The only person right now who could answer any of these questions was Lantern-Eyes herself, walking only a few steps in front of me. Curiosity burned, but I kept quiet. Not only was I worried that sound might summon a manikin, but I had to watch what I said to her. If I told her something about the Senator that she didn’t already know and got the Senator in trouble, and if the Senator found out it was me… boom, pop, bye-bye Sean Wren’s intact skull.

Fuck the Republic, seriously. They weren’t content with screwing over the independent planets, they had to go around screwing over each other—which got us independent planets screwed over too, in the end.

I followed Lantern-Eyes through a doorway and stopped, because she had disappeared. I swung my light across the room and found it a dead end, a small closet of a room that might’ve been an office once. There was a pile of dust and splinters that had maybe been a desk, with iron fittings discolored in the pile. A shattered mound of plastic and crystal might have been a computer, once—in the old days, data had been stored in quartz.

I jumped at movement behind me, ready to brain my attacker with my stolen flashlight, but it was just Lantern-Eyes. She set her hands on my shoulders, turning me to face the direction she wanted, and then pushed me inexorably that way, out of the room and into an adjacent room. I hadn’t seen that there were two doorways, side-by-side. She stopped me in front of a closed door inside this second room, maneuvering me like a doll.

She bent down, messing with something hidden from my flashlight beam by her oversized jacket, and this new door swung open. Dim light emitted from inside the room beyond, but it was more light than I’d seen since Indigo had turned his collar-light up high. I squinted against it.

“In,” she said, and I stepped in, flicking off my flashlight as I did. The room she’d led me to was boxy, large enough to lie down in, and not much more. The floor and walls had been swept clean—very clean. You could eat off that floor, and there weren’t tables, so maybe she did. Against one wall was a neatly done-up pallet of patched blankets; the wall opposite the bed had very precise stacks of rations, all at exact right angles to the wall and floor, all grouped by type. The light in the room was coming from a bar set into the wall all around at about waist level—ancient emergency lighting, I guessed. Whether by luck or Lantern-Eyes’ rigorous repairs, the lights in this room still functioned, bathing everything in a pale soft glow that flickered gently at uneven intervals, like a butterfly’s wings.

On the third wall, between bed and rations and opposite the door I’d entered through, a small army’s worth of weapons had been mounted. I saw hand grenades, smoke bombs, knives of every conceivable size, and rather more clubs and bludgeoning instruments than I could name. I saw what I guessed were the smoke and light bombs she’d used to take down Indigo and me. They looked small and lightweight, easy to slip into my jacket pockets. They’d been very effective against me and Indigo, and nonlethal, too.