“Callie’s transponder!” Drake said. “Ashok, she’s way the hell in the wrong direction, I don’t know what happened, but we’re closer than the canoe. We’ll pick her up. Converge at these coordinates.”

Elena was waiting at the airlock when Callie floated in, and Elena was the one who helped her out of her suit, who checked her over for bruises, who covered her in kisses, who hugged her and then stopped hugging when Callie said “Ow,” and who took her to her quarters after Callie gave her last order before falling asleep: “Drake, Janice – take us back home.”

Elena left Callie alone in her quarters after a while to go check on Sebastien and her other crewmates. Callie was exhausted and grimy, the exhilaration of near-death draining out of her as her body tried to balance itself again chemically. She couldn’t sleep until she got word that they’d successfully traveled via bridge back to Trans-Neptunian Space, emerging in the same spot the Anjou had just a few days ago. She ordered everyone to stand down, get some rest, get some food, do whatever they needed to do, ahead of an all-hands meeting to discuss their future.

She certainly needed sleep, but it wouldn’t come. “Shall?”

“Yes, Callie?”

“I’m guessing the hull repair drone was destroyed?”

“It took a lot of hard hits, I’m afraid. Came apart completely. But I shut down its copy of my consciousness first, so there was no suffering.”

“It – you – saved my life.”

“A purely selfish act. Without you, Stephen would be in charge, and he’d park the White Raven in orbit around some Jovian moon and never take me anywhere interesting. I wouldn’t have any fun.”

“Did you, ah, synch up with the drone’s memories when it came out of the bridge?”

“I did. Reconnection happens automatically, whenever communication is possible. But there’s a keyword system, and I detected a slightly ambiguous request for confidentiality. I err on the side of caution so I encrypted that portion of the information, and never experienced it consciously. Whatever you said to the drone, thinking it would go with me to my robot grave, is still secret.” He paused. “Unless you want me to hear it?”

“It was just a lot of really filthy sexy dirty talk. You wouldn’t be interested. Do you remember going through the tunnel with me, though?”

“I do. That was harrowing.”

“Could you see anything in there?” Thinking of that single glowing blue eye.

“No, as usual, it was totally blank to my sensors. I wonder if Ashok could wire some biological eyes onto a drone so I could see the lights in the tunnel, and the other things the Axiom tries to hide from mechanical sensors. We’d have to get our hands on some eyes, of course. Liars seem to have as many as they want. They must grow them in a lab.”