She ate little, and the less she ate, the less she felt like doing. A vast calmness settled over her, and her body felt increasingly distant and insubstantial, as if it were a holo projection. The few times she left the pilot’s seat, she found she had neither the will nor the energy to exert herself.

Her stretches of wakefulness grew shorter and shorter, until she spent most of her time drifting in and out of awareness, never quite sure if she had slept or not. Sometimes she received snatches of images from the Soft Blade—impressionistic bursts of color and sound—but the xeno didn’t share with her another memory like the one of the Plaintive Verge.

Once, Kira noticed that the hum of the Markov Drive had ceased. She lifted her head out of the thermal blankets wrapped around her and saw a smattering of stars outside the cockpit windows, and she realized that the shuttle had dropped out of FTL in order to cool down.

When she looked again, some time later, the stars had vanished.

If the shuttle returned to normal space at any other time, she missed it.

As little as she ate, the store of ration packs still continued to dwindle. The dust the suit expelled gathered in a soft bed around her body—molding to her form and cupping it like dense foam—or else drifted away from her in delicate threads toward the intake vents along the ceiling.

And then one day, there were no more ration packs.

She stared at the empty drawer, barely able to process the sight. Then she returned to the pilot’s seat and strapped herself down and took a long, slow breath, the air cold in her throat and lungs. She didn’t know how many days she’d been in the shuttle, and she didn’t know how many days were left. Ando could have told her, but she didn’t want to know.

Either she was going to make it or she wasn’t. Numbers wouldn’t change that. Besides, she was afraid she would lose the strength to continue if he told her. The only way out was through; worrying about the duration of the trip would just make the journey more miserable.

Now came the hard part: no more food. For a moment, she thought of the cryo tubes at the back of the shuttle—and of Orso’s offer—but as before, her mind rebelled against the idea. She would rather starve than resort to eating another person. Maybe her stance would change as she wasted away, but Kira felt certain it wouldn’t.

From a bottle she’d stashed by her head, she took a pill of melatonin, chewed it up, and swallowed. Sleep, more than ever, was her friend. As long as she could sleep, she wouldn’t need to eat. She just hoped she would wake up again.…

Then her mind grew increasingly fuzzy, and she fell into oblivion.

4.

Hunger came, as she knew it would, sharp and grinding, like a clawed monster tearing at her gut. The pain rose and fell, as regular as the tide, and each tide was higher than the last. Her mouth watered, and she bit her lip, thoughts of food tormenting her.