But she could follow Sagara’s line of thinking. Out loud she said, “If you really believe the culprit is one of us, it can’t be that difficult to eliminate the innocent, can it? There’s a limited pool of suspects. The number of people who had the motive, means, and opportunity can’t be that large. All it takes is some deductive reasoning.”

“You make murder sound so simple,” Sagara snapped. “And you forget that the ship’s systems are down. We don’t know who was where, doing what. We don’t even know what time Wick was killed.”

She’d forgotten about the systems’ failure, the chaos it could be causing, and was briefly shamed into silence. Boone said, “There’s, what, seven of us left? You’re going to interrogate us all, figure out who’s guilty from discrepancies, lies? That’ll take forever—and all the while the real killer will be running around, doing God knows what to the ship. At least let someone you trust help you.”

Sagara gave him a look that made it clear: he didn’t trust anyone. “I’m putting you in separate rooms,” he said again. Then, looking at Park, he added, “Even if you aren’t guilty of anything, it’s for your own safety.”

Boone’s sculpted face was white and sullen. “If you separate us all, you make us easy targets for the killer.”

“I’ll be the only one walking around,” Sagara retorted. “And I am not a killer.”

“I’ve heard otherwise,” Boone said, casting a significant glance at the security officer’s tense hand on his weapon. At this, Sagara made a strange face: it was almost a grimace, almost something like a vicious smile.

“Not unless I have to be,” he amended. And he curled his fingers around the hilt of his blade and unsheathed it a little.

The implicit threat was clear: Sagara was now speaking in a language that he knew Boone would understand, the language of power and violence. She knew then that he wouldn’t hesitate to cut their throats if they put up a fight. All in the name of serving the ISF, she thought. All to carry out his duty, his mission. His blind loyalty was going to doom them all.

But what could she say? Already she could feel the heat of the energy-blade fizzing and sparking through the air, and the thing had only been uncovered by an inch. She couldn’t imagine the damage it could do when slashed at someone, with its edge that could cut through tungsten and the cores of asteroids. Even Boone was flinching back. So she closed her mouth against her protests, her own accusations. Silently she let Sagara march them back to their bunks like an executioner taking his condemned to the gallows.

—