And the rumors weren’t wrong, Park thought bitterly. Their conclusions were not so far off. She would not refer to herself as a “spy” necessarily, but the ISF officially called her an “orbiter”—the differences between the two being not so clear. The term had always made Park think of a satellite, cold and mechanical, watching from afar—or, when she was feeling unusually romantic, a moon, circling the tiny world of the Deucalion.

But her crewmates would not have agreed with the depiction. It was more likely they’d have compared her to a rat: some lurking, scampering thing. Park had been hired to provide the ISF a clear window into what was happening on the Deucalion, and the others resented her for it. To them, she was a snitch, a kiss-ass, proof that the ISF didn’t trust its own operatives—to the extent that they would pay someone to watch the crew and report on them. Forget that the other twelve were leading experts in their fields, under non-disclosure agreements; forget too that the majority of them were also under the rite of conscription, meaning the ISF owned their lives, or the lives of their loved ones. Park being on the ship meant that none of that was good enough for the ISF. They still wanted their information from as objective a source as possible. From someone specifically tasked to observe, to record, to interpret, to relay. So that whenever a crewmember reported back to ISF’s outpost, Park was there to fill in the gaps, to clarify their messages for the higher-ups: not what the shipmates were saying, but what they really meant. What was really going on—with them or the ship. She wasn’t really a psychologist, at least not in the conventional way. She was a living avatar of the Interstellar Frontier.

Or she had been, Park corrected herself. Now she didn’t know what she was—orbiter or primary psychologist or both.

She didn’t like that. Didn’t like surprises.

She wrenched her thoughts back to Sagara. Others perceived him in the same way that they perceived her. Sergeant Boone, who had joined the crew from the start, was already established as the mission’s military leader. He and his lieutenant Hunter served as the combat specialists aboard the ship, assigned to protect it from outside threat. They’d only picked up Sagara much later, at the last outpost before they left governed space, and then belatedly found out that he was to be the ship’s security officer. What was the difference? It was unclear—but again, the conclusion was that Sagara, like Park, was there to serve the interests of the ISF, not the crew. If Boone and Hunter were already there to protect the crewmembers, then Sagara must be around to protect something else. But what? No one knew. It was that mystery, coupled with his intense personality, that led the crewmembers to shun him.