Park shut her eyes; the pain in her head was throbbing wildly, distracting her—pulling her away from the moment, from the scene she was part of right now in the bridge. She couldn’t follow what was going on.

Sagara, at least, seemed to know. “So it was you,” he said with a note of disgust. “I suspected someone had tampered with communications on the ship—but I never imagined you’d have the gall, Fulbreech.” He shook his head, despite the gun pointed at it. “And I gave you access to METIS when the blackout happened. I suppose that was when you reprogrammed it to take orders from Boone.”

He wouldn’t, Park thought, opening her eyes again and looking at Fulbreech’s hunched shoulders—like he was a boy being scolded. He didn’t.

But then she could only think about how Fulbreech had come into her office that night, after Holt had gone missing, and told her that radiation storms had fried the communication systems. How effortlessly he’d gotten her into the escape pod for his grand gesture, having stolen a suit without anyone noticing. How he’d come to free her in her bunk, overriding Sagara’s orders and giving himself Reimi’s clearance to access the locks. “I’m good with computers,” he’d said with a smile. “I have to be.”

He’d had the ability all along, she realized. Why wouldn’t it be him?

Because it’s Fulbreech, she told herself, just as Fulbreech looked helplessly at Sagara and said, “You’re not conscripted. You don’t have family in the frontier—”

“Save it,” Natalya said then, in a cold, clipped voice. The hand holding the gun to Park’s neck tightened until the knuckles showed white. “It’s no use trying to explain to people like them. They won’t understand.”

Park finally wrenched her mouth away from Natalya’s other hand, heedless of the danger. “What’s your endgame here?” she demanded. She couldn’t look at Fulbreech at the moment—or perhaps ever again—so she directed her gaze to Boone, who looked back at her without emotion. “What do you plan to do with control of a ship that’s barely working and a crew that’s either frozen or incapacitated?”

“It’s a mutiny,” Sagara answered her, his voice acidic with contempt. “They think they’re being creative, revolutionary. It’s all happened before. They mean to hold us as hostages—the robot, probably, too—until the ISF gives them a ransom.”

“Ransom?” Natalya answered fiercely, taking the bait despite her own instructions not to. “You mean our families? Our freedom?”

Sagara laughed; it was a mocking, bitter sound that made Park shiver. “And where will you go with that freedom?” he asked her. “Back to Earth? It’s not as if they won’t find you there—and ISF owns the rest of inhabited space.”