Sagara was still limping, but it didn’t stop him from creeping ably up to the bridge doors and pressing his ear to them. A futile gesture, considering it was soundproofed and all they could hear was the roar of the ship around them, the whine of spaceflight as they continued to hurtle away from Eos. Park waited in agonized silence, her heart thumping in her throat; what if the doors opened, what if they were ambushed from a direction they weren’t expecting? Chanur and Wan Xu had been easy to confront: they were scientists, academics—but Boone had had his genes refined specifically to make him a killing machine. And Natalya had the deadly vigor of a fanatic. She took a steadying breath through her nose. She just wanted this part to be over.

Finally Sagara eased away from the door and motioned with some kind of hand signal she didn’t understand: a military gesture, some complicated series of steps and directions. Taban, at least, pretended to understand; he nodded sagely. Fulbreech just shrugged and said in an undertone: “Go on, then.”

Sagara palmed open the bridge doors and leapt lightly past them, gun poised, body coiled. Fulbreech followed, swinging his gun up and around in a wide arc. Park squeezed her eyes shut against her will, expecting the sounds of blasting, of massacre—but there was only silence. When she opened her eyes again, Sagara was looking around and frowning. The bridge was empty.

Natalya and Boone were not there.

Fulbreech rushed forward to one of the control panels. “They must have left,” he said, already flying into action. “Maybe they abandoned ship, seeing how things were going. Here—you three, you go over there and start reconfiguring the lambda drive. Look, we’re trapped in elliptical orbit around the planet still—we need to shoot off toward Corvus, I want calculations—” He rapped off some more orders to the synthetics, who moved to help him man the controls and take back piloting control of the ship. Sagara went over and closed the bridge doors again, positioning himself so that he was ready to shoot whatever tried to come through. He was still frowning, tense and wary.

Fulbreech looked at Park. “I need your help, Park,” he said, pointing to the seat that she’d seen Natalya sitting in, during her vision in the freezer. “Go over there and wait for my signal—you’re going to touch the orange button that says ‘Disengage Automated Tracking’ when I tell you to.”