She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that they were all siding with Boone—after they had seen Holt submerged in that healing pod, comatose, while liquid nanobots grafted his frayed nerve endings back together! She’d been sure that, once she explained the situation to them, Boone would be considered just as much a madman as his victim. That he would be the one who was punished—not her.

They were hiding something, she realized. All of them. They knew whatever it was Boone had been down in Deck C for; whatever it was he’d been protecting. Boone really wasn’t just some soldier, some hired muscle for a simple colony expedition. Certainly he wasn’t there to run interference between volatile personalities on the ship. If anything, she felt less secure with him in the mix. So what was he around for, if not security? Park didn’t know, but it was clear the others did.

“If you’re really that concerned about Boone,” Wick continued, “rest assured that Sagara will take care of him if he ever steps too far out of line.”

“And how will Sagara do that?” Park asked, without looking at the security officer.

He didn’t look at her either. “I’m trained to deal with people like Boone,” he said. “And EL guns, too.”

Which meant, she thought with dismay, that Sagara also had weapons on this ship. Ones deadlier than an electrolaser. What did he have in his arsenal? A quantum blade? A railgun? And more importantly—if he thought they could rely on him to keep Boone in check—who had the power to keep Sagara in check?

“I’d like to talk to Holt,” she said then. It was clear to her now that she could hardly trust anyone on the Deucalion, not without knowing the bigger picture. Holt, if he was conscious and lucid, might have information that she could use.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Wick told her, absently touching the stubble that had grown on his face over the events of the last day. He looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept. “Holt’s in a medically induced coma now. He’ll be frozen once he’s stable.”

“And if he wakes up before that,” Sagara added coldly, “I’ll be the one who talks to him.”

Park wanted to hit him. “I am the only one trained for this,” she said, fighting so tightly to keep her voice calm that it quavered. “I’ll talk to him.”

They glared at each other for a moment in breathlessly icy silence. Then Wick said, coughing: “First I’d like to establish exactly how this all happened. First Holt started suffering—what, hallucinations?”