The breeze was numbing Jainan’s cheeks. He had found his outdoor gloves in his luggage; they made his hands too bulky for his pockets, so he clamped them under his arms as he crouched down to examine the remains of the engine.

Several minutes later, Kiem popped his head over the hull. “I think we’re good,” he said. “This stuff hasn’t been checked in a while, but it looks okay.

We’re still in the signal dead zone, so I suppose the emergency beacon’s useless.

The dashboard map’s not still working, is it?”

Jainan turned from the wreckage and opened his hand to show the glowing hemisphere of the flybug’s map resting in his palm. “I was just thinking that,” he said. “It has some charge, though no signal. I don’t know where we are.”

“Untracked wilderness,” Kiem said, incongruously cheerful. “Kind of illegally, too, since you’re not supposed to land in landscape reservations. Some hikers would kill to be us.” He inspected the miniature map in Jainan’s hand more closely and tried a command sign, but its sensors had died. He poked it instead. “I didn’t know they disconnected.”

“It was brute force,” Jainan said, gesturing at the bits of wreckage he’d used as makeshift tools. “I salvaged the pyro from the engine and melted the connectors. It doesn’t project anymore.”

“Neat job,” Kiem said. He examined the tiny crystal screen. “Okay, I think I

have a plan.” He pointed to a line across the map that Jainan had to look closely to see. “That has to be the rail line. It cuts east-west, so if we’re in the general area I think we are and we head south, we should hit it within two or three days.

They strip out the tacime alongside it so passengers can have signal. Our wristbands should pick up the moment we get in range. Then we call for help.”

Two or three days. They had ten days before Unification Day. The ceremonies were taking place on Carissi Station, a space habitat in orbit around Thea, and it would take seventy-two hours on a shuttle to get there from Iskat.

They could still make it in time. Jainan didn’t want to think about the consequences if neither of the treaty representatives turned up to the ceremonies.

“Yes,” he said. Kiem looked at him. After a moment, Jainan said, “Was there something else?”

“Uh.” Kiem cleared his throat. “It’s just. I’m not sure if that meant ‘Yes, that sounds good,’ or ‘Yes, I suppose we could ignore the glaring holes in that plan.’”

Despite the coat and overjacket, Jainan felt suddenly vulnerable. “Pardon?”

Kiem seemed to find the toggles of his wrist cuffs very interesting. “You say yes like that a lot,” he said, not looking at him. “I. Uh. I think I might be missing some cues.”

He thinks I’m lying to him, was Jainan’s first, panicked thought, but he clamped down on it. Kiem said what he meant, he knew that. But what he meant was bad enough.