Kiem gave a start. Bel had levered open the airlock to the launching tube at the end of the line and was leaning over the shuttle inside, attaching something that looked a bit like a suction cup to its door. Kiem had given up being surprised by what Bel had apparently been sitting on in her luggage this whole time. He angled his body so he and Gairad were covering her completely from view.

Bel hissed as the door slid open. “Got it. Let’s go.”

Kiem and Gairad squeezed through the airlock into the tiny shuttle behind her, stumbling as they hit the transition to zero gravity. The interior could have sat six people, but only if those people were very good friends. “Do we need to talk someone into giving us clearance?”

“Nothing will be inward-bound while that freighter leaves,” Bel said, her eye on a blocky supply freighter. “So we just slip out behind it.” She must have noticed Gairad’s suddenly pale face, because she grinned and said, “Don’t panic, I’ve done this before.”

“Suddenly everything about your speeding fines makes sense,” Kiem said. He snapped himself into the zero-grav restraints. The interior had no windows, so he tapped his fingers on his knees and watched the glass walls recede on one of the pokey viewscreens.

Sitting still was agony. It felt like there was a pile of coals lodged under his rib cage, and all he could do was hang against the straps as they accelerated and watch the lighted bustle of the docks give way to black space. The viewscreens flickered and sharpened to brighten the pinpoint scattering of stars. Kiem knew their slow glide was an illusion—the other habitats in the cluster were kilometers away—but he wanted to shake the controls to eke out some speed. Jainan had been taken hours ago. He must be bored and tired, Kiem told himself. He must

be sitting there wondering when Kiem and Bel would turn up. Other options were unthinkable.

The silver shells of the other habitats in the cluster rose around them, mainly automated manufacturing plants and storage stations as big as asteroids. The Kingfisher refinery came into view with the excruciating slowness of a planet turning toward the sun.

“Hah!” Gairad said, leaning forward. “Look, I was right about the secret module. They have detection fields,” she added sharply. “Bel! You’re flying right into them!”

Bel’s mouth was, unusually, a straight line. “Kiem, permission to corrupt comms.”

“What?”

“I can’t completely block their signals,” Bel said. “Not without a proper rig.

But I can corrupt them, which will give you some time before they reset.”

“How long?” Kiem said.

“Maybe twenty minutes. No messages in, no messages out. Not even if the habitat is on fire.”

“There’ll be safety controls,” Gairad said.

“All safety controls have a fail state,” Bel said.