“Ah. I thought perhaps I’d overlooked something. No, the pirates will enter, carrying enough armaments to make resistance useless.”

“We’ve got to do something!” Atlanta glanced around at the other faces, but they all seemed calm.

“We are,” Niko said. “We’re making sure we don’t get killed when we get boarded. They’ll find us all here, nice and peaceful-like. They don’t want to kill us.”

She directed a look at Atlanta, who maintained a wise silence, before she went on. “You can try to hide things about your person that might be of use in an escape, but unless you can come up with a way to do so that these folks haven’t seen before—and I guarantee they have both seen and done quite a bit of it themselves—you’re only going to have it taken away from you. So gather up anything that you think you can’t bear to part with, and hope for the best, but know that it will probably be taken.”

She looked around for confirmation before she nodded over at where Dabry sat with several crates of seasonings and cookware at his feet. “They’ll probably take those, but on the off chance that they won’t—that they’ll actually listen to a list of our skills in order to prepare us for inventory and will realize he’s better able to demonstrate when he’s got his gear—he’s prepared.”

“I don’t have anything like that,” Atlanta said.

Niko spread her hands in an easy gesture. “See, there? Even fewer complications. You’ll be fine. Just follow Dabry’s lead.”

“Not your lead?”

“Oh no,” Niko said. “Not my lead. I intend to be exceedingly foolish, and I strongly suggest that you do not follow suit.”

“Captain…” Dabry said.

She held up a finger. “We have been over all this before, more than a dozen times. You play the cards that have been dealt you.”

“It is a poor hand,” he said mildly.

“I’ve held worse and still walked away with the pot at the end.”

Despite the braveness of those words, dread stole over Atlanta as they waited, sitting among their luggage in the dining room where they had already spent so much time. From the bubble, they could see more of the haven: an immense collection of ships and structures floating in a single void.

It looked like a beach where a thousand thousand ships had washed ashore. Some were new and expensive, but most were older, scuffed and scarred by battle, dented and corroded by time, looking barely capable of flight. Human ships by the dozens, but they were outnumbered by those of other races: the bulbous, tubby ships of Geglis; and the plain rounds of Spisedo; the deadly gray metal of Alderan, and the gritty organic stonework of Emshwills.