Hayes waited until the drag on the hatch went still.
He counted breaths. Then he cracked the leaf.
The bridge side was red-dark and empty of the long body. Growth. Rails. No scrape.
A green suit stood off the frame, weapon low.
The HUD still refused the others. No Smith. No stack. Only this one tag, finally willing to be a name.
GREEN-5 — VOSS
"Easy," Voss said. Voice through the mask, flat. "Got cut off. Smith took the spine. I took the wrong branch. You're Hayes."
Hayes did not lower the shotgun all the way.
"Where are they?"
"Moving to you. Coms are trash. I heard the shot. Followed it."
It was a clean story. Too clean. The outlands had taught him clean stories. He still had one slug and a room at his back, and a man in green was better math than the thing in the hall.
Not enough suspicion to put the slug in him.
"We find Smith," Hayes said. "You walk where I can see you."
Voss nodded and stepped past, hands visible.
They took three paces toward the crown.
Hayes's glass stayed blank. No One. No Four. No Smith. Just Voss, close, real, breathing.
Hayes turned his head to check the dark they were leaving.
The butt of Voss's weapon arrived first.
From Hayes's side it was not a fight. It was the world tilting. A hard shock at the base of the skull, light going white, the deck coming up into his teeth. The shotgun left his hands without asking. The graft hit metal and sparked on the magnet. Then the red strips smeared and went out.
He came back to the captain's quarters.
Not standing. On the deck. Wrists bound to the bolted desk leg with his own sling. The shotgun was across the room. His mask was gone.
Voss sat on the bunk like the room was his. Helmet off. A plain face. Sweat in his hair. Eyes that had watched too long in the shuttle ring and again in the corridor.
Air moved. Real air. The vents in this room still pushed something that could be breathed. Hayes tasted it and hated how grateful he was.
"Intentions," Voss said. "Why the Fleet. Why blue. Why 626."
Hayes's mouth was dry.
"Investigation. Same as you."
"Don't," Voss said. "Are you working for your father?"
The words sat in the room and did not belong to any life Hayes owned.
"I don't have a father."
"Everybody has one. Some of them build fleets. Some of them leave boys on dirt and wait. You landed off-course. You found this room. You read. Don't tell me that's luck."
Hayes thought of the slate. Scientists. A box that was never supposed to open. A thirst that did not end. He thought of his mother's mouth moving in a dream with no sound.
He had nothing that would satisfy this man.
So he spat.
It hit Voss on the cheek.
Voss's face changed in a small way, then a large one. He came off the bunk and used his fists. The first punch opened Hayes's lip. The second found the eye. Blood ran warm down the chin and dripped onto the deck, bright against the gray.
Moisture.
Hayes still had a leg.
He kicked the desk.
The cup jumped, turned, and threw its water across Voss's chest and hands. A thin sheet. A shine. Voss froze a half-second looking at it like it had insulted him.
"You think this is a settlement game," Voss said. He picked up the weapon. Raised it. The muzzle found Hayes's face. "Answer me about your father or—"
The vent over the bunk made a sound.
Gentle.
A scrape. Soft. Almost polite. Metal on something that was not metal.
Both of them heard it.
The water on Voss's suit sat there and gleamed.
The scrape moved closer to the grate.