A lot of people would’ve cringed while pulling away Farsus’ bandages. Kamak had seen worse.

  “Hmm. That’s a lot of muscle lost,” Kamak said. He leaned in a little closer to the scabrous wound. “Are these stitches? They used a needle and thread to put you back together?”

  “I don’t think they had access to anything better,” Farsus said.

  “Six below, that’s depressing,” Kamak said. “We’ll have to send them some flesh-fusers as a thank you gift.”

  “Maybe stick to calling them Regenerative Tissue Modifiers,” Doprel suggested. “Flesh-fusers” was an off-putting nickname for an otherwise helpful medical device.

  “Same difference,” Kamak said. He grabbed some fresh bandages and a few other medical supplies from their stocks. “You want us to try and fix whatever they fucked up in there?”

  “I would prefer to avoid any more digging around in my torso,” Farsus said. Kamak nodded along and stuck to cleaning the wound and replacing the bandages.

  “We’ll get you to Theddis as soon as we can,” Kamak said. “Or some other doctor, if you’d prefer someone less crazy putting your guts back together.”

  “Theddis will be fine.”

  “We’ll see if he makes housecalls, then,” Kamak said. “Not sure going back to Centerpoint is a good idea right now.”

  “I would prefer to return, actually,” Farsus said. “I think I would like to see Ambassador Yìhán.”

  “Don’t get all sentimental on us, you weren’t that near-death,” Kamak said.

  “It was closer to death than I have been before,” Farsus said. “And to my surprise, I did not enjoy it.”

  Kamak glanced sideways at Doprel, but Doprel just had his eyes on the floor.

  “Most people don’t like dying, Farsus.”

  “And I am not most people,” Farsus said. “I am a chaos scholar, a student of death. I had always imagined I would greet death as a new adventure. That was not the case.”

  Farsus shifted uncomfortably in his bed, trying to sit as upright as his wounded stomach would allow.

  “Instead, my thoughts were of things I had not seen, words I had not said,” Farsus said. “I was not expecting to meet death with regrets.”

  “Again, very normal thing to feel,” Kamak said. He’d seen enough people die to know there were always regrets.

  “All the same, I think I have spent too much time in the company of death,” Farsus said. “I should, perhaps, try to live for a while.”

  He adjusted himself once again, and suffered the stinging pain of his half-treated wound.

  “Especially considering my condition,” Farsus said.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Hey, come on, this isn’t a career-ending injury,” Kamak said. “We can fix that. Hell, the government wackos grabbed some of Kor’s fucked up gene tanks. We can probably make you better than you started if we borrow one of those.”

  Kor’s apartment on Centerpoint had been sparse, resource wise, but the Council Police had raided her manor on her homeworld as well. They’d found a fully stocked lab and many of Kor’s notes, giving them a vague idea of how Kor’s technology functioned. Kamak didn’t trust the tech enough to use it for frivolous reasons, but fixing a giant hole in Farsus’ abdomen was hardly frivolous.

  “My physical state is only part of my reasons for wanting time away from violence,” Farsus said. “If you and the crew are not willing to accompany me, I will find my own way to Centerpoint.”

  “I should go to Centerpoint too,” Doprel said. “We might as well all go together.”

  “What do you want to go to Centerpoint for?” Kamak said. “You got an ambassador you want to chat up too?”

  “No, I just...I have things I need to do,” Doprel said.

  “You’re still a terrible liar, Dop,” Kamak said. “What are you planning?”

  “I’m...I think I should maybe turn myself in.”

  “For what?”

  “I killed a woman, Kamak!”

  “Yeah, one who was trying to kill you,” Kamak said. He gestured to Farsus’ wound. “Everyone with half a brain knows that’s self defense.”

  “There’s a lot of people with less than half a brain out there,” Doprel said. Kamak had no rebuttal. “Look, things are rough with humanity already. Maybe a little due process will help smooth things over, keep people from seeing me as a mindless monster.”

  Doprel knew that some people would always see him as an animal or some otherworldly freak, but he had to try, at least.

  “Accountability will help things along,” Doprel concluded.

  “The people who chased us out of the hospital didn’t want ‘accountability’, they wanted your head on a pike,” Kamak said. “Don’t give them the satisfaction of acting like they might have a chance. And you sure as hell don’t put yourself in a locked room surrounded by strangers when there’s a serial killer on your ass.”

  Doprel scoffed at the idea, but Kamak latched on to it, and glared daggers at Doprel.

  “Or maybe that’s exactly what you want. Nice little locked room with a bunch of armed guards.”

  The withering glare turned to Farsus next.

  “What about you? You interested in the ambassador, or in her security detail?”

  “Kamak, that is not what this is about,” Doprel said.

  “I never took either of you for cowards,” Kamak said. “You come up with the idea to quit together, or did you both chicken out separately?”

  “Kamak, do not insult me,” Farsus said. “This is no shift in my courage, only my priorities.”

  “People don’t just change in a flash, Fars,” Kamak snapped.

  “The flash of a gunshot does wonders for one’s perspective,” Farsus said.

  “And not everyone’s as stubborn as you, Kamak,” Doprel said.

  “Fine! Call it what you want, I’ll call it what it is,” Kamak said, as he headed for the door. “Cowardice.”

  Kamak stepped out and slammed the door behind him.

  “Quit slamming doors on my ship, asshole,” Tooley cried out. Kamak turned to glare daggers across the room and saw her, Corey, To Vo, and Bevo all sitting around the common room table, datapads in hand as if they were comparing notes. To Vo looked up from her task long enough to match Kamak’s frown with one of her own.

  “Were you arguing about something?”

  “Just being an asshole, as usual,” Kamak said. For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to throw those two under the bus yet. “What are you all doing?”

  “Trying to figure out where Kor might head next,” Bevo said. “Checking out low-tech or off the grid places that might have a connection to us.”

  “That’s...good,” Kamak said. The exact kind of thing he would’ve told them to do. But they didn’t need to be told. “Keep at it.”

  “Well, we haven’t got much yet, so yeah,” Corey said. “We could use a hand.”

  “And I could use a drink,” Kamak said. He walked over to the kitchen and popped open one of his usual cabinets, finding it empty. “Fucking hell, did you drink everything on this ship, Toobertas?”

  “No,” Tooley grunted. Only most things. Kamak continued searching and continued not finding, until he popped open an upper right cabinet. A beeping alarm filled the air on the ship, making Kamak’s ears ring.

  “Fucking hell,” Kamak said. “You set up an alarm in case I ever break into your secret stash?”

  He glared at Tooley, ready for another round of insults. She didn’t look at him. Her blue face had gone pale.

  “That’s the proximity alarm,” Tooley said. “Someone’s coming.”