CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE WAITING --- The column of light pulsed in silence, and the Sable Wind waited. Leo sat in the cargo bay, his back against a bulkhead still warm from the gravitational shear. Joren Voss's grey ship shirt hung loose on his shoulders—clean now, but not his, never his. The dead man's clothing had become a second skin over the past few days, but there were still moments when he caught his reflection in a dark viewport and didn't recognize himself. He was eating a ration block. Core Paste. The taste of nothing. Miri found him there. She climbed down from the cockpit, her patchwork coat of salvaged ship fabrics rustling with every step—a coat made from a dozen different vessels, a dozen different stories, none of them hers except the wearing of it. Her fur was a restle
- Writer
