Chapter 22: The Compact Moves on Thresh

The harbor hands started work at first light, and Karev heard them through the corrugated wall — the scrape of inventory crates, the abbreviated exchanges of people who had been doing the same thing together for years and no longer needed full sentences for it. He had been at the diagnostic bench for four hours. He was not tired in any way that mattered.

The notebook was in his kit bag. He had not opened it again.

He was running the rebreather's secondary compression check for the third time — not because it needed it, but because his hands needed something to do that wasn't the thing they kept returning to — when the depot's access hatch opened and Pip came through it.