Chapter 5: The Maw and the Mathematics of Ending

The navigation bay of the Indifferent Maren was not designed for six people.

It was designed for two, generously, or one with room to spread charts. It measured four meters by three at its widest, with a central console that Farro had bolted into the floor himself when the factory mounting stripped its threads during a turbulent run through the Celrin bypass seven years ago. The overhead was low enough that Arak — not yet aboard, but Farro would remember this when he arrived — would have needed to duck. The walls were layered in overlapping navigational printouts, Farro's handwritten corrections in grease marker cutting across the machine-printed corridor designations like editorial dissent. Two of the four overhead lighting strips worked. The recycled air smelled of machine oil and the particular staleness of spaces where people have been worried for long hours.

Merrick sat on the console. Pip stood against the back wall with his arms crossed and his eyes doing something that wasn't quite watching the room. Samwell had taken the navigator's chair and was turned half away from the screen as though determined to see everything at once. Farro stood nearest the door with the unconscious positioning of someone who has spent fifteen years aboard a small vessel learning that whoever stands nearest the door controls the meeting's tempo.