We have been following the medicine, she said.
Perhaps we should have been following the boxes.
Hamish arrived at Meridian two days later with three unpaid docking fees, a scratched cargo manifest, and a mechanic who insisted that the ship’s left engine was held together by hope.
He had brought the mechanic because he suspected she was right.
Her name was Imani Okafor, and she was a human engineer who had spent most of her career repairing vessels that somebody else had declared beyond repair.
She wore a battered green jacket with the sleeves pushed up and spoke quietly until somebody tried to tell her how machinery worked.
Sepha met them at the docking gate and noticed that Hamish had brought a sealed packet of medical samples in a refrigeration box.
He said they came from a remote clinic where a colleague of his had recently died after receiving treatment from a Helix shipment.
Sepha asked why he had not told her about the samples over the communications channel.
Hamish glanced at the security camera above the gate and said that the channel had begun making a peculiar clicking sound whenever he mentioned Helix.
Imani said the ship had passed its inspection despite a transmitter fault that should have grounded it.
Somebody had wanted them to leave without asking questions.
Sepha led them through a service corridor rather than the public concourse, where a crowd of journalists had gathered in anticipation of the famous survivor’s arrival.
Hamish looked toward the noise and asked whether the press had finally discovered that he was an ordinary man with extraordinary bad luck.
Sepha told him that the press had discovered an embargoed report about antivenom failures.
He stopped walking.
Are we telling people, he asked.
She explained that the official plan was to confirm the results before making an announcement.
Hamish asked whether the people holding defective cartridges had been warned.
No, Sepha admitted.
He kept walking, but his easy grin had disappeared.
They entered the laboratory, where Vela was seated beside a transparent panel with a picture of the skithra life cycle displayed on it.
The girl had traced the arrows several times with her fingertip, following the progression from egg to hatchling to adult.
When Hamish introduced himself, she looked at his left arm.
He lifted his sleeve to show the narrow scar where the creature had bitten him.
Vela touched her own forearm in the same place and asked whether he remembered being frightened.
