Jeridan stepped through the airlock onto the pilgrimage ship Renewal. Nova and Aurora were on a spacewalk dealing with the damage to the Antikythera while Negasi took care of the ship and kept an eye on the less trustworthy members of the crew. No way were both of them going to leave the ship in the middle of an interstellar run.

MIRI could be trusted to secure the ship, but there was no telling what Nova, Derren, and Helen could get up to. They might be able to figure out a workaround. They'd probably been plotting it the entire voyage. He needed his partner on the scene.

I need a raise.

Jeridan put on a reassuring smile he did not feel as a Chinese man in a captain's uniform stepped forward. A Latina woman with the epaulettes of a first mate stood at his side.

The captain extended a hand. Jeridan took it.

"I'm captain Liu. This is First Mate Ramirez. We can't thank you enough for all your help. That ship took out our defenses easily and demanded forty of our youngest passengers as tribute."

Jeridan made a face. "Damn slavers. How are the casualties?"

"We lost a gunner in the initial fight. The explosion of the slaver ship caused a minor hull breach. Our emergency systems are rather antiquated, so the sealing took a few seconds. Flying debris from decompression injured thirty-two of the passengers."

"Any of them serious?"

"Some. We have decent medical facilities. Could be better, but … " Captain Liu gave an embarrassed shrug " … you know."

Yes, Jeridan knew. The Interstellar Bus was the bargain bin of transport. Only the poor and desperate took it, or those who had faith that they could make it to Earth.

"So all of your passengers are pilgrims?"

"Most of them. Some are moving to other systems along our route, but more than ninety percent of our passengers are taking the entire voyage to Earth."

"Wait. You're going all the way to Earth?"

First Mate Ramirez smiled. "We're pilgrims too."

Jeridan sucked in a breath and looked at the shabby ship with new eyes. "That's wonderful! But at this speed … "

"Yes," Captain Liu said. "We are in it for the long haul. We're making stops at various planets for a few weeks at a time for the sake of the passengers' and crew's mental health, but most of the time we will be on the spaceways."

"Not until we get that engine fixed. Let's take a look. We have excellent medical facilities aboard the Antikythera. We can transport over your worst injury cases."

"Thank you. Give us the names of your entire crew and I'm sure everyone will be happy to breath your names on Earth."

Jeridan felt a tingle go through him.

"We'd appreciate that," he said in a soft voice.

They headed out of the airlock room and down a short corridor. They hung a right, following a sign that said, "Main Passenger Deck."

Even though the door at the end of the corridor was shut, Jeridan could still smell the passenger deck.

He had never forgotten that smell—a mixture of sweat, body odor, recycled breath, and fear. The smell of too many people in too little space for far, far too long.

The smell he remembered most from childhood.

His journey had only been three months, and he had only ridden the Interstellar Bus once, yet he had never forgotten that smell.

Going all the way to Earth, these people would smell it for years.

Captain Liu hit a button and the door irised opened.

The smell hit Jeridan like a sledgehammer.

He paused for a moment, hands shaking, then crossed the threshold.

The sight was even worse than the smell.

The passenger deck was a single vast space taking up most of ship's interior. Despite being as big as most space hangers Jeridan had ever seen, it was also stiflingly cramped.

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The entire space was filled with beds, each surrounded by a grill and a curtain that could be pulled shut for privacy. Reaching from floor to ceiling, they must have numbered more than twenty for each stack, and the entire interior was filled with stacks side by side and end to end. It looked like a giant warehouse of people.

In essence, that's what it was.

Virtually everyone had their curtains open in a desperate attempt to see a little further, give a faint illusion of space. It was common for passengers on long voyages on Interstellar Buses to suffer from temporary myopia, their eyes no longer accustomed to seeing anything more than a few feet from their own face.

Some of the passengers watched programs or read on tablets. Others paced the gangways between the stacks of bunks. Only a few looked at them.

The vast majority lay listless, so dosed on tranquilizers that they had slept through the attack.

Jeridan didn't want into look at the eyes of the people he passed, but he couldn't help it. Dead, most of them, barely reacting to anything anymore. Interspersed with those were a few wide-eyed ones, the whites showing above and below their iris. These were the ones getting close to cracking. From somewhere further aft he could hear a man shouting. He couldn't make out the words, only the desperation.

They walked aft, passing row upon row of weary faces.

Jeridan wanted to put a cloth to his nose to hide that awful smell, but he couldn't insult these poor people. They didn't need any more insults. Their very existence was an insult.

He paused at one family. Weary father, drugged-up mother, young twins. A boy and a girl. They looked scared. Jeridan wondered why they weren't drugged up like their mother. Probably because they had taken too many tranquilizers already and their parents feared for their health. Jeridan had hated those medicine breaks when he had ridden on one of these damn things. The screaming further aft continued.

Jeridan stopped.

"We'll get you going as soon as possible," Jeridan told the kids.

"Can we go on your ship?" the little girl asked.

You don't want to go on our ship, kid. Hell, I'm tempted to trade places with you. At least it would be safer.

Jeridan put on a smile.

"We're going the other way. You won't get to Earth if you go with us."

He continued on with the captain and the first mate.

"I don't mind," the girl called after him. "We'll go anywhere. I don't mind!"

Jeridan gritted his teeth and continued.

They got to the space with the hull breach. Two tiny holes, now automatically sealed with quick-hardening foam, puckered the wall.

The foam hadn't filled the holes in time. The bunks nearby were buckled and twisted. Clothes, gear, and personal items were strewn all over the floor or were caught in the gnarled metal.

Several passengers lay on the floor, bruised and cut when bunks had collapsed on them. A medical team helped some of the worst cases, while the others sat around, slumped and suffering from yet another indignity.

One man lay on the ground, his arm twisted at a crazy angle, face slick with sweat, eyes wild.

"You're taking me to the infirmary, right? How big is it? Is it a big room? Do I get to stay there? Are you taking me there now?"

A female medic said something soothing and gave him a tranquilizer.

Jeridan scanned the casualties, then turned to the medic.

"We can take your six worst. Our ship has an excellent sick bay. Only two beds, though. The rest will have to lie on the floor. We can put down blankets or something."

The medic nodded and with quiet efficiency picked six badly injured cases and put them on stretchers. The ship was only equipped with four stretchers so they fashioned two more out of poles and bedsheets.

Once they were ready, Jeridan and the crew formed a column and headed for the airlock with the injured. Jeridan and the medic carried the first of the wounded, Captain Liu and First Mate Ramirez the second, and eight volunteers from among the passengers took the remaining four.

As they progressed down one of the narrow aisles on the port side, more and more of the passengers began to perk up and pay attention.

"Are you taking them to your ship?"

"Do you need any help?"

"I'm hurt too. Can I go to your sick bay?"

Jeridan glanced back to the rear of the column and saw a couple of dozen passengers following them. Others clambered down the bunkbeds and paced them along the next aisle. Still more cut in front.

"You want me to carry that?" a young male passenger asked Jeridan. "I can carry that."

"I'm good," Jeridan said.

"No, I'll take it."

The man tried to grab the stretcher's handles.

"I said I got it," Jeridan said, shouldering him away and nearly dropping the patient.

"I'll show you how to get to the airlock," the man said.

"Me too!"

"Right this way!"

"Everyone clear the way," Captain Liu ordered. "We need to get these critical cases to medical care."

The crowd only increased, tightening around them. Jeridan glanced around. Those faces looked desperate and capable of anything.

There had been a couple of riots on the ship he had been on, when the claustrophobia grew to be too much and panic set in. They had kicked off suddenly, without warning. Everyone just seemed to snap at once.

The result had been ugly. Really ugly.

Sweat beaded on his brow as he continued carrying the stretcher, shouldering aside the passengers in front of him as best he could.

The noise around them grew louder as more passengers crowded around. Progress slowed. Jeridan stumbled as one passenger crawled under a bunk to join the crowd in front of him.

"Let us through! These people are injured."

"Back to your bunks everyone," Captain Liu ordered. "The sooner we evacuate these injured, the sooner we can get going."

"Is the engine fixed yet?" someone asked.

"Are we being transferred to the other ship?"

"I'm a medic. Let me come along."

"I'm a medic too."

"Me too!"

A shout up ahead. The sound of a struggle. Someone cried out. Peering over the heads of the crowd, Jeridan could see a fight had broken out.

Panic spread through the crowd like a hot wind. Suddenly everyone was pushing and shoving. One of the stretcher bearers further back got knocked down by someone falling or being pushed off an upper bunk.

The crowd surged forward. Jeridan got pushed back, the stretcher angling up. He tried to right it and ended up on the floor with the patient.

The next thing he felt was getting stepped on by a dozen trampling feet.

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