Sleep deprivation. Stress. Low goddamn blood sugar.

That's all it had been. Nothing to worry about.

Nothing to get institutionalised over.

Jinx wiped the crumbs of a hot-sauce jumbo burger from her mouth and scanned the port terminal, eyes skimming over e-billboards flashing travel specials and robots hawking accommodation. The irrational fear that had gripped her had loosened its hold the second she'd hit the main arrivals terminal. With food now in her belly and the familiar sounds of shuttle engines and flight announcements around her, she almost felt sane.

And if a sliver of ice still stiffened her spine, she'd live with it. The only thing that mattered right now was finding her friends. Given what'd just happened ... time most likely wasn't on her side.

Gripping her bag, she stopped in front of Dock 130's viewing window. She was right on time. Outside, a mass of rag-tag passengers disembarked a stout military shuttle. A lot of them looked injured. Some were on stretchers.

Stepping closer to the window, she tried to make out faces. Her lips quivered stupidly as she recognised service staff and E-district workers from Tirus 7 and crew members who'd been regulars at the port. Then a lumbering—limping—figure with a shock of brassy hair dismounted the shuttle's ramp.

The instant the arrivals' door slid open for the man, Jinx pounced. "Dem!"

Her supervisor's cat eyes widened as she flung herself at him. "Koel! Damn it." He caught her against his bulging belly and hugged her hard. "Thought you were roach bait."

"I'm fine." Jinx drew back, slightly horrified she was tearing up. The carbs in her burger needed to kick in stat. "But what happened to you, you old wreck? You're limping."

"Twisted knee. I'm not built to dodge bullets—or bloody lasers."

Recalling how he'd lost his human eyes to photonic tech, Jinx squeezed his arm. "You're not bug soup. That's what counts."

"There but for the grace of God, kid." Dem limped over to a seat and sat down heavily.

Jinx took the one next to him and resisted the urge to hug him again—confirm he was really there, breathing. "I've seen footage of what's left of A-Deck. Shit, Dem. Things got ugly."

"That's one word for it." Dem looked out across the busy terminal. His face... Jinx's heart thudded. Maybe neither one of them was ready for this conversation.

She opened her mouth to change the subject.

Dem's heavy hand on her knee stopped her. His throat worked a second before he turned to her, cat pupils fully dilated. "The look of those things, Jinx." His grip tightened a moment. "I should never have assigned you that inspection. What the hell was I thinking sending you onto a roach ship? I was going to do it myself. Got as far as the airlock. Then calls came in, complaints from mining execs, and I thought, 'Fuck it. Koel can handle this.' I'm an arsehole."

"That's not news, Dem." Jinx grasped his hand. "And who else would you have assigned the job while you sorted out all that other shit? Droe? He might've been the CI on call, but his brain never reports for duty."

Dem snorted. "That drug-addled prick survived, you know? He was out on Zero meeting his dealer. Took cover in an old escape passage."

"And both of us will eventually get over that disappointment." Jinx forced a smile then drew in a breath. "Dem, the top deck—?"

"Was bloody mayhem." He met her stare grimly. "The fuckers ran right over the top of us like we weren't even there. They wanted management and coms. Swarmed the admin level. Never seen anything like it. If we'd met up in my office as planned..." He shook his head and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Those of us on the docks got lucky. We got left to the gas."

"But you had breather tech." Jinx remembered the environmental system had gone down earlier—when the roaches had started their stealthy entry into the port.

Dem nodded. "I latched onto an old friend, Adeli Monk. She had a VIP shuttle fuelled and ready. And she's a sly pu'ta, that one. Ex-smuggler. Didn't try for the void like most. Faked a crash in the wastes. Took cover under a rock overhang to wait things out. Unfortunately, a sandstorm hit during the night. Took us a few days to clear engines and get back to port. The military had taken over by then, but everything was still a shit fest."

"Soh?" Jinx steeled herself. "Did you see her?"

"Sorry, kid." Dem squeezed her knee. "Not since before the attack. She'd headed down to C-Deck to talk to some contacts. Wanted to get information on who'd put that abduction contract out on you."

Jinx blew out a breath. "So, she wasn't on A-Deck. That's something. What about Data Coms? What happened to them?" His words about the admin level replayed, bringing a prickling chill. "You seen anyone? I'm looking for one of the analysts. Lenton Solaris."

Dem shook his head. "Only people from Data Coms I've heard about are techs who were fixing storm damage outside the port."

Lenton's vivid blue eyes and wide grin filled her mind, closing off her throat. She had to force out her next words. "What about Enforcement? The guys must have been hit hard. Did anyone—?"

"Get fucking shot by roaches and trampled by a herd of panicking dumbfucks?" An irritated voice behind her snapped Jinx around in her seat. "Fuck yes, we did."

"Olsen!" Jinx jumped up, but managed to abort the instinct to hug him. Not only because, well, it was frigging Olsen, but because the big port officer was a walking bandage. What she could see of his face was burnt. Plasma injuries. But his eyes, while red and watery, still held a familiar hostile gleam. "Jeez, Olsen. You've looked better, and that's saying something given the face you were born with."

A snarl minus a few metal caps. "Glad you made it out alive, freak."

"Ditto, dickhead."

He grunted. "Why aren't you roach shite? And where the fuck were you when everything went to stinking hell? People were looking all over the port for your runt arse."

"I got caught in a business deal involving Heiko Tras." She skipped any reference to Kaplan and his people. She'd read the legal crap she'd been handed, knew what 'classified' covered. "We were right next to his ship when C-Deck got gassed."

The bandage around Olsen's head creased: a scowl. "Bullshit. No fucking way Tras let you on his ship. The bastard goes for a weapon every time he sees you. He'd have fed you to the nearest roach."

Dem raised woolly brows. "Why aren't you space dust, kid?"

A certain void hound.

Jinx dumped the thought and the emotional baggage that came with it. She refocused on Olsen. "You get to a ship?"

Olsen snorted. "Was way too busy getting my arse shot off. A group of us made it to the lower levels, barricaded ourselves in one of the old bunkers. Turns out that shite port is good for something: surviving a fucking roach apocalypse."

Jinx eyed his injuries. How close had things got? "How's your partner, Rolli?"

"Don't talk to me about that fuckhead."

She blinked at the venomous reply. "What? The kid do something stupid?"

Olsen snarled, clenched his bandaged fists. "He fucking lost it, Koel. Started taking out his own team."

She jerked back. "What? Why would he...?"

"Saw it myself, kid." Dem placed a hand on her arm. "Locked his rifle on full blast and let rip."

"Fucker." Olsen looked out to the wounded disembarking the shuttle outside, but didn't seem to see them. "Don't know what prick of a drug he took, but it fucked him up. He killed Manning and Kiota before me and Lane could take him out. Took three fucking bolts—the last to the damn head. He wasn't feeling pain. Arsehole."

Jinx couldn't imagine it. Rolli had been a frigging goof. "That's seriously messed up, Olsen. I'm sorry."

"Fuck him."

Jinx filed her other questions. She was surrounded by the walking wounded. Her friends needed food and beds, not her pestering them. She'd hit them up for more info later, maybe over a stiff whiskey at one of the port bars. "You guys know where your accommodation is?"

Dem brought up a local map on his wrist com. "We're being put in a school dormitory overnight. Lot of others are getting shipped to various hospitals." He looked back up to Jinx. "Don't give up on finding Soh, kid. She knew most of C-Deck's regular scumbag crews."

"Yeah." Jinx blanked out memories of gunfire and crippled vessels. "You two go rest up. I'll track you down later, after I see who else I know in this mob."