The patrol found them in the ice.
Twelve hours out from Sable, coasting to save fuel, the Tern had drifted into the edge of a field of frozen debris that the charts called the Sable rime: a long thin cloud of ice crystals and small frozen fragments shed by the dead lamp over centuries, spread along its orbit like frost on a cold window. Sera had chosen to coast through it rather than burn around it. The ice was harmless at their speed. It ticked against the hull like sleet. Eshel had stopped looking up at it after the first hour, and Anwen had slept through most of it, upright in the jump seat with the sample case on her knees.
The patrol ship came out of the rime ahead of them without warning.
A Compact patrol cutter. Long, grey, armored, with gun housings along its flanks and a floodlight on its nose. The floodlight came on as the cutter turned to face them, a hard white beam that lit the ice crystals all around the Tern into a blinding glitter and pinned itself to the Tern’s hull, fixed on the cockpit glass.
Sera’s hand went to the lock control. She did not touch it. She kept her hand there, flat, beside it.
