"Abbi?"
"I'm here." The voice was quiet. It sounded like she had been crying.
"Where?"
"The corridor to your left."
Rena's light was still with the generator. She left it there and moved to her left. Light from Abbi's suit spilled from one of the rooms up ahead. Rena moved toward it. When she reached the doorway she saw that it was a room for young boys. The walls had been painted with mining ships and planets. Five child-sized hammocks were positioned along one wall. There were toy figurines and plastic helmets, sports balls, and stuffed animals. To Rena's relief there were no children here; perhaps they had been moved elsewhere on the ship before the battle.
Abbi floated in the middle of the room holding a toy hand drill. She didn't look up. "Mono had one of these," she said softly. "It was broken when we gave it to him. He was only about two years old then. He played with it for hours, flying around the room, making the drill noises, pretending to unscrew everything." She turned it over in her hands. "I think that's why he wanted to be a mechanic. He had this stupid little plastic drill and then he saw Segundo and Victor using the real thing, and his eyes lit up."
Rena said nothing.
"He was going to be a mechanic," said Abbi. "That's what he told me all the time. He was going to be like Victor. It was always Victor this and Victor that. He asked me more questions about Victor than he asked about his own father."
She let go of the drill.
It floated there in the air in front of her. She stared down at it. "If I had given him something else, a different toy, everything would have been different. He wouldn't have wanted to be a mechanic. He wouldn't have snuck off that day. He would've stayed with me. He wouldn't have been on El Cavador."
She lifted her head and looked at Rena. There were tears in her eyes. "We should have died with them, Rena. All of us should have died."
"They didn't want that, Abbi. They wanted us to survive. Segundo said so."
"Who cares what Segundo said!" She was yelling now. "Mono was a child! He died alone! Everyone else was outside the ship. He would've been afraid. He would've wanted me with him. He would've screamed my name."
Rena didn't know what to say.
"You keep telling us somos familia, somos uno. We are family, we are one, we need to stick together. Well why didn't we stick together when it mattered most? Huh? Why did we ever leave the ship? Why weren't we familia then?"
Rena moved to embrace her. "Abbi--"
"No! Don't touch me!" She shoved Rena away. The action pushed them both away from each other. Rena caught herself against the far wall.
She kept her voice gentle. "Abbi--"
"GET OUT!"
Rena didn't move.
"I SAID GET OUT!"
Rena left. She moved back down the hall to the room with the generator. She didn't pick up her hacksaw. She stared at it. She had been kidding herself, she realized. They were not familia. That had died with Segundo and Mono and Pitoso and all the others. What they had before was forever broken. Even if they were to get another ship one day, what would that change? That wouldn't mend anything. They'd still be who they were; they'd still be missing that other part of themselves.
Arjuna's voice on the radio startled her. It was fast and frantic. "Everyone get back to the ship now! Drop what you're doing and move! Now!"
"What is it?" asked Rena.
"Don't ask questions! Move!"
"Abbi and I are still several minutes away. We're deep in the ship. Tell me what's going on." She grabbed her light and rushed back to the room Abbi was in.
"Khalid," said Arjuna.
"What's a Khalid?"
"It's not a thing. It's a person. A Somali. A vulture. The worst of them all. He's coming. He must have heard our transmissions. He will kill us if he finds us here. How far away are you?"
Abbi was still in the boys' room. She had picked up the toy drill again. Other than that she hadn't moved.