Covey NOT THAT HE was paranoid, but in the forty-eight hours prior to departure, Rahiti Ochoa ate and drank only from the supplies he’d been stockpiling under his bunk. He compulsively checked the oxygen levels in his tiny quarters. He didn’t go near the crew bar on level four (someone might drug his beer), skipped working out in the gym (someone might rig the treadmill), and kept to himself on shift, glaring at anyone who got within ten or fifteen feet (because someone might just try the direct approach, a crowbar to the head). He warned Will Danton to keep the same precautions.“Crazy Samoan,” Will muttered. “Relax, will you? You won the contract. Orbital’s not going to try and sabotage you.”Better crazy than dead, Jovinta might say, if she were talking to him.Maybe Will didn’t take the threat seriously enough, or maybe he was distracted by someone on purpose, or maybe (just maybe) it was really an accident, but when the silver crate toppled over, smashing Will against a sled – when he began to scream, wild and raw, accompanied by the wail of the emergency siren – when all that happened, Rahiti’s first thought was: Son of bitches found a way to stop me.“Ra!”
