CARIAD HADN’T EVER really noticed the smell of the Nova Fortuna until she’d spent time aboard the Guardians’ Mistral, which was almost clinically clean. Now, each time she stepped off a shuttle onto the old colony ship, it smelled stale and moldy to her. This wasn’t surprising given the ship’s age and the fact that many thousands of humans had lived and died on it, but that didn’t stop Cariad from noticing it.
Cariad walked the familiar route to the Fertilization Lab and went inside.
“Hey, Cariad,” said one of her two techs, a Gen called Cassie.
“Cariad?” another said. He was a Woken called Florian. “Who’s that? Never heard of her.”
“Oh, you know who she is,” said Cassie. “She used to work here, like, years ago.”
“Come on guys,” Cariad said. “Cut me some slack. I haven’t been gone tha
