The Officer’s Deck was way smaller than he expected. In regular circumstances, the room would be decorated a little more generously with some nicer lamps and cushions, but any regard for upper-class decency had since been thrown out of the window.

Patch was surrounded by piecemeal scrap that had likely belonged to electrical panels and equipment from around the ship, fervently in the process of soldering wires to a strange machine cobbled together from a gutted astromech. Frostbite was cleaning his hands with a wet rag that dripped of pink. Carcass rounded up the rope they had used for the elevator shafts and deposited it in a nearby crate, and then returned to the door to stand guard. A number of bodies laid near the entrance of the room with blankets respectfully draped over their heads. Some of the other injured men were resting on the couch on the far back of the room while the healthy clones distributed warm coats that had been salvaged from around the ship.

The atmosphere was subdued, but not defeated.