SecUnit, traveling under the alias Rin, is stuck on a bot-driven passenger transport headed for HaveRatton. Because SecUnit listed "security consultant" as an occupation, the transport has treated SecUnit as onboard security, forcing SecUnit to break up repeated fights among angry contract workers. In the chapter’s opening scene, SecUnit interrupts another mess-hall brawl, disarms one passenger, and tries to hold the group together for the final hours before docking.

As SecUnit reflects on the voyage, the larger problem becomes clear: the passengers are not merely quarrelsome, but desperate. Ayres has explained that the group sold twenty years of labor to work on a harsh installation, with food, energy, and medical care all deducted from their pay. SecUnit does not want to become attached to them, but keeps intervening because there is no supervisor and because SecUnit knows they are all heading into a bad situation.

SecUnit then recalls how this trip began after leaving RaviHyral in a hurry following the killing of several dangerous humans. Hiding in a transit hub rest cubicle, SecUnit checked news about DeltFall and GrayCris and found an interview with Dr. Mensah. From the reporting and Mensah’s comments, SecUnit learns more about GrayCris’s abandoned terraforming project at Milu and begins to suspect that the site may have been a cover for secretly recovering alien remnants or strange synthetics.

That suspicion gives SecUnit a new goal. If evidence still exists at Milu, exposing it could damage GrayCris further and help Dr. Mensah, who appears exhausted and still tied to the fallout from earlier events. SecUnit decides to try to reach Milu, recover any surviving data, and send the proof to Dr. Mensah, both to hurt GrayCris and to keep attention away from the rogue SecUnit case.

Back in the present, as the transport approaches HaveRatton, SecUnit searches schedules and station feeds for a route to Milu. No public passenger service appears to be available, which makes the plan look doubtful. However, SecUnit notices a small bot-piloted cargo ship with no listed destination but a pattern that suggests it may be supplying Milu, and decides the next step is to go ask about it in person.