A generation after the unrest on Damascus, the octopus commander Salome travels aboard The Requisitioner of Small Things, a repurposed Homeship with a crew of nine and many civilian residents. The vessel was originally built to relieve population pressure on the planet below, but it has been commandeered for military use while civilians remain aboard because space habitats are safer than Damascus’s violent cities.

Salome is sent to inspect a resource catch point that has stopped broadcasting. The catch point is crucial because asteroid-mining tardigrades send water, minerals, fuel, and other supplies there, but those supplies arrive too slowly to ease Damascus’s crisis. When Salome’s instruments find the catch point intact but tilted, she realizes someone has hijacked it to redirect incoming consignments to an enemy depot.

A hostile vessel appears and ignores attempts at communication, so Salome orders the Requisitioner into evasive action. Because the Homeship is huge and water-filled, it can barely maneuver, and civilians must move inward to survive any violent movement. The enemy launches missiles and fighters, while Salome deploys an escort destroyer and several smaller fighters from inside the Homeship.

Rebekah pilots one of those fighters, a tiny, agile vessel she currently thinks of as That Part of Wonder That is Mine. While other fighters engage the enemy’s craft, Rebekah presses toward the main gunship and identifies it as a damaged military ship, likely the survivor of an earlier battle for the catch point. She sends trajectory data back to Salome when the enemy fires another salvo at the distant Requisitioner.

Rebekah uses her fighter’s stored energy in a single cutting-laser attack against the gunship. The beam breaks through old damage, carves into the ship, and flash-boils its internal water, tearing a massive breach in the hull. An enemy fighter pursuing Rebekah is destroyed by the venting ice, but Rebekah’s own fighter is damaged and thrown out of control.

Rebekah regains enough control to limp back toward the Requisitioner while watching the enemy gunship drift into the catch point’s magnetic field. The catch point tries to accelerate the crippled ship as though it were an asteroid consignment, tearing it apart into ice, metal, and organic debris. Rebekah exults in the victory, and the Requisitioner calls her home.