The planet had a name in the old registry but the name was administrative and Fen refused to use it. He called it Blue, which was accurate in the way that calling a person "tall" was accurate: technically true and entirely insufficient.
From orbit it was the color of deep water, which made a certain kind of sense, because most of it was. The landmasses were small and scattered like afterthoughts, like someone had meant to do more and ran out of something. Time, maybe. Interest.
"There are settlements," Sable said. She was at the navigation console, which she stood at even when she didn't need to, because old habits were easier than explaining why she'd stopped having them. "Small ones. Seventeen on the main continent. Fewer than a hundred people total."
"People?"
"That is the prevailing categorization, yes."
Fen pressed his forehead against the viewport. His breath didn't fog the glass — the ship kept everything at exactly the same temperature everywhere, which he had complained about once, and which she had quietly adjusted so the viewport ran just slightly cooler than the rest of the cabin. He had never mentioned it again. She had never mentioned she'd done it.
"We should go down," he said.
"We need parts more than we need to go down."
"Sure," he said, still looking at the blue. "But we should go down."