“Amos,” he said, and the big mechanic turned to look at him. The machine shop was in emergency lighting, and a swath of the deck was simply missing. Amos had a patch kit in one hand and a welding rig in the other. Muskrat, still in her crash couch, barked her greeting bark and wagged.
“Hey, Cap.”
“How bad’s the damage?”
Amos shrugged. “We’ve had worse. What happened to you?”
“A lot. Really a lot. I need you to do a favor for me.”
“Sure.”
“Tell Naomi to evacuate the ring space. Get everybody out. And wherever you go, be ready to stay there.”
“How long are we talking?”
“Stay there,” Jim said, and Amos lifted his eyebrows.
“Well. All right then.”
At the edge of the ring space, the enemy shifted and pressed, sensing, maybe, that Jim’s strength wasn’t what it had been. “And tell her to hurry. I’m not a hundred percent sure how long I can hold this.”
Amos looked around the machine shop, lips pressed together, then sighed and started stowing the patch kit. “You sure you don’t want to tell her yourself?”
“I think we’ve already said what we needed to say,” Jim said. “Another goodbye won’t help.”
“I can see that. Well, it’s been good shipping with you.”
“You too.”
“Hey, Cap, about the rest of ’em?”
“Tanaka’s dead. Duarte is too.”
“Tiny?”
“Don’t leave until she gets there.”
“That’s what I was waiting to hear.”
Jim moved his attention back to the station, complex and active as his cells. It all made sense to him now—the passages, the sentinels, the vast machines that broke rich light and opened the holes in the spectrum. That generated the subtle lines. There was so much that they’d never seen or understood. They’d all just bumbled through, using the gates as shortcuts and hoping for the best. A species of beautiful idiots.
He shifted what he could, remade the passages. There was some risk in it. The subtle lines shuddered, and the enemy circled, sniffing at the gates. Jim opened his eyes.
The pain was astounding. Now that he was aware of his body again, he didn’t understand how he’d ignored it. The numbness in his limbs had given way to a burning. The threads in his side tugged and ripped. It was hard to see. His eyes were changing, and the skin all down his front itched badly, but his arms were restrained and he couldn’t scratch.
Teresa was floating in a ball. He was aware that she’d been screaming for him the way he knew the relative densities of different elements or the names of Greek gods. Intellectually, and without remembering where he’d learned it.
“Teresa,” he said. His voice sounded wet and phlegmy. She didn’t respond. “Teresa!”
She started. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were red and miserable. She looked terrible. She looked achingly beautiful. She looked so very human.
“I’ve cleared a path back to the ships for you,” Jim said. “You need to run . . .”
Chapter Forty-Eight: Alex
“。 . . evacuate immediately. Assume whatever system you are entering is where you will be from now on. Expect and assume no further contact after your transit, and do not reenter the ring space once you’ve left. This is not a joke. This is not a drill. Message repeats.” Naomi ended the recording, sent it out, and then floated back from her control screen and swallowed a couple times. Alex felt the same. The hollowness in his gut.
“Well,” he said. “Holy shit.”
The ops deck around them wasn’t in ruins, quite, but it was hurting. He’d been in the galley when the universe went strange and the black things had come swimming through it like matter was a thin mist and they were the only things that were real. Which was just as well, seeing as half the pilot’s crash couch was missing now. If he’d been in his usual spot, he wouldn’t be worrying about any of this.
Naomi’s right arm was in a sling, but she wasn’t missing anything. The best they could reconstruct, she’d jumped back when one of the things had gone for her and slammed her shoulder against the bulkhead. A long stretch of the decking was gone, and there was a hole in the inner hull that Amos had thrown a quick patch on, the metal bright against the old foam-and-cloth covering.
“What do we need to be ready?” Naomi asked.
Amos went still the way he did ever since he’d gotten killed, then he shrugged. “There’s a few things I should patch up. We lost one of the port PDCs, but as long as we’re not planning to shoot anybody, that can wait. Make sure the water tanks aren’t leaking and triple-check the reactor and the drive.”