“Ships?” Mesa asked. “For what?”
“For the crew.”
“Of the Argus? Why?”
Puck nodded, his suspicions apparently confirmed. “Because we need to get off this one.”
Mesa’s soft features paled.
Puck gripped the back of his head and the muscles in his face and neck wrung taut. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Is that what we were seeing on the bridge? That light?”
“I don’t know what that was.”
“So, they really did see something out the observation windows?” Mesa asked.
“Yeah,” Puck said. “The Divide.”
Mesa’s overlarge eyes grew even larger. “They saw the Divide? There is nothing to see. And we are millions of kilometers—”
Adequin shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“You should have told me when you first called me,” Puck bristled. “I could have told you it wasn’t going to be enough.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked. “Three times the thruster speed isn’t good enough?”
“Fuck, no!” Puck said. “Not by half, not by anything! Its speed is increasing at a rate I can’t calculate. We should be abandoning ship, not trying to salvage it.”
“I’m not trying to salvage anything. There’s just nowhere for us to go.”
“Yes, there is,” he said. “We spin up however many away ships we have left in storage, and get everyone on board. Sublight will be fast enough to keep us out of it for a while. Then we figure something else out.”
“How’s that work, Puck?” she said derisively. “We could maybe cram twenty people onto one ship.”
“So what? We’d only need ten ships to make that work. How many are in storage?”
“One.”
“One, what?”
“One is in storage.”
Puck’s hardened grimace dissolved. “One Hermes?”
“Two, including the one Jackin’s got.”
“Fuck.” Puck pressed his fingers against his mouth and let out a sharp breath through them. He lowered his hands and his tone softened. “It’s gonna be here. Soon. We have to abandon ship. Now. If that’s twenty people, then it’s twenty people.”
“No fucking way—”
“Yes,” Puck said. “Who gets on the Hermes?”
Adequin’s cheeks burned. “I can’t make that call.”
“You have to.”
“I can’t.” Her heart raced, and that same loss of control threatened to seize her again. “I can’t,” she repeated.
Mesa nodded and laid her hands together lightly, her look sensible. The Savant’s serene composure simultaneously soothed and infuriated Adequin. “Then we follow standard evacuation procedure,” Mesa said. “There are no civilians, so protocol is rank, correct?”
Adequin nodded once.
“How many can we realistically put aboard a Hermes and not overweigh it?”
“Standard complement is eight,” Puck answered. “Without warp, we’re gonna need to save room for supplies—but they’re built to accommodate a full crew for six months … Yeah, I’d say twenty’s right.”
“Very well,” Mesa continued. “Are comms still inoperative?”