I think she’s the only one who does, but we follow, four sets of footsteps treading quiet on the metal stairs. It takes us longer than I’d like—nearly a quarter hour, I’d guess—but we manage to avoid the highly stressed and definitely shooty security patrols pounding all over the place.
The station rumbles again, and I hear a hollow booming through the walls. Scar reaches out to steady me as my exo hisses, and I squeeze her hand, give her a grateful smile. This whole place feels ready to come apart around our ears.
“Attention, Glass Slipper personnel. Hull breach on Decks 13 through 17.”
“I gotta be outta my goddamn mind … ,” Nari mutters.
“It is possible,” Zila agrees, climbing behind her. “But doubting your own sanity is reasonable proof that you are, in fact, sane.”
“Yeah, but maybe that’s what I’m supposed to think,” Nari says, glancing back to Zila. “Maybe none of this is real. Maybe I’m a POW right now, locked in some bleach-head psy-op lab, and this is all some drug-induced nightmare to get me to betray classified information.”
“Information about what?” I ask. “Seeing as how you’re a grunt and don’t actually know anything?”
“How should I know, Bleachboy?” Nari replies, sounding grumpy at having this flaw in her theory pointed out. “All I know for sure is, I get caught helping you three, I’ll be lined up with you and shot for being a traitor.”
“Attention, Glass Slipper personnel. All engineering staff report to Gamma Section, Deck 12, immediately.”
“Let me assure you,” Scar says, “having died twenty times, this is definitely really happening. Dying hurts.”
“It is difficult to understand what is occurring here,” Zila agrees, speaking over the blaring PA. “Hopefully our answers lie within the station’s computer system. But I do not believe you are insane, Lieutenant Kim. Or a traitor. In fact, I believe you are very brave.”
Dirtgirl raises an eyebrow at that, and Zila actually maintains eye contact for a few seconds before ducking her head and continuing upward. At the top of three flights, our co-conspirator slips out to check the hall, then ushers us after her.
BOOM.
The whole place shudders as something, somewhere, explodes.
“WARNING: CONTAINMENT BREACH. EVACUATE DECKS 5 THROUGH 6 IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH.”
“We can cross from here to Beta Section,” Dirtgirl murmurs. “Then it’s two more floors up to Pinkerton’s office.”
The deck’s Beta Section is at the periphery of the station, lined with viewports looking into space. As we pass by, I can see the swath of darkness out there beyond the station’s skin. That thick length of cable runs out into the dark matter storm, hundreds of thousands of klicks, connected to the quantum sail in the chaos beyond. A tiny flicker of energy illuminates the tempest, lighting up those massive roiling clouds, millions of klicks across, its echoes ripping through the fabric of subspace.
Honestly, it gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies.
“It’s beautiful,” Scarlett says quietly, proving—as did her decision to kiss me—that her judgment is highly questionable.
CRASH.
Out in the storm, that same massive pulse of quantum energy we saw from the hangar bay strikes the sail again. It’s so bright that my vision is momentarily lost to the afterimages. Zila looks down at her wrist display.
“Forty-four minutes …”
“Look,” Scar breathes. “It’s happening again… .”
I blink furiously as the pulse runs up the cable toward the station—an arc of dark energy blazing fiercely against the deeper darkness. The crystal in Scarlett’s necklace is burning too, the black light making my eyes ache.
“Why is it doing that?” Nari demands.
“Excellent question,” Zila replies.
Glancing at the flickering overheads, I mutter, almost to myself, “You know, I sure hope the gravitonic shielding in this sector is still intact.”
“Why?” Scar looks up from her glowing cleavage. “What happens if the gravitonic shielding isn’t still intact?”
Then two things happen at once.
First, the quantum pulse reaches the station, arcing over the hull, through the unshielded section we’re standing in, and right through our bodies.
And second, Nari Kim learns that Scar wasn’t kidding when she said dying was painful.
ZAP.
10
TYLER
I’m marching down a corridor bathed in gray light, Saedii’s First Paladin behind me. The engines shifted tone two minutes ago—we’re at full thrust now, on course to rendezvous with the Unbroken armada. Those news feed headlines are flashing through my skull—all those tiny sparks of conflict being stoked into flame by the Ra’haam and its agents. A theater of mass distraction. A veil to hide the threat until it’s too late.