Hurry, Zila, hurry. This time you can save them.
“Heads up!” Nari shouts, and the doors burst open, and everything is sound and light, smoke billowing around me, and I spare one hand to tug my shirt up over my mouth and nose. The wrench fits onto the first of the couplings. I yank it, yank it again. It loosens. I pull it free.
Crawling to the second lock, I ignore the fire sizzling over my head, the smell of melting metal. Nari is holding them off, but there are so many, and I know there are only seconds remaining until one of them uses the covering fire of the others to charge into the lab.
I glance at the probe and wrench the second lock free, the alarms ringing louder. It still hovers, still pulses with light, anchoring my friend here.
Now.
“Zila!” Nari shouts as weapons roar and the column above her head explodes in a shower of sparks. “Hurry up!”
I crawl to the next lock on my belly, sirens screeching in my ears. My hands are slick with sweat, the wrench slipping in my grip as I pull hard, face twisting, finally uncoupling the third bolt.
“ZILA!” Nari roars.
“Ten seconds,” I shout back.
I am at the fourth lock now, fitting the wrench into place and yanking with all my strength to turn it. The last coupling resists, stubborn, infuriating, the fate of the entire galaxy resting in my hands. I am not a religious person, but a part of me desperately wishes I was.
“Please,” I whisper to whoever is listening.
Please.
And finally, finally, the bolt comes loose.
For a moment more, the pulsing glow lingers. The energy flowing through to the broken probe stutters. And at last, the light within flickers.
Then dies.
With a hollow clunk, the cylinder containing it opens, the broken probe slipping free, ushered out into the cold void of space.
Powerless.
Lifeless.
I did it.
But there is no time for celebration. Nari backs up toward me, still firing, cursing. The air is filled with gunfire, the noise almost deafening.
Five seconds.
Nari spends the last of her ammunition on the doorway, then ducks behind my column, lacing her hands together as we planned.
I drop the wrench and rise, planting one boot on her joined hands.
With a grunt, she stands, boosting me upward. I punch at the ceiling vent and grab the edges of the hole, pulling myself up in one movement, swinging around with no regard for the pain as I jam myself into too small a space, and lowering my upper body down to reach for her.
Nari jumps, and another bank explodes behind her, and for a moment I think our hands will not connect, because she is not tall.
Then her palms slap into mine, and with everything I have, I pull her up just as the security patrol bursts in through the door.
Finian—seven minutes remaining
We’re later than usual, and the docking bays are alive, our usual path to our shuttle gone. My head is swimming, heart pounding, and as I crouch by Scar in the shadow of a supply vessel, I try to breathe deep to calm myself.
It whistles in my throat, a weird, high noise. I can still taste that piece-of-chakk fire extinguisher. Ugh. What do Terrans put in those things?
“We still have to try for the same ship,” Scarlett whispers. “Most of the crew is gonna jump for the escape pods, but that shuttle’s the only thing that’ll get us out into the storm.”
I want to agree, but my tongue feels weirdly heavy, my lips tingling, and my mouth won’t do what I want. When she looks across at me, I just nod.
“Can you … can you divert them or something?” she whispers. “Set off an alarm somewhere, do a magic computery thing?”
I shake my head, leaning forward, pressing my palms into the ground. My breath won’t come. I’m dizzy.
“Are you okay?” she whispers, eyes widening.
I gesture at the ship. We have to keep moving.
“Low-tech it is,” she mutters, leaning out and taking a good look at the crews surrounding us. Then, with both hands, she pulls a chock out from behind the wheel of the nearest fighter and, with all her strength, hurls it farther up the landing bay.
It lands with a CRASH, and all heads turns.
Scar is off like an athlete out of the blocks. I’m stumbling behind her, too hot, too dizzy, my vision starting to swim. I know which way I need to go, but I’m running blind.
My legs are weak. My exosuit is working overtime.
We reach the heavy shuttle we always steal.
Pain shoots through me as my knees hit the ground. I work quickly on the hatchway, hot-wiring it open amid the swirling smoke and chaos, same as I always do. But my hands are shaking.
I can’t seem to get enough air.
My tongue feels weird.
Something’s wrong.
Zila—six minutes remaining
“Zila!” Scarlett’s voice comes through comms, garbled but audible.
“One moment,” I say, turning a corner and crawling after Nari. The vents are very tight, and we are both small. Nobody on the security team will be able to follow. But we do not have long to reach our escape pod.
“REPEAT: CONTAINMENT BREACH ESCALATION UNDER WAY, ENGAGE EMERGENCY MEASURES DECK 9.”
“Zila, come on!” Nari calls, kicking out a grille ahead.
“Scarlett?” I ask, crawling forward on my belly. “Are you aboard the shuttle?”
“CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT, T MINUS THREE MINUTES AND COUNTING. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IN THREE MINUTES.”
“Yes, we launched!” Scarlett cries. “We’re headed toward the storm, but something’s happened to Fin! He inhaled some chemicals upstairs and now he can’t b—”
“REPEAT: CORE IMPLOSION IMMINENT. ALL HANDS PROCEED TO EVACUATION PODS IMMEDIATELY.”
I hold on to the walls as the station shakes around me. The sirens in the vents are terribly loud.
“Say again, Scarlett? What has happened to Finian?”
“Zila, he can’t breathe!”
Scarlett—five minutes remaining
Fin is slumped in the pilot’s chair, and space all around us is on fire. Escape pods are blasting out of the station’s flanks, and burning plasma is venting from its hull, and we’re rocketing toward the huge coiling tendrils of the dark matter storm, the sail and the pulse beyond, our ticket home.
Except I don’t know if Fin’s going to make it.
His face is swelling, eyes bulging, lips turning a strange purple. I try to ignore the panic, hold myself together. I lay him on the floor as we rocket closer to the tempest, focused on Zila’s voice.
She sounds so far away.
“Can you hear wheezing, Scarlett? Whistling?”
I bend down, my ear to his mouth, heart hammering on my ribs. He’s not moving anymore, he’s not talking, he’s not …
Oh Maker, please please don’t do this… .
“Yes.”
“Then he is still breathing,” Zila says. “Nari and I are headed to the escape pods. If Finian is incapacitated, you must guide the ship through the storm’s turbulence and out to the quantum sail. You must be close when the pulse strikes. Ten meters or less to be sure.”
“Me?” I glance around wildly, spot the pilot’s chair. “I don’t know how to fly this thing! My job’s always been witty commentary!”