But I see the answer just as all that scrolling stops.
“There’s our answer,” I say, pointing to the screen. “It’s a Cygnian warship.”
Booty’s hull is a formidable piece of engineering. Her weapons systems are top of the line, and her AI core is probably one of the best out there.
But Cygnian warships are no joke. They are easily ten times her size. Easily have ten times as many torpedoes. And when they come to destroy something, this is exactly how they leave it.
In pieces.
“Serpint,” I whisper.
“I’ve got Dicker on radar. She’s signaling me now.”
“Oh, thank the sun.”
“But the warship has her in a traction field. They’re pulling her in. This is just an emergency beacon.”
“We need to sever that connection so they can get out of here.”
“They’ve seen me,” Booty says. “They’ve locked on me too. I’m just not close enough to be in their control. And Dicker and the crew can’t get out of here even if they weren’t in that traction field. The only way she goes home is if I tug her behind me. There’s no power on the ship at all. The only thing working is the emergency beacon. All systems are dead.”
“The crew?” I say, afraid to ask but knowing I must.
“Wait,” she says. “There’s another emergency beacon. Very small and it’s behind us.”
“The crew, Booty! What about the crew?”
“I don’t know, Lyra. But the other signal is coming in as… Nyleena.”
“Shit,” I say, looking at the other screen where Booty’s exterior cameras are zooming in on a single cryopod.
“They’ve fired. I have to return fire.” She pauses. “Returning fire now.”
I don’t know why she’s telling me this. Why she’s reporting to me. Maybe because that’s what she does with Serpint and it’s just habit. Or maybe because she wants my input.
Two torpedoes release, their forward thrust sending us back in the opposite direction for a moment before her thrusters can compensate.
“They can’t kill me this far away,” Booty says. “I’ll just return fire and blow their torpedoes up as they approach.”
“And if you run out of torpedoes?” I ask. Because she will. Long before that Cygnian warship does.
“I can outrun them easily. But—”
“But,” I say, finishing for her, “we have to leave everyone else behind.”
“Incoming signal from Xyla,” Booty says.
“Oh, thank the sun,” I say. “They’re alive.”
“They have a plan. But it’s a bad one and will probably fail. And even if it does work…”
“Even if it does work what?”
She tells me the plan, and the consequences, and we both sit in silence for several seconds.
Then Booty says, “We have two choices, Lyra. And neither of them are good. We get Nyleena and run, leaving Dicker and the crew to hope for the best. Or we stay and fight to save Dicker and the crew, and let the Cygnians recover Nyleena if we fail.”
She pauses. Again, maybe for Serpint’s opinion that never comes. Or maybe she just wants me to get used to the idea that either way, we’re not going to win. Not today.
Then she says, “If they get Nyleena they can still detonate her? Even without you?”
“Yes,” I say, feeling defeated. “They can’t detonate me without her, but if they get her cryopod and start a new detonation sequence, they could detonate her without me.”
“So you’re safe? As long as they don’t get a hold of you?”
“No,” I say. “If she blows, I blow. My fate is tied to hers.”
Booty sighs. “So they could wait until we go home and then detonate Nyleena, thereby detonating you, and take out half of Harem Station too.”
I say nothing to that.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Then what should we do?”
I draw in a deep breath and look around the interior of the ship. Log what I see, what I can use, half-heartedly calculate my chances of success. Decide the odds are bad, and then decide to do it anyway.
“Take me over to Nyleena. I’m getting off here.”
Because I have a third option in mind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN – SERPINT
We come out of this gate blinded by a flash of light. An explosion of the brightest magnitude. And the sense that we just made a very big mistake.
Alarms are screeching, panels of electronic equipment spark and flash, like their circuits have been ripped out. And as my vision clears I spot Xyla through the cockpit hatch. Her hair is a tangled mess of lavender tendrils, letting me know that the ship’s gravity is gone.
And then I feel it now too. The way, even under my suit, my shoulders strain against the harness trying to keep me in place. Everything else happens in slow motion. My mouth opens to start yelling their names. Valor, Luck, Jimmy. But all the words get lost in my throat when I see the reason why we have no gravity. Why all the screens and panels are flashing with the blue-white light of lost electric current.