I want to ask him what he remembers, but if he can be spared some of those memories, maybe he would be better off.
“When I saw you trying to pull yourself back to the LINA, I realized you needed to come back, so I started the winch up, but—”
I push against the floor with my hand to sit up. The pounding in my head makes me wish I’d died. But I’m upright, at least.
“Hey, hey, slow down,” he says. “You’re in no condition to—”
I start to shake my head and immediately regret it. Nausea swirls over me. “TheAurorais set to go up. Rigged charges. Timer.”
He stares at me. “LINA’s main engine is online, but I don’t have helm control.” He pauses. “Did we… no, we took it apart. I remember that.” He’s piecing events together.
I hate that he’s going to have to relive horrible moments that I wish had never happened in the first place. But that’s assuming we survive long enough for him to do so.
“I know. Do we still have maneuvering thrusters?” As far as I’m aware, our thrusters should still be operational.
Kane frowns. “Yes.”
“I know it won’t get us very far but—”
His expression shifts from uncertainty to determination. “The LINA is shielded more heavily underneath. If we can angle ourselves away from the blast, that’ll offer a little more protection.”
I nod, and he pushes to his feet to run for the bridge.
I’m slower to follow, but I get there. I pause, though, in the galley, looking at our sad collection ofAuroraartifacts. The two Tratorelli sculptures,SpeedandGrace,and the emergency beacon plucked from space at Voller’s insistence with Nysus backing him up.
It wasn’t worth it. None of it was worth it. Max may be gone, and the device soon to be destroyed, but that won’t stop Verux from doing—or continuing to do—exactly as they have been doing for years. Chewing up lives and spitting them out.
On the bridge, Kane is strapped into Voller’s seat. Likely marking the first time those safety straps have ever been used, given Voller’s predilection for letting them dangle to the floor instead. The memory of Voller spinning around to say something on the verge of offensive, while grinning and daring one of us to object, makes my heart hurt.
As it is, I half expect Nysus’s voice over the intercom, giving me some random fact about the flammability of the varnish on theAurora’s real wood panels. And Lourdes’s chair feels conspicuously empty. Her headphones still rest on the communications board, where she last left them. It’s as if she’s just stepped away to make her tea and will be back any second. Oh God, Iwishthat were true.
I strap in, and Kane and I watch as the thrusters adjust our position and move us away, slowly, incrementally, from theAurora. Every meter feels like a hard-won step toward safety.
But when I check the cameras, we’re still too close, far too close.
“Do you think—” Kane begins, but he doesn’t get a chance to finish.
On-screen, theAurorafills briefly with bright light, as though all the power has been restored and inside, passengers are once more dancing, talking, drinking, and living.
But it’s only for a second. Then the light expands and theAurorafractures and vanishes in the burst of the explosion, like a shadow in a sudden noonday sun.
There’s no sound, but the force of the blast rolls out toward us and hits hard.
My body slams into the side of my chair, my upper arm pinned between my own weight and the reinforced arm of the chair.
The bone gives with a break I canfeel,and I scream, bracing myself for the last few seconds of air and life before the LINA cracks open like an egg.
Instead, we’re spinning endlessly. Alarms wail, smoke from somewhere flooding the bridge.
But we’re alive. For now.
“Claire!” Kane shouts.
“I’m okay,” I manage.
Through the smoke, he’s a vague shadow, struggling and moving. Our spinning gradually slows. Kane must be trying to pull us out of it with the thrusters.
Then, the grav generator kicks back in, and the world of the LINA settles back around us with various thuds and crashes.
