I turn. One of the Shippers runs up to me. “Sir,” he says, “the girl, the red-haired girl—she’s here.”

“Amy?”

He nods. “She’s beating on the Energy Room door, yelling for you.”

“Elder?” Shelby asks, her hand on the Bridge door.

I step back, away from the Bridge and toward the Energy Room door.

And then—

—an explosion rips open the ship.

It feels as if my eardrums have burst, and I lose my footing, crashing to the ground. My head cracks against the solid metal floor, but I’m moving—sliding toward what remains of the Bridge. Someone screams, and the sound is violently cut off. I twist around, and a chair soars across the room, the leg of it skidding across my shoulder, ripping my tunic and the skin underneath. There’s shouting all around, but the sound is drowned out by the ringing metal crashes as tables and desks fly up from the ground. A stab of pain shoots up my leg—a screwdriver is embedded in my calf. I reach down and yank it out, but I’m still sliding across the floor.

I lift my head as high as I can—

The window on the Bridge is gone.

The metal seam that connected the honeycombed glass is twisted, ripped apart, scraggly at the ends like the paintings from Sol-Earth of creepy dead trees in winter. The vacuum of space is sucking the air out of the Bridge and the Engine room so violently that we’re all caught up in its maelstrom, the chairs, desks, tables, tools—and people.

Shelby’s crew is hit the worst—some have caught onto the control tables or the bolted-down chairs, but I don’t see everyone. I do see blood and bone and organs at the front, near the hole—whatever blew apart the Bridge’s window also blew apart the people sitting closest.

A Shipper—Prestyn—tries to stand but stumbles, lunges, and flies through the doors. His body catches on the metal fingers of the broken seams, ripping through him. Great globs of blood float off him in crimson spheres.

I slam into the wall by the Bridge’s doors so hard my bones rattle, but the wall stops me from also flying out the window. I stand, pressing against the back wall for support, trying to breathe through the rushing wind. It won’t take long—minutes maybe—for the vacuum of space to suck out all the air from both rooms.

Clutching the metal supports on the wall, I twist my head around to peer inside the Bridge.

It’s too late—the gaping maw that was once the window has destroyed the Bridge. Shelby clings to a chair that’s bolted to the floor. Her hair is plastered back, and her eyes are red and streaming.

“Don’t!” she screams. “Don’t!”

She means the button. This one, here, by my hand.

The one that would seal the Bridge doors.