Dad ground his teeth, his gaze taking in each of us in turn until it rested on me. His expression softened, the shadows of the man I knew peering through. “I refused to cooperate unless they let me bring you home,” he said. He took a half step toward me, then stopped as Hallam jerked his gun more firmly against his shoulder. “Kenzie, Matt told me everything. I know what happened on Sanctuary, what your mother did. I can’t imagine how much that must have hurt you. I hope you know I would never have pressed that button. No matter what company regulations I was breaking, I would have brought you home safe.”

Tears began to blur my vision. I closed my eyes until they passed and managed to say in a steady voice, “But here you are, Dad. Doing the same thing as Mom.”

“It’s not the same. Kenzie, she tried to kill you.” Sudden fury underlaced his tone, his eyes wide with disbelief. How many nights had Dad lain awake piecing together events on Sanctuary? What had really motivated his coming here? Maybe . . . just maybe . . . he had come for me after all. His actions were twisted and wrong, but unlike my mom, his motivations might be a little bit purer. “I almost couldn’t believe it at first,” he continued, a strain of disgust entering his tone. “But your mother . . . she was always Omnistellar to her core. Even above her own family.”

He wasn’t wrong. And yet a protective impulse shot through me, a deep-seated need to defend my mother . . . and maybe even Omnistellar. I swallowed it down. This was still my father. There was a chance to reach him. “You’re not her. I know that. There’s got to be another way. Dad, work with us here. We can all get off this ship, stop the aliens together.”

“Kenzie, I tried. This is the best I could do. And even this nearly cost me my career. I had to make sacrifices you can’t imagine to save you.”

His voice had gone solid again, the uncertainty fleeing. I’d missed my chance, if it had ever existed. Whatever Dad’s plan, he was going through with it. I grabbed on to Cage for support as Priya raised her rifle. “Just one problem, Commander,” she said coldly. “We’re not going to let you kill us and walk away.”

At the same instant, a pleasant voice announced, “Self-destruct sequence has been activated. Five minutes remain until detonation.”

Dad gestured at the computer. “If you’d prefer, we can all die here together,” he said.

“And Obsidian?” I demanded. “What’s going to happen to all the people over there?”

For a moment, something like guilt washed over my father’s expression, quickly smothered in the company mask. “Kenzie, they were . . . criminals. Murderers. Evil people. They . . .”

I heard my own voice as if from a distance, cold and terribly quiet. “Are you saying that everyone on Obsidian is dead?”