If I’d had a god that would have been the moment I would have tried to make peace with them. But I didn’t. Instead, I thought of Sedge, lying in dreamless sleep on that Hopper ship as it relentlessly drilled its way into the unknown, pulling further away from me with every passing instant. Would he ever know what had happened here, and would he even care? By the time they revived him, all this would be centuries in his past, and an unimaginable distance behind him. At the very least, I hoped he might remember me from time to time—the thought brought a sliver of consolation. I might die today, but at least I’d left a small mark on the universe. If the old saying was true, and we were never truly dead until everyone who remembered us had also died, then some small part of me might conceivably endure for millennia, until Sedge himself passed away.

The main engines kicked in and I felt myself squashed into my couch. Ahead, I could see the system’s star—a large reddish-yellow sun at the centre of an absurd orrery. From here, it looked around the size of a coin held at arm’s length.

Why were we heading for the sun? It was seven light minutes distant. Even if we had some reason to go to it, there was no way we could outrun the torpedoes on our trail; they were lighter and faster, and could tolerate higher accelerations because they didn’t have to accommodate human crews. And even if, by some miracle, we managed to outmanoeuvre and destroy them, the Fenrir would still be right behind us, her tubes filled with replacements, and the Adalwolf would be here before we’d closed even half the distance to the sun.

The proximity alarm rang again. The fusillade of three torpedoes the Fenrir had fired earlier was now drawing close to our stern. We may have survived the first nuclear explosion, but I wasn’t confident we’d prevail against three more—especially if one or more of those torpedoes was packing an antimatter warhead. We couldn’t hope to withstand a combined blast of that magnitude.

I looked to Laura, feeling like I should apologise, but she seemed to have lapsed into unconsciousness. Her head lolled against her restraints, but that was probably just as well. The torpedoes would be in range within seconds. If we were about to be vaporised, it would be kinder to let her sleep through the ordeal.

Seemingly oblivious to the futility of running, the Trouble Dog continued to accelerate. Finally, I realised she wasn’t trying to outstrip them. Instead, she was building momentum for a jump.

Despite the crushing acceleration, I felt my heart skip. We were going to live!

But my elation didn’t last long.