“You what?” The color drains from my face as I finally pull up the ship’s diagnostics. A small hologram of the ship appears above the dashboard, and all over it is the green, green, green of system failure. “Oh, stars.” I let out a half-hysterical laugh. This is bad. Really bad.

“My fault,” Corvus murmurs next to me.

“Hey, don’t you steal all the credit. I set off the explosion,” Drom says.

“Scorpia?” Lyre is hovering behind me now, staring at the hologram with her face pinched in worry. “We’re awfully close to Nibiru. I think we’re already getting pulled in.”

“Stars damn it.” I take a deep breath, try to steady myself. “You’re right. The engine’s fucked, we don’t have enough thrust to escape.”

The battle may be won, but it’ll all be for nothing if we crash onto Nibiru with the weapons on board. They’ll likely be unleashed on impact—or, best-case scenario, they fall into the hands of the Nibirans. And I don’t want them in anyone’s hands at this point.

“We’ll have to get onto Fortuna instead. And fast.”

“How much time do we have?” Lyre asks. “We’ll have to bring the Red Baron’s crew aboard. I’m not sure we even have enough launch chairs to secure everyone. And Fortuna’s likely damaged from the impact as well. By the time we get there…”

Swallowing back panic, I tap on the nearest computer, looking for a destination timer of some kind. My stomach drops.

“We’re entering Nibiru’s atmosphere in ten minutes.”

All of us fall into a stunned silence.

“There’s not enough time. It’s not possible,” I say as the realization hits.

Which means we have to prioritize. Even if we’re doomed to crash and burn on a failing ship, maybe there’s something we can do to stop the entire planet from dying along with us. That means getting rid of the Primus bombs. If we were a little farther away, we could toss them out the air lock and hope for the best. But this close to Nibiru, we can’t risk it.

As much as I hate to admit it, there’s only one option left.

I try not to think too hard about the alien weapons I’m handling, or Corvus still bleeding in the cockpit, or the planet we’re careening closer to every minute and the millions of lives depending on us down there. It’s a whole lot to avoid thinking about. But luckily, the simple job of transporting all the alien vials over to Fortuna’s cargo bay takes enough concentration to distract me. I’m all too aware of how much damage any one of these little vials could do, and I’m handling six of them now.