She looked back toward Urg, but he had disappeared under the line of sliding debris. Gone. The end of his life missed behind her blinking eyelids. The entire tangle of ships had come to rest in a long line, sig-nifying the temporary boundary between failed panel and good.

Several more survivors staggered through the door in the distance as the first of the crewmembers stomped into Parsona. Molly could hear some of the pilots directing them aft and urging them to take water. She saw Cat in the distance, helping someone along who seemed to be limping, their front solid red.

The dune of debris behind them shifted once again. One of the Fire-hawks flipped over on its side. Cat and the crewman left their feet, slid-ing ahead of the ships and across the deck, everything falling toward Parsona.

Cat popped to her feet as soon as she came to a halt at the next line of functioning grav plates. Molly saw her look back over her shoulder at the man she’d been escorting, but she seemed to know better than to struggle with him. She dove forward as the rolling crush of taxpayer dollars ground to a halt right behind her, smashing the crewmember flat.

Molly silently begged Cat forward as she feathered the thrusters. They were warm enough for lift, but not much more. She aligned the ducts ahead of time and looked over her shoulder to see how things were going in the cargo bay.

The staterooms must’ve already been packed—the hallway had filled up, and people were crammed together up to the galley. The last large crush of survivors could be heard working their way inside—only Cat and a few stragglers remained.

That’s when the struggling grav system gave up the ghost—the last of the panels giving away completely. Molly felt it shudder through Parsona before she saw the effects outside. She could hear the screeching of the ship’s landing pads as they scraped across the deck, could see the walls outside shift forward as Parsona slid back along the hangar floor. Beyond the wall of tangled Navy ships, she could see through the top of the StarCarrier’s airlock door to the bright, blue Lokian sky beyond.

The view disappeared as the jumbled mess of Firehawks ground forward, chasing after Parsona. Between the two, Cat and a few other crewmen slid on their backs, their screams deadened by the roar of all else. Everything was in free-fall, like all the players had been tossed over a cliff.

Molly pulled Parsona up to stop her slide backward. She retracted the landing gear to get it out of the way, but left the cargo hatch open. Behind her, passengers were screaming. She glanced at the chase cam and saw several forms falling away behind, people that had not quite made it to the loading ramp.