“Have you started the reactor?” Holden said.

Drummer went silent for maybe half a second. It felt like years. “Yes, sir. We’re at sixty percent, and looking great.”

“Shut it down,” Holden said. “Shut it down right now.”

There was a moment of silence. Don’t ask me why, Holden thought. Don’t argue or ask me to explain. Please don’t.

“Done. The core is down,” Drummer said. “So can I ask what this is about?”

Chapter Thirty-four: Alex

… Do not start the reactor without reloading the hardware drivers from a known good source. If you hear this message, please retr—”

The message cut off.

“We have to get this out,” Alex said. “We have to get that to Holden.”

“I’ll take care of it,” the captain said. “You and the prime minister need to evacuate. Right now.”

Alex looked at her, confused. Naomi was on the attack ships. The Roci had been sabotaged. He felt like the moment of stillness between being hit in the head and the bloom of pain. His first semi-coherent, irrational thought was If Naomi’s with them, maybe they’re not so bad.

“Mister Kamal?”

“No, I’m fine. It’s just —”

Prime Minister Smith looked at him, the man’s gentle, innocuous eyes seeming utterly out of place. “Does this change anything for us?”

“No,” Alex said. “I just… No. No, we should go. Wait. Bobbie…”

“Gunny Draper knows where you’re going,” Captain Choudhary said. “I’ll see she doesn’t get lost.”

They moved to the lift, the two marines before and behind them. The lift car gave Alex a moment of orientation as it pushed them down into the heart of the ship. It only took a few seconds to match velocity and go back to floating, but it was enough of a cue that his mind made one direction into down, the other into up. The lift car was wide enough for three times the load. The marines took stations at the door, ready to face danger if there was any. The prime minister took a place at the side near the front, where there was a little cover. No one commented on it. It was just a thing that happened. The dynamics of political power as positions in an elevator.

Naomi was here. Right here. Maybe less than ten thousand kilometers away. It was like he’d turned a corner and she was there. Except, of course, that she wasn’t. Even close-quarters battle meant distances that were vast in any other context. If the ship had been transparent, the enemy vessels would only have been visible by their drive plumes – dots of light in a sky filled with them. The Pella could be as far from him right now as Boston was from Sri Lanka, and it would still be almost intimate in the vast scale of the solar system.

“You’re thinking of your friend,” Smith said.

“Yes, sir,” Alex said.