“I will.” She nodded sharply and squeezed Hirune’s hand, and tapped Miki’s feed.

The lift reached the junction and I was out as soon as the doors slid open. I moved toward the decontam room, the humans behind me, and I sent the diggers over the curve of the habitation pod and straight in toward the shuttle.

On board, through my connection to the evac suits on the flight deck, I heard Vibol say something in a language I didn’t have loaded, and Kader say, “We’ve got something approaching, unknowns are approaching—”

Distantly, from somewhere below the flight deck, Gerth shouted, “What? What direction?”

I opened Abene’s feed connection, and told her, Now.

She made the private connection to Kader and said, Kader, listen. No questions, don’t tell anyone I’m here. You must get everyone off the shuttle into the facility now, at once. Do whatever you must, pretend to be in a panic, but get everyone off. Your lives depend on it.

Through Abene’s feed, I heard Kader trigger an emergency evacuate order that blared across the team’s feed and the shuttle comms. Gerth had started up to the flight deck and snarled, “Stop, stop where—”

I thought she might trap Kader and Vibol in the cockpit, and we’d be back to a hostage situation. But Kader, who must have taken the “pretend to panic” advice to heart, sent the vid of the approaching diggers from the shuttle’s sensors into the feed and screamed for the others to get out.

I reached the corridor and had a view of the docking chamber as the shuttle’s hatch cycled open. Brais staggered out, a semi-conscious Ejiro leaning on her. Miki ran to help them, Abene hanging back with Hirune, and I followed.

I told one digger to let go of the facility’s surface and dive at the shuttle’s nose, where the forward sensor would have the best view. Abene was in Kader’s feed but with no cameras I got nothing but a confused jumble of impressions.

(I found out later from Gerth’s armor cam that the sudden sensor view of something large coming at the shuttle had made Gerth jerk backward out of the flight deck access. Vibol, taking Kader’s performance as evidence that the shuttle was about to be torn apart, grabbed Kader and dove past Gerth with him tucked under her arm, using the lighter gravity in the access to keep from slamming into the bulkhead. When they hit the corridor floor, they stumbled in the heavier gravity, staggered, and bolted for the hatch.)

Anyway, Kader and Vibol flung themselves out of the hatch, and Gerth, in her powered armor, strode out after them. I was standing to one side of the shuttle hatch by that point, so all Gerth saw was the others, confused and panicked, with Abene and Hirune, and a one-handed Miki holding up Ejiro.