For one wildly disorienting moment I heard the sound of monsoon rain on a metal roof—it was debris striking the hull of the ship. I kicked away from the wall, dragging Baqir with me, waving frantically for Ariana and Xiomara to follow. If the force of the explosion pushed the shuttle into the ship, we wanted to be as far from the hull breach as possible.

Through the turning, glinting glass, I aimed toward the other side of the cargo bay. I dragged Baqir by his arm, with Ariana and Xiomara hand in hand right behind us. Our captors were still shouting.

“You didn’t fucking shut it down! You fucking lied, you have no fucking idea—”

“They can’t be gone. They can’t be gone.”

“Zahra!”

The man called Dag hadn’t moved away from the control panel beside the interior door. He wasn’t shouting with the others, and his grim silence as he tracked our motion across the bay was unsettling. There was no way we could get past him.

I bumped against the wall a couple of meters from the door, catching a handle to stop myself from bouncing away. Baqir grabbed the same handle, his hand just above mine, and together we caught Ariana and Xiomara. Ariana was crying. The inside of her helmet was dotted with moisture, her breath hitching noisily over the radio. Another rattle of debris struck the hull.

“Boudicca, can you hear us? Do you copy?”

“Please say you can hear us. You can hear us, can’t you?”

“Zahra?” That was Malachi, the copilot and hacker. He was on the verge of hysterics. “Zahra, what happened? Tell me you’re all right!”

“Quiet.” Dag spoke at a normal volume at first, but raised his voice to be heard. “Quiet! All of you. Be quiet.”

For a few seconds all I could hear were the impacts on the hull.

“Boudicca, do you copy? Nico, do you copy? Bao? Pilgrim 3, please respond.”

No answer.

“Pilgrim 3, respond.”

Nothing.

“Zahra, do you copy?”

“Please,” Panya said. “Zahra, honey, please answer us.”

“It was those fucking drones.” That was the red-faced man they called Henke, the one who moments ago had been guarding us with a gun and a grin. “They came for us. They fucking came for us!”

Henke spun around quickly and shoved one of the others into a wall so hard the thunk of the helmet carried over the radio. I couldn’t tell who it was through the confusion of slashing headlamps and whirling glass, but I could see that Henke had the muzzle of his gun pressed to the front of the other person’s helmet.

“You were supposed to stop them,” Henke said. “You didn’t stop them.”

“Henke, don’t!” Panya cried. “He said he shut it down!”

“Pilgrim 3, do you copy?”