I did not need Dag contradicting me in front of everybody. I had seen the explosion. He hadn’t. But now was not the time to scold him. “We haven’t had any contact with Boudicca or the others since. They’re gone.”

“Fuck.” Over the radio I could hear Orvar taking deep breaths. His voice a bit muffled, he said, “Go find Adam. He needs to hear this.” Speaking to me again, he went on, “Are the rest of you okay? Were any of you hurt?”

My head was still throbbing, and my entire body ached from the force of the impact. It would be so much easier if we had the medical supplies from the shuttle—but I couldn’t think like that. I was only bruised, not broken. I had suffered worse. It was not important.

I said, “The rest of us are unharmed. We have four hostages, including Councilor Bhattacharya’s nephew. We brought them over before the explosion.”

“Thank the ancestors for that,” Orvar said. “Better than losing all of them. How did this happen? How did they find out?”

Malachi said, “Boudicca was sure SPEC has a dark ship in orbit. We couldn’t confirm its presence or location, but you should be on watch for it until we can get our radar up and do a complete survey. If it’s there, it’s close. The security drones will keep them away for a while, but we have to shut the system down to let Homestead approach, and we have to do it soon.”

A low whistle from Orvar. “We knew the bastards might have a trick like that, but attacking the shuttle . . . fuck. Fuck. I never thought they would kill their own kids to stop us.” His voice hitched on the word kids. Orvar had children of his own, but he had not seen them in a very long time. When he left the Councils to live in the desert, his wife and children had remained behind. That was years ago, long before I was born, before the Councils had closed the border even to former citizens seeking a temporary visit, when those who left still believed they could see their families from time to time. That, like everything else the Councils did, had been a lie. Every time he had tried to return to them, whether for a visit or to stay, he was denied. Orvar’s children would be grown now. I had never asked him why he left in the first place, but it scarcely mattered. There was no reason good enough to justify the Councils denying a man the chance to watch his children grow.

“None of us thought they would do that,” I said. “We should have known better.”

“We won’t make that mistake again,” Panya said, her voice soft and shaky. “Never again.”

“There’s more. It’s about the virus,” I said.