My arms feel like jelly, and I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep almost immediately. When I wake up, there’s an air freshener can digging into my back like a wedge. I can’t believe I passed out right on top of it. I pull it out, squinting at the label.

Lavender Meadow.

I haven’t smelled anything remotely like a lavender meadow since the day I got dragged onto this ship.

With no windows in the closet, I lose track of time. Occasionally a crew member will toss a meal through the door and escort me to the head, but I sleep so much in between that I can’t tell if they’re coming at regular intervals. It’s never a lackey, never Swift, never someone I can ask how long it’s been, if there’s pursuit on the horizon, if the captain’s said anything about letting me out of this room.

All I can do is wait and listen to the rumble of the engines beneath my back. We’re always fleeing now. The captain must be trying to put as much distance as possible between us and the Flotilla, to get us out in the open sea where we’ll be nigh impossible to reach. But there are satellites in the sky above us, the last gasps of pre-Schism space programs that watch the oceans with hawkish eyes. If the SRC commissions a sat to track us down, there’s no way we can hide.

I keep waiting.

And finally the door opens, and it’s Swift standing there, but it’s not the Swift I’ve known. That spark, that hunger I used to see in her is gone. She looks like an empty shell, her hair limp, her eyes hooded, and all she tells me is, “It’s time.”

As we jog down to the trainer deck, the all-call crackles on. “Radar has picked up an aerial attack inbound. Four SRCese quadcopters. All hands on deck. Let’s knock these birds out of the sky.”

The pursuit has caught up.

“The Minnow’s artillery will handle the brunt of the attack, but we want you prepped just in case there’s an opening,” Swift explains as she unlocks the hatch and lets me scramble through ahead of her. “We also need Bao near the ship. We don’t want him to take too much damage, and they can’t fire anything heavy at us when we have a hostage onboard.”

I cross to the counter where I left the duffle with the Otachi. Swift watches me, her fingers drumming on her biceps as I strap on the devices one by one.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask as I winch the velcro tight around my wrists.