Wilson couldn’t see Lowen but could track her. His BrainPal vision showed her as a tumbling sprite twenty klicks to the east. Well, fair enough. He was tumbling, too, because of his hasty exit from Earth Station; his BrainPal gave him an artificially stabilized view of things. Wilson was less concerned about her tumbling and more concerned about her utter silence. Even screaming would be better because it would mean she was conscious and alive. But there was nothing from her.

Wilson pushed it from his mind as best he could. There was nothing he could do about it right now. Once they were in the atmosphere, he could maneuver himself over to her and see how she was doing. For now, all he needed to do was get her through the burning part of reentry.

Instead of thinking about Lowen, Wilson had his BrainPal turn its visual attention to Earth Station, which floated darkly above him, save for the occasional flare as the missiles struck another area of the station. Wilson did a status check of the Colonial Union diplomatic ships at Earth Station. The Aberforth, the Zhou and the Schulz were all pulling away from Earth Station at speed, with or without their diplomatic contingents. Their captains were probably aware by now that one way or another, Earth Station was going up like a Roman candle.

The Clarke was missing or not responding. That was not good at all. If it wasn’t there, then it wouldn’t matter whether the shuttle got everyone out or not; they would have met their fate on the ship. Wilson tried not to think about that.

He especially tried not to think about Hart.

There was a dazzling light from Earth Station. Wilson focused his attention on it once more.

It was detonating. Not haphazardly, as in the attack; no, this was a planned and focused thing, a series of brilliant flashes designed to reduce an entire spaceship into chunks no larger than one’s own hand. Whatever the attacking ships started, the Colonial Union’s detonation protocols were finishing now.

A thought flashed into Wilson’s head: Some of that debris is headed this direction and it’s going much faster than you are.

A second thought flashed into Wilson’s head: Well, fuck.

Wilson’s BrainPal alerted him that Lowen was beginning to drag on the Earth’s atmosphere. A second later, it told him he was beginning to do the same thing. Wilson ordered the release of the nanobots and immediately found himself encased in a matte black sphere. On the other side of that, he knew, would be several thousand degrees of reentry friction that the nanobots were shielding him from, taking some of the heat from the reentry to strengthen the shield as he fell.

This would not be a good time for Dani to wake up, Wilson thought, thinking about the flat darkness surrounding him. Then he remembered that she would be in darkness anyway because she had no BrainPal.