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.

I’m definitely not a fun first date, Wilson thought.

He fell and fell some more and tried not to think of Lowen, or Hart, or the Clarke, or the fact that screaming chunks of Earth Station were almost certainly whizzing past him at ultrasonic speeds and could turn him into kibble if they smacked into him.

This did not leave a whole lot to think about.

There was a sudden fluttering sound and the nanobots tore away. Wilson blinked in the noontime sun. He was amazed to remember that it was still barely after noon, Nairobi time; everything that had happened happened in just about an hour.

Wilson did not think he could take many more hours like this.

Lowen pinged on his consciousness. She was now less than five klicks away and a klick up, still tumbling but less so in the atmosphere. Wilson carefully negotiated his way over to her, stabilized her and, as much as he could, checked her vitals. At the very least, she was still breathing. It was something.

Still, not having her conscious was not going to be a good thing when it came to landing.

Wilson thought about it for a moment, but only for a moment, because the ground was going to become a problem in the very near future. Then he checked how many nanobots he had left, estimated how much weight they were going to hold and then wrapped himself around Lowen, face-to-face. They were going to go in tandem.