Wilson preferred not to engage in treason if he could avoid it. And so here he was, on the shuttle, about to do something stupid.

On the shuttle display, Wilson called up the heat map he’d created, and a timer. The heat map registered each of the suspect missile silos; the timer counted down until the scheduled arrival of the Utche, now less than ten minutes away. From the mission data given to Ambassador Abumwe, Wilson had a rough idea of where the Utche planned to skip into Danavar space. He plotted the shuttle in another direction entirely and opened up the throttle to put sufficient distance between himself and the Clarke, counting the kilometers until he reached what he estimated to be a good, safe distance.

Now for the tricky part, Wilson thought, and tapped his instrument panel to start broadcasting a signal on the Utche’s communication bands.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Wilson said to the missiles.

The missiles did not hear Wilson. They heard the shuttle’s signal instead and erupted from their silos, one, two, three, four, five. Wilson saw them twice, first on the shuttle’s monitor and second through the Clarke’s sensor data, ported into his BrainPal.

“Five missiles on you, locked and tracking,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, through the instrument panel.

“Come on, let’s play,” Wilson said, and pushed the shuttle as fast as it would go. It was not as fast as the missiles could go, but that wasn’t the point. The point was twofold. First, to get the missiles as far away from where the Utche would be as possible. Second, to get the missiles spaced so that the explosion from the first missile on the shuttle would destroy all the other missiles, moving too quickly to avoid being damaged.

To manage that, Wilson had broadcast his signal from a point as close to equidistant to all five silos as could be managed and still be a safe distance from the Clarke. If everything worked out correctly, the missile impacts would be within a second of each other.

Wilson looked at the missile tracks. So far, so good. He had roughly a minute before the first impact. More than enough time.

Wilson unstrapped himself from the pilot seat, picked up the oxygen container, secured it on his unitard combat belt and fastened the mask over his mouth and nose. He ordered his combat unitard to close over his face, sealing the mask in. He picked up the black box and pinged its charge status; it was at 80 percent, which Wilson guessed would have to be good enough. He disconnected it from the external battery and then walked to the shuttle door, carrying the black box in one hand and the battery in the other. He positioned himself at what he hoped was the right spot, took a very deep breath and chucked the battery at the door release button. It hit square on and the door slid open.

Explosive decompression sucked Wilson out the door a fraction of a second earlier than he expected. He missed braining himself on the still-opening door by about a millimeter.