Wilson tumbled away from the shuttle on the vector the decompressing air had placed him but kept pace with the shuttle in terms of its forward motion, a testament to fundamental Newtonian physics. This was going to be bad news in roughly forty seconds, when the first missile hit the shuttle; even without an atmosphere to create a shock wave that would turn his innards to jelly, Wilson could still be fried and punctured by shrapnel.

He looked down at the Polk’s black box, tightly gripped close to his abdomen, and sent it a signal that informed it that it had been ejected from a spaceship. Then, despite the fact that his visual feed was now being handled by his BrainPal, he closed his eyes to fight the vertigo of the stars wheeling haphazardly around him. The BrainPal, interpreting this correctly, cut off the outside feed and provided Wilson with a tactical display instead. Wilson waited.

Do your thing, baby, he thought to the black box.

The black box got the signal. Wilson felt a snap as the black box’s inertial field factored his mass into its calculus and tightened around him. On the tactical display coming from his BrainPal, Wilson saw the representation of the shuttle pull away from him with increasing speed, and saw the missiles flash by his position, their velocity increasing toward the shuttle even as his was decreasing. Within a few seconds, he had slowed sufficiently that he was no longer in immediate danger of the shuttle impact.

In all, his little plan had worked out reasonably well so far.

Let’s still not ever do this again, Wilson said to himself.

Agreed, himself said back.

“First impact in ten seconds,” Wilson heard Schmidt say, via his BrainPal. Wilson had his BrainPal present him with a stabilized, enhanced visual of outside space and watched as the now invisible missiles bore down on the hapless, also invisible shuttle.

There was a series of short, sharp light bursts, like tiny firecrackers going off two streets away.

“Impact,” Schmidt said. Wilson smiled.

“Shit,” Schmidt said. Wilson stopped smiling and snapped up his BrainPal tactical display.

The shuttle and four of the missiles had been destroyed. One missile had survived and was casting about for a target.

On the periphery of the tactical display, a new object appeared. It was the Kaligm. The Utche had arrived.

Send that message to the Utche NOW, Wilson subvocalized to Schmidt, and the BrainPal transmuted it to a reasonable facsimile of Wilson’s own voice.

“Captain Coloma refuses,” Schmidt said a second later.

What? Wilson sent. Tell her it’s an order. Invoke my security clearance. Do it now.

“She says to shut up, you’re distracting her,” Schmidt said.

Distracting her from what? Wilson sent.

The Clarke started broadcasting a warning to the Utche, warning them of the missile attack, telling them to be silent and to leave Danavar space.

On the Utche’s broadcast bands.

The last missile locked on and thrust itself toward the Clarke.