Her one-bullet gun, I remembered, thoughts slow and stunned. Hadn’t her gun had only one bullet? She’d just shot One.

And where were the other soldiers? “Where are the others?” I asked.

“I lied to them about where I was going and left them behind,” Tamara replied, without taking her gaze or her gun off Indigo.

“Why?”

“So that they wouldn’t execute you as a traitor to humanity, Sean. What, Minister? Still not scared of me?”

“Should I be?” Indigo asked, his voice more gravelly than usual, on his knees next to One’s corpse.

Tamara sighed. When the air had left all her lungs, she dropped her arm, flicking the safety back on the pistol one-handed. “Fuck it,” she said, and then turned a beady look on me. “I assume your plan is to get the data and give it to both factions.”

I hadn’t told her, had I? No—she must’ve figured it out herself. I shouldn’t be surprised. Lantern-Eyes was intelligent and methodical; she’d probably realized it as soon as I’d ditched the Republic for the Minister side. “That’s right.”

“Then we don’t have much time.” Tamara tucked her gun into its holster at her side. “The Republic will come after me sooner or later, and I’m guessing the rest of the Ministers will do the same. How are we getting this data out?”

I stood up. My pants fabric was sticky and damp at the knees. “Come here.”

I led her to the ancient computer and showed her the screen. “I can read you what this says,” I told her, “but I don’t know anything about the science. Can you confirm it’s the data?”

“You don’t need to read it, I recognize that diagram,” Tamara said, hovering one finger lightly over the screen. “So this is an ancient computer. Interesting design.”

“We can’t detach it from the Nameless without frying it. I’m going to transmit the data to the Republican ship, the Minister ship, and the Viper—Benny’s ship. That way we’ll have a copy in case either of the other two groups misses a part.”

She nodded. “Understood. We’ve got to make sure we’re not interrupted, though. I’ll radio my people, tell them that I have the data but they should return to the ship to receive it. Indigo, can you do the same?”

“Yes,” Indigo said. When I glanced back I saw that he had turned One onto her back, hands crossed over her chest, and he was removing her collar-light. Without the dim glow, she was just a slight figure in the dark, indistinguishable from human.

“Right.” Tamara stood up, pulled a little black handheld radio from her pocket. “Sean, you get to work starting the transmission.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said automatically, and she stepped away to speak into her radio.

The ancient computer loaded slowly and painfully while the others turned aside our remaining pursuit. Tamara spoke quickly and clearly, clipped, into her radio. Indigo pressed the sides of One’s removed collar-light in a deliberate and rhythmic fashion. I remembered that the collar-lights could be used in short-distance not line-of-sight communication as well. I wondered how the absence of visual reception was interpreted. Vibrations against the skin maybe? I wondered if Indigo would explain it to me.