My hand hit the flashlight and I grabbed it, screwed the cap back on, and shone the light on the attacker.

A human shape, arms and legs and head—thick dark hair and a ragged uniform and wide-set brown eyes.

“Hey!” I shouted, and ran at them though it made Indigo flinch with a hiss that might have been a curse, long knife in his hands. Lantern-Eyes checked her swing abruptly, slamming her weapon into the ground instead of me. It was—God—a homemade mace, or morning star, or something; a club with spikes on the end.

“Hey, Lantern-Eyes,” I said, putting myself between her and Indigo. She’d saved me, back when the Ministers had first arrived. “It’s all right. Shh, it’s okay.”

She looked at me like I was the dumbest creature she’d ever had the misfortune to meet and said, in perfect Sister Standard, “Don’t be stupid, he’s a Minister.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

The Minister and the Lieutenant

Lantern-Eyes glared at me, her enormous bludgeon still clutched in her hands.

I felt slow and stupid, my brain realigning itself in the disparity between what I’d grown to believe of the strange woman living on the ship, and the reality that stood before me. “You’re from the Republic.”

“She’s a Republican soldier.” Indigo did not sound impressed.

Now that he mentioned it, I could just recognize the silhouette of Lantern-Eyes’ tattered uniform. The stiff shoulders had softened with wear, and beneath the fade and rough patching I could see that the jacket had once been a very dark red. The characteristic broad shoulder and crimson of a Republican officer’s uniform. I’d been detained by police officers in the non-military version of that uniform about a week ago.

Lantern-Eyes—the soldier—narrowed her big amber eyes at Indigo over my shoulder, then said abruptly to me, “He’s going to kill you after he uses you to find the data.”

“Well, he’s gonna have to get in line,” I said.

“I won’t,” Lantern-Eyes said.

Several things happened all at once. I heard Indigo move behind me. Lantern-Eyes pressed one hand to a rough-looking mess of wires tied to her hip. Indigo’s fingers brushed my shoulder just as the world split in thunder and lightning.

I blinked myself aware on the floor of the room, the rotting sun mobile inches from my face. Afterimages of brilliance were scoured on my retinas for the second time that day, and the room was filling with some sort of funny-smelling gas, metallic and sour.

Lantern-Eyes dropped to her hands and knees directly in front of me, her bludgeon clattering against the floor. She didn’t look as stunned as I felt. “Let’s go,” she said.

A flash bomb and a smoke bomb, I realized, my thoughts like a laggy computer connection. She’d set them off.

Indigo. He’d been right behind me.

“He’s only stunned,” Lantern-Eyes warned when I found him, on his knees behind me and breathing in sharp hard breaths, eyes wide and glassy. The gas. The funny-smelling gas.

Indigo swung his head around, his androgyne features even eerier with his glassy eyes staring sightlessly at me.