She focused on her destination again. Just a little more to the left and then angle up a few degrees, and … perfect! With each thought, the xeno responded by providing the exact amount of thrust needed to reposition her. And now faster! Faster!

Her speed increased, although not as much as she would have liked. So the suit did have its limits after all.

She tried to guess how much time had passed. A minute? Two minutes? However long it was, it was too long. The shuttle’s systems would take minutes to start up and ready for departure, even with emergency overrides. She might be able to use the RCS thrusters to put a few hundred meters between her and the Extenuating Circumstances, but that wouldn’t be enough to protect her from the blast.

One thing at a time. She had to get into a shuttle first, and then she could worry about trying to get away.

A thin red line swept across the back half of the ship, moving up the truncated stem—a laser beam slicing it apart. Decks exploded in plumes of crystalizing vapor, and she saw men and women ejected into space, their last breaths forming small clouds in front of their contorted faces.

The laser swerved sideways when it reached the docking section, swerved and sliced through the farthest shuttle. A burst of escaping air pushed the mangled shuttle away from the Extenuating Circumstances, and then a jet of fire erupted from a punctured fuel tank in one of its wings, and the shuttle spiraled away, a top spinning out of control.

“Goddammit!” Kira shouted.

The aft part of the Extenuating Circumstances rolled sideways toward her, driven by the decompression of the ruptured decks. She arced around the surface of the pale hull, hurtling over it dangerously fast, and smashed into the fuselage of the remaining shuttle. Printed in large letters along the side was the name Valkyrie.

Kira grunted and spread her arms and legs, trying to hold on.

Her hands and feet stuck to the shuttle, and she scrambled across the fuselage to the side airlock. She punched the release button, the light on the control panel turned green, and the door slowly began to slide open.

“Comeon, comeon!”

As soon as the gap between the door and the hull was wide enough, she wiggled through to the airlock and activated the emergency pressurization system. Air buffeted her from all directions, and the sound of the whooping siren faded in. The suit’s mask didn’t seem to interfere with her hearing.

“Self-destruct in T-minus forty-three seconds. This is not a drill.”

“Fuck!”

When the pressure gauge read normal, Kira opened the inner airlock and shoved herself through, toward the cockpit.

The controls and displays were already active. One glance at them, and she saw that the engines were lit and all the preflight checklists and protocols had been taken care of. Bishop!

She swung herself down into the pilot’s seat and struggled with the harness until she got herself strapped in.