For a moment, Fulbreech didn’t answer. Then, before he could, Park felt a sudden stabbing pain in her head, a kind of eruption in her brain. She staggered, gasping, and reached out for something to support her; she found Jimex’s strong, steady arm and clung to it. When she opened her eyes again she saw that Fulbreech and Sagara were also staggering, that the ship was lurching; for a terrible moment she thought that the unity rain had come again, that it was finally going to collapse the whole thing on them all.

But then she heard the thrum of the engines, the churning and clanking of the ship as it struggled to heave itself off the surface of the planet. Somewhere in front of her, Sagara swore.

They’ve done it, Park thought, with a blood-chilling certainty. They were leaving Eos. The mutineers had launched the ship.

—

The force of the launch flattened them all to the floor for a few minutes: Park held onto Jimex for dear life as he held on to one of the gravity hooks in the wall. The entire time she was thinking, We’re going to die. This is against the safety protocols. You’re supposed to be strapped in when you launch like this.

As usual, it turned out the ISF had fudged details again; all that happened was bone-rattling turbulence, the stomach-tugging swoop of shifting gravities. Park’s headache whined bullet-like through her head, and metal above them groaned and shrieked in protest. There was a great roar in her ears, as if they were being swallowed by a great white furious wave of water or static.

Then the ship punched through Eos’s atmosphere and leveled out—and all four of them fell on top of each other in a heap again.

Park lay there for a moment on the cold metal floor. For that moment she could hear the Deucalion’s heart straining and chugging away beneath her; she thought that if she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could dissolve into it, steal through the pipes and wires and passageways like an electrical impulse.

Then she thought that they ought to be relieved they were leaving the planet. That meant no more unity rain: they were safe from the ‘end of the season,’ from the catastrophic quantum events and quickening storms that Taban had warned her about. That, at least, was a blessing—that they wouldn’t have to merge into anything further than they already had.

Then Sagara was hauling her up by the elbow and saying, “Weapons.” Park snapped out of her reverie just as he turned to Fulbreech. “We need to get to the weapons.”

“Even while we’re in flight?” Park asked. She flopped against him clumsily, conscious of his injury—but it was hard for her to find her footing, with the way the floor was rocking and swaying beneath her. She did not quite feel grounded in herself.