Natalya. Park kicked her off, swinging blindly, and out of the corner of her eye—out of some awareness she had cast like a net across the room—she saw that Boone had dropped down from the vents, too, as silent as a bat, and he had landed behind Fulbreech and had his arm locked around Fulbreech’s neck, and he was choking him to death. Veins bulged in his biceps as he employed enough force to break a child’s spine down on Fulbreech’s windpipe. Sagara was still by the doors, wild-eyed, his gun tracking them—but he could not shoot Boone with Fulbreech in the way.

Park looked again—she could not keep track of what to look at—and she saw that Natalya was at the controls, hitting something with the butt of her gun. Park dove at her, and they both rolled—the ship was going into a nosedive now, something in the panel had been broken, the Deucalion was spinning downward like a poorly made paper airplane and Park bashed into Natalya and barely avoided breaking her neck. Both of them were holding their guns but could not get a proper aim for fear of striking one of the others—or something vital in the ship, something combustible—in the maelstrom of sound and motion. Natalya turned her head and hissed at Park like a cat, baring her teeth. They tussled together, stupidly, uselessly, and Park thought, She’s sabotaged the controls. We’re going to crash. They’re prepared to take us all down, even if it means they die too.

Across the room she saw Taban lunging forward now, using his six metal limbs for stability even as the other synthetics toppled over and skidded around; he leapt onto Boone’s back and wrenched him off of Fulbreech, who surfaced with a great gulp of air, a thick red stripe appearing across his neck as if it had been slashed there by a knife. Fulbreech staggered forward, rasping, and Taban continued to pry Boone backward, using his mechanical strength against the big augmented soldier; Boone gave a thunderous curse, fumbling to shoot back over his shoulder with his gun. His bad leg impeded him; Taban twisted him this way and that. Sagara leapt across the room then and plunged a glowing energy blade hilt-deep into Boone’s heart. Park saw it emerge out his back—narrowly avoiding Taban—and then hang there like a splinter of light. There was the smell of smoke and cordite and burning meat. Boone said nothing, did nothing; his body vanished silently under the other control panel.