“I don’t think that’s really going to do much,” Milly said. “I believe they already know we’ve escaped. Or that something is going on, at any rate.”

Niko didn’t bother to refute this logic. “Let’s go,” she said.

By now they were only a few hallways away from the ship. They turned the last corner.

“Hold on,” Niko said. She came to a stop.

“What?” Milly turned, only to find herself confronting Niko’s drawn gun. “What are you doing?”

“You said that the ship wouldn’t go without us. I think you tried to leave without us and the ship wouldn’t let you. How’s that sound? A bit more specific than the song you were singing a little while ago?”

“Are you just going to shoot me in cold blood?”

“I believe that I am, as a matter of expediency. Luckily for me, the sergeant isn’t around to act as my conscience.”

“Wait,” Milly said. “You can’t do this.”

“I believe that I can.”

“No, I mean that the ship won’t leave without all of us. All of us.” She tapped her chest and said it one more time. “All of us.”

Niko lowered her gun. She sighed. “Very well, all of us.” She motioned Milly onward and followed, muttering, “Sucks to be me, I guess.”

Refraining from comment, Milly moved forward with Niko at her heels.

“Where is your brother?” the ship asked Talon.

His eyes were wide with anger and sorrow, the rest of his face still as stone. “Dead.”

The ship felt uncertain. “He will not come?”

“He cannot,” Talon said flatly.

“There is nothing that can be done?”

“Nothing,” Talon said, and refused to answer any other questions.

Atlanta felt it the minute that Niko entered the Thing. Around her the ship’s walls suddenly thrummed with purpose.

“Prepare for departure,” the ship said. Milly gave out a startled squawk as fleshy tendrils lashed out from the walls to grab at all of them, pulling them close and snug.

“Prepare for departure,” the ship repeated.

“I’m really not sure what else we could be doing in order to prepare for it,” Niko snapped from her place on the wall. Her voice was muffled; the ship had secured her with additional diligence due her rank, and her form was barely visible among the mass of enthusiastic tendrils.

“We will be entering snap drive in thirty seconds.”

“Are you mad?” Niko snapped. “You need to get away from this place before you deploy—”

And with that, the world collapsed and once again they hurtled into space, but this time the passage was rough, buffeted by forces that seemed ready to tear them to pieces.

22

Snap drives, a creation of the careless Spisoli, who pay little attention to environmental effects, allow a ship to move at near-light speed but also generate a back-facing discharge of energy capable of tearing matter apart.