“Dani,” Wilson said, “it’s going to be okay. Trust me.”
Lowen stopped going for the escape pods but didn’t look the least bit happy about it.
“When they start launching these things, they’re probably going to cycle out the air,” Wilson said. “Let’s go ahead and cover up.” He attached his oxygen apparatus and then covered his head with his cowl.
“How do you see?” Lowen asked, looking at the blankness of the cowl.
“The suit nanobots are photosensitive and send a feed to my BrainPal, which allows me to see,” Wilson said. He reached over to help her with her oxygen and to seal her cowl.
“Great,” Lowen said. “How am I going to see?”
Wilson stopped. “Uh,” he said.
“‘Uh’?” Lowen said. “Are you kidding me, Harry?”
“Here,” Wilson said, and sent instructions from his BrainPal to Lowen’s suit. It sealed up everywhere but the eyes. “That should be fine until we go,” he said.
“When is that?” Lowen asked.
“I was going to do an emergency purge of the deck,” Wilson said. “But now I’ll wait for the pods to go before we do.”
“And then I’ll be blind,” Lowen said.
“Sorry,” Wilson said.
“Just talk to me on the way down, all right?” Lowen said.
“Uh,” Wilson said.
“‘Uh,’ again?” Lowen said.
“No, wait,” Wilson said. “You have your PDA, right?”
“I put it in my underwear, since you insisted I take off my clothes,” Lowen said.
“Put the audio up as loud as you can. Then I should be able to talk to you,” Wilson said.
From above the shuttle deck, the two of them heard panicked yelling and screaming, and the thundering of people running down the ramp to the shuttle deck.
“Oh, my God, Harry,” Lowen said, pointing at the rush. “Look at that.”
Harry turned in time to see a flash, a hole in the hull where the bottom of the ramp used to be, and people both thrown into the air and sucked out of the hole. Lowen screamed and turned, losing her footing and falling hard against the deck, momentarily stunning her. The suction of the hole sent her tumbling silently into space.
Harry frantically sent a command to her suit to cover her eyes and then leaped into space after her.
IX
Captain Coloma had been keeping tabs on Schmidt and Wilson, the Clarke’s lost sheep, via their PDA and BrainPal, respectively. Wilson had been moving about shuttle gate five but seemed fine; Schmidt was at gate seven, having just missed the shuttle, and was largely motionless until the announcement about the escape pods. Then the ships attacking Earth Station started putting missiles into the shuttle gates, intentionally targeting the decks where the people were funneling into escape pods.
“You sons of bitches,” Coloma said.
She was alone on the Clarke. The escape pods off the ship seemed not to attract attention. At the very least, no missiles were sent in their direction. Not every crew member was happy to go; she’d had to threaten Neva Balla with a charge of insubordination to get her into a pod. Coloma smiled grimly at this memory. Balla was going to make an excellent captain.
The ships targeted and hit the sections Wilson and Schmidt were in. Coloma zoomed in and saw the wreckage and the bodies vomiting out of the holes in the Earth Station hull. Remarkably, Coloma’s tracking data told her both Wilson and Schmidt were alive and moving. “Come on, guys,” Coloma said.
Wilson’s data indicated he had been sucked out of gate five. Coloma grimaced at this but then watched his BrainPal data further. He was alive and just fine, aside from hyperventilating slightly. Coloma wondered how he was managing this trick until she remembered that he was scheduled to do a jump with a U.S. soldier later today. It looked as though he were doing it earlier than he expected. Coloma watched his data for a few seconds more to assure herself that he was good, then turned her attention to Schmidt.
Her data on Schmidt was less exact because his PDA did not track his vital statistics, unlike a BrainPal. All Coloma could tell was that Schmidt was on the move. He had gotten himself down the ramp of gate seven, which the Clarke’s shuttle pilot had damaged, meaning it was filled with vacuum. Despite that, Schmidt had planted himself in an escape pod. Coloma was curious how he’d managed that and regretted that at this point it would be unlikely that she would ever find out.
The escape pod launched, plunging down toward the atmosphere.
The Erie Morningstar launched a missile directly toward it.
Coloma smiled. She went to her display, tracked the missile and vaporized it with the final blast of her antiparticle beam. “No one shoots down my people, you asshole,” she said.
And finally, Coloma and the Clarke had the attention of the interloping ships. The Erie Morningstar launched two missiles in her direction. Coloma waited until they were almost on top of her before deploying countermeasures. The missiles detonated beautifully, away from the Clarke, which was now swinging itself around as Coloma plugged in a course for the Erie Morningstar.
The Erie Morningstar responded with two more missiles; Coloma once more waited until the last minute before countermeasures. This time she was not as lucky. The starboard missile tore into the skin of the Clarke, rupturing forward compartments. If anyone had been there, they would be dead. Coloma grinned fiercely.
In the distance, three ships fired on the Clarke, two missiles each. Coloma looked at her display to gauge how long it would be until impact. She grimaced at the numbers and pushed the Clarke’s engines to full.
The Erie Morningstar was now clearly aware of what the Clarke was up to and was attempting evasive maneuvers. Coloma compensated and recalculated and was pleased with her results. There was no way the Erie Morningstar wasn’t going to get kissed by the Clarke.
The first of the new set of missiles plowed into the Clarke, followed by the second and then the third and fourth in rapid succession. The Clarke went dark. It didn’t matter; the Clarke had inertia on its side.
The Clarke crumpled into the Erie Morningstar as the fifth and sixth missiles struck, shattering both ships.
Coloma smiled. Her Colonial Defense Forces orders were, should she engage a hostile ship that attacked either her or Earth Station, to disable the ship if she could and destroy it only if necessary. They wanted whoever was in the ship, in order to find out who was behind everything the Colonial Union was coming up against.
That ship is definitely disabled, Coloma thought. Is it destroyed? If it is, it had it coming. It went after my people.
Sitting there in the dark, Coloma reached over and patted the Clarke fondly.
“You’re a good ship,” she said. “I’m glad you were mine.”
A seventh missile tore into the bridge.
Wilson couldn’t see Lowen but could track her. His BrainPal vision showed her as a tumbling sprite twenty clicks to the east. Well, fair enough. He was tumbling, too, because of his hasty exit from Earth Station; his BrainPal gave him an artificially stabilized view of things. Wilson was less concerned about her tumbling and more concerned about her utter silence. Even screaming would be better because it would mean she was conscious and alive. But there was nothing from her.
Wilson pushed it from his mind as best he could. There was nothing he could do about it right now. Once they were in the atmosphere, he could maneuver himself over to her and see how she was doing. For now, all he needed to do was get her through the burning part of reentry.