Providence - Max Barry Page 0,113

were made of them. One thumped against her, its wings warm and heavy, and did not stop but flew on toward the ship. Even the salamanders realized she was meaningless. The ship’s mass projectors began to cycle again. Salamander bodies plunged around her. But there were so many. As they rose, they filled the air with sound: Huk. Huk.

Through a torrent of salamander bodies she saw the ship’s foredecks split through by a thousand little gluon-quark balls until the structure could no longer support its own weight and broke off toward the rock. Everywhere the ship was punctured and breaking. “Shoot!” she screamed. The planet-killer was primed. It could end this. It would kill her and maybe itself but it would take the salamanders with it.

Although now that she thought about it: Why was it so close? It didn’t need to breach atmosphere to use the weapon. It was better not to. It should have stayed clear to avoid the incredible amount of flying debris that would exist after it put a lightning bolt through a quintillion tons of planet. She knew she wasn’t supposed to try to read the mind of an AI, but this was insanity.

A dark shape fell toward her, a maimed salamander, perhaps. There was an engine roar and a flaring of hot thrusters. The bull-nosed shape of a jetpod set down. Salamanders flew by, ignoring it. She stared dumbly and then scrambled toward it. When she slapped the tactile panel, the door opened. “Gilly?” she said, but there was no answer, and no occupants. Before she could process this, the door closed behind her. The engines kicked. She felt herself begin to lift off. The viewports were thick with dark salamander bodies. The acceleration drove her toward the floor but she was able to crawl to a harness and work the straps. Salamander bodies thumped against the hull. As she rose higher, they began to thin, and she could see more of the ship and the terrible damage it was sustaining. Its engines began to crumble. “No,” she said, because it was dying. It wouldn’t survive long enough for her to reach it. Then she realized the jetpod was arcing away. It wasn’t taking her to the ship.

The accelerative force increased. There were charts and numbers on the viewports but they were shaking too much to read. She saw the ship falling to pieces and then the viewports fogged and were enveloped by cloud.

She fought the darkness creeping in from the edges of her vision. When the shaking stopped and the viewports filled with inky starfield, she saw the path the ship had plotted for her: a hard burn and a skip to take her all the way out of VZ and then to home.

“Wait,” she said. She twisted until she could see what she was leaving behind. The ship was invisible, submerged in a balled mass of cloud. The numbers on the viewports blanked. A word appeared:

GOODBYE

The planet heaved and went white. The jetpod began to skip ahead even faster. A minute later, a wave of turbulence passed through so violently that she thought it would pull the teeth from her head. She fought to stay awake but this time could not.

* * *

—

Eventually she raised her head. It had been three hours, according to the viewport numbers. She had traveled forty thousand miles. A little under fifty trillion to go. The jetpod continued to accelerate, making movement difficult, but she managed to free herself from the harness and grab a support bar. She was approximately ten months from home. There was no food, no water, no anything. The only way to survive this trip was to crawl into a medbag and let it put her into a coma.

She wasn’t ready for that. She brought up her comms and rewatched the message from Anders. Then she played the one from Gilly, the one she hadn’t gotten to the end of, not even to the parts he’d apparently recorded as an exposé of his captivity in a salamander hive.

“One more thing,” Gilly said. “This isn’t on any of the recordings, because it’s not about the mission, but I wanted to say, I don’t think I ever told you I think you’re good at your job. It took me a while to figure