asleep on top of the bed with the lights still on and his tubes still connected. On the bright side, his color had already improved.
Denver carefully unhooked the dialysis tubes and put a blanket over Laramie before setting to work. Spence hadn’t been able to tell them exactly what time his evacuation would happen—only that it would be morning, and they’d know it when they heard it. When that happened, Denver and Laramie needed to be ready to move. There was no telling how successful the evacuation would be, or how long they’d have before station security figured out it was all hoax. With any luck, the Jiminy would be long gone before that happened.
Denver’s task took him nearly three hours. Laramie was still sound asleep, and Denver staggered back to his own room and fell into bed. Another two hours of sleep was all he managed before he was wide-awake in the kitchen, clutching a cup of coffee, thinking the wait was going to kill him.
An hour later, Laramie appeared, looking better than he had in ages. “Where’s Marit?” he asked as he poured himself a glass of water.
“She and OPAL are already out in the city, making contact with Samsen. As soon as we have the credits in our account, I’ll message her so she can pay. Hopefully they can get the nav drive translated fast.”
“She has the actual nav drive with her?”
Denver shook his head. “Nah, just OPAL’s copy. It should be easier to transmit that way, and even though she doesn’t understand it, OPAL’s confident she has all the data. Besides.” He smiled a little grimly. “Marit didn’t want to risk getting stopped and frisked on her way through the door.”
“I get that.”
“I think we’d better.”
They dressed so they’d be ready, then spent another hour in the kitchen, all but crawling out of their skins with impatience.
The sudden blaring of the Titan X alarm nearly sent Denver through the roof. They both clamped their hands over their ears, trying to muffle the slow whoop-whoop-whoop, rising and falling with each blare, so loud it sent vibrations through the hull of the Jiminy.
And with it came instructions in a feminine, electronic voice:
ALERT! COLLISION ALERT. AN INCOMING ANOMALY HAS BEEN DETECTED. IMPACT IS IMMINENT. ALL CITIZENS SHOULD EVACUATE SECTOR THREE IMMEDIATELY. REPEAT: ALL CITIZENS SHOULD EVACUATE SECTOR THREE IMMEDIATELY. PLEASE PROCEED TO YOUR NEAREST EXIT IN A CALM AND ORDERLY FASHION.
“Holy shit!” Laramie yelled over the blaring alarm and the drone of the voice. “What the hell did Spence do?”
“I have no idea!” Denver yelled back.
ALERT! COLLISION ALERT. IMPACT IS IMMINENT. COMPLETE LOCKDOWN OF SECTOR THREE WILL OCCUR IN THIRTEEN MINUTES. REPEAT: COMPLETE LOCKDOWN OF SECTOR THREE WILL OCCUR IN THIRTEEN MINUTES. ALL CITIZENS MUST EVACUATE SECTOR THREE IMMEDIATELY.
Laramie’s dialysis machine waited for them by the airlock. The unit was billed “portable,” which meant it could be moved, but that didn’t exactly make it easy to move. It was damned heavy.
“You ready?” Denver had to yell to be heard.
“Does it matter?” Laramie yelled back, smiling. “Lead the way.”
The alarm was even louder when they stepped off the ship. The overhead lights flared and dimmed, flared and dimmed, perfectly synced to the up-and-down scream of the alarm. Past the door of their bay, people ran in all directions, some simply looking confused, others clearly panicking. Denver felt a twinge of guilt. His heart was pounding a mile a minute, even knowing the alert was fake. How scary must it be for the rest of Titan X?
ALERT! COLLISION ALERT. AN INCOMING ANOMALY HAS BEEN DETECTED. IMPACT IS IMMINENT. ALL CITIZENS SHOULD EVACUATE SECTOR THREE IMMEDIATELY.
They found Gerald himself guarding the door of their ship bay. “I knew it!” Gerald cried, blocking Denver’s exit. “I knew you were hiding something!”
“Are you crazy?” Denver yelled over the noise of the alarm. “Don’t you hear that alarm?”
“I can’t allow you to take that—”
“Bullshit!” Denver yelled. “This machine is my brother’s life.”
“Not to mention it cost more than you make in a year,” Laramie added.
“There’s no way in hell we’re leaving it behind,” Denver added.
“Not before I search it for contraband.”
“You already did!” Denver and Laramie said in unison.
Gerald pursed his lips, and Denver held his breath, his heart pounding. The dialysis machine would hold up to a cursory inspection, but if Gerald looked too close, he’d find it had been gutted. The space inside now held several little boxes of carefully packaged biologicals. But the station was in