out! Now!”
Judy let out a long sigh as she stood, hands behind her back, watching the hologram. Around her, in the command center, a few people clapped. A few others prayed. Rikolfr wept.
Judy just watched the bomb fall. She’d done what she could. Perhaps humankind could rebuild, with the remaining ships that survived. Perhaps the Defiants would continue on.
They’d do it without Alta. She braced herself. Ships scattered, to try to escape the blast. All but one.
That one dove toward the bomb.
“The defect,” Judy whispered.
I speared the bomb with my light-lance, then pulled up in a curve that overwhelmed M-Bot’s incredible GravCaps. The force pressed me against my seat as, by a narrow margin, I crested a dusty hillside—towing the lifebuster bomb after me.
M-Bot put up a timer, mirroring the one on the bomb. Forty-five seconds.
“We need to get this thing outside the death zone,” I said, slamming the throttle full forward and putting everything into an overburn away.
“This will be close,” he said. “I’m extending the atmospheric scoop so we don’t rip that bomb off our light-lance as we accelerate, but above Mag-16 the scoop’s envelope will shrink too much to fully shelter the bomb, so that’s our max for now . . .”
We tore away from Alta, accelerating to speeds no DDF ship could have managed, despite that restriction. I felt the g-forces even through his GravCaps. We careened through the middle of a pack of DDF ships—they were gone in a blink.
“We’re going to make it!” M-Bot said. “Just barely. But we’ll . . . Oh.”
“What?” I asked.
“We’ll be in the middle of the blast when it explodes, Spensa. And I don’t want to die. This is very inconvenient.”
The countdown hit ten. Ahead, I saw a swarm of black dots in the air. Krell chasing after the DDF ships.
“There has to be a way out of this!” M-Bot said. “Booster and thrusters: online. No, not fast enough. Acclivity ring and altitude controls: online. Can we rise quickly enough? No, no, no!”
I felt at peace. Serene.
“Communications and stealth systems: online, but useless. Light-lance: online, carrying the bomb. If we drop it too soon, the wave will hit Alta.”
I sank into the ship, feeling—becoming—his very processors as they worked. I felt the number counting down to three.
“Self-repair: offline. Destructors: offline.”
Two.
I felt, more than saw, the blossom of the bomb’s first explosion behind. And I felt, more than heard, M-Bot’s diagnostic tool working.
“Biological component engaged,” his voice said.
One.
“Cytonic hyperdrive: online.”
An explosion of fire surrounding us.
“What?” M-Bot said. “Spin! Engage the—”
I did something with my mind.
We vanished, leaving a ship-size hole in the expanding blossom of flame and destruction.
54
In that moment between heartbeats, I felt myself enter someplace dark. A place not just black, a place of nothingness. Where matter did not, and could not, exist.
In that moment between heartbeats, I somehow stopped being. yet didn’t stop experiencing. A field of white appeared around me—a billion stars. Like eyes opening at once, shining upon me.
Ancient things stirred. And in that moment between heartbeats, they not only saw me, but they knew me.
I jolted from that place that was not a place, and felt like I’d slammed into my straps, as if I’d been thrown physically back into the cockpit. I gasped, heart racing, sweat streaming down my face.
My ship hovered, still and quiet, lights blinking out on the control panel.
“Cytonic hyperdrive offline,” M-Bot said.
“What,” I said, gasping for breath. “What was that?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “But my instruments place us at—calculating—one hundred kilometers from the point of detonation. Wow. My internal chronometer indicates no discrepancy between our time and solar time, so we experienced no time dilation—but somehow we traveled that distance virtually instantaneously. Faster than light, certainly.”
I leaned back in my seat. “Call Alta. Are they safe?”
The channel came on, and I heard whoops and screams—it took a moment to distinguish those as cheers of joy, not terror.
“Alta Base,” M-Bot said. “This is Skyward Eleven. You may commence thanking us for saving you from utter annihilation.”
“Thank you!” some voices cried. “Thank you!”
“Mushrooms are the preferred offering,” M-Bot said to them. “As many varieties as you can dig up.”
“Really?” I said, pulling off my helmet to wipe my brow. “Still on the mushroom thing?”
“I didn’t erase that part of my programming,” he said. “I’m fond of it. It gives me something to collect, like the way humans choose to accumulate useless items of sentimental and thematic value.”
I grinned, though I couldn’t shake the haunting feeling of those eyes watching me.