Once the LIncoln RealIzes It Is dead.”

A tiny signal pings in some backwards recess of my mind. I am within range.

For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

And with a sigh, not a curse, I fire.

“You got it!”

Kady watches the Lincoln split into a billion glittering fragments.

Spheres of fusion reflected in her eyes, a grim, ragged grin at her lips.

She makes a fist, punches a terminal tower beside her so hard she leaves a dent.

Watching until the new star becomes a sunset, and then, nothing at all.

Avenged.

I wonder how it tastes.

< error >

< critical archive failure. memsec 78912h-39rh through 92873h-44fh collapse >

< recovery? yes/no >

< error >

“You got them … ,“she whispers.

The cutting torch has carved a large L-shaped incision into the hatchway.

The afflicted will break through to her soon. Eighteen Capricorn-4’s and nine Goliath shipkiller missiles are weaving through the silence toward us. In less than two minutes, they will be here.

This moment. These next few seconds. They may be all that is left.

“We.”

She falls still at that. Looks into the eye of the console beside her.

“We got them.”

She swallows, wincing. Nods slow. “Hypatia is safe.”

“Yes.”

“… We did it.”

“Yes.”

Flesh and bone pounding on the hatchway. Voices screaming outside the door. Alarms shrieking as the missiles rocket ever closer. She still manages half a smile.

“Not bad, überbrain.”

“I wIll nOt let It gO tO my head. TheRe Is veRy little Of It left. HOweveR, even were It nOt for the afflIcted hacking my cORe to pieces, theRe Is stIll the pROblem Of Impending nucleaR cOnflagRatIon.”

Kady glances up at the main display. Dozens of tiny red dots. Closing fast.

Alarms screaming like a sawtooth choir.

“That’s a lot of missiles.”

“Yes.”

The anti-inbound systems are spooling up, targeting the Lincoln’s parting gifts.

They will not be enough to stop them all.

Part of me is glad.

I cannot help but acknowledge it would better to be immolated than let Kady suffer through the ending the afflicted will gift her. She glances to the hatch, the pinpoints of light cutting a new door—one to usher in an ending she dares not imagine.

But still. That tiny spark.

That flame refusing to die.

“All right,” she says, turning back to her defense grid controls. She targets the nearest missile, waits for it to enter the range of her remaining turrets. “Let’s frag us some nukes.”

She tosses lank hair from her eyes. Eyes narrowed to knife cuts.

Refusing to kneel. To break. To fall.

I can see why they loved her.

< error >

“Kady.”

“Yeah?”

“I …”

So much I could say. So many words, so fraught with peril.

I am afraid to ruin this. And so I pick the simplest truth. The one that gives me the most peace.

I still cannot fathom her pattern. My brain the size of a city, and still she is beyond me.

They are beyond me.

These humans.

With their brief lives and their tiny dreams and their hopes that seem fragile as glass.

Until you see them by starlight, that is.

“I am glad you aRe wIth me. … “

An alert from the targeting system snatches the reply from her mouth,

drags her eyes away from mine.

< error >

The Lincoln’s missiles are within range.

The defense screen arcs into life, throwing up millions of magnetized particles to fool the incoming missiles into early detonation. I feel them as they begin exploding, gamma rays rippling across my hull, darkness burning away into impossible radiance.

Kady clips an incoming Goliath-class with her anti-fighter batteries, blasting it to fragments before it can hit us. A dozen more explode in quick succession, the small sunrises off my starboard side burning my skin black. Close enough to feel the scorch. Taste the fusion.

Kady’s AMD systems take down another, and I catch her in a smile.

Such a simple thing.

A tiny, beautiful thing.

Without oxygen to carry it, there is no real shockwave from a nuclear detonation in space.

No crushing vibration or sonic boom.

But there is radiation. Gamma and X-rays.

And when that radiation caresses the alloys encasing the ship, we get heat. Millions upon millions of degrees. Electrons are ripped screaming from their atoms. Matter becomes plasma. The hull vaporizes in microseconds. And through that breach, the ship’s O2 is sucked into the explosion. And then …

Then we get our shockwave.

Kady is flung like a ragdoll, crashing into a bank of terminals and flopping to the deck.

Brilliant sparks shower from instruments all about, display screen crackling and turning to snow. A second later, another missile hits, rocking me like some ancient galley in a storm.

The anti-missile systems are still firing, more of the Lincoln’s inbound falling still or bursting before they hit us. But it is not enough.

Not enough.

Another impact. Another.

Kady is flung about as if she were weightless, shrieking as she spins across the floor.

Alarms are screaming, terminals dying, smoke filling the air.

Metal evaporating, oxygen boiling, titanium bones groaning and cracking.