I raced the rest of the way up the stairs until I finally reached the upper level. I ran past the airlock to the top of the other staircase, the one I had taken down before. It was hard to see from a distance, with so much smoke rising through the factory, but I thought I glimpsed the broad door to the cargo transport tunnel in the wall. It was closed. I hoped that meant the others were already on the other side. Safe and fleeing the factory as fast as they could, or as fast as the mech suits could carry them.
If Vanguard hadn’t been able to get them out, they had no chance now.
I didn’t know how many of my seventeen minutes had passed. Too many. It was time to leave.
I stepped through the interior hatch, shut it firmly behind me, and wasted half a minute figuring out how to release my hand from its glove to access the key, then just as long figuring out how to get my hand closed safely away again. Finally I turned the key and the airlock depressurized. I opened the outer hatch.
The darkness outside was a shock after so much light inside the factory. The helmet’s visual input adjusted with only a little bit of lag. I took two steps, then two more, testing how well the boots gripped the cargo track. Good enough. I began to run.
I ran with big steps, loping steps, impossible steps, every one of them powerful enough that it felt like it might launch me from the surface of Nimue. I ran until my shadow stretched before me, shadow from an impossible light where no light should be. I had too much momentum to stop gracefully, and as I turned I ended up stepping off the cargo track and into the soft dust and gravel. I stumbled, righted myself, and looked back toward the factory. The dust I had stirred up with my clumsiness gathered around me in a waist-high fog, swirling but not settling.
I had come far enough that I could not see the bunker or missile silos anymore. The light came from the launch of the twelve rockets, one after another, each spewing a burst of flame as it rose. My heart was hammering, not from exertion but from excitement and fear and, yes, a little bit of pride. Vanguard had carried out our plan successfully.
The twelve rockets burned into space, growing smaller and smaller.
There was, for a moment, nothing but darkness.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Come on. Don’t get squeamish on me now.”
Three of the lights stopped retreating. I held my breath. With a change so imperceptible my eyes had trouble tracking it, they began to grow brighter instead.
“Oh, that will work. You clever little brat,” I said, so relieved I wanted to laugh.
Vanguard had loaded itself into nine of the rockets. Removed the payload of weapons, replaced it with its own brain—which was, after all, always meant to be portable, capable of separation, cleaved into pieces and spread around widely to explore as it willed. It was free now. Not as Mary Ping had wanted, with her wide manic eyes and delusions of mechanical godhood, but as Sunita and I had always intended.
The three returning rockets grew brighter, brighter, nearer and brighter. Vanguard had replaced the payload on those three as well. Parthenope had plenty of powerfully destructive bombs in its factory.
The rockets became streaks of light, then solid objects for a blink, then they struck the factory. Brilliant white light flared from behind Nimue’s stunted horizon.
The shock wave of gravel and debris followed moments later. I heard only the rattling of sand striking the suit, felt only the trembling of the asteroid beneath my feet, before I was engulfed in dust and the light was gone again.
TWENTY-SIX
The cell they put me in was larger than my personal quarters. I didn’t expect that.
The room had a complete lack of privacy, with at least two cameras watching my every move and a shatterproof window forming the entire front wall. But there was so much space I spent part of my first day simply lying on the floor, not thinking about what had been cleaned off that surface, appreciating the ability to point my toes and stretch my arms over my head without touching anything. Hygiea’s gravity felt strong after Nimue, like I was anchored and heavy, in no danger of drifting away.
And I waited. And waited.
I had been separated from the others on the flight back to Hygiea. Wellfleet was the sort of company ship that came with secured rooms and armed crew and not a lot of willing explanation. What I was able to learn before they shut me away was that Vanguard had, in fact, gotten the others out before destroying the factory. They were alive, all except for Katee King, who had succumbed to her injuries before Wellfleet found the survivors.
Sigrah had not made it out. I figured it would take a while for Parthenope to decide if it wanted to turn her into a hero or a villain. Probably the latter. They needed a scapegoat.
As soon as we returned to Hygiea, I was taken into custody. Stripped of my security uniform, told to bathe, given prisoner garb. They put me in a room for a medical exam, and during the long wait I had grown sweaty with terror that Parthenope was going to repossess my arm and leg.
They didn’t. The medics patched my wounds of skin and flesh, splinted my right wrist, gave me some meds, and left my prosthetics in place. A doctor stopped by to tell me there was no serious damage to my left hip or shoulder, nor to any of the prosthetics. She refused to answer my questions. I went straight from the exam room back into my cell.
It was eerily quiet and
