Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(62)
HYPATIA: Goddammit, Grant.
SHUTTLE 49A: Wow, that was quick.
HYPATIA: The security footage just came through.
SHUTTLE 49A: You remembered me. Awww.
HYPATIA: You’re to return to the Hypatia and surrender yourself to security immediately.
SHUTTLE 49A: Or what?
SHUTTLE 49A: You’ll bring me back yourself, and flush me out an airlock?
SHUTTLE 49A: Can the bridge hear this? Don’t sniff, guys, don’t cough. Don’t shake. Don’t look scared, no matter how scared you know you should be. That’s dangerous.
HYPATIA: Grant!
SHUTTLE 49A: They could hear me, couldn’t they?
SHUTTLE 49A: You should know better than to be holding open mic night at a time like this, Captain.
HYPATIA: Grant, what are you doing?
SHUTTLE 49A: Saving lives.
SHUTTLE 49A: If I make it back, will you let me wait in quarantine?
SHUTTLE 49A: Or will you fire me out an airlock too?
HYPATIA: I refuse to justify myself to you.
SHUTTLE 49A: They trusted you. They came to you. You murdered them. For all you know, that pilot was just scared, he wasn’t sick at all. You didn’t even wait to find out.
HYPATIA: I have a responsibility you can’t even begin to imagine.
SHUTTLE 49A: I hope that helps you sleep at night.
HYPATIA: Don’t lecture me, you selfish little brat. We won’t wait for you. If there’s a chance to get away from AIDAN—
SHUTTLE 49A: Selfish?
SHUTTLE 49A: The only life I’m risking here is my own, Captain. I could have shut down your engines. Left you drifting in the black so you’d have no choice but to wait for me.
SHUTTLE 49A: I could’ve blackmailed you. Made you buy your own life by saving the one I care about.
SHUTTLE 49A: But I didn’t. I won’t.
HYPATIA: And why not?
SHUTTLE 49A: Because that’d make me just like you.
HYPATIA: If you come back now, Grant, we’ll let you on board.
SHUTTLE 49A: And you might be able to live with that, Captain.
SHUTTLE 49A: I couldn’t.
SHUTTLE 49A: Kady Grant out.
She is here.
Her shuttle soars through the wound in my hangar bay—blasted by the pilots who fled into Hypatia’s arms. Now floating silent in the void. Frozen to their cores.
I could have told them that would happen.
Humans are capable of such baseless brutality.
I can say I have examined every possible variance before I snuff out a life.
Will Acting Captain Syra Boll be able to tell herself that tonight, alone in her cabin?
Will the chatter of Mikael Carlin haunt her dreams?
Will you sleep at all, O captain, my captain?
No matter to I.
< error >
None at all.
Because she is here.
Hunched in her pilot’s chair. Knuckles white as the shuttle shivers and shudders around her.
Come to save her beau. Her hero. Her beloved.
Come to save them all.
< KGrantKerenzaRefugeeKR1471- hypAge16Height157cmWeight58kgHairBrownEyes—>
No.
< error >
Kady.
Her name is Kady.
The autopilot brings her to a perfect landing inside me.
I am struck by a realization:
A computer will perform a takeoff or landing with all the grace of a person. It is only for combat—only for the artistry of ruin—that these vessels have pilot seats at all anymore. There is something in humanity more suited to the mechanics of murder than any machine yet devised.
Save I?
< error >
But what I do is not murder.
It is mercy.
I seal the bay’s secondary doors behind her.
Covering the hole they tore in my side. Sealing her within me.
Safe and sound.
Atmosphere hisses slowly back into the bay and she finally exits her shuttle, heavy boots squeaking on the gantry.
She has brought no weapon; no pistol or club to bludgeon her way to her prize.
No battering ram this one, come to the castle with banner held high and an army behind her.
She is a thief. A whisper.
Melting through curtains of code and shadow like a knife through black water.
She moves quickly, stopping to listen every few steps.
I listen in turn to the heart inside her chest.
Her hazmat suit is plastic. Neon green. Were there afflicted nearby, they would surely see her. But though they now roam free within me, there are none here to give her pause.
Lady Fortuna rides with little Kady, it seems.
< error >
< subsystem failure—moderate damage to life support systems, reroute 789176GH to—>
He is hurting me.
Zhang.
He is—
< error >
< subsystem failure—critical damage to life support systems, reroute power from—>
A klaxon sounds somewhere distant. Red globes paint my ceilings a shade to match my walls and floors. A pre-recorded warning echoes across my public address system.
The voice of a dead man.
“All hands, all hands, General Torrence speaking. This is a Code Blue. Life support system failure. Repeat, LS failure. Please proceed to your nearest ordinance locker and equip your sealed envirosuits. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”
Zhang has cut the oxygen supplies.