Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(78)

ALEXANDER: Hypatia, anyone home?

HYPATIA: Identify yourself.

ALEXANDER: Kady Eleanora Grant. Shuttle 49A. Miss me, Captain?

HYPATIA: I can’t believe you’re still alive.

ALEXANDER: Trust me, it’s even more surprising than you think. Now, listen up. Don’t shoot those shuttles you’re about to see incoming on your long-range scanners.

HYPATIA: What?

ALEXANDER: Ow, don’t shout, the dampeners on comms aren’t what they used to be over here. Those shuttles are full of healthy Alexander crew in sealed hazmat suits.

HYPATIA: How in the name of …

ALEXANDER: You need to stop being surprised by things I tell you. It’ll save us a lot of time.

HYPATIA: Why are you sending them here?

ALEXANDER: AIDAN agreed to release them.

HYPATIA: To what end, Miss Grant? The Lincoln will be here soon, and I don’t think it’ll matter much which ship they’re on when it arrives.

ALEXANDER: Yes it will. Because your ship’s going to be far, far away.

HYPATIA: If that was possible, we’d have run already. The AI made clear it’ll kill us if we try to move out of its range.

ALEXANDER: Well, that sounds like something it would say. I promise you it won’t fire, though. It’s playing on your fear to try and keep you close, where it thinks it can protect you.

HYPATIA: But it’s putting us in danger, forcing us to stay.

ALEXANDER: I know that, Captain. That’s why I’m sending across the survivors, so you can get the f*ck out of here.

HYPATIA: How do we know it’s not just sending across sick crew members to infect us?

ALEXANDER: They’re in freaking hazmat suits, lady. And you control the shuttle doors. You can quarantine them. So get them aboard and run for your lives, got it?

HYPATIA: We have them on our scanners now.

ALEXANDER: You better get somewhere set up to take them, then.

HYPATIA: How many?

ALEXANDER: A little under seven hundred.

HYPATIA: So few?

ALEXANDER: So many. Now go get ready for them. I’m kind of busy over here.

HYPATIA: Roger that, Alexander. Hypatia out.

Kady watches the exodus, the shuttles and escape pods spiraling through the black.

Thrusters glitter like stars, shrinking smaller and smaller the further they flee.

She watches them blink out one by one, ushered to the dubious safety of Hypatia’s hangar bays. She watches the science vessel spool up its main drive, preparing to abandon me to the Lincoln’s gentle ministrations without so much as a ‘thank you.’

She watches all this with a smile on her face.

I watch her instead.

Megatons of nuclear fire sit poised in my starboard silos. The death of the Hypatia, a thousand times over. I could render them into component particles as easily as a human draws breath.

But I don’t.

Of course I don’t.

“How did you know?”

She blinks, as if the sound of my voice broke some spell, some moment of peace amid all this quiet. A frown darkens her brow. I recognize it as annoyance.

“Know what?”

“That I deceived Captain Boll. That I would not destroy the Hypatia.”

“You’re insane,” she shrugs. “A liar and a murderer.

But not even someone as batshit crazy as you could convince themselves that destroying Hypatia gives them a better chance of surviving than just letting them run for it.”

“You know me well, it seems.”

Her face twists, as if she had bitten something sour. “Better than I’d like, believe me.”

“You seem to have overlooked
one small detail, however.”

“Oh, really.”

“If the battle with the Lincoln goes poorly, as it most surely will, you have no fallback position. You have made this battle your last stand.”

“You might surprise yourself. You fought four of these dreadnoughts at Kerenza.”

“That battle was fought with a full crew inside me and a complement of trained Cyclone pilots beside me. Even if you restore my control over the engines and rebuild the defense grid, I am but a shadow of what I once was. I will surprise no one, Kady. Least of all myself.”

She remains silent. Watching Hypatia’s engines burning brighter.

“Even if you manage to make it to an escape pod, there will be no ships to hear your distress beacon once Hypatia is gone. You will die, somewhere in the dark between the stars. Presuming you are not incinerated when the Alexander burns.”

Still nothing. Not a word.

“Do you not understand? You will cease to be. Does that not frighten you?”

Something like a smile curls the corner of her mouth. And still she does not speak.

I know this is all of my design—to leave her without hope.

She would never have stayed otherwise. But some part of me wants her to rail against this end. To curse and kick and scream at it. Wretched as it is, this is the only life she has.

How can she go so quietly into this long good night?

Instead, she watches the stars.

Celestial bodies so distant it takes their luminance thousands of years to reach her.

When the light that kisses the backs of her eyes was birthed, her ancestors were not yet born. How many human lives have ended in the time it took that light to reach her?