At Angel’s reminder, Juliet was struck by a wave of guilt and whirled away from Montclair’s corpse. What had the madman been trying to achieve? Had he been so sure of himself that he thought he could toy with her? Why not line this corridor with shape charges? Why not set up a turret outside the door or pack in a hundred security personnel? As she slid to her knees beside the still-sputtering Kline, she pushed the questions aside; either she’d figure it out someday, or she’d have to assume Montclair had simply been insane.

“Can you talk?” she asked, pressing her palm, already sticky with blood, atop his, noting the bleeding had slowed. She refused to see that as a good sign, not yet. For all she knew, he was about out of blood.

Kline’s eyes fluttered as he inhaled a thready breath, then wheezed, “F-fine. React—" He broke off in a sputtering cough, and Juliet saw fresh speckles of blood dot his lips before he wiped his sleeve over it.

She nodded, pressing a palm to his forehead, her helplessness making her do stupid things—was she checking for a fever? “I know, the reactor. Hold on, Kline. Let your nanites work. I’ll be back soon.” She took a couple of seconds to drag him over to the wall, gently tugging him up into a sitting position.

As she drew her sword again and stepped toward the sealed blast doors, Angel said, “Ruby messaged me. It seems the bullet went into his lung. It sounds terrible, and it would be, but Kline has high-end nanites. They’re working to isolate the damaged tissue and foreign body, sealing off vessels and deadening nerves. Hopefully, he’ll stop coughing soon.” Juliet nodded, feeling oddly conflicted about her relief. She liked Kline but hated what he represented, what he’d spent his life working for.

She shoved the thought aside as she lifted her blade and, almost without thinking or aiming, chopped it down, slicing it through the tiny gap, undoing Montclair’s welding. The blade split the plasteel weld like tissue paper, and some hidden safety mechanism in the doors activated, retracting them into their housings. The movement startled Juliet. “Shit!” She dove for the corner, tucking in against the bulkhead near the door’s control panel. As they opened to their full three-meter width, she peered around the corner, taking in as much of the reactor room as she could.

Her vision flickered while Angel scanned the cavernous room, using the hard surfaces to reflect her terahertz waves. She reported her findings: “There are three fusion reactors. I also see the gravity generator, much like the one we found on the gas harvesting vessel near Jupiter. Six combat synths are arrayed in two rows of three standing in the center of the main walkway. I believe I see a route you can use to flank the synths and reduce their firearms’ effectiveness—look to your AUI.”

Juliet watched as a detailed, top-down map of the reactor bay appeared on her AUI. Angel labeled the three fusion generators, each walled-off with containment domes, and all the other boxy equipment cabinets. Most important were the six red Xs at the center, about five meters from the door. Juliet examined the yellow dotted line—Angel’s suggested flanking maneuver—and nodded. “I can do that.” Before she could move, though, twelve blue circles appeared on the far end of the room between the two rear reactors. “What’s that?”

“I believe the people huddled back there are the engineering staff.” Angel paused a second, then added, “Juliet, your bio batts are down to seventeen percent. I can probably maintain your boost for about nine seconds unless you rest, which, as you know, we don’t have time for.”

Juliet took a heartbeat to curse Montclair and the fight she’d let herself get dragged into. “Let’s make this happen fast, then.” She sheathed her sword and, while she watched the hallway and the door, rapidly replaced the spent cartridges in her Texan, just in case things went sideways. As she slapped the cylinder shut and holstered the gun, her eyes fell on the portable welding pack Montclair had used. She narrowed her eyes, then, nodding to herself, picked it up.

Before she could think of another reason to delay, she sprang into motion, darting through the door, fully boosted. She took two wide strides and heard the roar of SMGs and shotguns firing. Bullets smashed into plasteel as she slid behind an engineering console with a broad plasteel base. The gunfire ceased immediately, and Juliet dove for the next cover, bringing herself within three meters of the synth squadron. “Ready?” she asked needlessly. At Angel’s mental nod, she tossed the welding pack toward the group of synths and drew her Texan, putting a fat polymer slug through the compressed acetylene canister.

The gas erupted from the massive hole, rapidly expanding into the air, mixing into a white mist that exploded like a bomb as the synths opened fire on her position. Juliet had already ducked back down, and Angel flawlessly managed her implants, dampening the noise and the flash. As soon as the wave of hot air and fire washed over her position, she stood, drew her monoblade, and walked into the billowing cloud of black smoke.

In a matter of seconds, she’d easily dispatched the scattered, mostly stunned synths, carving them to pieces. Meanwhile, a shower of wet foam erupted from recessed nozzles and soaked the plasteel in her vicinity. Rather than make the floor slippery, it was instantly tacky.

Angel announced, “I only used three percent of your remaining bio-batt capacity for that maneuver! Great idea with the welding pack!”

Juliet nodded, looked around the room, and then back into the hallway where she’d left Kline. She shook her hands, trying to get the sticky fire suppressant off. “Why aren’t we getting swarmed with corpo-sec?”

“Athena is helping me to sow chaos. We’re using bulkhead doors and automated fire suppression systems to mislead and delay responders.”

“You’re doing that while managing my synapses and everything?”

“It’s trivial with this processor!”

Juliet smiled, shaking her head, trying to stay focused, but her body was twitching—she’d been running on adrenaline too much, and her mind felt scattered. She stood on the blasted plasteel among the dismembered, leaking synths and stared at the engineering staff. “How do I blow this thing?” she subvocalized.

“Normally, it wouldn’t be easy. These fusion reactors are designed not to blow up. We can do it, though, with a little help. Move over there,” Angel highlighted a large control panel halfway from the doors to the rear reactor shrouds, “and plug your data jack into the port.”

Juliet nodded and jogged over to the panel, her eyes scanning the myriad readouts and built-in data terminals. She pulled her data jack out and plugged it in, watching the displays as Angel worked through them. One of the engineers stood, a middle-aged, portly fellow. Juliet idly noted that his bodysuit wasn’t doing him any favors as he cleared his throat and called out, his voice echoing amid the hum of the nearby reactors, “What are you doing? Listen, if you’re a terrorist—"

“Get out!” Juliet shouted. “I’m blowing this ship. Run for the shuttles or escape pods or whatever, and tell everyone you see to evacuate!”

The engineers and technicians broke into panicked murmurs, some bolting immediately for the doors, running past Juliet as she glared, fingers resting on the Texan’s grip. Angel said, “This reactor room is no longer air-gapped. Using your wireless antenna, I’ve let Athena through. I’m sure I could have overridden the safety protocols, given time, but she’s faster.”

Juliet nodded, watching the engineers as they fled, ensuring none remained to interfere. Angel narrated their progress as she and Athena worked: “Safety interlocks have been bypassed—flooding reactor A with excess deuterium and tritium. Cooling systems are offline. You should close those valves in case someone comes to re-engage the refrigerant from here. Do it now—you can unplug the cable; Athena has released some daemons to finish the work.”

Angel highlighted the valves for her, and Juliet pulled her cable out, jogging over to them. She slowly turned the wheels until they were shut, then cranked them extra hard with her cybernetic arm for good measure. Finally, just to be certain, she drew her monoblade and sliced the valve wheels off. They fell to the plasteel with clangs of finality.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Why don’t I hear anything?”

“This reactor is modern, and Athena is still working on many safety mechanisms. More than that, it has built up significant thermal inertia. It’ll take a little time for the excess fuel and lack of external cooling to have an effect. Athena estimates you have twenty-nine minutes to distance yourself from this ship.”

As if her query had triggered them, deafening klaxons began to echo through the reactor room. A calm, almost soothing, feminine voice announced, through the many hidden PA panels, “Attention all personnel: A critical malfunction has been detected in fusion reactor A. Immediate evacuation is required. Proceed to the nearest escape pods or shuttles.”

That was music to Juliet’s ears. Even if Apollyon completed whatever he was doing and managed to activate the warp drive, this ship was doomed. Whether it blew up here or at its destination only really mattered to her and the other people onboard. Juliet took comfort in thinking that, in the grander scheme of things, she’d already won, whether she survived or not.

That thought was sobering, and she wondered when her priorities had shifted. When she’d gone to Boulder, her goal had been to escape WBD for good. When had she decided that stopping them was more important than her own freedom, her own life? She jogged out of the reactor room toward Kline’s slumped form, wondering what she’d accomplished. If she destroyed this ship, was that going to stop WBD? Surely, a considerable percentage of the crew was going to escape. Did she think any execs she hadn’t already killed would stick around? Would Gentry?

Even if Gentry died on this ship, what about the rest of WBD? The people on this ship might represent their top scientists and research, but WBD had hundreds of thousands of employees. They had megastructures in seven different cities. What—

“Juliet,” Kline rasped, and she shook her head, pushing her doubts aside as she knelt beside him.

“You can talk?”

“I can breathe, but let’s be realistic: I’m not going anywhere. I’ve lost too much bl—” His words stopped, and he squinted his eyes, then shook his head. “No, Ruby. I mean it.” He refocused on Juliet. “Take Ruby. She doesn’t deserve to die here.”

Juliet groaned and reached out to grasp his blood-soaked suit jacket in both her fists, hauling him to his feet. She pressed him against the plasteel wall and growled, “I didn’t wake your ass up, help you to see how wrong your life has been, just to have you give up now ‘cause you’re a little woozy. Let’s move.” She threw his arm over her shoulders and hooked her cybernetic arm around him. Hauling upward as they went, she helped him hobble down the long, empty corridor. “Angel, where’s Harriet? Did she get off yet?”

“She’s in line near escape pod bank C.”

“In line? Didn’t I tell her to be waiting? Ready to go?”“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what she was doing; I’ve been keeping track of many variables. There are twenty pods in that bank. I can hold one for her—I’ll have the control panel display that it’s out of order.”

“How far from here?”

“347 meters.”

Kline, wheezing and grunting with each step, asked, “What’s going on?”

“Taking you to an escape pod with Harriet. Angel, can you keep security off us?”

“Yes. We’re in their comms. I have them storming the main aft cargo bay. There’s been a ‘sighting’ of you attempting to commandeer a cargo hauling platform.”

“What about Apollyon? He has to know the ship is doomed, right?”

“He seems to have withdrawn. We don’t see him anywhere in the network. Athena thinks he’s being moved.”

Juliet nodded; somehow, the news wasn’t surprising to her. Everything felt sloppy to her. Her escape, Chen’s lab, her run-in with Montclair, and now this—it wasn’t neat. She wasn’t tying WBD up in a bow, flushing them down the drain; thousands of people were escaping the vessel, even now. She’d already considered the countless employees and execs who were never invited to this ship. Did they even know that Gentry and Apollyon were taking off? What did they intend to do with the employee families living in their arcologies?

Juliet hated how she knew some of what WBD had been up to but not enough to have a picture of what was really going on. As she shuffled down the corridors with Kline, she said as much, “Angel, what was the point of all this? What was the point of these ships? Of gathering people here. Why would a corporation leave behind all of its assets, most of its employees, hell, all of its Sol-bits?”

“I’m downloading data wherever I find it. Athena is doing the same. I feel like we’ll be a lot closer to answering those questions after we escape this situation. Many crew are in the next areas, but they shouldn’t be aware of who you are. We’ve got eyes on every corpo-sec officer’s feed, and, with Apollyon gone, it’s been trivial to keep them moving away from you. Twenty-two minutes.” As she spoke, a red countdown appeared on Juliet’s AUI, and it helped to focus her mind.

When they reached a bank of lifts and crowds of panicked crew rushing to and fro, utterly ignoring her and Kline, Juliet said, “Don’t let him die, Ruby.” Kline’s face had gone waxy, a sheen of sweat coated his brow and cheeks, and his eyes had a glazed-over look, but his legs still moved as she pulled him into a lift. She pushed to the back corner and put Kline between herself and the half dozen crew who crowded around them. The lift surged, taking them up to the “C” deck, and when the doors opened, she pushed forward, “Excuse us.”

The people hardly spared her a glance; most were carrying armfuls of belongings, and many were wide-eyed with stress, fidgeting and looking at her with barely disguised impatience. She and Kline weren’t the only ones with stained clothing; Angel hadn’t been kidding about setting off fire suppressants and spreading panic. Not that it was necessary with the repeated warnings of an “impending catastrophic reactor event.” Her map said she was only 113 meters from Harriet, and her timer said she had eighteen minutes. Every few seconds, the deck shuddered, and after the tenth time, she asked, “What is that?”

“The pods are launching,” Angel replied.

“Makes sense. Thought maybe we were under attack.”

“No. Athena didn’t think it would be wise for the Cherry Blossom to engage. Too many factions around Mars are watching what’s happening to this vessel.”

Juliet swallowed and picked up the pace. She’d pushed her friends' involvement to the back of her mind, but the mention of the gunship had brought her near-panic back to the forefront. What had she accomplished? Were her friends ever going to be safe again? She supposed it depended on what kind of data Angel and Athena could pull from the ship’s servers.

Proving she could hear her thoughts much more clearly than she often let on, Angel said, “You’re destroying the heart of their ‘Angel’ research. You’re destroying Montclair’s work with your DNA. You’re dismantling the part of WBD’s corporation that wants any part of you.”

With those comforting words, Juliet rounded a corner and found a row of large bulkheads clearly labeled “ESCAPE VESSELS C1-C20.” Each bulkhead door was individually marked, and Juliet immediately saw Harriet sitting on the ground, her back pressed to the one labeled C1. A flashing red LED indicated a problem with the pod. Ten or twenty other crew rushed to and fro in a panic as they realized all the shuttles were already gone. Juliet dragged Kline over to Harriet. “Help me with your lazy boss, will you?”

“J-Juliet? You really came!” Harriet wiped her cheek and sniffed. Evidently, she’d been crying. “I couldn’t believe the message I got from Angel. I . . . I thought I was losing it or that someone was tricking me—that I’d been found out.” The bulkhead door hissed as it began to swing open, and the red LEDs turned green.

Juliet chuckled as Harriet took Kline’s other side and helped her drag him through the now-open door. “Happy to report that you haven’t lost your marbles yet.”

“Juliet, this escape pod has acceleration couches for forty-eight people. Everyone in this corridor can fit,” Angel announced.

“Come on.” Juliet continued through the small, open airlock into the wide circular pod. Two dozen gel-lined seats with three-point harnesses were arrayed around the outer wall, and a small lift in the center led up to another identical chamber. Juliet helped Kline collapse into one of the seats. “Harriet, stay with him. I promise I’ll be in touch. Or, if not me, one of my friends. After everything you did for me, we won’t leave you high and dry.”

“Wait!” she cried. “You’re not coming with us?”

“Not yet. I have to try to find—” Juliet was cut off as a woman shoulder-checked her, charging into the escape pod.

“There’s room! Come on!” the lady yelled through the door, refusing to make eye contact with Juliet as she glared.

Juliet sighed, stepped out of the doorway, and then turned back to Harriet. She took her shoulders and pressed her into the seat beside Kline. “I have to try to find Gentry,” she said, much more softly.

“She’ll be gone by now, don’t you think?” Harriet’s voice was pleading.

“Hang on.” Juliet squatted in front of Harriet’s seat and closed her eyes, opening her other perception. She tried to open her mind as much as possible, listening and looking as far as possible. She saw hundreds of beautiful, swirling mind-galaxies, and not a single one was static; they all moved rapidly—she could only guess they were trying to escape the ship. Seeing those glorious interwoven patterns of thoughts and dreams, Juliet hoped they’d make it. She kept looking. Juliet couldn’t be sure Gentry had a strange mind like Montclair and Chen, but if she could spot one of those odd, oblong minds with the darkened half—

“There,” she breathed softly. “I see one of the wrong-looking minds.” She pointed, hoping to mark the direction when she opened her eyes.

Angel guessed what she was doing: “That’s the forward end of the ship.”

Juliet opened her eyes. “I have to go, Harriet.” She looked around the escape pod and saw quite a few empty seats remaining. “Angel will launch this thing in a few minutes. Just stay in your seat, okay?”

“Okay, Juliet. Thank you for finding me. Thank you for keeping Kline alive.” Harriet nodded as she spoke, blinking away more tears. Juliet wondered if she’d really affected the poor woman so much or if she was just traumatized by the day’s events. After a second’s hesitation, Harriet leaped up and grabbed her in a hug. “Please don’t die.”

Juliet squeezed her back. “Same to you.” She pushed her back down into her seat and leaned over Kline, who was watching her with bleary eyes. “I’m not done with you, Kline. Don’t you dare die.”

He nodded and responded, his voice a hoarse whisper, “There are things I can tell you—”

“Hush. We’ll talk again soon. Stay with Harriet. I mean that! You two will need each other until we can reconnect. I don’t know why, but I feel like these ships are the tip of an iceberg—things are happening, and the system’s going to be a mess for a while.”

He nodded, and Juliet saw him struggle not to lose consciousness as his head tilted forward. Harriet took Kline’s hand. “I think these shuttles have some emergency supplies. I’m going to try to get him some fluids started.” She rubbed the back of Kline’s hand briskly. “Come on, boss. Don’t quit yet.”

Juliet glanced at her timer—twelve minutes. “I gotta go. Stay safe!” With that, she bolted out the door, noting the deserted hallway and flashing red lights.

“Juliet!” Angel finally voiced something that Juliet had felt her stewing over for the last few minutes. “Why don’t you just take the escape pod? We can catch up with Gentry or whatever you spotted another time. With help!”

“I have help, Angel!” Juliet laughed, sprinting down the hallway. “How are my bio-batts, by the way?”

“Recovering—twenty-nine percent.”

“Well, I’m not bailing now because my gut tells me there’s something here that I need to face. Maybe it’s Apollyon. Maybe it’s Gentry. Maybe it’s both. There has to be a reason one of those weird minds is still here.” As she ran, bulkhead doors flashed green and opened for her, and she knew it wasn’t just Angel watching her progress. “Tell Athena I said thanks, by the way. Tell her to keep my friends away from this ship.”

“She heard you.” Suddenly, a call window appeared on her AUI, and Athena’s golden-goddess face smiled at her.

“There’s much work to do, Juliet. I think you should get away from the ship. That countdown is just an estimate!”

Juliet nodded, her face grimly determined. “I have to see something, Athena. Just stay with me a little longer.” With that, she pumped her elbows and stretched out her long legs, racing toward the front end of the ship, watching as the meters on the map ticked down while the seconds on the countdown did as well. “What a rush,” she grunted, “almost better than speeding on Luna.”