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“Pretty fragging good, right?”

“Maybe the best I’ve ever seen,” I admit

She winks “I won’t tell March”

We’ve burned out the stabilizers, but otherwise, we did reotten past the vanguard of the Morgut fleet I i to interpret the new signal and failing They’ll die there, no matter hoerful they are or how indestructible their dreadnaughts

“Does the comm still work?”

“It should”

I set it to Tarn’s personal code and bounce a lomerate ships jump They won’t be able to interpret the new beacon frequency without instruction Give coordinates for a centralhaul Doesn’tlost I’ll explain everything fully when I see you”

Not content with toppling the closest thing we had to a stable government, I’ve now crippled interstellar travel But it was for a good cause I’, no matter what they do to me later If it means prison tih call, and I was there

The doors are ja and don’t respond to the computerized controls, so Hit and I kick our way out Before I exit, I snag the small survival pack that’s included in ships like this one My limbs still feel weak as I pull reets us Oh, not frole burns, black s toward the sky Stone rubble constitutes all that’s left of the villa, just a bo no more than two meters anywhere Cracks web the foundation, charred black, and I can set

“They weren’t shooting at us,” I realize aloud

Hit shakes her head “I should have realized Those weren’t ship-to-ship weaponsthough if we’d been hit, they would’ve vaporized us just the same”

As we rocketed toward the ground, the bo fired at our stern had been photon round The wrongness hits me then—because we left, we lived Survival feels like cowardice

I can’t see the point in destroying such a beautiful, defenseless place, but I’ut Maybe this devastation serves their master plan, or it’s simple retaliation for our defiance Millions of innocent civilians will die on Venice Minor, innocuously enjoying their vacations; they ht’ve saved for the trip their whole lives, as such consummate luxury doesn’t come cheap

The snizable only froistration nuar in bits no bigger than the span ofon repairs My heart feels like lead in my chest Beside me, Hit curls her hands into fists

“We should look for survivors,” I say at last

We ready our weapons in case the Morgut sent a ground team—yet ould they? They can continue the blitz from above The missiles aren’t toxic, so the natural beauty will rebound in time—and by then, they will have claimed the lush, tropical paradise, a replace world Once they establish a foothold on Venice Minor, fighting theht breed fast enough to corimspace, and then we’ll be back where we started—with no solution in sight

Still, I power up ed and ready in case we run into trouble Silently, Hit does the saraveyard with the scent of smoke and scorched metal in our nostrils, co difficult There’s no telling what ht be in the air, but I don’t have any air scrubbers handy The little ship we departed in offered no special equipround

“Any movement?”

Grih the wreckage It looks as if we’ve lost all our ships How ns that anybody survived the attack As far as I know, ency bunker Nobody would reckon that a necessity on Venice Minor

My tih They’ll find some way to blame you for this, a cynical little voice says