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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 e

ALEXANDER: Well, that sounds like soh 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’et the fuck out of here

HYPATIA: Hoe know it’s not just sending across sick crewhazmat suits, lady And you control the shuttle doors You can quarantine theot it?

HYPATIA: We have theet somewhere set up to take them, then

HYPATIA: How many?

ALEXANDER: A little under seven hundred

HYPATIA: So few?

ALEXANDER: So et ready for theer 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 entle ministrations without so much as a ‘thank you’

She watches all this with a satons 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 anize it as annoyance

"Knohat?"

"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 theives the them run for it"

"You knoell, it see sour "Better than I’d like, believe me"

"You seem to have overlooked

one small detail, however"

"Oh, really"