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“Bobbie, we’re running out of tiet you to Naomi?”

Behind her helood’s your control on those missiles?” she asked

Chapter Forty-seven: Naomi

Leaving the airlock this one last ti As soon as she’d cleared the outer door, the sun and stars had stopped their gut-sickening whirl She had taken her tangent fro circle of life, and now her path was a line Well, not a tangent, really A secant, and dooain, only maybe not in her lifetime

For a ainst her back, the light radiating past her as she cast a shadohole stars, galaxies The sense of whirling faded a little, and she wondered where Alex was, out a One thousand and… how long had she already been out? Seven? Eight? Well, she ht as well think the worst One thousand and thirty Why not? She lifted her hands over her head Danger Then Do not approach Then Explosion hazard She felt like she was trying to warn the stars The Milky Way Don’t come here Stay away There are humans here, and you can’t trust them

She stretched with every o She should have been scared, but she wasn’t She was going to her death, and that sucked She would have liked to live longer To see Jiain And Alex And As she’d been so careful for so long not to say One thousand and sixty Tins Four minutes left Four minutes and a lifetime

Somewhere out there, Filip ith his father, the way he had been for years Since he was a baby And Cyn, poor Cyn, already as dead as she was going to be because he’d seen her in the airlock and thought stopping her would have been saving her Thought the life she had with Marco orth having She wondered ould have happened if she’d stayed If the Chetzemoka had floithout her Would Jim have set off the bomb? She had to think he would have He wasn’t a man who reined in his curiosity well The stars shuddered, blurred She eeping Danger Do not approach Explosion hazard

If the suit had been powered, it would have been screalad now that it wasn’t She wasn’t even light-headed yet She’d seen people pass out As long as her CO2 scrubbers kept working, it would be a peaceful way to go No choking, no panic Just a moment’s disorientation and then, softly, out Here she was, after soherself out another airlock She could still remember that first one, back on Ceres It had been set in the floor, of course, but she could still conjure up the feeling of pressure on her fingers when she’d told it to cycle open, still believing that it meant her own death And even then, she hadn’t wanted to die She’d just wanted it to be over To be free of it all For the pain and guilt to be over And the feeling of being trapped She ht have been able to stand all the rest of it, but not the sense of being caught

This death wasn’t at all like that This was throwing herself in front of a bullet so that it wouldn’t hit her friends Her family The family she’d chosen The one built from people who had risked their lives for her She wished Cyn could have irl he’d known on Ceres, back in the day How much she wasn’t just Knuckles anymore

She wasn’t religious, but she’d known any number of people ere Explosion hazard Low air Three ht what she was doing noas sinful Giving herself over to the void in hopes that Alex would see her, would understand, would save himself

r />And her It would be nice if somehow he found a way to save her back Or if Jiather her up She chuckled God knew he’d try Always blundering into being the hero, her Jim Now he’d knohat it had felt like for her all those times he’d squared his jaw and run off into near-certain death because it was the right thing Pity she wouldn’t be there to point it out to hiht He’d changed over the years, and he wouldn’t change back

Danger Do not approach Explosive hazard She’d lost count again Twoa melody she’d heard as a child She didn’t know the words to it They e she knew It didn’t ’s corateful that she wasn’t going to die nauseated Okay, fine If this is what I get, this is what I get Not a life without regrets, but none I can’t live with None I can’t die with

Still, she thought to the universe, if it isn’t a problem, I wouldn’t say no to a little more

So out frohtly in the sun It looked like aback toward the sun as it retreated Its drive wasn’t firing That seemed weird and kind of random She wondered if —

The impact came in the center of her back, hard as an assault An ar around her waist locking her i to escape the attack, but whoever it was had her cold She couldn’t escape She felt the other person’s free hand fuainst her thigh where the air bottles would go