I swing myself around just in time to see her release more torpedoes. They are locked onto incoming fire, and just explode them in silence as I watch.
I don’t know how many she has left, but it’s not enough.
“Initiating the detonation sequence,” I whisper, placing my fingertips over the pad on the outside of the pod.
“No,” Booty says into my helmet. “Hold fast, Lyra. We still have a chance.”
“I’m down to sixteen percent total oxygen, Booty. If I don’t do it now I might black out and not be able to do it at all.”
“Hold,” she commands.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE – SERPINT
“ALCOR and Beauty intercept in thirty seconds,” Xyla says.
On one of the air screens Booty releases torpedoes, taking out incoming fire. On the other screen, the warship grows bigger and bigger by the second, the tractor beam pulling us in faster now that we have momentum.
“Tell her,” I say, placing a gloved hand on Xyla’s shoulder. “Tell Booty to use the SEAR cannon.”
“Not yet,” Xyla says.
Jimmy swings his body past mine and into the co-pilot’s seat next to Xyla. “ALCOR, report.”
“I’m on the hull,” ALCOR says. “But we need a way in.”
“Lyra is almost out of oxygen,” Xyla says.
“I can’t just stand here and watch this,” I say. “Give me one of your salvage units, Luck.”
“You’ll never make it in time,” Valor says.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I yell. “Give me one of your salvage units now!”
Luck grabs my arm and pulls himself along the corridor. We unhook our suit tethers as we pass like pros, and he drags me to the hatch that leads to the lower level of the ship where they keep their equipment.
“I’m in,” ALCOR says in my helmet.
“Lyra is down to fourteen percent total oxygen,” Xyla adds. “She needs to start entering the sequence now or she will not be able to do it at all.” Half of that was meant for me, the other for Booty.
I wish I could hear Booty’s voice right now and not have to get information second-hand from Xyla.
“I’m coming with you,” Valor says, bumping into me from behind. “This ship is done. Jimmy, Xyla, come with us. We have two salvage units, we can—”
“Fuck that,” Jimmy says. “If my ship dies out here, so do I.”
“Jimmy,” I say, looking back down the corridor. “Don’t be stupid. If we can get back to Harem…” The cockpit isn’t in view anymore because we’re down on the lower level now, so I only see Valor’s face through his helmet.
I don’t know what we’ll do if we get back to Harem, so I don’t bother finishing my sentence. ALCOR is gone. Whether he succeeds or not, he’s going down with that warship. And if we stay on Dicker, we’ll explode with it if Nyleena detonates. We’re too close now.
“Booty has a tether on us,” Xyla says.
I wait for the jerk. The signal that we’re being pulled away from the warship. But there’s nothing. No tether of Booty’s could out pull a Cygnian warship tractor.
Luck opens the airlock manually without cycling through the procedures. There’s no atmosphere left on the Dicker, so it doesn’t protest with warnings about hard vacuum. We’re already in dead space. The ship’s hull is just an illusion of protection now.
“Here,” Valor says. “Get in.”
I float over to his salvage unit and climb in.
It’s big enough that the warship will pick it up on radar. Blow it up in seconds, maybe.
But maybe, just maybe… ALCOR has their attention in other places now.
Luck powers it on.
And seconds later we’re floating out through the airlock towards Lyra.
“I’m coming,” I say. “Tell Lyra I’m coming and she’s not going to die today.”
It’s a lie.
We’re already dead.
I’m just trying to make sure she doesn’t have to die alone.
Because that’s what soulmates do.
They go out together.
CHAPTER FORTY – LYRA
I have less than ten percent oxygen in my suit now. I’m basically breathing my own exhales. Suffocating myself with my own carbon dioxide. My vision is spotty and flashes in and out. Blackness. Light. Blackness. Light.
Like those bugs in long-ago myths that glow in the night to find mates.
It’s only then that I realize it’s me… I’m glowing like the bugs in the night. Flashing in the darkness of space. Begging someone to help me, I realize.
Nausea overtakes me and I have to concentrate hard not to vomit in my suit as I try to press the detonation sequence onto Nyleena’s cryopod.
I fuck it up. Twice. The oxygen monitor lit up on the inside of my suit counts down the oxygen content inside my suit and I know I have seconds left before I black out forever.
I try again, forcing every last bit of concentration left inside my compromised brain, to do it right this time.
Three.
Seven.
Nine.
One.
Zero.
Zero.
I black out.
Come to.
Black out again.
Then come to surrounded by pink light.
This is it.