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her.
    But she wasn’t interested in these brainless Neanderthals. They were only good for the kind of problem you could shoot at.
    Instead she used the microwave comm system in her head to hack into the shuttle’s AI.
    “It’s you!” said the Marine.
    She was in. Full telemetry, sensor feeds, flight vectors. Even with all her augmentations, straining her mind to encompass all the shuttle’s information simultaneously was painful. She didn’t need long, though, the situation was chillingly clear.
    “Mader zagh!” she said, with feeling.
    “What’s up?” asked Loobie.
    The words choked in Indiya’s throat. How could she tell her dear friend that they were all about to die?
    “Sitrep!”
    It was that annoying Marine again, barking an order at her. Congratulations for being the only one with an IQ in double figures. Afraid you will have to collect your prize in heaven.
    “Frakk you, purple girl. I need sitrep. Now!”
    “Shut up!” she screamed back. “It’s not something you can hit or shout at. Guess that makes our situation beyond your comprehension.”
    “You promised to talk with me. Remember?”
    Indiya looked up at the Marine. Was that her mystery guy? He made his visor go transparent, but he was too far away to see his face properly. Unlike them, she didn’t have ocular zoom.
    “Yes, I’m Marine Arun McEwan. I can’t solve this if I don’t know what’s going on.”
    She had to wait for bubbles of excitement to finish coursing through her before replying. “ Bonaventure has exploded,” she broadcast. “Total destruction. There’s a debris wavefront hurtling our way.”
    “How long before the shockwave hits?” asked McEwan.
    “Twenty-four seconds.”
    “What? You tell me this now!”
    Ever since meeting him, she’d dreamed of adventure, of dangers shared alongside this deadly warrior with a human heart. For a moment she’d thought her fantasies were crossing into real life, that this was McEwan’s chance to rescue her. But as the seconds counted down, the hope she’d invested in this Marine drained away, leaving nothing but bitterness. McEwan said nothing, did nothing. He simply hung in silence, waiting for the end along with all the other dormant warriors.
     Finfth asked, thinking his words.
    “Nothing,” Indiya snarled back through clenched teeth. Her mind could barely form words now. The engines were thrusting so hard that the harness was threatening to rip her arms off; the blood was draining from her head, her heart unable to pump that far.
    The pilot’s efforts were hopeless. Despite all this frantic expenditure of delta-vee, all the engines could do now was slow their velocity toward the onrushing wavefront.
    The world was fading away from her oxygen-deprived mind. Perhaps she would black out before the end. That would be for the best.
    Then her head exploded with light. She was dizzy, the universe spinning. But not spinning away… the world was hurtling back into view.
    The shuttle had spun around again and shut off the engines. Now she was weightless and the ship’s bow was facing the oncoming debris head on.
    “The pilot wanted to slow us down,” said McEwan, “but that wasn’t going to be enough.”
    Indiya gasped when the Marines launched away from the bulkhead, aiming at Indiya and the specials. God, they were fast! She put her hands protectively in front of her face, feeling like a fly about to be swatted.
    “I persuaded her of a better plan,” said McEwan. Indiya dropped her hands, and saw that he was releasing her from the harness. “The bow has some shielding.”
    “Not nearly enough,” she protested as he manhandled her through the cargo bay, moving so fast she couldn’t track what he was doing.
    “We’ll soon see,” he said.
    Then there was a scream of wind and she gasped as her respirator switched to suit air. They’d opened the cargo bay doors to space! She ought to be sucked out into the void, but the Marines seemed immune to the