Taz pressed the button on her radio transmitter. The
Cazadora’s sophisticated communication system had failed
early in the battle with a hit to their communications array.
“Up?”
“What have you got for me, Taz?”
“It’s desahuciado,” she said. “We’ve got to separate
engineering from the rest of the ship.”
A long pause. “We’ll be easy pickings without our main
engine.”
“Even easier if we blow ourselves up for them.”
Up growled through the crackling radio. “Finish the
evacuation, and that includes you and your team,
Lieutenant. Then seal it off. I’ll start the countdown.”
Up sat high up on a metal walkway in engineering,
nursing a bottle of hundred-year-old scotch. Far below
him, Lieutenant-Commander Davis was doing a final
check, making sure his section was in top shape for the
battle tomorrow. It was the night watch, and most of
engineering was dark, save for the greenish glow cast by
the warp crystal in the core. This was the heart of his ship.
It was Up’s favourite hiding place.
Tripp had given him the scotch, for his fifteen-year
anniversary as a Ranger – Tripp, who’d been killed by his
own Rangers, people he trusted. Friends. And for what? To
provoke the robots into retaliation, to send every ship in the
fleet to certain destruction, to ensure the end of the human
race altogether?
Up had faced death before. But it never felt as sure as
this. And he’d never felt so powerless to stop it.
“What would you do,” he’d asked Tripp once in a
drunken bar, feeling philosophical. “If you knew this was
your last night alive?”
Tripp hadn’t hesitated. “I’d run straight to Rosie,” he’d