Chapter 18: THE ATTACK — PART 2
The door burst open and Lieutenant Lopez appeared, flanked by two marines in full combat armor.
"On your feet. We're moving."
Nobody argued. We followed her into the corridor, which had transformed from military precision into organized chaos. Wounded sailors being carried toward medical bays. Damage control teams rushing toward hull breaches. The smell of smoke and ozone and something that might have been blood.
Lopez led us at a run, her marines covering our flanks. "We're evacuating you to the Tachi—a corvette in the secondary hangar. She's fast enough to outrun the attackers if we can get you aboard before they cut off the route."
"What about the Donnager?" Holden demanded.
"The Donnager will do her duty." Lopez's voice was hard, professional, the voice of someone who'd already accepted what was coming. "Our priority is getting you and your evidence to safety. Whatever happens here, the system needs to know the truth about the Canterbury."
We ran through corridors that grew increasingly battle-scarred. Blast marks on the walls. Debris from damaged systems. Bodies—some Martian, some in unfamiliar armor—lying where they'd fallen.
The first boarders hit us at a junction three decks from the hangar.
They emerged from a side corridor without warning—four figures in matte-black combat armor, moving with the coordinated precision of professionals who'd done this a hundred times before. No insignia. No identification. Just weapons up and firing.
Lopez took the first burst. She went down hard, her body armor absorbing some of the impact but not enough. One of the marines stepped forward to cover her—and took a round to the faceplate that ended him instantly.
The second marine returned fire, driving the boarders back, buying us a moment.
I grabbed the fallen marine's sidearm before I consciously decided to act. Standard military pistol, familiar weight, familiar balance. My body moved into position—covering the corner, weapon up, waiting for the shot.
Two boarders pushed forward. I fired three times.
Three hits. Center mass on the first, throat on the second, and a follow-up to the third who'd exposed himself trying to flank.
The corridor went quiet except for the distant sounds of battle.
Amos looked at me. His expression held recognition—one predator acknowledging another. He'd known I was dangerous. Now he knew how dangerous.
"Nice shooting," he said.
"Lucky shots."
"Bullshit." But he didn't push. Just nodded toward the fallen marine. "Grab his spare magazine. We're not done yet."
I retrieved the ammunition. Checked Lopez—she was alive but badly hurt, bleeding from wounds the armor hadn't stopped. The remaining marine was trying to help her stand.
"Leave me." Lopez's voice was weak but determined. "Get them to the Tachi. That's an order."
"Ma'am—"
"That's an order." She locked eyes with me. "You. Whatever you are. Get them off this ship."
I held her gaze for a moment. Saw the question there—the same suspicion she'd had during the interrogation, now confirmed in the worst possible way. She didn't understand what I was. But she understood that I might be able to do what needed doing.
"I will."
She nodded once. Then her eyes closed, and the remaining marine started dragging her toward a side passage that led to the medical bay.
We kept moving.
The hangar was two corridors away when we ran into the second group.
These were different—not the ambush teams we'd encountered before, but a full assault squad clearing the ship section by section. Eight of them, heavily armed, operating with textbook military precision.
We didn't have time for a standup fight.
"Side passage." I pointed toward a maintenance corridor that ran parallel to the main route. "It's tight but it connects to the hangar's secondary access."
"How do you know that?" Naomi demanded.
"I studied the ship's layout during the interrogation wait. Call it a hobby."
She didn't believe me. I didn't care. We were out of time.
We squeezed into the maintenance corridor—tight quarters designed for technicians, not combat. I took point, Amos covering rear. The sounds of the assault squad grew distant as we pushed deeper into the ship's infrastructure.
The secondary hangar access was exactly where I remembered it. The door was sealed—emergency lockdown—but the override panel was accessible.
"Naomi. Can you get this open?"
She moved forward, fingers flying across the panel. "Standard military encryption. Give me thirty seconds."
Twenty-eight seconds of those thirty were the longest of my life. I could hear boots in the main corridor, voices coordinating search patterns, the systematic sweep of professionals hunting for their targets.
The door clicked. Slid open.
The hangar stretched before us—smaller than the main bay, but large enough to hold a half-dozen corvettes. Most of the berths were empty. One ship remained—sleek, deadly, her lines speaking of speed and firepower.
The Tachi.
"Go," I said. "Get aboard. Alex, you're flying."
"On it." Alex sprinted toward the ship, years of military training kicking in despite the civilian exterior. The Tachi's boarding ramp lowered as he approached—someone on the bridge had been watching for survivors.
The others followed. Holden helping Shed, who was barely functional but moving. Naomi running with the particular efficiency of someone who'd survived worse than this.
Amos stayed beside me, covering the entrance.
"You should go," I said.
"Not leaving you here."
"Someone needs to make sure they get off safely."
"Someone also needs to watch your back." His eyes never left the corridor. "We're doing this together or not at all."
I didn't have time to argue. Movement in the corridor—shadows of approaching boarders.
"Get ready."
They came around the corner firing. I dropped the first two before they could acquire targets. Amos handled the third, his borrowed weapon barking twice. The fourth retreated, calling for backup.
"Time to go."
We ran.
The Tachi's boarding ramp was still extended, Holden waving frantically from the airlock. I pushed Amos ahead of me, covered the final approach, then threw myself through the closing door as rounds sparked off the hull behind us.
The ramp sealed. The airlock pressurized.
"Alex!" I shouted toward the bridge. "Get us out of here!"
"Already moving!"
The deck lurched as the Tachi's engines roared to life. I felt the ship pull free from her docking clamps, felt the acceleration pressing me against the airlock wall. Through a viewport, I watched the Donnager's hangar recede—and watched the boarders arrive too late, their shots splashing harmlessly against the corvette's armored hull.
We were clear.
For the moment.
The bridge was cramped but functional—designed for a crew of twelve, currently occupied by six traumatized survivors and one very determined pilot.
Alex's hands moved across the controls with the precision of someone who'd trained for this his entire life. The Tachi responded like a thoroughbred, her engines pushing us away from the dying Donnager at acceleration that pressed everyone into their crash couches.
"Multiple contacts on approach," Naomi reported from the sensor station. She'd slid into the role naturally, her engineering background translating to combat systems. "The enemy ships are engaging the Donnager. They're not pursuing us—yet."
"They will once they finish her." Holden's voice was hollow. "We need to get as far away as possible before that happens."
"Working on it." Alex pushed the engines harder. "This ship's got legs. We'll outrun anything short of a torpedo."
I found a seat and strapped in, my mind racing through contingencies. The Tachi—the Rocinante, eventually—was a legitimate Martian warship. Fast, well-armed, capable of independent operations. In the original timeline, the survivors had claimed her through necessity and kept her through loyalty.
That timeline was intact. Different in details—I was here, Lopez was probably dead, the path had wound differently—but the broad strokes remained the same.
We'd survived the Donnager.
Now we had to survive everything that came after.
The Donnager died beautifully.
We watched on the Tachi's displays as the flagship of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy reached the end of her existence. She'd fought hard—three of the stealth ships were debris, victims of her railguns and torpedo batteries—but the enemy had numbers and surprise and the terrible advantage of anonymity.
Her final act was self-destruction. Rather than let her secrets fall into enemy hands, the Donnager's crew triggered the reactor overload that turned a thousand meters of warship into expanding plasma.
Two thousand, four hundred, and seventy-three souls.
Captain Yao, who'd greeted us with suspicion and kept us with duty. Lieutenant Lopez, who'd suspected something wrong with me and ordered me to save the others anyway. Marines who'd fought and bled and died defending strangers they had no reason to trust.
All of them gone.
"Madre de Dios," Alex whispered.
Nobody else spoke. There were no words adequate to what we'd witnessed.
I sat in my crash couch and counted the dead. Added them to the fifty from the Canterbury. Added the seven from the Scopuli. The numbers were growing, and we were only at the beginning.
Shed.
I hadn't forgotten him. Couldn't forget him. But in the chaos of escape, in the desperate sprint through corridors and the firefight in the hangar and the rush to reach the ship, I hadn't seen exactly when it happened.
A boarder had breached from a side corridor. The shot had been meant for Holden—I'd seen the weapon tracking, had started to move to intercept—but Shed had been closer. Had stepped into the line of fire without meaning to.
Head wound. Instant.
I'd caught his body before it hit the deck. Had held him for ten seconds—ten seconds I didn't have, ten seconds that could have gotten us all killed—before passing him to a marine and keeping moving.
Grief later. Survival now.
But now was later, and the grief was waiting.
Shed Garvey. Young. Nervous. Eager. A medic who'd wanted to help people and had died trying to help us.
I'd known it was coming. The show had killed him in almost exactly the same way. But knowing hadn't prepared me for the reality—the weight of his body, the sudden absence of someone I'd been responsible for protecting.
Some things I couldn't change. Some deaths were fixed points, locked into the timeline by forces I didn't understand.
That didn't make them easier to bear.
The Tachi pushed deeper into space, leaving the Donnager's grave behind. The enemy ships didn't pursue—they'd gotten what they came for, silenced the investigation before it could reach conclusions, eliminated thousands of witnesses along with all the evidence they might have collected.
Or so they thought.
We were still alive. We still had the data from the Canterbury and the Scopuli. We still had the story of what we'd witnessed, the testimony that could expose the conspiracy if we could find someone to listen.
And we had a ship—a fully armed Martian corvette, liberated in the chaos of battle, technically the property of a navy that would probably consider us thieves if we ever returned.
"Where do we go?" Alex asked, his voice rough from stress and smoke.
"Tycho Station." Holden's answer came without hesitation. "Fred Johnson. If anyone can help us make sense of this, it's him."
Tycho. Fred Johnson. The OPA leader who'd become an ally, a resource, eventually almost a friend.
The timeline was still intact. Different at the edges, but intact at the core.
I unstrapped from my crash couch and moved toward the bridge, where I could see the stars spreading out before us. Somewhere out there, the protomolecule was waiting. Eros was waiting. The horrors that would reshape humanity were waiting.
But first, we had to survive the next few days. Had to reach safety. Had to find allies who could help us understand what we were fighting.
"Let's go," I said.
Alex nodded and set the course.
The Tachi—our Tachi now, whether we'd meant to steal her or not—accelerated toward Tycho Station and whatever came next
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