Chapter 19: THE TACHI
The hangar bay doors blew open behind us.
Alex was already in the pilot's seat, his hands moving across controls he'd never touched but somehow knew intimately. Twenty years in the MCRN meant he'd trained on ships like this, dreamed about them, probably fantasized about flying one without the weight of military bureaucracy telling him where to go.
"Everyone strap in!" His voice had lost its usual warmth, replaced by the clipped precision of a combat pilot. "This is gonna be rough."
I sealed the airlock as the first boarders appeared in the hangar—black armor, no insignia, the same faceless killers who'd torn through the Donnager's marines like they were training dummies. One of them raised a weapon toward the Tachi's hull.
The ship lurched. Alex had initiated launch sequence without waiting for clearance, because there was no one left to give clearance. The magnetic clamps released, and we dropped out of the hangar bay into the chaos of space combat.
Through the viewport, the Donnager filled the sky—massive, wounded, dying. Fires bloomed along her hull where boarding torpedoes had punched through. The PDC batteries were still firing, but slower now, less coordinated. The great ship was bleeding out.
"MCRN Donnager, this is the Tachi," Alex transmitted. "We are away with survivors. Repeat, we are away."
Static. Then Captain Yao's voice, calm despite everything: "Acknowledged, Tachi. Get clear. We won't let them take her."
"Captain—"
"That's an order, pilot. Yao out."
The comm went dead.
Holden was staring at the tactical display, watching the swarm of enemy contacts surrounding the Donnager. Six ships—no, five now. The battleship's railgun had claimed one in its death throes. But five was still too many, and the Donnager wasn't fighting to win anymore.
She was fighting to die on her own terms.
"They're overloading the reactor," Naomi said quietly. She'd found the engineering station, was reading data that shouldn't have been available to us. "Deliberate cascade. They're going to—"
The Donnager became a sun.
For a fraction of a second, the great battleship existed in a state between matter and energy, her reactor's fury consuming everything within a thousand kilometers. The boarding ships—three of them, still attached to her hull—vanished in the same instant. The others scattered, their stealth systems flickering as they tried to escape the expanding sphere of destruction.
Alex whispered something in Martian. A prayer, maybe. Or a farewell.
"Two thousand four hundred seventy-three souls," Naomi said. Her voice was hollow. "That's the Donnager's standard complement."
I thought about Lopez, who'd interrogated me with suspicion and let me go with doubt. About the marines who'd died buying us time to reach the hangar. About Captain Yao, who'd chosen annihilation over surrender.
Martian honor. I'd read about it, watched it portrayed on screens in another life. But reading and watching weren't the same as seeing a ship die rather than be taken.
"They're not pursuing," Amos reported from the weapons station. He'd found it instinctively, the same way Alex had found the pilot's seat. "Looks like they're regrouping. Probably trying to figure out what the hell just happened to half their fleet."
"It won't last," I said. "They'll realize we escaped. They'll come looking."
"Then we don't give them anything to find." Alex's hands were already adjusting course. "Running silent. Minimal emissions. We disappear into the black and figure out our next move."
The Tachi—our ship now, stolen or liberated depending on how you wanted to frame it—accelerated away from the debris field that had been the MCRN's flagship.
There was a station Shed would have taken.
Medical bay access, close to the main corridor, positioned where a medic could reach any part of the small ship quickly. I saw Holden looking at it—the empty crash couch, the unused harness, the particular absence that no one would fill.
Neither of us said anything. There wasn't anything to say.
Shed had frozen at the wrong moment, in the wrong place, and now he was dead. The universe didn't care about intentions or potential or the fact that he'd been scared but still trying. It just kept moving, indifferent to the holes it left behind.
"We need to talk about what happens next," Holden said finally. His voice was steady, but I could see the effort it cost him. "We're in a stolen Martian warship. The Donnager's gone. The Canterbury's gone. Everyone who could verify our story is dead."
"Not everyone." Naomi pulled up a display. "We have the Tachi's flight recorder. Combat data, communications logs, everything that happened from the moment we launched. That's evidence."
"Evidence of what? That someone attacked the Donnager with ships that don't officially exist?" Holden ran a hand through his hair. "Who do we even give that to? Mars will think we stole their ship and ran. Earth will think we're OPA terrorists. The Belt..."
"The Belt might listen," I said.
Everyone looked at me.
"Fred Johnson. Tycho Station. He's OPA, but he's also pragmatic. He has resources, connections, and a vested interest in anything that destabilizes the Inner planets' control." I'd been thinking about this since we launched—where to go, who to trust, how to stay alive long enough to matter. "More importantly, he has the infrastructure to analyze what we have and get it to people who can act on it."
"Fred Johnson is a terrorist," Holden said.
"Fred Johnson is a survivor. So are we." I met his eyes. "Right now, that's the most important thing we have in common."
Holden was quiet for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. "Okay. Tycho. But we're not giving him the ship."
"Agreed."
"And we're not broadcasting anything until we understand what we're dealing with. No more messages that start wars."
I almost smiled. He was learning. "Also agreed."
Amos had been silent through the exchange, but now he spoke up. "So what are we dealing with? Someone just killed a Martian battleship to get at... what? Us? That seems like a lot of effort for five people."
"Not us," Naomi said. "The evidence. Whatever we saw on the Scopuli, whatever the Canterbury found before it was destroyed—that's what they're protecting."
"Protomolecule," I said.
The word hung in the air. Everyone stared at me.
"Something I saw in the Scopuli's encrypted files," I continued, the lie coming smoothly. "A project name, maybe. Protomolecule. Whatever it is, it's worth killing thousands of people to keep secret."
Naomi's eyes narrowed slightly—she was tracking my explanations, noting the convenient discoveries, building a picture she didn't share. But she didn't challenge me. Not yet.
"Then that's what we investigate," Holden said. "We find out what protomolecule means, who's behind it, and we make sure the whole system knows."
"One step at a time, Captain." The title came naturally now. He'd earned it, even if none of us had chosen this crew or this ship. "First we survive. Then we investigate. Then we decide what to do with what we find."
Holden nodded. "First we survive."
The Tachi accelerated into the darkness, carrying five survivors toward an uncertain future.
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