THE IMMENSE POWER COURSING behind us, an enormous wave pushing up and up, fills my consciousness to the exclusion of all else. The rocket shakes uncontrollably, as if in the jaws of some gigantic beast. I clasp my arms around Mila’s body, her back to my chest, and hold tight. The acceleration presses us to the bulkhead like the hand of an angry god, determined we should not leave this world. My stomach convulses.

The initial thrust of the laser stops abruptly, and we’re thrown forward. I curl up in a ball and shield Mila, but we clang against the hull, her head taking a hard knock. She goes limp, and then we’re immediately slammed back against the rear bulkhead as secondary boosters kick in.

With my eyes screwed shut, I cling to Mila and wait. It feels like forever, but eventually the boosters cease. Gradually we lift away from the bulkhead and float in the dark. The fluids in my stomach rise into my gullet, burning the soft tissues of my throat. My legs kick outward, but I go nowhere.

“Mila?” I spin her around and hold her shoulders.

She doesn’t respond, though she appears to be breathing.

“And now, what do I do?” Perhaps I’m asking myself. Perhaps I’m asking Vedmak, or a god I don’t believe in. But no reply comes. Even Vedmak is silent. “Vedmak? Vedmak, I know you’re in here.” But he’s not. “Vedmak?” There’s no answer. Did he leave? Am I free? The dark of space says nothing.

I am alone. Vedmak is gone, a freedom at the cost of so many lives.

Only Mila is with me now.

A loud clunk and the ship shifts. We float into the hull again. The thrusters must have fired. We’re positioning ourselves? For what? I arrange Mila near the wall and shed my heavy coat. I push off the hull—just enough to get some momentum—and stretch my hands out to protect my head.

My fingers find the opposite wall, and I feel along rather than halt my ascent. There’s a faint light a few meters ahead. Eventually I come to rest with my face centimeters from the thick glass of a small porthole.

A beautiful blue-green marble sits in the purple-black fabric of space. It’s awesome in every sense of the word. My breath halts. Earth. My home. From up here I can see no lillipads. No slums. No Etyom. From here, our agendas seem insignificant. The war. The Leader’s plans—all of it. Our little blue orb, tiny in the vastness of space. Does the universe care if we exist? I think not.

But we care. And perhaps we should. In the vastness of the cosmos, on this tiny speck of insignificant rock, was born an intelligent life-form that, for all we know, may be the only one like it ever to have existed. Our stint in this universe cut short because the Leader believes it is time. Even Mila’s Yeos hasn’t done that. If He exists, He’s allowed us to play out our fretted reality without interfering.

You are more important than you know. That’s what Evgeniy had said. Maybe I can stop the Leader. Maybe I can make the people of Etyom see what I’ve seen. Maybe I can stop their petty squabbling. I owe it to everyone. To Evgeniy. To Nikolaj. To Mila.

The rocket jerks again, and I cling to the edges of the portal. A huge metal structure comes into view. A space station. Is that ... Asgardia?

The structure resembles a humongous metallic insect. Long and thin, it has a glass biome at the far end of one arm. At the opposite end is a large boxlike structure that must be the living quarters, and maybe communications if that large dish on the dorsal side is anything to go by. But it’s the huge structure in the dead center that commands attention. A giant disk, like an enclosed hamster wheel, easily more than thirty meters in diameter, and four meters thick. It’s fixed by external axles to a support structure that sports two massive arrays of solar panels like huge wings.

Why would he dock here? Why not fire the accelerator from the rocket?

The enormous station hangs in space, the huge disk that would rotate to give the occupants at least some gravity unmoving, the massive glass dome once designed to house hydroponics, dark and lifeless.

Why here?

I fumble along the wall for a headlamp, remove it from its hook, pull it over my head, and switch it on. A narrow beam of light penetrates the dark. This isn’t a service area; this is a cargo hold. I push off the wall and float to the opposite side, where a large square unit hums quietly. The self-contained computer and monitor embedded into the casing is a standard unit. With a few presses of the correct keys, I have the inventory pulled up. Seeds, grain and ... embryos. He’s transporting fifty Gracile embryos? If it all goes wrong, he’s going to start again. No wonder we haven’t frozen to death; this hold is temperature controlled.

The Leader must need a backup plan. If it goes wrong—if he creates strange matter rather than a black hole—he’ll want to continue the Gracile lineage somehow. To use Asgardia as a new New Etyom. He must have found a way to power it up.

Think, Demitri, think. He’ll need time to set up the station and initiate the gravitational disk. He’s probably using Nikolaj’s fusion reactor to power everything, including the heating and electronics, so he’ll need to install that first. Then he’ll back the station away from low orbit and any chance of coming into contact with strangelets. Then he’ll fire the supercollider. We need to sever his link with Earth—so he can’t do that.

I push off again to the opposite side. There, fixed to the inner hull, is an array of tools. I grab as much as possible and stuff it into the pockets of my tunic. Perhaps, without Vedmak, this is who I am. Perhaps without his crushing personality devaluing me at every turn, I am a good person. A brave person.

The ship clunks, shudders, and comes to a complete halt.