Attention: ALL

Subject: Emergency Procedures

Thank you for your support as we address the ongoing situation in the orchard dome. Until further notice, please refrain from speculation regarding these events, as we will continue to post updates here for all.

—Vice President Barre

Chapter Thirty-One

In Her Hands

Darkness descended.

My mind skipped, remembering deep in my bones what could happen in the dark.

What dust hid. How fast death appeared. How even survival stung.

A noise unlike any other enveloped us, the murmured whisper of space pressed close to the eardrum.

Han had reset the power. She was here, at last.

A blip only, but the systems couldn’t restart all at once.

They cycled up, warming.

Help had come.

Joule and I collided in the dark in our race toward V.

“Don’t you dare,” she yelled as we both set about removing our helmets to give to her.

“You’ll die!” I yelled back, pushing my gloved fingers uselessly at the locking gear on my collar.

“We have less than a minute before the gravdrives shut down, and half that before you freeze to death,” Joule argued, using way too many words for how little time we had to act.

“Both of you, move!” came another voice, followed by a heavy shove that sent Joule and me sliding backward over the floor.

In the seconds it took me to recover my footing, the soldier who’d pushed us had removed their helmet, freeing a long, thick braid that tumbled down their back.

Danny! She strapped her helmet over V’s head and pushed her face close to the visor.

“Tell my brother I’m sorry,” Danny choked. “Tell him—tell him I said to get his ass up here where he belongs.”

Emergency lights blinked red, and I caught sight of Brand a few feet away. He screamed as he scrambled to put on his own helmet. Just in time, but it was too late for gloves.

A full minute was more than enough to freeze an appendage. Or two.

The power stayed off for at least that, during which a million things happened.

The gravdrives weakened, first as a hiccup that hopped me upward, then faster as the tug of gravity overpowered the devices’ effects.

I was loosed into the air like a flung balloon. We all were.

Some of us kept our wits while most of the soldiers slid into sleep, their motions blurred by the drugs I’d dissolved into their food, exacerbated by the sudden change in pressure.

The hostages took the opportunity of weightlessness to swim further from the soldiers.

Han’s security team barreled through the airlock, dozens of them, wearing magnetic boots and armed with electric net cannons. They scooped up the drowsy soldiers in short order, before the repowered gravdrives sent everyone careening back to the metal floor. By the time the lights came back on, Brand was alone, in agony and white-handed, with only one person left at his side.

Andrek, with an RC weapon trained at Brand’s forehead.

Han marched over, unfazed by Brand’s screaming. “Brand Masters, you are under arrest for war crimes against the free citizens of the Lunar Collective, among many others, in accordance with the Faraday Peace Act of 2056. Do not resist.”

“No! That’s not a thing—You can’t do this to me!” He cast about feebly, searching for his human shields. “We have an agreement! We—”

Han rattled on, ignoring him. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to obtain counsel.”

“Verona! Verona, help me!”

And though she did so with a grimace, V put a hand on his back in a gesture of support.

Han cleared her throat, speaking very carefully. “If you would like to assign a power-of-attorney to manage your affairs while you obtain legal counsel, you may name them now.”

Brand fumbled on the ground, then tried to get to his feet but couldn’t. His face was ashen with pain and shock through the visor. V helped him stand. “Verona Masters—she—I name my daughter.”

V took a sharp breath. “I need a second, for it to count for the RC’s board.”

“Seconded,” Andrek said immediately.

“Does everyone mark that?” V asked.

The remaining RC soldiers who could speak mumbled weak assent from beneath the net cannons.

“Commander Han,” V said, “if you would be so kind, please release my troops so they can answer me properly.” Han must have known this was coming, because her guards released the cannons at once. “As your commander,” V went on, “I order your peaceful cooperation. Offer no more resistance to the lunar guards, and I will dissolve your contracts and see you returned safely to your families. Salute if you agree.”

Their movements may have been sluggish, but one after another they saluted, standing taller than before.

“Wait…” Brand’s face fell even further. He glared at his daughter miserably. “You! Did you just steal the RC? Was this your plan all along?”

V smiled, and it was like a rose blooming.

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have to ever again.

“Let’s clean this mess up. We’ve got a while before the others wake,” Han said to her guards, who unceremoniously cuffed Brand’s ankles and dragged him toward the airlock. Then she drove to where Danny’s corpse had fallen and touched the woman’s shoulder.

I couldn’t hear what she said, but, to me, it looked like forgiveness.

Andrek rushed to me and Joule, while V shook Halle awake. We threw off our helmets and dissolved into a group hug. It was a weepy, wiped out, and wild group hug, full of too-bright laughter and jumbles of words. At least until my dad tapped my shoulder, and we broke apart.

President Marshall hung onto Dad’s side.

“Lane, were you part of this? This coup to arrest Masters and take control of the RC?” Dad meant Were you sneaking around for months behind our backs and under our noses?

“More or less,” I admitted.

“She was, sir,” V added, slipping her hand into mine. This time, despite the glove, I felt her squeeze. “We couldn’t have done it without her.”

“And you, Andrek?” Dad stammered, and now I felt a little guilty, because what he meant was Were you lying to us all this time?

“What you need to understand,” I said, hoping my brain would catch up with my mouth by the time the next words fell out, “is that we’re all Lunar now, and we owe it to each other to stop monsters from getting into our home. We did exactly what we had to do.”

“But the RC—” the president started, sounding almost as baffled as Brand had a moment before. “What happens to them? A whole empire won’t evaporate on a word.”

“It will on mine, because it now belongs to me,” V said confidently. “He was too paranoid to appoint a second-in-command, so there won’t be anyone to challenge my position. And I have no doubt that once the rest of his soldiers find out the extent of my father’s atrocities, particularly against them, they’ll be more than willing to help dissolve any holdouts. Then we can let the incorporated states vote to restructure independently.”

“Freedom will flow to the people,” Halle put in. “Like it should.”

“And we can finally build some damn spaceships!” Joule added happily.

Andrek beamed so hard that he looked like he might burst. We all looked like that, really. He wrapped an arm around V and me, pulling us close. “Who needs an empire anyway, when we’ve got the moon?”