Chapter 17: THE ATTACK — PART 1
The cell door opened twelve hours after Lopez's interrogation.
A different marine this time—younger, less certain, wearing the expression of someone following orders they didn't fully understand. "You're being moved. Come with me."
I followed without argument. The corridors were busier than before—crew members moving with purpose, the particular energy of a ship on heightened alert. Something had changed while I was isolated.
The marine led me to a compartment several decks up—larger than the cells, furnished with actual furniture. Guest quarters rather than detention. Inside, four familiar faces looked up at my entrance.
"Kwame." Holden rose from his seat. "Thank God. We were starting to worry they'd spaced you."
"Not yet." I moved into the room, taking stock. Holden looked exhausted but intact. Naomi sat near the viewport, her expression guarded. Alex managed a tired smile from his corner. Amos leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching everything.
And Shed—Shed sat in the corner, hugging his knees, looking younger and more frightened than I'd ever seen him.
"What happened?" I asked. "Why'd they move us?"
"Change in status." Naomi's voice was flat. "We're witnesses now, not suspects. Their analysis of the sensor data confirmed our story—the Canterbury was attacked by vessels using technology consistent with what killed the Scopuli."
"Consistent with Martian technology."
"Consistent with technology that resembles Martian designs." Her emphasis was deliberate. "They're not admitting anything, but they're also not accusing us anymore. We're being held for our protection while they investigate."
I processed this. The Martians had verified our evidence, which meant they were taking the attack seriously. Which meant they knew someone was using their tech—or copies of their tech—to start a war.
"How long until we can leave?"
"Unknown. They're not exactly sharing their timeline with us." Holden rubbed his eyes. "The interrogations were... intense. They asked about everything. The Canterbury, the Scopuli, our backgrounds. They wanted to know why we broadcast instead of coming directly to them."
"And you told them?"
"The truth. That we didn't know who to trust, that we wanted the evidence public so it couldn't be buried." He managed a grim smile. "I don't think they appreciated my reasoning, but they couldn't argue with my logic."
Naomi moved toward me, her voice dropping. "What about your interrogation? Lopez seemed particularly interested in you."
I met her eyes. "Standard questions. Background, timeline, observations. She didn't like my answers."
"Did she push?"
"She tried." I let a moment pass. "Equipment malfunction. Her readings came back scrambled."
Something flickered in Naomi's expression—recognition, maybe, or confirmation of a suspicion she'd been building. She knew I was hiding something. The question was whether she'd push for answers here, now, in front of the others.
She didn't. She just nodded and moved back to the viewport.
I found a seat near Amos. He acknowledged me with a slight tilt of his head.
"You okay?" I asked quietly.
"Fine. Martians ask questions, I give answers. Pretty straightforward." His eyes stayed on the room. "You?"
"Headache. Their equipment didn't agree with me."
"Mm." He didn't ask for details. That was one of the things I appreciated about Amos—he understood that some things didn't need explaining.
Time passed. Hours blurred together in the artificial environment of a ship where day and night were arbitrary constructs. We ate military rations, used the minimal facilities, tried to rest on bunks that weren't designed for comfort.
Shed stayed in his corner. I checked on him periodically—offered food, water, conversation. He responded in monosyllables, his eyes distant. The trauma was hitting him harder than the rest of us. He'd signed up to be a medic on an ice hauler, not a witness to mass murder and political conspiracy.
I sat beside him during the third meal cycle. "Hey."
"Hey." His voice was hollow.
"How are you holding up?"
He laughed—a short, bitter sound. "I'm on a Martian warship, being held prisoner after watching everyone I worked with die, waiting to find out if I'm going to be charged with crimes I didn't commit or released into a solar system that might be about to go to war." He shook his head. "How do you think I'm holding up?"
"About that well, yeah."
"I shouldn't be here." He stared at his hands. "I'm not like you or Amos. I'm not a soldier or whatever it is you are. I'm just a medic. I fix people. I don't—" He swallowed. "I don't know how to handle any of this."
"None of us do. We're all figuring it out as we go."
"You seem pretty figured out."
I considered my response. "I've been in bad situations before. You learn to compartmentalize—put the fear in a box, deal with it later, focus on what's in front of you."
"And if the box breaks?"
"Then you find someone to help you put it back together." I met his eyes. "That's what we're doing right now. Helping each other hold it together until we get through this."
He didn't respond immediately. Then, slowly, something shifted in his expression. Not resolution, exactly—more like the first stirring of something other than despair.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
"Anytime."
The feeling hit me without warning.
One moment I was reviewing the room's layout, cataloguing exits and potential weapons and all the other details a soldier processes automatically. The next, something cold crawled up my spine—not physical sensation, but something deeper. Instinct. Warning.
Danger approaching.
I moved to the viewport. The stars were the same—points of light against endless black. No visible ships, no obvious threats. But the feeling persisted, growing stronger with each heartbeat.
"Something's wrong."
Amos was beside me instantly. "You feel that too?"
Before I could answer, the Donnager lurched.
The deck heaved beneath us—not the smooth acceleration of a ship changing course, but the violent jerk of impact. Emergency lights flashed. Alarms began screaming.
"General quarters, general quarters. All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill."
Another impact. The ship shuddered, metal groaning under stress it wasn't designed to handle.
"Torpedoes," Naomi said. She'd moved to the compartment's internal display, pulling up whatever data she could access. "Multiple contacts. The Donnager is taking fire."
"From who?" Holden demanded.
"Unknown. No transponders, no identification." Her fingers flew across the controls. "Thermal signatures are—" She stopped. Her face went pale. "They're the same as the ships that killed the Canterbury."
The stealth ships. They'd found us.
Or rather, they'd found the Donnager—the flagship investigating their crime, the one vessel in the MCRN fleet that might actually uncover their secrets. And now they were going to destroy her too.
A marine appeared in the doorway—full armor, weapon ready. "Stay here. Don't leave this compartment under any circumstances."
He was gone before anyone could respond, the door sealing behind him.
The battle sounds were impossible to ignore. The ship's PDC batteries opened up—thousands of rounds per minute, designed to intercept incoming missiles. We could hear them through the hull, a rapid-fire drumbeat of desperation. Railguns charged and fired, their electromagnetic launch systems humming at frequencies I could feel in my teeth.
Impact. Impact. Impact.
The Donnager was losing.
Shed had started hyperventilating, his breathing rapid and shallow. I knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder.
"Breathe with me. Four counts in. Four counts out."
"I can't—I can't—"
"You can. Focus on my voice. Four counts in." I demonstrated, forcing my own breathing to slow. "Four counts out."
He tried. Failed. Tried again. Slowly, with desperate effort, his breathing began to match mine.
It wasn't much. It wasn't enough. But it was something to focus on while the universe came apart around us.
The lights flickered and died. Emergency power kicked in—red illumination, minimal but enough to see. The impacts had grown more frequent, more violent. I could hear secondary explosions somewhere deeper in the ship, systems failing under assault.
"They're boarding," Naomi said. Her voice was steady, but I could hear the fear underneath. "That's why the PDCs are concentrated on specific sectors. The enemy is landing breaching pods."
Boarding. Just like I remembered from the show. Commandos in combat armor, professional and ruthless, cutting through Martian marines like they were nothing.
The Donnager was going to fall.
And unless we moved soon, we were going to fall with her.
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