“What?” I ask.

  “Are we searching your room?”

  I don’t bother dignifying this with a response. I’m not going to go through my things in front of Tam. Besides, I’ve already searched my room. And I already know it’s not secure.

  “Don’t touch anything. Just watch me.”

  “Right,” he says. “What are you trying to find?”

  “I’ll know it when I see it,” I say. I hope.

  I didn’t expect it to bother me to look through people’s things. But it does. When you see what people bring, you learn about them.

  Naomi has almost nothing besides the standard items issued to everyone on the ship. She has one faded book, a collection of fairy tales, which is unexpected. It seems a bit fanciful for Naomi.

  Brig’s room is more revealing. There are two packs of well-worn playing cards, some clothes that aren’t standard-issue, several photos of him with people I assume are his parents—an older woman and a man whom Brig resembles. He also has a pocketknife. “I’ll take this,” I say, and I slide it into my pocket. “We’re not supposed to have weapons on board. Brig knows that.”

  “It’s just a knife,” Tam says.

  I raise my eyebrows at him.

  “What?” he asks. “I have dozens of them in the kitchen.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I say.

  We go on, from room to room.

  Eira’s belongings are immaculately tidy. She has an outfit to wear for when she gets off the ship, I suppose—a blue skirt, a white eyelet blouse, a pair of shoes that aren’t practical in the least. A mirror, some ribbons. A set of beautiful colored pencils.

  “We haven’t found anyone keeping a journal,” Tam says as we leave Eira’s room.

  “Not much time for it.”

  “I make time for it.”

  “You really don’t sleep, then,” I tell him. “What do you write?” I want to distract Tam. He’s been paying close attention. I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s been keeping a list in his head of what each person has.

  “I write about what happens,” he says. “Don’t you? Aren’t you supposed to keep a record? Like a captain’s log?”

  “No,” I say. No one ever told me to, anyway.

  I’m starting to feel frustrated. What am I looking for, exactly? I thought I’d know it when I found it, but that hasn’t been the case. And clearly whoever it is was smart enough not to hide something in their room. Anything revealing is probably hidden somewhere on the ship. Some secret spot. Perhaps on the mining deck, or in the cafeteria?

  Should I have checked those places first?

  Or it could be on their person. I’ll have to search everyone individually.

  I open the door and we go into the next room. Another typical one, shared by four people. Two bunks, two dressers, each with two drawers. No desk.

  “This one’s my room,” Tam says. “I share it with some of the other kitchen crew.”

  I feel along the bottom of the beds, turn back the blankets. Slide my hand into the pillowcases, shake them upside down.

  I open Tam’s drawer. I have to pull hard. Whatever’s inside is heavy. “What have you got in here?”

  The drawer gives way and I stumble back and stare inside.

  Gold.

  The whole drawer is filled with it. With the new, high-quality nuggets we’ve been dredging up the last few days.

  I look at Tam.

  For the first time since I’ve known him, his expression is panicked. “I didn’t put that there,” he says. “It’s not mine.”

  A dull pain begins to throb against my right temple in time with my heartbeat.

  Gold. Gold. Gold.

  What was he hoping to do with it? What does this mean?

  “Captain Blythe,” he says. “Please, I—”

  “Out,” I say to Tam. “Now.”

  He puts his hands up and, facing me, makes his way out of the room. Is he afraid to turn his back to me? Should I be afraid? I wonder if he’s hidden a kitchen knife somewhere.

  “Walk in front of me,” I say. “Don’t give any reason to make this harder than it is. We’re going to the cafeteria.”

  I need backup and Brig is the closest.

  “Captain Blythe,” Tam says, and I can tell he’s fighting to stay calm. “I didn’t take the gold. Someone else put it there.”

  We’ve come to the stairs. “Turn around,” I say. “Walk down facing forward, or you’re going to fall. Keep your hands up where I can see them.”

  Why would he steal gold? Why would any of the crew? It’s heavy and bulky and surely he’d get caught when he tried to get it off the ship.

  Is this why he’s been so keen to help on the mining deck?

  Has Tam been leaving the notes in my room?

  A wail goes through the dredge. It’s the alarm. Again.

  I didn’t pull it this time.

  Underneath it is another sound, the sound of silence growing. The trammel isn’t spinning. The motor isn’t running.

  The ship is slowing down.

  The sound of ending, of something stopped that used to be moving—that’s the sound that makes me sick.

  * * *

  • • •

  I hear the clang, clang, clang of footsteps running up from the mining deck. Someone reaches the top, almost colliding with Tam before pulling up short.

  It’s Naomi.

  The sight of her makes the dull pain behind my temple turn sharp. First Tam, now Naomi. I know I can’t trust people. But can’t they at least stay where they’re supposed to be?

  “I told you to stay down—” I say, but she interrupts me.

  “Captain,” she says, “it’s the raiders. They’ve boarded the ship.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “ALL CREW, TO EMERGENCY DEFENSE POSITIONS,” I say into the speaker on the wall. For a moment, my voice overrides the warning siren. “There’s been a breach on the mining deck.”

  I click off the override. The alarm continues to howl, warning us.

  “Weapons,” I say to Naomi.

  “Someone smashed in the lock to the firearm locker near the mining deck,” she says. “We’ll have to get them from up here.”

  I’m tearing down the hallway before she’s finished her sentence. “How are they getting on?” I call over my shoulder to her. Tam runs with me. Is he coming to fight with or against us?

  “Through the stacker,” she says. “Someone on board disabled the mining system.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “As soon as the last of the tailings went out through the stacker, the raiders started coming on.”

  “How?” The tailings stacker is high above the river. They’d have to climb up my armor to get to it. I thought of everything. Didn’t I?

  We’ve reached the firearms locker. We’ll get the raiders. We have a procedure for this. I unlock the door, and Naomi and I each sling as many rifles as we can over our shoulders. Tam reaches for one but I gesture to the door across the hall, one of the small supply closets. “In there,” I say. “Now.”

  “You need me to help,” he says.

  “I can’t trust you,” I say. “Get in now. Naomi, cover me.”

  She does and I open the closet with the captain’s master key. Tam backs inside, hands up. I slam and lock the door. It’s taken a few seconds, ones we didn’t have to waste.

  If he was up here with you, he couldn’t have been the one who disabled the mining system.

  Unless he managed it when he was down on the mining deck earlier. Or has someone working with him.

  I shake my head. Think about it later. Act now.

  I hear some of Brig’s crew coming down the stairs from the upper deck to join us. If he’s followed protocol, he’s sent three people up to guard the entrance to the top deck, two to keep the bridge secure, and the rest to the area of the breach. That’s what’s supposed to happen in the case of an emergency, unless I tell him otherwise.

  Did I force the traitor’s hand? Was my search through everyone’s belongings what triggered this? Or was it already planned?

  “Fall in,” I say to the rest of the crew, and they do so without a word. Naomi and I pass guns along to them. The taste of fear is sour in my mouth. Any one of my crew could be in league with the raiders. Any one of them could shoot us.

  We round the corner, the sound of our boots a rumble and a storm down the hall, onto the mining deck.

  The door is wide-open.

  The raiders have guns trained on my crew.

  The alarm howls.

  “Captain!” It’s Naomi. And then she’s pushing me back. “Don’t let them get a clear shot at her,” she shouts to the others. Crew from behind rush around to protect me.

  Even now, the raiders keep coming in through the stacker. One after the other after another. The buckets hang still, the trammel doesn’t turn.

  But I know the ship so well that even under the sound of the alarm I can hear that the armor is still going. It’s the last system working, running on the energy from the solar panels. The raiders have disconnected it from the other systems and left it functioning. Why?

  Because they’ve found a way on. And they don’t want us to try to get off.

  How are they getting on? Did they learn to fly?

  No.

  The raiders coming though the stacker have something strange attached to them. Some kind of fabric that for a second I think might be wings, but of course it’s no such thing.

  They’ve made gliders.

  The raiders shrug them off as soon as they hit the floor of the mining deck. They lift their guns in our direction. Their hands are bloody, and one of them sinks to the floor with blood blooming across his chest in a serrated pattern.

  When I see this, I understand. It all notches into place, like the gears of my armor.

  They must have gotten somewhere above us, and then dove in. With the mining system shut down, and the slicken no longer coming out, they could, if they timed it perfectly, glide to the stacker opening and climb in. They’d still get cut up on the edges of my armor, but it would be possible.

  I’m livid with myself. I didn’t think they could get us from above.

  The longer we stand here, the more of them there will be.

  “Listen,” says one of the raiders. Do I recognize him from that night two years ago? I think I know his voice. That roughness, the edges of it.

  His face is deeply tanned. His rifle is pointed right at me, held tight in his bloody hands. “We’re taking prisoners, if you come peacefully. Put down the weapons, put your hands up. We’re going to take the ship, but we don’t have to kill you.”

  Liar. I’ve seen what they do. It’s seared into my brain.

  “You lie,” I say. “I heard what you said last time. So did she.” I jerk my head over my shoulder to Naomi. “You said it was the last time you’d leave anyone alive.”

  There’s a speaker on the wall near me. I slam my fist onto the call button and shout out, “We’ve lost the mining deck, Brig. Seal us off. That’s my order.”

  He’d better obey.

  I raise my gun. I will have to hit the mark perfectly to make the kill I have in mind.

  I don’t miss.

  * * *

  • • •

  I’ve been responsible for many deaths before, but I’ve never dealt one with my own hand and I wonder if I’ll feel sick later. A dark hole feeling in the bottom of my stomach says that I will. When there’s time.

  If there’s time.

  I blew apart the main control panel to shut down the armor.

  I just killed my ship.

  In the confusion following my shot, Naomi and the others and I push back up the stairs right before the metal door between decks comes down, sealing off the mining deck below us. Brig heard me. He did what I asked.

  We’re safe for now.

  For a very short now.

  “Get up the stairs,” I call out to the crew. “Go to the cafeteria.”

  Some move without questioning. A few look at me, their backs pressed up against the walls of the narrow hallways to let the others pass.

  “Go!” I yell. “Now.” They obey, pushing their way into the crush of bodies surging for the cafeteria.

  “Bring up the rear,” I tell Naomi.

  It takes two minutes to get us all to the cafeteria. These are minutes we will never get back and I hope I’m not wasting them. I climb up on a table and Brig shouts at everyone to quiet down.

  “The raiders will break through the barrier,” I say, “and there are more of them coming through the stacker.”

  “Why the hell did you shut down the armor?” someone calls out. “Now they can board at will. You’ve killed us all.”

  “No,” I say. “They left the armor on so we wouldn’t climb off. I shut it down so we could escape. We go to the upper deck, jump ship, and find one another the best we can onshore. Then we’ll regroup and take the dredge back.”

  “Or we could stay on board and fight here,” someone says.

  “No,” someone else calls out. “We should give up our weapons and then try to sabotage the raiders later.”

  “You’d rather surrender?” The thought never crossed my mind.

  “Did you find the traitor?” a third person calls out.

  “I didn’t have time,” I say, fury boiling over and making me grit my teeth, spit the words. “We have no time. If you want off the ship, we go now.”

  Brig and Naomi both salute and I appreciate the gesture.

  “Where are the machinists?”

  Three people raise their hands.

  “Brig, take them up,” I say. “They escape first.”

  We’re missing machinists. Corwin, our chief machinist, didn’t make it through the mining deck door before Brig had to close it. That, especially, is a loss. The raiders will likely try to force him to repair the ship. But I can take the ones we have left, the ones who weren’t working on the mining deck when the raiders boarded. I can make it as hard as possible for the raiders to get the dredge back in working order.

  “We don’t get a choice?” says one.

  “No,” I say. “Go. I’ll cover you. I’ll come last.”

  On his way out the door, Brig leans in to say something low in my ear. “Be careful. You’re the most valuable person on this ship.”

  He’s right. Not just because I’m the captain, but because I designed the armor. Do the raiders know that?

  If they don’t, they will soon.

  “I’m coming with you,” Eira says. Good. She knows about the ship and the maps. I should have included her with the machinists, but it’s even better that she’s chosen to go.

  Brig and Naomi herd the machinists and Eira toward the cafeteria door. I point at the rest of the crew. “Let’s go.”

  No one moves.

  We have no time.

  “Come on,” I say. “I’ll cover you, and we’ll all jump. We’ll regroup and take back the Lily.”

  “How?” someone asks.

  I don’t know. I have been thinking moment to moment. I have been thinking live now and save the ship later. I can’t save the ship if I’m dead.

  I hear sounds below. Raiders, coming for us?

  “Maybe you’re the traitor,” someone says. “Maybe you’re leading us to our deaths.”

  “I’m no traitor,” I say. “And I don’t surrender.”

  They all look at me. Faces and faces and faces and none of them want to follow my lead.

  But I’ve got Brig and Naomi and Eira and the machinists.

  Would Tam have come?

  There’s no time for him now.

  * * *

  • • •

  I hear the raiders on the move below as I head up the stairs to the top deck. They’ve broken through. Brig and I shove open the door to the deck stairwell, and he leads the machinists in a scramble up the steps, Eira behind them. I nod to Naomi to go up, too, and then I fire a few shots down into the stairwell before racing after her. They’re coming for us.

  Brig waits at the top with the others. I throw him the key to open the final hatch out onto the deck. “As soon as it opens, run, and jump out into the river,” I tell everyone. “Don’t try to climb down. The armor isn’t moving, but it’s sharp. Jump clear of it. And if you try to climb, the raiders will have more time to pick you off.”

  Brig nods. “I’ll cover you,” he says to me.

  “No,” I say. “You and Naomi go first. I’ll cover you all. We find each other in the woods to the west.” Of course, that area might be riddled with raiders, but I don’t think so. The way the raiders are boarding us means they’re up higher than we are, on the bluff to the east of the river.

  I push past the machinists and Eira in the stairwell so that I’ll be able to cover Naomi and Brig when they jump. I look out across the deck, which is still and unmoving.

  From up here I can see more raiders in the light of the setting sun.

  Dozens of them, on a bluff, with their glider wings.

  The outcropping where they perch is perfectly situated for them to fly down on us. And the wind is perfect, too. The elements have conspired against us, along with the traitor on board.

  My mind spins, trying to catch on to an answer that will set all the gears into motion, that will help me understand how this happened. Who suggested we change course? Who said we should come up this part of the river?

  Who is the traitor?

  The raiders are poised. Waiting. Now that I’ve shut off the armor, they’re going to descend on us like spiders on the wind. We have to get off before they realize the armor is down and start jumping onto the top deck. We’ll never be able to hold off so many.

  Our window is closing.

  “Captain—” Brig says.