I'm not suicidal. I like my life, on the whole. The plan was stupid. It was also the only plan I had.

  We were less than a kilometer from the port, its landing beacons clearly visible, small red lights atop slender steel towers. The missile packs were nearby, spread out along the port's length.

  That was the hole in my plan. My brain felt slow, frozen over, my vision still blurry. I kept hearing the Knife talking, a low, harsh whisper that I couldn't quite make out. He couldn't have, though, because his mouth wasn't moving. My mind was making sounds up.

  Hallucinations. It was one of the signs of mind collapse. We'd been drilled to recognize the signs at the Academy. The feeling of distance, the disconnect to reality. Hallucinations. Vertigo. Hunger. That last one I'd had for days. Didn't even notice it anymore. There were others.

  It all came back to a single thing. I was going to die.

  I might have one more shot in me. At five hundred meters, definitely. At a kilometer, probably not.

  But I didn't need one shot. I needed twenty. I needed to fire all the missiles, all at once, and do it before the Invisibles' ships came too close.

  Twenty missile packs. Twenty shots. I could get off one, maybe two. I'd faint before I got off three.

  Three wasn't good enough. Not against four cruisers coordinating their point-defense systems. They'd shrug the missiles off like so much tossed gravel.

  I needed twenty. And I could do it.

  The missile packs were built in two long rows, spanning the length of the port. The nearest ones were less than a kilometer away, the furthest ones closer to two.

  The Bucket was parked in the middle.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I could conjure four long threads, and bounce them off the Bucket's engines. Pitch the angle correctly, and they'd jump in straight lines. For the moment it took the engines to overload, I'd have four vibrating threads angled at ninety degrees.

  Straight through the missile packs. If I sent a fifth thread through, triggering the flame wards in the rifle, I'd burn through the void, reaching every missile pack at once with a shockwave and a flame front, right along their bottoms. It'd set of chemical missiles. It'd have to.

  It'd kill me.

  Even with the void's luck, I wouldn't survive something like that. Keeping giving five threads to the rifle would rip my mind to pieces, even before the backblast from the engines scrambled my brains.

  "Jake?" the Knife said. This time his mouth did move.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "We need to run," he said. "Nowhere to hide, here."

  Nowhere to hide in the desert, either. Not with thousands of people coming. Maybe some of them would run. Maybe some of those would survive. Maybe the Syndics wouldn't hunt all their horses down.

  Maybe I couldn't stand by and do nothing.

  We'd come to Remba to save a few hundred Kylians. We'd discovered thousands of sneaks and diggers. People, hunted like animals, for sport, for the pleasure of those rich enough to pay the Syndicates' fee.

  It wasn't enough to hurt a few Syndics and run. I'd caused those people to come. I'd given them hope, made them a promise. I had to fulfill that promise.

  Someone else would have to lead them to safety. Riina would approve.

  "Hao," I said, "you'll have to take the hauler on your own."

  "Oh?" she said, giving me an annoyed stare from those too-blue eyes. "And you're going on vacation to where?"

  I smiled. I'd miss her dry wit and contrariness. And her companionship, those long, silent shifts at the Bucket's helm where it was enough to know that you had another living mind next to you.

  "Out cold," I lied. It felt bad, like I'd dipped my tongue in the recycling vats, but I had a sneaking suspicion she'd clock me one with her crowbar if she knew what I was planning. "You can fetch me later."

  She gave me another look, but nodded. Good man. Woman. Crew member.

  The Knife gave me a look, too, but his was sad, knowing. He might have owned a bar on New Tashkent, but if he wasn't at least a dirt mage, I'd eat my stockman. With ketchup. The cheap, reprocessed kind.

  "You intend to shoot the way clear for the com center raid?" he said.

  "No," I replied. "I'm going to fire the missiles myself."

  There was a moment of silence, broken only by the distant roar of approaching ammonia/methanol engines. The Knife clapped me on the shoulder.

  "I always knew you were a good man, Jake," he said.

  I stretched out in the cold sand, and sighted along my rifle.