Page 275 of Reaper Said Mine

“I don’t know.”

I connect the drive to my compad.

The screen flickers.

For one awful moment, nothing happens.

Then files appear.

Fragmented, damaged, but present.

I exhale.

The next impact slams a loose medical container across the aisle. It strikes my hand and knocks the cartridge free. It skitters toward the rear hatch, straight into the smoke.

“Damn it!”

I dive after it.

Rana grabs my jacket and yanks me back a fraction of a second before another burst of sparks showers the floor where my face would have been.

“Do not die for a storage device,” she snaps.

“That storage device is why they’re shooting at us.”

“They’re shooting at us because powerful people lack hobbies.”

The drive lies near the threshold, half-hidden beneath foam and debris.

The floor around it glows faintly where a severed conduit has heated the plating.

I reach again, slower this time. Heat bites my fingers before I get close enough.

Sera unstraps herself and staggers toward us. “Use this.”

She shoves a surgical clamp into my hand.

I grip the clamp, stretch forward, and catch the cartridge by its cracked edge. The heat travels up the metal fast enough to burn, but I drag it back and cradle it against my chest.

For one second, I simply hold it.

Then I realize everyone is staring at me.

“What?” I say.

Dane coughs into his sleeve. “Nothing. Just enjoying your extremely normal relationship with data.”

Sera wipes blood from her eyebrow. “Is it still readable?”

“It was before I nearly cooked it.”

Rana leans over the panel. “Care less emotionally and more usefully. I need the drive connected to the emergency beacon if we’re going to send anything.”

I stare at her. “Send the evidence?”

“Send a distress signal with enough attached metadata that anyone intercepting it knows exactly why we’re being attacked.”

“That will expose part of the packet before I can verify final chain of custody.”