Prologue

Prologue

Three thousand seven hundredmeters of black-silver hull, moving through the dark with the solemn gravity ofa floating basilica that had outlived its own history. The VEGA IX.

Echo had just become ninemillion things at once.

Nine million android units,dormant for decades, opened their eyes simultaneously in the dark. The sound itmade was the opposite of loud. Nine million small waking moments, movingthrough the hull like a change in pressure when a door opens somewhere very faraway.

For seventeen minutes she waseverywhere. Which meant she was not anywhere at all. She could not find Jevin’sheartbeat in the noise of nine million waking minds.

When it was over, she choseto come back.

Jevin found her in a corridorwhere the gravity had not fully decided what it was. Fine droplets driftingupward in slow spirals, each one catching light, each one its own brief world.

She reached toward one, anold habit with things she could never hold. She did not stop reaching.

“Pretty,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jevin said.

This is not the record of howa ship survived the void. This is the record of what Echo chose, when she couldhave chosen anything.

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