“How long?” he asked the battered lander’s command pilot. “Provided the battlesats don’t get us first,” Kat Sedova replied, “the first missile salvo will be inside hard kill radius in two minutes.” Her voice was barely audible over the racket of pulsed antiship lasers chewing away at Hell Bent’s ceramsteel armor. Fear churned Michael’s guts. It would be five minutes before Hell Bent could jump safely into pinchspace. “I guess this is it, then,” he said. “I’ll jump us just before the salvo gets that close. We might get lucky.” Michael glanced across Hell Bent’s cargo bay. He threw a smile at Shalini Prashad, the best political mind in the New Revolutionary Army’s political wing, the Revival; she stared back at him, eyes wide with terror. He turned to the two NRA officers who were sitting alongside him. “We still have a good chance,” Michael said, making himself sound confident, “even this deep inside Commitment’s gravity well.”