Pham Trinli cuts his link and retreats, concluding Nau anticipated the plot with extraordinary surveillance. As Relight peaks, trapped volatiles force Diamonds One and Two apart; the canopy tears free and outgassing drives uncontrolled motion. Pham shifts to survival, fearing Nau’s trap will spring if Jimmy does not abort.

Inside the temp, Qiwi and Ezr watch the moorings groan while Diamond Two slowly lifts. Nau reassures the crowd about missing canopy crews as massive boulders begin drifting. The auditorium scrambles for press gear while the leviathan starships sway on their tethers.

Jimmy’s team enters the Far Treasure through dark, airless passages and discovers the ship gutted. In the sickbay’s heart they find hundreds of neatly stacked corpses—armsmen and others once listed as hostages, including a Trilander—revealing the Emergent deception. Jimmy connects a banned audio node to broadcast the truth outward.

On an open channel, Jimmy declares the Far Treasure retaken. Nau, shocked, pleads for a truce amid the rockpile crisis. Jimmy admits retuning the stationkeeping grid to amplify instabilities and claims leverage: four kilos of S7 and dozens of Emergent hostages in sickbay, demanding Nau and Brughel come over within 1,000 seconds. Qiwi, torn between parents on both sides, begs Jimmy to stop.

Before Nau can depart by taxi, explosions strike the Far Treasure. Fragments vent from the hull; Brughel reports multiple breaches in aft radial deck fifteen—sickbay and coldsleep. The blasts likely consumed all the S7 and crushed the ramscoop throat, effectively killing the ship. In the temp, hope collapses as Qiwi floats in stunned silence.