She had stopped him. "You forget who you're talking about?"

  Shoji threw the box across his room. "Grand Admiral Kyle! I didn't forget."

  "William Kyle." Liezl said it like they were two different people. "He always knows what he's doing."

  "He's dressing me up like a clown and parading me around."

  She put her open hand on Shoji's forearm, stopping him before he could march across the room and stomp the box flat. "Trust him. Trust me."

  Shoji stared straight ahead, his eyes going glassy, emptying of anger and leaving nothing behind.

  Now he stared through his reflection like it was a stranger standing in his way. This man, this uniform, were relics, pictures of an ancestor with whom he shared a passing resemblance. He might have been proud of this man then for reaching this rank, for pulling himself out of the darkness that was swallowing him and doing what the planet needed him to do.

  But now, this man just stood in his way.

  A knock on the door. Liezl had returned. She didn't even wait for a response, just swung open the door like an impatient mother getting her kid ready for his first dance.

  She gasped. "Look at you."

  Shoji's head fell forward. He felt like a teen blushing under mom's prideful stare. "Can we get this over with?"

  "Come on." Liezl tried a playful jab. She saw immediately the pointlessness of it. "It's just a formality."

  "Exactly." Shoji lifted his chin and straightened his tie.

  Liezl stepped behind him and looked over Shoji's shoulder at the man in the mirror. Her smile drew his attention. A gesture of genuine pleasure. Happiness. It was a star in an empty night sky. "Just play the part. It will be over soon enough. Quick and painless."

  Shoji let her play her part and decided to play his. It was a small thing, one of hundreds of small things he would need to endure in order to complete his mission, to fulfill his promise.

  Trombones were not quick and painless.

  The EDI band, an assemblage of horns and drums, ushered Shoji to the stage that had been assembled overnight in front of Tin Man. The sharp brassy blasts and thunderous pounds of bass seemed like a bad way to welcome a prisoner of war. Shoji's brow was moist with sweat before he stepped in front of the crowd and ascended the stairs to take his place next to the podium.

  Kyle welcomed him, then turned to issue him a silent apology. William Kyle was as averse to these sorts of grandstanding events as Shoji.

  It was a small pleasure to watch Kyle squirm as he played his role, in his fresh-pressed uniform, smiling and waving to the crowd. He had also become a twisted reflection of himself. The man Shoji knew was a battlefield commander, a man who seized control of an alien spacecraft and took on an entire armada with it. This man seemed more a politician than a warrior.

  The ceremony was mercifully short. Kyle welcomed the hero home, announced Shoji's promotion, and announced that he’d resume his duties as Tin Man’s pilot, the other hero of the battle for Earth.

  The horns blasted again, the crowd cheered, and Shoji's arm twitched, nearly extending the blade sheathed in his wrist and shredding his pristine uniform.

  Kyle ushered him offstage and did not remove his hand from Shoji's back until they had passed around Tin Man and entered the hangar. Kyle immediately loosened his tie.

  The hangar was mostly empty, the majority of base personnel still outside for the ceremony. With the base being decommissioned and declared a memorial site, most of the regular staff were purely administrative. The handful of techs at the far end of the hangar had been brought in from another base. Some of the original techs who worked on the Tin Man project. Liezl's idea.

  "A diplomatic mission?" Shoji said, taking no pains to hide the insubordination in his voice.

  Kyle held up a hand to quiet him, but his eyes smiled like he'd been waiting for it. "Don't start. It was the only way."

  "To do what? Get me off base?"

  "To get you back in Tin Man."

  Shoji threw up his hands. "And what's the point of that? I can't fly all the way to...wherever by myself."

  Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. "To wherever? I'd say I'm giving you a lot of rope here. Don't hang me with it."

  "What does that even mean?"

  Kyle's temper bubbled up and out. "You don't even know where you're trying to go. You haven't told me a goddamn thing about what you're trying to do, but you expect us to give you the full power of the EDI to do it."

  "I'm expecting you to trust me." Shoji's anger grew and pressed against Kyle's.

  "Trust goes both ways."

  Liezl stepped between them, popping both bubbles. "Enough." She turned to Shoji. "You can't see past your own nose right now. Grand Admiral Kyle is doing what he can." Having to continuously reassure Shoji seemed to be wearing on her. With each instance, her soft edges hardened. Soon enough, she would be slicing Shoji across the chest.

  He relented, not yet willing to push away the only two people on the planet he liked and trusted. The only two people who could get him back to his family.

  Kyle paced away, allowing his temper to cool before turning back. "I wanted to get this mission done two years ago, but you're the only one who can do it, so I shelved it. It's important."

  "Okay." Shoji let his eyes climb up Tin Man again until they rested on the mech's face. He quieted every doubt and shouting voice in his head that told him this was a waste of time. He needed to trust. He needed to remember what that felt like. "It's been a while. Maybe I should take him out for a bit. We can get used to each other again."

  "Good idea," Kyle said with a smile that said much more. "It'll be a good opportunity for you to get to know your new crew."

  "My what?"

  The idea felt like a hot knife twisting in Shoji's side. The whole damn thing. A ceremony. Music. Promotion.

  Tin Man.

  A new crew.

  To fly off on some goddamn diplomatic waste of time while the real mission ticked on. The people who needed him sitting alone in the dark, wondering when he was coming back.

  "No." Shoji paced the length of the hangar. Kyle had been gone for an hour, leaving Shoji with a pat on the back and a promise of good things to come. "I'm not doing this."

  Liezl's gentle hand had hardened into a fist. "You don't have a choice. This is happening. It's a good idea, and I want you to stop being such a damn baby about it." She pressed her palms to her temples like she was trying to keep her head from cracking open. "Okay, that was harsh. I apologize. I'm just... I'm getting tired of the handholding." She squeezed the bridge of her nose. "Shit, also harsh. Maybe I need some coffee."

  "I'm not putting another crew in there. I don't have time to train some privates straight out of flight school. I'm not going to explain all of this to some newbies and drag them along behind me toward..." He looked off, through the wall, toward a horizon that stretched on forever. "Wherever I'm going. I'm not doing it."

  Liezl stretched her arms to her sides then brought the forward, zeroing in on Shoji like he was a target. "What if I told you that your new crew isn't a bunch of newbies? What if I told you they had intimate knowledge of Tin Man and you and your missions both past and present?"

  His eyes regained focus and narrowed on her face, shifting the target from him to her, before they widened with sudden realization. "No."

  Liezl jumped, a child in a toy store with a grumpy father not bending to her demands. "Oh, come on."

  "No way. You are not coming with me. You are not qualified even a little bit."

  She stomped her foot, not a child anymore but the parent. "First, I was involved with the development of Tin Man from the very beginning. I know that machine inside and out. Second, you were gone a long time. I spent the last three years training in simulators to take command of Tin Man. Sure, it would have been a largely ceremonial thing, flying Tin Man around the world like a parade float, but so what. Flying is flying, right?"

  Shoji shook his head.

  "Third, I'm the Senior Civilian Consultant for the EDI. The entire EDI. For the whole planet. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I'm willing to bet I outrank you. So, buckle up, buttercup."

  Despite all of his instincts, Shoji couldn't help but crack a smile.

  All it took was a crack for Liezl to squeeze through. She extended her hand for him to shake. "I'm your new copilot."

  He looked at her hand, hanging there. Part of him wanted to slap it away. Part of him wanted to grab it and pull her in for a hug. Part of him didn't care whose hand it was—if he needed a warm body in the copilot's chair to get him off this planet, then so be it.

  And another part of him didn't want anyone sitting in that chair. Because it only belonged to one person.

  "So, me and you," Shoji said, never taking her hand. "That's enough to pilot a parade float."

  Liezl's smile hardened and straightened into a pained expression.

  "Right?" Shoji asked, growing concerned. "Right?"

  "We've got one more. A tech. The best there is. But...you aren't going to like it."

  "No." Shoji didn't unclench his jaw or any other muscles when he spoke. He pushed the words through his teeth, and they dropped dead on the floor of the engineering lab.

  "Can't say I'm keen on the idea myself," Jason Wiggins said. "I don't think I ever got that apology he owes me."

  Liezl dropped her face into her hands. "I tried to warn you."

  "I don't recall that," Wiggins said, "but your instincts were right. I cannot fly with this man. We'll need to find another pilot." He tilted his head and looked appraisingly at Liezl. "You always did have good instincts. Ones I trusted. Remind me again why I fired you as my assistant?"

  Liezl pointed at Wiggins like he was a monkey wearing a top hat. "I recommended him for this," she said to Shoji. "I know better than anyone what it's like being in his proximity for extended periods of time and still I said, ‘Yeah, put him in a metal tube with me while we fly through space.’ If I can do it, you can do it."

  "But why?" Shoji flicked the top hat off to reveal that without it, Wiggins was just a monkey.

  Liezl shrugged. The words seemed to cause her great physical pain as she spoke to them. "Because he's the best. He personally designed a lot of the systems on which Tin Man is based. Yeah, Kinsey improved on them, but—"

  The shadow crawled across Shoji's face again. He slashed his hand through the air, trying to cut the argument in half. "Fine. I get it. He's in. As long as he doesn't talk to me."

  Shoji marched off toward the hangar.

  "This is going to be great," Liezl said to herself.

  Wiggins looked up from his phone, which had his undivided attention for the past minute. "Sorry, what? It's settled then? Who's the new pilot? Is it me?"

  Liezl groaned and followed Shoji.

  Later in the afternoon, after the stage had been disassembled and the crowd dispersed, Shoji and his new crew boarded Tin Man. Shoji disassociated himself from the moment, from the implications, from the waste of time it seemed to be. He focused on the feeling instead.

  Of sitting in the chair.

  Of slipping his hands in the control gauntlets.

  The rumble of the engines as they came to life.

  The feeling of being intertwined, the code in his arm interfacing with the Tin Man's programming.

  The voices over the comms sounded far away. Liezl, Wiggins, flight control officers from somewhere on base. Some part of him registered what they said, going through the pre-flight motions.

  His body took over. Blissfully free from the clutter of his mind, acting on its own.

  They launched into the air. He couldn't tell if it was the scream of the engines, if Liezl or Wiggins were screaming, or if he was screaming, but it was a joyful sound. A release of tension that knotted itself in the core of his chest. One he hadn't allowed himself to acknowledge.

  Liezl called out her status updates. Wiggins reported the readings from the engine room. Flight Control called out patterns and maneuvers.

  Shoji didn't realize he was being tested. It wouldn't have changed the experience if he had. He always flew like this—free from constraint, with his whole body, his mind taking a backseat.

  When they landed, the muscles in Shoji's cheeks ached. Liezl mirrored his excitement back at him. That made the ache turn into a burn, and Shoji's mouth straightened. The shame of joy tied his insides back into a knot.

  "I guess we're ready then," Liezl said. "Mission launch is tomorrow. We're going to the moon."

  3

  Mission launch lacked the fanfare of Shoji's reinstatement. The welcoming home of a hero was an event everyone could throw their full weight behind, an opportunity for unity. No place or need for dissent.

  The mission didn't have the same support. The commanders seemed pretty evenly divided, from what Liezl said. Even those who supported it saw it as an unfortunate necessity. Those who opposed did so with intensity. The mission, even though it was a diplomatic one, had not been made public.

  Public sentiment was more in line with the opposing commanders. The fear was that the intensity of public fervor that would form if they knew would make the dissenting commanders look like they were just shrugging their shoulders.

  Shoji didn't care one way or the other. He understood the situation as much as he needed to in order to complete his mission. If that was what he needed to do to get back to his people, that's what he would do. He had to believe this wasn't a waste of his time.

  It was the only thing keeping him from flying Tin Man into the side of a mountain.

  "Tin Man, you are clear for launch."

  "Roger that, Control." Liezl’s excitement made the cockpit feel like the backstage of a magic show where she was about to be let in on the trick. "Beginning countdown." She caught Shoji's narrowed eyes. "Sorry. Were you supposed to say that part? Did you want to? Should I be quiet?"

  Shoji shook his head. Liezl's charm always confused him. On paper, she should have been as sharp a thorn in his side as ever there was. She was loud, chittered like a chipmunk, abrasive. Even when he first met her and she was a brown-nosing gopher, there was something about her that kept Shoji from hating her like he should have. Something that made him like her. Something that, even now, made him smile.

  He swept his hand, motioning for her to take the floor.

  She wiggled in her chair.

  Liezl ran through the motions. Fired the engines. Got the all-clear from Wiggins. Activated launch procedures. And they were away.

  Tin Man shot straight up. Within seconds, they had punched through the cloud cover, and the light blue sky grew darker until it was black. Earth faded like a dream behind them.

  "Set our course," Shoji said.

  "Roger that," Liezl responded. "Course set."

  For an instant, things felt as they should feel. Shoji slipped back three years ago. Liezl's childish wonder hardened to objective analysis, a razor-sharp understanding of the way the universe works, and a complete lack of social awareness. Shoji smiled again, wide and honest, and his vision blurred with tears.

  But he realized the moment was a memory. The tears burned up before they could spill over, and his smile pulled flat and sharp.

  Liezl sensed the shift. She straightened in her chair, cleared her throat of joy. "Arriving at our destination in five minutes."

  "Radio the Lunar Station," Shoji said. "Tell them we're inbound."

  Liezl opened a comm channel and relayed the message, beginning the administrative process that would dictate their visit. The voice on the other end was another shot of the past in Shoji's ear. It sent him spiraling backward.

  He didn't come back to the present until Tin Man was making its final approach.

  Shoji hadn't spent much time on the moon, certainly not enough to claim any familiarity with the place, but he felt safe in saying that it had changed. It was...populated.

  The surface looked like a city in the American Midwest. Short buildings spread outward, like a New York City block laid unstacked and end to end. The structures were all copies of each other, gray squares, mostly the same size save for a few large ones that must have been community or administrative centers.

  Tin Man touched down at the edge of the settlement.

  Shoji stared through the viewport at the figures approaching. His body reacted, his hands reaching for the weapon controls. His mind told him to stop. No, not his mind. Liezl.

  "Commander." Her voice was sharp and quick. It cut the strings moving his hands.

  He looked at her, his eyes far away.

  "Are you okay? You ready for this?" He sharp voice melted with concern.

  Shoji could only nod.

  They left the cockpit and descended until they reached the airlock in Tin Man's foot. Wiggins was waiting.

  Shoji gestured to the sidearm on Wiggins's hip. "You aren't taking that."

  Wiggins groaned like a teenager. "Seriously?"

  Liezl slapped the back of Wiggins's helmet. "This is a diplomatic mission."

  "I'm being pragmatic. One hundred percent of our interactions with these people so far have been them trying to annihilate us. Also, if you recall, there was that time they sent a hit squad after me."

  "Noted," Shoji said. He removed the sidearm and stored it in a locker in the wall. The crew secured their helmets. The hiss as they sealed made Shoji jump.

  Liezl opened the airlock.

  As they stepped outside, Shoji resisted the feeling that he was stepping onto the battlefield.

  A group of three approached them. One, craggy skin a shade of deep blue, stood front and center. The other two, both gray with veins of green, walked a step behind.

  "Welcome," the blue one said. "On behalf of the Vhast, it is an honor."

  It wasn't the sight of the Vhast, his former enemies, that made Shoji freeze; he knew what was waiting for him on the moon. It was what they did next.

  They bowed to him.

  Grand Admiral Kyle didn't sound like he was joking. He wasn't known for joking. He was a buttoned-up military man through and through. And yet, there was no way he could be telling the truth.