“Are you coming with us?” Kim stopped in front of him. Four shuttles were visible through the porthole in the door, two with their hatches open.

  “Nobody else would fit in your shuttle,” he said dryly, waving to the one that didn’t match the others—its hull was painted white with a furniture-delivery logo on the side. “It’s unfortunate that you’re not wearing armor sturdier than that galaxy suit. The odds of you completing your mission without having your foot stepped on by a crusher must be astronomically against you.”

  “I’m willing to risk my feet for a friend.”

  “I feel compelled to point out that it’s unlikely that they need you along. I know you have more combat prowess than the average bacteriologist, but...” He spread one of his gauntleted hands.

  “Is there a reason you don’t want me to go?” Kim trusted him with her life, but she knew he didn’t care about Qin or her sisters or the crushers. More than that, he had butted heads with Asger several times, and Tristan had sabotaged his ship once. If she weren’t on the shuttle, would he consider tipping off the Kingdom that they were coming?

  No, she decided before he spoke. For good or ill, if he wanted the knights dead, he would challenge them face to face to a battle. Much as he’d done with Jorg.

  “I don’t want you to be a casualty of a rescue mission gone wrong,” he said quietly.

  “Oh.” She felt bad for having thought anything nefarious of his intentions. “Thank you. We did get an inside tip.”

  “You’re welcome to stay on my ship while the others go.”

  “I can’t. Casmir is my friend, and…” Kim shrugged, feeling the weight of the extensive first-aid kit slung over her shoulder. “I have the bandages.”

  “I understand why you don’t want to be associated with my plan, but I believe they won’t see it coming and that it has a better chance of success. I’ve also prepped a shuttle and will go out after yours.” He tilted his head toward the bay door.

  “Your plan to kidnap Finn? Or to assassinate Jager?”

  “It depends on whom I run into at the castle,” he said dryly.

  She frowned at him.

  “Since Casmir is in danger of being executed, I will prioritize the kidnapping,” Rache said more seriously. “Jager, I will deal with later. If he comes for the handoff, to trade Casmir for Finn, I might get my chance to take him out in person.”

  “You’re not supposed to get dreamy eyed when you talk of assassinating people.”

  “I’m wearing a mask. You can’t tell if my eyes are dreamy.”

  “Yeah, I can.” Kim sighed, still finding this subject disturbing—still disturbed with herself for being able to care about a man who casually planned assassinations. “Don’t get yourself killed, please. I can’t imagine getting to Finn in his own castle will be that easy.”

  “No. It won’t be.”

  Kim shook her head, worried Rache’s self-appointed mission would be even more dangerous than her rescue attempt. “I hope you live.”

  “Thank you. I will aspire to do so.”

  “Truly?” She’d always gotten the feeling he didn’t expect to survive his showdown with Jager, in whatever form it ended up taking.

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rache lifted his hand toward her face, making her think of the time they’d kissed, but two dark figures walked across the shuttle bay and toward the door, and he lowered it. Two crushers.

  The door slid open, and Kim stepped back out of the way in case they had been sent on some last-minute errand. Though she couldn’t imagine what. It wasn’t as if they needed to use the lavatory before they left.

  “Greetings, Kim Sato.” That sounded like Zee. After the greeting, he faced Rache. “Captain Tenebris Rache. I am Zee, the original crusher programmed to protect Kim Sato and Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “Yes,” Rache said. “We’ve met. Numerous times.”

  “This is the twenty-seventh crusher created on the assembly line at Stardust Palace.” Zee pointed to the identical tarry-black figure next to him. “Casmir Dabrowski suggested his name might be Amit, which means friend or colleague.”

  “Uhm.” Rache looked to Kim. For help?

  She could only spread her arms since she didn’t know what this was about either.

  “I am a Z-6000,” the crusher said, “programmed to protect Tenebris Rache. I am Amit.”

  With that mask on, it was hard to tell if Rache was stunned, but the way he leaned back did hint of surprise.

  “Before we left System Stymphalia,” Zee said, “Casmir Dabrowski programmed Amit to work for you. You are a nefarious villain, as evinced by the numerous Kingdom dramas in which you play the role of antagonist, and a loathed criminal of the Kingdom, but Casmir Dabrowski said he promised to give you a crusher.”

  “I will not kill human beings,” Amit said, “but I will protect Tenebris Rache and do non-nefarious tasks for him.”

  Kim brought her fingers to her lips to pinch them to keep from grinning.

  “Huh,” Rache finally said. “He actually made me one.”

  Did his voice sound the tiniest bit gruff, as a cover to hide emotion? Kim wished she were better at reading people. She liked to think that Rache had come to care about Casmir, but she wasn’t positive of that.

  “Wait out here with me, Amit.” Rache pointed to the deck next to him. “We’re going on the next shuttle.”

  The crusher stood in the indicated spot.

  “It is time to leave, Kim Sato,” Zee told her. “We must retrieve Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “I’m ready.” She lifted a hand toward Rache, thoughts of kisses disappearing with the crusher audience present. But she couldn’t resist a long look over her shoulder as she walked toward their shuttle, wondering if he would get himself killed trying to sneak into the castle to kidnap Finn.

  He also lifted a hand, holding it up until she turned away and the door closed.

  “I should not have allowed Casmir Dabrowski to be taken prisoner without me,” Zee told Kim as they walked toward the open hatch.

  “He didn’t have any choice.”

  “He has not been able to answer communications to his chip. The inferior android Tork is also gone from this system. He returned with Princess Nalini’s fleet to System Stymphalia.”

  “I know. My mother did too.”

  “Then you understand this gap.”

  “Gap?”

  “The words I have are inadequate to explain it.” Zee stopped at the nose of the shuttle. “I have had only the other crushers to communicate with since the inferior android Tork and my creator Casmir Dabrowski have been gone. My conversations with them are not sufficiently engaging.”

  “What you’re saying is that you miss Tork and Casmir.”

  “I believe this is correct. But that is an emotion, is it not? Crushers are not programmed to have emotions. I miss intellectual stimulation. Casmir Dabrowski said the other crushers would develop personalities and grow more interesting with time, but we have the same foundational programming, which means I know everything they know. I know what they will say before they say it.”

  “No value added from your dialogues, huh?” Kim found the conversation surreal, more because Zee was turning her into his confidante than because she couldn’t believe he could develop emotions, or something like them. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be his confidante—she still felt a twinge of sadness about losing Reuben and was reluctant to form attachments to the other crushers—but she missed Casmir, too, and the least she could do while he was gone was chat with his crusher.

  “Correct.”

  “I’ve heard raising children is like that. They become interesting later. Sometimes.”

  “How much later?”

  “I had a teacher call me fascinating when I was five, but my mother didn’t start talking to me about her research until… Well, she still doesn’t discuss it much with me. We work in different fields.”

  “So you are not yet interesting to your mother?”

  Kim smiled faintly. “Possibly true.”

  Zee looked toward the open hatch, the rows of crushers visible inside. “Distressing.”

  “If you find someone you enjoy spending time with and who is interesting, you should try to keep them around.” Kim kept herself from looking back at the door again, but she didn’t miss the fact that she wasn’t taking her own advice. But Rache wasn’t a pet. She couldn’t leash him up and keep him close. Even if the universe would be safer for all that way.

  “Yes. I have made a mistake, Kim Sato.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “Distressing,” he repeated and headed inside.

  “Yes.”

  5

  Between all the crushers and Qin’s sisters, the shuttle was packed.

  Asger sat in a pod next to Kim, wishing she hadn’t come along. Aside from the nearly indestructible crushers, she was the only one not in combat armor. She wore a galaxy suit with an attached oxygen tank, in case the shuttle was damaged and they lost environmental controls, and she’d borrowed a rifle from Rache, but she seemed small and vulnerable in the warrior-filled craft.

  They’d already taken off from the Fedallah, so it was too late to ask her if she wanted to stay behind, but Asger asked, “Are you sure about this?” anyway. If they had to, they might have time to take the shuttle back so she could stay on the ship. “You don’t have to come along.”

  Kim gazed toward the porthole instead of looking at him. “Yes, I do. As I told Rache, Casmir’s my best friend.”

  Rache had asked her not to go too? Asger didn’t know how he felt about agreeing with the man on something. Not good.

  “If something happens,” Kim added quietly, “I need to be there for him.”

  Asger kept himself from saying that something had already happened. A lot of somethings. That was why they were stuck on a rescue mission.

  “I understand,” was what he said instead. And he did. If someone had told him to stay behind, he wouldn’t have done it. “I just have a bad feeling about this.” What if she ended up sacrificing herself for nothing? “I wish we’d been able to get another shuttle to split our team between.”

  Then they could have gone after two out of the three shuttles that had been launched from the Starhawk. Their odds of getting the right one would have been better.

  “Our exit plan would be less believable with two shuttles.”

  “True.” Asger glanced over his shoulder, though he couldn’t see the explosives and spare parts and debris they’d loaded into the rear of the craft, ready to be deployed at a touch from the pilot’s pod.

  The plan was to get Casmir and then fake a crash on the planet—it probably wouldn’t be hard to fake that crash since ships from Odin’s planetary defenses would likely be pursuing them by then. Ideally, they would land with enough time to disappear from the supposed crash site. Casmir and Kim could get their families and find a way out of the system until things settled down—or forever—and Asger and his father… They hadn’t sat down yet to discuss what they would do after freeing Casmir. In all likelihood, they’d made their choices weeks ago and would also have to flee the system.

  Asger tried not to feel bleak at the prospect of getting a job in station security at Stardust Palace. Maybe Tristan and Princess Nalini needed a bodyguard.

  “The Starhawk shuttle on course to the lunar station is twenty minutes ahead of us,” Asger’s father said from the pilot’s pod. “I’ve put in a fake order for supplies to the station in case someone checks on us, and I’m setting a course to bring us adjacent to them. They shouldn’t think we intend to intercept them until it’s too late for them to do anything. We have no slydar for this shuttle, unfortunately.”

  Asger closed his eyes, trying to find calm before the action started. Behind him, the crushers were mute. But behind them, Qin and her sisters chatted quietly on topics that ranged from favorite weapons, to whether fur removal hurt, to Qin’s decision to keep her claws painted with colorful nail polish to make people less fearful of her.

  Asger hadn’t realized that was the reason she did it. He’d assumed she liked to decorate them because she had a whimsical personality.

  “I’m reading two life signs inside.” Tristan sat in the co-pilot’s pod, manning the scanners.

  “That’s it?” Asger’s father asked. “Casmir and a pilot? If this was the right shuttle, I would expect there to be guards.”

  “Guards in combat armor wouldn’t register on the scanners,” Tristan said. “And if Kim’s programmer friend is right, and they want us to believe this is a supply shuttle, not a prison transport down to the planet, they would try to hide that they’ve got a lot of extra guards along.”

  “True.”

  “The other two shuttles that launched from the Starhawk are heading directly down to the planet, on track for Zamek City.”

  “We may be making a mistake. Trying to be too clever.” Asger gripped the armrest inside his pod, accidentally squeezing with his strength-enhancing gauntlet so that it creaked. He forced himself to loosen the hold.

  “Lieutenant Grunburg has no reason to betray us or Casmir,” Kim said.

  Asger thought she sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as them. “But Royal Intelligence could have anticipated that we would have a spy or someone capable of hacking into their computers and setting him up.”

  His father glanced back at him. “Do you want to abort? There may still be time to catch the shuttles with the escorts, but we’ll have a hard time dealing with those escorts. We’ve got decent firepower, but our real advantage will be if we can get close enough to board.” He flicked a finger back toward the rows of crushers and the herd—no, pride of Qins.

  Asger opened his mouth to answer, but Tristan blurted, “Look!” and pointed at the panel.

  “The shuttle we’re following is changing course,” Asger’s father said. “Turning for the planet.”

  “Maybe it is delivering Casmir somewhere,” Tristan said.

  “Or it noticed us getting close to it, and the pilot got worried.”

  “If that were true, it would be heading back to its ship.”

  “Maybe.” Asger’s father tapped his hands across the control panel. “It’s now or never. I’m going to try to catch it before it drops into the atmosphere.”

  Asger’s pod tightened around him as their shuttle banked hard and flew downward, one of Odin’s oceans visible far, far below. The other shuttle was visible as well, speeding down toward the planet below them.

  “I still can’t get in touch with Casmir,” Kim murmured.

  Asger glanced at her.

  “If he’s been taken out of the brig that was blocking him from accessing any networks, he should be able to do so now. Unless they stunned him.” She lowered her voice. “Or worse.”

  “We’ll find out soon,” Asger said.

  His father opened fire at the shuttle ahead of them.

  “Nice,” he purred. “This thing has upgraded weapons.”

  Asger would expect nothing less from a craft that Rache owned.

  “They’re firing back,” Tristan warned, reading the scanner display. “And comming for help.”

  “Should be twenty minutes before any other ships can get to us,” Asger’s father said. “I was hoping for an even bigger gap, but the pilot turned away from his flight path too soon. We’re gaining on them. If I can bring us alongside them, they won’t be able to fire, and we can board.”

  Usually, Asger’s stomach was ironclad when it came to fluctuations in gravity and gyrations in space, but even he felt twinges of nausea as they sped toward the planet—and closer to the shuttle—with his father doing what maneuvering he could to try to avoid the weapons fire.

  Orange light flashed on the display as a faint jolt rocked the shuttle.

  “Good shielding too,” his father said.

  “Us or them?” Asger asked.

  “Us.”

  “Eight fighter ships from one of the orbital defense stations are on an intercept course,” Tristan said. “And the Starhawk is veering in this direction too.”

  “They won’t follow us into the atmosphere,” Asger said, hoping he was right.

  “We’ll get to this shuttle before anyone else gets here,” Asger’s father said as the other craft grew larger on the display. “But everyone is going to have to board and get Casmir out of there quickly.”

  “We are prepared,” Zee’s voice came from the back. “We are very quick.”

  “So are we,” one of Qin’s sisters called.

  Another blast lit up the cabin with intense orange, but again, the shuttle only shuddered slightly. For once, Asger was thankful that Rache was a paranoid bastard with the funds to armor his spacecraft like bank vaults.

  As the Kingdom shuttle grew larger and larger on their display against the backdrop of the ocean far below, Asger tapped his chest control, and his helmet unfurled from the back of his armor and locked over his head. He gripped his pertundo and rifle, eager to spring into action.

  “The pilot’s banking,” Tristan warned. “They’re trying to get away from us.”

  “I see it.” Asger’s father did his best to stay close, then opened the comm. “We have you outgunned, Kingdom shuttle. Hold a steady course and prepare to be boarded, or we’ll blow you out of the sky.”

  Silence answered him. Asger’s father fired again, a glancing blow instead of a direct hit, though they were close enough now that to miss hitting the shuttle dead-on had to have been intentional.

  Tristan looked over at him and muted the comm. “You’re bluffing, right, sir? It’s one thing to rescue Casmir, but if we kill Kingdom soldiers…”

  “I’m bluffing, but they don’t need to know that.”

  “Wish we had a maglocker,” his father muttered and reached for the weapons console again.

  “We surrender, pirates,” a voice growled over the comm. “But your actions have marked you as dead men. No fewer than twenty ships are on the way to annihilate you.”

  “Fly straight and prepare to be boarded,” Asger’s father ordered.