“You said before that I’m special, and I can do things you haven’t seen before. Maybe it won’t take me that long.”

  “Knowing you, probably not. I hesitated to mention it because just practicing can be dangerous. You are playing with the fabric of the universe, after all. It’s definitely not safe to experiment on board. The smallest mistake could create a tear in spacetime that’ll rip Head Case in half.”

  “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” He glanced down at the construct again. “Honestly, I’m still in disbelief that what you did works at all.”

  “So am I. Not that I had anything to lose in trying. I can’t even describe how much it hurt. Only the thought of saving Matt kept me going.”

  “Not the thought of saving me?”

  I laughed. “I knew you could take care of yourself. Part of me had a feeling you’d turn up sooner or later.”

  “I do have a knack for getting out of tough situations. So do you. And now you’re super-powered.”

  “Hardly. My restore isn’t like yours. I didn’t try to survive in a vacuum, but I’m not sure I could. And every time I use up the chaos energy, the sigil sickness hits me and I run the risk of being paralyzed for good, calm or no calm.”

  “But the brain tumor’s gone, I bet.”

  “It is. And I’m thankful for that. But I’m not Galaxy Man or anything close.”

  Keep laughed. “Who told you about Galaxy Man?”

  “Justus. He’s a big fan.”

  “Maybe I’ll get in his good graces with that.”

  “Are you a fan too?”

  “Me? Not a chance. But I can fake it. Badabing badaboom. How long to get to Kirillia?”

  “A little over five days. Too long. We’ve got the Mustang. Maybe we could transit ahead?”

  “Sorry, kid. I don’t know the coordinates to Kirillia. And I’m pretty much spent anyway. It’ll take me that long to get back to full strength.”

  “Well, before you sleep it off, there’s one more thing we need to talk about.”

  “Sure. What's that?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me the inside of Head Case’s hull is covered in sigils and there’s a sigibellum on board?”

  Keep didn’t miss a beat. “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “We had the Star of Caprum and a sigibellum. The same combination Dominator has now, and Lyke is using it to transit across the Spiral. How the hell is that not important?”

  “Because the sigibellum doesn’t work.”

  “You mean the power problem? We already experienced that. And I couldn’t get the lid off for Meg and Leo to fix it.”

  Keep stared at me. “You what?”

  “Leo found the sigils on the hull, so I figured there had to be a sigibellum on board, and the only place I could think of that it might be hiding was under Alter’s sand. Which is where I found it. And tried to use it. And yes, nearly blew up the ship and killed myself and everyone on board in the process. You’re lucky our new reactor has a safety built-in. I’m sure the connector to the Star didn’t.”

  “I’m lucky?” Keep said. “I wasn’t here. You’re the lucky one.”

  “Why would you leave a booby-trapped sigibellum sitting around like that and not tell anyone?” I snapped.

  “Because I didn’t expect you to A. find it and B. be dumb enough to try to use it with zero training or experience whatsoever.”

  “Well, I thought you were dead, so who would train me on it? If you had at least mentioned in passing that we had it and warned me that it didn’t work and that I shouldn’t try to use it, my near death experience would have never happened.”

  “The point is—”

  “Enough secrets, Avelus,” I shouted, getting fed up. “What else haven’t you told me that I might need to know? Another secret base? Some long lost jilted lover who’s going to try to assassinate you? That you’re actually Sucaath in disguise?”

  “No, no, and no,” he replied, remaining completely calm despite my outburst. “But there is something else about the ship I guess it might be helpful to know.”

  “I knew it! What?”

  “Did you find a loose connector during any of your spacewalks to the back of the neck?”

  “Yeah, Druck found it on our first repair job together. He plugged it in, why?”

  Keep smiled. “You’re going to love what that does.”

  “What does it do?”

  “I can’t tell you, kid. You need to try it for yourself.”

  “Oh, so now it’s okay for me to play around with things I don’t fully understand?”

  “Bingo. Because this one won’t kill you. Are you familiar with the Konami code?”

  “Of course. I’d have to turn in my geek card if I wasn’t.”

  “Next time we’re out of hyperspace, put her on autopilot and enter the code with the stick. You’ll get a new option in the menu.”

  For as annoyed as I felt, I couldn’t help smiling in response to the Easter egg. “Fine. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I can think of right now.”

  “Right now? That isn’t very inspiring.”

  “I’m a thousand years old, kid. I can’t remember everything off the top of my head.”

  “I’ll accept that for now. Why doesn’t the sigibellum work? What’s wrong with it? And how did you even get one in the first place?”

  “Demitrus has all kinds of garbage on it, including an occasional piece of a sigiltech ship. Since most people don’t even know what a sigibellum is, they didn’t have much interest in it. I set the Acheon looking for one on the off chance they might find it, and lo and behold they did. Along with enough catalyst to build Head Case’s hull.”

  “Wait. The entire hull is made of catalyst?”

  “Yessiree, Bob. Why do you think it looks like it’s been through a war and left to rot for a few hundred years? Because it has.”

  “And you never told me that either.”

  “Nope. I had the sigils painted over on purpose. Look, kid, right now the sigibellum doesn’t work. But if we can get the piece we need to make it operational, we’ll have an incredible shot to take Sedaya completely by surprise. I imagine Lyke is already arrogant as hell with Dominator. I’d love to cut her down to size.”

  “What’s the piece we need?” I asked.

  “A crystal.”

  “Kyber crystal?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s what helps power lightsabers, the color of the crystal determines the color of the—”

  “Are you seriously going there again right now?”

  “What? You just said we need a crystal to power our magic starship. The parallel is undeniable.”

  “Except one is real and the other isn’t.”

  “Well, what does your crystal look like?”

  “It looks like a crystal. Clear, with a bunch of facets. It acts sort of like an amplifier for the user’s action. The Acheon found the sigibellum but someone else got to the crystal first, and they aren’t exactly easy to come by.”

  “Okay, so we need to add finding a kyber crystal to the to-do list.”

  “It’s not a kyber crystal.”

  “So what is it called?”

  “A zouchem crystal.”

  “That doesn’t sound like kyber at all.”

  “Nope.”

  “Where do we find one?”

  “If I knew that, I would have picked one up some time over the last twenty years. The zouchem crystals were human cultivated, and most of them were destroyed at the end of the war, along with the knowledge of how to make them. What exists in the universe is all there will ever be.”

  “So the best bet would be to find a sigilship graveyard.”

  “Most likely. Too bad we don’t know where to find one.”

  “Yet,” I said. “We don’t know…yet.”

  Keep nodded. “I missed your positive attitude.”

  “It hasn’t always been so positive.”

  “In my recollection, it pretty much has. Anyway, one thing at a time, right? First we save Sherlock and the others, and then we can worry about chasing down our macguffins.”

  “Agreed.” I grabbed my shirt and pulled it back on. “Which reminds me. I’m hungry.”

  “How did that remind you that you’re hungry?”

  “You said McMuffin.”

  “No, I said macgu…” he trailed off when I smirked at him. “Okay, you got me, kid. Funny. Really. I’m going to hit the sack.”

  “I’ll be around if you think of any other secrets you’d like to share.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Goodnight, Bennie.”

  “Goodnight, Keep.”

  He ambled out of the conference room while I zipped my hoodie, my smile lingering. This was the best day I’d had in a while.

  CHAPTER 3

  I was in the middle of my egg and cheese on an english muffin when Ixitat’s legs appeared in the doorway to the kitchen like something out of a horror film, causing me to flinch and nearly choke. She entered almost silently, low on her limbs and slightly sideways to fit through the doorway. Nearly as long as I was tall, her horizontal layout left her back half in the hallway.

  “That’s twice now,” I said, exhaling. “I’m not kidding about the bell.”

  “Sorryssss,” she said.

  “I hope you aren’t here because you’re hungry. We won’t have a shot at live food for a few days at least.”

  “Eatsss once…per monthsss,” she forced out, needing to pause to gather more air in between. It took a lot of effort for her to speak English. “Needssss ssspacesss.”

  “You need more space?” I said. She bobbed her head in affirmation. She had been trapped inside a tiny cage on Windfall Station. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to be squeezed into one of the bedrooms, relatively small compared to her personal envelope. “I have an idea. Give me a few minutes to finish this, okay?”

  “Yessss. Thankssss.”

  “Of course. I need to learn more about your kind. I never got to x in the onboard ALF compendium.”

  She clacked in laughter. “Needsss to…learnsss more…aboutsss Earthiansss,” she admitted. It took her so long to say I had bitten off and chewed another bite of the muffin.

  “We aren’t much different from any other humans out here,” I said. “Maybe a little more awestruck by everything.”

  “Kindsss to…Ixitatssss.”

  “Let me warn you. That’s not particularly an Earthian trait. You resemble a creature we have on Earth that a lot of people fear because of how it looks. I personally think you look awesome.”

  “Thankssss.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Hey, Ixi,” Justus said from the hallway. “Would you mind moving your arachnid ass out of the doorway?”

  Ixitat clacked in laughter again and backed out of the kitchen.

  “Thanks,” Justus added, patting the side of her head as he slipped in past her. “Hey, Captain.”

  “Thank you for not making a scene with Keep during the all-hands,” I said as he bypassed me to use Asshole.

  “I have to admit, it wasn’t easy,” he replied, pulling out a plate and sticking it in the assembler. “Cinnamon bun please, Asshole.”

  “One ooey gooey cinnamon bun dripping in frosting and butter coming right up, ya’ filthy animal!” Asshole replied.

  "Huh?" I turned to look at the machine. “I didn’t program it to say that.”

  “Maybe Leo’s bored now that he’s done with the reactor,” Justus suggested.

  I took another bit of my muffin while he collected his snack and sat at the table with me. The cinnamon bun looked exactly like Asshole had described. “Man, that smells good.”

  “Yuckssss,” Ixitat said, repositioned at the doorway.

  “Not to start any trouble, Captain,” Justus said. “But how do we know we can trust Keep? How do you even know it’s him and not Blorb again?”

  “I know he’s not Blorb because he knows things Blorb couldn’t know. An Aleal can take on a person’s appearance, personality, and skills, but they don’t get the person’s memories. According to Alter, that’s a different part of the brain. And I trust him because he’s saved my life a few times already. I told you on Omega, I know he can be shady, but he’s never given me a reason not to trust him.”

  “It just seems so coincidental for him to turn up out of nowhere like that. And that he found you so easily when he never made contact with Her Grace in all this time.”

  “I can’t argue that his timing is interesting, but I think we’d both think that no matter when he showed up. And he’s done this to me a couple of times before already, so it’s not a total surprise. I can’t answer as to why he never found Jacinda. Maybe he wasn’t looking as hard as he claims. That part does seem a little sketchy to me.”

  “Ah, Bennie. You’re breaking my heart,” Keep said, passing by Ixy's head as he came through the door, the rest of body out in the hallway. His eyes landed on Justus. “I’m happy as hell to know that Jack’s still alive. You have no idea.”

  “No, I don’t,” Justus admitted, glaring back at Keep. “Since you never bothered to get in touch.”

  “I thought you were going to bed?” I said as Keep started setting up Asshole.

  “I am,” he replied. “But I realized I was famished. “Asshole, my usual.”

  “You got it, Mr. Keep. Double cheeseburger, triple fries heavy on the ketchup coming right up.”

  Keep turned to face Justus. “It’s a big universe, pal. And Jack’s not using her real name or anything that I could trace back to her. Plus, I spent a lot of time on Earth looking for help to deal with Sedaya.”

  “So you ran away,” Justus said.

  “Order up!” Asshole announced. Keep pulled out his food and sat opposite Justus. The combination of smells from their food was making me hungry again. Having almost finished the egg and cheese, I had already promised Ixitat I would take care of her when I was done eating. No time for seconds right now.

  “You can call it what you want,” Keep said, grabbing a few fries. “You can’t guilt me into feeling sorry I haven’t seen her in so long. I regret that, but I think it worked out for the best. Sedaya never stopped keeping an eye on me, and I would have led him right to her.” He shoved the fries into his mouth, chewing quickly.

  “You’re a smart guy. I’m sure you could have sent a message through the dex or something.”

  “Probably, but what good would that do? I think she needed more from me than a note if I were around at all. Without me? I bet she used my absence to make herself stronger. Without me to rely on, she had to learn to fend for herself.” He downed a few more fries and picked up the burger, ready to take a bite.

  “Yeah, that worked out great for her.”

  “Didn’t it? It seems she’s picked up a militia, a few ships, and the ability to nip at Sedaya’s heels while she builds up her forces. That’s pretty impressive.” A large bite of the burger, which he chewed and swallowed like it was still alive and trying to escape.

  “It is,” Justus admitted. “But you don’t know the path she had to take to get there. The things she had to do. The things she had to sacrifice. Did you know she spent two years on the streets?”

  Keep’s face tightened. “No.”

  “And three years on a pleasure barge?”

  He glanced down at his food, appetite apparently fading fast. “As a servant?”

  “As a prostitute,” Justus growled. “She only got out because one of her clients was a mercenary captain with his own ship, and he decided he wanted her all to himself. That’s where we met.”

  “What was the name of the mercenary ship?” I asked.

  Justus smiled when he looked at me. “Radiance.”

  I nodded. I had a feeling she had seized the ship at some point, and probably killed its original captain.

  “Life can be hard,” Keep said, the wind out of his sails. “And rarely fair.”

  “It wouldn’t have been as hard if you were there for her. If you had stopped Sedaya from taking Caprum in the first place, instead of running off with the Star.”

  “There was nothing I could do. I almost died.”

  “You just teleported halfway across the Spiral after surviving hours in space unprotected, and you expect me to believe that?”

  Keep’s shoulders slumped. “You don’t know as much as you think you do.”

  “So fill me in. I’ve got time.”

  Keep glared at Justus before glancing at me. “I’m not hungry anymore.” He picked up his food as he stood. “I don’t owe you anything,” he said, moving to drop it in the recycler before looking back at Justus. “You weren’t there. And you’ll never understand. Maybe she won’t either. That’s something I have to live with. I’ll add it to the pile.” He started turning to leave before pausing again. “Oh, and Galaxy Man has to be the worst superhero ever created. Even Superman has a weakness.” He turned and stormed from the room, leaving both of us speechless.

  “Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen anyone get under his skin,” I said a few seconds later.

  “He doesn’t care about Her Grace. He doesn’t care about anyone.”

  “I don’t believe that. He wouldn’t have reacted that way. You won that round. I don’t know if he’ll be getting much sleep for a while.”

  “Cold comfort,” Justus said. He still had the bulk of his food remaining too, but he stood and tossed it into the recycler. “I lost my appetite too. See you later, Captain.” He left the kitchen.

  I finished the last bite of my meal. “Justus called you Ixi,” I said to Ixitat. “Do you like that nickname?”

  “Finessss,” she replied.

  “Okay, Ixi. Let me give you a tour of Deck Five. I think you’ll find it to your liking.”

  “Yesss.”

  She needed more space, and Deck Five had it, especially since the sigibellum didn’t work and wouldn’t until we found a crystal for it. There was plenty of room for her to build a web or whatever she needed to do, and it would be easy to isolate whatever living things there that she needed to eat in private.

  I had a solution for her, but I wasn’t sure if one existed for Justus and Keep. I could only hope Head Case would be big enough for both of them.