And there were so many crew members. While most of Radiance’s survivors had returned to Atlas for medical treatment, our crew size had increased substantially with the addition of Dryka, Justus, Ki, and Narayan. There were enough of us now that we would need to share the bedrooms, especially Matt and his Captain’s Suite.

  “How are you feeling, Ben?” Sheri asked, weaving through the group toward me.

  “I feel good right now,” I replied, looking at her before sweeping my eyes across the rest of the crew. “I imagine you’re all tired. I appreciate your hard work, and for picking up my slack out there. The last thing I would expect after lazing around all afternoon while you were busting your asses is a gift.” I motioned to the box. “Unless that’s a stink bomb.” The joke landed pretty well. “Seriously, I’m grateful to you all for being here. Whatever you think about me, I—”

  “We love you, silly,” Sheri said, smiling as she reached me.

  “I love you too, sis,” I replied, wrapping my arm around her, my attention moving from her to each and every member of my crew. “Whatever you think about me, I would be nothing without all of you. I know the last few weeks have been hard. And the next few days may be even harder. But there’s no other crew I’d rather go to war with. There are no others I trust more, or have more faith in than all of you. With your help, we’ll take care of business and ensure the safety and security of the Spiral for years to come.”

  The crew didn’t clap or cheer. They stared at me in expectant silence.

  “That’s it,” I said, shrugging as I broke into a sheepish grin. “I’m done.”

  “Your gift, Cap,” Meg pointed out. “We’re waiting for you to open it.”

  I laughed with them. “Right.” I turned to Matt, who held the box up for me. It had a latch in the middle with an empty clasp intended for a lock. I flipped the latch and slowly lifted the lid.

  “The suspense is killing me!” Emerald shouted, lunging at the box and throwing the lid open. Only the hinges prevented it from flipping up and smacking Matt in the chin. “Ta-da!”

  CHAPTER 3

  I stared down into the box, eyes absorbing the object inside. A guitar. That much was obvious from the get-go. It had a headstock, neck, and body, but unlike my acoustic guitar, it also had pickups and a much sleeker profile. The body had a funky shape though, curved at the bottom, angled sharply at the top, as if Matt had merged a Fender Stratocaster with a Gibson Flying V. I couldn’t immediately guess what it was made from. Definitely not wood, it was matte black.

  “This is unbelievable,” I said, reaching into the box and running my hand over the body. Clearly frictionless, my fingertips called it metal, but it wasn’t as cool to the touch as metal would be. “What is it made from?”

  “The bones of your vanquished enemies,” Matt joked in an ominous voice.

  “Ixy’s silk,” Meg answered seriously. “Reconstituted and blended with a small chip from your collator to get the color.”

  “What?” I said, yanking my hand away.

  “It was a tiny chip,” Matt said. “Less than a karat size.”

  “You went into my room to take a piece of the collator?”

  “Well, Shaq did,” Emerald said.

  I glared sideways at him.

  “Guilty,” he said, lowering his head.

  “You have no idea if the protostem is safe to use. And you stole it to make a dye?”

  “We wanted you to have something unique,” Quasar explained. “Gia helped us with the recipe.”

  “It’s fine, Ben,” Matt said. “I tested it out. The sound is unbelievable.”

  “Well, it is gorgeous,” I said, looking it over. “But I can’t exactly carry an amp around with me wherever I go.”

  “You don’t need to,” he countered. “It’s all integrated. The battery has enough charge to last nearly a month with heavy use. This is two thousand years of guitar evolution right here, man. Just give it a try, see if you like it.”

  I stared at the guitar for a few more seconds before lifting my acoustic off my shoulder and handing it to Sheri. I eyed the new instrument cautiously before committing fully, grabbing the piece and sweeping the matching black strap up and over my head and shoulder. It was lighter than any guitar I had ever played, and it felt like it had been made solely for my hands. Because, I realized, it literally had been.

  “What should I play?” I asked.

  “What about Back in Black?” Matt replied.

  I smiled. “Yeah, I guess that’s fitting.” I retrieved the pick from under the strings at the top fret and strummed it once to get a feel for the sound. It resonated loud and clear but in such a way that it was hard to identify as coming from the guitar. I turned the volume down a little before really digging into the song.

  Ten seconds in, I could already sense the flow of chaos energy beneath the notes. Maybe it was the composition of the instrument itself. Maybe it was because receiving the gift had relaxed me, but it barely took any time or effort at all to tap the well and funnel chaos energy to my construct, the amped sound filling the entire hangar. I smiled before cutting the music short. It wouldn’t do to gather too much energy without activating my construct. It would quickly burn me alive.

  “That was awesome,” Sheri said, a huge grin on her face.

  “Totally cotton candy,” Matt joked. “I told you the sound is unbelievable.”

  “I can’t believe the amplitude,” I agreed. “I love it.” Amazed, my gaze swept across everyone in the hangar. “Thank you all. This is an incredible gift.”

  “We couldn’t have you gallivanting around with that clunker,” Matt said, motioning to the acoustic.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that guitar,” I replied.

  “Except it makes you look like a cowpoke, not a badass rock and roll wizard. You wanted to make a statement, remember?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, this completes the look.”

  I smiled as I swung the guitar to my back. “In that case, it’s time to go. Shaq, you’re with me. Matt, let’s get the hell out of here. The rest of you, go get cleaned up and wait for orders.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” a few members of the crew replied.

  “This is going to be so much fun!” Emerald squealed, excitedly clapping her hands and prancing in place. “I’ve got first dibs on the shower. I don’t want to miss any of this. Zar, you’re welcome to join me. We are married after—”

  “Are you still going there?” Quasar replied. “It was only slightly amusing the first time.”

  “It’s still funny to me.” She laughed, trailing off a few seconds later.

  I turned to Matt. “You know what to do.”

  “Aye, Captain. We’ll see you on the other side.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder, turning to the others. “I’ll see you all on the other side.”

  “Just don’t go crushing us by accident or anything,” Sheri said. “This is going to be so weird. I’m terrified and excited at the same time.”

  I squeezed her shoulder before circling the group, leaving them behind and making my way through the open hangar bay and down the ramp. I moved a dozen feet away from Head Case before turning around to look at the ship. It had definitely seen better days. In fact, it looked as if Optimus Prime had gone a few rounds with Iron Mike in his heyday. One of the ears was completely ripped off, along with the ion cannon connected to it. The other ear was dented and scuffed. The ion cannon on the cheek below it was gone, the slightly thicker metal there pitted almost all the way through. Meg and Leo had reinforced it from the inside. One of the huge headlights had been reduced to a mangled mess, and the smaller lights on the opposite side were out of commission.

  “Ugly,” Shaq commented.

  “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” I replied. “She’ll get us where we need to go.”

  “Hope so.”

  I continued staring at the ship, waiting impatiently. The ramp retracted with a grating whine, the hangar doors rumbling closed with a ominous moan as if they might fall off their track at any moment. The anti-gravity plates activated, lifting the ship a foot off the soft sediment. Matt retracted the landing skids, or at least tried to. One of them refused to budge, so he re-extended the others to match it. A soft humming sound, almost like Shaq’s purr, seemed to envelop the ship.

  With the scaler functional again, it shrank to the size of a golf ball hovering in front of Shaq and me. I put out my hand, palm open, and Matt guided the ship into it. I brought the hand up to my face and looked in, barely able to make out the interior of the flight deck through the forward transparency. Knowing what I must look like to them, I could barely discern the people I knew were inside. As carefully as possible, I lowered my hand to my jacket pocket and gently settled the ship inside.

  “Just like Pokemon,” I said to Shaq before swinging my new guitar back around to the front. I started playing again, sticking to Back In Black. Like the first time, I found the chaos energy easier to connect with and channel than before, thinking the protostem had a lot to do with it.

  Channeling the energy through my construct, I opened a new portal and confidently stepped through. Like before, I was hit with an immediate sense of elation and raw pleasure that threatened to steal my motivation to continue on to the opening on the other side. I sensed an invisible power reaching toward me, followed by pressure as if someone tried to grab the guitar. Gripping it more tightly, I kept my focus on David. He had been in the enemy’s hands long enough. He needed help, and one way or another, he was going to get it.

  It hurt emotionally to exit the portal, intense sadness followed by sudden anger at being forced to leave the void behind. I stopped playing when my feet touched down on the cold metal in the corner of the hangar of the Royal Sentry Prestige, which was pregnant with more ships than I expected. Considering it was on recon duty in the Outworlds, near Gloin, the planet where David was presumably being held, the heavy load out baffled me. It also presented a problem in that I didn’t see anywhere suitable for Head Case to scale back up to regular size.

  More surprisingly, that small wrinkle was the least of my concerns. I had barely gotten my bearings inside the Sentry before a heavy contingent of Marines rushed toward me, rifles up as they ordered me to let go of my guitar.

  “Well, hell…” I did as the Marines ordered, releasing my guitar and slowly raising my hands. Of course, I had no intention of fighting with them. We were on the same side, and I wasn’t all that concerned with their unfavorable reaction to my sudden appearance. The only part of it that bothered me was that they had surrounded me so fast, almost as if they were waiting for me to arrive.

  With a dozen rifles pointed at my head, I didn’t even want to breathe, nevermind move. One of the Marines stepped forward in front of me, lifting off his helmet and looking me over. “Benjamin Murdock I presume?” he asked gruffly.

  “In the flesh,” I replied. “And you are?”

  “Sergeant Batten. If you’ll just hold still.” He waggled his finger at a couple of his subordinates, and they approached me from either flank. Shaq lowered himself and growled at them, bringing them to a stop. “Do you mind calling off your attack squirrel?” Batten asked.

  “Squirrel?” Shaq buzzed back. “Come a little closer. Show you the difference.”

  “Stand down, bud,” I said softly. “He’s fine. He won’t hurt anyone.” The two Marines glanced at Batten, who nodded them forward. “Be gentle with that,” I scolded when one of them grabbed the guitar a little too roughly. The other quickly patted me down before slapping a pair of magbands on my wrists. Thankfully, she didn’t notice the golf-ball sized starship in my pocket. Oops.

  “I hate to say this,” Batten started, though it didn’t look like he hated saying it at all. “You’re under arrest, by order of the Regent.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “What?” I spat indignantly. “Keep put out an APB on me? Are you kidding?”

  “I don’t know what an APB is, but he did give us a warning to expect you to pop in sooner or later, and to apprehend you when you did,” Batten answered. “Follow me. I’m taking you to the brig.”

  I considered trying to plead my case, but I already knew that if Batten was a good Marine he wouldn’t go for it. Orders were orders, especially ones that came from the acting head of the Hegemony. The man I had thought was my friend. Apparently, he’d decided flexing his power by stopping me from helping David was more important than letting me do what needed to be done. I had no idea how he expected me to be agreeable to anything he wanted in the future. In fact, I may have promised him three days, but maybe that wasn’t a promise I needed to keep, all things considered.

  I had told him I didn’t mind that he and Mom were dating. I really wanted to take that back. She was too good for him. She would never condone stabbing someone in the back the way he had just knifed me.

  “Can you take me to a conference room instead?” I asked. “I need to speak with the Regent.”

  “Negative, Murdock. If His Honor wants to speak to you, he’ll make his intentions known once Commander Kritchek informs him of your capture. This way.”

  He walked ahead of me, and when I was too slow to move, the female guard holding my guitar gave me a slight push to get me going. Batten led me toward one of the hovertrams that expedited passage across the huge ship. I glanced back at the guard. “You’d better take good care of my guitar. I expect to get it back in the same condition you confiscated it.” She didn’t respond, but I noticed her grip on the neck softened a little.

  “In you go, Murdock,” Batten said, motioning to an empty space on the tram. I stepped into it while he turned to his unit. “Rolen, Tsu, you’re with me. Zanyo, take Murdock’s weapon to the armory for safe keeping.”

  “It’s not a weapon,” I complained. “It’s a musical instrument. It’s harmless.”

  He laughed. “That’s not what I hear.”

  “Word travels fast,” I said.

  “I had friends on Privilege,” Batten said. “A couple of them made it to Jaito in a pod and back to Atlas. They’re laid up in the hospital right now, with nothing to do but blab about the battle to their fellow Blues. They said you abandoned them, and that’s why Privilege was destroyed.” His eyes narrowed as he glared at me. “Twenty-six hundred fourteen souls were on that ship, Murdock. That’s a lot of blood on your hands.”

  I blanched at the accusation, shaking my head. “It wasn’t like that. Commander Rickard ordered a retreat before—”

  He stepped forward, getting into my face. “Are you accusing a decorated and highly respected officer of something, Murdock? Think carefully before you speak again.”

  Shaq shifted on my shoulder, no doubt tempted to bite the sergeant. I know I wanted to take a chunk out of him. Yet, I didn’t take his rant to heart. I knew the truth of things. Privilege had been destroyed because Rickard’s dislike toward me led him to mismanage the battle. He had let his personal feelings get in the way, and it had cost him. Yet somehow, he had found an escape pod when over two thousand others hadn’t.

  “There’s two sides to every story, Marine,” I replied flatly. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  He backed off, eyeing me thoughtfully. “You must have some brass tacks, showing up here with only your pet squirrel. Were you planning to steal a ship and break for Gloin on your own, or did you think you might convince Kritchek to allocate some backup your way?”

  I shrugged. Truth be told, I had only intended to use Prestige as a drop point. I didn’t expect much help from the Royal Guard in freeing David. But I also hadn’t expected them to put me in cuffs and drag me to the brig. “Gloin is a high value target. And if you call Shaq a squirrel again, I can’t be held responsible if he murders you.”

  The Marines gathered around us all assumed a hardened stance, swinging their rifles toward Shaq.

  Batten chuckled contemptuously. “Apparently, the Regent doesn’t agree with your assessment of the target. Or maybe he just knows you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

  Batten and the guards stepped onto the tram, and it took off from the hangar. As it moved briskly through the seemingly endless, nondescript corridors, I couldn’t help thinking it strange that Keep had been so quick to contact Prestige’s commander with orders to arrest me. Yet, he hadn’t warned Kritchek about Head Case’s ability to change size. Keep had spent twenty years on Earth. I figured he knew what a Pokemon was and might have guessed the nature of the trick. Had I overestimated his knowledge of geek culture? Or maybe he assumed Head Case was too beat up to be of much use.

  His motivations were impossible to guess. Before today, I thought I had some idea of how Keep operated. In a single moment, he had turned my entire view of him on its head. In any case, the Marine who frisked me hadn’t found Head Case, and Batten didn’t care either that he hadn’t. Depending on how things went, it would be my decision how long I spent in the hoosegow. Even so, it was an annoying complication I didn’t need right now.

  The tram zipped through the ship to the brig, making a few stops along the way, accepting and releasing passengers. They all eyed me as they boarded and disembarked, a hint of recognition in most of their faces, a look of disgust in some. Their reactions made it easy to see who had probably known people on Privilege, and their animus toward me only increased my anger. None of them knew the truth of what happened. At most, they’d heard secondhand how I had refused to follow Rickard’s orders.

  We reached the brig within a few minutes. Batten and his subordinates hopped off ahead of me, pointing their rifles my way and motioning for me to follow them. The sergeant paused at the thick blast doors leading into the holding area to scan his eyeball. The door opened, and we passed through it into an ordinary square room with nine cells surrounding the perimeter and an unoccupied guard station in the center. There was no reason to cover the station, since all the cells were empty.