“Rocket punch!” Tyler announced, launching his metal fist at the bot as we ran by it. It hit the thing in its lifeless face hard enough to decapitate it. The thing’s oblong head bounced twice and then rolled down the hallway while the immobile body collapsed to its knees and Tee’s superhero fist snapped back to reattach itself.

  “Are you going to announce it every time you use it?” I asked while we raced toward the stairwell door.

  “It’s definitely more fun that way,” Tyler answered, slamming his shoulder into the door, forcing it open and allowing us quick entry.

  Just in time.

  Plasma bolts sizzled past behind us, the enemy bots close on our heels. Tee waved us ahead while Ben took point, leading with his rifle as we made our way down the steps. “Rocket punch!” I heard Tyler cry again behind us. Whatever he did, it was effective, and we opened up some distance between us and the attacking bots.

  After three levels of stairs and dingy passageways, we finally stumbled into daylight on an empty side street. With the yellow bots no doubt descending the stairs behind us, we were anything but safe when an angry buzz seemed to come out of nowhere. All around us, flashes of plasma lit up the sky like a lightning storm.

  ”What now?” I asked, fighting to keep my cool as my thoughts whirled in tight circles. How had everything gone so spectacularly crazy? A week ago my biggest concern was finishing an essay on theoretical space drives. Now we were dodging plasma bolts fired by punk robots in an alien city a billion light years from home. Tyler could rocket punch, and I had inadvertently sicked a brain-eating blob on someone. At this point, Jedi’s cornfield serial killer sounded downright reasonable.

  Before Ben could answer my question, a yellow combat drone swung around the edge of the building, casting a green laser grid across all three of us. My eyes landed on the dozen or so warheads sticking out from a rectangular belly launcher.

  “Rocket—“ Tyler started to say.

  A thumping whine cut him off as the drone disintegrated in mid-air, succumbing to a direct hit from one of Head Case’s cannons.

  “Now we get out of here,” Ben answered as Head Case swung into view, its face turning toward us as Matt guided the ship to the ground. Already, the ship had started taking rifle fire from the forces crawling all over the compound. I nearly cried in relief as the ship’s shields sparked, absorbing the bolts.Once safely aboard, we could finally escape this lunacy.

  We just needed to get there.

  The smaller hangar door opened, the ramp extending to the ground through the force field surrounding Head Case. Ally and Leo emerged, both in full combat armor. They stood near the top of the ramp, trading fire with an unseen foe who must have been in one of the windows before they ducked back into Head Case for cover.

  “We need to make a run for it,” Ben said. “Come on.”

  With drones closing in on Head Case, adding to the volume of fire sizzling off her shields, we sprinted hard down the alley. Behind us, the yellow bots finally cleared the stairs, spreading out and taking aim. Plasma bolts lanced through the alley, punching smoldering craters in masonry. Return fire streaked overhead as Ally and Leo laid down covering fire.

  “Come on! You can make it!” Ally shouted encouragement from her position just inside the bay door. A quick glance over my shoulder showed two of the yellow robots destroyed, but three more still firing. Their bolts seemed to hit an invisible wall between us and them, making the weapons ineffective despite their machine-perfect aim. A quick look at Ben showed the exhaustion on his face from the effort of sucking chaos energy through what amounted to a clogged straw to save our lives.

  We gained the ramp and staggered up into Head Case. Stumbling into the hangar bay, I sank against cool metal with a ragged groan. Beside me, Tyler spat dust and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Ben collapsed beside Tee, looking far too pale. Ally kept her rifle trained on our attackers, tension etched in the part of her face visible through her helmet.

  We were aboard but hardly safe.

  “Are you guys okay?" Leo asked as the smaller hangar bay door closed behind him, once more allowing the shields to fully cover the ship. His frantic gaze swept us up and down, his attention snagging on Tyler’s titanium fist. “Whoa...what happened to you?"

  I drew a shaky breath, adrenaline and relief leaving me lightheaded. "Where do we start? Ben, are you okay?”

  He nodded shakily. “Nothing a long nap won’t fix. Fortunately, defense is cheaper than offense.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but I figured it had to do with chaos energy expenditure. “Well, you saved our lives again. Thank you.”

  He glanced over at me. “Least I can do, all things considered.” Gathering his energy, he struggled to his feet. “We need to get to the flight deck.”

  I hopped back up, offering to help him make his way up the stairs to the elevator. He surprised me by accepting the shoulder I propped under his armpit. I had to grab the rail with my free hand as Head Case moved beneath our feet. Matt no doubt lifting us up and away from the war zone.

  As we boarded the lift and rose toward Deck Four, all I wanted to do was collapse safely in my bed and sleep for the next day or two, but I knew that wasn’t in the cards for a while yet. And only if we made it safely off Cacitrum.

  Dread tensed my spine when the flight deck hatch whisked open, my gaze immediately shooting to the forward transparency. We were indeed ascending away from Portus, but the drones engaging us there had followed, and it looked like there were even more larger ships taking off from the surface and heading toward us.

  "What's the situation?” Ben asked, crossing to the command seat and dropping into it. I hurried to the co-pilot seat without waiting for the order, and Tyler grabbed one of the recliners. Ally and Leo remained standing, their armor too bulky to allow them to sit anywhere, their magboots anchoring them to the deck.

  “I think a lot of people are very pissed off at us right now,” Matt replied. With a few quick gestures, he activated the primary projector, displaying the sensor grid, already heavy with red outlines of ships Levi’s algorithms had decided intended us harm. Nearly a hundred smaller drones remained on our tail, while two dozen additional attack ships now appeared to be on the descent from orbit.

  “We didn’t even do anything,” Tyler complained as additional icons pulsed into existence further away, outlined in orange as potential unfriendlies. “Well, Noah’s Aleal did eat Jaffie’s brains, but other than that,” he corrected. “It’s those stupid yellow and red robots that caused all the trouble, not us.”

  “It’s the Warden,” I said. “I’d bet anything he gave that other guy…what did Levain call him? Zariv? He gave Zariv a task to stop us.”

  “Freaking bastard son of a bitch,” Tyler griped. “It’s not fair how he’s playing both sides.”

  “I don’t think the Warden cares much about fair play.”

  “Focus, Katzuo,” Matt said. “I need your head in the game.”

  “Right,” I replied, shifting my attention from the main projection to the co-pilot surround and its smaller field. The view didn’t change, but my mental state did. Instead of fearing the incoming ships, I prepared myself to fight them.

  "I don't suppose we could reason with them?" Ally’s weak question drew cynical shakes from everyone present.

  “Levain seemed pretty influential,” Ben replied. “And we asked to meet with him by name right before he was murdered. Right or wrong, Warden or no Warden, we’re the scapegoats. In any case, there’s no way we’re punching through that mess. Cacitrum is too well-defended to swoop in, assassinate someone, and fly out unscathed.”

  “But we didn’t assassinate anyone,” I said.

  “The Aleal did,” Tyler reminded me.

  “We heard you the first time,” I countered angrily. “We didn’t kill Levain. Team Yellow did that.”

  “Complaining isn’t a solution,” Ben replied. “Matt, change our course. Blowing through that mess is too risky.”

  “We’ve done it before,” Matt argued.

  “With the help of Sigiltech. Without it…” He trailed off.

  “Point taken. But change course to where?”

  “Why don’t we just go to hyperspace?” Tyler asked.

  “Hyperspace is a misnomer,” Meg said from the comms station. “It’s not like a different part of space, we’re just compressing real space in front of us so we can move through it faster. But any obstacles also in front of us are also compressed and pulled into the field. Anything too big for the shields to fully disintegrate, like an incoming assault ship, would tear us apart.”

  “Oh,” Tyler replied.

  “Not to mention, compressing atmosphere can have bad side-effects,” Leo added. “And Cacitrum hates us enough already.”

  “Well, we need to do something,” Tyler said. “They’re catching up with us fast.”

  "What if...." I hated how thin and meek my voice sounded. Frustrated, I cleared my throat and tried again. "What if we use the ship’s sigils? We can shrink the ship, lay low for a while, and embiggen her again once the hornets have returned to their nest.”

  The deafening silence answered that question in a hurry.

  “No. We have to go through this mess,” Matt said. “Noah, you take the stick. I’ll handle the pew pews.”

  “Wait,” Ben said. “Maybe Noah’s idea isn’t as bad as it seems on the surface.”

  “I’m not saying it’s bad,” Matt countered. “But how are we going to power the scaling sigil? Just scaling the elevator kills the batteries, and Head Case is a lot bigger.”

  “Meg, what do you think?” Ben asked.

  Her fingers were already dancing across her terminal, possibly crunching numbers to come up with an estimate. “This is going purely on the power to scale ratio of the lift, based on its actual size and the reduction percentages. Plus, taking into account that we’ll need to scale back up.”

  “How is this a power concern?” I asked. “You have a synthetic star for a reactor.”

  “Yes, but if the power needs are too great we’d have to increase the fusion reaction, which risks destabilizing the reactor,” Meg answered.

  “Forget the reactor,” Leo added. “The conduits can only take so much juice before they start melting. What if we shrink down and burn out more wiring than we have resources to replace? We’ll be stuck in mini-mode forever.”

  “We might be stuck dead forever if we don’t do something,” Ally said.

  Meg finished tapping, leaning forward to read the results. “I can’t guarantee no damage to the electrical subsystems, but we should be able to manage the shift.” She swiveled her seat toward Ben. “But you’ll need to use the sigibellum.”

  “The sigi-what?” Tyler asked.

  CHAPTER 3

  “If I use the sigibellum, I need to stay on the ship,” Ben said.

  “I thought we were all staying on the ship?” I replied. “That was the plan, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Ben countered. “Not if there’s a chance we might suffer damage that will keep us from resizing. How would we ever get new materials to make repairs?”

  “ILF mice?” Tyler ventured. “I picture them working in tiny sweatshops beneath the robot factory floors.”

  “Did you get hit on the head during the fighting?” Matt asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Look, whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it fast,” Matt prompted. “I’m running out of options here.” He motioned to the sensor grid, more enemy contacts lighting up ahead of us. It didn’t take more than a cursory glance to see we were nearly surrounded. “We can’t evade all these ships for more than two more minutes. Tops.”

  “Damn, this stinks,” Ben huffed, taking a deep breath to regroup himself. “I’ll probably need a week to recover after this anyway.” He hopped to his feet and tapped his comm badge. “Ixy, is your web in tune?”

  “Yesss,” she replied. “Are we playingsss?”

  “We need to use the sigibellum to scale Head Case down.”

  “That’ssss badsss.”

  “Better than dying. I’m on my way up. Matt, I suggest finding a place to ditch our tail and land so you can get our renters off Head Case before we scale her down.”

  “I’ve already got a spot picked out,” Matt replied. “And a plan. I’ll keep you and Head Case safe.”

  “I know I can count on you. Meg, you’re with me, in case we have any technical problems.”

  “Right behind you, Cap,” Meg said.

  “Noah, Tyler, Alyssa, you’re probably tired of hearing me apologize, but I’m sorry about all of this. The good news is, we know there’s a way to get back to Earth. We just have to find out what it is.”

  “That’ll be tough to do with Levain reduced to ventilated mush,” Tyler said.

  “One thing at a time,” Ben answered, already heading for the exit.

  “Captain Murdock, don’t scurry away too quickly.”

  Ben and Meg stopped in their tracks at the sound of the Warden’s voice. Ben turned slowly back around. Tyler and I both groaned. I hesitated before shifting my attention to the forward projection, unenthused about seeing his stupid grin again.

  “We did what you asked,” Ben said. “We delivered the message.”

  “I know. And?”

  “And what?” he replied.

  The Warden laughed as he turned his attention to me. “I brought you directly to the man who mowed down your parents and gave you a clean shot at revenge. Aren’t you going to thank me?”

  “You might think revenge is the answer. I prefer justice.”

  “Justice is revenge for cowards,” the Warden snapped. “I don’t appreciate your lack of appreciation. You’re omitted from the lottery for the next boon. Which you did earn, since you did complete the task as assigned. Congratulations.” He golf-clapped a few times. “Tyler, how do you like your boon?”

  “It’s so c—“ He froze when he noticed me glaring at him. “It’s okay, I guess.” I was sure as soon as my head swiveled back toward the Warden, he flashed him a thumbs up and mouthed ‘it’s so awesome.’

  “You’re also excluded since you already have a boon. It’s just been delivered to the lucky recipient. I hope it’s a good one.”

  “What kind of game are you playing?” Ben asked. “You sent us to deliver your message to Levain, knowing he would likely kill us afterward. Then you sent Zariv a task to attack him while we were still there, and now we’re running for our lives because the bots think we killed Levain.”

  “One, you have no proof I had anything to do with Zariv’s attack. If you were more familiar with Cacitrum history you would know the feud between Levain and Zariv has been escalating for some time. The attack is just a natural step forward. Two, you’re doing an excellent job of running. Keep up the good work.”

  “Did you have anything to do with Zariv?” I asked.

  The Warden shrugged. “Maybe.”

  "You son of a bitch,” Matt growled.

  “Oh, be nice, or I’ll stop being nice.”

  “You call what you’ve already done to us nice?” Ally said.

  “It could be worse. A lot worse. Anyway, I have to run. I just stopped by to congratulate you on completing the task. I’m excited to see how this all plays out. Aren’t you?”

  Thankfully, he vanished from the projection, returning it to a view of the sensor grid.

  “Asshole,” Matt muttered.

  “Okay, we’re on our way up,” Ben said as he and Meg left the flight deck.

  “What’s a sigibellum, again?” Tyler asked.

  “It’s a Sigiltech device that amplifies chaos energy,” Matt answered.

  “What? We’ve had that this whole time, and we haven’t used it?”

  “Ben has to stand on it to use it. And with the way chaos energy is choked off here, the opportunities to leverage it are severely limited.”

  “I’m not sure I want to get off Head Case to wander around Cacitrum,” Ally said. “I’d feel a lot safer staying on board.”

  “I’d rather stay on board too, but Ben’s right. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be stuck at micro-size.”

  Ally exhaled nervously in response to the warning.“Okay, I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Yeah, I want to get off, too,” Tyler said. “A hundred percent on that one.”

  “Noah, help me keep an eye on the bogeys as we make a break for it. If you see anything that looks like it’ll nail us, call it out ASAP.”

  “On it,” I replied.

  “Here we go. Hold on to your keisters, kiddies.”

  Matt suddenly pushed Head Case's thrusters to the max, desperate to put distance between us and the incoming armada. My eyes darted between the sensor projection and my surround as he smoothly evaded most of the plasma fire streaking toward us.

  “Four o’clock!” I called out as a trio of drones approached from our flank. Matt rolled the ship as he banked hard right, the maneuver briefly overpowering the inertial dampeners and plastering me against my seat. The drones overshot us, too close to match our tight vector change. Not that it mattered. There were plenty more ships available to cut off our escape route, closing in from every side. I had the impression we’d wasted too much time chit-chatting with the Warden and had lost our chance to take evasive maneuvers. There was nothing we could do about it now.

  “There’s nowhere to go, Matt!" I cried, fear gripping my voice. We were well and truly surrounded, the swarming ships tightening like a noose around our necks.

  "Working on it!" Matt's expression hardened with concentration. Like Maverick against enemy MIGs, he once again impressed me with his cool demeanor in a tight spot. Me, however…I winced as a pair of incoming assault ships unleashed a punishing volley. Head Case shook under multiple impacts, shields flaring brilliant azure.

  “Matt, I’m in position on the sigibellum,” Ben reported over comms. “Just say the word.”

  "Understood. Stand by." Helping to throw off our attackers, Matt worked the flight controls like a surgeon, small adjustments leading to rapid changes in vector and velocity. With a final burst of acceleration, he powered Head Case toward a group of drones, ducking into their midst and only colliding with one. It bounced off our shields, ricocheting into two drones, all three tearing apart in midair and tumbling toward the ocean below, spewing smoke and debris. “Everyone grab something. This is gonna get dicey."