Before our experience on Bushara, even with all of the other Game of Thrones stuff swirling around us, we’d been able to keep our sense of lightheartedness. But Druck's betrayal, the multitude of innocent civilian life lost at North Lapul because of it, and nearly losing Quasar, not to mention suffering my very real and probably lasting injury, had all worked to open my eyes to the stark truth of the dangers we faced.

  We had never really gotten the chance to gallivant through space the way I had pictured in my mind when Keep’s text reached my phone advertising a starship for sale. While I had never really considered any of our experiences on Head Case akin to a simple joyride, what the ship and the crew faced now—and what we faced ahead of us—was something much more serious. And dangerous.

  Head Case had become a warship. And we were at war.

  “Exiting hyperspace in one minute, Captain,” Matt said, not looking back at me.

  We had removed the sofa from the flight deck, replacing it with an elevated, Asshole-manufactured command seat, with all of the controls on a terminal arranged on my left hand side. The seat was flanked by a pair of slightly lower observation seats where Emerald and Quasar sat. Shaq rested behind my head on a perch designed just for him, while Ixy had claimed the remote mech control unit to build a web inside and secure herself. It was a shame we hadn’t gotten the chance to reclaim the Avenger we had bought, and a bigger shame the man who would have piloted the machine had turned traitor and died, but at least we were getting some use from the equipment.

  “Leo, bring up the shields,” I said. “Arm the fire control system.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” he replied from the co-pilot seat.

  A few short months and things were so different now. I would never have pictured Matt flying the ship instead of me or imagined that Alter wouldn’t be the co-pilot, or that we were about to drop in on one of the wealthiest recluses in the galaxy, trying to prevent a galaxy-wide war by rescuing a ten-year-old prince.

  And I was doing it with one arm and no cancer!

  “Ten seconds to drop,” Matt announced when the time came. I didn’t tense up as he completed the countdown, though we all remained on alert, ready to run head-on into trouble. We had no way of knowing if Sedaya, Succaath, or anyone else had any inkling of where we were headed or why.

  Matt flipped the switch as the clock hit zero, killing the hyperdrive. The generated field slowly flattened away, returning us to sub-light speed. My hand gripped the edge of the control pad, my eyes focused foremost on the sensor grid floating between the two pilot seats, my station's elevation allowing me to see clearly over the pilots and their seats. When it remained blank, I glanced up at the forward transparency. Of course, we had come out of hyperspace a few hours shy of Cicana’s standard drop zone.

  Standard procedure for fugitive starships.

  Having already studied up on the place, I knew Cicana was a moon orbiting a much larger world. Thirty percent water, its thirty-six hour orbit around its parent gave it a crazy climate which had in turn given birth to all kinds of weird organisms. Only about three thousand people lived on Cicana full-time, most of them on the eastern seaboard near the equator where the temperature changes were the least extreme. Carlton Usari lived on the western side of the moon’s primary land mass, away from the settlement, in a huge mansion partially built into the seaside cliffs.

  “Jump complete,” Matt announced.

  I was relieved to see there were no Royal Sentries orbiting Cicana or its parent. In fact, there were no ships of any kind in orbit around the planet or its moon. But then, Usari had chosen the location because of his reclusiveness and the moon's relative isolation.

  “It looks like a straight shot to orbit and down to the surface,” Leo said. “Sensors are clear. Orbital Control channels are silent. It’s pretty much dead out there.”

  “Let’s hope it isn’t completely dead,” I replied, suddenly worried that if Usari had financed the blueburn for someone else, that someone might have already disposed of him to keep him quiet.

  “Yeah, I guess we want Prince Hiro to still be alive if he’s here.”

  “I was thinking about Usari, but him too,” I agreed.

  “Are we going with Plan A or Plan B?” Emerald asked, closing her eyes and mumbling loud enough for me to hear. “Please say Plan A. Please say Plan A. Please say Plan A.”

  “Plan A,” I replied.

  “Yes!” she shouted, pumping her fists.

  “You aren’t coming,” I added.

  She deflated at once, head whipping toward me. "What? Why? You can't leave me behind. You can't.” Her disappointment was palpable.

  “Sorry, Em. I’m taking Meg with me this time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “For one thing, she’s smaller than you. I already know we’ll fit in Starbright’s cockpit together. For another, I might need her to work with Quasar and Gia to crack Usari’s computer systems. And finally, she won’t say or do anything that might…" I sighed heavily, knowing how she was going to take this."...complicate things.”

  “I don’t complicate things,” Emerald complained. “Zar, do I complicate things?”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” she replied.

  “Ugh,” Emerald huffed. “Shaqie-poo? Come on, you’re my favorite alien.” Shaq buzzed his response, and she looked at me. “What did he say?”

  I’d also spent parts of the nine days beginning to learn Shaq’s native language. “I think he said, did you forget Lapul already?”

  “Mmmhmm,” Shaq agreed.

  “I’ll do better,” she said. “Please take me with you, Ben. If there’s anyone to shoot, I want to be the one to do it.”

  “We’re trying to avoid violence on this one, but if there’s anyone to shoot, you’ll be coming in on Head Case to save our bacon,” I replied. "I'm depending on you for that. Do you understand?"

  She folded her arms and lowered her head, going full pout. There wasn’t much I could do about that. I wasn’t about to change my mind. I tapped on my comm badge. “Meg, meet me in the hangar. Make sure you look like you did when we met.”

  “Greasy?” she replied.

  “You are my mechanic, aren’t you?”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  I disconnected the comms and stood up. “You all know the plan. Stay alert and be ready to react to my signals. Matt, you have the ship.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Matt replied. “Good luck out there, Ben. Be safe.”

  “Safer than we were on Bushara,” Quasar added.

  I turned to Shaq, who jumped off his perch and vanished into the pouch on my sling.

  Emerald raised her head, looking at me “Be careful, Boo, I need you to come back. We all do.”

  “I will,” I replied. “I promise.”

  I hurried off the flight deck, headed for the hangar. I paused at the threshold, looking back at the bulk of my crew. Depending on how things shook out, there was a chance the fate of the Spiral and beyond would be completely changed by the time I saw them again.

  CHAPTER 34

  It took Meg and I nearly thirty minutes to make the transfer from Head Case to Starbright, relying on sigiltech instead of spacesuits to make the crossing. I would be lying to say I wasn’t nervous when I activated my construct for the first time since Bushara, A tingle in my right arm forced me to stop and start the actions needed to cross the vacuum a few times before I accepted the sensation as my new normal.

  Once I resolved to fight through the fear, we made it safely to the hop racer, tucking into the cockpit the way we had when we escaped Windfall station. Only this time, Meg positioned herself more precisely on my lap, to give me a better line of sight and to allow me to better reach the controls. While I had figured I would never pilot Head Case again, this ship was a different story. With fewer controls and less need to hit more than one of them at a time, I could mostly get away with one hand, and in the few cases where I couldn’t, I had either Meg or sigiltech to help fill the gap. Not ideal, and untenable in a combat scenario, but we had devised this plan with the goal to avoid combat, if at all possible.

  Since we didn’t know how deeply Usari was involved with Hiro’s kidnapping, we didn’t want to just rush in, guns blazing. If he was plainly guilty and not ashamed to admit it, he would be well defended against just such an attack, putting us at a disadvantage. But if he was only a puzzle piece, we might be able to bribe him into giving us the information we needed. Or, if his intentions were totally benevolent, there was a chance we could bring him in on our side and convince him to return Hiro to Atlas with us. That would be the best outcome, but I also considered it the least likely.

  The only thing we knew with relative certainty was that he had purchased the body of the starship used to kidnap the prince and that we had less than a week remaining to find the Empress’ true heir. Our presence here felt like a Hail Mary pass with only a few seconds remaining on the clock, desperate and last ditch. If Hiro wasn’t on Cicana and wasn’t anywhere within a six-day jump, we were pretty much cooked.

  But we absolutely had to try.

  “Head Case, this is Starbright,” I said. “Do you copy?”

  “I copy, Starbright,” Matt replied.

  “Control separation is complete. Comms relay is active. All systems are nominal. I’m initiating primary separation now.”

  “Copy that.”

  Meg had already disconnected the link between Head Case’s control system and Starbright, severing Matt’s ability to add the hop racer’s thrusters to the rest. Now I activated separate, reversing the fusion of the two ships that I had enacted in the aftermath of Lyke’s attack on Windfall station. The chaos energy flowed easily from me, the point of contact between the two vessels pulling back until they had come apart.

  “Primary separation complete,” I announced. “We’re on our way.”

  “Be careful, Ben,” Matt said.

  “Wilco. ETA to orbit, fifty-six seconds. Starbright out.”

  I held the stick and slowly opened the throttle, but not too much. With a hop racer, there was a much better way to get from one point in space to another in a short time. While regular starships couldn’t initiate and cancel a jump that quickly, this one had been designed for that exact purpose.

  I put some distance between Head Case and us, flying away from Cicana and setting up an easily jump-navigable angle with the moon’s drop zone. The hopper’s computer finished the calculation in no time, surprising me by audibly complaining about the proximity of the landing coordinates. Meg overrode the warning, muting the computer.

  I flipped Starbright over, keeping the throttle steady and the main thrusters burning us to a near stop. Still drifting slightly backward, I moved my thumb into position to cancel the jump and used the voice controls to initiate. The field snared us in seconds, and as soon as the universe turned white, I tapped down on the trigger, ending FTL travel. We returned to space about five minutes short of the drop zone. Close enough considering it was my first true hop.

  It surprised me how long it took for Cicana Orbital Control to open a hailing channel. They left us drifting toward the moon for nearly the entirety of those five minutes before making contact, despite the fact that we were the only ship around.

  “Incoming starship identifier 393478,” a clearly non-organic voice rattled out when we answered the hail. “Please state your cargo and reason for visiting Cicana.”

  “Cargo?” I said softly, glancing sidelong at Meg.

  “Us, I guess,” she replied.

  “OC,” I said, loud enough to be picked up on the comms, “my cargo is two humans. Myself, Jackson Hondo, and my mechanic, Pixie Gillyfin.” I cringed as I said the names, making them up on the spot. “I came to speak to Carlton Usari. I have a business proposition I’d like to discuss with him.”

  There was no time lapse between the end of my sentence and Orbital Control's robotic response. “Mister Usari is unavailable for solicitation. Landing request denied.” The comm disconnected.

  “That went well,” Meg said.

  “Not exactly how we drew it up,” I replied. “Call OC back.”

  Meg sent a hail of her own to the OC channel.

  “Incoming starship identifier 393478, your request has been denied. Reverse course and leave Cicana’s sovereign space immediately, or your denial will be enforced.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, trying to cut in before the bot cut us off again. “I know Carlton Usari is a huge fan of Hop Racing. I’m looking for a sponsor. I—” The comm disconnected. “Damn it.”

  “I don’t know how much time they’ll give us before they start launching defensive measures,” Meg said. “They could launch ships or torpedoes. Or fire on us from ground batteries.”

  “Open the channel again.”

  Meg winced but did as I asked.

  “Incoming starship—”

  “Shut up and listen,” I growled. “You know this ship’s identifier, but you don’t know its name? Starbright. Do you hear me? Katana’s former hop racer. He lost it to me in a card game, and now I’m looking for a sponsor so I can start racing her myself.”

  “Mister Usari is unavailable for solicitation,” the bot repeated. “Landing request is—”

  “Denied. Yeah, I get it. I don’t know if you’re even passing my message on to Usari, but since you’re still denying me I assume you aren’t. I know he’ll want to hear what I have to say. And if you refuse him the opportunity and I go to some other sponsor and start winning races like the badass pilot I am, it’ll be your circuits he fries for letting me get away.”

  “Standby,” the bot said.

  “That was awesome,” Meg whispered in response to my tirade.

  “I learned that from Matt,” I whispered back.

  “Mister Usari is available for your solicitation,” the bot said, returning to the comms. “Landing request is approved. Transferring landing marker now. Do not stray from the landing pattern or you will be fired upon.”

  “Good to know,” I replied as the pattern data arrived. “We won’t deviate a single inch. Starbright out.”

  “I can’t believe it worked,” Meg laughed as soon as the comms disconnected. “It looks like we have clearance to land directly on Usari’s estate. Now the only question is whether he believes our story or he’ll have a security garrison there to apprehend us the moment we touch down.”

  I adjusted the stick, aligning Starbright to the provided landing route. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Usari didn’t have a security force waiting for us when we touched down. Instead, he sent a well-dressed woman and a pair of servants to wait for us at the edge of the round landing platform overhanging the sea. The trip from orbit had been incredible. The birds-eye view of Cicana was definitely in my top ten in terms of eye-popping alien beauty. Everything was so colorful, with sharp hues of reds, oranges, greens and blues, including the huge plants that grew everywhere people weren’t, which was most places on the moon. From above it was as if Jackson Pollack had chosen the most neon palette he could find to paint the landscape.

  Carlton Usari’s home was no less impressive. Everything above the cliff face was made of glass that constantly shifted in transparency, revealing the interior as it was submerged and exposed by waves at the water’s edge. Open glass bubbles lined the edge of the cliff the home had been built into, offering dozens of observation points to step into and look out to the seemingly endless sea. Massive tides allowed the waves to occasionally crest the three-hundred-foot high rock. And there was still so much beneath the hard stone that couldn’t be seen. The size and composition of the home remained a mystery to most of the Spiral.

  Was Prince Hiro in there somewhere? Alive? I could only hope.

  Spray from the waves created moist, salty conditions on the tarmac as Meg and I climbed out of Starbright. She had already commented on how the water would quickly affect the ship’s paint job, which I thought might be a good thing. I hated the crystal-rainbow look. Give me matte black or fire engine red with racing stripes any day.

  We walked across the damp cement toward a ramp leading from the overhang to solid ground. The woman and servants waited patiently for us there. The woman’s hair was already a tangle around her face, thanks to the breeze coming in from the ocean, though her obvious lack of concern suggested she was accustomed to the outcome. She smiled as Meg and I reached the ramp.

  “Mister Hondo,” she said, shouting over the wind and waves. “Miss Gillyfin. Welcome to Cicada, and the Usari Estate.” We reached her by the time she finished her greeting and put out her hand, only then realizing that my right arm was missing from the sleeve of my coat. Her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion as Meg grabbed the outstretched hand, shaking it for both of us.

  “Great to be here,” I said. “Miss…?”

  “Bayona,” she said. “But you can call me Mae. I’m Mister Usari’s personal assistant.”

  “Mae,” I finished. “I know what you’re thinking. A one-armed hop racer? Is this a trick? I assure you, it isn’t. I only need one hand to handle the stick. I use voice commands for everything else.”

  “Of course,” she replied, retracting her right hand and extending her left. It was awkward for both of us to shake that way, but we managed.

  “I really appreciate Mister Usari agreeing to meet with me. I took a big risk coming here. I only had enough fuel for this hop.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise, her smile spreading across her face. “Well, be sure to let Carl know that. He has a strong appreciation for people who aren’t afraid to go big.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “This is Kine and Malo,” she said, introducing each of the servants. A man and a woman, both with shaved heads and white, toothy smiles. They were dressed in dark suits that could have come straight from a Buckingham Palace wardrobe closet. “They’ll be your personal escorts while you’re on the grounds.”