And it did.

  I ducked under the Marine’s grab, darting forward toward Kritchek as I pulled him toward me. His feet slid along the deck until we met at the base of the ramp. I pulled his arms down to keep them at his sides while Shaq hopped to his shoulder, positioning his teeth at the man’s throat. Spinning around, I increased the volume of my amp and played an ugly chord to bring the Marines to a stop.

  “Stay back,” I growled. “I’m not wrong about this.” In truth, I wasn’t as sure anymore about my theory, but I was past the point of no return. Either way, I needed Prestige out of hyperspace. I turned back to Kritchek. “If you are an Aleal, and Shaq bites you, then you won’t die. But if you’re human…”

  “I won’t submit to threats,” he replied firmly. “And you won’t get off this bridge alive if you harm me.”

  With twenty armed Marines at my back, he was probably right if he turned out to be the real deal. “Zar?” I pleaded, hoping she could help me make my final choice.

  “I’m sorry, Cap. The block’s more complex than I expected.”

  “If you’re above board, Krichek, why did you lock down the nav computer? What’s the purpose of the added security?”

  He laughed. “Your lollipop queen turned hacker already gained root access to one Royal Sentry. It would be stupid for me to risk her cutting our trip short. I can’t wait to remove you from the picture, Murdock. You’re a damn thorn in all of our sides.”

  My eyes shifted from him to Shaq and back, my mind turning to the holos on the commander’s desk. “I saw the recordings of your family in your office,” I said. “You have beautiful children.”

  His expression didn’t change. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Do you love your kids, Commander?”

  Again, no change in his face. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Murdock.”

  “Your son, is he anything like you?”

  He paused, his eyes shifting ever-so-slightly to glance at Shaq. I didn’t hesitate to nod, signaling Shaq to bite. He dug his teeth into Kritchek’s neck. As expected, he didn’t so much as flinch as blood spilled from the wound. The Marines gasped, and murmurs echoed across the bridge.

  “I hate to say I told you so,” I said, mostly to Zar, but also to the Marines behind me. I didn’t get much pleasure out of being right. This Kritchek was an Aleal, which meant the real Kritchek was dead, leaving his children without a father. I knew what that was like.

  The Aleal scowled. “This doesn’t change anything, Murdock. You can’t break the encryption. This ship is headed for the nearest star, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

  “Ensign Yung,” one of the officers at the holotable said. “Disengage the hyperdrive.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” he replied. “Sir, the nav computer isn’t responding to my commands.”

  “I just told you. There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” Kritchek said. “You lose, Murdock.”

  “Captain,” Quasar said over the comms. “I’ve got it. I’m in. I removed the block.”

  “I knew you would come through, Zar. Ensign Yung, try again,” I shouted up at him before returning my attention to Kritchek. “You were saying?”

  Kritchek scowled, his chest changing shape as a spike stretched out from it, intending to impale me. I had seen the trick too many times to be unprepared for it. Stepping aside, I pushed the Aleal to the deck and held him there. “Who wants to do the honors?” I asked the Marines.

  They surged forward as one.

  “Hold on, Marines,” the ship’s apparent second-in-command said, his eyes meeting mine. “I’ve got a better idea. How well do you think these things can survive in a vacuum?”

  My thoughts turned to Kritchek’s family again. “I don’t know. Maybe we should find out.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Actually, I did know how Aleal fared in a vacuum. I had space-walked with Alter before to repair Head Case, and she hadn’t always worn a suit. Aleal didn’t function like people. They didn’t need oxygen or warmth to stay alive. Their individual colonies only needed energy broken down from absorbed organic material and spread across the whole for the collective billions of single-celled life forms to survive. So I already knew the Aleal who had killed Kritchek and replaced him as commander of the Royal Sentry Prestige wouldn’t die when we put him out of the airlock. At least not right away.

  As far as I was concerned, that was a worse fate than any I could have imagined for the alien.

  But I wasn’t convinced it would be the right move.

  Still gently strumming my guitar to keep the Aleal pinned, I looked to the officer at the holotable who’d ordered the hyperdrive disengaged and had suggested spacing the Aleal. Like Kritchek, I recognized his rank by the striped piping on his shoulder boards. “I take it you’re Prestige’s new commanding officer?”

  “Volker. Lieutenant Commander Simon Volker…” He afforded me a respectful dip of his chin. “. at your service, Mister Murdock.” He motioned to the other two officers still standing near the center of the bridge, their faces wearing mixed expressions of surprise and dismay. “And this is Lieutenant Raylyn Cox,” he said, motioning to the woman on his left. “Lieutentant Hector Gonzalez.” He nodded to the man on his right before looking at Kritchek again. “How did you know this thing was an imposter?”

  “I’ve never met anyone who keeps pictures of his kids out where he can see them and doesn’t light up at all when given a chance to talk about them. He hesitated when I asked him about his son, because he doesn’t know anything about him.” I switched my attention to the imposter. “Do you?” I smirked when Kritchek glared up at me, unable to move. “What I’m really curious about is the whole bleeding thing. That’s new. Lieutenant Commander, you should have your medical team draw a sample. I assume he drew enough of Kritchek’s blood into his colony to pass a DNA test.”

  “We learned it from your puppet child emperor,” Kritchek said, eyes shifting to Volker. “The Prince has no clothes. He’s as much a fake as the Empress.”

  I was tempted to push down harder on him, to prevent any sound from escaping his mouth. But I couldn’t write him off as a liar as convincingly if I shut him up. “Pitiful.” I shook my head in disgust. “Just like you’re really Commander Kritchek, right?” I said. “Give us another lie.”

  “It’s true,” he continued, looking back at Volker. “We made him ourselves. Another from our source colony. Still immature.”

  Volker blinked and raised an eyebrow at me, clearly not buying what Kritchek was trying to sell. “I appreciate you intervening to bring this creature’s deception to light, Murdock. I’ve heard a lot of negative things about you, mostly in the last twelve hours, but you came through for us here. Just don’t underestimate Rickard. I went to the Naval Academy with him. He can be like a dog with a bone. He won’t be an easy frenemy to live with.”

  “With everything I’ve been through in the last few months, he might as well be a week old kitten. I can handle him. I’m just thankful you aren’t jumping onto his bandwagon.”

  He nodded. “What did you think of my suggestion? Shall we deliver this asshole to the airlock?”

  “This is your ship, Lieutenant Commander. Do as you see fit. But I wonder if we can get any information out of him first. He not only infiltrated the crew, but also seized command of the ship. You’re fortunate he was waiting for me to arrive before making his move.”

  “It must have received its orders from somewhere,” Volker surmised, clearly refusing to treat the Aleal as a person. Knowing Alter had made me think of Aleals I encountered in terms of the human form they were in. I found the habit hard to break. “I’d definitely like to find out where those orders came from. But how do we interrogate a monster like this? Does it feel pain?”

  “It does,” I replied. “Electric shock would work. So would burning. But he also knows he can only be killed one way. I think he can deal with the pain for longer than we can spare the time inflicting it.”

  “Volker, don’t you care?” Kritchek continued. “Prince Hiro is one of us. Why do you think he was missing? Because we took him. We killed him. We replaced him with an Aleal.”

  “I found Hiro asleep in bed,” I said. “Your kind doesn’t sleep. I also put him through an autodoc.” I glanced at Volker, hoping for once I could lie like a thief. “One hundred percent human.”

  “I never doubted it,” Volker said. His conviction covered for any tells I might have had in my expression or voice. “We’ve all seen footage of his entrance into the throne room when you exposed the Empress for what it really was. Of course it would be in this thing’s interests to lie. If we can’t torture it, how do we get it to speak?”

  If I didn’t need both hands to play the guitar, I could use calmed-to-death on Kritchek to give him a jolt he wouldn’t recover from so easily. I loved to jam, but this method of funneling chaos energy had some major downsides. Then again, I didn’t necessarily need to touch him with my hand either.

  “We should take him to the brig for now,” I said. “I have an idea, but I need some help from one of my crew, and she needs to be more than six inches tall.”

  “What do you mean?” Volker asked.

  His eyes lifted past my head, and a fresh round of comments and gasps went up from the bridge crew. I didn’t need to look to know that Head Case had entered through an air vent. Matt guided the ship to a hovering position a short distance above my head, taking advantage of the bridge’s high ceilings.

  “My ship,” I said, pointing up at it. “And my crew.”

  “How?” he said, staring at Head Case. “That’s impossible.”

  “Ben,” Dryka said through the comms. “I have His Honor on the collator.”

  “Now he calls in?” I replied. “His timing is impeccable.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach him since you were arrested. He didn’t have his collator with him.”

  “Can you tell him to contact Prestige?”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  A few moments later, an ensign at one of the surrounding workstations spoke up. “Sir, I have an incoming comm from the Imperium.”

  Volker raised his eyebrows again, this time impressed that I had just told the most powerful man in the Spiral what to do, and he had done it. “Put him on the holo,” he told the ensign.

  “Aye Aye, sir.”

  Keep appeared where the star map had been, way too big for my liking. He was dressed in the formal robes I knew he hated, stuck wearing a silly domed hat instead of his preferred pork pie.

  “Your Honor,” Volker said, as everyone on the bridge stood and bowed their heads to him. Except me, of course. To keep the Aleal stuck to the deck, I kept spitting out soft riffs of Metallica, repeating the opening chords over and over again. Too much longer, and I would start to hate this song.

  “As you were,” Keep said in a more commanding voice than I was accustomed to. “Lieutenant Commander Volker, I need to speak with Benjamin and his crew in private. Would you mind escorting your people off the bridge?”

  “Your Honor?” Volker said. “That’s highly unorthodox. I can transfer the comm to one of the conference rooms if you want to speak with him alone.”

  “No, we’re fine right here,” Keep insisted. It seemed he could see the bridge, because his eyes shifted to Kritchek. “Do you mind explaining why Commander Kritchek is down on the deck?”

  “Your Honor,” I said, rolling my eyes. I hated calling Keep by such a far-reaching title, but to do otherwise would be to act like an ass for no reason. “Commander Kritchek is an Aleal. He planned to kill us all by guiding Prestige into a star.”

  “I see. And you prevented this tragedy, I take it?” I could tell he was trying to hold back his anger over what had nearly come to pass.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  The anger shifted to a light smile that played at the corner of his mouth. “Well done. Have you interrogated the prisoner yet?”

  “Not yet,” I replied. “We only subdued him a few minutes ago.”

  He looked past me to the gathered Marines. “It appears you have more than enough Royal Marines on the bridge to safely escort him to the brig. Lieutenant Commander Volker, make it so.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Volker said, looking to the Marines. “You heard the Regent.”

  The Marines filed past me, quickly surrounding Kritchek. I stopped playing then, the sudden lack of music so jarring to my senses I needed to draw a deep breath to get enough air. Kritchek tried to get up, only to be held back from coming at me by a half dozen Marines.

  “Be careful,” I warned. “He can change his form, which includes growing lethal appendages.”

  Three of the Marines put their rifles on him. “If he so much as twitches, I’ll burn a hole right through him,” one of them said.

  The other Blues lifted him up and carried him off the bridge. While Kritchek didn’t stop struggling, he had stopped trying to tell them Hiro was a fraud, finally realizing no one would believe him. With the floor less crowded, Matt landed Head Case on the deck beside me.

  Volker raised his voice, turning in a circle to address his crew. “The Regent has spoken. Everyone out.” The bridge crew began rising from their seats and making their way toward the exit.

  “Your Honor,” I said. “I’d like Lieutenant Commander Volker to remain.”

  “Are you certain?” Keep replied.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. Commander Volker, you’ll stay.”

  The change in title wasn’t lost on the man, but he remained controlled enough not to make a show of his sudden promotion. “Of course, Your Honor,” he replied, his pride obvious in the snap of his response.

  We waited a handful of seconds for the remainder of the bridge crew to file out and the door to close behind them. Once they were gone, Keep’s demeanor changed instantly, as if he had been in front of a camera that had just stopped recording.

  The first thing he did was take off his goofy hat. “Bennie, do you have something you want to tell me?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 13

  “You mean about Kritchek?” I asked, figuring Keep wanted to know what had happened when I arrived on Prestige. “It all started when—”

  “Nope, not Kritchek,” Keep replied. “I mean about the fact that you’re wearing lady’s combat armor.”

  I heard Matt chuckling over the comms and grinned. “Oh, that,” I replied, glancing down at my voluptuous chest. “I got the armor from the Marine who was guarding me in the brig. I needed a disguise to get up to the armory, which is where they put my guitar for safekeeping.” I held it up for him. “Do you like it? Matt and the others custom made it for me.”

  “Yeah, it’s real nice, kid,” he answered. “Because it’s okay if you’re suddenly into cross-dressing. I just don’t want you to feel like you need to keep secrets from me.”

  I laughed at that. “Says the man who’s kept more secrets from me than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “To protect you.”

  “I don’t need protection.”

  “Maybe not anymore. But you did.”

  “Well, I’m not a cross-dresser. But I am willing to wear women’s clothes if it’ll help keep me from colliding with a star at faster-than-light speed.”

  “Okey dokey. So, you were saying?”

  “About what?”

  “It all started when…”

  “Oh, now you want me to explain? Because my combat armor was more important?”

  “Considering you’re like a son to me, I’m just trying to show interest in your life outside of all this craziness. After all, your mother’s counting on me to look out for you.”

  I glanced at Volker, who seemed confused by the whole conversation to this point. I was right there with him. “Are you feeling okay, Keep?” I asked. “You’re not trying to do the father-figure thing because you’re seeing my mother, are you?”

  “Your mother is dating the Regent?” Volker said, surprised.

  “Something like that,” I answered simply.

  “Of course not,” Keep said at the same time. “Well, maybe a little. I’ve never been good at the mushy stuff.”

  “You don’t need to start now. I’m dying again, remember? If you want to help, you’ll be there for Mom when I’m gone.”

  “You’re dying?” Volker asked.

  “Yes,” I answered again. “Cancer.”

  “You aren’t dead yet.” Keep’s voice hardened. “Maybe there’s something—”

  “We’ve been down that road before. I’m not going there again. I’ve accepted my fate. You need to accept it too. But right now, the only thing that matters to me is freeing David. Thanks for not backing me up on that when I returned the survivors to Atlas, by the way. Or for setting the record straight on what happened at the Bracken factory. You really had my back on that one, didn’t ya.”

  “Come on, kid. You know that as Regent, I can’t play favorites.”

  “Bullshit. You’re the one person in the galaxy best positioned to play favorites. Besides, you do play favorites when it suits you. Instead of working the problem from a different angle, you threw me under the damn bus and made it look like I was going rogue.”

  “Maybe if you had bothered to tell me what the angle would be ahead of time, I could have prepared for it. It’s easy for you to blame me from where you’re standing, but everything’s a lot harder and more stressful for me. If you’ll recall, you endorsed me for this position. I didn’t want it.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “Who’s full of shit now?” Keep asked.

  We were both getting frustrated. I stopped talking, taking a moment to cool off. After listening in on the argument, Volker looked as if he was ready to throw me back in the brig for the way I spoke to his Regent. I hadn’t requested his presence so he could hear Keep and me fight like a married couple. I drew another deep breath and picked up the conversation, calmly explaining everything that had happened from the moment I transited to Prestige.