one of the creatures was saying. “I think it wants to eat me. I don’t like this at all!”
“It should be incapacitated now,” a communication returned from the space station. “And if it’s looking at you, it doesn’t see you. We are overwriting its vision. Tow the ship in for study. That’s not a standard DDF model. We’re curious how they built it.”
“I don’t want to get anywhere near it,” said another one of the creatures. “Don’t you know how dangerous these things are?”
Curious, I looked out of my canopy at a ship drawing closer, then I made a kind of growling face—baring my teeth. The creature screamed and immediately turned its ship around and fled. The other two tugboat-style ships backed away.
“This is a job for fighter drones,” one said. “Not manned ships.”
They sounded so scared. Not like the terrible monsters I’d always imagined.
I relaxed in my seat.
“Would you like me to try to hack their systems?” M-Bot said.
“Can you do that?”
“It’s not as easy as it might sound,” he said. “I have to piggyback on an incoming signal, and then decrypt their passwords and create a dummy login, then transfer files while spoofing an authorized request—breaching local data defense lines—all without tripping any of their alarms.”
“So, can you do it?”
“I just did,” he said. “That was a very long explanation. Beginning data transfer . . . And, they caught me. I’ve been booted, and security protocol is preventing my reentry.”
Lights flashed on the station, and a moment later a squadron of small ships ejected from one of the bays on its side. I knew those flight patterns. Krell interceptors.
“Time to go,” I said, grabbing the controls and sweeping us around. “Do you think you can navigate us through the debris layers without triggering any of the defense platforms?”
“Supposedly, the Krell do that each time they attack the planet,” he said, “so it should be possible.”
I hit the overburn, launching us back toward the outer layer of debris. M-Bot put some directions on my canopy, and I followed, tense for the first bit. We skimmed close to some of the platforms as we weaved toward the planet, but none of them fired at us.
I felt . . . strangely alert. The sense of fascination I’d experienced earlier—the draw to seek out what was causing the stars to sing—had faded. It was replaced by stark realism.
Coming out here really had been crazy. Even for me. But as we wove past another layer of debris, the Krell interceptors fell back. It seemed, increasingly, that I’d be able to return to the planet safely.
“Did you get anything?” I asked. “From their computers?”
“I started with the station’s core orders and worked outward,” he said. “I didn’t get much, but . . . Oooh . . . You’re going to like this.”
“What?” I asked as I hit the overburn, flying back down toward Detritus. “What did you find?”
“Answers.”
EPILOGUE
Two hours later, I sat in the DDF command center, holding a blanket around me, with my legs up on my seat. They’d given me Admiral Ironsides’s chair.
Ever since that moment in the nowhere, I’d felt cold. A chill I couldn’t shake, and which the blanket could barely help. My head still pounded, despite the metric ton of painkillers I’d swallowed.
A group of important people surrounded my chair, crowding me in. National Assembly Leaders, junior admirals, flightleaders. I was growing confident that they believed I wouldn’t turn against them, though at first—after I’d reentered the atmosphere—they’d been very cautious.
The door to the command center opened, and finally Cobb limped in. I’d insisted on waiting until the transport fetched him and brought him back, and until he’d gotten his afternoon cup of coffee.
“All right,” Ironsides said, folding her arms. “Captain Cobb is here. Can we talk now?”
I held up a finger. It might have been petty of me, but it felt really good to make Ironsides wait. Besides, there was someone else who deserved to be here before I explained.
As we waited, I reached for the radio at my side. “M-Bot,” I said. “Everything all right?”
“I’m trying not to be offended by how the engineers in this hangar are looking at me,” he said. “They seem overeager to rip me apart. But so far, nobody has tried anything.”
“That ship is DDF—” Ironsides began.
“That ship,” I said, “will fry all his own systems if you try breaking into him. The DDF will get his tech, but it will be on our terms.”
The way she looked—red-faced—when I said it was