The Trouble Dog cast out her free hand, to indicate the ranks of warships arrayed behind us.

“Because these ships follow me, and I follow your orders.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

“I see…” I tapped my fingers against my chin.

The Trouble Dog watched me for a moment, and then asked, “Do you really see?”

I took a deep breath, opened my mouth to speak, but then changed my mind about what I was going to say. “No,” I finally admitted.

She smiled. “Well, I’m sure we’ll figure it out. But right now, we’ve got more pressing concerns.”

“The fighting?”

“The other factions are arriving. Unless we nip this situation in the bud straight away, we’re going to have secondary conflicts breaking out all over.”

“And all I have to do is tell you to stop the war?”

“Yes.”

I sat back in my chair and gripped the sides. “And you won’t kill everybody, or unleash some hideous alien super weapon while you’re doing it?”

The Trouble Dog’s smile was the most genuine I had ever seen on her. “Not at all.”

“Go on, then.” I exhaled, letting out all the pent-up fear and tension from the past week. “Do it. Stop the war before it starts.”

* * *

Once, years ago, I saw some slow-motion footage of flower seeds bursting from a pod and scattering themselves to the wind. When the Marble Armada erupted from the surface of the Brain, it was like that—except these “seeds” came out like missiles.

The ships in orbit were outnumbered and quickly surrendered—all save Admiral Menderes on the Righteous Fury, who started targeting the Hearther ships as they converged on his position.

“I advise you to stand down,” I said to him over an open channel. “This system’s now under my protection, and no further violence will be tolerated.”

He looked at me across the link. His eyes were bloodshot and each iris had a faint yellow corona, like a ring of discoloured cream in the milk of his eyeball.

“Hand over my son,” he demanded.

I gave a small shake of my head. “That’s not going to happen.”

“You can’t hold him prisoner.”

“I am not. This is his choice.”

“I don’t believe you!” He thumped the arm of his command chair, but I refused to flinch. Instead, I gave an unconcerned shrug. “Believe what you like, it won’t change the fact Preston’s one of us now.”

The admiral’s cheeks flushed purple. He knew he’d failed his mission and lost his son. All he had left was his bluster. “This is all your fault.” He shook a meaty fist at the camera. “If you hadn’t come blundering in—”

I cut him off mid-sentence. “If your Carnivore hadn’t shot down the Hobo and the ’dam, tried to scare us off, and then tried to kill us,” I said, “I wouldn’t have needed to!”