One turned just in time to catch a jet of fire in her face.

In an instant, Nine was up. Sort of. Half of his legs weren’t working. Half of his head was missing. The hole in his middle was smoldering, revealing scraps of melted metal. Clearly most of his weapons systems were down because Leo didn’t see the rockets or the blasters emerge, but Nine was still a solid chunk of titanium, and he drove his wobbly weight into Number One, sending them both crashing into the wall, the rifle knocked from her hands.

“Leo! The nullifier!” Crayt said, circling around the workbench and picking up the rifle with his good arm.

Leo scooped up the don’t-blow-up-the-world device, cradling it like the world’s heaviest football, and stumbled into the hall, headed back toward the hangar, vaguely aware of the two robots grappling with each other behind him. His head was ringing, and he could feel the blood dripping down his cheek from where One’s fist had broken skin. Crayt stumbled behind him, holding the rifle the wrong way, unless he intended to use it as a club.

“Foolish,” he muttered as they hurried down the corridor, away from the brawl happening behind them. “I thought I had reprogrammed her. I should have known. They have probably been watching me this whole time.”

As they neared the hangar, Leo could hear different music blasting from Skits’s speaker, something grungy with heavy guitar, played loud enough to drown out the sound of Leo shouting Baz’s name. He turned the corner into the bay and ran straight into Kat.

“Whoa, Leo. I was just coming to get—Hold up, are you bleeding?”

Leo nodded, breathlessly fumbling over his words. “Number One . . . attacked us . . . for this.” He held up the nullifier as if that explained everything. Fortunately Crayt was right behind him, eyes still like bonfires.

“The Aykari know what we have been up to. Number One contacted them. She took out Nine. She tried to kill us.”

“The Aykari? What are you talking about?” Kat took a good look at Crayt and her eyes grew even bigger. “Wait—were you shot?”

Suddenly the music clicked off as the rest of the crew realized something serious was happening. From the top of the Icarus, Baz called out, “What in Jupiter’s big red butthole is going on down there?” But Leo didn’t have time to answer as the corridor behind him erupted in an explosion of robotic fury: Number Nine, stumbling around on three miraculously working legs, crashing off walls, his torso spinning, his half a head chimneying black smoke now, attempting to rid himself of the smaller, more agile Number One, who was hanging on to his back, wielding one of Nine’s own legs as a spear, repeatedly driving it into what was left of the bigger bot’s central processing unit over and over again.

Leo dove out of the way as the two robots tumbled into the hangar, a dervish of sparking circuits and scorched metal. From his vantage point on the ground, he watched as Number One reared back and drove the amputated leg into what was left of Nine’s torso, the sharp metal snapping through wires and piercing the robot’s power processor. Nine staggered for a moment like a boxer trying to find his legs, and then collapsed, the last bit of light fading from his only intact sensor.