“Get into the ship!” Baz yelled down at him. “Keep that thing safe!”

Leo nodded, cradling the nullifier closer. The ramp of the Icarus was only twenty yards away and the path was mostly clear. He heard another electronic scream from behind followed by an explosion—Skits unleashing her fury—but he didn’t dare look, just stayed focused on making it to that ramp. Maybe if he could get aboard the Icarus he could find a way to activate its weapons systems, use the turret to take some of these things out before they diced up every member of the crew.

Instead he was forced to a halt, his feet skidding, slipping out from beneath, sending him to the floor as one of the armored attackers suddenly dropped down in front of him. It was missing an arm—the one with the saw, at least—but it still had a set of powerful claws that could snap his limbs in two or pin him down while that drill put a hole through his skull. Its high-pitched whine filled his head.

Leo scrambled backward, still holding tight to Crayt’s invention, his kicking feet inches from the bot’s snapping pinchers. One foot connected with the robot’s heavy frame, not even making a dent in the armor. He felt something grab his leg and squeeze, metal digging into flesh, the pain instant and agonizing.

Leo screamed as loud as he could.

A Queleti’s scream, he knew from experience, could strike you with temporary paralysis. It could nearly drive you insane, even with your hands over your ears.

Leo’s scream, apparently, could make an armor-plated robot explode.

Because that’s exactly what it did. The mining bot’s entire upper half shattered right before his eyes. The pain in Leo’s leg instantly abated as what was left of his attacker dropped harmlessly to the hangar floor.

Leo blinked, confused, disoriented, staring at the smoking remains of the mechanical monstrosity that had been inches away from Swiss-cheesing his brain.

Then he saw it. The sleek-looking starfighter hovering right outside the open hangar door, its green-haired pilot with her fingers on the trigger of the ship’s forward-mounted cannons, pulsing with deadly energy. He recognized ship and pilot instantly.

The last time Leo saw Zennia the bounty hunter, she hadn’t seemed all that interested in saving his life. Almost the opposite. But here she was, blasting Leo’s attackers to scrap.

He couldn’t be sure with all the shouting and the explosions and the screech of saws and drills, but Leo thought he heard Bastian Black let out a curse.

They went down in showers of sparks, one after another, victims of Zennia’s deft maneuvering and deadly aim.

Recognizing the much bigger threat, the rest of the hovering, saw-brandishing bots swarmed their new, unwelcome guest, converging on the hangar door, going for the ship’s engines with their piercing appendages, all with the hope of sending it crashing down into the artificial canyon below. But the ship’s pilot was too good, dodging around them, drawing her attackers out into the open where she could more easily swat them out of the sky, her ship’s guns turning them to melted slag one blast at a time.