“Put it in the sequel,” Baz said. Then he called up, “All right, Z. Let’s talk.”

Leo stayed crouched beside Crayt and watched warily as the bounty hunter emerged. She looked much the same as last time, clad in the same tarnished brown armor, the scuffed boots hiked up to her knees, her goggles hanging loose around her neck. His stomach clenched when he saw the set of pistols latched to her sides, but that was better than already in her hands. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp and looked around the hangar.

“Yeah . . . this looks like you,” she said, taking in the blaster holes, the bleeding alien, the smoking robot corpses, including the one Skits was dutifully parked beside. “Should have guessed you’d be hiding out in an abandoned mining town on the edge of the galaxy.”

“Must not have hidden too well,” Baz replied. He nodded up at her ship. “I see you managed to get ahold of some V.”

“And repair my flight console, no thanks to you. Though my cockpit’s still a wreck.”

“That was mostly Skits,” Baz deflected, holding up his hands. “And you sort of asked for it. Not that I think we should be assigning blame or anything.”

“Pretty sure your robot wasn’t the one who pissed all over my pilot’s seat,” she said.

“Please tell me you didn’t,” Kat said.

Baz scratched the back of his head guiltily. Boo scrunched his nose in disgust. Zennia pointed at Crayt. “Who’s the Aykari getting his insides everywhere?”

Crayt tried to pull himself up to answer her but managed only a grunt of pain. Leo whispered for him to be still. “He’s a friend,” Baz said.

Zennia laughed. “A friend?”

“Okay. More of a business associate. We’re working on a project together. Sort of a top-secret, fate-of-the-galaxy kind of thing.”

“Since when do you do business with the Aykari? Weren’t you the one who told me they were heartless, soulless imperialists who only care about themselves?”

“Yeah, well, things have gotten . . . complicated,” Baz admitted.

“Things were always complicated.”

“Not like this,” Baz said. “How did you find us, anyway?”

“Tracking device. Same as before.”

Baz turned to Kat, his eyebrows pinched in frustration. “You said you got rid of the tracking device.”

“I did,” she hissed. “I found it on the hull tucked beside the aft storage compartment. I showed it to you, remember?”

“That was Grimsley’s tracker you found,” Zennia explained. “The one he stuck on your ship back at Kaber’s Point. You didn’t find mine because you were the ones who put it on the ship yourselves.”

She nodded toward the rifle hanging from Kat’s shoulder.

“Hold up . . . you bugged your freaking gun?” Kat asked. “What kind of crazy psycho does that?” She looked down at the rifle in disbelief. “Where’d you even put it?”

“In the butt.”

Baz chuckled. Kat shot him a please-grow-up look.

“It’s not that crazy,” Zennia continued. “I love that gun. I figured if anyone ever took it—and I was still alive—I would have a good reason to hunt them down and get it back. I’ve brought in thirty bounties with that gun. I slayed a two-headed wharbeast with that gun. I sleep with that gun.”