Baz looked as if he’d been hit with another of Kat’s hard left hooks. “Hold on, are you saying you want to stay? Here? Are you serious?”

Boo met Baz’s rising voice with a calm nod. “This planet has suffered. It is still suffering. There is so much the Orin must do to get their lives back to normal. Crayt was helping them, but you are taking him with you. So I’ve decided I will stay and finish what he started.”

Kat frowned; she looked disheartened, disappointed, but not all that surprised. “You’re sure that’s what you want?”

Boo considered it. “It is what I need.”

Kat nodded. She wasn’t going to argue. Baz was more than ready to do it for her. “Forget it, Okardo. I won’t let you jump ship. Not now. We don’t leave crew behind. You know that. I’m not going to abandon you on this broken-down planet in the middle of god knows where just because you’re feeling a little guilty all of a sudden.”

“You are not abandoning me, Bastian,” Boo countered, refusing to match the rise in the captain’s voice. “I am choosing to stay. And this world is only broken until we fix it.”

Baz threw up his hands. “This is crazy. You’re crazy. You’re a pirate, for Saturn’s sake. Not some crusader looking to right the injustice in the universe.”

“So says the man risking everything to save his own planet from certain destruction,” Boo remarked.

Baz hissed through his teeth but said nothing.

“We all have reasons for being who we are and doing the things we do. Right or wrong. Good or bad. I have tried being Bo’enmaza Okardo. And I have tried being Boo. Now I think I will be Lark for a while.”

Lark. Outsider. Leo thought of Rint and Shree and the little Orin children hanging off Boo’s fur. He wouldn’t stay an outsider for long.

With clenched fists, Baz took three steps until he was nose to neck with the Queleti. “I am your captain, and so help me, you are getting on one of those ships even if I have to drag you on board myself.”

Boo grunted. It was both a laugh and a sigh. He smiled kindly down at Baz. “As fun as it might be to watch you try, I think it best if we just say goodbye to each other instead. Perhaps not as captain and crew, but as one friend to another.”

The Queleti placed four hands on Baz’s shoulders. The captain opened his mouth again, ready to unleash more threats or entreaties, but after a moment he closed it. He gave Boo a nod, barely that, but the gesture said everything.

Baz turned to Kat, clearing his throat, his voice suddenly charged with determination. “All right, let’s do this. Get Crayt on board that transport. Skits, let’s get started hooking up that device. Make sure everyone’s got enough V to get there. And give Z back her rifle; she came far enough for the damn thing. Dust-off in five.”