Gareth glanced behind him, at the planet they were leaving yet again. “Did it work? Did he do it?”

Kat glanced down at the console. Presumably at the readout that told her how much EL-486 remained in the ship’s cores. The answer, apparently, was none.

“It worked,” she said. “He did it.” Her voice was distant, though, hollow. Though her hands stuck to the controls, she didn’t seem to be making any effort to steer them, as if she didn’t even realize the mess they were flying into.

Leo reached out for her. “Kat?”

“He always said he’d bring me back here,” she said. The former pickpocket turned pirate shook her head. “When he took me in, he told me. He said that no matter what, we’d always have each other’s backs. He was the only family I had left.”

She turned to Leo, whose hand still rested on her shoulder, squinting at him as if he were some old acquaintance she couldn’t place. She stared at him for a moment longer, then her expression changed, her eyes finding focus. She clenched her teeth.

Kat spun back around to the controls. Leo lurched sideways as the ship banked hard, taking on a new trajectory.

Heading straight for the Djarik command ship.

“Zenn, are you there?” Kat’s voice was suddenly sharp, determined. The edge Leo was used to. The bounty hunter’s own voice barely cut through the static.

“Still here. Though I don’t know how much longer. Getting hit from both sides. I think each party is convinced I came with the other guy. . . . Did Baz . . .”

Zennia’s voice trailed off, waiting for Kat to fill in the blank.

“He did what he came here to do,” Kat replied shortly. “What’s the reading on that command ship?”

In the pause that followed, Leo reminded himself that the bounty hunter had known Bastian Black long before he came along. They had a history, a complicated one. But most histories were.

“It’s taken a beating. Its shields are down, but there are fighters pouring out of its hangars and its gun batteries are still firing. I’m surprised it hasn’t tried to make a jump.”

“Maybe it can’t,” Leo said. Maybe the nullifier was even more powerful than Crayt had thought, reaching even beyond the Earth’s atmosphere to the ships that orbited it. Maybe they were all sitting ducks out here. Bloodthirsty ducks armed with torpedoes and laser cannons hell-bent on blasting each other to pieces.

“Yeah, well, it’s not going anywhere until I’m through with it,” Kat said. She switched channels and hailed the lead EDF cruiser again. “Commander Marcellis—if you can read me, we believe that the immediate threat to Earth has been neutralized.”

This time he deigned to answer. “Copy that, Captain Corea,” Marcellis said, sounding much less sure of himself than before. “We have reports of Djarik ordnance targeting mining facilities all across the planet, but so far all of their weapons seem to have had no effect at all. Whatever you did, it must have worked.”