“Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . ,” Gareth whispered. “He was a good man.”

Just a terrible pirate. “He was,” Leo said. He wiped his cheek and focused back on the space beyond. From their position in the hangar you could just make out the top of Earth, a swirl of white on blue. Of course, out here there was no top or bottom. For all Leo knew, he could be looking straight down at his own hometown.

He could picture it. The street he lived on with the uneven sidewalks that would trip you if you didn’t watch your step, the overgrown box bushes lining the driveway, the solar panels glinting in the sun. His mother’s flowerpots hanging from the window, filled with pansies and impatiens. The backyard with its rusted swings, two starships whose young pilots had outgrown them. He wondered how much the sapling they’d planted had grown. If some bird had made a nest in its blossomed branches. Wondered if it was even still there.

“Listen, Leo, if we get back—”

“When,” Leo interrupted.

“Okay, when we get back, that’s it, right? No more ships. No more jumps. We dig in and we stay there. No matter what. We don’t leave again. Ever.”

Leo nodded. “Shouldn’t be too hard,” he said. After all, there was no more V left on Earth for them to go anywhere.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leo noticed a flashing green light on the ship’s console. He didn’t know what it meant, but it was accompanied by the sound of metal sliding against metal coming from the rear of the ship. That, in turn, was followed by a slow hiss.

The sound of a boarding ramp lowering.

“Was that . . . ,” Leo started to say, but Gareth was already up out of his chair, pulling Leo with him. “Stay behind me,” he ordered.

Leo stood beside him instead. He fixed his eyes on the entrance to the cockpit and the dark corridor beyond. He heard footsteps coming closer, boots pounding against the metal floor. Gareth held Kat’s pistol steady, though it clearly took both hands.

“It might be Dad,” Leo whispered.

“Might not be,” Gareth whispered back.

Leo felt the familiar band around his chest, the serpent coiling, squeezing, winding its way up his throat, but he didn’t dare reach for his medicine, afraid to make a sound at all as the footsteps drew closer. He counted his own heartbeats. Whoever it was was right outside the entry now.

And it definitely wasn’t their father.

Leo caught the flash of movement. The muzzle of a gun peeking in from the corridor, held in a clawed hand. The glimpse of gray scales and one dark eye.

Gareth raised Kat’s pistol and pulled the trigger.

Three shots fired in all.

The first from Kat’s pistol, hitting the intruder in his armored chest but not dropping him. The second from the Djarik’s rifle, meant for Gareth but missing its target by a foot as Leo instinctively pushed his big brother out of the way.