A lot could happen in three days, Leo knew. Your ship could be attacked by marauders. You could become a stowaway. Build a cistern. Save a planet. Get shot. Have your whole galaxy flipped on its head. Still, he couldn’t believe he’d been out that long.

Gareth continued: “Dad’s been meeting with high-ups on the UPE council, discussing the situation. It’s a giant cluster. The Aykari, the Djarik, the Coalition, all of it—everyone’s in a tizzy. Hey, you want some ice cream? They have it up here. The real stuff, too, not the fake freeze-dried crap. I mean, it’s no Fudgy’s, but it’s sure as heck better than this.” He eyed the plate of protein chunks suspiciously.

“Dad . . . ,” Leo prompted.

“Right. Sorry. So word’s gotten out about what the Aykari have done. Their actions during the bombing. The effects of the drilling. The way they leave other planets in pieces. The way the left us during that last attack. Everyone’s up in arms, some saying they’re just as bad as the Djarik, some saying they’re even worse. There are protests in every city, people marching, burning Coalition flags.” He glanced at the bare spot on his breast where his own patch would have been. “Nobody knows where to go from here, but the council thinks Dad can help because he’s smart and he was caught right in the middle of it. Plus, there’s the whole deal with the ventasium.”

“What about the ventasium?” Leo croaked.

“Yeah—we kind of nixed it all in order to save the planet, remember? Pretty heroic, if you ask me, though not everybody feels the same. Maybe they would have rather just been blown up.”

A world without V. Leo took another long drink of water and closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to ponder it. A little smile crept in.

“Here, I got you something.” Gareth reached under the bed and fished up a plush white rabbit with floppy ears and an oversize snowball tail. It greeted Leo with two glass eyes and a stitched-on smile. “Ta-da. I know it’s not quite like the one you had—and you don’t really do magic anymore—but I saw it in the commissary and thought, you know, if you ever take it up again.” Gareth tucked the rabbit under Leo’s right arm. Leo ran his taped and tubed hand along its soft fur. “Still trying to make up for the fact that I shipped you off with those pirates, I guess,” Gareth added.

Those pirates. Leo conjured each of them in turn. Boo with his four big arms and shrugging shoulders. Skits’s pasted smile and salty comebacks.

And Baz, with his high-tops and concert T-shirts, his one and a half ears, and that cocky smile. Leo pictured the canyon, the smoke, the ship vanishing, and felt a sudden pain, different from the ache in his shoulder. This one ran deeper, reaching down to his gut and spreading from there.

Bastian Black. Terror of the galaxy. Captain of the Icarus. And his first mate . . .