Baz threw his hands up, continuing to negotiate. “Listen . . . I don’t know who they are, but nobody needs to be disintegrated,” he said, his own voice surprisingly cool and collected. “We aren’t working with the Djarik or the Aykari or anyone else. I promise.”

“The promise of a pirate,” Crayt scoffed.

“Worth at least as much as the promise of an Aykari,” Baz countered.

That seemed to stall Crayt for a moment. “Who sent you, then? How did you find me?”

“Tell ’im, Leo.” Baz shot him a look.

Oh, now he wants me to talk? When the guns are drawn and disintegration is on the table? Leo’s voice came out in a rasp, as if his vocal cords were coated with the planet’s yellow dust. “Calvin Fender. Doctor Calvin Fender. My father. He sent us to find you.”

The orange in the Aykari’s eyes flickered, a burst of muted yellow suggesting his anger was ebbing, though the guns didn’t retreat into their ceiling panels and Number Nine didn’t stand down. “Dr. Fender is your father?”

Leo nodded.

“Then why is he not with you?” Crayt demanded.

“Man, is that a story,” Baz interjected. “How about you order Daddy Longlegs there to put his guns away and we’ll tell you all about it?”

“I imagine I will get a straighter answer from you if I don’t,” the Aykari returned.

“My father was taken by the Djarik,” Leo blurted. “We tried to rescue him but—” But what? He refused to come along? He said he had more important things to take care of? He looked his own son in the eyes and sent him away with a band of pirates he’d only just met? Leo had his father’s final expression branded into his memory: the look of a desperate man caught in an impossible situation. “He needs your help,” Leo said.

“And what would Calvin Fender need my help with?”

Kat had the answer to that one. “He’s hoping you can stop the Djarik from blowing up the galaxy.”

A long silence fell between the Aykari and the crew of the Icarus. Finally Crayt raised his hand, clearly giving some kind of order to Number Nine. Leo screwed his eyes shut. Surprisingly he had no problem getting one last deep breath.

Sorry, Dad, he thought. I tried.

He listened for the sound of shots. A second passed. A heavy heartbeat. Nothing.

Leo cracked one eye, then the other, to find all of Number Nine’s weapons sliding back into their compartments, the two laser cannons retreating into their hiding spots.

Crayt’s eyes had returned to normal as well. Sky blue, with maybe just a hint of turquoise, a lingering apprehension. The Aykari didn’t necessarily believe them, but he wasn’t going to kill them either. Not yet, at least.

“Please leave your weapons by the door,” he said. “And then we will talk.”

The thing about guns that pop out of the ceiling, Leo decided, is that once you know they’re there, you can’t help but think about them. It’s like finding a bug lurking in your shoe—you have to shake it out the next ten times you go to put it on, just in case.