“Sorry. Got a little lost there.”

“Yeah . . . well, don’t freak out on me, kid. We’ve got work to do,” Bastian Black said.

Leo’s eyes readjusted to their surroundings. He’d been deep inside his own head again, somewhere far away. But now he was back. Back inside this hulking, metal, pear-shaped ship hurtling through space, staring at a man with a ratty black T-shirt asking if anyone’s Got Milk.

“Seriously, ninja turtle, you okay? You look like you’ve just had your mind wiped by a Darvatulan brain leech.”

Leo had no idea what that was, but it sounded not too far off from what he was feeling. His brain felt scrambled, like someone had scooped it out and dropped it in a blender before pouring it back in. “I’m all right,” he said.

Baz put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Definitely need to work on your lying. Time to strap in, then. We’re coming out of our jump.”

Leo nodded and followed the captain of the Icarus into the cockpit where the other members of the crew were already assembled. Katarina Corea sat in the pilot’s seat, dressed in her customary black uniform, her titanium hand operating the controls while the one she’d been born with fiddled with an ugly fuzzy-blue-haired doll that Baz kept hanging from the ship’s console. Skits was busy at another control panel, messing with some wiring—whether making it better or worse, Leo couldn’t be sure; it probably depended on her mood. She swiveled along her bucket-like torso and smiled at Leo because she had no choice—it was her only available expression. Next to the tank-treaded robot, the four-armed Queleti was busy attacking his toe claws with some kind of industrial bolt cutter.

“Trimming your nails?” Leo asked.

“Baz told me I had to,” Boo said gruffly.

“That’s because when they get that long I can hear them clicking on the metal floor when you walk,” Baz said. “Do you know how annoying that is? All the time. Click-click-click-click-click.”

“No more annoying than you banging on the console, playing your imaginary drums constantly,” Kat countered. “Besides, why would anyone take hygiene advice from you? When’s the last time you cleaned your teeth?”

“I gargled some warm beer an hour ago,” Baz informed her. She made a face.

Boo squeezed the handles of the bolt cutter and the tip of one claw went flying. “Incoming,” he warned as the clipped nail pinged off the wall.

A week ago, if Leo had been this close to the lumbering hulk of hair and muscle that was Bo’enmaza Okardo, he would probably have peed his standard-issue Coalition khakis. But since then he’d saved the alien’s life and vice versa. They’d even slept in the same bed. Not exactly what he’d envisioned three years ago when his father informed him they’d be journeying into outer space—using an alien’s fur as a makeshift blanket in the bottom bunk of a pirate transport—but that’s what it had come to.

The same went for all of the crew of the Icarus. Not long ago, Leo would have looked at them—had looked at them—with skin-prickling apprehension and distrust, seeing them as outlaws and traitors, the kind of people you would only be caught dead with, mostly likely because they would have killed you. But a lot had happened since he first boarded this ship. A lot that Leo still didn’t understand. But he at least knew he wasn’t afraid of pirates anymore.