Leo didn’t stop to listen to Nine’s response. Instead he slowly made his way back to the control room to find Boo still only softly rumbling, Kat curled up beside him, looking mostly harmless for the first time since Leo had met her.

Baz, on the other hand, was wide awake.

“I was about to come looking for you,” he said.

“Here I am,” Leo said. Three days ago he doubted Bastian Black would ever bother to go hunting him down. Good riddance to extra baggage, is what he would have said. A lot could change in three days.

“You talked to Crayt?” the captain guessed.

Leo nodded. “He’s seen the message. And he’s looked at the files on the chip.”

“And?”

And . . . it’s even worse than we thought. “He still won’t help us.”

“Won’t or can’t?”

“I’m not sure he sees a difference,” Leo said.

“There’s a big difference,” Baz said. “If it’s can’t, then there’s a pretty good chance that nobody can. After all, your dad seemed to think this guy was our best shot. So that means we’re screwed. But if it’s won’t—well, then that means it is possible to stop the Djarik and we just have to find someone else who’s willing to help us.”

“I think we’re going to want to find them fast.” Leo’s voice broke as he said it. No doubt Baz could see him shaking, even in the weak light of the room.

“What is it, Leo? What did Crayt tell you?”

Leo summoned a shuddering breath. Truthfully it shouldn’t have been that big of a revelation. It made a certain sense, after all; it wouldn’t even be the first time they’d tried. Still, when he heard Crayt say it, Leo had felt his legs buckle.

“There were encrypted files. Stuff we couldn’t see. Crayt’s computer managed to decode them. One of those files . . .” Another breath. “One was a list of possible targets.”

They had been ranked in order of their military and strategic value as well as their estimated remaining quantities of V. There were more than twenty planets identified.

Baz already knew. Just by Leo’s look. “It’s us, isn’t it?”

“It’s us,” Leo confirmed. “We’re at the top of the list.”

The environmental collapse that our precious planet faces cannot be blamed on the Aykari alone. Though their mining has accelerated it in some cases, the destruction of Mother Earth began long before the aliens’ arrival. Our planet was our responsibility and we shirked it, over and over again. We perverted and abused and destroyed those things we claim to cherish. The moment we discover something rare and beautiful we immediately find ways to exploit it, hoard it, commodify it—almost always to its detriment, and to our own. It is not a uniquely human impulse—our alien superiors have shown us that—but we would be fools to not take our share of the blame. And we will certainly end up bearing the brunt of the consequences.