“Ak’va, think, you stupid star-kisser,” he muttered to himself as two schooners fell in line behind him. Artem-1S, both of them.

Talle said from the communications console, “Thrusters are maxed!”

“Tell me something I don’t know!” He took one hand off the controls to check the ship’s inventory. There had to be something he could use. Three solar-flare rockets and about a thousand rounds for the gunnery . . .

Ana, quickly followed by Viera, stumbled into the cockpit and pulled down two emergency seats in the back, securing themselves in.

He pulled the ship up through the thunderheads and into clear sky. The clouds flickered behind him, and he wasn’t sure if it was lightning or another missile. “Goddess, love, what did you do to make them this mad?”

“Well,” replied Ana, “the heart wasn’t in the tomb, and I kinda blew it up, so Mellifare definitely isn’t happy with me right now.”

“That’s an understatement, darling,” Siege muttered, positioning herself behind Jax’s chair.

Jax flipped a switch to bring the wings in as they crested past twelve kilometers. “Captain, you should buckle in, too.”

She didn’t move from her station behind his chair. “What’re you doing?”

“There are two schooners after us, and they’re so heavy I’m hoping they can’t flip-turn on a dime like our girl, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and hopefully they’ll be eating our pretty little exhaust as we jet into the stratosphere.” Then he flicked on the intercom again and said, “Xu, you’re in the engine room, right?”

“Yes,” they replied immediately.

“I need you to reroute all the solar power to the thrusters—to nothing else. Can you do that?”

“I hope there is nothing in the refrigerator that needs saving,” they commented.

From the comms console, Talle said, “Just some salmon I was hoping to cook . . .”

“I’ll buy you more, starlight,” the captain promised, and grabbed one of the leather holds in the ceiling of the cockpit. She wound her hand around it twice and planted herself where she stood. “Okay, we’re clear.”

“Oh!” Ana gasped, jolting up, “but Di’s on the gurney—”

“Stop worrying about that murderer!” Viera snapped, and Ana scowled at her.

“He’s not a murderer.”

Goddess’s spark, he did not have the patience for this. “Xu, on my mark.” With a flick of the propulsion, he eased out of their ascent. The Dossier swirled, passing through the raging gray thunderheads, toward the ground again—

At an alarming angle.

The schooners followed.

Lighting spiraled through the clouds around them, so bright it was blinding.

“Now, Xu!”

He waited for the thrusters to read the power flux. One second, two.

Come on, come on—

The ship lights went dark, energy rerouted to the solar core. The red emergency lights blinked on. Praying to the Goddess this worked, Jax slammed one control back, the other forward, and the thrusters shuddered. The entire ship vibrated—

And flipped backward on its head.

There was ground, and suddenly there were the glorious, angry thunderclouds. The thrusters shuddered as they tried to catch the Dossier out of its descent, propelling it upward again. This had to work.