“He is leading the remaining active missiles toward parasite Eight, either hoping they’ll take out the frigate or we’ll take out the missiles, I suppose,” Penae said.

“Why would we do that?”

“Not every species has systems as precise as ours,” he explained. “Many would be forced to destruct their own missiles, or risk losing the parasite. It’s not a bad gambit to play, given his situation.”

“It will gain him nothing,” the second-in-command of the parasite said, mystified.

“True, but he doesn’t know that.”

►►►

Shuttle Eagle One

► Milla had a death grip on her heavily bolstered seat, eyes wide as the parasite frigate loomed ahead of them, growing larger by the second. She didn’t know what Steph had in mind, but she did know that she no longer wanted to be a pilot. Not for the moment anyway.

Give her the heavy armor and, more importantly, the heavier weapons of a Heroic Class starship at her touch; now that was her place.

She hoped she would get back to her post, though at the moment that seemed less and less likely.

“Stephan . . . ,” she murmured, her tone not quite panicked.

“Quiet now. I really need to focus for this,” Steph said, actually looking away from the screen for a moment to flash a grin at her.

“Ahead! Ahead, look ahead, please!”

His rolling chuckle was an alien sound amid the thudding of her heart and the constant alarms sounding through the shuttle’s flight deck, but it quickly became what she focused on. Even when the laughter passed, Milla felt she could hear the sound’s ghostly echo hanging in the air, making light of everything that was happening.

She had no idea how he could be so calm about it all, but Milla realized that she very much preferred that to the alternatives.

A proximity alarm began to sound, softly at first, but with quickly growing enthusiasm as Eagle One closed on the enemy frigate. A nearly forgotten program on Milla’s station lit up, and she jerked her head down to see what it was before letting out a surprised cry.

“Stephan! They are attempting a lock!”

The shuttle bucked and twisted as Steph killed the throttle and hit a set of retros, jerking them hard in place as Eagle One decelerated rapidly. Then he slammed the throttle stick forward again as he skirted around the heaviest set of signals Milla was using to try to detect any attempts to quantum lock the shuttle. The two were thrown around in their restraints as Steph used every maneuvering system at his disposal to keep them flying.

“Missiles! Vectors, now!”

Milla glanced over, automatically reading out the numbers as they were updated on the screen.

“Seven o’clock, now five degrees negative to our plane. Impact in . . .” She swallowed. “Ten seconds.”

“Only need seven.”