She’d always known that she would go back to face the pirates. Always known that somehow she would manage to free her friend. But that plan had gone slowly in the intervening years, hampered by the difficulties of survival within the HHM ranks, which were prone to infighting and influence peddling. And then they’d taken the next step, the restaurant. She had thought it would be a success for sure, build the reserves they’d need for a ship, a fast ship. But it had gone slowly, so slowly at first, and then things shifted somehow, seeping away credit by credit, like a slow oxygen leak, one you couldn’t find, draining away vital air.

All of this and other worries were the thoughts that came to her in the middle of the night, each and every night, when she thought of Petalia.

She wondered now if Tubal Last was still around. He had been, in the pages of Skullduggery and Sacred Space Vessels. He walked through its pages committing atrocities, and every time Niko read one, she saw Petalia’s face on the victim.

No, he would still be there. She would have heard something if he had fallen.

Dabry was looking at her now; he knew the story of Petalia. He knew almost all of Niko’s stories by now.

“It would be best,” he said, “to avoid this place entirely.”

“That,” Niko said, “does not seem to be an option at the moment.” She said, “Ship, could you hide us if you needed to? From Lolola?”

“Maybe,” the ship said. “I am not sure of the parameters surrounding that command.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” Milly asked.

“We’re not the target,” Niko said. “The Thing is, that’s what they want. We just happened to get swept up in this particular net. The question is—how do we get ourselves out of this and keep them from taking the Thing?”

“I do not understand,” the ship said.

“Do you want to belong to pirates?”

The ship considered this one more time, matching the question against everything that it knew of pirates, their culture, their deeds, their practices, and their history. It ran several thousand projections.

“I do not,” it said seconds later, “but that answer might change if the alternative is worse. I do not wish to be destroyed. I do not wish to lose my memories.”

“The latter would be one of the first things they wipe,” Niko said grimly. “Anything that might serve to identify you will be removed.”

“But I am unique,” the ship said.

“The Known Universe is very large, Thing. They’ll find a place to sell you, one on the outskirts that has never heard of a bioship and will be accordingly dazzled.”

“I don’t think they intend to sell the ship,” Dabry said. “What does Tubal Last collect, after all?”