He was so focused on finding that shell that he almost stepped on it—the jellyfish inches from his toes, its gelatinous body splayed across the wet dark sand, looking like a blister on the beach, its tentacles shriveled underneath it.
Such an alien thing, Leo thought. Even more alien looking than the actual aliens that had come to Earth from millions of light-years away. They, at least, had arms and ears and eyeballs. Leo couldn’t tell if the jelly was still alive or not. He was afraid to touch it, afraid that it could sting him, even dead.
But what if it wasn’t?
Was there a chance he could save it? If he could get it back into the water, would it suddenly blob back to life and float away? Had it come onto shore to die, or was that just a mistake, the work of an indifferent tide? Did jellyfish have a time, the way that humans supposedly did—it was just her time—or was that too just a lie people told themselves?
For a second Leo considered walking away, pretending he hadn’t seen anything at all. But then he heard his father’s voice in his head. We have a choice, Leo. Each and every day gives us an opportunity to do something. To leave our mark. To make things better. So that when we fall asleep at night we can do it knowing that our day made a difference for someone else, no matter how slight. We owe that to each other, don’t you think?
Leo knew he didn’t just mean the Fenders, or humans in general, or even the inhabitants of Earth. He meant every living thing. We owe it to the universe to help each other.
Or at least to try.
Scattered among the shells and the seaweed and the tiny scuttling crabs, Leo found a stick, and with it he carefully dug beneath the quivering blob, afraid of hurting it, and yet growing more and more certain that it no longer felt anything, that his effort was a waste, even as he dragged its body out to sea, letting the retreating waves bear it back with them.
For a moment Leo watched the jellyfish bob at the surface, slowly working its way back to shore with the current. He was afraid of what would happen if he stayed, that the creature would simply wash right back up onto the sand to rot. Only if he stopped watching could he entertain the possibility—the hope—that it was still alive. That what he had done mattered.
He glanced across the blue-black expanse, feathered with whitecaps crashing, and far off in the distance, the thimble of an Aykari excavation tower anchored to the earth. Then he turned and ran back to his father and his brother, his quest for the perfect shell temporarily forgotten, toes pressed into the sand, a similar sinking in his stomach, a sense of powerlessness in the face of forces so much greater than him.
It was 2:35 on a Saturday afternoon, and the Djarik warships had just come out of their jump, missiles armed and ready.
“All personnel evacuate immediately.”
The alarms continued to sound as Leo trailed Baz through the corridors, back in the direction they came. Getting farther and farther from the man they had come to rescue.
Leaving Leo’s father behind.
Leo had waited at the door for a moment, heartbroken, head swamped with doubt, seeing his father, the man he’d come to save, standing next to the two robed Djarik only feet away. An insignificant amount of space, easily crossed in a few strides, not like the light-years traveled to get here. And in that moment Leo felt an overwhelming urge to run back into the room, back into his father’s arms, holding on no matter what.
But then his fingers brushed along the edge of the datachip nestled in his pocket, the one that had been handed to him in secret. Do this for me, Leo. It could mean the world. He thought of Gareth. Probably—no, definitely still alive. Out there somewhere. And he saw the grimace on Kat’s face, knowing that every second he spent standing in that doorway, deciding on what path to take, was one second less the crew of the Icarus had to escape. So much seemed to hang in the balance.
But then Chellis grabbed Dr. Fender by his shirt, pulling him through the door on the opposite side of the room, away from Leo. He caught one last glance of his father—caught the silent but still desperate Go on his lips.
So he turned his back on his family and threw in with a band of pirates.
Pirates who were now running for their lives. Again.
“That way!” Leo pointed at a turn ahead.
“You sure?”
“I’m sort of sure.”
Except he wasn’t. His brain was all static and swirl. He couldn’t recall all the turns they took to get here.
How had he gotten here? Not just here, but here. Allied with a pirate crew trapped in a Djarik base under attack by forces that, less than a day ago, Leo would have run to for protection. If the Aykari really did what his father said, then they were just as responsible for what happened as the ones pressing the buttons, weren’t they? Which is worse? Doing the unthinkable or standing back and letting the unthinkable happen so that you could use it to your advantage?
And if Leo was no longer on the Coalition’s side, then whose side was he on?
“Skits? Are you there? Answer me for Earth’s sake!” Kat’s annoyed voice brought Leo back into focus. “She’s still not responding.”
“We’ll find them,” Baz said.
“All personnel must evacuate immediately,” the mechanical voice droned above them. “All personnel must eva—”
The warning shut off in a burst of static.
“That can’t be good,” Kat quipped.
From other corridors, Leo could hear the blasts of gunfire. The Aykari were inside the base. The allies of humanity. Five days ago—five hours ago—Leo would have been on-his-knees-grateful to see Aykarian soldiers. He would have shown them the patch that he still had in his pocket, the one planet so much bigger than the rest, encircled by the smaller ones like bees swarming a hive with its queen at the center.
“This place is a war zone, Baz,” Kat said. “And look at us. Right in the middle like always.”
“You voted to come here,” he reminded her. “Leo, any idea how far we are from the hangar?”
Leo spun around, trying to get his bearings. None of these doors looked familiar. Or they all did. “We’re close, I think,” Leo said uncertainly. “Left here maybe.”
They made a left and nearly walked straight into a firefight, the hallway exploding with deadly energy, the silver Aykarian forces pitched against the black-armored Djarik.
“Maybe not!” Baz said, pushing everyone back.
They took a different turn instead, Kat still calling out for Skits, Leo still armed with his inhaler, which he’d already taken a hit of, trying to stave off an attack that seemed all but certain. They made it ten more feet before two Aykari soldiers appeared in the corridor, blocking their way, their tall, elongated frames clad in plates of silver armor, covering most of their hairless, pale blue skin. Their eyes shown a fiery orange. Their rifles were raised, spindly fingers on the triggers.
“Don’t shoot,” Baz said, dropping his own weapon to his side and raising his other hand in surrender. “Please. We’re human. We’re with you guys.”
The gangly-limbed Aykari didn’t fire.
They also didn’t lower their weapons.
Sometimes what you don’t do matters even more than what you do, and in that moment, Leo saw them differently. Rather he saw himself through their eyes. And what he saw wasn’t a human being; it was a resource, just like Baz said. A means to an end.
“Man, are we so glad to see you,” Baz continued. “The Scalies were going to execute us. Seriously, if you hadn’t come along . . .”
As Baz continued to try and talk his way past them, one of the Aykari soldiers removed a scanning device from its belt, a bright blue beam projecting outward, tracing Baz from scalp to heel. The soldier held the scanner up to his partner. Leo guessed the results weren’t good by the way they both retrained their rifles on the captain.
Taking their burning orange eyes off Kat for an instant, which, Leo knew, was all she needed.
Two blasts, one right after the other, and the two Aykari guards fell, incapa
citated.
Before Leo could even process what had happened, Baz was already dragging him back down a different corridor, cursing and muttering to himself.
“Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs. . . .” He pulled both Leo and Kat to a stop. “Hold up. Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” All Leo could hear was alarms.
“That music,” Baz said.
Leo concentrated. He could hear something, awfully faint but steadily growing in volume. Harmonizing voices over crunchy guitar chords. Definitely music. And distinctively human.
“‘I gotta get outta here. I’m stuck inside this rut that I fell into by mistake.’”
Kat and Baz looked at each other and smiled. “Skits.”
They followed the sound down through the labyrinthine hallways until it was enough to drown out the alarms and the explosions, the electric guitar slashing through the thunder of war. Leo turned the corner to a wild sight: Boo, his robe torn and singed, three hands gripping a hunk of metal that might once have been a door of some kind but now served as a shield, feet straddling Skits’s treads as if he were sitting on the front of a miniature tank barreling down the corridor.
Leo had to admit, he was happy to see them.
The robot’s speakers were blasting at full volume but switched off the instant she spotted Baz. “Finally,” she moaned. “I swear, it’s not like we’ve been looking all over for you or anything.”
“Found you first,” Kat said. She inspected the new burns in Boo’s robes. “You okay?”
“Nothing that will leave a scar,” Boo said, dropping his makeshift shield. “Sorry about the plan. They caught us before we could even make it to the terminal. Guess we weren’t as stealthy as we thought.”
“Not your fault,” Baz said. “It was a terrible plan.”
Boo looked at Leo. “Your dad?”
Leo wasn’t sure what to say—how to explain why his father wasn’t with them. He didn’t really have an answer himself. Just a whisper, a promise, and a datachip. All the rest was questions and doubts.
“Dr. Fender is getting a ride with someone else,” Baz said for him. “The kid’s coming with us. I’ll try to explain once we get somewhere where nobody’s shooting at us.”
“That could be a while,” Kat said.
“Either of you have any idea how to get to the Icarus?” Baz asked. “Because I can’t remember where we parked.”
Where we parked.
Why didn’t he think of this sooner?
Leo glanced at his watch, the gift from his parents on his eighth birthday. Cutting-edge technology. Holographic projector. Health-monitoring system. Database enabled. It could even tell time.
Plus it automatically remembered where you parked your car. Or, he supposed, your ship.
Leo pressed a button on the side, pulling up the app. A minuscule red dot began to pulse on the tiny screen along with a number indicating how close they were. A hundred and eighty meters. “This way,” he said.
They darted down two more corridors with Leo now at the lead, avoiding the sounds of gunfire at all costs and finally making it to the door that opened up to the hangar. There sat the Icarus less than a football field away, the freighter it had docked beside already gone, escaped with its cargo before the attack—or perhaps confiscated by the Aykari when they arrived.
The ship looked like it was still in one piece.
Unfortunately it was also surrounded by Aykari soldiers.
“Never easy, is it?” Baz said, breathless.
“Not with you around,” Kat admitted.
The captain turned to Boo, whose fur stood up on end. “I think we’re going to need you to wail on these guys, if you’re up for it.”
“That’s another terrible idea,” Boo replied. “You know what it will do to you.”
“Yeah. But it will do the same to them. Do you think you can carry Kat? The kid too?”
The Queleti shrugged. “Manageable. What about you?”
Baz knocked softly on the side of the robot. “Skits’s got me, don’t you Skits?”
The robot extended one of her claws to rest on the captain’s shoulder. “Always,” she said.
Leo had no idea what was going on. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, what it will do to us? What is it?”
“In your time on Earth did you ever hear the Irish legend about the banshee?” Baz asked.
Leo shook his head. He’d heard his father use the phrase “screaming like banshees” before. It always just meant he and Gareth were being too loud while he was trying to work.
“You’re going to want to plug your ears for as long as you can,” Kat said, slinging her stolen Djarik rifle over her shoulder. “Unless you feel like having your head explode.”
“Wait, what?”
Leo watched as Kat stuck a fleshy finger in one ear and a metal one in the other. Baz stood on the front of Skits’s treads, back pressed against her torso, two of her extendable arms locked around his waist.
“Boo, what’s going on?”
In answer the Queleti wrapped two arms around Leo, much the same as he had when they were snuggled back on the Icarus.
“Kat’s right. Plug your ears tight as you can. And don’t worry—I won’t drop you,” he said before sweeping Leo off his feet.
In Irish folklore, the banshee’s wail was a harbinger of death. Her keening could drive one to madness or despair.
Boo’s wail wasn’t too far off.
Leo pressed both hands against his ears but it was like trying to cover Boo with a blanket. The sound emanating from the Queleti’s mouth could not be completely buffered or blocked out. It seeped through Leo’s fingers, through bone and skin, reverberating straight to his brain where it drove home a spike, a blinding shaft of pain that caused nearly every muscle in Leo’s body to seize. He was paralyzed, at least that’s how it seemed. His arms and legs were unresponsive, though he could still turn his head to see Kat, her own eyes shut, fingers still jammed in her ears, riding on Boo’s opposite hip. He was strong enough to carry them both, even with his one wounded arm. Out of the corner of his eye Leo saw the captain lashed to Skits, clutching both sides of his head and gritting through the pain as she barreled ahead, unfazed. Whatever Boo was doing—whatever head-splitting sound was coming out of his mouth—it had no effect on robots.
The agony on Baz’s face was nothing compared to the look on the Queleti himself, though, the anguish in his roar reflected also in his eyes. This sound came from somewhere deep inside him, some shattered place, a wound that had never healed, and it broke Leo’s heart even as it blasted his brain.
The sound echoed out across the hangar, rolling like a wave, striking the Aykari soldiers standing guard over the ship. The moment Boo’s wailing reached them, they dropped their weapons, collapsing to their spindly knees. Some, like Leo, seemed paralyzed. Others trembled, heads cupped in their hands, adding their own screams to the mix. Boo’s yell had rendered them immobile. He had practically frozen time.
He could only wail for so long, however. Long enough to make it halfway to the ship. And in the moment that followed, Boo’s wailing faded to nothing and everything that had slowed down suddenly sped back up. The Aykari that had been driven to their knees shook their heads and staggered to their feet. Those that been paralyzed by the sound found their wits and scrambled for their dropped rifles.
But they weren’t the only ones who had recovered. His mouth shut, Boo’s arms opened—two of them anyway—and Kat dropped free, unslinging her own weapon and firing in the direction of the soldiers beside the ramp, causing them to scatter. Boo refused to let go of Leo, though, just like he promised, running full speed and plowing through one Aykari who was still reeling from the roar, sending it flying.
They hit the ramp and Leo finally felt his feet hit the ground, Boo collapsing beside him. Bursts of deadly energy filled the hangar. Skits zoomed up the ramp next, her treads smoking again, and Kat followed, taking errant sh
ots at the Aykari soldiers behind her without even looking.
And then there was Baz, bringing up the rear this time, making sure every member of his crew was on board. He was less than a meter away when an energy bolt hit him, causing him to stumble toward the ramp. Leo reached out with one hand, Boo with another, pulling the captain on board.
“Kat, get this thing moving!” the captain shouted, holding the side of his head with one hand so that Leo barely got a look at the wound as he staggered past. “Kat?”
“I know! We’re going, we’re going!” she shouted back.
The ramp was barely closed before the Icarus lurched sideways and then up, knocking Leo into the walls as he followed Baz to the cockpit, the captain still clutching his head. He could hear Kat’s voice, exasperated, shouting all the way down the corridor from the pilot’s seat.
“Just once, just once you might take a girl somewhere quiet. Somewhere peaceful. Somewhere where there aren’t bounty hunters or security bots or whole platoons of Aykari soldiers all trying to gun her down.”
Leo lurched forward and then stumbled backward as the Icarus turned and then burst out of the hangar, a parting barrage of laser blasts from the soldiers attempting in vain to stop it.
“Somewhere with a lake,” Kat continued to rant as she steered the Icarus up and away from the base. “And some trees. Real ones, Baz, not artificial. And a freking duck. Is that really too much to ask? To see some stupid freking ducks again before I die?”
The ship tore through the gray clouds, leaving the Djarik base behind, pulling free of the planet’s grip and breaking back into the empty black void of space.
Except the void wasn’t empty at all. It was filled with ships. Aykari naval cruisers and frigates attempting to ensnare the Djarik freighters and transports fleeing the planet, swarms of fighters from both sides weaving through the constant barrage. The whole view from the cockpit exploded with arcs of energy and bright bursts of flame.
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