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  “Nothing so far.”

  Puzzled, I weaved around the various hulking blocks of machinery, wincing as the hot metal accidentally grazed my skin. The engine room stretched the entire width of the vessel, so I knew my room was somewhere above my head. Seeking it out, I clambered up onto a box and peered through one of the slender vents, seeing the familiar sight of my bedroom above. I half expected someone to jump out at me, or an eye to appear in front of me, the way they did in horror movies, but there was nothing but the peace and quiet of my chambers.

  Undeterred, I made my way back through the engine room, sneaking up to every shadowed corner, before whipping around it, hoping to take someone by surprise. The only person I managed to startle was Xiphio, who’d been creeping in the opposite direction.

  “Oh! You’ve made my gills flutter!” he cried, clutching his chest.

  “Sorry, Xiphio… I didn’t see you there,” I replied, before moving off again.

  For a crash that loud, there should have been some sign of impact, but there was nothing to speak of—no tumbled boxes or broken machinery pieces. It made me wonder if the noise had come from the rooms above, though I was a bit wary of peering through vents, in case I saw something I didn’t want to see. Even so, I looked through every available gap, but I couldn’t find a single thing out of the ordinary.

  “Weird,” I mumbled, tapping the edge of my chin thoughtfully.

  “Maybe it was a space squid latching on to the back of the ship. They do that a lot around Almaghura. They’ll just attack a ship out of nowhere and rip into it, often tearing out the engines!”

  I grimaced. “A nice image, Xiphio, but we aren’t anywhere near Almaghura, and there’s no sign of impact whatsoever. That’s what is so strange. If it was an asteroid or a bit of debris, we’d be able to see a dent or something. But everything looks fine.”

  “It may just have been an engine judder,” Xiphio suggested. “It happens frequently on Fed ships, especially when they’re traveling consistently. It’s simply something in the engine turning over, restarting itself. Nothing to worry about, but a little perplexing.”

  “An engine judder?” I repeated dubiously.

  “Yes, quite normal, nothing to fear, though it does get the blood flowing!” He laughed brightly. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss here. Bangs and crashes like that didn’t just happen… though what did I know about alien engineering? Perhaps, out here, they did.

  “We should be getting back up to the cockpit,” I said. “They’ll be listening in for the transmissions, and I want to be there when they do.”

  “Very good, Miss Riley. I’m sorry our search wasn’t more exciting.”

  “It’s better that it wasn’t. I doubt we could deal with another problem, to add to everything else,” I said wryly, as I clambered up the stepladder and out of the hatch, with Xiphio following a little too closely behind. I was glad I wasn’t wearing a skirt, or Xiphio might have ended up with a punch to the face.

  Knowing we would be getting close to Vysanthe by now, I hurried down the corridor with Xiphio at my side, eager to get back to the cockpit before the transmissions started trickling in. Xiphio, however, seemed eager to talk.

  “And what shall you and Navan do, once all of this is over?” he asked.

  I glanced at him, amused by his relentless positivity. Right now, I wasn’t even sure we would make it that far. “Live happily ever after?”

  “How delightful!” he cried, his cheeks flushing. “A love like yours is a wondrous thing to behold. Once all of this is over, I should like the same thing. Once we have vanquished those tiresome rebels, I would very much like to settle down with a nice girl and live a peaceful life somewhere.”

  I smiled. “That sounds nice.”

  “You don’t happen to know what Miss Lauren’s plans are, do you, after all of this is done with?”

  I almost burst out laughing at his lack of subtlety. “You’ll have to ask her yourself, I’m afraid. I’ve meddled in crushes and love lives before, and it has never ended well,” I said, remembering what had happened between Queen Brisha and Bashrik. He had embarrassed her in front of a party full of people because I’d encouraged her affections for him, and she’d ended up with her heart broken. Yeah, I was never going to play matchmaker again.

  “Miss Riley! You are… well, you are not mistaken, but… you think I have a crush on Miss Lauren?” he stuttered, his cheeks flushing a darker shade of purple. “I must say, I’m quite surprised… I didn’t think I was being so obvious. Does she know? Oh, goodness, tell me she does not! I’ve yet to properly woo her, and I wouldn’t have her think badly of me.”

  “She doesn’t think badly of you,” I assured him.

  “So, she thinks… fondly of me?” he pressed, testing the waters.

  “Sorry, pal. I’m not getting involved!”

  He pulled a disappointed face. “Well, if you won’t help me, Miss Riley, then you must swear that you will not breathe a word of this to Miss Lauren! Please, promise you’ll keep my affections a secret until I can muster the courage to tell her myself?”

  I lifted my hands in agreement. “I won’t say anything, but I’m pretty sure you’ll give yourself away long before then.”

  As we approached the cockpit, the rasp of the news transmission feed filtered through, the sound of it quickening my pace. Inside, the others were already gathered, clustered around the central hub, listening to what the media outlets of Vysanthe had to say about the last month.

  “Whose side is it?” I whispered, tucking myself against Navan’s side.

  “Gianne’s,” he replied.

  “Can you find a transmission from Brisha’s side?”

  He shook his head. “There’s only one channel coming through. If Brisha even has any media outlets left, they’ll have resorted to archaic measures—short-range radio waves and pirated broadcasts. We’d have to be on the ground to hear those.”

  I realized that meant we’d be hearing things from Gianne’s perspective, with her doing whatever she could to maintain her nation’s patriotism, but the bare bones of truth would, hopefully, still be there. Bashrik fiddled with something on the control panel, and the raspy transmission cleared up until I could hear every word.

  “The aerial assaults on the North have been a success, even with the departure of our allies. We are mightier than they are, we do not require outside support, and we shall always prevail,” the newscaster said. “The palace of the usurper was hit at six o’clock this morning by a bombardment of new supernova missiles. We must take a moment to remember the comrades who have so bravely given their lives in the use of these missiles. Queen Gianne has already engraved their names on the honor memorial, so they shall be remembered in the annals of Vysanthean history. It shall be known that they were the ones responsible for the new dawn that has come to our nation…”

  A crackle distorted the next few words, but I heard the last ones the newscaster spoke. I didn’t think I’d ever forget them.

  “Queen Brisha has been assassinated.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I stared at the windshield, looking at Vysanthe in the distance, feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under me. My heart sank, my eyes blinking slowly in disbelief. Queen Brisha was dead, and that could only spell disaster for the rest of the coldblood planet.

  “No…” Lauren gasped, tears glittering in her eyes. The two of them had been closer than the rest of us, spending evenings in Brisha’s library, talking like two ordinary young women—despite the fact that they came from opposite ends of the universe and led vastly different lives. I could see the pain on her face, knowing that Brisha was gone.

  Stone put a comforting arm around her. “Sorry ‘bout that, Ren. I know the pair of ye was tight.”

  Xiphio eyed the action with disdain, but he didn’t say anything, evidently realizing that now was not the time or place to squabble over Lauren’s affections. She was cut up about it. We all were. An air of utt
er shock had settled over our group.

  “I can’t believe she’s dead,” Bashrik murmured.

  “I didn’t like either of them much, but Brisha wasn’t a bad egg,” Angie added, nestling into her boyfriend, her face sad.

  “Does that mean… Gianne won?” Ronad wondered, narrowing his eyes at the planet, which was just visible beyond the windshield.

  I looked up at Navan, who had yet to say anything. A muscle twitched in his jaw, his slate eyes growing steely. Although he’d been a Southern Vysanthean for most of his life, I knew his thoughts on Gianne—we shared the same ones. She was an insane tyrant with an enormous amount of power, and now that she had nobody standing in her way, she could seize total control of the planet.

  “The battle is not won, however,” the newscaster said, distracting us from the shock of Brisha’s assassination. “The usurper’s forces are still at large, battling to retain control of the North. They do not see the one true queen as their queen and would seek to defy our armies. We shall not allow them to disobey the might of Queen Gianne. We will continue to fight until not a single one is left standing, if that is what it takes—these are the words of our fearless leader.”

  It appeared that Queen Brisha’s military was still fighting back against Gianne’s army, despite their leader being dead. I couldn’t blame them. If I had a choice between battling for my independence or bowing down to the whims and wishes of a madwoman, I knew where my loyalty would lead.

  “They will not triumph,” the newscaster continued. “Our queen shall be queen of all Vysanthe soon enough. We must remain strong and defeat these usurping hordes who would refuse Queen Gianne her right to their throne.”

  I wasn’t sure what state Gianne’s armies were in, but that didn’t change the fact that there was only so much the North could do to retaliate and keep hold of their lands. We had seen them depleted with our own eyes, thanks to the Titans, and I knew things could only have gotten worse from there. They were likely dangling by a thread, clawing at any hope they could muster, but it would only be a matter of time before Gianne got what she wanted and took control over everything. They couldn’t fight forever.

  Unfortunately for us, that meant Gianne’s distractions would soon be over, too. As soon as the war was officially won, and the Northern forces had been vanquished by the remainder of her army, she would undoubtedly resume all the projects she had been developing prior to the war. I sensed, deep down in my heart, that she would jump straight back into it the moment she took both thrones. She would go back to building the deep-space technology that had so nearly been thwarted and would set her sights on completing the immortality elixir. Once that was done, there would be nothing we could do to stop her from doing whatever she wanted, wherever she wanted, in all the universe.

  “What do we do?” Angie asked, lifting her head.

  “What can we do?” Ronad replied. “It’s not like we can swoop down there and save the day. They’ve already lost.”

  Navan grimaced. “And we’ll lose, too, if we don’t get a move on.”

  “Navan?” Bashrik said, concerned.

  “We have to get out of here. There’s nothing we can do about Vysanthe now, but we can do something about the rebels,” he urged. “As soon as they find out what’s happened here, they’ll be slaughtering humans for blood and pushing harder for the elixir, especially now that they have the notebook. Then they’ll be pouring that elixir down the throat of every rebel soldier and making their plans to return. This won’t be the last conflict Vysanthe sees.”

  I nodded. “We need to press on to Glossa.”

  “What about everyone down there?” Xiphio protested. “I have no love for the coldbloods, but there must be countless innocents in need of some reassurance. Perhaps we can pause a moment, to see if we can arrest Gianne?”

  “And do what with her?” Navan shot back. “The Fed won’t come near this place—you know that as well as I do. I hate to say it, but the Vysantheans are on their own.”

  “For now,” I added, feeling a twist of guilt.

  Lauren nodded. “We have to deal with one thing at a time, and Vysanthe will have to wait its turn. The rebels have to be stopped first. We can’t let them make that elixir. If they manage it, it’s game over for everyone.”

  “I’ll see that don’t happen, but I need me crew first,” Stone reassured us, his arm still around Lauren.

  “If anyone can help stop them, it’s Stone,” Lauren agreed.

  “I suppose you have to think like a criminal to be able to vanquish a criminal,” Xiphio mumbled, clearly feeling put out by the bond between Lauren and Stone. Regardless, I hoped Lauren was right. We were wasting valuable time going to pick them up from Glossa, but if that’s what it took to gain Stone’s cooperation, then so be it.

  “Continuing our course to Glossa,” Bashrik said, his hands moving across the control panel.

  Three more days passed in the blink of an eye, with us running way behind schedule. It seemed the navigation system had been wrong in predicting it would take us four days to reach Glossa. The system was glitching every couple of hours and pointing us in a different direction. Fortunately, Bashrik had caught the error before it could cause us too much trouble, diving down under the controls and restarting the navigation system manually. Afterward, he’d claimed he couldn’t find any problem with the wiring, which worried me.

  First, there’d been an unexplained crash. Now, there were unexplained glitches going on with the ship’s systems. Either someone was trying to sabotage us, or this ship was falling to pieces and we didn’t know it. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  And so, three days off course thanks to the navigation problems and still despondent over the loss of Brisha, we were finally headed back in the right direction. All of us were gathered in the cockpit, with Bashrik and Ronad on the controls, while Angie and I sat together to one side and Navan was in the armchair next to me, drifting in and out of sleep. Lauren was on the opposite side of the room, playing a board game with Xiphio and Stone, who seemed intent on outdoing one another.

  “How long until we reach Glossa?” I asked, staring through the windshield at the endless darkness of space. I was starting to get sick of the sight of it, which was something I’d never thought possible. Now, I was starting to understand why Pandora had never bothered to venture onto the observation deck—there just wasn’t anything new to see.

  “Four days or so,” Bashrik replied.

  I grimaced. “Won’t your crew be worried about you by now, Stone? What if they’ve already left because they think you’re dead?”

  Stone smirked. “They won’t.”

  “And you’re not going to run off as soon as you have your crew back?”

  “We’ve been over this. I ain’t going nowhere,” he insisted. “I made an oath to ye, and I don’t break oaths.”

  I frowned at him. “And you’re really going to help us?”

  We’d discussed the situation at length, but I couldn’t help asking again and again. As soon as he had his crew back, as promised, he’d agreed to use his powers to help us defeat the rebels, with all of them returning with us to Earth to fulfill that part of the bargain. After that, we’d have to find a more permanent way to protect Earth from the perils of intergalactic beings, but that discussion would have to wait until we’d actually defeated the rebels—I just hoped Xiphio would make good on his promise to ask the Fed for further help. Right now, however, there was no point in running before we could walk.

  Stone nodded. “I told ye, I made me promise and I’ll stick to it. Ain’t that right, Ren? I’m a man of me word, right?” he said, looking to Lauren for approval.

  She and Xiphio had been spending a lot more time together lately, which had had a peculiar effect on Stone. He’d started acting weird around her, almost trying to imitate Xiphio’s chivalrous mannerisms. It was funny to watch, considering Stone had all the manners of a scavenger, but I felt bad for him. He clearly adored Lauren, not realizing his
own feelings until he’d almost lost her to Xiphio. Now, he was trying to make up for lost time, with hilarious consequences.

  “You are a man of your word, Stone. I don’t know anyone more honest,” Lauren replied, smiling.

  “I been meaning to say, Ren, yer face looks weird today,” he said unexpectedly, his cheeks flushing. “Have ye done somethin’ to it?”

  Lauren frowned. “No, I don’t think so. What do you mean, weird?”

  “Like, all glowing and stuff,” he muttered. “Yer radiant… or something, like one of them stars out there.”

  “Are you feeling okay, Stone?”

  “I’m fine, just wanted to… say ye looked decent today. Yer clothes are nice and that,” he murmured. “Ah, forget it.” He wandered over to the controls, where Bashrik was looking up at him with doe eyes.

  I’d expected Xiphio to look pleased, considering Stone had just embarrassed himself in front of Lauren, but he didn’t seem particularly victorious. Instead, he looked sympathetic, as though he understood the difficulties of courtship. It didn’t stop him from resuming his conversation with Lauren. They’d been talking about books she liked, and he had been describing some of his favorites to her.

  “What’re ye doing over here?” Stone asked, plonking himself down in one of the chairs closest to the controls. He kept casting glances at Lauren and Xiphio, who were chuckling together, enveloped in their own little world.

  “We’ve been running some diagnostics through the system to find out what happened to the navigation program. I’ve been running every possible scenario, if you want to come and have a look,” Bashrik replied eagerly, gesturing at the monitor. “I know you’re great with ships of all kinds, so we could definitely do with your input.”

  Stone leaned forward in his chair. “What kind o’ diagnostics you runnin’?”

  “General sweeps of the system.”

  Stone shook his head. “Nah, ye need to be more specific. Ye’ll not get anywhere with general sweeps. Ye gotta go to the root of the problem.” He moved closer, with Bashrik shifting to the side so Stone could get at the controls. His hands moved effortlessly across the panel, his eyes focused on the monitor.