“What’s going on?” the man gripping Juanita’s arm asked.

He’d stopped moving. His faceplate turned toward the sky, though only a sliver was visible between the trees. A ship flew overhead, thrusters glowing red behind it as it passed.

Juanita grimaced. It hadn’t looked like the falcon-shaped Star Guardian ship.

“There they are,” she blurted, still hoping she might lure the men far enough for her trap.

With the man distracted, she managed to slip her arm free. She ran toward the tree that she and Orion had leaned against before, knowing the land around it was dry and also knowing the land to the side of it was not. That one Star Guardian had proven that a deep sinkhole lay out there, even though leaves and moss covered the moist, dark earth, hiding the mud from sight.

“Come back here,” the slaver yelled. “Help me get her, you two.”

All three men chased after Juanita. As she passed the tree and veered away from it, her foot sank alarmingly. She yanked it free and ran a couple of steps inland. Too close. She kept running, trying to stay close to the edge without landing in it, and remembering that the trees could be her guide. The light from the man’s helmet revealed enough for her to see the way. But it also revealed that he was catching up with her. They all were.

“Angela, Tala, Kate, are you out here?” she called, yelling her friends’ names and one of the other ones she remembered. “I think I see them,” she yelled over her shoulder.

The men were right behind her. One reached out, scant feet away from grabbing her hair.

Juanita spotted a boulder out in the middle of what she believed to be the sinkhole. She sprang toward it, her heart leaping into her throat when she almost didn’t make it. But she managed to land on the edge of the mossy platform. She raised a hand to her eyes, making a show of peering into the gloom.

“Get that stupid woman.”

The men charged into the mud right behind her.

“What the—” one blurted, and she knew at least one had sunken into the quagmire.

“Do you see them?” she asked, turning back to them, still feigning innocence.

All three were snarling and struggling with their footing, knee-deep or deeper in the mud. One sank rapidly to his waist and wrenched himself around, grabbing his closest comrade for support.

“Get off me.”

Juanita crouched down, bunching her muscles, and sprang for the edge like a long jumper. She didn’t quite make it to the hard ground. Both feet came down in soft mud.

She squeaked and flung herself forward, trying to yank her shoes out. Fortunately, she wasn’t as heavy as the men, and she’d landed close to the edge. With her momentum going that way anyway, she was able to pull her feet out. She almost lost her shoes, but she rolled onto solid ground, bumping into a tree.

Juanita jumped to her feet, mud squishing inside her shoes. She ignored it. The men were trying to claw their way out of the sinkhole. They were too preoccupied with escaping to worry about her.

Taking advantage, she sprinted back the way she had come. That mud wouldn’t hold them forever, but she hoped she had given Orion enough time to disable the bomb.

Just as the slaver ship was going to unleash its weapons, the Falcon 8 burst to life. Its running lights came on, and it rocketed up from the bog where it had seemed to be mired.

The helmsman for the slaver ship might have been surprised, but he still fired. A pair of missiles slammed into one of the fire falcon’s wings. They exploded with a fiery boom that made the ground shake. Down below, all weapons fire ceased as everyone looked up at the ship.

Orion also paused, his gaze riveted to the sky. If the Falcon 8 went down…

The Star Guardian ship sailed out of the smoke and fire, completely undamaged. Its shields were up, and the missiles hadn’t broken through. The ship zipped high into the sky, then dove down behind the seemingly surprised slaver ship.

Both vessels fired again, and flashes of light brightened the sky for miles in all directions. The Falcon 8 swerved, almost defying gravity as it contorted and gyrated in the air, avoiding the blasts.

“Go, Zakota,” Orion urged, though he barely knew the helmsman.

The slaver ship wasn’t as quick to react as the Star Guardian vessel. It jolted in the air as the fire falcon’s huge nova cannons boomed, crackling balls of energy striking it squarely on the starboard side. Its shields deflected the blows, but its running lights dimmed, as if the attack had drained its power.

The slaver ship streaked away from the lake with the Falcon 8 in pursuit.

Orion lost sight of both through the trees. A soft beeping noise yanked his attention back to his own problem.

It was coming from the bomb, from somewhere inside the casing.

He patted all around it again, determined to find an access panel this time. Instead, he brushed something, and the legs extended, raising the cylinder from the ground and tilting it upward, readying it for launch.

“Great,” he muttered.

If his “help” turned into him accidentally launching it, and if it had some tracker and could home in on the Star Guardian ship… Sage would strangle him for sure. If he survived. Orion cringed, thinking about the intense guilt he would feel.

“Focus,” he whispered.

Now that it was clear which side of the bomb was up and which was down, he found faint creases on the top that indicated a panel. He slid his fingers around it and finally bumped the right spot. The panel swung upward on hinges.

A huge digital display showed a timer counting down. Three minutes.

“What in all of Hades’ dominion?” Orion blurted. “Who the fuck armed this? And how?”

He glanced in the direction the ships had disappeared, though he couldn’t see either now. Had someone on the slaver ship figured out that the team carrying the bomb had been attacked? Maybe they’d started the countdown remotely, wanting to blow up as many Star Guardians as they could while they escaped. If so, they hadn’t cared if they blew up their own people at the same time, because Orion could hear plenty of men still fighting near the lake.

“Assholes,” he snarled, shining his light across the display.

There had to be a way to stop the countdown.

His light gleamed on four red buttons, but whatever the labels said underneath them, they weren’t in his language. They didn’t even look like a human language. Had the slavers bought or traded for this bomb? Was he dealing with some Zi’i nuclear warhead?

If so, someone must have altered it, because he had no trouble reading the countdown. That meant one of the slavers had to have a clue. Presumably one of the ones that had been carrying it.

A groan came from the tree, and Orion looked over.

With only two and a half minutes on the countdown, he sprang over the log, landing beside the trapped man. The slaver had gotten his helmet off, and it lay in the grass beside him. He glared up, his face not as contorted with pain as Orion would have expected, considering his shoulder and arm were crushed. Maybe his armor had injected him with a load of painkillers.

“Do you want to live?” Orion asked. “That bomb is going off in two minutes, and I need someone who can turn it off. Otherwise we’re both going to see Hades tonight.”

“Screw you.”

“Fine.” Orion jumped back over the log.

“Wait!”

Orion leaned over the log, raising his eyebrows. He tried to look calm and even indifferent, as if it didn’t matter to him whether they died or not, but inside, his heart was thundering against his ribs. If that thing went off, he was dead, and everyone down here was dead. Including poor Juanita. She had wanted an adventure, not to die horribly on an alien planet light-years from home.

“Get me out of here, and I can turn it off,” the man said.

Orion eyed the way he was pinned and the size of the tree.

“Without sawing off my arm,” the man added, wincing.

Orion moved just past the slaver’s feet and backed up to fire at the trunk.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” the pinned man yelled.

Orion kept firing, doing his best to cut through the thick trunk. Even if he pulled this off, the chunk of tree remaining on the man would weigh hundreds of pounds. He could only hope the slaver’s armor would give him extra strength and that he could find the leverage to make a difference.

Orion eyed the bomb nervously while he fired, aware of that time counting closer to zero.

The tree snapped under his assault, breaking in half a couple of feet below the pinned man’s boots. Orion didn’t have time to slice the trunk in half on the other side, too, so he slung his bolt bow around to his back and gripped the smoking bark. The scent of charred wood filled his nostrils.

“If you’ve got any strength left, you better heave, man,” Orion said.

The slaver was already doing so, shoving one-handedly at the log. Orion added his power, sinking into a crouch and pushing with his legs. Under their combined effort, the top portion of the trunk shifted upward. The man cried out as the weight crushing his arm lessened. Orion tried to push the trunk higher, heaving with all his strength, but his arms were already quivering under its weight.

“Can you roll out of there?” he yelled.

“Not while I’m pushing,” the man yelled back.

“I’ve got it.” Orion hoped that was true. “Just get out of there.”

A figure appeared at the corner of his eye, and he nearly dropped the log. But he recognized Juanita immediately.

She ran straight to the downed man, grabbed his free arm, and tugged, throwing all her weight back. Orion didn’t think she would be strong enough to make a difference, especially with the slaver wearing all that heavy armor, but he shifted toward her as she pulled. She tumbled backward as the man rolled free of the log.

No longer able to hold it up, Orion sprang away as he let go. The trunk slammed to the ground.

“The bomb,” he yelled, already leaping over the log toward it.

Juanita helped the slaver to his feet. Though his smashed arm hung uselessly against his side, he managed to hurry toward the bomb.

Orion gripped his bolt bow as the man peered at the panel, tempted to point it at his head and order him to stop the countdown or he would shoot. But what was the point in making that threat? If the bomb blew up, the man would die along with the rest of them. Still, Orion bounced from foot to foot, needing to do something. They were down to fifteen seconds.

“The other men could run back at any second,” Juanita whispered, joining him beside the bomb.

He shook his head and clasped her hand. The other slavers didn’t matter now. Nothing would matter if this man couldn’t stop the countdown.

He thought about kissing Juanita, about telling her he loved her in case these were their last seconds alive. But they both only gripped each other’s hands and watched the slaver.

Wordlessly, the man pressed a single button. The countdown halted.

“Is that it?” Orion demanded.

He had imagined the panel being opened, wires being cut and spliced together. Certainly far more craziness than a button pushing.

“That’s it,” the slaver said.

“Shit, I could have pressed the button and done that.”

“Do you know Zi’i?”

“No.”

“If you’d pressed that one—” the man pointed, “—you would have detonated it early.”

“Ah.” In that case, Orion was glad he hadn’t guessed.

The man slumped down to the ground, his head bowed in defeat. Orion had no idea what to do with him.

A boom erupted, and for a split second, Orion thought they had failed after all, that the bomb was blowing up. But the thunderous noise had come from the sky nearby.

A familiar ship flew into view. The Falcon 8. It did a lazy, almost insouciant roll before landing in the bog where it had been before.

Orion hoped that boom had been the slaver ship blowing up spectacularly, and he hoped the two other ships would find the same fate.

“What’s this?” a familiar voice asked.

Three men strode out of the woods, the running lights of the Falcon 8 limning their dirty combat armor from behind.

Juanita stiffened. Did she think those were the three men she’d lured away?

“That’s Sage,” Orion whispered.

His brother and the other two Star Guardians walked toward them, their armor covered with soot and grime, and dented and gouged too. They definitely looked like they had been in battle, but they were moving without limping, and none of them were as bad off as the slaver at Orion’s feet.

“Some of the slavers had a backup plan,” Orion said. “We thought we should make sure it didn’t come to fruition.”

Sage looked at the countdown timer. It had frozen on three seconds.

“Good,” was all he said. “The ship is back. Zakota shot down the slaver ship that tried to take it out, and then blew up the two that had landed on the other side of the lake. We’ve taken out most of their ground troops, but it’ll be dangerous out here while we round up the rest of them. Mikolos and Treyjon, escort these two to the ship. I want them and their unarmored bodies safe on board.”

“Yes, sir,” the two men to his side said.

“There are three slavers in armor that way,” Juanita said, pointing. “They’re probably out of the mud by now.”

“We’ll find them and take care of them,” Sage said.

Orion would have liked a thank you or at least an acknowledgment from his brother that he had done something right, but Sage strode off without another word, probably to handle the “round up” he’d mentioned. Orion thought about arguing that Juanita should go aboard and that he should stay out to help, but in truth, he’d had enough. He was weary of the swamp and tired of not being in the loop. Sage and his Star Guardians could do the round up by themselves.

“Lead the way,” he murmured to the men, recapturing Juanita’s hand as they walked away.

Mikolos, the Star Guardian who’d taken a mud bath earlier, hoisted the injured slaver over his shoulder. One of many prisoners that would be taken that night.

“Nice timing with that bomb,” Treyjon said, thumping Orion on the back as they walked.

“Thanks, but Juanita is the one who told me to disarm it. And then she led three armored men off to give me the opportunity to do so.”

In the dark, he couldn’t tell if Juanita blushed as he and Treyjon both peered at her.

“It wasn’t anything brilliant,” she assured them. “I led them into quick mud and then ran away.”

“Sounds brilliant to me,” Orion said, releasing her hand so he could put his arm around her shoulders. “You wouldn’t believe how many trees had to be blown to bits so I could defeat one man.”

“So, what I heard,” Treyjon said, “is that she’s ahead for the night. The two earlier take-downs, plus three more, means five for her. And only three for you, Orion?”

“It’s not a contest,” Orion said.

“I didn’t take them down,” Juanita said. “I just convinced them to run into a sinkhole.”

“A perfectly legitimate way to remove a person from combat,” Treyjon said. “You better watch out, Orion. The Star Guardians might find out about her and try to hire her.”

“That’s fine by me. I’ve always found women in Star Guardian uniforms sexy.”

“What about men?”

“Not in the least. The men all look uptight.”

“Even Ensign Bystrom? I thought even you agreed that he has a sexy ass.”

Orion shook his head.

“You guys are weird,” Juanita said.

“I think the translator mistranslated that,” Treyjon said. “Did you mean that we’re charming?”

“There’s blood on your cuirass, Trey,” Orion said, “and half a fern sticking out from your helmet in the back.”

“So I’m not charming?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Damn.”