“ABEL!”

Noemi screams as he falls to the tarmac. She tries to run forward, but Ephraim grabs her arm. “What are you doing? The Queen’s coming our way—we have to move!”

Sure enough, the Queen has started toward them. At first Noemi can only see the Charlie unit scooping up Abel’s inert form and walking toward a hopper with its doors open, waiting for cargo.

What did they do to him? Is he even still alive?

The Queen walks faster, then breaks into a run, directly at them. Noemi’s training kicks in, propelling her to run at top speed toward the Daedalus, with Ephraim just behind her. She’s still weak from the Cobweb, but she runs full-out, holding nothing back. Time to collapse later, or when she’s dead. Doesn’t matter. Surrender is impossible.

But why is the crazy thing after us in the first place?

The Daedalus door spins open, allowing both Noemi and Ephraim to come through. “Lock door!” she yells. “Override external security functions, now!” The spiral plates of the door begin contracting—

—but the Queen’s hands catch them, holding them open with superhuman force. Their edges slice through the flesh of the mech’s palms; yet more blood trickles down the door in lengthening streaks. Mechs feel pain, Noemi knows, but this Queen doesn’t care.

“A blaster.” Ephraim frantically starts searching the docking bay, turning over equipment boxes, pausing only for a moment when he sees bloodstains on the floor before moving to a storage locker. “Tell me you have a blaster on this ship somewhere.”

It’s in her quarters. The others will be in either Abel’s quarters or the bridge. Noemi can’t reach any of them in time to keep the Queen from coming through that door.

She’s trained to fight. But she’s still feeling so weak. She’s exhausted to the point of nausea. Even at top condition, she wouldn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat with a Queen model.

Think, she tells herself. Think!

Using her full mech strength, the Queen begins pulling the doors open. As the gap widens, Noemi calls to Ephraim, “Follow me!” and runs from the bay into the corridor without checking to see whether he does. She hopes he lives, but right now she has one priority that eclipses all the others: Get to sick bay.

The spiral corridor at the heart of the Daedalus has never seemed so long, not even when Esther was dying. Noemi had her full strength then. A painful stitch wasn’t stabbing into her side. At least this time she knows where she’s going.

Every heavy thump of her feet on the floor panels means the Queen will know it, too.

She hears even heavier steps behind her—Not yet, not yet! Noemi thinks wildly. Even one backward glance is a risk, one she takes, and mercifully it’s only Ephraim catching up to her. “Tell me you’ve got a plan,” he gasps.

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

Noemi doesn’t have the breath to respond. And now, in the not-far distance, she can hear the Queen following, running faster than either of the humans can.

But this is the last spiral, the final curve. Noemi keeps running full-out as the sick bay doors swish open, barely widening enough to admit her in time.

Ephraim skids in behind her. “So this is where you keep the blasters. Right? Right?”

She ignores him. Instead she studies the room and tries to figure out how to play this. Ephraim gives up on her and starts going through the medical supplies, maybe looking for a laser scalpel or something like that. It wouldn’t be bad to have a plan B.

The sick bay doors can be locked, but Noemi doesn’t bother. She gets into position one heartbeat before the Queen dashes in.

To Noemi’s astonishment, Ephraim tackles the Queen. Just tackles a warrior mech like it would do any good. He’s either brave or suicidal.

In either case, he’s out of luck, because the Queen quickly throws him aside so hard Ephraim hits the wall and staggers to his knees. Then she turns to look at Noemi, not in anger, but with blank, terrifying determination. “You have to come with me.”

“What do you need me for?” Noemi stalls, taking a step backward. “You already took Abel.”

“We have orders to examine you. To discover how you overrode the Abel’s core directives.” The Queen’s hands drip blood onto the floor as she comes closer, and Noemi skitters farther back. More blood runs down the Queen’s neck from the gap in her skull where the old components used to be, and a few droplets speckle the side of her face. “These questions must be answered before the Abel model can assume his rightful place.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Abel never said anything about a “rightful place,” and surely he would’ve bragged about it early on. But Noemi has no more time to think about it. The Queen’s in front of her, and her back’s to the wall, and it’s time to do this.

The Queen seizes Noemi in her gory hands. There’s no way Noemi could pull free, and the Queen’s braced herself too well to be pushed away. So Noemi grabs the Queen right back and swings her sideways, barely even twenty centimeters—

—which is enough to hurl her into a cryosleep pod.

The pod mechanism cycles automatically, immediately, its transparent steel cocoon enveloping the Queen in an instant. Even as the Queen begins pounding on the pod, trying to smash her way out, the initial clouds of greenish-gray gas begin to swirl. Noemi watches in sick fascination as the Queen’s movements slow, then stop. The mech slumps backward, in dormant mode, just as Abel had predicted.

Quickly Noemi pauses the cycle. She doesn’t want the Queen fully frozen, even if that would work on a mech. Unconscious will do.

“One mech advanced enough to pilot the fighter,” she says, panting. “Check.”

Across sick bay, Ephraim struggles to his feet. He stares at the immobilized mech for a second before he shakes his head to clear it. “You have to get off this planet. I have to get off this ship.”

“Come on.” Noemi takes off running again, pushing herself just as hard, because if there’s any hope of finding out where Abel’s being taken, she has to get the Daedalus in the air now.

Within five paces of sick bay, though, an automated warning comes through the ship’s sensors. The panels along the walls all flash the same message: HANGAR SECURITY COMPROMISED. NO-FLY PROTOCOL IN EFFECT.

“We have to get past that,” Noemi says. “Follow me to the bridge.”

Ephraim pauses. In the tension of his muscular body she can tell how badly he still wants to run for it. But in his sorrowful eyes, she knows he’s glimpsed the truth: The ship’s already been identified as a risk. He can’t walk off it and claim to have been drugged or forced. They know.

“A traitor,” he murmurs. “They’ll say I’m a traitor. All because I repaid a debt of honor—”

“Ironic, it sucks, I know, now run!”

With that, she goes, hoping he has the good sense to listen. Regardless, she’s getting off this rock.

Noemi hauls herself down to the bridge. Abel’s chair at navigation looks so empty. She shouts, “Autolaunch! Bypass system checks and get us out of here!”

The computer consoles light up with the no-fly rule, but civilian ships like this aren’t hardwired to ground commands. She hits the override and slides into Abel’s chair, even as the Daedalus engines roar to life.

Ephraim walks in after her, clearly in a state of shock that this sight does nothing to dispel. “Whoa. This ship is pretty flash.”

“Thanks.” Noemi steadies her hands on the control, takes a deep breath, and sends them soaring upward. The domed viewscreen shows her the hangar, then the view from above it, and then Stronghold’s gray sky, darkening as they fast approach the rim of its thin atmosphere. “Planetary security forces—what are we up against?”

Ephraim seems to surface from his daze, stepping closer to the front of the bridge. “There are labor strikes on the high eastern continent. Most security forces are over there, and they’re not going to leave the authorities without cover, not so soon after a hundred thousand immigrants showed up. So we shouldn’t have more than one or two ships after us.”

That’s one or two more than the Daedalus can handle. Noemi begins trying to think of something else she could use against them. The rescue beacons won’t work again; the launcher doesn’t aim with enough precision for her to hit a moving target.

“Here they come,” Ephraim says.

Noemi switches the viewscreen to show two small ships—dual-person fighters, probably—coming up fast behind them. If she tries to flee, they’ll shoot her out of the sky long before she could reach either Gate.

No surrender, she thinks. Better to go down fighting. But does she have the right to make that choice for Ephraim?

On the screen, a third shape darts in, faster than the others.

Ephraim groans. “That makes three.”

“That’s not the same kind of ship,” Noemi says absently. She enlarges the image to show their pursuers in more detail. The two-person fighters are unremarkable, but the third ship, the interloper—a corsair—is it painted red?

Her console lights up with new information. Staring, she watches as the new ship aims first one beam, then another at the fighters. It’s not a weapon, though. Instead of blasting the fighters from the sky, the red corsair seems to have…

“Stolen their power?” Noemi whispers. But if the energy readings on her screen don’t lie, both of the fighters are now adrift on emergency backup only, while the corsair practically glows with new reserves.

Ephraim steps to her side, looking as confused as she feels. “Are we about to get our power stolen, too?” All Noemi can do is shrug.

But then her console lights up with an incoming audio message. She hesitates for one breath, then punches the controls to listen.

“Oh, come on!” Virginia Redbird’s voice crackles over the speaker. “That doesn’t even get me a thank you?”

By the time Noemi gets down to the landing bay, the air lock has already cycled through. The doors open to reveal Virginia in a skintight red flight suit that’s as impractical as it is sexy, her helmet under her arm. “Hiya. Long time no see,” she says, as casually as if she and Noemi had run into each other on the street. Then Virginia motions toward Ephraim, who walked down, too. “Hey, who’s the new guy?”

Noemi ignores this. “Virginia, what are you doing here? How did you even find us?”

“You assume I came looking for you? A little self-centered, don’t you think?” Virginia cocks her head, almost ridiculously pleased with herself. “Maybe I decided to take a ride around the galaxy on my own.”

There’s no time for any of this. Noemi folds her arms. “The Milky Way galaxy is about a hundred and twenty thousand light-years long. It contains approximately four hundred billion stars, about a hundred billion planets. Do you seriously think you can play running into us as a coincidence?”

If Abel were here, he’d recite the exact probabilities involved. With a jolt, she remembers her last sight of him lying unconscious in the Charlie’s grasp.

Virginia shrugs, like, What can you do? “Okay, okay. Turns out, when two mechs trash your secret hideout and chase a couple of fugitives around—setting off every security alarm, by the way—well, your hideout’s not so secret anymore.” She sighs. “They found all the equipment we borrowed and even our designer, um, smokes. Got myself suspended for a month with no pay, no communication home. Thankfully they thought you two had me hostage, and nobody’s missed the thermomagnetic device, otherwise I’d probably be in lockup.”

Noemi focuses on the thermomagnetic device. If nobody knows it’s been taken, nobody can figure out her plans. Protecting Genesis still matters to her more than anything else—but it’s no longer the only thing that matters. Abel does, too, and Ephraim, and Virginia herself. “Sorry we got you into trouble.”

“Are you kidding? That’s the most flash thing that ever happened to me, ever. We’re talking lifetime.” Virginia’s smile returns to her face. “Well, I already had my new ride, and a burning curiosity to know just where the most advanced mech in the galaxy was headed, so I took to the skies. Ludwig didn’t get caught, so he was able to dig into security files, get me some specs on your ship. Went to Kismet first—which, ew, so touristy. When that didn’t pan out, I figured I’d try here, and sure enough, as soon as I’m coming into Stronghold orbit, I see a ship taking off in a hell of a hurry, vehicles in pursuit, and the ship looks a whole lot like Ludwig’s specs. You think I wasn’t going to check that out? Now, seriously, who’s the new guy, and where’s Abel?”

Ephraim frowns. “What do you mean, the most advanced mech in the galaxy? Genesis doesn’t have any mechs.”

It’s Virginia’s turn to look lost. “Why are you talking about Genesis?”

Noemi braces herself. “You each have half of the story. Time to tell you the whole thing.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” Virginia says as she follows Noemi back toward the bridge. “Genesis—you guys—I don’t agree with what you’re doing. At all.”

“I’m not sure I do either, any longer,” Noemi confesses. “But I know I have to stop the Masada Run.”

Ephraim’s stuck on his own piece of new information. “Abel can’t be a mech. Nobody’s ever made one that smart. Even if it could be done, that would be illegal. But—he did manage to land the medtram on a speeding train. Huh. I spent all that time talking to a mech and never knew it? I gotta sit down.”

Noemi doesn’t blame him. She brings up the makeshift relativistic calendar Abel put together, the one that tells her how long before the Masada Run. It’s only another… six days. Not long. Not long at all.

But it’s long enough.

“We have to find Abel.” Noemi sits in the pilot’s seat, screwing up her courage. “The Queen and Charlie just—shut him down. In an instant. It was like a human taking a blaster bolt to the head.”

“Password fail-safe.” Virginia smirks, knowing and smug again. For an instant she reminds Noemi of Abel. “Has to be. Nothing else would deactivate a sophisticated mech that quickly.”

“Well, they did that to him, and shipped him back to Mansfield before Abel was ready to go. Then the Queen mech said something about Abel having to fulfill some purpose—take some ‘rightful place’—I don’t know. It sounds all wrong.”

“Let me see if I have this straight.” Ephraim starts counting points off on his fingers. “Burton Mansfield himself made Abel. According to you, Abel talks about the guy like he’s his father instead of his inventor. Mansfield is getting Abel back. I’m not seeing the problem here. I mean, won’t Abel be happy to be back home? Mansfield wanted him back so badly he sent mechs all around the galaxy looking for him, so he’s probably happy, too. Right?”

Noemi has to admit this makes some sense—but not enough. “Then why did they have to knock Abel out to make it happen? Abel said he’d return home on his own. Soon, even. That wasn’t enough for them.”

Finally, Virginia grasps the seriousness of the situation. “Remember what I said on Cray? Abel’s design is way, way more complex than any mech I’ve ever seen. More than is legally allowed. Mansfield made him to do something pretty important.”

“Not important enough to actually tell Abel about it.” Noemi takes a deep breath before looking squarely at both Virginia and Ephraim. In her red flight suit and his medical scrubs and black jacket, they look as unalike as the worlds they come from. Never would Noemi have imagined she would meet two people so foreign to her, much less that she could come to trust them.

Least of all would she have imagined that she’d be willing to risk everything for the sake of a single mech. But here she is.

“I’m going after Abel,” she says. “Maybe he’s better off where he is. Maybe he’s delighted. But I have to know that for sure. He’s saved my life so many times, even when he didn’t have to, even when he thought I was going to destroy him. It wasn’t just his programming at work—it was Abel himself. The soul inside the machine. And I can’t abandon him without finding out whether he’s okay. If you guys want off this ship, then we’ll figure out how to make that happen. But if you’re willing to come with me, I could use the help. Abel could, too.”

After a few moments’ silence, Virginia says, “I think this is a really incredibly terrible plan. But there’s no way I’m letting you go on a joyride that good alone.”

“I also think this is a terrible plan.” Ephraim rubs tiredly at his eyes with one hand. “But since I’m now a wanted fugitive, I figure I’m along for the ride.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys.” But they’re not exactly wrong about her plan.

She’ll just have to come up with a better one.

Fear churning in her belly, Noemi lays in a new course. The mag engines flame into brilliant life behind them, powering them through the stars, directly toward the next Gate.

To save Abel, Noemi has to find Mansfield. And Mansfield is sure to be on the last world she ever wanted to visit, the one she’s feared and hated more than any other.

Time, at last, to land on Earth.