The blue-black metal gate lay ahead on the view screen, the Falcon 8 poised to fly through it.

Zakota rubbed his palms on his trousers, noticing their dampness. Usually, he didn’t bat an eye at flying into battle—he’d started piloting as a space fleet officer during the war, and he’d been in dozens of skirmishes since then, if not more than a hundred.

He supposed he was nervous this time because they didn’t know what they were flying in to. As far as he knew, other than Sagitta’s contact at the station, they hadn’t received any intel. Normally, there would have been ships flying out of the Dethocolean System and into this one who would have transmitted updates. But Zakota hadn’t spotted any gate activity in the hours they had been cruising through the system. That likely meant the Zi’i had the other side barricaded. If that was the case, he and Asan would have to pilot through that barricade to join the battle. If the Zi’i had several ships deployed there, getting through could be very, very difficult.

His logostec beeped.

“Zakota here, Captain,” he responded promptly.

This time, he and Katie weren’t fooling around. Though he had appreciated that activity a great deal, and had wanted things to keep going in the direction they’d been heading, the arrival of Arkyn and Orion had put a damper on the flames.

“I want to send you in first,” Sagitta said.

“Damn, Captain, I thought you liked me more than that. Sacrificing your favorite pilot to the Zi’i isn’t a noble thing to do.”

“No, it’s not. See to it that you’re not sacrificed.”

Zakota assumed Sagitta wanted the warship to lead since the Zi’i might hesitate a few seconds before firing at one of their own vessels. Even if they had the Star Striker marked as lost to the enemy, which was likely, seeing it might discombobulate them briefly. Also, they might be tempted to try to retake it rather than firing to disable or destroy it. It wasn’t as if the Zi’i had unlimited resources, any more than the Confederation did.

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“As soon as you get through, break toward Caerus Moon and its orbital asteroids. If the Zi’i give chase, there’s the potential to lose them in there. Once we’ve had time to assess the situation in the system, we can leave the asteroids and help where needed.”

“You’ll be right behind us then?” Zakota wouldn’t be surprised if the captain waited long enough for the Zi’i to give chase, maybe leaving the gate open for the fire falcon to slip out and race right into the heart of whatever awaited them.

“Approximately one minute behind. Enough time to get them focused on you and looking away from the gate.”

“Understood, sir. Tell Asan to scoot over so I can maneuver this big beast past him.”

“Make sure to give us a belly rub on the way past,” Asan said.

“You need to get a woman for that,” Zakota said.

“It’s hard to find women when you’re usually relegated to another ship.”

“Enough,” Sagitta said. “Let’s get this plan going. Sagitta, out.”

“Spoken like someone who already has a woman,” Zakota murmured, glancing at Katie. “Do you give belly rubs?”

“It depends on how appealing the belly is,” Katie said from her perch on the stool next to him. She had let him retake the controls when they’d approached the gate, but had seemed to enjoy her lesson on how to fly the warship.

“Mine’s appealing. Want to see?”

“No,” Orion said from the cot, his arm slung over his eyes.

“I thought you were sleeping,” Zakota said, though he hadn’t truly been planning to lift his jacket and shirt. Katie had already slid her hands over him, so she ought to have a sense of his appeal.

“Even if I was, Arkyn wasn’t, and he doesn’t want to see your belly, either.”

Arkyn, after familiarizing himself with the weapons console, had been studying all the other stations on the bridge. He was at the environmental controls now, and he paused to look over his shoulder. His features leaned toward the cool and flinty side, and he leveled that expression at Orion now.

“We should probably go before they honk the horn,” Katie said, waving at the view screen.

The fire falcon had drifted to the side, leaving plenty of room for the warship to fly through the gate.

“Right.” Zakota took a deep breath and sent them arrowing ahead. Remembering the four other members of the combat team, those who hadn’t come up for naps on cots, he made a ship-wide announcement. “We’re going through the gate, and we expect to meet resistance as soon as we enter the system.” It felt exceedingly strange to be the one making the announcement. That was Captain Sagitta’s job. But, he realized with a sense of unease, since Hierax had gone back to the fire falcon, he was the highest-ranking officer here. “Belt yourselves—er, brace yourselves.”

Unlike the Falcon 8, the warship had neither seats nor seat belts. He wondered what the Zi’i did when they traveled the galaxy’s wormholes. Maybe they plopped their furry bodies down on the deck and didn’t worry about being jostled around.

Katie slid off the stool, which would doubtlessly go flying the first time the ship was struck, and gripped the console.

Zakota raised the shields as they approached the gate, the shimmering silver event horizon forming. The gates always knew when a ship was coming and created a new, live wormhole to the linked gate. If an event horizon didn’t form, that was a sign of a broken connection. He was relieved to see this one—the Zi’i could have destroyed the Dethocolean gate as part of their war strategy. Of course, that wouldn’t have made much sense, since it would have meant trapping their own ships in the system, but Zakota had still worried about it. The Zi’i had tried to blow it up during the Territory War when their ships had been on the other side. They’d badly wanted to cut the head of the Confederation off from the rest of humanity.

“Here we go,” he whispered. “Arkyn, be ready with those weapons.”

Arkyn jogged back to the weapons console. “The captain instructed me not to use Hierax’s special weapon until we’re at a crucial moment.”

Zakota had no trouble envisioning a crucial moment slamming into them as soon as they exited the gate, but all he said was, “Plenty of other weapons to use.”

“Yes, and I’m ready to deploy them.”

Zakota looked to Katie and touched her arm. She gave him a solemn nod in return.

With another deep breath, he took them in.

For the others, traversing the wormhole would seem to take only a couple of minutes—and in real time, that’s exactly what it did take—but for Zakota, it seemed more like an hour. The chip that had been implanted in his brain when he’d been a newly minted ensign on the verge of graduating flight school allowed him to see the twisting purples, pinks, and blues of the wormhole. The real world became a shadow world, people’s figures dark and unmoving around him as they seemed frozen in time.

The wormhole undulated like a giant sand snake, but his practiced hands glided over the controls, keeping them in the center rather than bouncing off the walls. This wasn’t the hard part. The hard part came when—

There.

He swallowed as the silver disc that represented the event horizon at the end of the wormhole came into view. The flight hadn’t taken nearly long enough.

Unfortunately, there was no way to see what waited for them until he flew through the gate.

The warship zipped out, the vibrant colors of the wormhole disappearing, replaced by the drab grays of the warship’s bridge. His colleagues were slumped over consoles or down on the deck. They would wake up soon enough, so he didn’t spare them a glance. He couldn’t. He had to focus on whatever trouble lay ahead.

And trouble there was. Three Zi’i warships floated in front of the gate, one so close that the proximity alarm blared as soon as Zakota flew into normal space.

He jerked one hand sideways in the navigation gel as he checked to ensure the warship’s shields were still up with the other. The warship veered sideways.

More alarms flashed, warning him of weapons locking on to him. A wave of disappointment washed over him, even though he’d expected this. Deep down, he’d hoped and prayed that they would enter the system to find that the Dethocolean forces had already won the day and beat down the Zi’i. The fact that three enemy ships lounged here, barricading the gate, was not good.

All he could do was fly away from them as quickly as possible, aiming for the asteroid belt, as Sagitta had instructed. He wished Lieutenant Coric had stayed aboard to comm the Zi’i and try to convince them their admiral was still in charge of this ship and that it should be allowed to pass. But he knew full well that it wouldn’t have worked. These were probably some of the same Zi’i that had been in the Scyllan System when the Star Guardians had captured the ship.

The first energy blast struck their aft shields, causing another alarm to flash to life.

“Returning fire,” Arkyn said coolly.

So much for the hope that the Zi’i might hesitate to fire on one of their own ships. If they planned to attempt to recapture the Star Striker, they meant to disable it first. And it would be an unfortunate mishap if they accidentally destroyed the warship.

Hierax had gotten the warship into good working order, and shields were at full power. They wouldn’t remain that way if all three of those ships opened up on the Star Striker, but Zakota thought he could get them to the asteroid belt. After that, he was as good as anyone at navigating through an obstacle course.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Katie asked quietly.

“Be ready to jump in if I get electrocuted,” Zakota said, rocking his hand in the navigation gel, trying to make them a hard target.

Two of the Zi’i ships veered away from the gate to follow him, and they had no trouble slamming energy blasts into his backside. The warship lacked the maneuverability of the Falcon 8. Hells, it lacked the maneuverability of a brick.

Arkyn returned fire, but it pattered uselessly off their pursuers’ shields.

Zakota was tempted to have him unveil Hierax’s weapon. Would it be enough to cut through those warships’ shields? All he knew was that it was based on some of the Wanderer tech Hierax had taken apart in their system.

“Do you want a status update on the rest of the system?” Orion asked from one of the consoles near Arkyn. “Or are you busy concentrating on flying?”

“How depressing of an update would it be?” Zakota asked.

“Depressing.”

“Maybe you should save the information and surprise us with it later.”

“It’s not the kind of surprise anyone’s going to like. Here comes my brother.”

Since two of the warships had veered off to pursue Zakota, the fire falcon only had to zip past one. Asan sent them into a crazy spin right out of the gate, and even though the remaining warship opened fire immediately, the Falcon 8 sped past it almost unscathed. What hits it did take bounced off its shields. That warship didn’t give chase, probably having orders to stay there to keep the barricade up. The fire falcon raced into the core of the system, soon flying out of the Zi’i ship’s firing range.

“At least that’s something,” Zakota whispered, glancing at the warship’s shield power as more bolts hammered into them. Too bad his pursuers showed no interest in returning to guard duty.

“Can you lose them in the asteroid field?” Katie asked, looking at the view screen.

Caerus Moon and the thousands of asteroids orbiting it, ranging from pebbles to chunks of rock kilometers across, had come into view.

“Lose them, no,” Zakota said. “Their sensors are as good as ours—as Confederation tech, that is. But we can make it harder for them to hit us.”

“Shouldn’t we be thinking of ways to hit them instead of just running away?”

“I am firing,” Arkyn said.

“Hit them and destroy them,” Katie said.

“I do love a bloodthirsty woman,” Zakota said, accelerating into the asteroid field instead of decelerating.

The two warships, their helmsmen perhaps less suicidal, slowed down. Good. He might have a chance of getting the Star Striker out of their firing range. Their shields were down to 50 percent, which was depressing, considering they’d just gotten here. Sagitta would want them available to help with the core conflict. And Zakota wanted to help with that too. Like Katie, he didn’t wish to simply hide and avoid fire. He wanted to turn the tides and make a difference.

“I’m going to give the status report,” Orion said, “whether you’re ready for it or not.”

“Go ahead,” Zakota said, though he had to worry more about their pursuers than anything else right now.

And the asteroids. Since he hadn’t slowed down, they zipped past at an alarming speed. They could do damage to the shields as effectively as weapons fire could.

“There are three Zi’i warships in a high orbit around Glaucous, and it looks like three others have taken the Hermes Station. We’ve got a lot of ships out there, but it looks like they’ve mostly fallen back to protect Dethocoles. Gods, my parents are down there. My whole family.” Orion’s voice tightened—it sounded like he had a lump in his throat.

Zakota couldn’t blame him. He was glad his family was safe on Amalcari, at least for now. If the Zi’i took Dethocoles, the rest of the human planets in the galaxy would be much easier targets to attack.

“Just give us the report,” Arkyn said, his voice emotionless, almost sounding like the captain’s.

Zakota thought him unsympathetic at first, but Orion recovered and continued on in a sturdier tone, so maybe the cold order was what he had needed.

“Zakota probably already saw them,” Orion said, “but there are several wrecks around the gate, one Zi’i warship, but… a lot more that belonged to our people. One space fleet vessel, but mostly civilian ships. It looks like they were trying to escape. And the Zi’i wouldn’t let them. Or maybe they were simply near the gate when the Zi’i fleet came in. And it is a fleet, damn it. There are way more than the eight we saw in the Scyllan System. There must have been more that came through after we left the system.”

Zakota wasn’t sure whether he wanted to look at the sensor map of the system for himself or not. He was busy speeding between asteroids and flying them high above the cratered, orangish-red surface of the moon. One of the warships had come into the field after him, but the other was waiting, content to try and get him when he came out. Which he would have to do at some point if he wanted to help.

“Sage is flying straight toward the fighting at the core of the system,” Orion said, “but one of the warships from Hermes Station is moving to intercept him. And there’s another one that was between planets that’s veering toward him too.” He paused, then added, “And there’s more bad news.”

“You sure you don’t want to save some for later?” Zakota flew them under a hulking asteroid full of caves and craters.

A part of him wondered if he could find some cavern to hide them in until the Zi’i forgot about their wayward warship. But that wouldn’t happen. That one warship following him had the power to pulverize an asteroid. As he’d told Katie, he couldn’t truly hide from these invaders.

“There’s some kind of giant weapons platform, it looks like,” Orion said. “It’s bigger than four of their warships combined, and it’s flying slowly toward Dethocoles. I’m scanning it now, getting as much information as I can, but it seems to have some sensor-scrambling tech. Interestingly, I don’t see any shields, not in the traditional energy-absorbing sense. You’re not using the view screen to navigate, are you?”

“No.” Zakota didn’t take his hands from the controls to gesture at the holographic display surrounding the helm station, but he jerked his chin at it.

“Then I’m putting a picture of the weapons platform on the view screen.”

“The captain said his Tyrax Station contact described a huge caravan of pieces of equipment being flown through the system,” Zakota said, “like something very big that had been disassembled to go through the gate.”

“And that was reassembled in our space?” Orion asked grimly. “This could be it then.”

As promised, he brought an image of the weapons platform up on the view screen.

Zakota, busy starting his second lap of the moon, only spared it a glance. It had a giant cuboid shape, a blue-black color that reminded him uncomfortably of the metal alloy favored by the Wanderers—a very hard metal alloy. Bristling spikes stuck out of the box, like rockets ready to be launched. Maybe they were rockets.

“Now that looks like the Borg cube,” Katie said. “On steroids.”

“I’m going to assume a Borg cube is something bad,” Zakota said.

“I only saw a few episodes as a kid, but the Enterprise definitely didn’t care for it.”

Zakota dove between more asteroids, keeping the entire field between them and the warship lurking outside, waiting. He also was careful to keep a couple of asteroids between them and the warship pursuing them. The one outside fired at the Star Striker, no doubt hoping to get lucky. Most of the beams spattered into asteroids, blowing some of them up. A couple made it all the way through to skim past behind the warship, eventually burrowing into the moon.

“It doesn’t look like they’re going to give up and leave us in here,” Zakota said. “Arkyn, we’re going to need to at least take out the one following us.”

“Hierax’s weapon?” Arkyn asked.

Zakota wished he knew more about what Hierax’s weapon was supposed to do. “Let’s get on the far side of the moon from the observer there, then try it on our pursuer. Maybe if we’re able to take him out quickly enough, he won’t be able to report to his people that we have something special.”

“Are we sure we do have something special?” Orion asked.

“If Hierax touched it, he would assure us it’s special.”

“Uh huh. Did he get a chance to test it?”

“I don’t know,” Zakota said. “You ready, Arkyn?”

“To press the big red button? Yes. Any time.”

“I’m going to make a few sloppy turns and let them gain ground. Be ready.”

A beep sounded, not from anyone’s logostec this time, but from the communications station.

“Katie, you want to answer that?” Zakota asked, glancing back to see if Orion was busy at the sensors. He had a real-time map of the system up to study.

“Sure,” Katie said, jogging to the comm station. “How?”

“Just wave your hand over the flashing button, but don’t say anything. I don’t think the captain knows you’re here.”

“How come he’s not calling on your wrist thing?”

“He’s probably switched to ship-to-ship to make sure our transmissions are properly encrypted. Lieutenant Coric installed a com-sec device the day we claimed the ship.” Zakota waved toward a small box jury-rigged to the comm station.

“Status, Zakota,” Sagitta said as soon as Katie did the appropriate hand waving.

“Hiding in the asteroid belt, sir.”

“Is it hiding if two ships know where you are?” Katie whispered.

“You’ve seen the cube,” Sagitta said, not making it a question.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve been in touch with Admirals Eliados and Enroy. It’s what they’re most worried about. We know the capabilities of the warships, but that cube is an unknown. It’s come to a stop, and they believe it may have reached firing range, even though it’s three planets out from Dethocoles.”

“Yes, sir,” Zakota said, though he didn’t know why Sagitta was bothering to give him this intel. It wasn’t as if the Star Striker could do anything from Caerus Moon. They were practically still kissing the gate way back here. Sagitta also looked to be plenty busy with his own problems—a glance at the sensors showed the Falcon 8 trading fire with two warships that seemed intent on keeping it from reaching the main conflict or the cube.

“Our people have been firing at it whenever they can get close,” Sagitta went on, “and they report that nothing’s making it through. They’ve confirmed that it doesn’t have shields and that the metal itself is absorbing our en-bolts. That’s the Wanderer alloy, which we’ve known about for a long time and can make, but there’s more to it than that. HQ has had two days to ponder that cube as it was assembled and then began its approach, and they believe it’s using some Wanderer tech. It’s possible that the Zi’i have also found some of their ruins recently. Maybe it’s what spurred on this whole invasion.”

“Wonderful,” Zakota muttered, swooping slowly around an oblong asteroid several kilometers in length. The Zi’i ship was closing on them, accelerating now. If not for the curvature of the asteroid, the Star Striker would already be in their sights.

“Hierax is looking over the data that’s been gathered so far,” Sagitta said, “and he’s spotted a couple of access shafts on the cube that a very small ship might be able to fly into.”

“To what end, sir?”

“To drop off a couple of Hierax’s warheads, set a countdown timer, and get the hells out.”

Zakota grimaced, starting to get the gist of why the captain was giving him this information. They had two Zi’i shuttles, and he remembered that look Hierax had given to them as he’d mentioned delivering some of his weapons manually. Had he known about this? Even planned for it?

“It looks like there are Zi’i inside and parts of it have a breathable atmosphere,” Sagitta went on. “A combat team in a shuttle could go in, find a vulnerable place to plant the explosives, and get back out again.”

“Our combat team? Sir, the fleet must have far more people and shuttles that could be used for this. We’re already stretched thin here, and I’m not even sure how I can get this ship all the way over there, as we’re dealing with problems here at the moment.”

“Fleet has already tried.”

“And failed?”

“They couldn’t get into the shafts. There are forcefields over them. Coric and Tala have been examining them, since they appear to be Wanderer tech instead of Zi’i tech, and we know a thing or two about them now.”

“Shouldn’t have dropped Indi off on the station,” Katie said. “She was the one good at finding the music patterns.”

The deck shuddered as the Zi’i warship caught up to them and fired, striking the aft shields.

Zakota pointed at Arkyn. “Red button, do it.”

“Firing,” Arkyn said.

A wharrrm sound reverberated through the ship, and an alarm blared as the shields went out.

“What the—”

The shields flashed on again before Zakota could finish the sentence. They’d fired something, a weapon that looked like a glowing torpedo. The oblong object rocketed away, growing brighter as it traveled, as if it was drawing energy from the sun. It streaked unerringly toward the Zi’i ship.

The Zi’i must not have been concerned because they did not bother with evasive maneuvers. Their shields were up, and they continued forward, accelerating to close the distance.

Hierax’s torpedo smashed into their forward shield. Zakota expected a flash of light, proof of some big explosion. Instead, it burrowed its way through the shield, slowing down as it went, but not stopping altogether.

All of the ship’s shields dropped in its wake. It continued on to strike the hull of the warship, burrowing halfway into it before stopping.

Nothing happened after that, and Zakota felt a stab of disappointment. Was it a dud? Or maybe that was all it was supposed to do, to bring down the shields.

“Fire at will, Arkyn,” Zakota said, reversing thrusters to take them back toward the enemy. He got rid of the cube on the view screen and brought up the Zi’i ship.

Before Arkyn’s first en-bolt sailed away, the explosion Zakota had expected came.

Instead of light flashing, it was like darkness spreading, swallowing the illumination from the ship’s running lights. A strange wave of dark energy rolled over the Zi’i vessel, and it broke apart before Zakota’s eyes. Disintegrated.

Not trusting what the view screen showed him, Zakota checked the sensor display. But it only backed up what he saw. Where there had been a massive warship, manned by a crew of hundreds, nothing but space dust floated.

“That was effective,” Arkyn said.

“No shit,” Katie said. “How many of those things do we have?”

“We had two. Now we have one.”

Zakota slumped against the helm. How could Hierax have come up with amazing super weapons that could turn the tide of a war and then only made two of them?

He hoped the Falcon 8 had some of its own. Had Hierax had time to install any over there? He had been over here on the warship a lot of the time.

Maybe one of these new weapons could tear up the cube without the need for a suicidal infiltration mission.

“We’re working on a musical frequency pattern that we believe will cause the forcefields to lower,” Sagitta said—he must have been distracted by some battle or flurry of evasive activity too. “We’ll transmit all the information on the cube that we got from Fleet, and the pattern as soon as we figure it out.”

“You sure they can’t just fly some X-wings into a trench and fire at a vulnerable target handily located at the end of it?” came a woman’s voice from somewhere behind Sagitta. Juanita?

“Dr. Tala,” Sagitta said, his voice softer, as if he’d turned away from the pickup, “when I invited you to the bridge to work with Lieutenant Coric, I do not recall mentioning you should bring visitors.”

“Don’t pick on my woman, Sage,” Orion said, “or she’ll write you into a story as a villain and then kill you off.”

“Enough,” Sagitta said, the command apparently for everyone—maybe especially for his brother. “Zakota, figure out a way to fly that warship out of there and as close to the cube as you can get it. Then divide the combat team between the two shuttles. Hierax and I talked about the potential of using them to deliver weapons earlier, so each one is already stocked with a warhead. You and Arkyn will pilot them into the weapons platform, and the combat teams will work together to find a way to destroy it from within. We’ll do our best to assist fleet and keep the Zi’i busy so they don’t notice you until it’s too late.”

“Uh, sir,” Zakota said, glancing toward Katie, who’d stood up very straight at the mention of the shuttle, “if Arkyn and I are flying the shuttles, who’s piloting the warship?”

He had a hard time imagining that Sagitta planned to put any piloting responsibility on Katie’s shoulders—Zakota still wasn’t sure if the captain knew she was over here—but it didn’t take him long to run down the list of six Star Guardians who’d come over from the Falcon. Aside from Arkyn, only Orion had piloting experience, and Zakota knew he hadn’t touched any of the Zi’i helms yet. Further, it was unlikely that his bounty-hunting experience had deposited him at the helm of many Zi’i ships in the past.

“We’ll need a big distraction if you’re going to fly to the cube unnoticed,” Sagitta said. “I was thinking that you could set the warship on a course to ram it before you take off in the shuttles. Since everyone will be on the shuttles, the warship will no longer matter. The cube doesn’t move quickly. It’s possible the Zi’i will blow up your warship before it reaches its target, but that ship will carry a lot of mass and momentum, and some of the wreck might make it through.”

Zakota blinked slowly as he envisioned this plan. Sagitta was known for his creativity in battle, but this sounded crazy. If not suicidal.

“You want us to crash a massive ship into the weapons platform while we’re infiltrating it?” Zakota asked.

“Make it so the warship reaches the platform before your shuttles do. You can break off if it looks like the ship striking it does a great deal of damage, but from what I’ve heard from Fleet intel, it won’t. It will serve as a distraction only.”

Zakota rubbed the top of his head, grimacing at the stubble growing back.

“Are you allowed to tell your captain he’s nuts?” Katie whispered.

“It’s not encouraged, no.”

“You don’t have to crash the ship,” Sagitta said. “Use your initiative. Just get our teams into the cube so they can destroy it. Right now, it’s lining up rockets to target Dethocoles. As the planet orbits, the capital will come into the sights of one of those rockets. We have less than three hours.”

Orion stared bleakly at the comm station. Zakota knew that at least some of the captain’s family lived in the capital, which meant Orion’s did too.

“We’ll do our best to make it happen, sir,” Zakota said, sharing a nod with Orion.

A crack sounded, and a woman cried out in surprise—or pain—over the comm. Juanita? Dr. Tala? It was getting harder to track the Falcon 8 as it approached the other ships, diving and swooping to avoid as much fire as possible as it flew in close enough to help the fleet.

Sagitta’s voice turned grim as he said, “It’s a dangerous mission, Zakota—I know it is—but the rest of us will be in danger as well. We’ll do our best to cover your team as you go in, and we’ll pick you up afterward.”

“I understand, sir.”

“We’ll send the transmission for the forcefield as soon as we figure it out. Sagitta, out.”

“Can I pilot one of the shuttles?” Katie promptly asked, pinning Zakota with her gaze. Her eyes burned with enthusiasm.

“It’s a suicide mission,” Zakota said, trying to temper her enthusiasm with reality. “You don’t want to—”

“I have to go, anyway, don’t I? If this ship is being sacrificed, I need a ride off it in one of the shuttles.”

Damn, she was right.

“Unless you let me pilot one of the shuttles,” Katie said, “in which case you or the Viking over there could stay on the warship and do something else with it.”

“The what?” Zakota looked at Arkyn. The translation chip hadn’t had a word for her term.

“Blondie,” Katie said, which prompted a single eyebrow raise from Arkyn. “He could pilot this behemoth while you and I pilot the shuttles.” She grinned at him, her eyes gleaming. “You wanted a chance to race me, didn’t you?”

“I was envisioning that involving rented dune fliers on a sanctioned desert race course. With fewer all-out battles going on around.”

“Weenie.”

The chip didn’t translate that, either. Perhaps it was just as well.

Zakota looked at Arkyn and at Orion, silently asking for their opinions. He might be the highest-ranking officer on board the ship, but that didn’t mean he was used to being in command of anything. His butt was used to being in his seat on the Falcon with all his charms and talismans around him for luck.

“I can fly the warship,” Arkyn said. “It still has weapons, including one of Hierax’s super weapons. I agree with the woman. To use it as a battering ram would be a waste of resources.”

Orion returned Zakota’s look without commenting, as if to say this was his decision. Katie was his project. Or maybe he considered her his problem.

Looking into her bright eyes, Zakota had a hard time thinking of her that way. She wanted to help. She wanted to fly. He understood all of that. And even though a part of him wished she were back at Tyrax Station where she would be safe, a part of him was glad to have another pilot here, someone who understood what it was like to take a ship full of men into battle. And someone who had a great ass too. One he very much wanted to see without clothing on. He wanted to see all of her without clothing on. This suicide mission had better not truly be suicidal. He wanted more time with her.

“I’ll pilot the other shuttle if she doesn’t,” Orion said, earning a dark glare from Katie, “but she does have more experience with Zi’i tech.”

“Damn right, I do.”

“And she’s modest,” Orion said.

“Kiss my ass.” She smirked at him, despite the vitriolic words, and Zakota doubted she was truly irritated with him—now that he’d agreed she should fly.

“Judging from what I saw earlier, Zakota is more interested in assuming that position.”

Zakota smiled at Katie, though he was still worried about how this scenario would play out. He pulled out his thong necklace of terashi teeth and brought the one carved into a representation of Qat to his lips, silently praying for wisdom.

“Zakota,” Arkyn said, “we’re going to have to take that initiative the captain mentioned soon. That other Zi’i warship is coming into the asteroid field to get us.”

“Shit.”

Zakota had forgotten about the lurker monitoring from outside the asteroid belt. He doubted the warship had seen exactly what happened to its buddy—Hierax’s secret weapon had worked even more devastatingly than Zakota had hoped. But that didn’t mean the Zi’i wouldn’t come in to take revenge.