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“I have a helper on the inside.”

“Inside what?”

“Your head.”

Sorry,M-Bot said.But you’ve been so…pressurized lately, Spensa. I went for some advice.

I growled softly.Betrayed by my own faithful steed?

“Stop that,” Gran-Gran said, rapping her knuckles against mine. “I trained you to be a bold warrior. Not a Chihuahua.”

“What’s a chihuwhatever?”

Oh! It’s a kind of dog,M-Bot said.A little one that is also very big inside! Like me! Oh…Hum. Maybe you don’t want to hear from me right now. I can feel it. I’ll just hide back here…

Gran-Gran went right on knitting. It seemed she wasn’t going to move unless I started talking.

“I need to do this,” I told her. “I have a plan, and it’s going to work. And it will spare Jorgen from having to order everyone to do something that’s worse.”

“Heisa nice boy,” Gran-Gran said. “He’s good for you, like a good pommel stone for weighting a sword. Also, his bread is quite tasty. He can follow instructions better than a certain someone.”

“My mission will help him, and all of us.”

“Well,” Gran-Gran said, “I do not doubt your heart, Granddaughter. Or what you’ve accomplished. There’s no one I’d prefer to entrust our safety to than you.”

“Great,” I said. “So why are you blocking me?”

“I just like being in a cockpit.”

“Gran-Gran…”

She smiled in her devious way, continuing to knit.

“What are you making anyway?” I asked.

“Seat cover,” she said. “Starships are so cold and utilitarian. They need some comfort. With flower patterns.”

“Do you at least have a story you’re going to force me to listen to?”

“Nope,” she said. “You know them all.”

“You sure?” I said. “I was hoping there might be one where the heroine roasts her ‘trusty steed’ and eats him in punishment for being a blabbermouth.”

That earned me another rap on the back of the hand. Not a painful one, just a pointed one. “Always treat your mount withrespect,” Gran-Gran said. “Even if he’s a blabbermouth. A knight’s steed is there to help her when she’s at her weakest.”

“Fine,” I said. “But if you’re not going to tell me a story, and we’re both agreed this is the best course for me to take, thenwhyare you still sitting in my seat?”

Gran-Gran smiled and lifted her chin upward, closing her milky-white eyes. “Do you still take time to listen to the stars, like I taught you?”

“There’s nothing to listen to lately,” I complained. “We don’t have the Krell in orbit any longer, trying to fight us. All I heard was their cytonic communications anyway.”

Gran-Gran just sat there, chin tipped upward, eyes closed. So, with an exaggerated sigh, I did as she’d taught me. I closed my eyes and opened myself to the sounds of the sky. It was far, far easier now. Things I’d struggled with when I was younger—activating my cytonic senses, reaching out with them as if they were a new set of arms—were second nature to me now.

The sky was silent today. We tried to limit our cytonic communications. Cyphers and codes were impossible in cytonic communication—or at least they were easy to break. Because language barriers meant nothing in the nowhere, where communication worked through impressions. So a cytonic could break any code. They intuited the meaning of your message.

With the kitsen, we might now have more cytonics on our side than the Superiority. They’d spent centuries suppressing the abilities, as they were a threat to their slug-based rule. But they did have some cytonics, and so we had to be aware that anything we sent to one another could theoretically be intercepted.

The short version of all this was: silent stars. A vast emptiness.