I watched as my hands reached out and flipped open the pack. Nothing went boom. That was the good news. The bad news was my hand scrabbling into the mess of equipment and pulling out the little anchor box.

"Edward!" Festina called over my earphone. "What do you think you’re doing?"

The spirit that possessed me didn’t answer. It set the anchor down on the roof and flicked the activation switch.

I didn’t even see the Sperm-tail coming — it was somewhere behind my back, still flipping and flapping, swishing aimlessly across Unshummin and far out into the countryside, like some cat-toy bouncing on a string. One second it was a dozen kilometers away; the next instant, it had snapped into place against the anchor, plastered to the side of the little box with only the tip of its mouth hanging free.

Festina’s voice rang loud in my ear. "Turn off the anchor, Edward. Turn off the anchor!"

Too late. The Sperm-tail’s tiny mouth suddenly became a nozzle squirting out a crowd of newcomers: Counselor, Zeeleepull, Hib Nib Pib, exploding out of the tube, smacking down hard on the crystal-brick roof. I could feel the impact under my feet; it must have jarred the Mandasars to their very bones. Right behind them was Kaisho in her hoverchair, shooting forward, spinning sideways, almost flipping over in a somersault… till the chair’s stabilizers kicked in and pulled upright with a whine of engines.

They must have been waiting, I thought. They must have been right there in Jacaranda’s transport bay, all set to come through the moment the anchor came on.

How did they know what would happen? Had the spirit possessing me set this whole thing up?

But the spirit had one more trick to play. Before I could react, my own foot lifted high and smashed the anchor box under my heel.

Electronic guts spilled onto the bricks. The glittering Sperm-tail whipped away and disappeared from sight.

"Dade, quick, Dade!" Festina yelled. "The other anchor — turn it on."

"What?" the boy asked. "Why?"

"Turn on the fucking anchor!" Festina roared.

He’d set it down on the roof back near the stairwell. Dade threw himself across the bricks, bounced once on his tightsuit stomach, then landed within arm’s reach of the box. He slapped his hand on the switch… and nothing happened.

Nothing happened for a long time.

I lifted my head. The Sperm-tail was nowhere in sight.

"Ohhhh, fuck!" Tobit groaned. He skittered across the roof toward Dade, pulling his Bumbler with him. With the Bumbler’s scanner, he started a quick once-over of the anchor box… maybe checking for malfunctions.

Meanwhile, Zeeleepull struggled to straighten himself up to his usual height. He and his hive-mates looked winded from their landing — slapping down hard on the unforgiving roof. With all their weight, Mandasars fall a lot more heavily than humans. "Teelu," he gasped, "help how?"

"Help?" I asked. The spirit possessing me had quietly let go. "Help how who?"

"You, Teelu. Radioed you for help."

"I didn’t radio for help. I don’t even have a transmitter."

"But the captain said—"

"Oh. The captain."

I didn’t need to hear more. If Prope had lied to the Mandasars about receiving a call for help — if she’d hurried them and Kaisho into the transport bay and waited for the Sperm-tail to get anchored again — she had to have known the spirit inside me would turn on the anchor, then smash the box to free the tail.

Which meant Prope was working with the spirit. She might have been pheromoned into doing it… but more likely, the spirit had used my father’s access codes to send instructions in the Admiralty’s name. That’s what I’d done when I’d found myself sitting all dopey at the captain’s terminal: the spirit had given Prope orders to maroon us here.

But why? I thought the spirit was on my side. Back on Celestia, it had helped me — pretty well saved my life and Festina’s. So why turn against us now? Unless its purpose had just been to keep us alive till we got to Troyen…

I scanned the night sky again. No dancing Sperm-tail anywhere… as if Jacaranda had reeled up its fishing line and headed for home. Across the roof, Dade and Tobit were poking at the anchor box, but I knew there was nothing wrong with it. Jacaranda had simply flown away. With Kaisho and the Mandasars down on Troyen, no one on the departing starship would raise a fuss that we’d all been abandoned.

From the start, Prope had been ordered to dump me someplace nasty. I just never suspected I’d help her do it.

Footsteps rushed up the ramp. Festina rolled over on her back, stun-pistol held in both hands… but she lowered it when she saw the newcomer was a man, a human man.

Both his skin and his uniform were black: not camo’d up like our party, but still plenty hard to see. Even so, I could tell he was definitely Explorer material. The bottom part of his face just wasn’t there — the skin swept straight down from his cheekbones to the thinness of his neck. His chin was only a little nub, scarcely bigger than his Adam’s apple.

I was kind of glad I couldn’t see him very well in all this dark.

"Festina?" the man said in a deep, very precise voice. You could tell he was making an extra effort to enunciate clearly. "I didn’t expect a rescue party at all, much less my favorite admiral."

"Don’t count your rescues before they’re hatched," Festina told him. She’d switched on a small external speaker in her tightsuit so people without radio receivers could hear her. I noticed she kept the volume down to a whisper. "How’re you doing, Plebon?" she asked. "Where’s Olympia?"

"Gone." His face barely changed, but his eyes showed pain. "When Queen Temperance left, some of the palace guards defected to the enemy. They took Olympia as a bargaining chip — a valuable hostage they could offer to the Black Queen in exchange for their own lives."

"Shit." Festina’s fists clenched. "Any chance she’s still alive?"

Plebon shook his head. "Two days later…" His voice caught and he swallowed hard before trying again. "Two days later, they hung her corpse on their front lines. That’s what ‘expendable’…"

He couldn’t finish the phrase. The rest of us were all busy, trying to look anywhere but at him.

"Anyway," he said after a while, with that hard tone of someone trying to hold himself together, "if it’s any consolation, the defectors were hung on the front lines too. Their bodies looked worse than Olympia’s."

"Craziness," Counselor murmured. "Smart armies don’t kill defectors, they show them off: happy, safe, and well fed. That way, you encourage more people to surrender."

"Unless you don’t want your enemies to surrender," I said softly. "What if you want them to stay right where they are, so the war doesn’t end three and a half weeks too early?"

It’s hard when you feel people’s deaths on your head. Those defectors got killed to keep the war going… delay things till I got here. As for Olympia Mell… it explained how my sister had known Willow was in the system. Olympia had told the Black Army everything she knew: maybe under torture, or maybe just chatting with Sam as a fellow member of the navy. Then, after the talk was over, Olympia had been murdered and put on display — to make sure the palace guards stayed at their posts till the very end.

This Black Queen, whoever she was: she could have had an easy victory weeks ago, but she wanted a massacre. And Sam was the queen’s closest advisor. What did that say about my sister? What did that say?

"The anchor’s working just fine," Tobit announced. "But Jacaranda isn’t replying to any calls. They’ve buggered off on us."