According to HUGO, the ship's AI, it would take five hours and twenty-seven minutes to get to Earth.

I fucking hated HUGO.

He'd turned on once we were in stable flight and started scampering across the dash, his stupid smug little voice chiming in with a completely pointless suggestion each time I tried to do something. I didn't even understand the point of having an AI that turned on after the takeoff. The takeoff was the hardest part.

"Make sure to triple-check the back thrusters!" HUGO piped up as I leaned back in the pilot's seat, having set the ship into automatic flight.

"Make sure to triple-check your fucking face," I snarled half heartedly, reaching out for what felt like the thousandth time to turn him off.

Solstice slapped my hand sharply. "HUGO stays on."

"Please let me turn him off," I begged. "You're just doing this to torture me."

"Maybe," they shrugged, grinning a bit.

Over the past little while, my heart rate had finally slowed to normal. The adrenaline had stopped coursing through my veins. Solstice and I had settled into a sort of a rhythm, and while I wouldn't call it comfortable, exactly, it was better than your typical hostage-situation-turned-escape-to-Earth scenario.

Earth. I hadn't been back in nearly six years—not since I was ten.

"So why are we going to Earth?" I asked Solstice, watching HUGO's pudgy digital form dart across the dash, running scans on all the controls.

"I can regroup there," they said. "What happened back there was... unexpected."

"Right." I poked HUGO and watched him disintegrate into pixels before reforming.

"Please do not disturb the AI!" He said.

I poked him again.

"You gonna tell me what all that was about? Aside from just the Lunars coming, I mean." I glanced at Solstice, who was picking at a tear in the leather.

"You led them there," they glared. "It's your fault."

"Mhm." I pursed my lips. "See, I'd feel way worse about that if I hadn't been taken against my will."

Solstice sighed, but didn't bother to argue. "I left the bodies back on the asteroid. Hid them in the base. Lunar Code requires that they recover the corpses of their soldiers as a first priority, so that should buy us some time."

"I remember that." I flashed back to the few months of training I'd attended. Seemed like a pointless rule to me. Once the person was dead, the corpse was pretty much just flesh and bones stuffed into a leather bag. Nothing worth holding on to. "What part of Earth are we going to? This—" I tapped the little glowing sign displaying the ETA "—is just how long it'll take before Earth comes into view."

"I've got a couple hideouts," they replied. "Uh, one in Toronto. One in Johannesburg. One in Hong Kong. And one at the bottom of the Dead Sea."

"Those are all pretty populated places," I pointed out. "Except the Dead Sea. Why have your hideouts there?"

"Better camouflage," they said. "HUGO, which RB will we be closest to by the ETA?"

"RB?" I asked at the same moment HUGO replied, "Toronto!"

"Don't worry about it," Solstice told me. "Just take us to Toronto."

"People only say 'don't worry about it' when there's something to worry about," I muttered.

But I adjusted the course like they asked.