In her senior year of high school, Natalie Hope reunites with her friends, Adam and Barbara, at the funeral of the fourth member of their once-close gang, Jake. They remember the made-up superhero game they played as kids called "the Astronites," wh...
Adam couldn't rest while Star sailed the cosmos at starspeed. He remained still in his pilot's seat, afraid that a Mandata warplane would suddenly swoop in and attack Star from the rear. His remaining companions were able to relax after everything that had befallen them. Barbara went to the bedroom and fell asleep, exhausted, and drained of any happiness. Yona did too after she submitted her last mission report. The pilots' cabin was eerily quiet. Star remained silent and sent the UEF to voicemail every time they called.
The reason Adam couldn't find a sliver of peace was because he ran calculations in his head ad nauseam until he came to the unescapable conclusion that his conscience struggled to accept:
Victor, Natalie, Ador were dead because of him. Had he charted a route to the Principle reactor a little quicker, all three of them would still be alive. Had he not followed Victor to the hangar, he might've found Natalie and Ador, and Victor might not have died at Endgon's hands.
I don't deserve to be here, Adam told himself, and now . . . without Natalie, Aleph, or the pennar, Barb and I are stuck here, forever.
Adam set aside his morbid feelings when he saw that Star would exit starspeed in five minutes. As much as he wanted to lament, he knew that he would have little time for himself once he returned Command Castle. For now, he needed a distraction. He decided to review everything he had learned on the Heltest Eye. Perhaps there was some piece of information he had overlooked that might help the UEF prepare for Endgon's upcoming march.
For some reason, Adam became hypnotized by a single word: Starpower. The word was an enigma that followed Adam everywhere: star farms; the starpower creature; even Endgon.
"Such wasted potential," he remembered Endgon tell Victor, "and for what? Starpower?"
Adam felt like a veil had been lifted. Endgon hadn't randomly mentioned starpower to Victor. There had to be a meaning behind it — a meaning the UEF knew about and purposely didn't tell the Astronites. Anger washed away Adam's grief when he ran his calculations and had his suspicions confirmed by his digital mind. He pressed a nearby button to alert his sleeping friends of their impending deceleration from starspeed. Barbara and Yona sluggishly joined Adam in the cabin and strapped themselves in.
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Star flew into the Elem Cloud's magenta arms of dust and ice before reentering the Elem System. Two fleetjets pulled up next to each of Star's wings and followed her through the planetary rings. The planets seemed void of any activity — and UEF fleetships.
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