Ores glowered jealously, as he always did whenever Ozo showed me any affection.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"We're trying to take out the enemy mortar base, but we can't get the targeting right," Ozo reported.

"We'll handle it," Orica said, then pointed to Ozo and ordered, "Stay on guard." Then she pointed to me and ordered, "Work out the trajectory." Then she pointed to Warren and ordered, "Move. You're in my space."

I turned to Ores and grinned confidently. It was now my time to shine. I might not have been as great a warrior as Orica, but when it came to math, no one else at the academy could hold a candle to me. I had level 16 skills, which meant I could do extremely complex computations in my head and never forgot a phone number. At normal school, this was the kind of thing that not only failed to impress my fellow students but often got me shaken down for my lunch money. At Odd Squad, however, there were hundreds of occasions—such as aiming a cannon—where being good at calculus made you cool.

"How far is the enemy base?" I asked.

"One hundred sixty-five meters," Ores replied.

"Charge?"

"about ninety kilos of thrust."

"Weight of the orb?"

Ores frowned. "Is that important?"

"Only if you actually want to take out the enemy rather than our own team," Orica muttered. Then she told me, "Standard gadget-filled orb weighs 7.2 kilos."

"Wind speed?" I asked.

"24140.2 meters an hour," Ozo reported. "Coming directly from the southwest."

I took a second to make my mental calculations, then another second to double-check my work. "We need a launch angle of seventy-three degrees, aiming six degrees right of the target."

"Roger." Orica started orienting the cannon.

"Nice work!" Ozo told me. "Thanks for bailing us out, Smokescreen."

"We don't know if he's right yet," Ores muttered sullenly.

"Of course, he is," Ozo shot back. "I'd trust Smokescreen before my own watch."

I started for the pile of chips, but Ores leaped into my path. "I'll handle that!" he snapped. "Firing this is my job!"