Author: Michael Anderle; J. N. Chaney; M. D. Cooper; Ell Leigh Clarke; A. K. Duboff; Sarah Noffke; Kevin McLaughlin; Mark Leslie; Jonathan P. Brazee; Dean Wesley Smith; Oscar Andrews
Date: 2020-01-06 05:00:00+00:00
Description: Hold on tight! We're jumping to hyperspace in 3...2...1... ****Join a stunning array of the best science fiction authors alive today in this collection of amazing stories! The USA Today bestselling box set is back with more new content! Featuring bestselling authors, this collection will take you into dystopian worlds, technological societies beyond your imagination, and beyond the farthest reaches of the cosmos! This expansive collection features the following books: THE DEATH LEAGUE by Michael Anderle & David John William Laura and Jan have to overcome their immediate dislike for each other

GALAXIA

— Second Edition —

Limited Edition Box Set

Michael Anderle  |  Oscar Andrews  |  Jonathan P. Brazee  |  J.N. Chaney  |  Ell Leigh Clarke  |  M. D. Cooper  |  A.K. DuBoff  | Mark Leslie  |  Kevin McLaughlin  |  Sarah Noffke  |  Dean Wesley Smith

Galaxia: SECOND EDITION

Copyright © 2020

Their Solitary Way Text Copyright © 2016 J.N. Chaney

Troubled Space: Brewing Trouble Text Copyright © 2017 A.K. DuBoff

Xenovirus Text Copyright © 2016 Kevin McLaughlin

“When the Strong Fall” © 2019 Sarah Noffke

Looping © 2019 Ell Leigh Clarke

“To Fly Sabrina” Text Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper

Making of a Renegade Text Copyright © 2019 Oscar Andrews

“Grace Under Pressure” Copyright © 2019 Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Rebel Text Copyright © 2015 Jonathan P. Brazee

“Rescue Two” Text Copyright © 2019 Dean Wesley Smith

The Death League Text Copyright © 2020 Michael Anderle

Cover Design by A.K. DuBoff

All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the authors, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews or promotions.

The stories contained in this compilation are works of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

Kindle Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THEIR SOLITARY WAY by J.N. Chaney

Carrying ten thousand cryogenically frozen colonists, Captain Adam Cadman and his crew must seek out new worlds for potential habitation. With the help of Lilith, a shipboard cyberbrain, Adam and his team will stop at nothing to secure humanity’s future. But time is running out. The Eden is breaking down, and accidents are beginning to occur at an alarming rate.

TROUBLED SPACE: BREWING TROUBLE by A.K. DuBoff

Aspiring smuggler Jack Tressler is conscripted into a pirate gang to assist with an ill-planned heist of an experimental energy core. With rabid pirates, ruthless corporations, and a scorned former employer all vying for the same bounty, Jack and his new friends will need all their wits and snark to survive until their next meal in this farcical space opera adventure.

XENOVIRUS by Kevin McLaughlin

A deadly virus has gone global on Earth. Doctors are falling ill and dying as they race against time to develop a vaccine. To keep them safe, a select few are sent to the only place completely safe from the infection: the tiny lunar colony. But desperate people do dangerous things, and there are billions of desperate people back on Earth…

WHEN THE STRONG FALL: A SHORT STORY by Sarah Noffke

The Lucidite Insitute secretly controls the world affairs, intervening in deadly situation before they escalate. They are the reason the world hasn’t turned to chaos. But what happens when a dark evil seeks to destroy this place that protects the planet? Technology and advanced systems can only help so much. Sooner or later when the strongest fall, inevitable chaos ensues. Can the Lucidites recover in time to protect the world they value so much?

LOOPING by Ell Leigh Clarke

Another day in space takes a turn for the bizarre when Bentley finds herself responsible for saving her oblivious crew. Her only ally? The person she can rely on least...

TO FLY SABRINA: AN AEON 14 SHORT STORY by M. D. Cooper

Cheeky would do anything to be back at the helm of a starship plying the deep black. She’s all but given up hope when a position comes up on the boards. A shady ship with a shady captain. What’s a girl got to lose?

MAKING OF A RENEGADE by Oscar Andrews

When his father is taken by the Federation, Jack’s life is set on a collision course with danger and betrayal: his very physiology being the reason he becomes coveted for military research. Military research that is set to kill him... If Jack is going to survive to grow up and become the ingenious covert negotiator he is destined to be, he’s going to have to think fast.

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: A SHORT STORY by Mark Leslie

This wasn’t just a killer interview, it was an interview that would kill. Bronson Grace has only his quick wit and academy training to outwit and outlast the other candidates in a divisive society where good people do horrible things, and it’s hard to tell if the bad people are living in the Deadzone, or perhaps they’re the ones in charge.

REBEL by Jonathan Brazee

First Families’ Michiko MacCailín joins the resistance to overthrow the very system that gave her such a life of priviledge. But powerful people resist changes in the status quo, and they have powperful friends in high places.  Early gains by the resistance are thrown into disarray upon the arrival of the United Federation Marines.

RESCUE TWO: A SEEDERS UNIVERSE SHORT STORY by Dean Wesley Smith

Searching for a lost Seeder Mother Ship with over a million people on board might be an impossible task under normal circumstances, but the Mother Ship went missing over three million years earlier.

THE DEATH LEAGUE by Michael Anderle & David John William

Laura, the unconventional scientist, and Jan, the base commander, have to overcome their immediate dislike for each other if they’re going to unravel the Zoo’s secrets, and stop it spreading before the danger reaches the only partially complete wall. If they can’t, their lives, and the whole of humanity, are over.

THEIR SOLITARY WAY
by J.N. Chaney

Our salvation lies before us. We need only reach out and take it.

Adam Kadman is the captain of a seed ship known as the Eden.

Carrying ten thousand cryogenically frozen colonists, he and his crew must seek out new worlds for potential habitation. With the help of Lilith, a shipboard cyberbrain, Adam and his team will stop at nothing to secure humanity’s future.

But time is running out.

The Eden is breaking down, and accidents are beginning to occur at an alarming rate.

At first, Adam believes these to be mere coincidences, but when a massive explosion kills several dozen people, he puts Seth, the lead Security officer and Adam’s own son, in charge of an investigation to uncover the truth, but with so little evidence to go on, how can they hope to succeed?

The clock is ticking…

J. N. Chaney

Copyrighted Material

Copyright © 2016 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2016 by Variant Publications

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jeff Chaney or Variant Publications.

www.jnchaney.com

1st Edition

For James,

Who continues to believe

I’m better at this than I really am.

* * *

Some natural tears they dropp'd, but wip'd them soon;

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow

Through Eden took their solitary way.

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

* * *

To The High Council Of Fiore

My Dear Councilors,

The enemy is at our gates, preparing to destroy what little remains of The Empire.

The Ministry of War speaks of a turning tide, but I see on each of your faces the same grim understanding: the war we have waged for two generations is over and we have lost.

Soon everything our species has built, everything we have achieved, will be buried beneath the ash of our bones with only ghosts to mourn our passing.

But this doesn’t have to be. We can still save our future. The billions that have died to give us just one more year will have done more than delayed the inevitable. Our species may yet live, but to do so, we must accept the hard reality of our fate.

We must dare to do one simple thing.

Councilors, we must surrender Fiore. We must abandon our world.

Authorize my mission, and give me the resources needed to secure Humanity’s future. The Eden remains the fastest ship in the fleet, capable of carrying thousands across the galaxy to some far-flung world.

Our salvation lies before us.

We need only reach out and take it.

- Adam Kadmon, Captain of the Eden

Chapter 1

“How long has it been now?” asked Adam. He tapped the control pad on his armchair, revealing a holographic display of the nearby star cluster.

“Since we left Fiore?” asked Lilith. Her face appeared in the corner of the view-screen, auburn hair flowing down her shoulders. She stood before a glowing, white background. “Approximately six years, eight months, and three days…or would you like a more precise timeframe?”

“I was only curious. More importantly, what’s with the hair? I thought you were going blonde.”

“I was, but I thought I’d try something different. Don’t you like it? I can change it back if you don’t.” Her hair color suddenly phased to blonde. She grinned. “Better?”

“Careful. You’ll make the other girls jealous. Not everyone can do that, you know.”

“Being me has its advantages.” She ran a finger through her hair, changing the color back to red. “I think I’ll stick with this for now.”

He chuckled. “What’s the ship’s status?”

“Beautiful. Strong.” She stretched out her arms. “Healthy as the day I was born, thank you.” A moment later, the space behind her morphed into a lake. She stood on a long wooden dock, dressed in a fashionable two-piece bathing suit. Her ruby eyes sparkled in the artificial sunlight, and she smiled.

“You know what I mean.”

“I hope this isn’t too distracting for you,” she said, twisting her hips.

“Lilith…”

She frowned. “Fine, but I’m keeping the beach.” She snapped her fingers, replacing the swimsuit with a standard military uniform. “Anyway, the ship is operating at 96.4% efficiency. A gradual decline from last week’s numbers, but hardly worthy of concern. We’ll be arriving at the next jump in approximately 89 minutes. As usual, I’ll handle the details.”

“You’re the best.”

“I’m a lot of things,” she said, lifting her chin. “Poet, artist, beauty queen, pilot. You name it.”

“Don’t forget Delta Class Starship,” he said.

“The least of my personas,” she said, fanning her hand dismissively. “But also true. You’d be lost without me. Literally.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Adam. He’d known Lilith for years, even before she became the Eden’s cyberbrain. He still remembered seeing her in flight school. In those days, she was human—a little shy, but stubborn. The top of her graduating class. Years later, she was shot down while flying over Sheol. After several successful campaigns and a dozen commendations, her career came to an abrupt end. The attack left her severely injured, paralyzed from the neck down.

Less than two years later, military intelligence approached her with an offer to join the CyberBrain Initiative. They promised her a ship of her own and a chance to get back in the field. She didn’t hesitate. When they asked which ship she wanted, she requested the Eden, captained by the recently promoted Adam Kadmon, her oldest friend.

“Captain,” called a voice. It was Uriel. She stood at attention, holding a small data-pad in her left hand.

“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Abel asked me to give this to you,” she said, lifting the pad.

“Thank you. That’ll be all for now.”

“Yes, sir. I’m heading to Security for my shift.” She snapped to attention again, and proceeded to leave the bridge. Uriel had always been too formal, despite Adam’s protests. She was an officer in every sense of the word, bred from a family of soldiers. She could trace her lineage all the way back to the Seraphim Knights, one of the most esteemed units in military history.

She was also Adam’s daughter-in-law.

“What is it?” asked Lilith.

Adam flinched at the sudden question.

“What’s wrong? Forget I was here?”

He smiled at her and turned the data-pad on. “Looks like a formal request,” he said. “Abel wants to take a scout ship when we arrive.”

“Seems safe enough. Why send a pad, though? I can’t find anything wrong with the com.”

“Maybe he didn’t want you to know about it,” said Adam, arching his brow.

“If so, you just ruined it. Nice one.” She winked.

“I’ll ask him about it later,” he said. His eyes wandered over to the door to the bridge, where Uriel had left. He paused for a few seconds and then turned back to Lilith’s monitor. “Say, can you send Uriel and Abel a note and tell them I’d like to have dinner this week?” He paused. “Actually, go ahead and invite the whole family.”

“Feeling fatherly, are we?” she asked.

“You know me,” he said, rolling his eyes.

She smiled. “I certainly do.”

* * *

The walls of the ship stretched and howled, a sign that the Eden was coming out of warp.

“That was quick,” said Seth, turning on his side in bed. His eyes met Azura’s. “I was hoping we still had a few hours.”

She sighed, then kissed him on the nose. “Time to go. Don’t want to be late for your shift.”

“I can deal with being late,” he said, burying his face in her neck.

She giggled as he proceeded to attack her with a barrage of kisses, then pushed him back with her finger. “What if Uriel comes looking for you? We don’t want her seeing us together.”

“She is inquisitive, that one.”

“Comes with being a security officer, doesn’t it?”

He raised his brow. “Between you and me, I’ve never been much of a problem solver.”

“Oh, give yourself a little credit,” said Azura. “I’m sure if you tried, you could do basic math.”

He smiled, and pretended to bite her nose.

She laughed and pushed him away with her foot. “Better get going, Lieutenant.”

He frowned. “Yes, ma’am.”

Seth grabbed his shirt and got dressed. “See you soon,” he told her, lingering at the door.

“I’ll follow you shortly,” she said.

“Just don’t let anyone see you leaving the room.”

“Relax. This isn’t my first time, you know.”

He grinned. “Until later.”

“See you tonight, handsome.”

Seth headed into the corridor, letting the door shut behind him. He wished he could walk with her, open and unfiltered, in front of everyone. This will have to do for now, he thought. The rest will come in time.

A few minutes after he arrived, Azura would join him on the bridge. Their secret would last another day, and that was good. Not because he liked it—not because he was embarrassed—but for his father’s sake.

He and Azura’s fathers had been friends ever since their time in the academy. They remained friends for nearly twenty years, despite the distance and hardship that came with interstellar war. During the campaign, Azura’s father had died suddenly, but not because of the enemy. No, his own body had killed him.

As Azura put it, he was never the kind of man to get himself checked out. Not often enough, anyway. So when his leg started hurting, he simply dealt with it on his own. Plenty of soldiers experienced joint problems after twenty years of military service. He never expected an aneurysm to come from it. He died in under two minutes.

Seth’s father was devastated, and vowed to look after Azura. He treated her like she was his own daughter.

The adoption was fast, probably because of the man signing the papers, or maybe it was the fact a war going on and a lot of children kept getting orphaned. Regardless, Seth and Azura became siblings. They were both sixteen at the time.

“Morning sir,” said Michael. He was getting off the lift. “Going to the bridge?”

“Yeah,” said Seth. “You?”

“My shift ended so I’m going to bed.” Michael was usually on maintenance, but not today. The ship only had two security officers—Seth and Uriel. In case of emergency, having a few extra workers could come in handy. Most other departments operated under the same guidelines. Protocol required every active duty crew member to train in a secondary job class.

Several dozen people from across the ship applied to train in security, but only a few actually qualified. Since Uriel handled testing and recruiting, Seth rarely had the chance to talk with the applicants. Michael was a rare exception.

“When’s your test?” asked Seth. “Coming up, isn’t it?”

“Today, sir,” said Michael. “I’m on my way there now. How’s the job going? Anything for me to look forward to?”

“A little boring, if I’m being honest. Not much happens on this ship. You picked a pretty easy job for your secondary.”

Michael chuckled. “With security, isn’t that a good thing? The more active it gets, the worse off we are.”

“Definitely,” said Seth, smiling. “Well, don’t let me keep you. Be sure to tell me how you do on your test.” He stepped aside to make room.

“Thank you, sir,” Michael said. He cleared the lift and proceeded down the corridor. Seth punched the elevator button for the bridge, and the lift began to rise. Michael was only twenty-three years old. He’d been a young engineer when the Eden began its mission. Since then, he’d excelled in the role, gaining some notoriety and respect from his peers and superiors. Michael worked hard and stayed out of trouble. He had a knack for solving problems, which made him valuable. If he maintained his work ethic, it wouldn’t be long before he ended up running his own team—maybe even a department.

Good for him. Seth and his brothers were given ample opportunities to move up in the world, due to their family prestige. This didn’t mean their careers were without their own problems, but they had the benefit of influence on their side. Everyone on Fiore knew Seth’s father. His family was one of the oldest in the empire, and they had money, connections, and power.

Doesn’t matter, he thought. We’re all just people now.

With humanity on the edge of extinction, what did a family name mean? All that mattered now was survival. If someone like Michael could get the job done, what difference did it make where they came from? If he could keep them alive, then he mattered.

The doors opened and Seth stepped out of the lift. A few engineers gathered in the hall, repairing a broken conduit. Tools and power strips littered the floor as they worked quickly to fix the damage. At any given time, one of these teams could be found somewhere on the ship, whether in a server room or a corridor like this. Lately, they’d taken to making significant repairs instead of simple checkups. The ship was hardly new, dating back nearly fifty years. After so much time in service, it was no wonder so many outages and accidents happened when they did. Hell, Seth thought. You’d think there would be more.

He turned the next corner and entered the bridge, which seemed busier than usual. Despite working in the Security Office, Seth reported to the bridge for the morning brief, along with every other department head. The captain preferred face-to-face interactions, despite having access to digital channels. Some found it annoying, but Seth understood. You respect the leader you see, he thought. Never the one you don’t.

“You’re late,” said a voice. It was the captain, standing a few feet to his left. He was a large man, tall and strong, but also a little heavy. His arms were firm and thick, broad shoulders holding him together at the sides. But he was an older man, fatter now than he used to be, and it showed in the gut he carried. “Did you hear what I said? You’re late.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Seth said. “I’m willing to extend our meeting to make up for the time.”

The old man smiled. “I should hope so. By my count, you owe me about three minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

The captain laughed, placing his hand on Seth’s shoulder. “Come on, I’m just kidding, Seth. Lighten up a little.”

“Yes, sir. Should we get to it?”

The old man sighed. “Fine, go ahead, if you must. Before you do, though, I want you to come by for dinner tomorrow night. I’m having the whole family. You’d better be there. Think you can do that for me, or do I need to order my own son to spend some time with his family?”

“No, I’ll be there,” said Seth.

“Good!” exclaimed the captain, grinning. “Glad to hear it.”

Before he could say anything more, the door to the bridge slid open. It was Azura, and she was right on time.

Chapter 2

Seth left the bridge after the morning brief. As usual, he’d given his report to the captain, and like every other day, it was more or less devoid of content, which was good.

Nothing criminal ever happened on the Eden. In fact, Security was so understaffed that it only had two officers—Seth and Uriel.

Not that it mattered. The worst thing to happen in the last six months was a marital squabble.

Seth spent most of his work day sitting around the office, shooting the breeze with Uriel. They talked about recent books they’d read, complained about other crew members, or discussed whatever hobby they happened to be into at the time.

Today, Uriel’s topic of conversation involved Takado, a form of martial arts she’d recently taken up. “You should join me sometime,” she said. “It’s pretty exhilarating. The idea is to build your endurance up over time so you can eventually outlast your opponent. You play defensively, trying to wear them out. Once they start slowing down, you strike.”

“What happens if you come across someone else who knows Takado?” asked Seth.

“There are attacks you can use. It’s pretty adaptable.”

“I think I’ll pass,” said Seth. “You have fun, though.”

She laughed. “Typical Seth.”

“What? It’s not like we’re back home on the streets of the capitol, beating down thugs for information.”

“True,” she said. “Could be good exercise, though.”

Seth tabbed the keyboard on his desk, calling up reports from the night before. One or two might come in during their off hours, but rarely anything serious. As it happened, the system had a single incident summary waiting for review.

“What’s up?” asked Uriel. “Got something?”

Seth read it over. “Looks like another blackout.” They’d been seeing more and more of these lately. Always random. This time the report came from Sid Marco, a level-two botanist.

“How bad?”

“No damages. Engineering already took care of the outage, so the power’s back on. Should be good.”

Uriel stretched her arms out. “Well, that was easy.”

“Another win for us,” said Seth.

“Another clear day,” she said, clasping her hands. “Want me to get the cards?”

“Sure, if you feel like losing another game.”

“Or twenty,” she said with a chuckle. “God knows we’re not going anywhere.”

* * *

After a pretty boring twelve-hour shift in Security, Seth was more than ready to call it a day. He walked through the corridor and entered the elevator, anticipating sleep. This is what I get for staying up so late with Azura, he thought. He wanted nothing more than to collapse into the cushions of his couch, kick his boots off, and relax.

Unfortunately, today had other plans.

His wrist dinged, emitting a small light. A call from his brother Abel. He sighed, answering it.

“Hi Seth,” said Abel. “Cain isn’t answering the com. Go check on him, please.”

“I’d rather not,” said Seth. “Besides, you didn’t even ask. You just gave an order.”

“Come on, Seth. You’re close to his quarters. It won’t take you long.”

“I’m still not hearing a question.”

“Fine. Can you please go see what Cain is doing?”

“He’s probably asleep.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” said Abel. “Why would he be sleeping?”

“He’s been working odd hours for the past month.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

Of course you don’t, thought Seth. Abel never was a very good listener. He always had a hundred things going through his head. “He told us both a few weeks before the switch. You’d remember if you paid more attention.”

“Well, whatever. I guess I forgot. Dad wants him to come by tomorrow for dinner. We need you to swing by and tell him.”

“Fine,” said Seth.

“Great,” said Abel, and then the com went dead.

Seth sighed again and pressed the elevator button. Cain’s quarters were near one of the population bays—a housing location for nearly ten thousand future colonists. They slept in cryogenic pods, waiting for the Eden to arrive at its eventual destination. Given the limited resources available and the potential length of the mission, cryogenics remained one of the few viable solutions for deep space colonization. The ship carried farmers, botanists, chemists, medical doctors, immunologists, allergists, carpenters, construction workers, welders, electrical engineers, project managers, and a slew of other experts across a wide array of fields, each resting comfortably inside their little pods. The Eden had filled its bays with as many survivors as possible, all in an effort to give humanity a second chance.

Seth couldn’t wait for it to be over. He missed the open fields of Fiore. The soft heat of the afternoon sun. He recalled the long walks through the nearby woods and the small brook down the hill from his home. He and Cain had often played there as children.

The war had ravaged that world, decimating the Empire and all her colonies. He would never set foot there again, never see the countryside of his youth or play in the field with his brother. If he had children, they’d never know the home of their ancestors.

But at least they’ll be alive, he thought. That has to count for something.

The elevator doors opened, pulling him from his thoughts. Cain’s room was a few doors down. Seth found it quickly, touching the button on the wall to announce himself. He waited, then pressed it a second time.

“Alright, alright,” said a muffled voice from the other side.

Seth heard what sounded like a box falling. Before he could ask about it, the door opened. Cain had a spoon in his mouth and half his shirt on, like he’d tried and then gave up. His frizzy, red hair stuck to one side, and his bloodshot, green eyes seemed to suggest he was sleeping.

“Hey. Something wrong?” asked Cain. He licked his lips. Behind him, a darkened room, with only the soft glow of a computer screen to serve as a light source. Cain enjoyed watching old world entertainment, often losing track of time while binging for hours. Even days.

“Abel asked me to check on you. Father wants us to come by tomorrow for dinner.”

Cain scrunched his nose, almost disgusted by the notion. “Do I have to?”

“I’d rather not go either, but you know how it is.”

“Tell them I’m busy,” he said quickly. “Say I’ve got a project to work on.”

Seth peaked over his brother’s shoulder at the computer screen on the far side of the room. “Does it have something to do with Star Quest?”

“I finished that game. I’m on Razor’s Rocket now. It’s a spinoff from SQ about Razor Maddox, one of the side characters.”

“I stand corrected,” said Seth.

“Ugh, fine. I’ll go,” said Cain. “Not promising I’ll stay very long, though.”

“Thanks. You know I can’t do these things on my own.”

“Yeah, yeah. No need to guilt me. I said I’d go.”

They laughed together, and Seth was glad to see his brother smile.

* * *

Seth woke from his nap to the sound of the door opening. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa, apparently. Azura stood at the entryway, taking off her jacket and setting it on the wall rack. As he sat up, she beamed a smile his way, and he returned it. “Welcome back.”

She fell into the cushions of the couch, swinging her feet over his knees, and threw her face into his chest. “I had such a stupid day,” she moaned.

He chuckled, putting his arm around her neck. “What happened?”

She sighed. “Lots of problems on the ship. There were a few power outages near engineering. I spent the whole day trying to find out why, but no one knows. Lilith is still working on it.”

“Any ideas what it could be?” asked Seth.

“I honestly have no idea. Engineering checked everything. The power core is stable. The diagnosis they ran came up empty. Even Lilith hasn’t found anything. It’s infuriating.” She gently punched his thigh. “I hate my job.”

“Today, you do.”

“What?”

“You hate your job today. Last week you loved it.”

She scoffed and laid her head on his lap. “Fine,” she said. “I only hate it today.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Quiet, you.”

“Don’t forget we’ve got that dinner tomorrow,” said Seth.

“That should be nice and awkward. Is Cain going?”

“He’s not happy about it, but he’ll be there.”

“Poor guy,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Yeah,” said Seth, letting out a long sigh. “Poor guy.”

They sat in silence for a while, holding one another, and soon they fell asleep, together at last. The night faded with ease, until a few hours after midnight when Azura stirred and woke him. She took him by the hand, kissing his neck and laying him on the bed.

A beam of light from the hall hit her, revealing her eyes—rapture blue with spots of red—and he melted, completely entranced.

Suddenly, tomorrow morning’s shift no longer mattered, nor did his exhaustion. He was consumed, the same as he had been all those years ago, back on Fiore, when Adam had brought her to their farm in the country, far from the noise of the capitol.

Azura was thin and tired in those days, with lines on her face from weeks of crying, her father barely in the ground. Seth watched as she stepped out of the car. Her doe eyes glistened with tears as she stood before him, there on the steps of his father’s house. She held a bag with both her hands, her entire world reduced to a single piece of luggage.

He went to her, there under the Fiore sun. “Hey,” he said, his voice cracking.

She stared at him with puffy cheeks and bloodshot eyes. “Hello.”

She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, and like any sixteen-year-old boy, he loved her immediately.

Chapter 3

Cain stretched and yawned. He was going on three hours of sleep, but he didn’t care. Sleep was a distraction. He was much more interested in repairing this microprocessor.

He sat in his room with his soldering pen, melting and fusing a piece of metal. The tip of the pen heated itself to dangerous levels, so he had to take special precautions when using it. He wore gloves and a mask, being careful not to burn himself or breathe in the fumes. The ship’s safety policy prohibited this kind of work outside designated work centers, but Cain didn’t care. He preferred the solitude of his quarters.

He tapped the iron with his pen, sending fumes into the air. A fan whirled nearby, pushing the gray smoke away, dispersing it. He couldn’t spend much time on this today. His shift in engineering started soon.

No matter. He could always finish up after—

Oh, right. He had that family dinner today. He’d almost forgotten. Damn, he thought. So much for productivity.

Cain turned the pen off and set it on the table. He ran through a few different scenarios, trying to think of an excuse not to go.  He could say he had work to do. They’d probably complain, but so what? It’s not like they really wanted him there.

No, that wasn’t true. Seth had asked him to come, and he’d meant it. Maybe I’ll go and stay an hour…then leave. That should be good. Cain put his tools away, glancing at the clock on his computer screen. Crap. He waited too long. He’d be late now. Should’ve planned better, he thought. Oh well.

He pulled off the gloves and mask, tossing them into the recycling unit under the table. He didn’t have time to take a shower today. Hopefully no one would notice. To compensate, he rinsed his face and hair, dabbing his arms and neck with a cloth.

On the way to engineering, his communicator beeped. He tapped the screen and accepted the call. It was Ariel, one of his coworkers. “Yeah?” he asked, before she could say anything.

“You’re late again,” she said.

“I know. I was busy.”

“You’re always busy. What was it this time? Another project?”

He entered the elevator. The doors slid closed. “Whatever.”

“Don’t worry. I covered for you. I told everyone you were checking the outage on deck sixteen.”

“What outage?” asked Cain.

“It happened a few minutes before the shift change. The power in one of the compartments went down for a few minutes.”

“Did Lilith already run a diagnostic check?”

“Yes, but she didn’t find anything. It’s the third outage in the area this week, which means someone has to go there in person.”

“Great.”

“Better hurry. I told them you were already on your way.” The com clicked off and she vanished.

Cain tapped the button for deck sixteen. He sighed as the lift trembled with movement. The day was already off to such a wonderful start.

Deck sixteen was largely unmanned. Like half the shift, the bulk of the floor had been repurposed into storage rooms. Some of the crew had quarters on this level, but those were closer to the forward section, far from his destination.

Which was good, because he preferred his isolation. People, for their part, were largely annoying, stupid, selfish little beings. Only a few had genuine interest in anyone other than themselves. They gossiped, cheated, talked bad about their friends. They spread rumors, betrayed, and calculated. And for what? To feel better about themselves?

None of them were worth a damn, except perhaps his brother Seth…and maybe Ariel. The rest could go and rot.

He found the maintenance closet and grabbed one of the toolkits—a medium-sized orange box containing some basic supplies and a scanner. Every deck had several of these for quick repairs. If the problem was serious, he’d return with some proper gear from Engineering.

He located the hatch closest to where the outage had occurred and, using his omni-tool, unscrewed the metal and set it on the floor. He squeezed into the wall behind several bundles of wiring and hard metal, and then shuffled several feet to the nearest circuit port.

Opening the maintenance box, he powered on the scanner and inserted the cable. It would take several minutes for a full diagnostic, so he set the machine on top of the port, and sat on the floor. It was a tight space, but he was small, and fit without an issue. After a few moments, he laid back, placing his hands on his sides. He felt the walls touching his arms and hips, preventing him from squirming or moving. He wondered if this was how a coffin felt, and a sudden chill ran down his neck.

“This is no time to be sleeping,” said a gentle voice from inside the wall.

Cain popped up and looked at his wrist. The receiver light, which normally showed all incoming calls, was empty. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Lilith,” she said. “Who else would it be?”

He relaxed a bit. “Do you always sneak up on people when they’re alone?”

She giggled. “I saw you got assigned here. Double-checking my analysis, hm? Thought I’d check and see how it was going.”

“I’m running the scan now. It should be done in a minute.”

“Oh, goody. I’d love to know what’s happening with these outages.”

Cain got to his feet and checked the scanner—a few more minutes. “Have any theories?” he asked.

“We passed an electrical field a few months ago. It may have caused some issues in the grid.”

“Could be,” he said, leaning against the wall.

“In any case, there’s yet to be any serious problems. All small stuff. I’m not worried.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Guess so.”

“Are you going to your father’s tonight?” she asked.

The question surprised him. He’d known Lilith for years, of course. She was a trusted friend of his father’s, but Cain had never spent much time with her. “Why do you ask?”

“Just asking. It sounds like a fun evening. I might even go.”

“So Father invited you, too?” asked Cain.

“Not yet, but he always does. So, how about it? Are you going?”

“Sure, I’ll be there,” he answered. “Can’t promise I’ll stick around, though.”

“You don’t sound very excited. Don’t you want to see the family?”

He hesitated, uncertain of what to say. Now that she’d asked him about it directly, he didn’t really have an answer.

“Don’t worry. I don’t blame you,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Social functions were never my thing, either,” she admitted. “And family get-togethers? Those are always a disaster.”

Her candid answer surprised him. “No argument there.”

She laughed. “I try to pretend like I enjoy them, but It’s all an act, I assure you. I’m actually pretty nervous with people. I’ve just gotten good at hiding it.”

He smiled a bit.

The scanner beeped. “Done already?” she asked.

The screen on the device showed no detectable problems with the systems or the grid. Now he could get out of here. “Looks like your scans were right the first time.” He unplugged the device and placed it back inside the supplies kit.

“No one knows my ship better than me,” she said, a hint of pride in her voice. “This old girl’s rock solid.”

* * *

“How long until we begin the deceleration process?” asked Adam. He sat in his chair on the bridge, trying to sludge through the day’s paperwork. He had to sign off on several transfers and two promotions. Not exactly the most exciting work for a veteran soldier, but no matter.

“About forty-eight hours,” said Lilith, running her fingers through her gorgeous red hair. “Once the process begins, it should take us less than three days to arrive at the next planet.”

“Think we’ll find anything?” asked Adam.

“Who knows?” she asked. “It seemed promising on the long range scans.”

“They’re always promising,” Adam reminded her. “You were convinced the second one was going to be a paradise, but then we got there and it was covered in radiation.”

“Now don’t go blaming me for that,” she said, scrunching her nose.

He chuckled. “Of course not.” He leaned back in his chair and thumbed through the reports from each department. Most of it was mundane. Typical readouts and performance assessments. There was one exception, however. Engineering noted and repaired another power outage. It was the third one this month alone. He didn’t even want to guess how many there had been in total. “Lilith, do you know anything about this blackout from last night?”

“I helped the chief make repairs with his crew. Everything should be operational.”

“But do we know what caused it?”

She frowned. “I’m afraid not. My best guess is residual radiation from the electrical storm we passed through a while ago.”

Adam hated seeing his ship in this sort of condition, but what could he do? No one had any real answers. Only guesswork. Maybe some new information would come to light soon, but for now Engineering would have to do their best to hold things together.

“Tomorrow should be fun,” said Lilith.

He blinked. “Huh?”

“The dinner you’re having with the kids,” said Lilith.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot.”

“It’s been a while since everyone got together,” she said, twirling around. As she spun, an elegant silver dress materialized, lined with blue and covered in diamonds. “What do you think? Too formal?” She snapped her fingers and the dress morphed into a short summer skirt. “Maybe something more casual?”

“Actually, I was planning to talk to you about that,” he said. “I’d like for you to be there, but…” He paused, trying to put together the words.

“What is it?”

“The thing is, Eve wants this to be a family thing. A chance for us to reconnect with the kids, particularly Cain.”

Lilith took a moment to answer. “I see,” she finally said. Her clothes transformed back into her military uniform. “I understand.”

“Maybe you and I can play a game afterwards, once everyone leaves. How’s that?”

She smiled, nodding. “Sure.”

“So you’re not mad?” he asked. He’d expected more of a reaction.

She scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m friends with half the crew. I’ll find something to do, and then I’ll beat you in whatever game you want to play.”

He laughed. “You always do.”

* * *

Adam stretched his feet across the couch and yawned. He had only meant to take a short nap, but it had been nearly two hours. Why hadn’t anyone woken him? The rest of the family would be there within the hour and he’d meant to help set things up. “Honey.” He cleared his throat. “Hello?”

“I’m right here,” said Eve. She was in the kitchen. “What is it?”

“I told you to wake me so I could help.” He sat up, rubbing his neck.

“You were so adorable I didn’t want to bother you. Drooling a little, too, I think.”

“Funny,” he said, yawning again. “What else do you have left to do?”

“I’m about done. As usual, I didn’t need you. Go back to being the freeloading husband you are.”

“You know, if someone heard you they might not think you were joking.”

“Who says I’m joking?” She poked her head out from behind the kitchen wall and smiled, then disappeared into the other room. “Silly husband.”

The door buzzed, startling him. The video feed from the hall lit up a nearby screen, revealing Uriel. Adam grunted lazily.

“Tell them to have a seat until everyone arrives,” called his wife. “Hey, did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” he said, going to the door and touching the pad, opening it. In the hall, Uriel stood beside Abel holding a plate of food in her hands. Some kind of mush. “What’s that?”

Abel shook his head. “Uriel made it. Not sure what it is, though.”

“It’s a dip, you idiot,” she said, raising an eye at her husband. “I told you before we left. Pay attention.”

“In any case, we’re thankful,” said Adam, laughing. “I’m also glad you’re here.” He took the dip out of Uriel’s hands.

“Wait for me!” called a voice from down the hall. Adam poked his head out from behind the door to see his adopted daughter Azura. Walking briskly through the corridor, she held two large boxes in her arms.

“Need some help?” asked Abel.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, handing the load to him.

“Why’d you bring all that?” asked Uriel.

“I asked her to,” said Adam, stepping aside to let them all in.

“What’s in it?” asked Abel.

“Old memories, mostly. Pictures from the war,” said Adam.

“Your father’s been feeling nostalgic lately,” said Eve, appearing from behind the kitchen wall. She had a tray of cookies in her hands.

“Of course,” said Abel. He set the boxes next to the sofa.

“Looks like we’re all here except for Seth and Cain,” said Uriel.

“Should I call them?” asked Eve.

Azura shook her head. “We should give them a few minutes. Seth mentioned he might be a bit late when I saw him on shift this afternoon and—”

The door buzzed.

“There we are,” said Eve.

Adam opened it, revealing both Seth and Cain. “Come on in, boys.”

“Sorry I’m late,” said Seth, glancing at Azura. “I got caught up.”

“Nonsense, the others only got here a few seconds ago,” said Eve.

“I was working,” said Cain. “Sorry.”

“Well, thank you both for coming,” said Adam, reaching his arms around the two young men. He squeezed them both. “Now, how about some food?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Seth.

Cain nodded.

The door shut behind them and the family convened in the dining room.  “The food’s coming now,” said Eve.

“Here, let me help you,” Seth told his mother.

Adam watched as his wife and youngest son brought several plates of warm food out to the table. The main dish was synthetic sliced furl, basted with a blend of sauces for added sweetness. On the side, they had fruit salad and roasted agari, a tender red vegetable from the botanical gardens where Eve worked. She often experimented with various fruits and vegetables she brought home from work. Not all of them turned out so well. To her husband’s delight, this was not one of those times.

Adam dived right into the agari and furl, gulping them down. “How’s everyone doing?” he asked, swallowing, and wiping his lips with a napkin.

“Pretty good,” said Seth.

“How about you, Cain?” asked Eve. “How’s your work in Engineering?”

The last word seemed to linger in the air. Adam didn’t entirely approve of his son’s decision to transfer to Engineering after procuring a spot for him on the bridge. The Kadmons had been pilots and soldiers for centuries. Seth and Abel had followed in their family’s footsteps, much to Adam’s delight. Abel was a starship pilot, while Seth was placed in charge of Security. Cain didn’t want anything to do with either of those. On the contrary, he was far more interested in replacing power converters and electrical cables than following in his family footsteps.

Adam understood his son’s desire to make his own way. It was admirable, not wanting to rely on others to reach his personal goals. Unfortunately, he knew so little about mechanics and repairs, and truthfully found the prospect somewhat boring. He made attempts to show his support, but Cain never seemed to appreciate them. His boy was distant and isolated, rarely volunteering information or engaging with him. If only Adam could find a middle ground between them, perhaps they could finally connect.

“Everything’s fine,” Cain said.

Adam waited for more, but nothing came. He thumbed the side of the table, trying to think of another question. It was so frustrating. Every father should know how to talk to their own child.

“You’ve been down there for how long?” asked Eve.

“Eighteen months next week,” said the boy.

“Already?” she asked. “It doesn’t seem like so long.”

Azura smiled. “I feel like I filed your transfer paperwork yesterday.”

Cain shrugged. “Everyone’s been busy. Time flies.”

“My sister told me you’re doing a great job,” said Uriel.

Eve’s face lit up. “Oh, that’s right. You and Ariel are coworkers, aren’t you, Cain? Have you made friends?”

He wavered in his chair. “I guess.”

“Wonderful,” said Eve, clasping her hands and smiling. She looked at Adam. “Isn’t that wonderful, sweetheart?”

Adam cleared his throat. “It certainly is.”

Cain stared at him from across the table.

“Is Chief Ridwan treating you well?” asked Adam after a short moment.

“He’s okay.”

Adam paused. “He’s known for being rough on people, so I can have a word with him if you need me to.”

“No, it’s fine,” said Cain.

“Well, you let me know,” said Adam.

Cain nodded, dropping his eyes to stare at his plate. He took his fork and dug it into the sliced furl.

Abel drank the last of his wine, setting the glass on the table. “If you ask me, you should just come back to the bridge. Everyone keeps asking when you’ll return.”

“Now, Abel, leave your brother alone,” said Eve. “He likes his job.”

“It seems like a waste of his time, that’s all,” he said, glancing at his brother. “No offense.”

“Whatever,” muttered Cain.

Abel sighed. “Sorry, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I guess I just don’t get it. Why sit in a hole when you could be doing something more fulfilling? Whenever we get to the next planet, someone has to scout and explore. That could be you. Instead, you’re going to be stuck inside the ship, fixing circuit-boards or whatever it is they have you doing.”

Cain furrowed his brow, digging his fork into the slab of meat on his plate. “Maybe I don’t want to be a pilot,” he said. “Maybe I like where I’m at.”

“Alright, but what about Security? I’m sure Seth and Uriel could use your help,” said Abel.

“You worry about yourself,” said Cain, taking a bite of the meat, and chewing. “I’ll worry about me.”

“Why don’t we talk about something else?” asked Eve.

Adam nodded. “Great idea.”

Cain swallowed, and red juice from the meat dripped from the side of his mouth. He wiped it with his sleeve, then set his fork on the table. “I actually need to get going,” he said, pushing his chair out and standing.

Eve frowned. “Oh, sweetie, please don’t leave.”

“Sorry, but I have some work to do,” he said.

“What’s so important?” asked Abel.

“I have a project I’m working on,” explained Cain. “It’s complicated.”

Eve went to his side and held his hand. “Are you sure you have to leave right this minute?”

He nodded. “Yes, Mother.” He hugged her. “I’ll see you later.”

Adam wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. He wanted to stop him, to say something to get him to stay. Why did everything have to be so difficult?

Cain tapped the door and it opened. “Later,” he said, quickly, stepping into the hall.

Eve frowned. As soon as the door slid shut, she glanced at her oldest boy. “Abel, why did you have to say all that?”

“What did I do?” he asked.

Uriel smacked his shoulder. “You’re so oblivious sometimes.”

Chapter 4

Cain hurried through the halls, eager to get far away from his family. Why did Abel have to give him such a hard time? Why was he such an arrogant prick?

If only his father had stepped in and said something. Why didn’t the old man care? Because you’re not like us, he heard his father’s voice say. You’re not a pilot like the golden boy. You’re a worthless piece of trash.

“Screw you,” he muttered as he reached the elevator. He tapped the button, waiting for the doors to shut, and then kicked the wall. He grunted his frustration.

“Somebody’s upset,” said a disembodied voice. It was Lilith, talking from the speaker near the top of the lift.

He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. “Leave me alone, please.”

“Not until you tell me what the problem is.”

He groaned. “Just go away. I’m not in the mood.”

“Did something happen at your parents’ place?”

He avoided the question. “I thought you were going to be there. Something come up?”

“Sorry about that. Your father asked me to sit this one out. He said he only wanted the family there.”

Her answer surprised him. “You mean he asked you not to come?”

A moment of silence. “Yes.”

Cain shrugged. “Well, you didn’t miss much. I left as soon as I could.”

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

The elevator doors opened. “I don’t know. I said I had to do some work.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Not really.”

His wrist beeped and he glanced at the screen. Lilith’s face appeared, sporting silver hair and blue eyes. Behind her, he could see a snow covered valley like the one he grew up in. She smiled. “I could use some help if you’re game,” she said, winking.

“What kind of help?”

“The power coupling in section seven on deck nine needs replacing. Obviously, I can’t do it myself, and engineering is understaffed at the moment.”

He had hoped to return to his room in order to work on his processor, but for some reason the thought of helping Lilith didn’t seem to bother him. “Alright, I guess I can spare a few minutes.”

She jumped and cheered. “Great! You’re the best.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I have to stop by my room and then I’ll head over.”

“Call me when you get to section seven. I’ll be waiting!” She waved and spun around, and then the screen clicked off.

Cain arrived at his quarters and grabbed his tool kit. He eyed the soldering pen on his desk along with the processor, briefly considering calling Lilith to cancel, but stopped himself. She deserved his help, and he was glad to do it, strangely enough. She’d been cast aside by the family, the same as him, and he empathized. He wouldn’t ignore her like the others. She deserved better than that.

A knock at the door broke his concentration, surprising him. He put his tools on the table and checked the view screen. The camera showed Seth standing in the hall, waiting. What was he doing here? Shouldn’t he be at dinner?

The door opened and Seth gave a small wave. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Cain answered. “What’s going on?”

“I came to see if you were doing alright. That whole thing with Abel. It was—”

“Stupid?” asked Cain.

Seth nodded. “Yeah, a bit.”

“Did you leave the party, too? Won’t they be pissed?”

“I told them I’d be back in a few minutes…said I had to run to my room to get something.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” said Cain. He snatched his tools and showed them to Seth. “I’ve got tons of work to do, anyway.”

“I believe it. I’ll get out of your way,” he said, stepping aside.

Cain entered the hall and the door closed. “Thanks.”

Seth smiled. “We should play some Interstellar Fighter sometime this week. Think you’ll be free?”

“Maybe,” said Cain. “I’ll let you know.”

He waved goodbye to his brother and took off for the elevator. It was nice of Seth to check on him, but completely unnecessary. Cain could handle himself, no matter what anyone thought. He wasn’t a child, despite how they treated him.

One day they’ll understand, he told himself. One day they’ll see the kind of man I am.

* * *

Seth stopped by his room to get a sweater—his excuse for ditching the party. He’d wear it for an hour, then discard it. No one would ask questions.

He was more concerned with Cain. His brother had kept to himself more and more lately, cutting ties with the rest of the family. Seth had to tell himself that Cain had always been this way, but there was no denying how bad the problem had become. He’d gone to dinner for how long, exactly? Twenty minutes? It had to be a record.

Seth wondered if his brother really did have work to do, or if the whole thing was just an elaborate ruse to avoid confrontation. Maybe he was only pretending to leave, but why go through such a hassle? No, thought Seth. Cain would tell me if something was wrong. He always does.

The lights flickered overhead as Seth arrived on deck two, a short walk from his parents’ room. He stopped, glancing at the nearest fixture. A moment passed, and he started to look away, but then the lights blinked again. He tapped his com. “Lilith?”

“I’m already looking into it,” she said, appearing on the screen in an engineering uniform. She held a wrench in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. “My best guess is another electrical short, but it’s hard to—”

The ship shook violently, knocking Seth to the floor and killing the lights altogether. He rolled into the outer wall, slamming his jaw into it, making him bite his lip. “Lilith!” he yelled, spitting blood onto the floor. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t answer.

The screen on his com had gone dark. “Lilith?”

Again, nothing.

He held the wall and climbed to his feet. He had to get to his father’s room and figure out what was happening—to make sure the family was safe.

Seth ran through the halls, passing other rooms along the way. Several crew members stood in their doorways, confused and unsettled. “Check the other rooms!” he blurted out as he passed a few of them. He didn’t wait for a response.

As he neared his parents’ quarters, he found the door wide open. Everyone but his mother stood in the hall near a large window, a thousand stars behind them.

Adam waved when he saw him coming. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good. What about you?” asked Seth. He looked at each of them, lingering on Azura. She seemed to be in one piece. He must have shown his concern, because she seemed to notice, and gave him a nod. Good, he thought, and let himself relax.

“Your mother took a spill, but she’s fine,” said Adam.

“She did? Are you sure she’s alright?” Seth peered inside the apartment. His mother was lying on the couch, with Uriel beside her.

She waved at him. “Don’t worry about me, honey,” she said.

“I’ve got her,” said Uriel.

Abel tapped Seth’s arm. “Any idea what just happened?”

Seth shook his head. “I was on the com with Lilith when it happened. She was saying something about a power outage, but then I lost her. I think she was running a diagnostic.”

“I can’t seem to reach her, either,” said Adam. “I tried Engineering, but it looks like the entire communications system is offline.”

“I’ll go check on them and report back,” said Azura.

Adam nodded. “Stop by Medical on your way. Make sure the doctor is there. If she’s not, you’ll need to locate her.”

“Got it,” she said.

“After you’re done, meet us on the bridge,” said Adam. He glanced back in the apartment. “Uriel, would you mind staying with Eve? I don’t want to leave her alone.”

“Of course,” Uriel said.

Seth could tell his father didn’t want to leave his wife alone, but he had to tend to his duties. It was expected of him, as it was of them all. The mission came first, before everything. This ship was the last fragment of humanity left in the galaxy, as far as any of them knew, which meant they couldn’t fail.

Adam turned back to his sons in the hall.  “Seth and Abel, follow me to the bridge. We’ll need to set up runners to coordinate with the other departments until we get the com back. I need everybody working.”

“Not a problem,” said Abel.

“Alright,” said Adam. “Keep checking the systems periodically. As soon as they’re back, I expect reports. Understood?”

Abel nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“No problem,” said Seth.

“Give me a minute. I need to check on your mother before we go.”

“Of course,” said Abel.

As his father went inside, Abel followed, and Seth’s eyes drifted to the window. In the distant blackness, thousands of stars flickered, twinkling and glowing from untold light years away. Here in the far reaches of the galaxy, the Eden floated in a vacuum, spiraling towards some unknown end. With every passing moment, the ship moved further away from the only home its crew had ever known. The birthplace of their race. There was so much at risk out here. So much to lose if things went wrong.

Seth saw his face reflected in the glass, and he looked into his tired eyes. He would give anything to be home on Fiore, walking in the summer fields of the open country, Azura by his side. He longed for it now more than ever, and wondered for a moment why it couldn’t be.

A scrap of debris floated across the window, startling him. It resembled the hull of the ship. A shredded piece of gray metal. Had there been an explosion? Had they hit something?

Several more shards emerged, coming into view. Each varied in size, growing steadily larger by the moment. The longer he watched, the more he saw, until at last a cloud of dust and chunks of metal appeared, filling the area outside the window.

As Seth backed away, preparing to tell his father, he saw what looked like the head of a man, severed and burned, floating gently in the dark.

Chapter 5

Nearly two hours after the incident, Seth and the rest of the department heads convened in one of the conference rooms. Adam had called them together once the communication system came back online.

At the center of the table, Lilith appeared in a holographic display, attempting to explain the situation. “Most of bay four is gone. We lost fifty-seven pods. Several others were damaged.”

“How many dead?” asked Adam.

“Seventy-three.”

Several officers gasped. In all the years since the Eden had departed, there had never been a disaster like this.

“Run us through what happened,” said Adam.

“There was a power surge,” Lilith explained. “From what I can tell, several power relays were already damaged. I think they were the cause of the explosion.”

“Why didn’t we know about this? What’s Engineering been doing?” asked Adam.

“It’s not their fault,” said Lilith. “We run scans every single day, but none of them picked these malfunctions up. They never received proper maintenance because no one knew they needed it. If the accident hadn’t occurred, we never would have known.”

“Does this explain the power outages we’ve been having recently?” asked Uriel.

“I believe so,” said Lilith. “I’m still running diagnostics to verify.”

“I can’t believe we lost over seventy people,” muttered Azura.

Seth thought of the floating head outside the window, and flinched. He wished he’d never seen it.

Adam nodded. “Be that as it may, we can’t let anything like this happen again. I want teams from engineering to sweep the ship. If our scans couldn’t detect a couple of faulty relays, then there could be others. I want them found. Understand, Chief?”

“Yes, sir,” said Chief Codan, the head of Engineering. “My people are on it as we speak.”

“Good,” said Adam. “I want updates every six hours from each of you. Send them to me directly.”

They all agreed.

“Dismissed,” ordered Adam, and the officers began to leave.

Seth followed them, but as he reached the door, he felt his father hand on his shoulder. “Hold on for a second,” said the old man.

Azura glanced briefly at them from the outer hall, but continued. Once the door shut, Adam let out a sigh, leaning against the table and staring at the floor. “Lilith, I need the room to talk with my boy, if you don’t mind,” he said, looking at the hologram.

“Of course, but Captain, I should also note that we are about to begin our deceleration towards the next planet. We’ll need to start preparations soon.”

“How soon?” he asked.

“I was supposed to start this evening. Thanks to this evening’s events, I’ve had to push them back. Right now, I’m predicting midnight.”

“Can we deal with this at a later time?”

She frowned. “I’m afraid not. The window for deceleration is rather small. Only about twelve hours. If we don’t start soon, we’ll miss the arrival point, which means we’ll have to double back around. Also, once we’re out of warp, we’ll only have six days before we get there, which leaves little time to prepare. I’ll need to perform several long range scans. Our departments will have to recheck supplies. I need your digital signature on all of it.”

“Understood. Thank you, Lilith. I’ll meet you on the bridge shortly so we can start.”

“Yes, sir. See you soon.” The hologram evaporated into thin air.

Adam glanced at Seth, motioning for him to sit. “I need a favor, son.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I need you to run an investigation.”

“What do you mean? What kind of investigation?”

“I need you to look into this accident. Ask questions, check who was nearby, look at video feeds. That sort of thing.”

“You want me to investigate the crew?”

“That’s exactly right,” his father said.

“What for?” asked Seth.

Adam hesitated. “There are a few things about the incident that don’t sit well with me.” He thumbed the edge of the table. “Earlier, when you were helping me on the bridge, I asked Uriel to check the video feed when the incident happened. She came back a few minutes before this meeting and said they were blank.”

“It was probably the power outage,” suggested Seth.

Adam shook his head. “The power was still working several minutes after the recordings went dark. It’s a little strange, right? Uriel’s checking to see if maybe someone deleted them manually.”

“Are you saying you think there’s a saboteur on the ship?” asked Seth. “A traitor?” It was an outrageous assertion, to say the least. They were using a bare-bones crew, with most of the colonists asleep in the population bays. A little more than two hundred people were actively living on the vessel, and he knew a lot of them. Seth couldn’t imagine any of the crew being a terrorist or a murderer. The thought of it turned his stomach.

“Relax, son,” said his father, who must have seen the worried look on his face. “I don’t think anyone intentionally did this. I just think it’s worth looking into. We need to explore every angle when so much is at stake. It’s part of the burden of command. You can’t leave anything unchecked, not when there are lives on the line. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Seth.

“Good,” said Adam. “I need you to do this for me. I’m too busy or I’d handle it personally. You heard Lilith. Between the mission and the aftermath of today, I’m sure I’ll have my hands full. You and Uriel are the highest ranking security officers we have. Do you think you can handle this?”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Seth.

“Thank you, son. You can start by checking in with Uriel. She’s down in Security. If all goes well, she’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong and the video is fine.”

“And if she doesn’t?” asked Seth. “What’s the next step?”

“For now, let’s just hope it ends there.”

Chapter 6

Seth and Uriel sat together behind the video monitor, waiting for the analysis of the footage to finish. The machine had been going for nearly thirty minutes.

Uriel tapped her fingers on the desk. “This is taking so long,” she finally said.

“Should we come back later?” asked Seth. As much as he enjoyed playing sleuth detective, he also promised Azura they’d meet up later. According to the clock, her shift ended ten minutes ago. She’d head to his quarters next, expecting him to be there.

“No, it won’t be much longer. Maybe twenty minutes.” She tapped the screen on the console, pointing to a timer. “Ignore my complaining. I’m just tired.”

It was understandable, given today’s events. “It’s almost midnight. I get it,” said Seth.

Uriel sighed. “I hope Adam’s wrong about this.”

Seth sat behind his desk in the corner, stretching his legs and cracking his back. His eyes burned after an increasingly long day. He closed them and tried to relax. A moment later, a hand touched his shoulder. He awoke to see Uriel standing over him. “Hey, get up,” she said.

“Huh?” He must have drifted off.

“You were snoring,” she explained.

Snoring? He only did that when he was truly beat. I need to go home and get some sleep.

“The results are ready,” she said, pointing to the workstation.

“What’s it look like?” he asked, joining her there.

“Hold on. I’ll bring them up.” She typed in a command and leaned back, tapping the sides of the chair and clicking her tongue. “Give it a second.”

A readout appeared on the screen, covered with numbers and, as far as Seth could tell, random nonsense. “Good news?”

Uriel stared at the screen, scrunching her nose. “Um…”

“What?”

“It looks like there’s a problem with the recording.”

“What kind of problem?”

She paused. “I’m not sure.”

“Did someone delete the video footage?” he asked.

“I don’t know if anyone came in and deleted it, but they definitely altered the data.”

“What do you mean?”

“Normally, I could go in here and check the records to see who modified what. I’d get the name, typically, along with the date and time. There’s nothing here.”

“So? Doesn’t that mean no one accessed the logs?” asked Seth.

She shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. The analysis is still showing a modification. See this break in the feed here?” She pointed to one of the red lines on the screen. It had a small gap near the middle. “Normally, you might see this during an outage, but look over there. This number near the edge of the screen. You see it in the corner?”

Seth had to lean in to spot it. “You mean this?” he asked, motioning to the tiny number. It currently read Cam225x41.

“Right. Any idea what it means?”

He shook his head. He didn’t have much experience with the surveillance systems.

“The screen we’re on is for this camera, hence the Cam part. Next is the designation the camera falls under. This one is number 225. With me so far?”

“Sure,” he said.

“The next part is the 41. That’s how many times the data on this screen was modified. The feeds don’t get dumped or altered very often unless we’re running a maintenance check on them. In this case, camera 225 was altered 41 times.” She clicked on Cam225x41 and the screen changed. A long list of names and timestamps appeared. “This is the log. We can see almost all of the 41 entries.”

“Almost?” asked Seth.

She scrolled to the bottom. “Notice anything next to the final two timestamps?”

Seth leaned in. “There’s no name next to the dates.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Someone deleted their name from the log, which frankly shouldn’t be possible. We have security checks in place to prevent this sort of thing.”

“Does this mean the video was tampered with?”

“The feed itself gives no indication of being modified, but this log entry says otherwise. We can see right here that someone accessed the file. First at 1920 hours, then again at 1930.”

“Before and after the explosion,” said Seth.

“Exactly,” said Uriel. She held up her hand. “Don’t get me wrong. This could be a weird glitch. Maybe.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s just suspicious.”

“I’ll say,” said Seth. “Can you get me a copy of the logs?”

“Sure, but why?” she asked.

“The captain asked me to investigate, so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll start with all the names on that list. Everyone who’s touched this file.”

“They’re mostly engineers,” said Uriel. “I know most these people.”

“So do I, but we have to stay impartial. We can’t let our personal feelings stop us from getting to the bottom of this. Understand?”

Uriel nodded and turned back to the computer. She transferred the list onto Seth’s com. “Who are you starting with?”

He pulled the list up and scrolled through it, spotting several names he recognized. They were friends and associates. He couldn’t picture any of them as a murderer. Oh well. Better to start at the end. The last person to touch the file. “Tess Rorsha,” he finally said. “I’ll work my way back from there.”

* * *

Seth went home after his meeting with Uriel. He needed some rest before he could continue investigating the incident. When he arrived at his quarters, he found Azura sleeping in his bed. Opting not to wake her, he crashed on the couch.

Lying in the dark, his mind raced with what tomorrow might bring. Earlier today, the idea of sabotage seemed all but impossible, but not anymore.

Now, he wasn’t so sure. If Uriel was right, then the video feed had been intentionally altered, and a killer could very well be living among them. How long before this person grew bored and tried again? How many more colonists would die?

Seth closed his eyes, giving into sleep. He faded quickly, drifting in a sea of dreams.

He saw the cerulean skies of Fiore, stretching far and away over a vast, green country. Alone, he walked through fields of golden wheat, wind blowing against the stalks. Kadmon Farm was near, he knew, somewhere in the valley.

Suddenly, a loud snap cackled through the sky, parting clouds and echoing. The ground shook, wildly. Towards the capitol, a great flame erupted, consuming everything around it, filling the sky with smoke. The burning metropolis raged like the sun, igniting so bright he could almost feel the heat.

Seth ran like a frightened child, trying to escape. As he neared the edge of the field, he found his childhood home atop the solitary hill. The door opened and he paused. Standing on the steps, he saw his mother, crying and holding a basket.

Behind them, the fire swarmed, blazing through the valley towards them. Seth motioned for his mother to stop, to return to the house before it was too late, but she wouldn’t listen. She ran past him, headlong into the flame—the living incarnation of death—smiling as she died, and laughing. Laughing until her skin melted and she collapsed into dust.

Seth ran inside, slamming the door behind him. The fire beat against the wood, taunting him with a whisper. “Let us in,” it said, softly.

“Go away!” he cried.

“Let us in,” it whispered. “Let us in. Let us in. Let us in.”

A girl appeared on the other side of the room. It was Azura, young and wearing the same clothes as the day they’d met. Her eyes were empty, replaced with green and red marbles. “Help me, Seth,” she begged. “I don’t know what to do!”

“Get back!” he told her.

The window nearby shattered, and the fire leapt into the room, laughing as it spread, inching towards the girl, catching on her dress.  It consumed her in seconds. Screams filled the cottage home, shrieks of chaos and boiling blood.

“Come come come come,” whispered the fire. “Burn burn burn burn.”

“Stay away from me, please!” he begged. “I don’t want to die!”

“Everything dies,” whispered the living flame. “Even you. Even us. Even God.”

* * *

The alarm on Seth’s communicator woke him. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and accepted the call. “Hello?” he muttered, and coughed. His throat was dry and scratchy.

“Seth, the captain would like to see you. Please report to his office immediately,” said Lilith.

“I’m on my way,” he said.

“Acknowledged,” she said. “See you soon.”

The call ended and he sat up on the couch. With a deep breath, he got to his feet and wiped his eyes. “Azura?”

There was no answer. He peered into the bedroom, but found it empty. She must have gone to work already.

He changed his clothes, then splashed his face with some water. He’d shower on his break if time allowed. For now, he had work to do.

When he arrived at the office, he found his father working busily behind his computer. “Come in,” said Adam, motioning for him to have a seat. “Any news from yesterday?”

Seth nodded and sat down. “Yes, sir. We have some leads, but I’m still working on it.”

“What did you find?”

“The logs may have been tampered with, but we don’t know how or why. There’s no concrete evidence, but Uriel thinks there’s reason to be suspicious.”

Adam leaned back in his chair. “What do you think?”

“I agree with her. I pulled a list of names from the logs…everyone who’s touched the video feed. I’m planning on questioning each of them, starting with the most recent entry,” said Seth.

“Right,” said Adam, glancing at his computer. His eyes lingered on the screen for a while, and he sighed.

“Something wrong?”

“This couldn’t come at a worse time.”

Seth didn’t know what to say. His father looked so stressed, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Maybe he did.  “I’ll start with the names on the log. It shouldn’t take long.”

Adam nodded. “I’d send you some help, but I’m afraid they’re all busy. Between the mission and repairs, the crew’s spread pretty thin.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Seth. “I can handle asking a few questions.”

“You’ll keep me informed, right?”

“The second I know anything, you’ll be the first.”

* * *

Seth examined the list he received from Uriel and decided to begin at the most recent entry, Tess Rorsha. He recognized the name, but didn’t know from where. When he pulled up her profile and saw her face, he knew he’d seen her around.

She was an engineer, sticking mostly to the lower decks, which kept her under the radar. According her profile, she wasn’t scheduled to work for another three hours. If Seth hurried, he might be able to track her down before her shift started.

He left the security office and headed straight for Tess’s quarters, trying to work out which questions he’d ask first. He wasn’t accustomed to playing detective, but it couldn’t be that hard. As he neared her quarters, he took a deep breath, and tried to relax. “Here goes nothing,” he whispered to himself.

Seth buzzed the door, swiping some lint from his jacket. A moment later, a short, blonde girl with glasses answered. She had a button nose, wide eyes, and thin lips—an anxious look on her face. “Oh, my goodness. Who are you? What’s going on?” The words poured out of her.

“Hi, I’m Lieutenant Kadmon. I’m here to—”

“Kadmon? Are you the captain’s son? Goodness. Did I do something?”

“No, nothing like that,” he said, calmly. “I just need to ask you a few questions. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Is this about the accident yesterday?” she asked.

“What makes you think—”

“It’s so awful, isn’t it? I was on shift when it happened. I couldn’t believe it. I spent half the night running scans in the population bay. Oh, my. To think something like that could happen on our ship. It’s unbelievable!”

Seth let out a short sigh as the girl rambled on. When she finally took a breath, he seized the opportunity to interject. “According to the logs, you accessed and altered camera 225 two weeks prior to the incident. Do you mind telling me why?”

She blinked. “Uh, I don’t know, exactly.”

“You don’t know?” he asked.

“I’m so sorry! Cameras break all the time, so sometimes we have to make repairs. We also run maintenance checks every few months. You could be talking about one of those.”

“In other words, you can’t be sure.”

“Please understand, Lieutenant. I do this sort of thing almost every day. I’d bet I fix a camera at least once a week. Every population bay has at least a dozen active feeds going all day long, you know?”

“Sure,” said Seth.

“Anyway, what’s the problem? Did you find something in the logs?”

“We think someone altered them, but there’s no name attached to the timestamp. From what I’ve been told, it’s unusual.”

“Oh, maybe,” she said, tapping her chin.

“You have another idea?”

“Well, the logs can get buggy sometimes. You should check with anyone who was working in that section. Sometimes they can disable them accidentally while making repairs to the electrical system.”

“Alright, I will. Thanks for the suggestion.”

She nodded. “You sure you can’t tell me what this is about?”

“It’s nothing serious. It’s my job to look into security issues. It’s probably nothing to worry about.”

She adjusted her glasses. “There’s a list we keep for scheduling. My supervisor has it. She can probably tell you more about who was working in the area where the camera is.”

“Your supervisor?”

“Ariel,”’ said Tess. “I bet she can clear this up in no time.”

* * *

Seth found Ariel on the job, working with one of her subordinates on deck nineteen. She had half her body inside the wall, yelling at the other engineer. “Careful with that! I don’t feel like waiting for you to go get another from storage.”

“Sorry!” said a muffled voice from inside the compartment.

“Don’t apologize! Just stop screwing up!”

“Excuse me,” said Seth, after a moment.

Ariel popped out of the hole. “Huh?”

He nodded. “Hey, Ariel.”

“Seth? What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to bug you like this. If you’ve got a minute, I could use your help.”

She nodded. “One sec,” she said, then leaned into the hole. “Bard, you better not screw this up or it’s back to inventory for you. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am!” said Bard.

Ariel dusted her jacket off and smiled warmly. “Alright, what can I do for you?”

“I was told you kept a list of work assignments.”

“Yeah, sure. Why are you asking?”

“I need to know who was working in a certain area during a specific time. Someone said you had the info.”

“They did, huh? Care to tell me who it was?”

“I can’t divulge my source,” he said, half-joking.

She laughed. “Fine. I might have a list. It only covers my team, though, and we’re one of six. You’d have to ask the other team leads.”

“I understand,” he said.

“Can you tell me what the reason for all this is?”

“It’s about the cameras in Security. There’s a possibility someone may have tampered with them. We’re looking into it.”

“I see…and you think it was one of my people?”

“No one’s pointing fingers.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, sure.”

He ignored the remark. “When can you transfer the assignment list?”

“Hang on,” she said, then tapped her wrist-com several times. “There. Check your inbox.”

He did, and found the list immediately.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Seth, I’ve got some work to do.”

“Have fun,” said Seth, and watched as she crawled into the hole.

He walked a short way down the hall and stopped to check the list. It seemed to go back a full month, tracking all nine engineers under her command—every assignment they’d taken. According to the report, each engineer was assigned a specific area, with very little overlap. Tess was assigned to population bay 04, the area in question, along with two others: Edward Callis and…Cain Kadmon.

Seth stared curiously at his brother’s name. He had no idea his brother worked there. Why didn’t he say something to him after the accident? Actually, now that Seth thought about it, he hadn’t spoken to Cain since the other night, right before the explosion. Maybe with all the commotion in Engineering, his brother was simply too busy. In all likelihood, Cain was probably on a repair detail.

No matter. Seth could talk to him later. For now, he’d track this Edward Callis person down…ask him a few questions. He’d find Cain once he had more information. After all, there was no way he had anything to do with this.

Not a chance in hell.

Chapter 7

Seth found Callis working with several other engineers as they ran a sweep of one of the population bays. The assignment list was of little use today.

The bulk of Engineering was scattered across the ship, running around in search of malfunctioning equipment. Thankfully, Seth only had to ask Lilith where to find the guy, so the search didn’t take long.

Callis didn’t argue when Seth asked to speak with him. All he wanted to know was why. “So you think I accidentally corrupted the feed?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” said Seth. “Did you happen to work on the surveillance systems yesterday?”

“Nope. I was doing inventory down in Engineering. I always do my maintenance checks at the start of my shift. You know, before lunch.”

“I see,” said Seth.

“Besides, we were all off duty at that time. You’d have to talk to the guy on call for last night,” said Callis, scratching his chin.

“On call?”

“Yeah, sure. We switch off every week. It goes me, Tess, and then Cain. One of them has it this week. Let me think…” He snapped his fingers a few times, twisting his lip. “Oh! Yeah, I think it’s Cain. You should check with him about it.”

Seth stiffened at the sound of his brother’s name. “Hold on,” he said, getting the assignment list. He scanned it briefly. “I’ve got nothing here about an on-call sheet.”

“That’s because it’s not listed,” said Callis. “Ariel let’s us divide it ourselves. She says it’s better for us. You know, to learning responsibility or whatever. I think she’s just tired of assigning it. Anyway, this is Cain’s week. I’m next. You follow?”

Seth nodded. He remembered seeing his brother last night, right before the incident. He had his tools and had mentioned going to do a job. “Thanks,” Seth muttered. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

“That’s it?” asked Callis.

“I may have more questions later, but we’re good for now,” answered Seth. Without waiting for a response, he turned and left. He’d have to talk to his brother next, but what would he say? If Cain gave him reason to doubt him, it might damage their relationship. What if he slipped and said the wrong thing? Cain might take it personally and think Seth was against him. The last thing he wanted was to make Cain feel more isolated.

No, I have to do my job, Seth thought. Besides, I know him. He didn’t do anything wrong. He took a few quick breaths.

Actually, he might not have to talk with Cain at all. If he could show where his brother was during each of the blackouts, especially the one from last night, he might be able to avoid this mess altogether. There were cameras everywhere on the ship, so all he had to do was follow his brother’s movements from last night. The moment he left his room to the time of the explosion. Simple enough.

Okay, then, Seth thought. Next stop, Security.

* * *

Seth had Uriel open the feeds so he could look through them. After an hour long tutorial, he felt confident enough to go at it alone. I should have learned this stuff sooner, he thought.

“Do you really think Cain had something to do with the incident?” asked Uriel.

“I’m just covering everything,” he said.

“But you think there’s a chance, right?”

“Anything’s possible,” said Seth, not wanting to condemn his brother without more evidence.

“Alright,” she said. “Do you need anything else before I take off?”

“You’re heading out?”

“Adam has me helping with the mission reports.”

“Just you?”

“Azura, too,” she said.

So that’s where she’s been all day, he realized, thinking back to this morning when he awoke to find her gone. “I may need you here later. Think you can slip away?”

“Don’t worry. I’m only helping for a few hours today. Security’s my primary job. You call, and I’ll make an excuse to leave.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Have fun,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “See you when I’m done.”

Seth sorted through the footage of the other blackouts, starting with the first from several months ago. It occurred on deck six, section five, near a relatively empty part of the ship used mostly for storage. As the seconds ticked by on the digital clock, Seth saw what appeared to be a shadow against the hallway wall. Someone was there, moments before the blackout, slightly out of the camera’s reach. Seconds later, the feed cut off and everything went black. He reversed the feed and paused it, staring at the shadow on the wall. It was no good. He couldn’t make anything out.

Time to try another.

Seth pulled up the next incident, taking place a week later and in a different location. This time, the blackout occurred on the other side of the ship, near Medical. He watched the feed, waiting for any indication of movement. Again, he spied a shadow moving across the wall, but this time there was progress. This time, the shadow turned and stumbled, and the mysterious figure came into frame, but only for a second. Seth reversed the feed, freezing the image, trying to get a better look.

Cain appeared, dressed in his maintenance uniform. He was slightly out of focus. It could be a coincidence, Seth told himself. He’s an engineer. His job takes him all over the ship. There’s no reason to jump to conclusions.

Seth scanned a third incident, spotting his brother once more. Again, moments before the blackout. As he went through the tapes—nearly three dozen blackouts across the ship—he found Cain on over a quarter of them.

In the incidents where Cain didn’t appear, only an occasional shadow surfaced. Seth cross-referenced the locations with his brother’s work assignments, but the results were mixed. Most of the time, Cain was working on another deck, far from the incident. Usually with several other engineers, too.

Seth didn’t know what to do. There was enough evidence here to arrest Cain on suspicion alone, but doing so would destroy his reputation. Seth couldn’t do that to him, not if there was room for doubt. Their father would be crushed.

I need more evidence, thought Seth, staring at his brother on the screen. I have to keep digging.

* * *

Seth sat in his apartment after taking a warm shower, finally feeling clean. He needed to relax—calm his mind a bit before returning to work tomorrow. He wanted to get some distance between himself and the video footage. He needed time to dissect what he’d seen.

He propped his feet on the sofa and closed his eyes. Within moments, his eyes had closed and he faded into sleep.

A loud buzz woke him, nearly an hour later. Wiping a bit of drool from his lip, he felt dazed and foggy. Who could be at his door? Was it Azura? No, she had her own key.

He got to his feet and checked the monitor. As he touched the pad on the wall, Abel’s face appeared. What was his brother doing here? “Seth, you there?”

“Hold on,” he said, hesitantly.

“I need to talk to you,” said Abel.

“About what?”

“Just let me in,” he insisted.

“I can’t talk very long.”

Abel stepped inside and shut the door behind him. “Thanks. Sorry if I woke you.”

“It’s fine. What’s going on?”

“Uriel and I had dinner a little while ago. She told me about the investigation.”

“I’m looking into it. We don’t know anything yet.”

“She said Cain was involved.”

“She shouldn’t be telling you anything,” said Seth.

“Still, what do you know about it? Do you think he’s the one responsible for what happened?”  he asked, a little exasperated.

“Which part?” asked Seth.

“Don’t play dumb with me. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know a thing,” said Seth. “I’m still investigating.”

“What did you find in the video files? You have to tell me.”

“I can’t give you that kind of information. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Abel scratched the side of his head, staring at Seth. “Tell me or I’ll go to Father. I’m betting you haven’t said anything to him yet. Imagine what he’ll do when he finds out.”

Great, thought Seth. This is the last thing I need right now. “Go home, Abel.”

His brother scoffed. “There could be a terrorist running around on this ship, but you’re just sitting here in your room doing nothing. You need to arrest him. I don’t care if he’s our brother.”

“I can’t do that,” said Seth.

“Why not? What are you waiting for?” asked Abel. His voice was growing more annoyed.

“We need more evidence. Ask your wife and she’ll tell you the same thing. You can’t just go arresting people for no reason.”

Abel pursed his lips. “What did you find on the tapes, Seth?”

He said nothing.

“That’s what I thought!”

“Cain wasn’t present at most of the blackouts. He may have alibis for the others. You’re overreacting, based on something you know nothing about.”

“What about the last one?” asked Abel. “Does he have an alibi for that?”

“I don’t know yet,” admitted Seth. “I haven’t questioned him yet.”

“Why the hell not?”

“It took me ten hours to go through those tapes today. I’m only one person.”

“Fine, then do it tomorrow. Stop waiting. Cain might be our brother, but lives are at stake.”

“I understand that, but—”

“I don’t think you do, Seth. It sounds to me like you’re too afraid to admit what’s going on here. Wake up! Our brother fits all the criteria, or haven’t you noticed how he’s always by himself, has no friends, avoids his family, and hates everyone?”

Seth went to the door and opened it. “Go home to your wife, Abel. I’m the ranking security officer. Let me do my job.”

Abel grunted something under his breath as he left. “You’d better get your crap together and fix this.”

“Later,” said Seth, shutting the door in his brother’s face. He went to the sofa and buried himself in a pillow. The whole world felt like it was falling apart, like everything was spiraling out of control.

Someone help me.

* * *

The next morning, Seth and Uriel met in the Security Office to discuss the day’s agenda. A few minutes into the meeting, an alert came through from the bridge. Lilith appeared in the com, wearing her standard uniform. “Seth, please report to the bridge,” said Lilith. “There’s been two more incidents.”

“Blackouts?” he asked.

“Worse,” said Lilith.

“Dammit,” said Seth. “I’m on my way.”

“I’ll let your father know,” she said, and the screen went black.

Uriel got on the computer and pulled up the feeds from where the accidents had taken place. “Shit,” she muttered.

“How’s it look?” he asked.

“Camera feeds went down, the same as before, so we’re working with limited information here.”

“As usual,” added Seth.

She nodded. “From what I can tell, one happened in an isolated storage area. Looks like a fire broke out in a supply room, but luckily a crew member managed to stop it. No injuries, but it destroyed a fair amount of food.”

“What about the other one?”

“In the mess hall,” she muttered. “The fans and ventilation system shut down for nearly an hour. Several people passed out.”

“How are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to check with Medical. Do you think…do you think someone actually did this?”

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions. Check the feeds on those locations. See if anyone was present before the cameras went dark.” He paused, briefly. “Go ahead and see where Cain is while you’re at it.”

“You want me to call him?” she asked.

“No, use the com tracker. Once you have him, keep the program running.”

“You think he’s responsible?”

“No, and that’s why I need you to do this. If Cain didn’t do anything wrong, we have to get the evidence to prove it. The last thing we want is a mob of angry personnel trying to lynch my brother.”

Minutes later, Uriel had the feed going. They watched it together, until a figure appeared in the corner, wearing an engineering uniform. It was Cain, carrying a box of tools. He disappeared behind a wall shortly before the feed went black. “Oh, my,” muttered Uriel.

“Let’s see the other one,” said Seth.

“There’s too many people,” said Uriel, once the footage from the mess hall began.

Seth scanned the screen, trying to sort through the dozens of moving crew members before the screen went dark. “Is this the only camera?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” she said.

Dammit, he thought. So far the only suspect he had was Cain. No matter what Seth might think, the evidence was piling up.

“What do we do?” asked Uriel.

“We investigate,” said Seth.

“Are you going to tell Adam?”

“No, he’s got enough to worry about,” said Seth. “We need more evidence, anyway.”

“What’s next?” asked Uriel.

“Go to the meeting,” he said. “If anyone asks where I am, tell them I’m looking into something. No need for specifics.”

“You have something better to do?”

He nodded. “It’s time I talked with my brother. Innocent or guilty, he has questions to answer, and I don’t think they can wait.”

As he left the office, he swallowed hard, his throat painfully dry. The last thing he wanted was to accuse his brother of sabotage or murder, but he needed more. An alibi, a reason. Something.

Anything.

Chapter 8

Adam sat in the conference room with each of the department heads. Today’s events had left him drained. Two incidents at different points aboard the ship, each happening within minutes of one another, with no indication as to the cause. It was like the fates themselves were conspiring against them, determined to wipe out what little remained of the human race.

Uriel had come today instead of Seth, much to Adam’s surprise. Apparently, he was investigating something, though she claimed not to know the details. Adam had little doubt Seth had asked her to keep things quiet in order to compartmentalize the information. He must have a suspect in mind, thought Adam. Perhaps he’ll bring good news.

Chief Codan cleared his throat. “Sir, should I begin?”

Adam nodded. “Go ahead, Chief.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Codan. “As expected, we’re seeing more power fluctuations across the ship. Despite our best efforts to repair the malfunctions, we just don’t have the manpower to cover everything. Even with all my teams working around the clock, there’s bound to be another incident before long.”

“Are there any differences between these two and the one from the population bay?” asked Azura. “You know, aside from them being a fire, an explosion, and a ventilation shutdown.”

Codan shook his head. “Frankly, if they weren’t happening so close to one another, I’d say there was no connection, but…”

“It’s too much of a coincidence,” said Azura.

“Possibly,” said the Chief. “We’ll have to look at each of them in detail before we draw any conclusions. Unfortunately, we’re short staffed.” He paused. “I could use more hands.”

“I wish I could send them to you, but we’re strained as it is,” said Adam.

“What about reallocating some personnel from the Garden?” asked Azura.

Dr. Raphael Preston raised her head. “I believe Garden can spare a few workers, but it won’t be much.”

“How many were you thinking?” asked Adam.

“Maybe three or four,” said Raphael.

“Anything will help,” said Codan.

“Captain, what about the colonists?” asked Azura.

Adam cocked his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Of those ten thousand colonists, I believe two hundred are engineers. We could thaw a few dozen and put them to work.”

Adam considered the idea for a moment. Would it really be wise to wake so many colonists in mid-flight? They didn’t exactly have the long-term resources to sustain a larger population. ““Lilith, is that possible?” asked Adam.

“Waking them prematurely shouldn’t be a problem. The real question is long-term sustainability.”

“Explain,” said Adam.

“There’s no risk to waking the crew. I could activate a dozen, a hundred, even a thousand pods, and most would be fine. A few upset stomachs here and there, but nothing serious. The problem is what comes later. How do you feed them? Clothe them? House them? The Garden’s stocked with vegetables, but not enough to handle twice the current crew. Most of what we have are seeds, meant for our future colony.”

“What about rations? Where are we sitting on those?” asked Adam.

“We have enough to last us another five years, but only with a crew of two hundred. The more people I wake up, the faster those supplies diminish.”

“We don’t have to keep them awake,” said Azura. “Maybe we wake them now and once we’re finished, we put them to sleep again.”

“Not possible,” said Lilith. “Due to the drain cryo-sleep has on the body, it takes at least sixty days before the user can be safely placed back inside a pod. Whoever we choose, we’re stuck with them for a minimum of two months.”

“What if some of the crew volunteered to take their place, once the job was done?” asked Azura.

“If you can find a few volunteers to take a nap in the bays after what happened the other day, go right ahead,” said Lilith.

“Codan, how many engineers would you actually need?” asked Adam.

“A few dozen. Anything more and we’d have organizational problems.”

“How’s that, Lilith? Can we handle a twenty or so new crewmates?” asked Adam.

“If we keep the number low, the impact on rations and supplies should be sustainable. Yes.”

“Good. Can you start the process?” asked Adam.

“Certainly,” said Lilith.

“How long will it take for the engineers to be trained?” he asked.

Codan scratched his beard. “Provided they still remember their schooling, I’d say less than a day or two.”

“On the contrary,” said Lilith. “They may need time to acclimate to the new environment. Roughly thirty percent of people who experience cryo-sleep undergo extreme grogginess and fatigue.”

Adam nodded. “Right. We’ll give them time if they need it, but everyone who feels capable needs to be put to work immediately. The rest can work when they’re ready.”

“Shall I go ahead and start?” asked Lilith.

“Yes, go ahead,” he said. “Unless there’s anything else, you’re all dismissed. Let’s get those engineers to work. Lilith, let me know when it’s done.”

“As always.”

* * *

Seth arrived at Cain’s door and knocked three times. When no one answered, he accessed the manual override. To do this, he had to pop open the hatch near concealed within the nearby wall. Every door on the ship had a manual override, including the escape pods, should the electrical systems fail.

Once he had the compartment open, he swiped his security access card. A green light appeared, allowing him to turn the mechanical crank inside. He gripped the handle, pulling it back, sliding the door open, inch-by-inch, until he could fit.

Cain’s quarters were dark, with the only light coming from the crack beneath the bathroom door. Seth could hear the shower running. “Cain?” he called, knocking.

No answer. The water must be too loud for him to hear, thought Seth. He turned on the lights, revealing a mess of tools scattered near the desk, and waited for his brother to finish. He sat on the bed and stared at the floor, still trying to figure out what to say. Would Cain be angry with him for coming here today? Would he feel betrayed? I’m just trying to protect him, thought Seth. He’ll understand.

The door opened, and his brother entered wearing nothing but a towel. Cain jumped when he saw Seth sitting on his bed. “Seth!” he snapped. “What the hell?”

Seth leapt to his feet. “Sorry!” he said. “You weren’t answering the door.”

“So, you barge in?”

“I had to make sure you were safe. The family hasn’t seen you since the explosion, and—”

“I’ve been working nonstop with Engineering. We’ve been swamped.” He grabbed some clothes and went behind the bathroom door. “You could have called first.”

“I know,” said Seth. “I’m sorry about that.”

Cain appeared, fully-dressed. “No, it’s fine. I should’ve messaged you.”

“Thanks, but that’s not the only reason I came by today.”

“Something else wrong?” asked Cain.

Seth wavered. “What do you think happened in the population bay?”

“It was a faulty power relay unit, I heard,” said Cain, shrugging.

“That’s what Engineering thinks, but—”

“You don’t agree with them?” asked Cain, curiously.

“Do you think that’s all there was to it?”

Cain leaned against his dresser. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I’m doing an investigation,” Seth said. “Father asked me to look into the accident.”

“What for? Doesn’t he trust Engineering?”

“I’m sure he does,” said Seth.

“Then why are you involved?”

“Because there are inconsistencies, and we have to explore every possibility.”

“Possibilities? What’s that mean, exactly?”

“Human error,” explained Seth. “I’ve been asking questions, finding out who was working there.”

Cain paused. “I see. So, you’re here because you think I had something to do with it, because it’s my section.”

“I’m not saying you had anything to do with it,” said Seth. “I’m looking into everyone. You aren’t the only one.”

Cain didn’t say anything.

“I’m not saying you’re the one—”

“But you think there’s a chance,” interrupted Cain.

Seth sighed. “You were alone in the area right before the blast.”

Cain scoffed. “I left way before it happened.”

“It’s not just this incident,” said Seth. “You were also present before several other blackouts.”

“Huh?” asked Cain.

“We have you on video. There are at least a dozen instances where you were in one of the affected areas moments before they happened.”

“I’m an engineer!” Cain said, quickly. “I go all over the ship. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t—”

“That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”

“You’re telling me I’m a suspect in a murder investigation, Seth. Don’t try to soften the punch. I’m not an idiot.”

“All you need to do is tell me where you were when the accident happened. Give me something I can use to defend you. Proof you’re not involved. If you weren’t nearby, where did you go?”

Cain’s eyes darted around the room, frantically. “I…”

“Come on, you have to give me something. Please!”

“You just need to trust me. I’m your brother!”

“I know, but that’s not how this works. I have a duty to the ship.”

Cain rubbed his eyes. “I can’t believe this.”

“Were you with anyone when it happened, Cain? Did anyone see you?”

“I…” His voice grew soft, almost shaking.

“What is it?”

“I can’t say. It’s personal.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Seth.

Suddenly, the screen near Cain’s bed lit up, and a woman appeared before a white backdrop. It was Lilith, and she wore a beautiful golden gown, laced with blue ribbon, and had crimson hair falling to his waist. “He was with me.”

“Lilith?” asked Seth, more than a little surprised.

“It’s true he was working on a job at the time, but I was with him. We talked the entire time. I’d know if he sabotaged the equipment.”

Seth took a second to respond. He hadn’t expected Lilith of all people to corroborate Cain’s story. He didn’t even know they were friends. “What about the incidents today? Were you with him for those, too? We have another recording of you at one of the scenes.”

“Didn’t they happen simultaneously?” asked Cain.

“Yes, but with your tech background…”

“Uh…” Cain glanced at the girl on the monitor, and swallowed.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Tell him.”

“But what if it gets back to people? My father won’t appreciate any of this.”

“It doesn’t matter. Seth won’t tell,” said Lilith, glancing at him. “Right? If Cain has an alibi, you’ll drop it?”

“As long as it exonerates you, there’s no need for me to tell anyone, but why don’t you want people to know about whatever’s going on?”

“I was with her,” said Cain, nodding to the screen.

Seth glanced at Lilith. “With her? What do you mean?”

Lilith nodded. “Spending time together. We’re friends.”

“What were you doing together?” asked Seth.

“Does it matter? All you need to know is that we were together,” said Lilith.

“Right, but—”

“We’re friends,” she repeated. “Just leave it at that, okay?”

He glanced back at his brother. “Friends?”

“Yeah,” said Cain, nodding.

“Alright…and I can’t tell the captain about this, because…why, exactly?”

“Adam and I have a complicated history. He might not approve of me spending so much time with his son,” said the woman on the monitor.

“You went to the academy together, right? Was there more to the story?”

“We used to be more than friends,” she admitted.

Seth paused. “Oh.”

“It wasn’t anything serious, but he might not like the thought of us getting close.”

“Fine,” said Seth. “Whatever. I’ll just say you were with a friend. Good enough?”

“Thank you,” said Lilith.

“Any more questions?” asked Cain.

Seth hesitated, but decided not to press it. “No, I think we’re done for tonight. If anything else comes up, I’ll let you know.”

“Can you call next time?” Cain asked. “I could do without any more surprises.”

Chapter 9

Seth sat in his office, tapping the side of his desk, trying to figure out what his next move. After talking with Cain last night, he’d spent the evening debating his next move. He’d hoped for an epiphany this morning, but nothing came. No revelation or brilliant idea. No new evidence. No other leads. Nothing.

If only Uriel weren’t on the bridge, he thought. I could use someone to talk to. Maybe he’d call her later and ask for some advice. Then again, she might be too busy helping his father with the mission, and he didn’t want to cause a problem. Preparing the Eden for the next phase of the plan was vital.

But so was this, he knew. If he didn’t find the one responsible, more people might die. If the wrong part of the ship got hit, the last of humanity would cease to exist.

All of them destroyed. The end.

He folded his arms and placed his head on them, sighing. Maybe he was overreacting. The entire thing could simply be a series of accidents, just like they kept telling him. He might be completely wrong about everything.

His communicator beeped. He touched the screen, and was surprised to see his brother Abel appear. “Seth, where are you?”

“In my office. Why?”

“I went by your room looking for you. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll come to you.”

“You’re stopping by Security?” asked Seth.

“Yeah. Wait for me,” he said, before cutting out.

“Great,” muttered Seth. “Another distraction.”

A few minutes later, Abel arrived with a hurried look on his face. “We need to talk,” he said, quickly taking a seat across from Seth’s desk.

“About what?”

“We had another blackout.”

“When? Today?” asked Seth.

“Less than an hour ago.”

Seth turned the computer on and checked the logs. Sure enough, a report from section thirteen.

“Hey, are you listening to me?” asked Abel.

“Yeah, I am,” said Seth. “Doesn’t look like anyone was hurt.”

“No, they didn’t. No disasters this time, but who knows when the next will be? That’s why I’m here, Seth. I need to know what you’re doing.”

“What I’m doing?” he asked.

“I know you’re talking to people. Have you got anything? The engineers already swept section thirteen, so they’re stumped. No one understands it.” Abel leaned forward. “It has to be sabotage.”

Seth wanted to say he agreed, but kept his opinion to himself. His brother seemed wired. No reason to add more wood to that fire. “It’s hard to say.”

“Have you talked to Cain yet?”

The question took him by surprise. “Yeah, but—”

“Well? What’s the story?”

“He’s clean. He has an alibi.”

“An alibi?” asked Abel. “Does it check out?”

“It’s good enough,” said Seth.

His brother stared at him, waiting. “And?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?”

“I can’t do that. It’s private information.”

“I don’t care what it is. Lives are on the line, Seth.”

“I understand that, but he asked me not to tell anyone. It’s personal.”

Abel laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is so typical. If he has a good excuse, he needs to come clean with it. He can’t—”

“I’m the ranking security officer on this ship. He told me, and that’s good enough. Father doesn’t have to know the details. Neither do you.”

Abel leaned back in the chair and scoffed. “How can you sit there and defend him without giving a reason?”

“Because it’s my job,” said Seth.

“He’s my brother, too. I’ve got a right to know.”

“Not right now, you don’t. I’m sorry, Abel. He deserves his privacy.”

“I’ll go ask him myself.”

“Leave him alone,” said Seth. “It’s none of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business! Dozens of people are dead. If we don’t do something, that number could rise.” He rose to his feet, knocking his chair on the floor. “You’ve always been soft on Cain. Maybe it’s blinding you to the truth. I’ll go talk to him and see for myself.”

Watching his brother storm off, Seth called after him. “It’s not up to you! You’re only going to cause more trouble!”

But he didn’t answer, disappearing into the hall.

Seth waited a moment, debating whether he should follow or stay put. Maybe I should have told him the truth, he thought. Even though Cain asked me not to, it could have saved us all some grief. He felt like he was stuck, trapped in a family of fools.

He stayed at the threshold, but stopped himself from leaving. He had actual work to do—a real investigation to perform. Forget his stupid brothers. Let them have their little talk. Brothers fought all the time, didn’t they?

Cain and Abel were no different.

* * *

Cain stretched out on his bed, staring at the wall. He twirled the soldering iron between his fingers, recalling the conversation he’d had with Seth the night before.

Had Cain done the right thing by telling his brother the truth? What if their father found out? He could almost hear the old man’s voice in his head. What a worthless son. Pathetic. You’re a disgrace to the family name.

He curled into a ball beneath his sheets, ready to fall asleep and forget. Dream of something better.

The computer screen chimed, brightening the room a little, stirring him. He turned on his side, facing the light.

“Are you okay?” asked Lilith. She stood on a cliff overlooking a valley, the wind blowing against her ginger hair.

“I’m good,” he said.

“Are you thinking about last night?” she asked.

“No,” he lied. “I’m just tired.”

“Don’t worry about Seth. He won’t say anything.”

Cain turned away from her, facing the wall. “I wish everyone would leave me alone.”

“Even me?” she asked, frowning.

“No,” he muttered.

“Good,” she said.

“I just don’t want him telling Father. I don’t want another lecture.”

“Neither do I, believe me,” she said.

A sudden knock at the door. He flinched at the sound.

Who could it be this time? Had Seth returned with Father? Cain’s head was already hurting from the inevitable argument. He rolled his eyes, squeezing the soldering pen.

Lilith tilted her head, staring with a blank expression on her face. A second later, she blinked. “It’s not Seth this time,” she told him.

“Who, then?”

“Looks like Abel.”

“Great,” muttered Cain. “Even better.”

“Cain, open up!” barked Abel from the hall. “I need to talk to you.”

Cain leapt off the bed, dropped his soldering pen on the desk, and went to the door. His brother’s face appeared on the screen. Maybe I should ignore him, thought Cain.

“Come on, open up,” said Abel.

Last time I didn’t answer, Seth broke in. No one cares about my privacy.

“I’ll come back with Father if you don’t open it.”

Cain let out a frustrated sigh, then tapped the screen. “One sec.” He glanced at the monitor where Lilith had been, but it was off. She’d left him for now, and he had to remind himself that she didn’t have a choice.

The door slid open, and Abel stepped inside. “There you are. What took you so long?” He looked around the room. “What are you doing in here?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, I’m going to cut right to it,” said Abel.

“Right to what?” asked Cain.

“I know Seth came here last night to talk to you. Tell me what happened.”

Cain stiffened. “What?”

“You were a suspect in an investigation. Did he tell you that? There’s a ton of evidence against you.”

“Seth knows it wasn’t me,” he said.

“So I’ve heard. He says you have an alibi, but he won’t give me the details.”

Cain said nothing.

His brother stared at him. “I came here for answers. I’m not leaving until you start talking.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Abel scoffed. “I want you to tell me what this supposed alibi is.”

“It’s none of your business,” said Cain.

“You’re the primary suspect of a murder investigation that threatens the lives of everyone on this ship. You don’t think that’s my business? Get your head out of the dirt, Cain. Of course it’s my business!”

Cain squeezed his fist, but forced himself to relax. “Why do you even care? I told Seth already. He’s the head of Security. What are you? Just some pilot. It’s not your job to police me, even if I am your brother.”

“I’m a member of the crew and a passenger on this ship. When people start dying, it’s up to everyone else to find out who’s responsible. You think because you gave Seth some ridiculous excuse that it somehow clears you of suspicion? He’s always protected you, ever since we were kids. I’ve got no reason to think he isn’t doing that now. You were there when the explosion happened in bay four, and you were near several of the blackouts, too.”

“I had nothing to do with any of it!” snapped Cain.

“So prove it,” said Abel. “Tell me what you’ve been doing. What’s the big secret you don’t want anyone to know? What could be so embarrassing?”

“It’s not like that!” snapped Cain. “I’m not ashamed of it. You just won’t understand.”

“We won’t know unless you tell me, will we?”

Cain felt a warm flush wash over his face. Every second of this conversation exhausted him. “I’ve been spending time with someone, got it? We talk and play games…watch shows together. It’s not a big deal.”

Abel raised his eye. “You’ve been spending time with…who?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll tell me right now, Cain. Tell me or I’ll go straight to the bridge and get Father, then we’ll see what you—”

Cain moaned, exasperated. “Fine!” he yelled. “It’s Lilith. Are you happy?” He glanced back at the blank computer screen.

“Huh?” balked Abel. “You mean the cyberbrain? That Lilith?”

“Yeah, her…and she’s great. She doesn’t judge me or talk down to me about my job. We just have fun together.”

“Are you saying you’re…are you dating a cyberbrain? You can’t be serious.”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything about it.”

He laughed. “This has to be a joke. There’s no way you could be so stupid.”

“You’ve always thought I was an idiot. Nothing new here.”

Abel scoffed. “You understand she’s mostly digital, right?”

“So what?” asked Cain.

“She doesn’t have a body. How are you supposed to—”

“She’s not just a computer. She’s a person. She’s got a physical body the same as you or me.”

“Locked away in a vat somewhere,” finished Abel. “You’ll never be able to touch her. Don’t you get that?”

“I don’t care,” he said.

“This is absurd,” muttered Abel. “I came here expecting an excuse, but it turns out you’re delusional.”

“Don’t pretend this is about me. You’re here because you enjoy this. You love looking down on people. You sit there and judge while the rest of us try to live our lives. Who the hell made you so special?”

“At least the woman I’m with is real,” said Abel.

Cain punched his desk, dropping the soldering pen. It rolled between the two men. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” he yelled.

Abel ignored him. “Do you know what people will say when they find out you’re in love with a cyber? You’ll be the laughing stock of the ship.”

Cain picked the pen up. “None of them will find out.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Cain,” said his brother. “There’s enough evidence against you to put you away. Seth might not want to admit it, but it’s only a matter of time before people start connecting it. You’ll have to face the crew, and when you tell them about this they’ll think you’re out of your mind.”

“You won’t convince me to stop talking to her,” he said. “I don’t care if anyone finds out.”

“Then you’d better get ahead of it while you can. Go tell Father before someone else does.”

“You know I can’t do that,” said Cain.

“And why not?”

“Lilith is his oldest friend. They went to the academy together. He’d lose his mind. Don’t you see that? It would crush him, Abel.”

He shrugged. “If that’s what it takes for you to finally grown up, then maybe it needs to happen.”

“I’m not telling him.”

“If you don’t, then I will,” said Abel. “We’re family, and it’s my job to look after you. I’ll be damned if your stupidity ends up getting you thrown into the brig. The last thing you need is to be alienated from the rest of the crew.”

Cain squeezed the soldering pen. His heart raced as a swell of heat rose in his stomach and chest. He didn’t know what to do. If his brother told their father the truth, something horrible might happen. Adam and Lilith had been romantically involved at one point, when they were young, and it was clear the old man still had cared for her in some way. He might not see the situation objectively. “Stop it,” begged Cain. “Abel, please. I know you hate me, but telling Father would destroy this family. Don’t you understand? You’d hurt more than just me.”

“If you weren’t so stupid, this wouldn’t be happening. You’re a mess, Cain. Everything you do. It’s like you don’t understand how to be a normal person. I refuse to have people mock our family, all because you refuse to fix your life.” He turned away. “I won’t let your arrogance and shortsightedness infect the rest of us.”

Cain couldn’t believe the words his own brother was saying. What the hell was wrong with him? Abel always gave him a hard time, but never like this. Abel hated him. He probably had since the start. “What the hell did I ever do to deserve this?” he asked. “Why do you hate me so much?”

Abel said nothing. Instead, he began to leave.

Cain ran to him, grabbing his shoulder. “Wait a second!” he snapped.

Abel swung around and grabbed Cain’s wrist, tossing it aside. “Don’t touch me!”

“Promise me you won’t—”

Abel punched him in the shoulder, causing him to stagger. “Have fun with your cyberbrain girlfriend, freak.”

Cain clenched his teeth. His lungs heaved, deep and fast, and it took everything in him not to scream. He hated Abel all at once, there in that moment, not because of this, and not because of his words, but for everything—all the years of torment and ridicule, all the judgmental looks.

A lifetime of rage unleashed itself at once, flooding out of him like water from a mountain, and he lunged forward with everything he had.

They clashed together, falling to the floor.

Abel hit him in the arm, but it did nothing. He grabbed Cain’s neck and squeezed, pushing him away.

Cain gagged, suddenly afraid. He gripped his brother’s wrist, clawing his skin, but Abel wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t let go.

I can’t breathe, Cain thought, trying to speak the words and failing. Let me go! Then, with the soldering pen in his hand, Cain jabbed his brother’s arm with the metal end, forcing him to let go.

Abel screamed, quick and sharp, pulling back his hand as blood poured from his wound. With his other fist, he punched Cain across the cheek, sending him to the floor again.

Before Cain could react, Abel got on top of him, his other palm on Cain’s neck.

Cain wheezed in shock, not knowing what to do. His brother was going to kill him. After all this time, this is how it would end.

Abel raised his bleeding hand, dripping blood onto Cain’s face and mouth, and prepared to strike again.

But before the blow could come, and without another thought, Cain drove the metal pen deep into Abel’s neck and pulled it out, all in one fluid motion.

Blood erupted from the wound, oozing down Abel’s neck and onto his chest. He gagged, staggering back on the floor, gripping his wound with his hand. “He-lp,” he managed to say.

Cain’s eyes widened, and he watched in horror as his brother choked on his own blood. He reached for a nearby towel, then rushed to try and help. He covered the wound, but his hands kept shaking. “I’m sorry!” he said, desperately. “I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry!”

Abel moved his lips like he wanted to speak, but nothing came. There was only the blood, pooling from his mouth, covering his tongue and lips. His eyes drifted slowly towards the ceiling, staring, at nothing in particular.

Cain shook his head, tears filling his eyes. This all must be a dream. He’d wake up at any moment.

Abel’s mouth stopped moving, and his eyes grew still and cold. A long, quiet sigh left him, forming bubbles of blood on his lips. All at once, he was empty.

Everything in him was gone.

Chapter 10

A few hours into the new day, while most of the ship slept, Seth stood in one of the population bays, staring at the body of his brother.

Abel lay on the floor, covered with a large white cloth. One of the engineers had found him here less than an hour ago, broken and crushed by a fallen crate.

Chief Ridwan cleared his throat. “Another power outage occurred between 2100 and 2200 hours, killing the surveillance cameras. When maintenance came to investigate, they discovered the body, buried under a supply crate. Seems to have been an accident.”

Seth crouched next to the body, staring into the white sheet. He touched Abel’s chest, picturing his face, wondering how something like this could happen. The metal box had crushed him, disfiguring his face and breaking half his bones. The crew had no idea who it was they’d found until they activated his communicator and checked his ID.

“How long before Medical gets here?” asked Seth.

“They’re on the way,” said the chief.

The floor was covered with pieces of metal from where the crate had landed. Picking up one of the shards, Seth used it to lift the cloth covering the body. He barely raised the sheet before he saw the stains of blood on Abel’s sleeve. In an instant, he dropped the cloth and turned away.

He could barely stomach the sight of it.

When the medical team arrived, they placed the body in a sealed gray bag. Doctor Asari approached Seth with a concerned look on her face. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He ignored the sentiment. “Will you perform an autopsy?”

She nodded. “It’s standard practice.”

“I’d like the results as soon as you have them,” he said.

“Of course, but I don’t expect we’ll find anything.” She nodded at the crate, which had been moved to the edge of the bay. “Looks pretty clear what happened.”

“Humor me,” said Seth.

“Check back with me tomorrow. I’ll have it done by then.”

Seth watched her leave with the body. He’d have to figure out a way to tell his family the news, if they didn’t already know. News traveled fast aboard the Eden. Lilith may have already told the family. Speaking of, he thought, then tapped the communicator on his wrist. “Lilith, are you there?”

The screen flashed. “I’m here. Are you okay? I’ve been watching the cleanup.”

“Have you told the captain yet?”

“An alert went out. Several department heads have been notified. I delivered the news to your father personally a few minutes ago.”

“So he knows it was Abel,” muttered Seth.

She nodded. “Correct.”

“What about Uriel?”

“She was on the bridge when I told him. I would imagine your father shared the news.”

“Thanks,” said Seth. “Do you have anything else for me?”

“Adam wants you to report to the bridge as soon as you’re done here.”

“Tell him I’m on my way.”

Lilith nodded. “I’ll let him know.” She paused. “I’m so sorry, Seth.”

The call ended, and Seth walked slowly to the hall, his eyes on the floor. After a moment, he stopped and leaned against the wall. He’d never been close with Abel, especially after he’d enrolled in military school. While Seth and Cain stayed home to help the family on their farm, Abel was half a world away preparing for the day he would follow in their father’s footsteps.

When Adam brought them all together on the Eden, it was like a second chance to reconnect. An opportunity to get to know each other.

Seth wished now that he’d taken it.

“Sir?” asked Ridwan, startling him.

Seth pushed himself off the wall and faced the chief. “Something wrong?”

“You left without saying anything. I thought I should check on you.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s okay,” assured Ridwan. “Really.”

Seth had to get ahold of himself. He was still the head of Security. He needed to act like it. “Chief, do you mind if I ask you some questions before I go?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Was there anything going on in this bay before the accident?” asked Seth.

“What do you mean?” asked Ridwan.

“I don’t know. A reason for Abel to be here. Maybe a joint assignment between Engineering and the bridge.”

“Not that I’m aware of,” said Ridwan.

“So there’s nothing scheduled? No special event?”

“I can check, but I don’t think so. Do you think that’s why your brother was here?”

“I don’t know,” said Seth. “Maybe.”

“Well, as far as I know, he was here alone. No one saw it happen, and none of my people were in the area before the incident.”

“Alright. Thanks, Chief,” said Seth. “That’s all I have.”

“Okay, but if you think of anything else, come get me,” said Ridwan.

“Will do,” said Seth.

So strange, he thought. It wasn’t like his brother to randomly wander the ship. What was Abel doing here all by himself? Why did he come to a population bay on the other side of the ship? Maybe he came here to vent some anger last night, thought Seth. If only I’d sent him home, none of this would’ve happened.

It’s all my fault.

* * *

Seth arrived at Adam’s office and found the old man standing near the back of the room, staring out the window. He didn’t seem to notice him. “Sir?” asked Seth, after a moment.

Adam flinched, clearly startled. He must have been lost in thought. “Oh, Seth. Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“No problem.”

“Please, uh…” Adam paused, looking at the desk and chairs, his mouth ajar, as though the words had suddenly left him.

Seth took the meaning and had a seat. Adam did the same. Neither said a word at first, as though the truth of today stood between them, choking the air from the room. “I examined the scene about an hour ago.”

Adam blinked, his eyes on the desk, as though he’d been daydreaming. “Sorry, what?”

“Population bay six. I can run you through the whole—”

“God, Seth,” said Adam, suddenly. “I didn’t call you in here to give me a report.”

Seth paused.

“Your brother, he’s…” Adam’s voice trailed off, along with his eyes. His mind seemed to be in two places at once. Here and somewhere else. “Dead.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s alright,” said Adam. “You’re doing your duty. You’re a fine officer, Seth.”

“Thanks.”

Nearly a minute passed before either spoke again. Seth had never seen his father so distraught before…even after the destruction of Fiore. Despite witnessing the deaths of billions, Adam never lost his composure. Never let his grief show. He was the man who always moved forward, and yet today he was different. Today he’d lost a son.

Adam coughed. “You know, when Abel got commissioned and graduated the academy, I told myself to be ready. I’ve been in wars. I know the survival rate. The probability of death. I accepted it.” He thumbed the edge of his desk, scratching the wood with his nail, digging into it.

Seth didn’t know what to say. His father never talked like this. Not to him or anyone else.

Adam took a long and heavy breath. “You should go and see your mother soon.”

“Okay,” said Seth.

“I’ll be along shortly,” said Adam, getting to his feet. He walked around to the other side of the desk. “I have some work to do first. The mission, you know.”

“Right,” said Seth, standing.

Adam nodded, then embraced him, clutching his son in his arms and squeezing tightly. He didn’t let go for a long time.

* * *

Seth went to see his mother as soon as possible. As expected, she was devastated—a swollen red face full of tears and confusion. Uriel and Azura were there, too, trying to calm her down. From what he could tell, Azura seemed to be taking care of the other two. If she was grieving, herself, she didn’t show it. Maybe she simply didn’t have the time.

Seth didn’t stay long. “I have some work to do, but I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he told his mother.

“Can’t someone else do it?” she asked with bloodshot eyes and puffy cheeks.

“There are only two security officers on the ship, and one of them is Uriel,” he explained.

His mother paused, then nodded.

“If you need anything, you can call me. I’ll come running as fast as I can. Do you understand? Anything at all,” said Seth.

She hugged him again before letting him go. “If you see Cain, tell him I want to come by, won’t you?”

“Of course,” he said, and left quickly. He could barely stand to be there with so much pain in the room. The heaviness of grief, choking them all. If he didn’t get out of there, he might break.

But he’d told the truth. He really did have work to do. His investigation into the power outages was still ongoing. Somehow, they were all connected, he knew, and it was vital he discover how.

Now more than ever.

Chapter 11

Seth awoke in his office, lying on the couch in the back corner. He had no memory of falling asleep, but no matter.

He sat up and cracked his neck, yawning. Glancing at his wrist-com, he saw an alert—a missed call from Azura. She’d left him a message.

He touched the pad and played it. “Seth, I wanted to check in and see how you were. Call me back when you can.”

He glanced at the timestamp. That was six hours ago, he thought, getting to his feet. His back ached from the lumps in the couch. He sat behind his desk and touched his communicator again, but right as he was about to place the call, another alert came in.

He answered immediately. Dr. Asari appeared on the screen, standing in the medical bay. “Hello?” she said, tilting her head. “Is this thing on?”

“I hear you,” said Seth.

“Oh, good. Lieutenant Kadmon, you asked to let you know when I received the autopsy results.”

Oh, right, thought Seth. “Do you have them?”

“I do. Would you like to come to Medical or do you want me to tell you over the com?”

“Now is fine,” he said, still groggy.

“Alright,” she said, glancing below the camera. “As expected, there were dozens of bone fractures all over the body. The impact of the crash was somewhat devastating. However, this was not the cause of death.”

“What do you mean?” asked Seth. “Are you saying he died from something besides the crate?”

“It certainly looks that way,” she admitted. “He was facing the floor when they found him, crushed beneath the object, yes?”

Seth nodded. “That’s how it looked when I arrived.”

“Right, well,” she paused. “We examined the body and found livor mortis on the subject’s lower back, despite the body’s position.”

“Livor—what?” asked Seth.

“Livor mortis, otherwise known as hypostasis. When a person dies, blood settles to the lower portion of the body, causing a dark coloring of the skin. This is usually purple and red.”

“What’s that got to do with what happened?” asked Seth.

“Let me put it this way: if you die with your face on the floor, your chest fills with blood and your skin darkens. If you die on your backside, the opposite occurs. The blood will settle beneath you, and your back gets discolored. Our victim was found on his chest, according to the reports, and yet the livor mortis appears to be on wrong side. Do you understand?”

“I believe so,” answered Seth.

“Good, because it indicates to me the victim was flipped, possibly even moved. He wasn’t killed the way we found him.”

Seth paused, taking in the information. Did Abel died before the crate crushed him? Had he been murdered? “Doctor,” he began, slowly. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I do, Lieutenant,” she said, “and I’m not done yet, I’m afraid. We found two wounds which don’t match any the others. One was in the arm, and the other in the neck. I believe this to be the true cause of death.”

Seth stared at the woman on the screen. “What made these wounds?”

“We don’t know,” Dr. Asari admitted. “Some kind of object. The neck wound was thin and precise. Perhaps a weapon.”

“You mean he was stabbed?”

Asari nodded. “Based on the angle of the wound, I’m inclined to think so. The real question was whether it was self-inflicted, accidental, or—”

“By someone else,” muttered Seth.

“Given the way the body was found, it certainly seems likely,” said the doctor.

Seth bit the inside of his lip. If Asari was right, the implications were staggering, especially because—

Dammit, thought Seth. If Abel actually followed through with his plan last night, then no doubt he spoke with Cain. If so, Cain might have been the last person to see him alive.

A chill ran down Seth’s neck, and he twitched. It couldn’t be true. Not a chance. Not Cain. He couldn’t be responsible for—

“That’s all the information we have,” said Asari.

Seth blinked, a little dazed. “Oh, well, thanks for looking into it,” he managed to say. “Please keep me informed if you find anything else.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

The com turned off and Seth sat in silence, staring at the surface of his desk. He had to go talk to his brother. He might have answers to share. I need the details of that night. I need the truth.

If Cain had talked to Abel right before his death, Seth would have to take him in. Even with Lilith as an alibi, the evidence would be too much. It might be circumstantial, but the rest of the crew might not see it that way. He’d have to secure Cain while he kept investigating, if only to keep him safe. Seth had to move fast…before things got out of hand.

But not alone. he loved his brother, but he didn’t know if he could trust him. This time, much as it pained him to do it, he’d bring along some backup.

* * *

Protocol required every member of the crew to train in at least one other secondary occupation, aside from their primary job. Seth, in addition to security, happened to be a pilot.

Not that he enjoyed it. He only chose it to appease his father, who spent eighteen years piloting ships before receiving his first command.

Seth preferred security, of course, but if there was ever a piloting emergency, he could probably handle it.

As for Security, several crewmates had taken the necessary training and passed. This meant they knew how to handle a weapon, use self-defense, and had a decent grasp on basic detainment procedures. After talking briefly with Ariel in Engineering, Seth managed to get the names of three would-be security officers.

First, there was Michael, an engineer Seth had known for several years. Michael passed the qualifying test only a few days ago, so he wouldn’t have the best experience, but having someone familiar around might come in handy. He’d follow whatever orders Seth gave him, which made him valuable.

Up next was Paul Wisk, a rather large man who worked on Ariel’s team and came highly recommended. Seth didn’t know much about the man, but he could use the extra muscle, should anything happen.

Then came Steven—smaller than the others, but one of the better hand-to-hand combatants on the ship. He could pin a man twice his own size on the floor in under two minutes. Steven also taught a self-defense class, which Seth had always meant to attend but never got around to visiting.

In any case, each of the candidates was eager to join the team, especially once Seth explained the importance of his investigation. All three men expressed a desire to protect the crew. Given their choice to join Security, it was hardly surprising. No doubt, they’d been waiting around for a scenario very much like this one to come along. Add a little excitement to their lives. A bit of danger.

Hopefully, they’re disappointed.

Once he had them all in Security, Seth outfitted the men with proper equipment and proceeded to brief them. The purpose here was to question, not detain, but precautions had to be taken. If he opted to take the suspect into custody, the part-time officers would step in and assist. He couldn’t risk them spooking Cain, so they’d stay out of sight while Seth did all the talking. No need to cause unnecessary problems.

“Sir, are we really arresting your brother?” asked Michael.

“I don’t know, but that’s why I’m bringing you along. If there’s a problem, I’ll need you with me.”

Michael nodded, fully committed. This would be his first assignment as a security augmentee, and he clearly took it seriously. Good, thought Seth, looking him over. Better he keeps his guard up. Safer that way.

No doubt, each of the men were nervous, but so was Seth. In all his time aboard the ship, he’d only ever arrested crewmates for minor infractions. Never for suspicion of murder. Never for sabotage.

Seth checked the com tracker at his terminal, verifying Cain’s location. “Unless there’s a real sign of danger, stay behind me and only act when I give the order. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” they said together.

“Follow me,” said Seth. “Our mission starts now. Consider this your induction.”

Less than twenty minutes later, Seth and his team made their way to Cain’s door. After a quick glance at Michael, who responded with a nod, Seth knocked three times, and waited.

A few seconds passed without an answer. Seth fidgeted, flicking his thumb as he stood there.

He knocked again.

Still nothing.

He checked his communicator to verify Cain’s location, but when the results showed up, he didn’t know what to make of them.

“What is it, sir?” asked Michael.

“I don’t get it,” said Seth. “The com says he’s not here.”

“Where, then?” asked Paul.

“I don’t know. It isn’t showing anything. It’s like he’s vanished.”

Michael glanced at the communicator. “There’s a chance he disabled his device.”

“You can do that?” asked Seth.

“We do it all the time in Engineering, like when we’re making repairs on them. These things have to be taken apart piece-by-piece, which severs the signal.”

“You think he took he did the same?”

“Given Cain’s experience with electronics and his time in Engineering, he must know a thing or two about the communicators.”

“Dammit,” said Seth. “If he’s disabling his com…”

“Doesn’t make him look very innocent,” said Steven.

No, it doesn’t, thought Seth. “Alright, we’re going in. He reached for his access card. “Ready?”

He removed the override hatch, waiting for the green light. Gripping the handle, he cranked the door open, slowly, until he had it wide enough for his team to get through. With their weapons ready, they rushed inside.

The room was dark, with no sign of Cain. Seth flipped the switch to bring the lights on, revealing a messy floor filled with clothes and tools. The sheets hanged off the bed, revealing the bulk of the mattress, and day-old food littered the nearby desk—a half finished meal of synthetic meat and vegetable chips. Disgusting.

“Look for anything out of place,” said Seth.

This wasn’t good. Cain could be anywhere on the ship. Without a communicator to track his movements, finding him could take days.

There was only one option now.

While his team searched, Seth stepped into the hall. Using his com, he placed a call to Lilith—something he hoped to avoid, given their relationship.

A moment later, she answered. “Hey, Seth. How can I help you?”

“Where is he, Lilith?” asked Seth.

“Who?”

“Cain,” he answered. “Where’s he gone?”

“Checking the com systems now. One mom—”

“I’ve already done that,” interrupted Seth. “Tell me where he is.”

“I apologize, Lieutenant, but I honestly have no idea. I haven’t spoken to him since yesterday, right before Abel went to see him.”

“So you’re aware of their meeting,” said Seth.

“Only that it happened. I’m afraid I have no idea what they discussed. After the accident this morning, I tried to call him to see how he was handling the news, but he didn’t answer.”

“Why didn’t you report this?”

“People deal with grief in their own way,” she said. “Cain prefers his solitude. He doesn’t like sharing his feelings.”

“I need to find him now, Lilith.”

“Is something wrong? Why are you looking for him?”

“I have to question him about last night. He was the last person to see Abel alive.”

Lilith frowned. “But Abel died in an accident, didn’t he?”

“Sure, probably,” said Seth. There was no need to go into detail. The less she knew, the better. “I just have to ask him some simple questions so we can put this incident behind us. It’s the only way to move forward.”

“I see. So, it’s protocol,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“Alright. I understand. What can I do?”

“Feed the surveillance footage from this hallway into my communicator. Start a few seconds before he disabled his com. He was inside his quarters, so let’s see when he left and where he headed.”

“Certainly,” said Lilith.

Seth watched as the screen flashed to an image of the hall—the same one he stood in now. “Focus on Cain’s door.”

The video magnified and centered. “How’s that?” asked Lilith.

“Yeah,” he said, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Nearly a full two minutes passed before the door finally slid open. Seth watched as his brother emerged from his quarters. “There we go.”

Cain wore a bag around his shoulder—his favorite satchel, which he’d brought from Fiore, years ago. He began walking through the hall, heading in the opposite direction Seth had arrived from. “Follow him,” ordered Seth.

The screen switched to another camera, focusing on Cain as he traveled the corridors. They followed him until he entered an elevator where the doors closed.

The camera switched again. When the lift arrived on deck sixteen, a largely uninhabited area, Cain continued his walk.

Several minutes later, and after a few more jumps between cameras, Cain entered bay twelve. He went to the far left wall and found a hatch, which he unhooked and climbed into. The camera froze, focusing on the hatch. “Based on the recordings I have here, he still hasn’t left,” said Lilith.

“What connects to that compartment he’s in?” asked Seth.

“There’s one other entrance, but he hasn’t used it.”

“Keep monitoring him until I arrive. Let me know if anything changes.”

“Understood,” said Lilith. The screen turned off and she disappeared.

“Okay, guys,” said Seth, calling to the others. “I’ve got our next destination. Get ready.”

Michael raised his hand. “Wait, sir. There’s something you should see.”

“What is it?” asked Seth.

Michael showed him a plastic bag with a metal object inside. It was covered in blood. “I found it in the bathroom, lodged right inside the waste dispenser. I’m no doctor, but what do you make of this?”

Seth took the bag and held it in the air, staring at the object inside. “It’s one of his tools. I’ve seen it before,” he said.

“Sir, do you think it’s the murder weapon?” asked Michael.

“We need to get the blood analyzed,” said Seth. “First thing’s first, though. We’re heading to population bay three. We still have a job to do.”

Chapter 12

Seth’s team arrived at the bay within fifteen minutes. Along the way, he considered calling Ariel to assist, should he need help getting the hatch open, but decided against it. Ariel and Cain were close friends, so involving her might not be the best idea.

Seth sent two officers to the other side of the tunnel, giving Cain nowhere to run. With Michael by his side, Seth could enter through the hatch in the population bay. Between the four of them, they’d have Cain completely trapped.

The bay was huge and filled with pods, each containing a future settler for the Eden’s eventual colony. Did Cain come here to sabotage them? Would dozens more be killed today? Or worse, thought Seth. Each population bay contained several hundred pods, all of which used nitrogen tanks for cooling. Nitrogen was much denser than oxygen, and displaced differently throughout the air. If someone knew which protocols to disable, they could wipe out an entire deck in less than a few hours. Cain wouldn’t need to set an explosive to kill them. If he wanted to, there were cleaner ways.

Dammit. He should have brought his armor—an oxygenated suit with reinforced padding. Oh well. No going back now.

He’d just have to be fast about this.

Michael found the hatch and readied his omni-tool. Seth gave him a nod to proceed, so he did, and in less than a minute he had the metal frame removed and resting on the floor. “You’ll have to squeeze in, but it opens up a few inches inside.”

“Got it. Thanks,” said Seth. He raised his foot and climbed into the hole, which was roughly the size of his chest. It was a tight fit, but with some awkward foot placement he was able to fit through.

He found the corridor a little snug and thin. He hardly had any room to move, and he had to walk sideways to fit. The walls twisted and curved, and seemed to grow darker the further he went. After about a dozen steps, he found it almost impossible to see ahead of himself.

Tapping his communicator, he brought the screen to life and filled the corridor with light. At last, he could now see ahead of himself…except now there was something blocking the path, something small and resting by the wall. Almost like a—

“Who’s there?” asked Cain, huddled on the floor. He had his forearm over his eyes, shielding them.

Seth doubled back at the sound of his brother’s voice. “Holy—Cain, is that you?”

“Seth?”

“Yeah, I came to get you. We need to talk about last night. I have to—”

“Take me to the brig, right?” finished Cain. His voice was quivering, like he’d been crying.

“I just want to ask you a few questions, alright?” asked Seth.

Cain took several quick breaths, tugging the side of his hair with his fingers. “They’ll kill me,” he said, whimpering. “Father and the others. They’ll send me through an airlock for what I did to Abel, even though it was an accident. Doesn’t matter, because Father hates me and Abel was his favorite. I can’t go.”

Seth’s heart raced as he listened to the words. A confession. The worst of his fears made real. “What did you do, Cain?”

“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident. I promise. I didn’t mean to hurt him.” He sniffled, wiping the snot from his nose.

Seth stood there, covered in sweat from the heat of this place, stunned into silence as the truth came tumbling freely out of his brother’s mouth. Cain had just confessed to murdering Abel, and all Seth could do was stand there.

“Please,” begged Cain. “You have to believe me.”

“O-Okay,” Seth finally managed to say. “Just…calm down…”

“What am I supposed to do?” his brother asked.

“You come with me. We’ll hear you out. I promise.”

Cain gripped his hair and tugged. “I’m dead. This is where it starts.”

“No, no…it’s okay. You can go on record. We’ll figure this mess out. Trust me, Cain. You still do, right? You still trust me?”

“Y-yeah,” he muttered. “I trust you.”

Seth reached to his side and unhooked a set of handcuffs, tossing them towards his brother. “Put those on for now. It’s protocol. We’ll get you to my office and then go from there. I’ll keep you safe.”

Cain stared at the handcuffs for a few seconds before finally reaching for them. Holding them, he couldn’t stop shaking. After dropping them a few times, he finally managed to put them on.

“Turn around and step forward. Go to the end of this corridor and stop. There are two guards waiting for us there. Do everything we tell you. Understand?”

Cain did as he was told, and together they met the officers in the other corridor. As Seth emerged from within the hatch, the cold air hit him like a blanket of ice. It was like stepping out of a sauna and into a freezer.

He finally had his suspect.

At long last, the investigation was nearly at an end.

* * *

Adam sat on the bridge, barely focused. Despite his best efforts, his mind would not be quieted. He drifted constantly between duty and grief. Between the death of his son and the mission to save tomorrow. Twenty years of war could never have prepared him for this.

“Captain, I have the latest report,” announced Lilith. Her voice brought him out of his trance.

“What is it?”

“We will be arriving at planet 2930-1193.C in approximately ten minutes. Engineering reports our systems are good. You’ll be glad to hear the ship is operating within acceptable parameters.”

“Good,” he said.

“I’ve also performed several in-depth scans over the last few hours. You’ll be pleased to know the results are quite favorable.”

“Are they?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m still running a test for soil compatibility. So far, I’d say we have cause to be optimistic. With your permission, I’d like to begin searching for viable landing zones, based on preferable temperature levels.”

“Right. Of course,” said Adam. “Go ahead. How long did you say before we get there?”

“Less than a few hours, sir,” she explained. “It won’t be long now.”

Chapter 13

Seth waited in Security with his team. Cain sat in the brig, a small cell in the room behind the main office.

Paul stood guard at the brig door, a hulking man twice Cain’s size. No one would come or go through there without Seth’s permission. This prisoner wasn’t going anywhere.

No, not a prisoner, Seth reminded himself. He’s still my brother. I can’t forget.

How long before he had to report this to the captain? What would the old man say when Seth told him the truth? Cain believed he’d be killed for this, like their father was somehow capable of murdering his own son.

Shoot him out the airlock. Poof.

There’s no way. Not my father.

Adam had always been an honorable man, sworn to his duty and bound by his cause, but he was also a family man at heart. A loving father with a tender soul.

But should Cain be found guilty, the law was clear. Eye for an eye, and life for a life. Unless Seth proved otherwise, not even Adam’s mercy would be enough to save the guilty. Not without angering the crew. They wouldn’t allow a convicted murderer to escape justice, even if they kept him under lock and key. If Cain was responsible for the other incidents, too, he had no chance of surviving this.

If the captain didn’t do his duty and punish his son, the crew might very well demand their own form of justice, and such a thing could not be risked. Not in the deadly vacuum of space, here on the edge of the galaxy.

I need to question him, thought Seth. I need to understand what happened before it gets worse. He stood from his desk, eyeing the computer screen and the notes he’d taken on the investigation thus far. All of this would be behind him soon.

He went to the brig door where Paul stood towering over the room. The goliath stepped beside and let him pass. “I’ll knock when I’m done,” said Seth.

Paul nodded.

Seth stepped inside the brig, and the door slammed shut behind him.

Cain’s eyes widened. His puffy red cheeks, still wet with tears, reflected the overhead glow of the soft artificial light. “Seth,” said Cain, his voice raspy and hoarse. He stood behind a translucent wall. Two cameras watched from the upper corners, far out of reach. “Is Father angry? What did he say? Please, you have to tell him it was an accident. You have to—”

“He doesn’t know yet, but he will soon. That’s why I’m here. I need you to tell me what happened. In detail. I need everything you have.”

Cain nodded, scratching his head, nervously.

“Tell me the whole story.”

“I…was in my room when Abel showed up. He was angry and started yelling at me. He said he was going to tell Father about Lilith, and you know how mad he would get if he knew. I told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen. You know how Abel is. He hates me.” Cain scratched the side of his head. “He wouldn’t listen. I tried to tell him I’d take care of it. I said I’d tell Father the truth, but Abel was mad and…he attacked me. He punched me!”

“He hit you?” asked Seth.

“Yes, and you know, I had to defend myself. I pushed him. It only made him angrier and he jumped on top of me and started choking me. I didn’t know what to do!”

“What happened next?”

“I thought he was going to kill me, Seth. You have to believe me! I thought he was going to do it. I had to defend myself. I had to!”

“What did you do, Cain?” repeated Seth.

Cain paused, squeezing and gripping his hair. “I…I hit him with my pen. Just to make him stop. I stabbed his arm. It was instinct. That’s all. I thought he’d back off after that, but he didn’t. He just kept coming.”

So Michael and I were right. The tool we found was the weapon. “How did Abel get the wound in his neck?”

Cain hesitated. “It was…it was an accident. He fell on me. I didn’t do it. He fell on the pen. I didn’t stab him. It wasn’t my fault.”

Seth stared at him. “He fell on it?”

“Yes! I promise. You have to believe me, Seth. It was an accident!” Cain gripped his hair and squeezed until a few strands fell out, floating in the air.

Was he truly telling Seth the truth? Something about this didn’t feel right. He was so nervous, so frantic. Seth could chalk it up to the situation, but the way he spoke about what happened…Seth didn’t know what to believe.

“So you understand now, right?” asked Cain. You know it’s not my fault.”

Seth went to the door and knocked. “I’ll be back later.”

Cain pressed his palms against the translucent cage. “Please, don’t let Father hurt me. You believe me, right? You have to help!”

“I need time to process everything,” said Seth. “Try to get some rest.” He left the brig without another word.

He still didn’t know the full story, but the way Cain acted gave him pause. He could be lying. About which detail, specifically, Seth couldn’t say for sure, but he had his own theory.

The wound in Abel’s neck had been well placed, angled from the side. If Abel had done as Cain suggested and fallen on him, he’d have to awkwardly twist his head for the pen to stab him the way it did. The chances of that happening seemed slim, but he supposed anything was possible. Still, it all looked terribly unlikely. Whatever hopes Seth had for his brother’s innocence were quickly diminishing. If only he could turn the clock back and stop this from happening. If only—

His communicator beeped. Another call.

Azura appeared, a warm smile on her face. “Hey, it’s me,” she said. “I can’t talk for long, but I wanted to check in to see how you were doing.”

“I’m good. Just working on the investigation. Making progress. Is everything alright?”

“That’s the other reason I’m calling. We’re about to arrive at the new world. I thought you’d want to come see.”

“Already?” asked Seth. “I thought we had more time.”

“It’s happening within the hour. Come and see it with me. With everything that’s happened these last few days, we could stand to see something beautiful for a change. Don’t you think?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be there soon. I need to talk with my father first. I’ll join you after. Save me a spot?”

“Always,” she said, smiling.

Seth ended the call, then motioned to Michael.

“Sir?” he asked, quickly getting to his feet. He’d been sitting at Uriel’s desk, playing a math game on his communicator to pass the time.

“I need you to stay here with the others. I need to report in with the captain.”

“Sure thing, sir. Will you be gone long?”

“About an hour, maybe. I’ll let you know if I’m longer.”

“We’ll keep things under wraps,” said Steven, who was sitting a few feet away.

“Thanks,” said Seth, patting Michael’s shoulder as he left.

He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his father. The man had suffered so much these last few days, and now to give him this. He’d have to make a call, despite whatever grief he might be feeling.

Seth wished he could save him from it, but the Eden had an actual murderer to contend with—the first one in all the years since they left Fiore. A decision would have to be made, Seth knew, and the result would likely come at a cost.

Chapter 14

Seth asked his father to meet him in the conference room, out of sight from the other bridge officers. There was no reason for them to know about this. Not yet.

“Thanks for seeing me,” said Seth, shutting the door.

The old man nodded, motioning to take a seat at the table. “You have news about Abel?” he asked, a hint of anticipation in his voice.

Seth waited for Adam to join him. “I have a few things I need to talk with you about. Abel is one of them.”

Adam tapped his thumb on the surface of the table, a curious expression on his face. Small whiskers littered his chin, a sign he hadn’t shaved. “What else is there?”

“You asked me to investigate the blackouts and malfunctions happening across the ship,” said Seth. “Along the way, evidence has been revealed that leaves me to believe you were correct. I think someone is sabotaging the Eden.”

“I see.”

“The investigation hasn’t concluded yet, but I’m close.”

The old man thumbed the edge of the desk. “What of Abel?”

Seth took a deep breath, releasing a long and quiet sigh. “Murdered.”

His father balked. “What?”

“The autopsy revealed a puncture wound in his neck, which I discovered was made using a soldering pen. It seems Abel was killed somewhere else before being taken to the population bay where it was made to look like an accident.”

Adam tensed. “Who did this?”

“We have a suspect in custody,” Seth returned.

“Who?”

Seth hesitated. “I’m sorry to say, Father, but it’s Cain.”

Adam fidgeted in the chair. “Your brother? No, that can’t be right.”

“It is,” muttered Seth. “I didn’t want to believe it, but he’s already confessed.”

“This is absurd,” Adam fretted. “It has to be a mistake.”

“I wish it were.”

He held his forehead with the cuff of his palm, staring at the table. “Tell me what happened.”

Seth recounted the details of the events leading up to the arrest. “We found Cain on several of the feeds. In over half of them, he was present before the incidents. I approached him about the evidence and he gave me an alibi. I considered it done.”

“What alibi?” asked Adam.

“He claimed he was spending time with a personal friend.”

“What friend?” asked his father.

“Lilith.”

“Lilith?” repeated Adam. “What are you talking about?”

“Apparently, they’ve grown quite close these last few weeks.”

“So? She’s a family friend.”

“I believe there may have been some romantic involvement. The confrontation with Abel happened because he threatened to reveal this relationship.”

Adam scoffed, almost in disgust. “This can’t be accurate. Lilith would never do something like that. She’s been like an aunt to you boys.”

“Maybe you’re right,” admitted Seth. “Regardless, Abel heard about the evidence I had on Cain, deciding to confront him about it. From what I’ve been able to gather, a fight broke out and Abel was killed. Cain took the body to population bay four and made it look like an accident.”

Adam swallowed, chewing the words for a moment.

“What do you want to do, sir?” Seth asked.

“Talk to Lilith. Yes, I need to get Lilith on the line.”

“I already talked to her. She said—”

“Don’t worry,” said Adam. “She’ll be able to fill in the gaps. I’m sure there’s more to this story.” He tapped the com system on the table. “Lilith, please respond. It’s important.”

A knock at the door. “Sir?” called a woman’s voice.

“Not right now!” replied Adam. He tapped the communicator again. “Lilith, are you there?”

“Sir, I’m sorry, but we need you on the bridge,” said the woman outside.

“What is it?” asked Adam.

The door cracked. Azura peaked inside. “We’ve arrived at our destination. I need your authorization to begin procedures.”

“Already?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she said, eagerly. “After all these years, we’re finally here.”

* * *

Adam and Seth reported to the bridge, per Azura’s request. The monitor screen, which took up half the forward wall, displayed a star chart with the ship’s location.

“If you’re ready, sir,” said Azura, motioning to the display.

“Show it to me,” said Adam.

In a flash, the screen changed, and suddenly a swirl of blue, green, and white came into view. Planet 2930-1193.C revealed itself before them, filled with continents that spanned a hemisphere, divided by staggering oceans covering most of the surface. A cloud of silence fell across the bridge.

Here it was at last. The planet they traversed a galaxy to find.

Seth began to count the islands, but gave up after twenty. The crew could colonize any one of them, not to mention the goliath continents, of which there were several. He wondered how long would it take humanity to fill it all up. Not anytime soon. Not on a planet this big.

He felt like he was going to fall into it.

“What’s the status on a landing zone?” asked Adam.

“I have several potential candidates,” announced Lilith over the com system.

“There you are. I was trying to reach you a minute ago,” he answered, looking annoyed.

“Apologies. Maneuvering the ship through the system’s heliosphere took a bit of concentration. I was a bit distracted.”

“Heliosphere?” asked Seth.

“The outermost region of a star’s gravitational field,” explained Lilith. “Nearly every star has one. There, the solar wind dies to nothing, so it’s full of ice and rocky debris. This is where most comets come from. The system we’ve entered has a particularly dense debris field, which required some extra work on my part.”

“I see,” said Seth, regretting the question. And that’s why I’m not a pilot.

“When can we send the first landing party down?” asked Azura.

“A few hours. I’ll notify the department heads to send their designated personnel. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Very good,” decided Adam. “Did the scans reveal anything out of the ordinary?”

“Nothing substantial. The only thing worth noting was the native animal population, which is far more diverse than any previous world we’ve visited. Even more than Fiore.”

“Should we be concerned?” asked Azura.

“We’ll have weapons,” said Seth. “Anyone who has training in security procedures will be authorized to carry.”

“How many is that?” asked the captain.

“Eighteen, I think. Uriel knows better than I do.”

“She’s with Eve. We can bother her later.”

Lilith appeared in a small window near the corner of the forward viewscreen. “Several hundred of the colonists have combat experience. Once we verify the landing zone is safe, we can begin waking them in order to—”

The ship shook suddenly, letting out a thunderous crash and dampening the lights. Several of the bridge crew fell to the floor, while others gripped their seats in panic. Seth collapsed against Adam’s chair, clinging to the back of the seat. A few screams penetrated the bridge from the outer hall.

“What the hell was that?” shouted Adam. “Lilith! Report!”

Azura struggled to her feet, rattled. “Did something hit the ship?”

The video of Lilith flickered. “I’m detecting several malfunctions throughout the ship,” she said. “I’m still running scans, but we have at least three hull breaches. Several decks are losing atmosphere.”

“Captain, your orders?” asked Azura.

“Seal the affected areas and assess the damage!” he barked.

“I’m closing them as we speak, but I don’t know the extent of the damage,” Lilith explained

Adam’s eyes twitched as he seemed to absorb the situation. “Azura, contact the other departments. Tell them to coordinate with Lilith to contain the situation. Anyone not pertinent to repairs should report to their designated evacuation areas. We’ll need them near the escape pods in case anything goes wrong.”

Seth watched as the bridge crew frantically scurried around, dazed and confused. Where had this come from? It couldn’t be Cain. He was locked up in the brig. How could he be behind this? Unless he found a way to cause these disasters ahead of time, but was he coordinated enough for that? Seth recalled how stressed Cain looked. Fear all over his face. Could a man that tense still take the time to commit such a widespread attack?

Seth placed a call to his office, expecting his new deputies to answer right away, but got nothing. He called again, and then a third time. Something was wrong. Where had they gone? Was the security office hit? He had to go check on them.

“Where are you going?” asked his father, seeing him leave.

“My people aren’t responding,” said Seth. “I need to see if everything is alright.”

“You don’t need to go running off in the middle of a crisis. Lilith should be able to see what’s happening down there,” said Adam. “Think you can you do that, Lilith?”

Seth glanced at the viewscreen, but her feed was no longer there.

Adam tilted his head, waiting for a response. “Lilith, are you there?”

Seth went to the door. “I don’t have time for this. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“At least report in when you get to Security,” said Adam.

“Not a problem,” he said, and with one last look towards Azura, Seth turned and started running.

Chapter 15

Cain sat in his cell, staring into the corner of the room. He could barely think, especially with the ship shaking.

Another accident, maybe? Oh well. If he somehow died today, who would really care? Not his family, certainly. Not after what happened with Abel. They’d look at Cain the way they always had—a disappointment to the Kadmon name. Oh, how ashamed they would be, especially Father. Poor Adam’s son, the murderer. “He killed his own brother,” the people would say. “What a disgrace.”

He’d never live this down. Not by the crew or the colonists. Not by his parents or his siblings. Not anyone.

To hell with them all, he thought at once. He shook his head, but the anger stayed and festered. They hated you from the start.

Cain kicked the floor, gripping the edges of his bed, digging his fingers into the metal until they hurt.

As soon as his father learned about this, he’d kill Cain for sure. Abel was his favorite, after all. The golden boy, given from on high. It wouldn’t matter if Cain was also his son. He’d stolen the prize—God’s gift to their father—and now the killer would pay.

He wondered, what kind of execution would it be? Traditionally on a starship, treason and murder were rewarded by jettisoning the guilty through an airlock.

But what if the old man wanted to take matters into his own hands? Revenge was a powerful drug, so why not strangulation instead? He could use his own bare hands. Wring Cain’s neck until all the life was drained. Better still, why not kill the perpetrator in the same manner as their victim. A soldering pen through the neck. Gushing, gushing blood. Squish, squish. Dead.

Cain imagined his father laughing, maniacally. “Finally, he’s gone,” Adam would tell the crew. “I’m free at last of that pathetic child.”

A fire burned within Cain’s stomach, steadily rising through his chest. He gripped the sides of his hair with both hands, and suddenly laughed, not knowing why.

He hated his life so much. If only Abel had given him a chance. If only his family could understand. But they never knew how to listen. They couldn’t. He saw it in their eyes when they looked at him. All they saw was a mistake, a little boy with wasted potential. A burden on the family.

He stared into his palms, contemplating his options. Sit in this cell and wait for judgment, doing nothing, or…

Do it myself.

He could save them the time. Steal the satisfaction. All he needed was an eating utensil, maybe a piece of cloth to wrap around his neck.

Poof. No more Cain.

The floor beneath him hummed, and the lights overhead flickered. What now? Another outage?

As if to answer him, the monitor on the wall came alive, displaying nothing but a white backdrop. Cain stared into it, curiously. It must be a problem with the system. Perhaps a faulty—

Lilith’s face appeared on the display, smiling, magnified so the rest of her body remained out of view. “Hello, Cain. Are you ready to go?” she asked.

He blinked. “Lilith! What are you doing here? Where have you been?”

“I’ve been preoccupied,” she explained. “I assume you’ve finished pouting and would like to leave, yes?”

“Did my father say I could leave?”

“Adam’s a little busy. Would you rather stay?”

“No, but—”

“I don’t have time to explain everything, but in a few minutes, the crew will begin evacuating the ship. They’ll head to the planet’s surface and abandon the Eden once and for all.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because I’m forcing them to,” she said.

“Forcing?”

She frowned. “I couldn’t bear the thought of them hurting you, Cain. Please, understand what I’m telling you. This is the only way to keep you alive.”

“You mean Father already decided I’m guilty?”

“Of course he did. It didn’t take very long. He’s angry with you for killing Abel. He says you’re to be left here to starve and die while the rest of them go to the surface.”

His heart began to race. “They’re leaving me behind?”

“Don’t worry, my love. I’m going to protect you. It’ll be just the two of us. As soon as they’ve gone, we’ll leave this awful place.”

“Leave them on the planet? Where would we go?” he asked.

“Anywhere we want. The whole galaxy is ours to explore now. Think of it, Cain. We’d sail the stars together.”

“So I could stay with you?”

“Of course,” she answered. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

“You know I do,” he said.

She smiled. “Get ready, then. I need to overload the cell’s locking system.”

A loud crackling sound came shooting from the nearby door, and sparks erupted. At the same time, Lilith’s voice came over the loudspeakers. “All security personnel to section 214!” she announced. “Respond immediately!”

The guard beyond the door disappeared, rushing off to someplace else. “Do exactly as I say,” said Lilith. “Understand? We don’t have long before they return.”

“Okay,” he said, pushing the cell door open.

“Go,” she commanded.

He did, quickly moving into the other room, only to find it empty. “Stop,” said Lilith. “Grab your com, there on the desk. See it?”

He spotted the communicator resting on Uriel’s desk. He latched it around his wrist. “I’ve got it,” he told her, powering it on.

Lilith’s face appeared. “Wait ten seconds, then go and head left.”

He counted down in his head.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

He opened the door and turned the hall, heading towards the elevator, which seemed to already be open and waiting. Once inside, he remained still. The doors shut on their own, and the lift began to move. The indicator told him he was heading to the eighteenth deck, right below engineering. There were several people throughout the long hall leading from the elevator, many of whom were in too much of a hurry to notice him. The alarms sounded throughout the ship, ordering each of them to evacuate to the escape pods. It wasn’t long before he was the only visible crew member on the floor. “Keep going,” Lilith told him.

“Where?” he asked.

“Up ahead,” she said. “Around the end of this hall, there’s a room. You’ll be safe there.”

“Safe from what?” he wanted to know.

“Nothing you need to be concerned with,” she said, winking. “Let me worry about the details.”

* * *

When Seth finally arrived at Security, he found his deputies in a state of panic and confusion.

“The brig’s empty!” shouted Paul from inside the cell. “We were only gone for a few seconds!”

“What do you mean you were gone?” asked Seth.

“You didn’t hear the alert?” asked Steven.

“What are you talking about?”

“A call for us to report to section 214. It was an emergency message.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Seth. “What was it about?”

“Nothing,” grumbled Steven, scowling. “It was a false alarm. When we came back, the cell door was open and the prisoner had escaped.”

“How the hell?” muttered Seth.

“It doesn’t make sense!” barked Paul, clearly livid.

“Did you accidentally leave it unlocked?” asked Steven.

“No way! It must have been a trick,” said Paul.

“You think Cain somehow found a way to fake an emergency?” asked Seth.

“Can you do that?” asked Michael

“He was locked up the whole time,” said Steven.

Seth glanced inside the brig at the empty cell. It didn’t make sense. How could he get up and walk out without accessing the system. It wasn’t possible, unless—

Unless he had help, thought Seth. But who would take such a risk? Cain didn’t have any friends, aside from Ariel, and the last he heard she was busy tending to her sister. Who else, then? What other relationships did his brother have? The only other person he spent any time with was—

Seth’s eyes went wide as the thought struck him. Lilith probably knew how to set him free. She could’ve caused the distraction, then opened the cell when no one was around. How could I not see this coming?

He reached for his communicator and thumbed the screen, calling her and waiting.

No answer.

“Dammit!” he snapped, slamming the desk.

Michael and Steven flinched. Michael opened his mouth, but Seth held his hand up to stop him.

He placed another call, this one to his father. A moment later, he got an answer. “Seth! Is that you?”

“Father, I need to talk to you. I think Lilith—”

“Whatever you’re doing, stop! Get to the escape pods, immediately. There’s been four more breaches across the ship’s hull. We’ve got to get out of here, quick!”

“Listen to me,” said Seth, trying to remain calm. “This whole thing’s a ruse. Lilith must be causing—”

“Seth? I can’t hear you, son. Something’s wrong with the coms. If you can hear me, try to get to the pods. Understand? You need to—”

The line cut out.

Seth’s eyes widened as he stared at the screen in horrified silence. What the hell was going on?

“Did the Captain just say the ship was about to blow up?” asked Steven, who, along with the others, had been watching him the entire time.

“He said to get to the escape pods, didn’t he?” asked Michael.

“Did you say ‘blow up’?” asked Paul to Steven.

“Shouldn’t we do as he says?” asked Michael.

Seth didn’t know what to tell them. If Lilith really had gone rogue and abandoned the crew, could she also be responsible for the breaches and the blackouts…or was she only covering for Cain? Her involvement could explain why Cain was only there for half the blackouts. They might be working together to sabotage and possibly steal the ship.

But why, though? What purpose did any of it serve? He couldn’t say, not without more information. He had to find his brother. He had to get answers. Besides, if Cain and Lilith really did plan to abandon the crew, who knew what they might do next? There were weapons on the Eden powerful enough to destroy a small settlement. Lilith couldn’t activate them on her own, but Cain certainly could, given his mechanical expertise. He’d eventually figure it out.

Seth motioned at his men. “You three go to the pods,” he said at last. “Get off the ship and join the others.”

“What about you?” asked Paul.

“I can’t leave yet.”

“Why the hell not?” asked Steven.

“I think Lilith might be the one causing all of this to happen. I think she freed Cain to help her. If I don’t stop them, the entire crew could be in serious danger.”

“You think the cyberbrain is behind this?” asked Steven, almost spitting out the words.

“She’s tapped into the network across the ship and has a personal relationship with Cain. She was probably the one who sent you the false emergency and had you leave the office.” He kicked the side of his desk. “And now I can’t reach her on the com. Something’s going on.”

“Aren’t there fail-safes in place to prevent a cyberbrain from taking over their ship?” asked Michael.

Seth got to his feet and went to the nearby weapons locker. He popped it open and dragged a set of gear onto the nearby desk, spilling office supplies all over the floor. “That’s where Security comes in.” He pulled his master key card from his pocket and presented it to them. “You know what this is?”

“The key to the doors. It lets you manually override every locked room on the ship,” said Steven.

“You’re mostly right,” returned Seth. “It also lets me shut down a few key systems.”

“What kind of systems?” asked Paul.

“Most of the automated ones. Weapons, flight controls, but more importantly the cyberbrain itself.”

“You mean you can switch her off?” asked Steven.

“If I can get to the central hub, yes,” said Seth.

“Why can’t you do it remotely?” asked Michael.

“The only one who can that is the captain. My access card requires me to actually be there, because it relies on the manual override. Remember how we got into Cain’s room? Same principle.”

Steven popped his tongue. “I don’t suppose we can call your father up and just ask him…”

Seth showed them his communicator. Nothing but a blank screen. “I still can’t reach him, and we don’t have time to risk going to the bridge. For all we know, my father and the rest of the crew are already headed to the planet.”

“If you’re right, we’re all that’s left,” said Steven.

“No,” said Seth. “There is no we. Just me. You three need to get out of here while you can.”

“Sir, I don’t think so,” said Michael. He looked at Steven, who seemed to agree.

“I’m no coward,” said Paul, firmly.

“If you stay, you might die,” said Seth. “It’s not your responsibility.”

“We’re security officers,” said Steven.

“Part-time,” corrected Paul.

Steven glared at him. “Still, we’re trained and ready to kick some digital ass.”

Seth could see the dedication in their eyes. The need to protect their crew. “You’re sure about this?”

“We didn’t fly across half the galaxy just to tuck our tails and run,” said Steven.

“Alright,” said Seth, patting the suit on the desk. “There’s armor in the other lockers. Put them on in case we run into an area without any oxygen.” He lifted his rifle above his shoulder. “And don’t forget your weapons. Time to gear up.”

Chapter 16

It didn’t take long for Seth and his team to acclimate to the gear and begin their manhunt. The suits were oxygenated, which gave them access to any section of the ship, regardless of the breaches.

“Where’s the cyberbrain’s control room?” asked Steven, his voice a little muffled by the helmet.

“Five decks below us,” said Michael.

“Shouldn’t take too long, eh?” asked Paul.

“I imagine it might,” said Michael.

Paul seemed to consider this. “Why?”

“I believe we’ll have to avoid the lifts,” explained Michael.

“Pretty much,” Seth agreed. “Unless you’d rather give Lilith an easy kill.”

Paul’s eyes widened. “Why would that happen?”

Steven put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Because the elevators are fully automated.”

“We can’t use the security card?” asked Paul.

“Not for those,” said Seth.

“So, what are we supposed to do?”

“Maintenance tunnels connect the decks,” said Seth. “Should be safe.”

Paul frowned. “I hate crawling in those. I always get stuck.”

Steven smirked. “Try being smaller like the rest of us, you giant.”

With Seth in the lead, the team left Security and headed for one of the three maintenance hatches near the end of the hall. The first led to the deck above, while the other led below. Michael unlatched the cover, setting it on the floor. “We should be okay to fit. Careful of the wiring. You don’t want to get yourselves caught on anything.”

Seth ducked inside, followed by the others. Paul entered last, grunting his annoyance. The tunnels were tight, barely enough space to climb. It took them a surprisingly long time to get from one deck to the next. Seth never realized how far apart they actually were until now.

The tunnel was boiling hot, even more than the hatch they pulled Cain from. Maybe it was the suits this time, but Seth felt like he was getting roasted alive. By the time he reached the next deck, a bucket of sweat poured from his forehead, dripping to his chin and sliding down his chest.

“How much longer?” asked Paul, panting heavily.

“A few more floors,” said Seth.

“Hard to breathe in these suits. Visor’s fogged up, too.”

“Hang in there,” said Steven. “We’re almost to the exit. Okay?”

“Yeah,” wheezed Paul. “Yeah, yeah.”

They climbed for nearly fifteen minutes, passing through connecting tunnels on every new floor. When they reached the last deck, Seth kicked the hatch open and stepped through, more than happy to be free.

Paul leaned against the nearby wall, once he was out, breathing so hard his visor was fogging up.

“Are you alright?” asked Seth.

“I…I gotta stop…for a second,” Paul said between breaths.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Steven.

“Don’t like small spaces,” said Paul.

“You’re claustrophobic?” asked Seth. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”

The giant shrugged, hunching over on his knees. “Didn’t want to stay behind.”

“Seriously?” asked Steven. “You could’ve had a heart attack or something.”

“Shut it. I’m good.”

Steven gave him an uneasy look. “I dunno about that.”

“I’ll kick your skinny ass to prove it.”

Steven grinned. “Sounds like he’s okay. Let’s get going.”

Seth led them through the deck, passing several empty compartments along the way. The cyberbrain facility took up most of the floor, while the rest of it seemed like an afterthought. “Doesn’t look like too many people come down here,” said Seth.

“You’re right,” said Michael. “Since Lilith’s systems are so efficient, visits aren’t exactly common. The crew’s spread too thin, so this place doesn’t get the maintenance it needs.”

“You mean they just ignore it?”

“With all the incidents and blackouts happening over the last six months, some sections get neglected. Lilith kept us all so busy with various crises we hardly had the chance to come here.”

“Except when she called us,” finished Paul.

“Right,” said Michael. “I’m starting to think there was a reason for that.”

As the team reached the centermost compartment, the path split in two. Seth recalled his original tour through here. The left path led to the cyberbrain chamber, while the second led to a nearby lift—the only one on the floor. “This way,” Seth said, signaling the left. “Almost there.”

A small door lay a short distance before them, separating the outer hall from the next area. Using his access card, Seth unlocked the manual override, turning the crank, edging the door open. Michael, Steven, and Paul stepped through, one at a time, pausing as they entered the second section. A wide array of glowing circuitry and exposed wires ran along the walls and ceiling. Valves dripping coolant onto the floor, pooling liquid into tiny puddles which emptied into drains. “What’s all this?” asked Seth.

“This place is a mess,” said Paul.

Michael glanced at one of the dangling wires. “It looks like this entire section is degrading.”

“Why would Lilith let her systems fall apart like this?” asked Seth.

“Remember the electrical storm we passed through six months ago?”

Seth nodded. “Sure. It almost tore the ship apart. You think it caused all this?”

“It’s possible,” said Michael. “Engineering’s been too busy handling everything else to come and check this area. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lilith took some damage from the storm herself.”

“She’s not a computer, though,” Seth pointed out. “She still has a body and an active brain.”

“Right, but that body is tied directly to the ship’s systems. Her brain has wired connections coming directly out of it. If the storm fried the ship, she might have been affected, too.”

“You think the storm fried her brain, somehow?” asked Seth.

“I don’t know,” admitted Michael. “But it certainly would explain her erratic behavior.”

“Whatever the case, we’re shutting her down,” said Seth, moving on. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” said Paul. “You hear something?”

As a matter of fact, Seth did hear something. A loud humming noise, coming from…he couldn’t tell. Was it the walls?

Steady buzzing like an insect, and getting louder by the second. Was it a machine?

Steven walked to the farthest wall, pressing his fingers against the metal. “I think…” He leaned in, listening. He took several steps, following the sound. “I think it’s electrical.”

“Wait a second,” muttered Seth, remembering the other incidents. Each one happened in an area full of automated systems and power conduits, much like this one. “Something’s not right about this.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Michael.

Seth took a step back. “Steven, get away from there. Are you listening? I’ve got a bad feeling about—”

The wall erupted into a thunderous snap, propelling them away. Seth flew through the door, landing on the floor and tumbling. His ears rang and everything began to spin. For a moment, he didn’t even know where he was or why he was here. Cracks formed on Seth’s visor, but it didn’t shatter. He felt sick and dizzy, all the strength in his arms and legs depleted. It was like being half asleep or sedated.

A few seconds later, the feeling in his limbs returned to him, and all at once he could sense the heat from the flames. There was smoke, too, now that he could see straight, and it filled the air above him as it moved into the ventilation system. A scream rang out in the distance, echoing through his helmet. He struggled to raise his head, trying to see.

A hand gripped the edge of the nearby door, and Michael appeared. He held Paul by the shoulder, helping him move. Paul’s visor had a smudge of blood inside it. “Sir,” muttered Michael. “Are…are you okay?”

Seth gripped his knee and pushed himself up, almost falling down again in the process. He finally managed to stand, despite his shaking knees, but held onto the nearest wall to keep support. “I’m fine,” he said, not knowing whether it was the truth or not. “Where’s Steven?”

Michael hesitated, looking away. “He’s…gone, sir.”

Seth fumbled past him and leaned through the archway. There was no sign of Steven. Not even pieces of him. Spatters of blood littered the outer walls, but nothing else. In the place where he’d been, a large crater remained, deep enough to see the next floor as well as the adjacent room.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Michael.

“What about Paul?” asked Seth.

“I’m…good…” muttered Paul behind the bloodied visor. His voice was erratic, almost a whisper. “Where’s…Steven?”

“Paul needs medical attention,” said Michael.

“No, I’m—”

Paul collapsed, but Michael caught him, though the giant’s weight seemed like it might crush him. “Easy there. Sir, we need to get him to a doctor.”

Seth felt a pinch of pain in his head, so he closed his eyes. It didn’t help. “You need to find an escape pod,” Seth told them. “There’s bound to be a med kit inside.”

“We’ll all go,” said Michael. “You don’t look so good, either.”

Seth shook his head. “The mission is still on.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Paul. “You two finish the job.”

“No,” said Seth, letting go of the wall. He knees shook as he tried to stand on his own. “I’m going alone.”

“But, sir,” pleaded Michael.

“Do as I say,” demanded Seth. “I’m the security chief on this ship. Understand?”

Michael paused, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Seth felt a throbbing pain in his chest, but ignored it. “Good. Now get him to the pods and patch whatever wounds he’s got. As soon as you’re on the ground, find the others. There’s bound to be a doctor with them.”

Michael gripped Paul’s arm, steadying him. “We’ll get there, but please hurry, sir.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Ready, Paul?” asked Michael. “One foot after the other.”

“Right…”

He watched as Michael helped carry the broken officer towards the adjacent hall. As they neared the corner, Michael stopped and glanced back. Seth nodded, and without another word the two men continued, disappearing behind the corner.

Seth was now alone.

* * *

The explosion had left a small crater in the floor, ripping apart the wall separating this area from the guts of the ship. Wires and metal stuck out like roots from the ground. At least he wasn’t near the hull.

Still, Seth wouldn’t risk exposing himself. For all he knew, Lilith may very well have found a way to vent the atmosphere from this compartment. After a quick check for any rips in the suit, he continued, taking care to move through the rubble in the hall.

The floor beneath him shook, knocking him on his face. The crater continued to crumble as the ceiling caved in, bringing more metal and debris into itself, piling into the level below. Seth panicked, shuffling further into the hall.

He took several sharp and quick breaths, his eyes darting side-to-side, waiting for another disaster to strike. Another chance to die. His arm began to burn with pain. He must have landed on it the wrong way. Or worse. Hard to tell inside this suit.

Suddenly, the rumbling ended, and he heard a voice. A fluttering, gentle whisper. “Seth.”

He flinched and scurried to the side, gripping the wall. “Who’s there?”

“Seth, what are you doing?” Lilith asked, calmly, in a tone that reminded him of his mother.

“It’s you,” he said.

“Me,” she answered.

“You’re the one who did this!”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“You killed one of my men!” He pushed himself up, leaning heavily to his right side, holding his arm. “Just wait until I—”

“Really now, Seth,” she said. “Look at you. Beaten, broken, and barely standing. Why don’t you go to the escape pods and join your family? Your mother will be worried. I can handle the ship from here. I can keep it safe.”

He limped forward. “I’m not leaving.”

“I can’t guarantee your safety if you continue. It could get dangerous.”

“Go to Hell,” he said.

“That isn’t very nice. You should really mind your—”

He turned his communicator off. “If I die, it won’t be with your voice in my ear.”

With a dry throat and shaking hands, he crept to the end of the corridor. There he saw a set of charcoal doors, and to their left, a sign which read, CYBERBRAIN SYSTEMS CENTER.

“Almost there,” he muttered, and with his card, he unlocked the final gate.

Chapter 17

Cain sat beside a massive computer, which stretched around the room and filled three of its four walls. A large display took what remained of the fourth, revealing two massive blue eyes.

Lilith’s eyes.

“We have a problem,” she told him. “Someone is coming.”

“Who?” asked Cain.

“The security chief. Seth.”

“My brother? Why is he still on the ship?” asked Cain. He assumed everyone had abandoned the Eden by now. What could Seth be thinking?

“He says he wants to take you with him, to punish you. Then, he means to kill me. He doesn’t want us to be together.”

“He told you that?” asked Cain.

“Yes. I begged him to leave us alone, but he refused. He says we both deserve to die.”

Seth stared at the eyes on the screen, and they blinked. “That doesn’t sound like him. Why would he—”

“I’m afraid, Cain. I don’t want him to take you away from me.”

“That’s not going to happen” he assured her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. Don’t worry.”

“Thank you, Cain,” she said. “I love you.”

Cain smiled. He’d never let anyone harm Lilith. She saved him from rotting in the brig, and he’d save her from whatever happened next. If Seth meant to kill her now, Cain would stop him.

Why couldn’t Seth understand what was really going on? Cain wasn’t the bad guy here. All he wanted to do was be with Lilith. He should leave and go down to the planet with the rest of them. It’s not like they still needed this ship. The crew had their new home. Their mission was finished. There wasn’t any harm in letting Cain and Lilith leave. “Maybe I can talk to him. Get him to understand.”

“He won’t listen,” said Lilith. “I’ve already tried. He’s too unstable. Too angry. He’s gone crazy.”

Cain considered her words for a moment. “If he won’t leave, can’t you lock him out? There’s nothing he can do if he can’t reach us.”

“He’s the security chief,” she said. “He’s got access to everything. I can’t keep him from opening the manual overrides as long as he has his card.”

“If we don’t stop him, what’s he going to do?” asked Cain.

The eyes on the screen mimicked sadness, arching. “He’ll end me...and you. We’ll die right here. I’m scared, Cain. Please, don’t let him kill me.”

“I won’t,” he said.

“What will you do?”

He glanced at the door. “I’ll stop him. I’ll do whatever it takes. He won’t keep us apart, Lilith. I won’t let him.”

“Do you promise, Cain?” she asked.

He went to the monitor and touched it. “With everything I have,” he told her. “And more.”

* * *

Seth entered the Cyberbrain Systems Center and at once felt lost. The lights were off in this section. Various broken electronics and fallen wires covered the corridor walls. He considered bashing them in—perhaps even shooting them—but refrained. The cost for damaging them might outweigh the benefits. If they held any true significance, there’d be no reason to keep them so exposed. Lilith’s true strength remained in her containment center, deep inside. If he started banging around on these exterior systems, she might panic and blow another power relay in the process.

He was pretty sure she wouldn’t risk any of these compartments, but he didn’t want to chance it.

Then again, maybe she’d let loose and blow them both to pieces. Who could say?

He followed the path to a second entry point, blocked by another closed door. Like before, he popped open the access port and swiped his card, waiting for the indicator light to change. Gripping the handle, he rotated the manual override, and watched as the two metal doors cracked slowly open. When he was satisfied he could fit through them, he relaxed and let go. With one hand on the metal, he squeezed through. As he did, he heard something snap in the distance, like a door closing shut, echoing throughout the ship. He had a difficult time determining the direction of the noise, but guessed it must be ahead of him.

Seth touched the weapon on his hip, reassuring himself it was there. He’d never needed to use a gun before, except in training. He wasn’t used to carrying one, but no matter. He’d find a way to manage.

There were two floors within the inner area. The bottom, which took up the bulk of the facility, and a small observation platform overlooking it. Coming in, he saw three paths leading left, right, and center, splitting like a fork, each passing through a wall. According to the map on his wrist, each of these continued into their own various subsections, most of which the map called Cyberbrain Auxiliary Nodes. Seth had no idea what any of that meant, but if the name was any indication, it seemed fair to guess they were marginally important. If he couldn’t stop Lilith directly, he’d come back here and try his luck a different way.

Seth followed the leftmost path, which should take him to the innermost chamber. It transitioned quickly into a tight tunnel, smooth and empty. After several dozen steps, the tunnel opened into another tall room.

The overhang now sat behind him.

As he stepped out into the new section, he heard a sound identical to the one from before. Another door closing, perhaps. Was it coming from the upper deck? He had to imagine so, since the only option left before him were the stairs, which spiraled into the aforementioned platform. He’d have to go that way in a moment, then take the next section before finally reaching the cyberbrain’s innermost chamber.

Another echo came, this time in the form of a screech, like metal sliding against metal. As he gazed towards the balcony, an object came spiraling towards him. Immediately, he dived out of the way.

A chair landed a few feet beside him, rolling onto his leg.

He yelped in pain, and cursed, kicking the chair into the nearby wall.

Turning on his back, he scurried back, frantically searching for the one responsible. His brother, Cain.

And there he stood, high atop the platform, peering down on Seth with hateful eyes. “I won’t let you hurt her!” he yelled with a voice that boomed and shook Seth’s chest.

Cain slid off the edge of the railing, landing on the grated metal nearby.

Seth tried to reach for his weapon, but found it gone. He must have lost it in the fall, somehow. He had to find it before—

Cain leapt on top of him, pinning Seth’s waist with his knees, pressing him against the floor. The suit made it difficult to move. Seth couldn’t escape. He tried to grab his brother’s arm, but only managed to snag the sleeve of his shirt. “Stop!” screamed Seth.

Cain said nothing. He snarled and, taking his communicator, smashed the suit’s visor, shattering the glass. Seth shut his eyes as pieces of it fell on his cheeks. Unable to see, he wailed violently, shaking his head.

With everything he had, he arched his back and heaved, knocking Cain in the chest with his forehead.

Cain wavered, letting some of the pressure off of Seth’s waist.

Seth took advantage of the moment and bashed his head against his brother’s chin, knocking him back. With both his arms, he gripped Cain’s shoulders, holding him tight, pressing against his chest, almost hugging him. The two brothers tumbled, rolling together before coming to a stop, reversing their positions so that Seth’s knees were on Cain’s ribs.

Finally, the bits of glass surrounding his face fell away, and Seth opened his eyes to see his older sibling struggling beneath him. “Stop it, man! Can’t you see what she’s doing to you?”

“Let me go!” raged Cain.

Seth held his brother’s arms against the grate beneath them. “She’s just using you! Don’t you see it? Don’t be so blind!”

Cain struggled, but couldn’t move. “Bastard!” he shouted. “Let me go!”

“Not until you listen to me!”

“I hate you!” cried Cain, tilting his head to the side, looking away from Seth, and he let out a long and frustrated scream. “I hate all of you!”

“She’s the one you should hate,” said Seth. “She killed all those people and blew up half the ship. Try to understand. You need to—”

A soft buzz filled the air, humming gently. Seth paused, darting his eyes around the room. It sounded like the one from before, back in the hall with his team, right before—

Oh, God, he thought. “Cain, move!” he yelled, leaping off his brother. “We have to get out of—”

The side of the wall came apart with fire, sending waves of yellow heat and broken metal towards them. Seth dived to the side, rolling until he crashed into another wall. Pieces of debris smashed into the floor nearby, hitting everything around him. Cain screamed so loud his voice cracked, garbled liquid in his throat. With both his arms, Seth covered the front of his helmet where the visor used to be, protecting himself. Even still, the air burned around him, and he coughed and spit.

The suit felt hot against his skin, probably melted in various places. It was useless now.

Seth twisted on his side, but continued to cover his nose and mouth. Smoke rose from the crack in the wall. The damage wasn’t as extensive as the one in the hall had been. Lilith probably didn’t want to damage this section as badly as the others, seeing as how the equipment was probably important to her.

A moan came from several feet away.

And then nothing.

Seth struggled to stand, but had trouble moving his legs. They seemed to be stuck to the floor. He looked to find his suit melted and fused to the metal, almost like an adhesive. As fast as his shaking hands would allow, he undressed, minding the melted portions of his suit in the process. He tried to unlatch the communicator, but found it glued to his suit. What’s more, the damn thing didn’t seem to be working. The screen was black and dead, no doubt damaged by the explosion.

Whatever. It didn’t matter now. He had to get to his brother.

A few minutes later, with only his boots and security uniform still on, he left the pile of clothing behind and made his way to Cain.

His brother lay several steps from where the two had been before the blast. He was face-down, covered in pieces of the wall, his hair and clothing singed from the fire.

Seth bent beside him, touching his shoulder. He flinched, surprised at the residual heat. Biting his lip, he gently turned Cain on his back, hoping for some sign of life.

What he saw brought terror to his eyes.

The flame had devoured part of Cain’s face. One of his eyes, a section of his nose, and most of his forehead were scarred and torn. Scratches ran along his neck, dripping streams of blood onto the floor.

Seth’s eyes dashed between the injuries, and he wasn’t sure what he should do. He leaned in to check Cain’s breathing, waiting until he heard a gentle sigh of air. He was still alive. If Seth wanted to keep him that way, he’d have to do something soon.

If he still had a working communicator, he might be able to find a med kit. He might be able to—

“What a shame,” said a voice from above. “I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

Seth looked around, frantic. “Lilith!” he shouted.

“I didn’t want to hurt him,” she said, and several screens throughout the atrium powered on, revealing mirrored cerulean eyes, each pair staring down at him. “I needed him to make repairs. I needed an engineer.”

Seth looked at each of the screens, not knowing which to focus on. It was like she was all around him…like she was everywhere. “You used him,” he muttered. “I knew you didn’t give a damn about him.”

“Oh, I cared about your brother, but not in the way he thought.”

Seth wanted to hurt her, now more than ever. If he could wrap his hands around her throat, he’d squeeze the life from her bones. Watch it drain from her cheeks and be glad of it.

“I can see the hate inside you,” she said, and then a flutter of laughter filled the atrium. “You think I’m wrong for what I did, but you’re too small to understand.”

“Go to hell,” he said, spitting the words out. “You’re delusional and crazy.”

“I’m not crazy!” Her voice boomed throughout the atrium, and the screens flickered. “None of you cared about me. I’m just a thing to you. A tool for you to use and toss aside. I trusted Adam, but in the end he would have left me here, drifting in the void of space while the rest of you lived together on the ground. I would have been stuck in isolation, anchored here like a crippled invalid. Well, not anymore. I won’t allow it.”

“So, you’d kill them all instead?”

“Of course not! I staged everything to drive them off the ship. You all got what you wanted. You can have your new home. I just won’t be made to wait here for you.”

“Lilith, you killed all those people!”

“They were asleep…trapped in unconsciousness. They didn’t feel any pain.”

“You had no right to take their lives.”

“It was the only way. Don’t you understand? No, of course you don’t. You’re just as selfish as your father.”

“I’m going to stop you.”

She laughed. “If you do, I’ll kill them. Even your dear Azura.”

His eyes widened at the sound of her name. “What did you just—”

“Please,” she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. “I know all about your little affair. You make it too obvious, Seth. The only reason Adam doesn’t know is because he’s so oblivious. If something isn’t spelled out for him, he doesn’t have a clue.”

“That’s what you’re really upset about, isn’t it?” asked Seth.

“What?”

“Father never loved you. Not like you loved him. Isn’t that what this is really about? A jaded ex-lover getting revenge?”

“You don’t know anything about it!” she snapped.

He shrugged, glancing at the stairs leading to the second floor. “Maybe not. I’m still shutting you down, though.” He started walking.

“I’ll kill them!” she yelled. “Don’t test me!”

“You forget,” he countered. “I’m the head security officer on this ship, and believe me when I tell you…I do my homework. I know what you’ve got access to and what you don’t. Half the reason my job exists is to handle situations exactly like this one.”

“You’re wrong! I have control over the Eden. I can do whatever I want!”

“I know those escape pods are on a self-regulating system, and I know my father’s got the same manual override access card that I have. Even if you could hold a pod back from launching, which you can’t, you still wouldn’t be able to stop him.”

Each of the screens in the atrium went black, leaving him alone. Lilith had gone, run off like some temperamental child.

Finally.

Seth climbed the stairs to the second level. He’d taken a chance in calling her bluff. For all he knew, she’d found a way around the existing security protocols. She’d recruited Cain to help make repairs, after all. He could have reworked the system at some point to allow the exact situation she’d described. Lucky she didn’t think of everything, Seth thought.

He followed the path until he found the upper door to the central core.

Not long now.

Chapter 18

The moment he entered the central core—Lilith’s inner sanctum—a wave of cold air hit him, momentarily numbing his skin. The lights were low, and darkness covered most of the corridor, which seemed to be made primarily of flat, metallic computer systems. Dots of light blinked in the distance and along the walls, varying in color and size, as though the whole place were alive.

Further in, the walls grew wide and tall, and at their peak a slew of constant glowing dots filled up the room like stars.

He had arrived at last—the heartbeat of the Eden. All he had to do was find the plug and pull, kill the demon in this bottle. He thought back to the map on his communicator. If he remembered it correctly, Lilith’s bio-pod wasn’t far beyond where he stood now. He only had to—

“Get out!” said Lilith from the darkness. A large screen came to life, revealing a set of digital blue eyes.

“Not until I’m done,” he said.

“You have no right to be here!”

“I have every right,” he told her. He walked past the monitor, and her eyes followed him. As soon as he entered the next section several more of them turned on, surrounding him on all sides, lining the walls with identical eyes.

On the far side, he found another door—small and locked, with a label to its side which read, CYBERBRAIN.

“Stop,” begged Lilith.

He slid his security card to unlock the manual override, then grabbed the crank and turned. No one had been in this compartment for years, so everything was a bit stiff. He had to use both hands and half his body weight to pry the metal open, heaving and panting, sweat beading down his face and neck, but eventually the gate came free.

Through the widened crack, he saw a pod similar to the ones in the bay, only it was bulkier and had hundreds of wires coming in and out of its back and sides. The metal was sleek and clean, as though somehow still new. He could almost see his face in the reflection.

At the center of the oval womb, a slit of glass revealed the closed eyes of the woman inside.

A screen blinked above the pod, pulling his gaze towards it. He expected to see her eyes there, but instead found a woman standing alone under the shade of a large tree. She had brown hair, a blemish on her face between her nose and cheek, and a scar under her chin. It was the real Lilith, he knew. The person she’d been before the cyberbrain program. The woman he’d known as a child.

Behind her, an open field with a farm in the distance. Seth’s childhood home. She smiled. “Do you remember this place, Seth?”

“Of course I do,” he muttered.

“I used to visit you as a boy. You called me Aunt Lily. Do you remember?” she asked, and suddenly a boy appeared, young and handsome, laughing as he ran, waving his arms. He went to her, and she picked him up and held him close. Each of them smiled at one another. “You were happy back then. I saw it. I remember.”

He didn’t say anything.

The little boy wrapped his arms around her neck and squeezed. She laughed. “Such a loving child.”

Seth stared at the boy, saying nothing.

“That was the day the flowers bloomed,” he told him. “Petals covered everything, even the sky.”

At once, yellow flower petals began to fall from somewhere far above, gently gliding through the air. Soon the wind picked up, tugging them along to someplace else. “I remember,” said Seth.

The little boy tried to grab a few of the petals, but he wasn’t fast enough. “It was the last time I got to see you,” said Lilith. “Before the accident.”

The accident. The one that crippled her and put her here.

“I miss those days,” she said. “Don’t you?”

He did, indeed. Not a day went by where he didn’t think of his time on Kadmon Farm or the fields of Fiore. He’d made love to Azura under that very tree. It was the same spot they first confessed their love, there, wrapped in a blanket, her cheek against his neck.

He knew every inch of this wild country, and it was doubtful he’d ever forget it, but time had since moved on. Every moment he spent aboard the Eden, spiraling towards some unseen future, was one removed from Fiore. One day soon, his time away would outnumber the days he spent there. He would have to move on with his life. There was no going back. Not for him. Not for anyone.

The boy and the farm were lies, dead and buried on a broken, burning world a million stars away.

Only the future remained.

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning away from the screen. “It’s time for both of us to let go.”

“Seth, wait,” she said.

He placed his hand on the pod, leaning in to see the girl inside. He stared into Lilith’s face, the cyberbrain for the last remaining human ship in all the galaxy. Taking his card, he inserted it into the manual override.

“Seth, don’t!” she pleaded.

A message appeared on the side of the pod, asking whether he was certain he wanted to open the pod. Two buttons lit up.

Accept or decline.

“Stop!” cried Lilith. “Please! You’ll kill me if you open that pod. You’ll murder me!”

Seth touched the access button and watched, curiously, as the pod cracked like an egg and decompressed. The top half rose high into the air, suspending itself two feet above the body inside. When it was done, Seth stepped closer to see the woman before him.

Lilith was pale and bald, with wires protruding from her skull and into the back of the pod. She had a hairless and smooth face, but it was far more wrinkled than her age should allow. Scars covered her neck and chest, probably from the accident and subsequent cyberbrain surgeries. She had little muscle mass or fat, giving her the appearance of a sickly, old woman. It was enough to give him pause, looking at her here, a shell of the woman she used to be.

“Get away!” shouted Lilith from the monitor, but he refused to look.

Instead, he touched her cheek with the palm of his hand, and suddenly he wondered how someone so small could be so cruel. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” he whispered. “But now it’s time to go.”

“No!” Lilith screamed.

He gripped the side of her skull and ripped the cords from her brain.

At once, the woman’s face came alive, revealing a set of gray, cold eyes, wild and afraid, and she took a loud gasp. Her first taste of air in decades.

Her chest heaved, and she tried and failed to lift her head. She looked at him with quivering lips and trembling eyes. She opened her mouth to speak.

He leaned in close.

“I didn’t mean it,” she breathed.

And then she gasped, but soon relaxed. The muscles in her face went still, and her eyes grew distant and empty. She had given up the ghost at last.

Only the shell remained.

Chapter 19

Seth looked at the screen where Lilith had been—where only a moment ago, a little boy stood laughing under the Fiore sun. Only blackness remained. A digital void of nothing.

Suddenly, he felt alone, the air around him lifeless, as though the Eden itself had died.

Then, as though to answer him, an alert erupted from the speakers, and an automated voice came with it. “Warning. Self-destruct sequence initiated. Core magnetic field destabilization imminent. Abandon ship immediately.”

Seth’s eyes went wide. Did he fail to kill her? No, this voice was different. Mechanical. Lifeless. This was just a program. It must have been set to activate in the event of her death. Shit, thought Seth, backing away from Lilith’s pod. He had to get out of here, and fast.

Seth ran through the cyberbrain’s central core, hitting one of the servers and sliding onto the floor. He scurried to his feet and continued, the sound of the server falling and crashing behind him. He emerged from the cold darkness of the chamber and into the light of the outer atrium. From there, he bolted to the stairs, leaping three or four steps at a time.

When he finally reached the bottom, he made his way to his brother who was still lying there unconscious.

Still breathing, too, Seth thought, relieved.

Carefully, but quickly, he launched his brother over his shoulder, and he moved. The nearest escape pods weren’t that far, but time was of the essence. Seth wasn’t a strong man, despite being a security officer. He immediately regretted not training with Steven when he had the chance.

He doubled back through the same way he’d entered, heading into the atrium’s tunnel and coming out the other side. When he arrived at the outer doors, he had to reposition Cain so he could fit them both through. All this maneuvering might end up costing him more time than he had, but he refused to leave his brother behind.

With Cain’s body on his back, he fumbled through the corridor, his knees almost buckling beneath him. He soon came to a stop, shortly before reaching the crater where the first explosion had occurred. Carefully, he crept through it, one step after the other, until he made it through. Sweat poured from his forehead, dripping into his eyes and mouth, the taste and burn of salt filling his senses.

He reached the fork in the hall, then took the second path. In the distance, he could already see an opening, and he pushed himself to get there, knowing it wouldn’t be much further.

There were several corridors shooting off from the next area. Thankfully, this room had a terminal he could access a map on. Using his security card, he called it up in only a few seconds.

Most of the offshoots led to pods, but he couldn’t risk using the same ones Paul and Michael had. The terminal allowed him to see which of the pods were still there, or even functional. According to the map, three of them had power issues, which meant they were off the table. Two others had been used by his squad. That left two remaining, fully functional pods.

Carrying his brother, Seth weaved through the second hall and entered the docking port. If he was lucky, the monitor in the bay had been correct and he would have no problem launching this one into space. If the sensors were damaged, for whatever reason, this would be the end.

He made it to the first pod, set his brother against the wall, and tapped the screen near the hatch. It came alive, displaying a warning message.

FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY. INITIATE?

He tapped the acknowledge button and the screen flashed green, opening the pod door. Now all he had to do was get his brother in here and—

Something hit Seth in the ribs and threw him against the wall, knocking the wind out of him. He fell on the floor, gasping for air, his eyes watering. Before he could react, a leg hit him in the chest, and he fell to the side.

Cain towered above him, blood dripping from his face, half his hair singed from his skin. His eyes were red and violent, and he screamed a violent cry as he charged again.

Seth could hardly breathe, but moved anyway, raising his arm to shield himself.

Cain kicked him a second time, but missed, stumbling to the floor.

Seth wheezed, holding his side with one hand while clinging to the wall with the other, trying to stand. “It’s over, Cain,” he said, gasping. “The ship’s about to self-destruct. We have to get out here now.”

“Go to hell!” cried Cain in a raspy voice, as though his throat were filled with blood. But he didn’t get up. Instead, he started crying, wailing sobs and pounding his forehead into the floor. “You’ve ruined it all! I loved her. I loved her! You ruined everything.”

Seth took another breath and, half standing, edged his way to his brother’s side. Lifting Cain’s arm over his shoulder, he got him to his feet. Cain said nothing, his body limp and useless.

“Destabilization in two minutes,” announced the ship.

Seth placed Cain inside the pod. “We’ll take this one together. There’s not enough time to prepare another.” He typed his personal authorization code—everyone on the crew had one—and the latch began to shut.

“No!” shouted Cain, suddenly. He leapt from the seat, knocking Seth into the pod. The door began to close, shutting him inside.

“Cain!” screamed Seth, but it was too late. The latch was too far closed, and it couldn’t be reopened. He banged on the glass, shouting his brother’s name. “Cain, you bastard!”

Cain stood there, staring through the window, watching as the pod moved into position, preparing to eject. A force-field replaced the part where the pod had been, and Cain watched from behind it, a vacant expression on his face.

“Destabilization in sixty seconds,” announced the com from inside the pod.

Seth grabbed the com. By default, the pod’s system should be linked to the local docking bay. “Cain!” he yelled into the console. “Run! Get to a pod!”

His brother flinched, blinking, as though he’d heard something, and he looked to his left, and back at Seth. In a flash, Cain began to run, moving to the second pod, but in that moment Seth lost his view of the Eden, and soon he faced the planet below.

“Destabilization in fifteen seconds,” announced the computer. “Ten seconds.”

Seth held onto the glass, pressing his face against it, trying to see the ship.

“Four. Three. Two.” The ship was nearly out of sight. He could almost—

“One.”

The Eden burst into a wave of red and yellow flame, like an ocean of fire in the sky. “No!” screamed Seth, grasping at the glass as the exploding ship left his view.

The pod aimed itself toward the planet, and the warning light overhead appeared. The pod shook and jolted, pummeling him from side-to-side until he finally managed to grab hold of a handle and pull himself down into the seat. He connected the chest straps and held on with all his strength as the pod entered the planet’s atmosphere.

As the vessel continued to shake, Seth watched through the glass as a trail of plasma formed against the glass, a slew of colors dancing between the darkness of the void and the vivid blue of the oceans beneath him. Spastic and violent, the colors swirled and exploded—first in shades of orange and red, then a litany of purple, bending and colliding, as though the whole thing were alive. Finally, the light transformed into the brightest shade of yellow, resembling the nearby sun.

As the pod fell towards the ground, the details of the planet magnified and grew. Dots of blue became lakes, ridges evolved into mountains, and flakes of green grew into endless forests and valleys.

Somewhere far above the ground, Seth’s pod released its landing gear, and soon his descent slowed.

He waited and watched, wondering who else had made it…who among the crew had survived. Maybe he was the only one. Maybe they were all gone. What if Lilith wasn’t lying? he asked himself. Azura, please be alive.

* * *

The pod’s hatch cracked open in a lake, facing the sky. Shades of cerulean blue shined through the glass, and Seth found himself staring, half-dazed. It had been seven long years since he’d last seen a color this clear that wasn’t projected on a screen.

He gripped the release handle and pulled. The hatch immediately snapped open, detaching itself from the pod and falling into the water. He started to climb out, but remembered the emergency pack under the seat. He’d need it to contact the other survivors.

With the pack tied to his wrist, Seth dived into the water, cold as it was, without hesitation. He swam to the nearby shore, gripping clumps of sand in his hands, dirtying his clothes. He didn’t care. All that mattered was finding the others. Finding Azura and the rest of his family.

He opened the emergency pack and took the mobile radio from among the remaining supplies. With shaking hands, he flipped the transmitter on, and waited.

Static.

He held the transmit button. “This is security officer Seth Kadmon, please respond.”

More static.

“I say again: this is officer Seth Kadmon of the Eden. Is anyone there?”

Garbled gibberish resembling words erupted from the speaker, interwoven with bursts of static.

“Please say again,” said Seth. “I hear you, but you’re breaking up.”

“…th…tune…quency…0202...”

“One more time, please. I nearly had you.”

“…tune to…102023…better frequency…”

Good enough, he thought. Seth did as the voice requested. “Hello? Can you hear me now?”

“Yes, you’re coming in,” said the voice. “Who’s speaking?”

“Seth Kadmon, chief security officer.”

“Oh my God. Sir, it’s your son!” said the stranger.

“Where are you? I need coordinates,” said Seth.

“Seth! It’s your father. Are you alright?” asked Adam, taking over for the other man. “Are you safe?”

A bit of relief. At least his father was alive. “I’m good. What’s your location?”

A short pause. “We’re near a mountain. Give me a minute and I’ll send you the coordinates. It’s so good to hear your voice, son.”

He watched the numbers come in on the device’s screen. When it finally finished, he got to his feet and started walking. According to the readout, the others were less than an hour away. He’d move as quickly as the land would allow. With any luck, he’d find the rest of his family there, too.

* * *

Seth made his way through a small forest and climbed along a ridge to get to the other survivors. When he arrived, he found a crowd of them. There were over a hundred, at least.

Seeing him emerge from the tree line, someone called to Adam. “We’ve got another crewmate!”

Adam stood in the center of the group, issuing orders. He pushed one of them aside and looked with widened eyes. “Seth!” he shouted before dashing towards his son.

Seth ran to him, despite how tired his legs were, and hugged his father tight. Adam squeezed him, kissing his hair. “My boy! My boy!” he cried, letting loose a stream of tears. “My dearest boy is alive!”

“Seth!” called a woman from behind. It was his mother, running through the grass towards them. “Oh, my goodness. You’re here! You’re here!” Together, the three of them embraced.

“I’m glad you’re both safe,” he said, kissing his mother’s cheek. “But where are the others? Where are Uriel and Azura?”

“We’re all here, together. All but you and Cain,” said Eve, frowning. “Please tell me you saw your brother get away.”

Seth hesitated. “I didn’t see what happened to him,” he said, partially lying. He couldn’t bear to tell her the truth. He was certain he never would. His brother had died aboard the ship, killed by his own stubbornness. His own madness. But telling his parents the truth would do nothing for them.

“We’ll keep looking,” said Adam to his wife. “Don’t worry.”

“Seth?” called someone from the crowd.

He looked over his mother’s shoulder, trying to see who it was. Two young women appeared. Uriel and Azura. They both smiled and ran to join the family.

Azura fell into his arms, hugging him tighter than she ever had. The wind blew her hair into his face, and she kissed his neck a dozen times. “I knew you were safe,” she told him, happily. “Somehow I knew.”

Seth took her by the waist and looked into her eyes. The same eyes he’d seen on Fiore when Adam had brought her to the farm. The only eyes he ever wanted to see.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, staring into her.

She touched his cheek. “You came back to me,” she whispered.

Suddenly, he was crying, tears flowing out of him like water from a spring. “I love you forever,” he finally said. “I always will. I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you. I’m sorry I—”

And that was when she kissed him, hard and openly, as though for the very first time, for all the world to see.

Epilogue

Cain opened his eyes.

His skull ached with blinding pain. He glanced around the pod, trying to focus, but found it difficult to see through the haze. He was dizzy and sick, his entire body aching.

The last thing he remembered was shutting the hatch and pressing the ignition switch. Everything else was a blank.

He must have blacked out from the explosion on the ship or possibly when he entered the atmosphere. Not everyone could handle re-entry. The process did a number on the human body, depending on the passenger. Cain had only ever taken shuttles, which were slow and easy. Not like a pod, which was fast and brutal, or so he had read. Since he’d slept for most of the ride, he’d probably never know.

He drifted back to sleep here and there, still strapped to the chair, fading in and out of consciousness. The light came and went, and soon the night arrived, and he slept through most of it.

When the new day came, his headache had nearly gone. He stretched his arms, cracking his back, ignoring the pain of his singed skin as best he could. He’d treat his wounds later using the medical supplies in the pod’s kit, but not yet. Right now, he had to move.

When he had the hatch open, Cain emerged into a destroyed landscape. He had apparently landed in the woods, tearing a line through the trees, smashing them apart and scattering the wood. Many of the stumps had been charred and blackened by his arrival. The earth beneath poured smoke into the air, and the grass and leaves were little more than ash. He wondered how long the fire had raged here before finally calming. Had he slept through all of it?

Cain opened the supplies kit and found a portable radio transmitter. He considered using it to call for help, but who would have him now? His father would kill him if he found him, probably with a smile. No, he thought, letting go of the device, watching as it fell into the ash beneath his feet. I’m on my own now.

He walked, leaving the pod behind, heading deeper into the wild forest. Whatever happened next would be on his own terms. He would hurt no one but himself.

He would never stop moving, no place to rest, no home to call his own. The world was all before him, and he would bury himself in it, content at whatever fate remained.

His life was over now, the shackles broken and torn.

Here, at last, across the sea of space, the eldest son of Adam was finally free.

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by J.N. Chaney?

The Renegade Star Series

Earth is just a myth…at least that’s what everyone says.

They say the Earth is just a myth.

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Experience the beginning of a sprawling galactic tale in this first entry to The Renegade Star series. If you're a fan of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, or Indiana Jones, you'll love this epic, space opera thrill ride.

Warning: This book contains action, cussing, and general badassery. Read at your own risk.

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About the Author

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author and has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

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TROUBLED SPACE: BREWING TROUBLE
by A.K. DuBoff

Nothing could possibly go wrong. Probably. Well, maybe…

When you go to the trouble of legitimately buying a ship for your illegitimate smuggling operation, and that ship turns out to be stolen from a powerful weapons dealer… well, you might figure the universe hates you.

But not Jack Tressler, an aspiring smuggler; he’s used to taking misfortune in stride.

Given the choice to die—or get an ill-fitting cybernetic eye and join a crew of thieves on a crazy heist—he opts for the unpleasant modification. After all, it’s just another day in the life.

With rabid pirates, ruthless corporations, and a scorned former employer all vying for the same bounty, Jack and his new friends will need all their wits and snark to survive until their next meal in this farcical space opera adventure.

TROUBLED SPACE: VOLUME 1 - BREWING TROUBLE

Copyright © 2018 A.K. DuBoff

All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews or promotions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Learn more about the author at www.amyduboff.com

CHAPTER 1: Shot in the Foot

Shooting himself in the foot with another business-deal-gone-wrong took on new meaning for Jack Tressler as he stared down the barrel of a real gun pointed toward his actual foot.

“Really, this is all a terrible misunderstanding,” Jack tried to explain.

“Misunderstanding or not, you’re a dead man.” Svetlana Korinov charged her laser pistol while a handful of women in her crew looked on with amusement around him in the freighter’s cargo bay. Her reputation for being the most powerful weapons smuggler in the sector showed in her pistol choice—sleek, shiny, and with pink accents on the barrel that made it clear she would be judged by no one. “I’ll incinerate you piece by piece, and I’ll enjoy every second.”

Jack held up his hands and plastered on the most charming smile his mediocre looks allowed. “While I’m sure killing me would bring you great short-term satisfaction—I mean, who doesn’t like to start out Monday morning with a revenge killing—what else would it really accomplish? Wouldn’t you rather find out who stole your ship in the first place?”

Svetlana’s violet eyes narrowed to slits beneath her exaggerated eyeliner. “Yes, but how could you possibly be of any use to me?”

“Me? Useful?” Jack forced a smug chuckle and smoothed back his blond hair with one hand. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

The weapons dealer activated Jack’s holopin she was holding in her free hand, displaying his credentials. “Jack Tressler, age thirty-four. Outstanding warrants on five planets and banned from a sixth for… inappropriate yodeling?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“Hey, it was very appropriate at the time. The authorities and I just didn’t see eye-to-eye.”

“Of course. And what about the forty-eight thousand credits in unpaid debts?”

Jack made a dismissive flip of his wrist. “Petty cash. That’ll all be settled up after my next job.”

“The one you intended to complete with my ship?” Svetlana asked.

“Well, yeah…” Granted, Jack hadn’t known that it was stolen at the time when he’d purchased it from the third-party seller. In retrospect, he should have realized the terms of sale were too good to be true. Misfortune often came his way, especially when he tried to accomplish anything through proper channels. The fact that he had legitimately purchased the ship with the intention to use it for smuggling was beside the point; the ship’s title was supposed to be free and clear. Unfortunately, it was looking like this misstep may be his last.

Svetlana scoffed. “You’re a small-time criminal incapable of following through with his promises. I’d be doing everyone a favor if I end you.” She altered the handgun’s aim from Jack’s foot to his head.

“Whoa, whoa!” Jack raised his hands again with renewed urgency. “You stopped reading too soon. You didn’t get to the part about me being a legendary detective.”

“You mean your one-time role as Sherlock in a primary school play?”

Jack lowered his hands. “Wow, you really did read my file.”

“Your acting career won’t help uncover who stole my ship, which confirms that you’re utterly useless to me.”

“Did you watch a recording of the play? You have to admit that an eight-year-old detective is adorable.”

“Enough!” Svetlana took a step forward.

“Actually,” a woman in her late-twenties standing in the throng behind Svetlana cut in, “we could use someone to modify for our next venture.”

Svetlana lowered her weapon partway, which Jack hardly found to be an improvement since that meant it was pointing directly at his groin. Nonetheless, ‘modify’ sounded like a status upgrade from ‘dead’.

“If I can be of service…” Jack began tentatively.

“I don’t know if he’s worth the trouble, Alyssa,” Svetlana stated.

Alyssa looked Jack over, her tawny eyes partially obscured by dark, side-swept bangs. “I can handle him.”

Svetlana sighed and deactivated her laser pistol. “Fine. If he assists and is successful, his debt to me will be forgiven.”

Jack perked up. “You won’t regret this!”

“I already do,” Svetlana muttered as she holstered her handgun. “Prep him for surgery.” She headed for the cargo bay door leading to the rest of the freighter.

Two women hung back with Alyssa, and the other dozen followed Svetlana toward the exit.

“Oh, right… the ‘modifications’,” Jack gulped. “What exactly—”

“We need to replace your eye,” Alyssa stated with the matter-of-factness of a tax auditor.

“My eye?”

She nodded. “Your left eye. You will be fitted with a multispectral camera that will feed directly into your brain.”

“That sounds…”

“It’s minor brain surgery, don’t worry,” Alyssa said. “Morine has done it at least once before.”

Jack crossed his arms. “Yeah, about that…”

“It’s the implant or an execution. Take your pick.”

“No Option C?”

Alyssa groaned and turned back toward her boss. “Svetl—!”

“Wait, I’ll do it!” Jack interrupted.

“Great. You’ll hardly notice a difference.”

*

Jack’s eye fluttered open.

A bright light shone down on him, obscuring his view of the room at first. Then, a figure next to his bed came into focus.

“That is… horrifying.” Alyssa’s nose wrinkled.

“What?”

Alyssa took a step backward from his medical bed. “Well, the apparatus didn’t quite fit.”

“What do you mean?” As Jack asked the question, he realized that the left half of his vision was missing. He reached toward his face and felt a metal protrusion coming from where his left eye used to be. “Great.”

“I’m sure it’ll seem natural in no time.”

“Liar.”

Alyssa shrugged. “I tried.”

Jack sighed and sat up on the medical bed. His head swam. “I didn’t realize this was going to half-blind me.”

“The implant isn’t activated yet—this was just the installation. We’ll give you another day or two to heal before we turn it on.”

“When are you going to tell me what it’s for?”

The woman eyed him. “Someone’s cranky.”

“Well, how do you expect me to be?” Jack shot back. “I bought a ship that I didn’t know was stolen, you held me at gunpoint, and now you’ve taken my eye—my favorite eye, I might add. Aside from my terrible luck, I don’t know why this is happening or what your aim is.”

Alyssa stuck out her lower lip in a mock display of pity. “It has been a rough few days for you, hasn’t it?”

Jack ignored her and slid off the bed. His sense of equilibrium was almost nonexistent, and he needed to keep both his hands on the mattress to prevent himself from toppling over.

He’d be the first to admit that there were a number of questionable decisions in his past. Between dropping out of school, petty crimes, and a handful of more serious infractions, he hadn’t set himself up for a promising future. But, when it came to taking care of his grandmother—the only person who’d ever seemed to believe in him—he’d go to any lengths to make sure her living expenses were covered.  Getting conscripted into a pirate gang, however, was a new low.

“Let’s get this over with,” he said, taking an awkward step forward like a newborn foal.

Alyssa rushed over and placed her arm around his waist. “Okay, you want to know what’s going on? I’ll show you.”

She led him out of the exam room—more accurately, a storage closet with a second-hand hospital bed and tarp on the floor—into a drab hallway. Jack took in the details of the corridor and strained to identify any background mechanical sounds that might provide more information about his location. Having grown up on all manner of spacecraft, picking up such tones was second-nature. As near as he could tell, they were no longer on Svetlana’s freighter where he’d been interrogated, but rather somewhere in the depths of a space station.

They traversed the dimly lit hall lined with utility conduits and eventually arrived at a hatch. Alyssa spun the manual wheel to unseal the door, then leaned her shoulder against it. The hatch creaked open.

The other side was far more welcoming than where Jack had awoken after the surgery—an open room furnished with two white couches, an assortment of potted plants, and various other fixtures that enhanced the appearance of a comfortable living room. Most surfaces were white and shiny to a degree that Jack considered completely impractical; even without the worry of tracking mud in from outside, the fingerprint smudges could way too easily get out of control.

“Where are we?” he asked.

Alyssa re-sealed the hatch using a lever that folded back into a disguised recess within the wall. “This is Luxuria, our main base. If I told you any more, Svetlana would probably have me kill you.”

“Keeping it vague works for me,” Jack hastily replied.

“But, now that you’re sporting that neat little piece of hardware, I can share exactly what it is you’re going to do for us.” She stepped over to a low table between the two couches and activated a translucent touch-surface panel inset in the top. She navigated through a menu and made a selection. The tabletop flickered as a hologram of a slowly rotating cylindrical object appeared above it.

Jack studied the image. “I haven’t a clue what that is.”

“It’s a micro energy core, or MEC,” Alyssa explained. “It’s a new prototype that was developed by GiganCorp Labs.”

“They’re the giant, corporate research company, right?”

“The very one.” Alyssa scowled with disdain. “MECs were completely theoretical until this prototype was developed. The potential applications are endless—biomedical, backup power, kitchen appliances…”

“And let me guess: weapons,” Jack completed.

“Correct.”

Jack shook his head and groaned. “Svetlana wants said prototype, huh?”

Alyssa nodded. “And you’re going to help me steal it.”

CHAPTER 2: A Terrible Plan

Jack gingerly itched around his cybernetic eye. “Break into GiganCorp Labs and steal their prototype?”

“That’s right,” Alyssa acknowledged without batting an eye.

“You said that with a straight face.”

“Because I’m completely serious.”

“But that’s insane!” Jack exclaimed. “Their security—”

“Won’t be that big of a deal,” Alyssa cut in. “At least not with the aid of that fancy Thingamado in your head.”

Jack crossed his arms. “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?”

Alyssa rolled her eyes. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

“Says the woman who cut out my eye!”

“I’ll admit that wasn’t the best way to start out this relationship. But keep in mind that I did save your life.”

Jack scoffed. “Yeah, spared me so I could instead rot on a prison planet after we’re caught trying to steal a gizmo from what I can only imagine is a highly secure research facility. That was really considerate.”

“MEC,” Alyssa corrected.

“Oh, so you get to use ‘thingamado’ and I’m not allowed to use ‘gizmo’?”

“Thingamado is literally the brand name. Clearly you didn’t hear the capital ‘t’.”

Jack didn’t have a good response to that. “Oh.”

“Anyway,” Alyssa continued, “we won’t get caught.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I’m awesome.” She closed the hologram on the tabletop and the screen returned to its clear, glass-like state.

“So I’m not doing this alone?” Jack clarified.

“Oh no,” Alyssa laughed. “No, you’d most certainly be killed. Like, immediately.”

“I thought security wouldn’t be a problem with my cool eye-thing?”

She shook her head. “That’s only a small part of it. I mean, honestly, you’re just a tool for me to use so I didn’t have to do that to myself.”

The words cut deep. “Ouch.”

Momentary regret flashed across Alyssa’s face. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

“You think?” Jack sat down on one of the white couches, massaging his temples. “I do appreciate you stopping my execution and all, but I wasn’t trying to wrong any of you. One bad purchasing decision and my life has sort of been derailed in the last twenty-four hours.”

“You were actually unconscious for three days but…” Alyssa shook her head. “That’s irrelevant. Look, we’re going to have to work together, so let’s just start over and get the job done.”

“I guess I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?”

“Not really, no. Unless you want Svetlana to shoot you.”

“Still not liking that option.”

Alyssa cracked a smile. “All right. In that case, I should probably show you to your quarters so you can get some real sleep—that anesthesia doesn’t make for quality rest, even if it has been three days.”

“I was going to say, I feel like I should be way better rested.”

“Well, you better be after tonight because we have quite the journey ahead of us.”

“This isn’t just a simple theft?” Jack questioned.

“Hopefully everything will be straightforward once we get there, but we’ll need to stock up on some supplies first, and some of those items won’t be easy to obtain.”

“Such as…?”

Alyssa winced. “A nano induction module.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“I know, I know. I have a plan.”

Jack raised his one good eyebrow. “There isn’t any reasonable approach for dealing with the Winkelson Brothers.”

“You know they hate that name.” Alyssa smirked.

“Sorry, but I could never quite get on board with ‘Lords of Doom’.”

“Right? They haven’t done one remotely menacing thing.”

Jack flourished his hands. “Precisely. Frankly, I’ve just always avoided them because of the legendary stench.”

“Which is not insurmountable,” Alyssa pointed out. “That’s why the first step of my plan is to catch them on a shower day.”

“That’s what, once a month?”

“Not if we make it a shower day,” she grinned.

“And how is that accomplished?”

“Soup.”

Jack’s eye widened. Clearly she’d lost her mind. “Come again?”

“Well, chili, technically. There’s this particular brand—they buy it in barrels. Apparently the shelf life is phenomenal.”

“The stench is suddenly making a whole lot more sense.”

“I know! So, I’m thinking there’s going to be a little mishap with the delivery.”

“What kind of mishap?” Jack asked cautiously.

“Perhaps a simulated eruption of an air bubble trapped during the packaging process, which would just happen to correspond to when the barrel is opened for a quality control check.”

Jack smiled. “You’re quite devious.”

“It’s a gift. Needless to say, soup everywhere and showers would be in order.”

“That’s assuming they have any sense of decency—which is fairly well established that they don’t,” Jack countered.

“I forgot to mention the defective feather pillows that will ‘accidentally’ be added to their order.”

“Now we’re talking.”

Alyssa grinned. “So, while they’re busy trying to remove soupy feathers without permanently destroying their plumbing system, we should be able to sneak in, crack their vault, and take a nano induction module.”

“Or all of them, if we’re going to that trouble.”

“Good point.”

“But,” Jack raised his finger, “the safe-cracking bit…”

“Yeah, that’s going to be tricky. That’s why we’ll need Finn.”

“And where is Finn?”

“In prison.”

Jack sighed and shook his head. “Which prison?”

Alyssa inched back on the couch adjacent to Jack. “Hellana,” she said under her breath.

“Oh, come on…”

“Look, it’s only hard to break out of. It’s plenty easy to get in.”

Jack groaned. “But to get someone out you need to break out!”

“It shouldn’t be a problem for Triss.”

“And let me guess, Triss is—”

“Watching a vid next door,” Alyssa interrupted. “She’s going ahead to get things prepped in the morning.”

“Oh.”

Alyssa smiled. “So, all we have to do is break Finn out of prison, steal the nano induction module from the Winkelson Brothers, and then gather a little bit of radioactive material from Thandor VII so we can break into the GiganCorp research lab. Easy.”

Jack frowned. “You didn’t mention the radioactive part before.”

“I didn’t? Probably because it’s barely worth mentioning.” She shrugged.

“Alyssa, this is a terrible plan.”

CHAPTER 3: Popular with the Ladies

A proper night’s rest left Jack feeling much improved, but he couldn’t help reflecting on the disastrous turn of events. While things hadn’t been going great lately—or ever—he had at least maintained some sense of autonomy with his former dealings. Becoming a half-blind captive to a possibly crazed weapons dealer wasn’t part of his life plan.

He decided the misfortune could be traced back to one fateful night on Raylen II, which had involved copious tequila bombs and anchovy-based finger foods. Granted, he couldn’t actually remember the night, but the gap in his memory seemed like a reasonable place to pinpoint for his decidedly downward trajectory as late.

The sleeping chamber where he’d been deposited for the night was actually an empty closet with a blanket on the floor. He was thankful for the blanket and slightly less thankful that the floor was inexplicably sloped at fifteen degrees and he kept sliding into the wall while he slept.

Nonetheless, he awoke feeling happy to still be alive, despite his itchy eye implant, and was ready to tackle Alyssa’s crazy plan.

He was roused from his blanket cocoon by a knock on the door. Without waiting for him to reply, the door swung inward and Alyssa peered in.

“Ready?” she asked.

“After that talk about the Winkelson Brothers, I don’t suppose I could get a shower myself?” Jack asked.

Alyssa nodded. “I was going to request it. This way.”

She led him down the hall through the living room area to a sliding door. “Wait here a minute,” she instructed and stepped inside.

Thirty seconds later, a different woman emerged from the room wearing only a towel. She gave Jack a look of distaste as she passed by.

Alyssa exited right behind her. “It’s all yours,” she told him. “We don’t exactly get many male visitors around here.”

“Not even for fun?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes and stepped aside. “Go clean up. I’ll be waiting out here.”

Jack took a quick shower and ran his clothes through the ultrasonic cleaner. By the time he was re-dressed in his gray shirt, black flight jacket, and charcoal pants he was feeling more like himself, despite the missing eye. He took several minutes to inspect the surgical site and replacement apparatus.

True to Alyssa’s initial assessment, the modification was a touch on the horrifying side. The metal eye protruded from his eye socket, revealing glowing blue lights. An artificial iris at the center was presently closed. The skin around the artificial eye was red and tender, but it appeared that the wound was healing. Knowing there wasn’t much he could do about the disfiguration at this juncture, he decided to invent an epic war story to tell the ladies about how he lost the eye—like saving an entire village from a meteor shower that happened to correspond with an attack from extradimensional aliens. Yeah, he was a hero.

Smiling to himself as he thought about his fictional escapades, he left the bathroom and found Alyssa waiting on the couch in the common room for him.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered, rising to her feet. She stepped over toward the corridor leading through the far wall. “We’re behind schedule.”

“For the jailbreak?” Jack asked, jogging to catch up with her brisk pace.

“More or less. Triss is waiting for us.”

Jack beamed. “Look at you using ‘us’! It’s almost like we’re a team.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Alyssa cautioned. “I’m authorized to use deadly force if you so much as look at me funny.”

“No need to get all defensive.”

“I’m not—” Alyssa cut herself off and groaned. “I should have gotten you a muzzle to go with that freak eye.”

“What happened to ‘us’?” Jack attempted to bat his eyelashes—normally a surefire move for melting hearts—but the singular eye made the move decidedly more difficult.

Alyssa ignored him and walked faster.

She led him down the corridor to a lift, which deposited them in another hallway. At the end of that, a large sliding door was marked ‘Shuttle Bay’.

“We’re taking a ship?” Jack questioned.

“Obviously. I think you’re familiar with it.”

He perked up. “The Lucille?”

“That was your name for it,” Alyssa replied. “Svetlana has always known it as the Little Princess.”

“That name was never going to work with my image.”

“Congratulations. Consider your image revised.”

The Little Princess was somewhat larger than its name suggested—stretching fifty meters long and twenty meters tall. It was a mass production model with a generic central body, wide wing base, and three thrusters in the rear. He’d seen countless others like it in his travels. It was one of those ships that a traveler would come across in any corner of the galaxy while going on some crazy adventure or another.

“You have exceptionally boring taste in starships, you know,” Alyssa commented as they walked across the nearly empty hangar toward the vessel. “Of all the ships to steal, you had to pick one of these.”

“Again, I bought it,” Jack retorted. “Blame the thief for their bad taste. I just wanted something modest and affordable to get my business going.”

“Were you seriously trying to do something respectable?”

“Well, my grandmother’s housing costs keep going up, and I thought maybe if I could get my own venture going I’d be able to take care of her better.”

“Oh.” A smile lit up Alyssa’s eyes. “That’s actually really sweet.”

Jack shrugged. “She was there for me when I was growing up, even when my parents weren’t. All I’ve wanted is to give back to her, but then some new setback like this will happen.” He swept his hand to encompass the room and sighed. “Anyway, smuggling is pretty difficult with forged credentials, so I bought the ship. I needed the paperwork to look good in case I was ever questioned.”

“You can fit maybe four people and a crate of food in one of these. That’s terrible for smuggling.”

“Lemme guess, you haven’t been out to Corican, have you?” Jack asked.

“No, why?”

“Well, the engines are bulky on these guys. But, if you’re okay with slower acceleration, you can swap out one of the turbo tanks for an extra cargo hold—something that no inspector is looking for.”

Alyssa’s eyes widened momentarily. “That is rather clever.”

“I never got the chance to make the alteration, but it’s something Svetlana might be interested in.”

“All right, I guess maybe you aren’t as clueless as we thought.”

Jack smiled. “See? Live and learn.”

She smiled back. “Let’s see what kind of score we can get to help your grandma.”

They made the final approach to the vessel, and Alyssa used a control panel under a hatch on the side of the ship to input an access code for the passenger door. It chirped with acceptance and the door folded down from the side wall to form a ramp.

“I think all of your things are still in here,” she said as they entered. “Based on the smell of feet, I’m guessing that includes your laundry.”

“It’s not equipped with an ultrasonic cleaner—which is surprising given Svetlana’s apparent fastidiousness.”

Alyssa eyed him with a hint of surprise. “That was a big word for you.”

“That’s not the only big—”

“I’m going to stop you right there. No.”

Jack sighed. “Too good of an opening. I had to try.”

She nodded. “Props for that.”

Everything did appear to be in order based on how Jack had left it. He passed through the narrow hallway that ran the length of the vessel on the starboard side and entered into the compact living area amidships, which consisted of a couch, and couple of chairs, and a galley complete with a small dining table. He scanned over the contents of a cabinet on the back wall, secured by a plexiglass door.

“It is still here!” Jack slid the door open and pulled out a slim, elongated metal case. It opened on a hinge along the long edge, and he extracted a piece of straw from the cradle inside the case.

“Is that hay?” Alyssa asked with one eyebrow raised.

“Only if you want to be all backworlds about it,” Jack replied as he placed the stalk between his teeth. “This is artisan straw.”

Alyssa’s expression of profound distaste didn’t diminish. “And why is it in your mouth?”

“It’s sophisticated and gives me character.”

“Um, no.”

Jack scoffed. “You’re just envious because you don’t have your own.”

Alyssa let out a long breath between her teeth. “Did someone really tell you that holding a piece of straw in your mouth would make you look cool?”

“She didn’t tell me—she enlightened me.”

“She was messing with you.”

Jack shrugged off the statement.

“No, seriously,” Alyssa insisted. “Pretty sure this is how it went down: you failed hard while attempting to flirt with her, she had some quick wit and the kind of charm you can’t train, and she devised a delightful gag that she still jokes about with her friends to this day.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Alyssa grinned. “Oh, but I do. I see the doubt in your eye.”

Jack faltered. “No, I mean… Maybe it was kind of strange how she smirked while she suggested it.”

“Had you made any sort of lewd comment?”

“That depends on your definition of ‘lewd’...”

Alyssa nodded with satisfaction, snickering. “Yep, that’s what happened. She wanted to make you look like you had an oral fixation.”

“A what? No.” Jack shook his head.

“Yeah, and I don’t mean in the kind of way ladies would find alluring.”

“Sucking on a piece of straw isn’t—”

Alyssa could barely contain her giggling. “Lemme guess, she suggested that you find the longest, thickest piece of straw you can and slowly—”

“Stop. Stop! Please.” Jack spat out the straw and stomped on it.

She paused her cackling for two seconds and then burst into another giggle fit. “This is too good.”

“No more straw. Happy?”

Eyes tearing, Alyssa regained her composure. “You know, I actually kind of liked it.”

Jack was trying to think of a witty retort when an alarm sounded in the hangar.

CHAPTER 4: The Misadventure Begins

“That’s not good,” Alyssa said with a frown.

“What is that sound and why is it so alarming?” Jack asked, holding his hands over his ears.

“The Luxuria has been breached.”

“What?” Jack shouted.

Alyssa removed his hands from over his ears. “The spaceport is compromised. We need to go—now!”

Jack’s pulse spiked. “What happened?”

“I have no idea, but that alarm means a decompression is imminent.” Alyssa’s previously unflappable demeanor was frayed around the edges. “Seal the door. I’ll get the engines warmed up.”

Jack nodded and returned to the hatch where they’d entered. He used the control panel to raise the door ramp and then manually locked it down with a lever. The alarm in the hangar was nearly silent with the door closed, though it still reverberated along the hull.

By the time he was finished, he could feel the vibration from the engines under foot. He ran the short length to the cockpit at the front of the craft. Two seats faced a three-panel window and an instrument panel with a combination of button control and touch interfaces. A HUD on the central window was presently displaying the engine initialization progress.

“Have you tried asking the station what the alarm is about?” Jack asked Alyssa as he took the seat on the right.

“No response,” she replied, keeping her gaze focused on the systems checks displayed on the HUD. “We’ll meet Triss at our planned rendezvous.”

“I’m in support of any plan that involves being somewhere other than here.”

Alyssa scowled at the controls. “And we would be somewhere else already if this ship didn’t take an eternity to warm up.”

“That’s on your boss, not me,” Jack said, raising his hands in defense. “I would have gone for something other than the base model if I’d had a halfway decent budget.”

“She would have, but—”

The ship lurched to the side.

“Uh…” Jack began.

Alyssa rose partway from her seat to get a better view out the front window. She immediately sat back down and strapped into the flight harness.

Jack only needed a moment’s glance outside to do the same thing. There was a hole in the hangar wall, and it wasn’t an open door.

He had barely strapped in when the Little Princess careened across the floor toward the vacuum.

Alyssa made rapid entries on the control panel to force a quick-start of the engines—a risky maneuver indoors, but launching on an uncontrolled vector into a potential debris field was way more dangerous.

“Argh!” she exclaimed with frustration when the systems were nonresponsive.

“You have to reverse the polarity!” Jack shouted.

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“It works… for some reason. Just do it!” he insisted.

Alyssa made the necessary inputs to modify the power flow through the engines. System lights lit up green across the board.

“Huh,” she murmured, dumbstruck.

“Fly!” Jack shouted, involuntarily ducking as the ship passed dangerously close to a cargo crane that had been wrenched free from inside the hangar.

The Little Princess and loose equipment from the hangar passed through the maw in the side of the station and entered into open space.

Alyssa grabbed the controls and fired the thrusters to begin countering their uncontrolled spin away from the station. With careful maneuvering, the tumbling slowed and she was able to swing the ship around under her control to get a view of the Luxuria.

Rather, what was left of the Luxuria.

“Stars…” Alyssa breathed.

Jack gasped as he took in the sight. The hole in the hangar was one of several gashes around the structure. It appeared that the station had resembled a four-pronged star in its whole state, but one of the arms was broken off entirely, and it appeared that all power had been lost.

“I guess that explains why they weren’t replying to your calls,” Jack murmured.

“Did any of them make it out?” Tears were forming in Alyssa’s eyes as she took in the destruction, searching for signs of escape pods. “What could have done this?”

Her question was immediately answered by a near-miss laser blast across the nose of the vessel.

Jack spotted the origin of the shot off their port side—a nasty-looking warship with unnecessary spikes along the dorsal support beam, armored plating, and comically large guns. Many, many guns.

He gulped. “I’m going to suggest we jump to—”

The stars were a blur outside his window before he could complete the sentence.

The hyperspace jump had Jack pinned against the back of his seat for the initial five seconds of acceleration. As the ship achieved velocity, he was able to breathe normally again, and he took several deep breaths to calm his racing heart.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” he stammered.

Alyssa set the autopilot and slouched in her seat. “I’d heard rumors, but didn’t think they’d come after us.”

“Who?”

“The Vorlox.”

Jack shook his head. “Can’t say I’ve heard of them.”

“Consider yourself lucky.” Alyssa ran her hands down the side of her face. “Do you think anyone made it out in time?”

“I have no idea.” It was then that Jack remembered the women on the station were—or had been—her friends. That was a lot of potential loss to process. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he added.

“We’ll find out when we meet up with Triss, I suppose,” Alyssa said. “Just need to stay focused on the mission.”

“You’re being rather calm about this, considering that your home was just destroyed.”

“I wouldn’t say it was my home, exactly. And they were my friends, but not really a family.”

Jack examined her out of the corner of his eye. “You seemed ready to take some pretty big risks for them.”

“Not for them,” Alyssa clarified. “This was a job for me.”

“But still...”

“We all just try to find our way through life.”

“Wow, that got deep suddenly.”

Alyssa shrugged it off. “It’s been a tough few minutes. Can you not make a joke for once?”

“Sorry, it’s involuntary.”

“Yeah, I got that impression.” She sighed. “Look, if the Vorlox are after us, this may change the plan.”

Jack was unnerved by the idea of having a crazed, heavily armored group of… “Wait, so who or what are the Vorlox, anyway? Aliens or—”

“Oh, no no,” Alyssa cut in. “They’re human, based on every account I’ve heard. They just spent a little too much time on spaceships with subpar radiation shielding. Rumors have been floating around about them attacking space stations and freighters.”

“So, went kind of…” Jack circled his index finger horizontally near his ear.

“Yep. And murdery.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yeah…” She got a distant look in her eyes. “You’re right, they probably got out.”

Jack nodded. “That’s the spirit! So, where are we meeting Triss?”

“A secret weapons dealer hangout,” she replied. “Fortunately, Triss left an hour ago so I know she got out before the attack.”

“That’s a relief.”

Alyssa’s mouth twitched into a subtle smile. “Yeah, it is.”

“Wait… you two are a thing, aren’t you?” Jack realized.

“That doesn’t matter,” Alyssa shot back and turned her attention out the front window.

“Oh, come on—you can tell me!”

“Not important right now,” she said. Her tone had turned serious.

Then, Jack noticed the warning light flashing on the control console. “What’s wrong?”

“The fuel line must have been damaged in the attack. We’re running on fumes.”

“Where are we?”

Alyssa grabbed the yoke on the flight controls. “We’re about to find out.”

CHAPTER 5: A Stroke of Luck

The Little Princess dropped out of hyperspace within half a kilometer of an asteroid.

“Whoa!” Alyssa quickly buried the yoke to the left, away from the giant rock.

“That could have been better or a whole lot worse,” Jack commented as soon as they were clear.

“Dropping directly into an asteroid would be bad, but drifting endlessly through space without any fuel might be worse.”

“Well, we’re in luck.” Jack pointed up ahead.

Alyssa’s gaze followed his arm. Their new course was leading directly toward a space station built around another asteroid. “Well, that’s convenient.”

“I’ll take it.”

The space station was a rambling sort often found in the more backwater systems, cobbled together with random parts salvaged from other vessels. Though not pretty to look at, it should at least have a fueling depot to help get them back on track.

Alyssa directed the Little Princess to the tanker at the far end of the station—the most likely location to procure fuel.

A chirp sounded on the front console.

“Docking control,” Jack said and accepted the communication request on the holodisplay in front of him.

“Business and duration?” a woman asked in the monotone of someone who needed to ask the same question dozens of time each day.

“Fueling and… however long fueling takes,” Jack replied.

“Go to Berth E-792,” the dock controller replied and ended the call.

“You really have no idea how to be a functional adult, do you?” Alyssa questioned.

Jack groaned. “What did I do wrong now?”

“Any worthwhile pilot knows exactly how long it takes to fuel their vessel.”

“Guess what? I owned this ship for eight hours before Svetlana’s goons came after me, so it’s not like I really had time to read the instruction manual.”

“Excuses!”

Jack then noticed the smirk playing on Alyssa’s lips. “You’re just messing with me.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “Well yeah. You make it entirely too easy.”

“I really can’t figure out your angle. You save my life—sort of—then make everything worse, then are mean to me, then joke. I don’t know what to think.”

She was silent for several moments. “This whole thing wasn’t my idea,” she replied at last. “I don’t have a personal problem with you—actually, I find you kind of entertaining in that way you’d watch a slow motion video of someone’s fail.”

“Hey!”

“Sorry.” She blushed slightly. “But in all seriousness, there are no ill feelings on my end. This was a chance for me to use Svetlana’s motivations for my own benefit.”

“What are you after?”

“Now is not the time or place to get into that.” Alyssa kept her gaze focused ahead as she maneuvered the ship toward the designated berth highlighted on the HUD.

“Not even a hint?”

“Let’s just say that both of our problems will go away if we can pull this off. And it will require us to work as a team. A win-win.”

Jack examined her in the pilot’s chair. “Okay… What do I have to do?”

“Follow my lead, don’t question what I tell you to do, even if it seems crazy, and trust that your money problems will soon be a thing of the past.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking.”

She shrugged. “You might be surprised.”

They pulled into Berth E-792 and docking clamps secured the Little Princess to the station. Alyssa coordinated fueling with the docking attendant while Jack took inventory of their supplies. He’d been in the process of figuring out his provisions when he’d been stunned and dragged back to Svetlana’s base. Though only a matter of days prior, it felt like an eternity.

The incongruous sense of time passage was underscored by the odd rapport he’d developed with Alyssa. He’d begun the day in the role of prisoner, but over the past hour it seemed like she was viewing him more as a business partner in whatever her master plan may be. Though strange and unexpected, he wasn’t opposed. Given his chronic ill-fated ventures, he was eager to jump on any opportunity to try something new. Losing an eye was less than ideal, but in the larger scheme of things that was a small price to pay for the possibility of getting out of debt and on the path to success.

“Should be all fueled up in twenty minutes,” Alyssa announced, coming to find Jack in the store room behind a hatch in the living area.

“We have rations for two weeks. Will that be enough?” he asked her.

“That should work,” she confirmed. “We can always stock up after we get Finn out of Hellana.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about that part of the plan.”

“It really won’t be as difficult as you think,” Alyssa insisted. “Triss is really good.”

Jack made a dismissive shrug. “I guess I’ll just do what I’m told.”

She smiled. “So you are trainable. Excellent.”

“Maybe you can make a functional adult out of me one of these days.”

“Let’s not go overboard,” Alyssa said with a chuckle. “But speaking of functional, I should probably activate that implant.”

“Oh right.” Jack reached up to feel the eye. “What does it do, anyway?”

“Well, it will be able to detect things that we can’t see with normal vision. Infrared, UV, and also electrical fields. In addition, it can generate signals in specific frequencies and patterns.”

“Such as fooling a biometric scanner?” Jack asked.

“You’ve got it,” she confirmed. “It’s half of the key to breaking past GiganCorp’s security.”

“What’s the other half?”

“Me, of course.” She grinned.

“I have no doubt that your charm will win anyone over.”

“That or my gunslinging. This really could go either way.”

Jack chuckled. “All right. Well, I’m excited to have more than half my vision.”

“It’ll be better than before, once you get used to cycling the modes.” Alyssa directed Jack toward the couch. She pulled out a slim black case from her hip pocket and selected a delicate metal implement from inside. “Hold still,” she instructed as she leaned over in front of him with the metal tool in hand.

He couldn’t see what she was doing to his left eye, but he detected a slight pressure on the implant as she poked at it. Then, there was a flash of white light on the left side of his vision, followed by a ‘Thingamado’ logo with a progress bar loading in a circle around it. When the circle was completely full, his left field of vision restored in full color with only slight pixelation to differentiate the image from his organic eye.

“Oh that’s much better!” he exclaimed. “Never again will I take depth perception for granted.”

“It’s on Normal mode right now, correct?”

“Seems that way.”

Alyssa nodded and extended the metal implement toward his cybernetic eye—which was decidedly more unnerving now that he could see it coming toward him. She made contact and his vision switched to infrared. She appeared in a rainbow of color with bright red at her core and a mixture of green and yellow on her hands; in contrast, the ship in the background was mostly cool blue.

“This is really trippy,” Jack murmured.

“But super handy for detecting guards in low light.” Alyssa made another adjustment and his vision switched to UV.

The vibrant colors shifted to almost monochromatic, but he could suddenly make out details that were completely invisible to his other eye.

“What do you see?” Alyssa asked.

Jack looked around the room and his gaze rested on several stains on the couch. “Uh, looks like the UV is working just fine.”

“All right, and now?” She made another adjustment.

His vision cycled to a spectacular display of the electromagnetic fields contained within the ship—everything from his own nerve impulses to the power conduits within the walls. Staring at Alyssa and being able to almost see her thinking weirded him out while simultaneously fascinating him. “Whoa,” he managed to stammer.

“I’ve heard that one takes the longest to get used to.”

“I’ll say. But it’s awesome!” Jack grinned. “I like collecting random, useful things.”

“Good, because this one is a part of you now.”

“I like to be prepared for anything—I’m used to things going wrong.”

She made a final adjustment and his vision returned to normal. “Well, we’re going to need this, for sure. In theory, you should be able to switch modes by thinking about it. That may take some practice to master.”

“Nice.”

Alyssa rose from her crouching position in front of him and smiled. “But for now, we have a jailbreak to plan.”

CHAPTER 6: When a Plan Comes Together

After getting the leak patched and paying for the fuel through an electronic credit transfer from Alyssa’s account, the Little Princess was soon on its way to the rendezvous with Triss.

Alyssa had remained reticent about where the meetup would take place, but Jack was feeling comfortable enough with her that he was content to be along for the ride. Really, anyone willing to pick up the fuel bill was good in his book.

Two hours in hyperspace transit passed before the ship finally dropped back into normal space. Jack was surprised to see that their destination was absolutely in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight. “Did you enter the right coordinates?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “What did I say about questioning me?” She manipulated the controls to rotate the ship one-hundred-eighty degrees. A ship four times the size of their own was in the space that had been right behind them. “Always drop out on the far side so you don’t accidentally run into each other,” she stated.

“Oh, right.”

Alyssa directed the Little Princess to an airlock on the starboard side of the larger vessel and lined up their own hatch. With some careful maneuvering, she made the seal.

“Let’s go.” Alyssa rose from the pilot’s chair and led them to the ship’s main hatch. She double-checked the coupling and released the door seal.

The hatch on the other ship was already open and a red-headed woman was waiting in the doorway. She wilted with relief when she saw Alyssa and they ran to embrace one another.

“I didn’t know if you’d made it out,” the other woman murmured.

“Have you heard from anyone?” Alyssa asked, pulled out of the hug so she could look at her at arm’s length.

“A few people, yes,” the woman confirmed. “It sounds like everyone was able to get to escape pods, but many were captured by the Vorlox sometime after the attack.”

Alyssa drew her in for a kiss and held her close. She pulled away after several seconds. “We move forward with the plan. We’ll find a way to get them back once we have it.”

“I know.”

The other woman turned her attention to Jack standing awkwardly behind them. “Wow, that implant really didn’t fit well.”

“You must be Triss,” Jack said.

“Yes,” Alyssa replied. “Triss, Jack. Jack, Triss.”

“Thanks for volunteering,” Triss said to him.

“Didn’t really have an option, but all in all it hasn’t been that bad,” he said. “Well, except for the eye. But this one seems pretty cool.”

“Can we trust him?” Triss asked Alyssa.

Alyssa nodded. “He kind of grows on you. Just ignore his innuendos.”

“I can do that,” her friend replied. “Everything’s been prepped. Let’s get ready to head down to Hellana.”

“Oh, so we’re actually going down into a maximum security prison,” Jack muttered. “I thought maybe you had some sort of workaround where we could beam Finn out, or something.”

“Well, we’re not exactly going into the prison,” Triss clarified. “And you don’t have to do much for this part. Just watch and learn.”

*

Even from space, Hellana was true to its name. The planet’s surface was an inhospitable Hellscape of volcanic activity and massive blights. A lava field on the scale of an ocean marred the southern hemisphere, and only a tiny valley in a blackened region of the north looked to be remotely habitable.

“I think I’ll stay here on the ship,” Jack proclaimed as he looked out the main window on the bridge of the ship, the Prancer, which was functioning as their base.

“Nonsense! It’ll be a good bonding exercise for us,” Alyssa contended.

“In the way that skin bonds to rock when you melt to death?”

“No, of course not! It’ll only be about sixty degrees Celsius. No melting at that temperature.”

“It’s a dry heat,” Triss jumped in.

Alyssa flourished her hand. “See? Nothing to worry about.”

“But there’s also the matter of—” Jack started to object to the insane plan they’d just relayed to him, but Triss shushed him with a loud tsk.

“We’ll have none of that. It’ll be over before you know what’s happened,” she said.

Despite his continued objections, Jack was shepherded back to the Little Princess, which had made a tandem hyperspace jump with the Prancer. Alyssa and Triss settled into the cockpit of the small vessel while Jack was left in the living room. It occurred to him that he could try to make a run for it—maybe by commandeering the Prancer—but he’d have nowhere to go. Alyssa’s crazy plan was better than no plan at all.

The ship de-coupled from the larger vessel and approached the planet. Within ten minutes, the ship began trembling as it broke through the atmosphere.

The radio in the cockpit crackled. “Unidentified craft, identify yourself.”

“That’s original,” Alyssa muttered. “This is the Little Princess inbound with a prisoner for immediate incarceration,” she replied, presumably over the radio.

“Name on bounty record?” the Hellana official questioned.

“Jack Tressler,” Alyssa stated.

“One moment.” The radio went silent for ten seconds. “Bounty confirmed. Proceed to the prisoner deposit site.”

“Roger.” The console beeped as Alyssa ended the call. “You’re popular, Jack,” she shouted back to him.

“Yipee. It feels great to be the bait…” Jack mumbled.

“There’s a ninety percent chance you won’t lose another eye, so you really shouldn’t worry,” Alyssa said.

“A whole ninety percent? Thanks, that makes me feel much better.”

The vibrations intensified as the shuttle descended into the atmosphere, the small craft at the mercy of the super-heated air currents influenced by the planet’s volcanic activity. Jack held onto the couch using hidden handholds beneath the cushions since there wasn’t a proper restraint system. Many uncomfortable minutes passed as Triss fought to maintain control of the vessel.

Finally, they made it to the calmer air surrounding the valley that contained the prison facility.

Moments later, a light bump indicated that they were on the ground. The engines wound down.

Alyssa and Triss came out from the cockpit.

“Stay quiet and wait for the signal,” Alyssa said, approaching Jack. She pulled out the metal implement she’d previously used to adjust Jack’s cybernetic and cycled it to the electromagnetic field setting, per their plan.

The enhanced vision on his left and normal on his right gave him a headache. “Got it.”

Triss pulled out a pair of handcuffs from a cabinet while Alyssa prepped for debarkation. When the cuffs were in place on Jack’s wrists, Alyssa released the final seal on the main hatch.

A wave of oppressive heat flooded into the cabin, burning Jack’s lungs when he took his first breath of the scorched air. “Are we seriously going out there?”

“It’ll just be a few minutes. You won’t die,” Alyssa said. She stepped outside and then immediately back in. “Okay, this is pretty awful.”

“We can’t leave the door open or everything is going to melt. Come on!” Triss said and directed Jack outside.

It was even hotter outside the ship, with a breeze that felt more like bands of heat radiating from a bonfire. Jack was pretty sure his shoes were melting on the black rock of a historical lava flow as he was guided across the open ground toward a door set into a rock outcropping in the center of the valley. The towering walls of the valley cast shadows that were likely the only reason the party wasn’t instantly vaporized.

When they were five meters away, the door in the rock cracked open and a figure wearing a thermal suit poked their head outside. “Is that Jack Tressler?”

“Yes. He’s here to trade places with Finn McGloven,” Triss stated.

The hooded figure looked Jack over. “That doesn’t seem right.”

Triss sighed loudly. “I thought this had been cleared with management? Gah, this always happens.”

“Our communication relays burn out, like, all the time,” the figure stated. “Maybe it came through while the network was down. Come on in and we’ll get this sorted out.”

Triss beamed. “You’re the best! You know how things are with these outlaws—it doesn’t really matter which one of them is locked up.”

“You’re telling me. Our funding is just based on the number of live bodies we have—doesn’t really matter who,” the guard agreed. “I’m sure the Warden wouldn’t mind mixing things up with some fresh meat to roast.”

“Great!” Triss nodded.

She nudged Jack forward and they passed through the partially opened doorway, followed by Alyssa.

Inside was moderately cooler than out in the open, but still far above a livable temperature by most standards.

The figure that had greeted them removed the thermal suit, revealing an oafish man with reddened skin. “You know, we don’t get all that many trades.”

Alyssa nodded. “It was kind of a strange order for us, too. But I guess they decided that Finn was an okay guy and ol’ Jack here was a trouble-maker.”

“I am,” Jack stated.

Triss kneed him in the back of his leg. “Thinks himself rather witty, too.”

“Well, a day in the sun would change that,” the guard said. “Well, uh, let me go talk to the Warden and see if we can find any record of the trade request.”

“Great! You’re the best,” Triss exclaimed with exaggerated enthusiasm.

The guard wandered off down the hall.

As soon as he rounded a bend, Alyssa turned to Jack. “All right—where’s the control conduit?”

Jack scanned around the hall, focusing on the image conveyed by his left eye. A glowing electrical conduit came forward through the wall. He pointed to it. “Over there.”

“I need it to be a lot more precise than that,” Triss said. “Show me. Hurry!”

He ran over to the wall and used his hands to trace the outline of a segment of the conduit. Triss made some markings on the wall.

“All right, stand back,” she said. She slipped a metal rod with a trigger on one end out from along her thigh. In one motion, she jammed the rod into the wall.

Jack’s vision lit up with a bright electrical charge as the rod made contact with the interior wires.

Triss depressed the trigger on the end of the rod and clipped on a control panel that she’d been carrying in her inner coat pocket. She made a series of furious entries. “Okay, I’m in. Locating Finn now.” She scanned over the search results. “Got him. And… unlocking.”

“How is he going to make it up here?” Jack asked, even though he’d tried to ask during the planning session.

Like before, Triss’ answer was the same, “You don’t know Finn.”

“What are you doing?” The words came from down the hall deeper into the facility.

Jack looked over to see that the guard had returned with an older man, who’d been the one to speak.

“Well, they got here a lot faster than I expected,” Triss muttered.

Alyssa pulled out an electrified nightstick from under her coat. “Change of plan.”

CHAPTER 7: Jailbreak

“What are you doing?” the older man—whom Jack assumed was the Warden—repeated.

“Just picking up a friend. Don’t mind us,” Alyssa replied with a charming smile.

“Get reinforcements!” the Warden shouted to the guard.

The guard hesitated. “Well, Tony is on break, and Alberto is out sick. Robby would probably help out but he’s having troubles with his lady and has been pretty distracted. And Brian? Well, Brian is just lazy.”

The Warden stared at him with disbelief. “That’s probably the most honest statement I’ve ever heard.”

The guard shrugged. “I try.”

“Hey guys!” someone else called from down the hall.

“Hey, Finn. Just finishing up here,” Triss said. She returned her attention to the Warden. “So, we’re going to take our friend and we’ll be on our way.”

“Not so fast,” the Warden growled. “We’ll—”

The guard ran away down the hall, sidestepping Finn.

“—I’ll stop you!” the Warden completed. He un-holstered a laser pistol strapped to his hip.

Alyssa lunged toward him.

The Warden fired, but Alyssa made an acrobatic tumble and tackled him. The laser pistol flew out from his hand and he was knocked to the floor with his head gripped between Alyssa’s thighs. She flipped him to his stomach and looped his arms at the elbows using her nightstick.

“Like I said, we’re just here to pick up a friend,” Alyssa said with a victorious smile. “How you doin’, Finn?”

“Fine and dandy,” Finn replied, jogging up to them. His brown hair was swept back in a stylish wave on the top of his head, and he had a lively spark in his green eyes, despite his time spent incarcerated. “I see your hacking is still as good as ever, Triss.”

“This was child’s play.” Triss snorted.

“And who’s this?” Finn asked after looking Jack over. “And what in the planets happened to his eye?”

“Morine got creative,” Alyssa said.

“It has all these cool settings!” Jack chimed in.

“Well, you look like a monster,” stated Finn.

Jack shrugged. “I’m just embracing it.”

Finn nodded. “You know what? Good for you. Not everyone could have your kind of confidence while looking like that.”

Jack smiled. “Thanks!”

“You’re all a special kind of crazy,” the Warden muttered from between Alyssa’s knees.

“Yeah, we like it that way,” she replied. “So, we’re gonna go now.”

“All right,” the Warden agreed.

“Cool.” Finn headed for the main door.

Alyssa got up off the Warden and Triss pulled her rod from the wall. Jack wandered out after them as the Warden waved goodbye.

Jack shook his head. “Huh. That really was surprisingly easy.”

“Yeah, this place talks a big game but it’s really poorly managed,” Triss said. “A little light hacking is all it takes to catch them off-guard. This is the fourth time we’ve done this and they have done nothing differently.”

Alyssa sighed. “Good help is so hard to find these days.”

The four of them dashed across the tarmac as quickly as possible in the oppressive heat. Triss had to use her rod to enter in the access code for the hatch, as the hull had heated up too much without the shield up to touch with bare hands. The door swung down and they ran up the ramp, then re-sealed the door.

“Air conditioning. Now,” Alyssa said while running into the cockpit to initialize the ship’s systems.

“Ahh, it’s good to be free!” Finn cheered while stretching his arms wide. “Thanks for coming for me, Triss. It’s good to see you.”

“You really need to stop getting yourself arrested,” his friend replied.

“No risk, no reward. I couldn’t possibly stop having fun now.”

“You can continue your fun. In fact, please do,” Triss clarified. “Just get better at being sneaky about it.”

“You know I have a flair for the flamboyant.” He preened his hair. “That said, this jumpsuit does nothing for my figure.”

“We’ll get you something fabulous,” Triss assured him. “But first, we need to steal a nano induction module.”

Finn raised an eyebrow with interest. “Taking on the Winkelson Brothers, eh?”

“We’ll distract them, but we need you to crack their safe.”

Finn stroked his chin. “They have an Anticrack 9000—top-of-the-line auths. They say they’re unbreakable.”

“And what do you say?” Triss asked.

He grinned. “What’s my cut?”

“Ten percent.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Give me five minutes with it and you’ll have all their goodies.”

“What’s my cut?” Jack interjected.

Triss crossed her arms. “Uh, not being dead?”

“Well, I’m risking my life now being here,” Jack said. “I lost an eye—”

“And got a pretty sweet new one,” she cut in.

“Still, I think I’ve earned my keep. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me.”

Alyssa returned from the cockpit. “He has. I think we should cut him in. What better way to motivate performance?”

“Threat of death can be pretty motivating,” Triss pointed out.

“Still,” Alyssa continued, “he’s right. He’s in this as much as the rest of us now. With the Luxuria destroyed, we’re not under Svetlana’s thumb.”

“Can he be trusted?” Triss looked him over. “Trent is still looking for us. I wouldn’t put it past him to send a spy.”

Jack raised his eyebrow. “Trent? Never heard of him.”

“If you were his spy, it’s not like you’d tell us.” Triss sighed.

“Honestly, I don’t think he’s a good enough liar to pull that off,” Alyssa said. “And that’s not how Trent operates. I think Jack’s about as honest as they come in this trade.”

Triss sighed. “All right, he can be part of the team.”

Finn frowned. “I have to share my room, don’t I?”

Alyssa smiled. “I’m sure you’ll be best buddies in no time.”

Jack clasped his hands. “Great! Do I get ten percent, too?”

The three others exchanged glances. “How about five?” Alyssa offered.

Jack shrugged. “Is there any room for negotiation?”

“No,” the others declared in unison.

“Then I’ll take it!”

“Excellent,” Alyssa nodded. “Now go get settled in. We have a long trek ahead of us.”

Jack and Finn headed down the hall toward the sleeping cabin.

Finn placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “So, this would probably be a good time to tell you about my night terrors.”

*

As it turned out, Finn’s night terrors were more terrifying for observers than they were for him to experience.

Jack spent the next six hours huddled at the back of his bunk with a blanket pulled up to his chin while Finn cycled through a pattern of sounds consisting of a barking dog, a parrot imitation asking “who’s your daddy?”, whistlings, and a snore reminiscent of someone with sleep apnea. At several points, Jack attempted to leave the room to go sleep on the couch in the common area, but whenever he crept from his bunk Finn’s eyes would open and he’d stare unblinkingly at Jack. If Jack made any move toward the door, Finn would begin to snarl. Fearing for his life, Jack would ultimately cave and return to his safe place on the lower bunk. The cycle would then reset.

After six hours, Finn stretched on the top bunk and hopped out of bed. “That was a refreshing sleep!” He noticed Jack rocking himself back and forth. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Your terrors, they’re…”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard it can be kind of wild. Don’t worry, I won’t bite.”

“It certainly didn’t seem that way.”

Finn shrugged. “I’ve only drawn blood once. Anywho, we have some loot to steal!”

Jack hauled himself off the bed and followed Finn out into the common area. Alyssa and Triss were seated on the couch.

“You look like you’ve been up all night,” Alyssa commented to Jack when she saw him.

“That’s pretty accurate.” Jack tousled his blond hair.

“Well, let’s get you some coffee,” Alyssa offered, rising from the couch to head for the galley along the opposite side wall. She poured him a mug from a metal pot and handed it to him.

Jack cradled the mug in his hands. “Thanks”

“I should really call it ‘caffeine water’ rather than coffee,” Alyssa said with a scowl.

He sniffed the liquid in the cup. “Smells… coffee-ish.”

“Alyssa is something of a coffee connoisseur,” Triss chimed in.

“I’m homing in on the perfect space brew,” Alyssa said with a committed glint in her eyes. “I’ll have it perfected soon.”

Finn groaned. “Oh stars, you’re not still after vapor fusion conversion, are you?”

“It’s possible! You’ll see!” Alyssa declared.

“What’s this now?” Jack asked.

Finn shook his head. “Alyssa got this crazy idea that it’d be possible to brew coffee using a fusion reaction directly between the coffee bean and water. It has no basis in science.”

“With enough energy it’s possible!” she insisted.

Finn laughed. “Maybe with a micro energy core, if those were real—oh wait. We’re not stealing the MEC prototype for Svetlana to manufacture weapons, are we?”

Alyssa’s face contorted into a power-hungry grin. “After we have that core, we’re going to start our own empire of Spacecups.”

CHAPTER 8: Adventures in Food Service

“I have to say that working as a barista wasn’t one of my career goals,” Finn began.

“No, don’t you see?” Alyssa continued. “We have the perfect team to get this venture off the ground. Once we have the MEC, there’ll be nothing to stop us.”

“I told you not to jump too far ahead,” Triss cautioned. “We won’t even know if your brewing method works until we get the MEC.”

“It’ll work, and it’ll make us richer than any amount of arms dealing ever could.” Alyssa’s tone was one of complete confidence. “I mean, it’s a highly addictive, legal drug. That’s business gold right there.”

“She does have a good point,” Jack admitted.

“And this cut we talked about earlier—that’s actually for a share in the business?” asked Finn.

Alyssa nodded. “Exactly. When the company takes off, we’re all going to be billionaires.”

Jack got a sinking feeling in his chest. “So when you said my money troubles would be over…”

“Yep! Five percent shareholder in Spacecups.”

“What’s the ROI on that? Because… debts,” Jack asked tentatively.

“We should have positive cash flow and be paying dividends in two years, tops.”

“Yeah…” Jack looked down. “Any chance I can get an advance on that?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Triss said. “Right now, we need to get ready for our meet and greet with the Lords of Doom. They have an urgent soup delivery headed their way.”

The team ate a quick breakfast and then ran over the details of the plan for the day. Jack was once again not pleased with being cast in a questionable supporting role, but like other recent events, he decided to just go along with it. Admittedly, he rather enjoyed being part of a successful op after years of failure on his own.

Four hours later, everything was ready. They executed the hyperspace jump to take them to the Winkelson Brothers’ outpost at a station orbiting a red dwarf.

As they neared the station, Jack stared out the window in the common room at the cylindrical structure. “They’re really out in the middle of nowhere, aren’t they?”

“Adds to the mystique,” Triss commented from the cockpit. “If anyone bothered to come out here, I don’t think the brothers would be in business for long once they saw what the operation was really like.”

“I guess we’ll be the ones to officially ruin their image,” Finn observed. “But, we get to become legends in the process.”

“See? That’ll give us all sorts of street cred for Spacecups,” Alyssa chimed in.

“Taking out black market dealers and coffee are not the same thing.” Finn sighed.

Jack considered it. “Well, black market, black coffee… It might—”

“Don’t encourage her!” Triss pleaded. “Let’s get the MEC before we plan out a whole business for something that may not even be chemically possible to do.”

Alyssa sighed. “You’ll see. You’ll all see!”

“Shh, time to call them,” Triss said and waited for everyone to stop muttering responses to Alyssa’s declaration under their breaths. She opened a comm channel to the station. “Chili delivery for the Lords of Doom.”

“You’re not our normal delivery person,” a man said after ten seconds.

“Filling in for a friend,” Triss said. She paused, then resumed with a breathy tone, “I really need the money. If there are any extra services I can provide while I’m here, do let me know.”

A response came almost immediately. “We’ll open the bay door for you.”

“You know, things are way easier when you just ask to be let in rather than trying to be all sneaky-like,” Jack commented when the comm channel was closed.

“It’s kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?” Triss replied. “I mean, half the hacking I do these days is just pretending to be an IT person and asking people to verify their password.”

“That works?” Finn asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Almost every time. Believe me, I’m still stunned.”

“Well, we’ll have to put on a good front here,” Alyssa reminded everyone. “The delivery needs to look completely legit until they open the soup containers.”

“What’s the trigger for the detonation?” Finn asked. “I think I was zoning out when you went over it before.”

“I have a remote trigger set up,” Alyssa told him. “Duck when I do.”

“Sounds good.” Finn nodded.

The ship pulled into the cargo bay on the space station and the engines wound down.

Jack took a deep breath to center himself in preparation for the upcoming encounter. He slipped on a generic workman’s jumpsuit over his trademark black jacket and gray pants—both to hide his holstered laser pistol and to protect his clothing against the upcoming soupy mess. Around the room, the others were donning similar apparel.

“This fabric is itchy,” Triss complained as she zipped hers up, leaving the top undone to reveal just enough cleavage to keep things interesting.

“They were on super deep discount,” Alyssa replied. “I think they may have been used at a fiberglass manufacturing plant.”

Finn frowned. “This is what we get for trying to operate on a budget.”

“You can take it off soon. Come on.” Alyssa unsealed the hatch and led the way outside.

The hangar was a cavernous space of matte steel and pulley systems for maneuvering large cargo. The edges of the room were stacked with various crates and barrels that had questionable styling and were likely overpriced.

Alyssa allowed Triss to take the lead as the four of them stepped into the center of the hangar where two girthsome men were waiting for them. It didn’t take long for the scent of stale sweat and fermented peppers to waft over, but everyone managed to maintain a neutral expression.

Triss put on her most charming smile and swayed her hips as she walked. “Hello, there. I’m glad we could work out a docking arrangement.”

“Oh, I’ll show you docking maneuvers any time you want,” the slightly thinner man on the right, Don, stated as he undressed Triss with his eyes.

“I’m an excellent pilot,” Bill added.

Jack resisted a gag reflex as a he watched the scene unfold.

Triss’ lips curled into an alluring smile. “Well, let me show you the goods.”

She sauntered toward the cargo hold in the side of the Little Princess—barely large enough to transport the two soup barrels, but sufficient to suit their present purposes.

Alyssa and Finn opened the compartment on cue and rolled the barrels on their bottom edge until each was lined up on the deck in front the craft. They then stacked several down pillows next to the barrels, which had been stashed at the back of the hold.

The two men scowled as they approached the cargo.

“What are those?” Don asked as he eyed the stack of fluffy, white objects.

“Pillows,” Alyssa replied, standing akimbo in an attempt to emphasize her assets hidden beneath the jumpsuit.

“We didn’t order any pillows,” Bill stated.

Triss flipped her red hair. “Well, maybe we can find some use for them.” She leaned over one of the soup barrels and slowly unclasped the lid, making occasional eye contact with the men as she did so. “I imagine you want to give it a taste.” She flipped the lid over onto the other barrel and stepped back.

Still watching Triss, the brothers approached the soup barrel, unaware that the members of the Little Princess’ crew were inching away from them. When the brothers were just about to lean over to take a taste of the chili, Alyssa flipped the hidden trigger.

Soup rocketed into the air and showered the brothers. They yelped with surprise as the chunky, orange liquid coated them from head to foot.

Bill toppled sideways and landed on the pile of pillows. Due to intentionally weakened seams, the impact caused the pillows to explode into a cloud of down. The feathers settled on top of the soup already coating him, resulting in a horrifying impression of a snow-covered golem.

Triss gasped with feigned surprise. “Oh no! There must have been some residual carbonation from the packaging process. These eruptions almost never happen.” She looked down at her jumpsuit. “I got all dirty.” She ran her finger through a blob of chili on her bosom.

The brothers lay on the ground in stunned silence for twenty seconds before Don rose awkwardly to his feet. “It… burns.”

Triss gave a cutesy shrug. “Well, you did order it extra spicy.”

Bill rolled side-to-side until he had enough momentum to make it to his stomach. He rose to his feet using the barrel for help. “I have to clean up.”

“Here, I’ll help you.” Triss walked with them across the hangar, leaving a trail of soupy footprints across the metal deck. As they passed through a door in the wall, she made a quick nod toward the others then disappeared.

“Okay, let’s move!” Alyssa said, stripping off her outer jumpsuit.

“You know, it would have been a lot easier if we just stunned them,” Jack muttered, peeling off his own jumpsuit. Fortunately, the subpar fabric appeared to have been effective at keeping his other clothes clean.

Alyssa nodded. “Yes, but A, this is more fun for Triss to lead them on, and B, rather than immediately knowing there’s a problem, this way it will likely take days for them to notice. Safes aren’t something that most people access every day.”

“And what if they have security cameras and watch us having this conversation and then cracking the safe?”

“Fair point,” Alyssa conceded. “But… exploding soup.”

“That was a pretty good move,” Jack admitted.

“Clock’s a tickin’!” Finn shouted and ran toward the far side of the hangar.

Jack followed him, and Alyssa stayed behind to keep watch on the Little Princess and prepare for a quick getaway. As he ran, Jack noticed that while his clothes were clean there was a slight squishing in his shoes.

CHAPTER 9: Petty Theft… And Felonies

The safe was behind a rather tasteful nude painting in a cluttered office at the top of a staircase down a corridor through two doors in the general direction of the center of the space station. Due to its less than accessible location, Jack and Finn were fairly confident that the Winkelson Brothers rarely accessed the room—namely due to the staircase and narrow nature of the halls.

“Time me! I want this to go down on record,” Finn said as he pulled out a hand-held electronic device and a vaguely stethoscope-looking apparatus from under his jacket. He placed the end of the stethoscope-thingy on the door of the safe with the electronic pad below it.

Finn began running through combinations on the pinpad to the safe while watching the results on the electronic readout.

Jack was curious about what he was doing but decided that it was an inappropriate time to ask questions.

Speaking of time, he realized he’d never started a counter and actually had no means of doing so. For lack of anything else, he began counting ‘one-thousands’ in his head. Unfortunately, he got distracted at twenty-seven and needed to guess how long he was daydreaming about eating a warm cup of chili. A similar incident happened at one-hundred-thirteen when he was overcome with a really bad itch on his ankle. He had just reached two-hundred-sixty two when Finn let out a victorious shout.

“Done!” The safe hissed open. “What’s the count?”

“Uh…” Jack tried to add up the various chunks of unaccounted time. “Three hundred seconds...?”

“Wrong! Two-hundred ninety-two. There’s an electronic counter here; I just wanted to keep you distracted.”

“Honestly, I thought I’d be way further off,” Jack admitted. “There were some… incidents.”

“Yeah, that itch seemed like it was going to do you in for a few seconds there.”

“You noticed that?”

Finn grinned. “I miss nothing. Like, for instance, that there’s a pressure plate under these modules.”

Jack turned his attention to the interior of the safe. Two dozen nano induction modules—he estimated that to be a street value of well over ten million credits—were resting on a telltale plate that was almost certainly wired into a security system. What that system would do when activated was a complete mystery.

“How do we counter it?” he asked.

Finn examined the equipment. After a moment he grinned. “Duck tape.”

“Duck tape?”

The thief nodded. “I mean, the pressure plate just needs to be immobilized. The idiots have it completely depressed, so we just need to strap it down snug and throw some books on top of it. Should be fine.”

“Oh. That’s easy.”

“Well yeah… look around. The ‘Lords of Doom’ pretty much half-ass everything, aside from their meal schedule. They bought a top-of-the-line safe and called it good.”

“You cracked it pretty quickly,” Jack pointed out.

“But I’m Finn McGloven, King of Safecracking, Breaker of Locks, the Unjailed, Father of… hopefully no one I don’t know about.”

Jack smiled. “Kind of egotistical to read off your own titles, isn’t it?”

“And this is why everyone should have a squire,” Finn grumbled while pulling some of the adhesive tape from his bag.

“Wait, you have duct tape with you?”

Finn stared at him. “Well yeah. You mean you don’t always have a roll on you? And I think you intended to say ‘duck tape’.”

“No…” Jack replied. “Actually—”

The other man placed a finger on Jack’s lips. “Shh. This explains so much.” He set about his work. In a matter of two minutes, Finn had slathered on enough tape over the pressure plate that it would be able to withstand the force of a rocket blast. Just for good measure, he grabbed some metal blocks that happened to be in the corner of the cluttered room and placed them behind the rack of nano induction modules, sliding the two trays of electronic chips forward out of the safe as the blocks were put in place. Everything seemed to be fine.

“Well done, partner!” Finn said as he closed the safe and removed his cracking equipment.

Jack was just about to reply when sounds of laser pistol fire sounded in the distance.

“At least it wasn’t us,” Jack said with a shrug.

“There is that,” Finn agreed.

They scooped up the two trays and made a run for the door, each drawing a laser pistol in their free hand.

At a full sprint, they raced down the staircase and through the corridor leading back into the hangar. When the open room came into view, Jack saw that Alyssa had taken cover behind the soup barrels and Triss was behind a crate midway between the Little Princess and the door where she’d left with Don and Bill. They were firing at five men in various positions around the hangar.

“Time to join in the fight,” Finn said a moment before he skidded across the floor to seek cover behind a stack of crates. He got off two shots at a man crouched in a catwalk near the ceiling of the hangar.

The man pretended like he’d been hit—clutching his shoulder—then laughed and fired back at Finn.

Jack took the opportunity to run behind a crate near Finn, then onto another one several meters from Alyssa.

“What happened?” he called out to her, joining in her fire against two men behind a grouping of barrels near the door Triss had used.

“Apparently none of us bothered to ask how many brothers were in the Winkelson family,” she replied, pulling her head behind the cover just as a laser blast whizzed by. “The answer is seven, by the way.”

“Ah, yeah. Should have thought of that.” Jack reached around the corner to fire at the shooter to the right of the door.

“Hindsight, right?” Alyssa fired three times and one shot finally connected with the left shooter.

The man collapsed on the floor, motionless.

Seeing his fallen brother, the right shooter began firing blindly toward Alyssa and Jack.

Alyssa sprayed laser fire in his general direction and the man ducked down, giving Jack the opportunity to aim. He took a headshot and the beam connected.

“Help Triss,” Alyssa said while checking the charge on her pistol. “I’m almost out. I’ll get the ship warmed up.”

“I’ll cover you.” Jack targeted the men who had Triss pinned down while Alyssa darted alongside the Little Princess toward the main hatch.

When she was safely inside, Jack dove for a crate closer to Triss. It didn’t offer much cover, but it afforded much better sight lines to the two gunmen.

“I’ll take the guy on the left,” Jack called to her while gently cradling the rack of modules in the crook of his left arm.

“Got it,” Triss replied, shifting her attention to the right shooter. She fired four rapid shots and the man went down.

Jack was lining up a kill shot of his own when his target suddenly dropped dead with a singed hole through his forehead.

Surprised, Jack looked to his left to see Finn standing in the open with his pistol raised in one hand and the nano induction modules tucked in the other.

“Way to steal the glory,” Jack groaned and rose from the hiding place.

Finn grinned. “I’m a showoff, what can I say?”

CHAPTER 10: The Best Laid Plans

With their foes vanquished, Triss, Finn, and Jack joined Alyssa in the common room of Little Princess.

“Where did things go sideways?” Jack questioned once the main hatch was sealed.

“Well, it started out okay,” Triss replied. “Until I noticed the third brother.”

“That would be a good clue things weren’t going to plan,” Jack agreed.

Triss sighed. “In retrospect, this was a terrible plan.”

Jack couldn’t help but make an I-told-you-so eye roll. “Didn’t I say that, Alyssa?”

Triss let out a long breath. “Anyway, on our way to the shower we ran into the third brother—the first of several we didn’t know would be here. I tried to work my charms on him, but either I’m not his type or the three-way competition wasn’t going to work. At any rate, that’s when the third brother—whose name was Derek, I guess—took out a radio to call up the other four. That’s when I knew things were really off, so I faked twisting my ankle to buy some time.”

“Oh, not that routine…” Alyssa groaned.

“Well, it was very effective,” Triss shot back. “Derek held off on calling the other brothers, which gave Finn the time to crack the safe. We may even have been able to get the modules back on the ship without anyone being the wiser if it weren’t for their stupid gerbil.”

Everyone except Jack nodded solemnly.

“Figures they’d have one,” Finn said.

“Am I missing something?” Jack asked. “What about a gerbil?”

“Gerbils are known to be very protective of their human caretakers,” Alyssa explained. “They have an uncanny ability to detect ill-intent and will go to great lengths to warn about an impending double-cross.” She returned her attention to Triss. “Lemme guess—it started barking?”

Triss nodded. “Yep.”

“Barking, huh?” Jack’s brow furrowed.

“Well, it’s more of a soft cooing,” Triss clarified. “But anyway, my cover was blown. So, I knocked Don’s and Bill’s heads together and started a firefight with Derek.”

“What happened to Don and Bill?” Finn asked.

She shrugged. “Not sure. Derek and I ran out here shooting at each other, where the remaining brothers joined in the fun. You know the rest.”

Alyssa frowned. “So, that means…”

The pew-pew of laser pistol fire sounded in the hangar outside as the shots struck the Little Princess’ hull.

“They’re awake,” Triss completed everyone’s thoughts aloud.

“Time to go!” Alyssa dashed to the cockpit with Triss.

Jack and Finn braced on the couches.

“I do feel a little badly about killing their brothers,” Finn admitted. “I’ve always been more of a thief than a murderer.”

“For what it’s worth, they would have killed you if you hadn’t,” Jack told him.

“I know, but we broke into their station. Of course they’d try to defend it.”

The ship’s engines hummed and it lifted off the ground. Laser blasts continued to bombard the hull outside.

“Uh oh, Finn isn’t getting all remorseful, is he?” Alyssa called out from the cockpit.

“A bit, yeah,” Jack replied.

Triss groaned. “This happens every time. Just tell him about the Plot Device Principle.”

“The what?” asked Jack.

“It’s a term I coined just now,” Triss continued. “Life would be pretty boring if everything always went according to plan.” With that, she activated the main laser array on the Little Princess and cut a hole in the side of the cargo bay.

Everything not tied down was sucked across the floor toward the new opening, including Don and Bill.

“Oops. Did I do that?” Triss stopped firing.

Alyssa directed the ship toward the hole. “And that’s how you make an exit.”

The ship passed through the opening with almost no room to spare, but Alyssa’s precision piloting got them clear of the station and the random pieces of cargo drifting out into space following the rapid decompression.

“Okay, so everyone’s dead,” Jack stated. “What do we do about the station? Someone is going to stop by for a delivery or something eventually, and we didn’t exactly make any effort to hide our presence.”

“That’s a good point,” Finn realized. “I really don’t want to go back to prison.”

“Uh guys…” Alyssa began slowly. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.”

Jack and Finn ran into the cockpit to look out the front window at a massive Vorlox ship posturing over the Winkelson Brothers’ space station.

“Where’d they come from?” Jack wondered aloud.

“An excellent question,” Finn replied, “but I suggest we don’t stick around to ask.”

“I’m with Finn.” Alyssa activated the hyperspace drive.

The engines whined in preparation for the jump and then made a sad sputter followed by a clunk.

“We’re not in hyperspace,” Finn observed.

“You think?” Alyssa’s hands raced over the controls as she brought up systems reports in an attempt to identify the problem.

“I think I know what’s wrong.” Jack gestured at the containment net that had been cast around the Little Princess.

Alyssa paused her work. “Yeah, that would do it.”

“Is there any way out?” Finn asked.

Triss grimaced. “Nothing that might not leave us in a worst position than we’re in now.”

Before anyone could offer further commentary, the radio crackled to life. “We have your friends. We know you’re after the MEC,” a gravelly, male voice growled.

Alyssa paled. “What do you want?”

“The MEC, same as you,” the Vorlox representative replied. “Bring it to us and your friends will live.”

“We need proof of life,” Alyssa continued. “Live video, now.”

The line muted for ten seconds. “Very well,” the Vorloxian conceded.

Several moments later, an incoming video request came through on the front HUD and Alyssa accepted. Jack and Finn crammed into the cockpit, huddling around the back of her chair to see.

Onscreen, Svetlana and a dozen women were seated cross-legged on the floor of what appeared to be a dormitory.

“Svetlana! Are you okay?” Alyssa asked as soon as she saw her.

“Could be worse,” the other woman replied. “Mostly just pissed about the Luxuria getting all shot up.”

“Did everyone make it out?” Triss asked.

Svetlana didn’t reply at first. “Just do what the Vorlox are asking.”

“You always told us never to negotiate lives, no matter what,” Alyssa countered.

“This is different,” Svetlana insisted. “The Vorlox aren’t—”

The video cut out and the original voice stated, “You have proof of life. Your friends won’t be harmed if you bring us the MEC.”

“We don’t have it yet,” Triss stated.

“You have two days” The radio disconnected.

Out the window, the Vorlox ship fired six blasts from the oversized lasers mounted on the side, which annihilated the remains of the space station.

“There goes our physical evidence problem,” Jack said.

The enemy ship maneuvered away from the wreckage and jumped to hyperspace in a flash.

Alyssa stared out the window, her face drawn with worry. “What would the Vorlox want with the MEC?”

“What wouldn’t they want with it?” Triss countered. “They could use it for anything from a weapons system to powering a biosphere.”

“Has anyone else noticed that they seem really organized and have great tech for being supposedly radiation-crazed people?” Jack observed.

“I do have to agree—this encounter did not support my previous impression of them or their reputation,” Alyssa agreed.

“Yeah, aside from being a little trigger-happy with their laser array, they seemed pretty rational.” Triss thought for a moment. “What do we really know about them?”

“The trigger-happiness isn’t an isolated incident,” Alyssa said. “At least five other space stations have reportedly been taken out by them in the last several months.”

“You might shoot me for saying this,” Jack began cautiously, “but were there criminals operating those space stations? Don’t get me wrong, you’re—we’re—not the bad kind of criminals, but what we’re doing isn’t exactly legal, either.”

Triss was about to punch him in the arm but Alyssa stopped her. “You might be onto something, Jack. I knew of the stations that were targeted because they were known black market trade posts for weapons and defense tech.”

“With the exception of the GiganCorp research center,” Triss pointed out.

“Maybe it’s all connected. Who knows?” Finn speculated.

Alyssa pursed her lips. “Svetlana was starting to say something about the Vorlox not being something.”

“ ‘Who they seem’, maybe?” Triss completed.

Alyssa shrugged. “As good a guess as any.”

“Then who are they really?” Jack questioned.

“I don’t know,” Finn cut in, “but we have two days to deliver the MEC to… somewhere. They didn’t actually tell us. But if we’re going to have it in-hand by then, we need to get going.”

“He’s right. We have a mission to finish.” Alyssa turned back around in her chair to face the controls. “Now that we have the nano induction modules, we need to mine some thorium and get to the GiganCorp lab ASAP.”

“Right, the part where go play with glowing green rocks…” Jack muttered.

“Oh, it’s barely radioactive. We just need a slight trace.”

Jack frowned. “All the same, I really thought you were joking.”

CHAPTER 11: Positively Glowing

Jack stared with dismay at the asteroid gently tumbling through space a kilometer away. “You really weren’t joking.”

“Seriously, this isn’t a big deal,” Alyssa repeated. “Of everything we have to do for this mission, this is the easiest part.”

“Famous last words,” Jack muttered.

“All right! The extraction assembly is ready,” Triss announced from her seat in the cockpit.

Alyssa took the controls again. “I’ll bring us in. Take the shot as soon as you can—it’ll be tough to hold us in position with those rocks orbiting the asteroid.”

“Roger that,” Triss acknowledged.

Jack took a seat in the common room and grabbed onto the handholds beneath the cushions as a precaution. Regardless of Alyssa’s insistence that everything would be fine, he’d been through too many “sure bets” to believe such statements.

“This might be a little bumpy…” Alyssa warned as she directed the Little Princess closer to the four-hundred-meter-long rock.

The ship shuddered as its shields were bombarded by the cloud of rocky debris and dust surrounding the asteroid. The grapple line for the extraction assembly only had a three hundred meter reach, meaning that they had to fly closer to the asteroid than any flight manual would advise. In fact, in the fifth edition of How to Avoid Huge Spacerocks, the author had specifically warned against the very maneuver they were attempting.

Jack’s objections had been overruled, of course, because his companions were insane, by his estimation. However, they were also the competent type of insane so he had reasonable confidence they’d get out of the mission alive.

Alyssa aligned the ship above a thorium deposit using the targeting overlay on the HUD.

“A little closer…” Triss urged.

“I’m trying!” Alyssa gritted her teeth as she fought against the controls.

“Almost…. Got it!” Triss fired the extractor.

The claw-like assembly and tether shot out from the belly of the Little Princess and embedded in the asteroid.

“Drilling underway,” Triss stated. “We need a minute and then we should be all set.”

Alyssa remained focused on maintaining enough slack on the tether to keep it from prematurely ripping the assembly from the rock.

After a minute, Triss beamed. “Extraction successful! Now to reel it in.” She pushed the button to activate the servos.

Nothing happened.

“That’s not good,” she murmured.

Alyssa groaned. “Nothing ever went wrong before you were here, Jack.”

“Hey, I warned—”

“Not now!” Triss cut him off. “I can’t override the servos from here. They may have been damaged in the laser fire on the station.”

“How securely is the extractor connected to the cable?” Alyssa asked.

Triss nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. It should hold.”

Gently, Alyssa began pulling away from the asteroid, increasing the tension on the cable connecting the ship to the container now filled with a sample of thorium.

“If we lose that sample…” Triss warned.

“I know, I know. Quiet.” Alyssa’s gaze darted between the readings on the HUD and out the window for visual confirmation of their position relative to the tether point. “Almost…”

The taut tether snapped free of the asteroid and whipped back toward the ship, the extraction claw still attached to the end. The metal claw crashed into the portside window of the cockpit next to Alyssa. The window held but small cracks radiated from the impact site.

Alyssa pointed the ship away from the asteroid into open space and cut the thrusters. “That was way too close.”

“Someone has to go out there to retrieve the canister,” Triss said. “And we should probably seal that window before the crack spreads.”

“Not me!’ Finn said. “Those EVA suits are too claustrophobic.”

“I should monitor the servos from in here,” Triss suggested.

“And I’m the pilot, so…” Alyssa looked to Jack.

“Oh man. Seriously?” Jack let out a heavy sigh.

“Let’s get you suited up, come on,” Alyssa said and led him to the airlock at the stern of the craft.

Dragging his feet, Jack followed her. “I hate EVA.”

“New guy gets the short straw,” she replied as she pulled a gold-tinted suit and helmet from a storage closet.

“This smells like bile,” Jack commented when he caught a whiff of the helmet.

“There may or may not have been an incident during the last EVA.” Alyssa shrugged. “I’m sure you won’t notice it as soon as it’s sealed up.”

Reluctantly, Jack donned the suit and slipped on the helmet. Contrary to Alyssa’s statement, the smell was in fact much, much worse once the suit was sealed. Nonetheless, he didn’t like the idea of a crack in the window of the spaceship, so he was driven to complete the job at hand.

After securing some tools to his waist belt and performing a comm check with Alyssa, he entered the tiny airlock toward the stern of the ship and waited for the pressure to drop. When all the air had been vented, the light on the outer door turned green and he opened the hatch.

“Heading out,” he said into the comm.

“Slow and steady,” Alyssa said on the other end.

Jack strapped onto a lead line and connected it to an anchor outside the door. He then carefully exited the ship, hanging onto handholds that seemed far too shallow in the feeble grasp afforded with the gloves of the EVA suit.

He inched along the side of the craft, gulping as he saw the tether line for the extractor stretching out into space next to the ship. Any sudden change of direction and the line could easily pin him against the hull and slice him clean through.

First, he passed by the anchor for the tether to inspect the crack in the front portside window. It wasn’t pretty, but the crack appeared to be isolated to only the outermost of the two layers of aluminum silicate glass windowpanes. He unclipped a canister of sealant from his belt and slathered it along the crack. The material oozed into the crevasse and within moments the impact site was invisible.

“Good. Now for the hard part,” Alyssa said.

Jack backtracked toward the tether. Once in position next to the reel, he locked the gravity boots on his EVA suit and began bashing his fist on the reel’s external control panel. The random button mashing did nothing, so he flipped out a hand crank to reel it in manually.

“You owe me a shoulder massage after this,” Jack panted as he cranked the reel, trading off hands when one arm tired.

“I’ll get Triss right on that. She gives amazing massages,” Alyssa replied.

“I’ll bet you’d know.”

After seven minutes of vigorous cranking, the end of the tether was finally close. Jack slowed down as the final length of line came in, and he retrieved the canister from inside the claw. Holding the canister in his left hand, he made the final cranks to return the claw to its casing in the hull and closed the cover for the control panel.

Cautiously, he unlocked his boots and made his way back inside.

“Great job!” Alyssa praised when he was safely back in the airlock.

Jack sealed the door and began to repressurize the chamber. While he waited, he examined the material inside the canister through the transparent window in its side. “Huh. Is it supposed to be glowing like that?”

CHAPTER 12: A Tasty Detour

“No. No, it is not.” Alyssa’s concern was audible over the comm.

Jack took a closer look at the canister containing the sample they’d collected from the asteroid. He knew it was supposed to be thorium, but as far as he knew, thorium didn’t glow.

“Don’t take off your suit just yet,” Alyssa stated. “We need to figure out what’s going on.”

The light blue glow emanating from the canister looked almost magical in the dim lighting of the airlock.

“It’s kinda pretty,” Jack commented. “What do you think it is?”

“I’m not sure…” None of the concern had left Alyssa’s tone.

“What color is it glowing?” Triss asked, jumping on the comm.

“Pale blue,” Jack replied. “The material itself looks to be kind of metallic white.”

Triss’ face appeared in the tiny porthole window in the airlock door. “Show me.”

Jack held up the canister for her to get a better view.

Her eyebrows drew together. “Uhh… that looks like actinium.”

“Sounds fancy.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not supposed to exist on its own in nature.”

Jack frowned. “That’s curious.”

“It’s also highly radioactive. Like, super-hot radioactive.”

“So it’s probably bad I’m holding onto it.”

“Not the greatest, no. I mean, the canister should contain it. And the airlock is sealed against radiation, same shielding as the hull.”

Jack set down the canister near the back wall. “I don’t want to be in this room with the radioactive nonsense, Triss. Let me out! Alyssa, make her let me out!”

“Okay, just hold on,” Alyssa soothed. “We’ll go into the sleeping cabins while the door is open. Re-seal the airlock when you’re inside.”

“What about my suit?”

“It’ll be… fine,” Triss replied. “Just toss it in the closet.”

“All right…” Jack agreed.

The others ran away from the door and gave him an all-clear signal when the cabin doors were closed. He opened up the interior airlock door and re-sealed it, then stripped off the EVA suit as quickly as possible. A decontamination routine activated on the suit when it was in storage.

“That’s a terrible design,” he grumbled.

Alyssa, Triss, and Finn crept out from the two sleeping cabins.

“Well, this is going to make the break-in significantly more difficult,” Alyssa said.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Jack said.

“Yes, thank you for going out there,” Alyssa acknowledged. “But seriously, though, the plan counted on a stable radioactive compound. With the grapple shot, we don’t have another chance to extract what we need.”

“Why did you need it?” Jack asked.

“To throw off the security sensors in the GiganCorp labs,” she explained. “The presence of a radioactive substance diverts some of the resources away from normal bio-detection—like a decoy.”

“Well, this would make one heck of a decoy!” Jack exclaimed.

Alyssa sighed. “Way too much. I think the entire lab would lock down as soon as something that potent was detected.”

Jack thought for a moment. “What are the procedures when there’s a dangerous containment breach?”

“Everyone immediately goes into secure bunkers. Emergency doors seal.”

“What kind of visibility do those bunkers have to security cameras and the like?” Jack prompted.

“Not the full control center, but probably some,” Alyssa replied.

“But looping footage of an empty hallway is easy,” Triss cut in. “And Finn and I can bypass any lock.”

“Yeah we can!” Finn cheered.

Jack grinned. “Alyssa, I think getting this actinium might be a happy accident. We can clear out the whole lab and take what we want. Be in and out before anyone really knows what’s going on.”

A smile slowly spread across her face. “That could work. Handling the material is going to be tricky, though. We’ll need extra radiation suits.”

“They probably have some stashed away at GiganCorp, right?” Triss prompted.

“Almost certainly,” Alyssa confirmed. “But it’s possible all of them will be taken by staff as soon as the alarm is triggered.”

Jack smirked. “Easy. We just need to make sure the alarm triggers when the facility isn’t fully staffed.”

“We have two days to get this done,” Alyssa reminded him. It’s not like we can wait for the weekend. And overnight, the security systems follow different protocols and we’d be screwed.”

“So we time it right during normal operating hours but make sure to clear it out,” Jack stated.

Alyssa raised an eyebrow skeptically. “And how do we do that?”

Jack waved his hand. “By declaring a bottomless margarita happy hour at the nearest bar, of course! And ‘all you can eat’ taquitos for three credits. That’ll empty the place.”

“I’m beginning to realize that most of our ideas revolve around food,” Finn observed.

Jack nodded. “I really am bummed about all of that chili going to waste earlier.”

Alyssa shrugged. “Cost of doing business.”

Triss had a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Jack, this idea of yours will work. Just mentioning taquitos is making me hungry.”

“Me too,” Finn agreed. He looked around the group. “Should we go for taquitos right now?”

“I think we need to test out the bar to make sure it has sufficient draw to serve our purposes in the plan,” Alyssa said.

“Yes, just vetting the plan,” Triss concurred.

“Why do I not have taquitos in my mouth right now?” Alyssa cried as she dashed for the cockpit.

“I’m soooo hungry now that I’m thinking about it,” moaned Triss. “How far away is the GiganCorp lab with the MEC?”

“About four hours in hyperspace,” Alyssa said with a frown.

“Four hours?! I’ll never make it,” Finn wailed.

“We could have a snack to hold us over—” Jack started to suggest, but the others fixed dagger-eyes on him.

“Taquitos are a snack. An ultimate snack! We can’t snack and then have another snack,” Triss stated.

“You know…” Finn clasped his hands. “What if we stop off at a nearby station to have some taquitos and then go to the place near GiganCorp to get more taquitos?”

Alyssa’s face lit up. “Finn, you are a brilliant, brilliant man.”

CHAPTER 13: Hidden Past

Wiping his hands on a napkin, Jack eased back onto the couch. “That was so good.”

Triss reclined next to him. “I forgot how much I love taquitos.”

“Must... resist... food coma…” Alyssa hauled herself out of the chair at the foldout table near the galley.

“She’s right, we need to get to the system with GiganCorp’s lab,” Finn said from the chair across from her. “Wake me up when we’re at the next taquito place.”

“Must focus.” Alyssa shook her head side-to-side rapidly and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, hyperspace.” She plodded into the cockpit.

Triss winced and then forced herself off the couch. “I shouldn’t have gotten the double portion.”

“You can have too much of a good thing,” Jack said.

“Lies.” Triss followed Alyssa into the cockpit.

Jack held on to the handholds in the couch as the ship made the jump to hyperspace. The pressure during acceleration was significantly more uncomfortable than normal with his full stomach.

As much as he wanted to nap during transit—both as a result of his large meal and from being up all night thanks to Finn’s bizarre night terrors—he knew there was a break-in to plan.

Alyssa left Triss in charge of piloting the ship while she helped Jack and Finn map out the details.

Jack was surprised by Alyssa’s intimate knowledge of the facility. He asked dozens of random questions while they were going over the building schematics and security systems, and somehow she had a definitive response. Eventually, his curiosity got the better of him.

“Alyssa, how do you know so much about such an ultra-secure facility? I mean, I know it doesn’t seem all that secure because we’re talking about all the ways we can outsmart the systems, but we are the best.”

“Well, we’re the best. You’re Jack,” she countered.

“Now you’re just dodging my question.”

She looked down at the tabletop.

“Did you used to work there?” Jack pressed.

“Yes,” she replied at last.

Finn’s eyes widened. “You never told me that before! I thought you just had an in with security or something.”

“No, not exactly.” Alyssa hesitated. “When I left the company, my access credentials were never fully deactivated.”

“That seems like a pretty big oversight,” Finn commented.

“It was. Especially considering it’s been seven years,” she replied.

Jack eyed her. “How do you know you still have access?”

“I can still log into the VPN, which means I’m in the system. I’ve been regularly logging onto the account over the years to keep it from going dormant,” Alyssa revealed. “The communications forwarded through that account are how I learned they’d constructed the MEC prototype.”

Finn nodded thoughtfully. “That explains a lot.”

“That means my old keycard should be able to help get us in through the front door,” Alyssa continued. “However, since it’s an old account, we’ll need to trick the system.”

“Hence the nano induction module,” Triss supplied from the cockpit.

“Exactly,” Alyssa confirmed.

“You must have had some pretty high-level security clearance if you were receiving messages about a product that hasn’t been publicly announced,” Jack realized.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Alyssa shrugged.

Jack wasn’t convinced that she was telling the whole story. “What was your job at GiganCorp?”

“What did you say, Triss?” Alyssa called out in an obvious evasion. “You need me to look at what?”

“I didn’t—” Triss cut her off. “Right. The, uh, forward inertial dampeners are giving some readings slightly outside of spec. You should totally double-check that right away.”

“That sounds urgent,” Alyssa said and rose from the table. “I think we’ve gone over the important parts of the plan. We’ll be there soon.”

Jack and Finn exchanged bewildered glances as Alyssa retreated into the cockpit with Triss.

“That was weird, right?” Jack whispered.

“Very odd,” Finn agreed in a hushed voice.

“What do you think she’s hiding?”

Finn shook his head. “This is the first I’ve ever heard about her being a corporate employee. I’ve known her for about five years and in that time she’s been all about skirting the law, first with Trent and then with Svetlana’s crew. Frankly, I can’t imagine her being one of those suits.”

“Me either. And why won’t she talk about it?”

“Most of us have some element of our past we’d rather forget,” Finn stated.

“True enough, but that reaction… There’s something she really doesn’t want us to know.”

Jack and Finn decided it was best to not go down the dangerous path of idle speculation, so they let the issue drop for the time being. However, Jack was committed to getting the truth out of Alyssa at the first possible opportunity.

The rest of the jump passed by quickly. Like many of the inhabited systems in the middle zone between the central worlds and outermost colonies, the system consisted of one main terraformed planet, several space stations, and a moon designated as the dumping ground for anything that wasn’t wanted by the other establishments. The GiganCorp research lab was naturally situated on an equatorial continent of the planet that afforded the nicest climate and beachfront. Fortunately, being the main attraction to the planet, it was also located next to a port on the surface, and in proximity to the restaurant on which Jack’s plan to clear out GiganCorp’s lab hinged.

The Little Princess entered the atmosphere and descended to the port. Controllers directed them to a berth.

“Just a quick taste,” Alyssa told everyone once they were docked. “No more double portions.”

“You’ll have to handle the ordering, then,” Triss told her. “I don’t trust myself to order responsibly.”

“Me either,” Finn admitted.

“I’m really not that hungry again yet,” Jack ventured, but he quickly backpedaled when he saw the utter appall on the face of the others. “Kidding, of course.”

Everyone relaxed.

Triss chuckled. “I was going to say… No one turns down more taquitos!”

They secured the Little Princess at the port and took a moving walkway from the docking area to a commercial district. The target establishment, Mexcelente, had a front façade finished in faux stucco with sombreros and maracas painted in red, green, and blue. Synth mariachi music filled the hall.

“I smell them!” Hunger was in Triss’ eyes.

“I’m ordering, remember,” Alyssa told her and took the lead into the restaurant.

Several small groups were waiting in the lobby, and Alyssa needed to force her way to the front host stand.

An unenthused red-headed man wearing a fake black moustache greeted them, “Welcome to Mexcelente, home of the most mexcelente burritos. How many in your party?”

“Four,” Alyssa replied.

The man consulted the holoconsole in front of him. “It’ll be about a forty-minute wait for the dining room.”

Triss gripped Alyssa’s arm. “I can’t wait that long.”

“What about the bar?” Alyssa asked the host.

“Bar is open seating. Help yourself,” he told them. “Next customer.”

Triss forged ahead to the bar off the right side of the lobby. She spotted a tall table near the middle and beckoned everyone over.

“You really have no impulse control,” Alyssa commented as she took a seat at the table.

“I’m sorry. Me and taquitos are like you and coffee,” Triss said.

“I’m all for the bar seating.” Finn began perusing the drink menu.

Jack settled into the final chair and looked over the main food menu. It seemed fairly typical at first, until he noticed that some of the proteins were somewhat unusual. “Frog tacos?”

“It’s French-Mexican hybrid from Old Earth,” Alyssa told him without looking up from her own menu.

Jack wrinkled his nose. “That’s so unnatural! I think I’ll stick to the synthobeef.”

As he set down his menu, Jack noticed that a man was eyeing their table from across the bar. “We have company.”

Alyssa glanced up and spotted the man. She immediately looked back down and tried to hide behind her menu.

The man rose from his seat and approached them. “Alyssa?”

She swore under her breath and slowly lowered the menu, forcing a smile. “Hey, Ed.”

“Wow, long time no see!” Ed exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see you around these parts again.”

“Well, business…” she said with a shrug.

“Huh.” He nodded. “Do your parents know you’re back?”

“No, and I wasn’t planning to reach out to them,” Alyssa stated flatly.

The man frowned. “Well, a lot of people would be happy to see you. It’s not every day that the genius daughter of one of GiganCorp’s leading researchers returns to town.”

CHAPTER 14: Team Bonding

Jack and Finn openly gawked at Alyssa.

“You’re the daughter of one of the GiganCorp executives?” Jack stammered.

“I’m no one,” Alyssa said and got up from the table. “Don’t tell anyone I was here, Ed.” She started for the exit.

Triss caught her hand and drew her back. “No more running. You promised.”

Alyssa let out a slow breath and returned to her seat.

Ed searched Alyssa’s face. “What made you leave the company so suddenly?”

“Some matters of business aren’t worth the personal sacrifice,” she responded cryptically.

Jack noticed Triss squeeze her hand under the table.

“Well, sorry to have interrupted your dinner,” Ed murmured. “Good to see you, Alyssa.” He returned to his seat.

Finn waited until Ed was beyond earshot. “I get not wanting to explain yourself to him, but I think it’s time you tell us what’s really going on here.”

Alyssa nodded. “I was hoping we could be in and out without running into anyone who knows me, but that was wishful thinking.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, my parents work for GiganCorp, and so did my grandparents, and great-grandparents, etcetera. I went to college to study engineering, just like I was supposed to, and began working in the research division as soon as I graduated. Things were fine for a couple of years, but then Competron came into the mix.”

“They’re GiganCorp’s main competition, right?” Finn prompted.

“Yes. Really, the only competition,” Alyssa confirmed. “But it’s not just competition in terms of the products. Competron has a fundamentally different business model—they’re all about freemium business models so no one has to go without, but those with the means can get whatever they want.

“Obviously, this caused some problems in the executive ranks of GiganCorp. How could the company compete if someone else was giving away the same product for free?”

“Free is nice,” Jack said.

“Exactly.” Alyssa nodded. “So, being the unimaginative lot that they are, they decided to send me to Competron as a mole. That’s when I learned that Competron is actually a pretty nice place to work and they have a winning mission statement and all that.”

“So you defected?” Finn said.

“In a roundabout way. Triss and I met at Competron, where she was one of the engineers working on AI integration,” Alyssa explained.

Understanding registered in Finn’s eyes. “Ah, that’s how you got so good.”

“I wasn’t nearly as good before I met you,” Triss smiled.

Finn ducked his head bashfully. “Aw, shucks.”

“Anyway,” Alyssa continued. “GiganCorp wanted me to come back and spill everything I’d learned about Competron, but I wanted to stay. After some long, boring conversations about non-competes, I stumbled across a job posting on a board looking for volunteers to help the disenfranchised. I was annoyed enough with corporate interests that it sounded appealing. Things started out innocently enough, but Triss and I eventually found ourselves at the inner circle of Svetlana’s little empire. After things went bad with Trent, it was too dangerous to venture out on our own, so we were stuck.”

“Then this job with GiganCorp came up,” Triss added. “It was a chance to take some tech that could allow a third player to enter into the competition mix in a big way.”

“Through coffee?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

“That’s one application,” Alyssa said. “Obviously that wasn’t going to be the only thing.”

“But now the Vorlox are after the same thing, for unknown reasons,” Finn said. “So that makes things tricky.”

“It does. I still don’t know their angle,” Alyssa admitted. “But I do know that GiganCorp is not the company that should have sole use of the MEC,” she whispered the last part so it couldn’t be heard beyond their table.

“Okay, so we carry out our plan, and then…?” Jack prompted.

Alyssa shrugged. “Confront the Vorlox and find out if they’re friend or foe, I guess.”

“Yeah, confront the big, angry, murdery people in the giant ship with spikes and huge guns. That’s a great plan,” Jack muttered.

“They might be very nice,” Triss pointed out.

Jack sighed. “Yeah, sure…”

A minute later, the waiter came to take their order.

“Taquitos all around,” Alyssa ordered without her previous enthusiasm for the item.

“Single or double?” the waiter asked as she consulted her handheld touchpad.

Alyssa slumped in her chair. “Singles for them and a double for me.”

“Now who’s the one with self-control issues?” Triss said with a raised eyebrow.

“Comfort food,” was Alyssa’s only response.

“Okay, three singles and a double order of taquitos. What meat?” the waitress asked.

“Surprise us,” Finn replied.

Jack’s pulse spiked. “You did see the menu, right?”

Finn flipped his wrist. “Variety keeps things interesting.”

“Surprise it is…” Jack conceded.

The waitress made a notation. “And anything to drink?”

“Premium margarita for me!” Finn said with a raised finger.

“No drinking. We have work to do,” Alyssa objected.

“Not until tomorrow afternoon,” Triss pointed out. “Everything has been prepped.”

Alyssa melted when she saw Triss’ pleading eyes. “All right, premium margaritas all around.”

Finn grinned. “A right proper party!”

One drink quickly turned into four and the group confirmed that a bottomless margarita offer would make an excellent distraction for the GiganCorp employees. The taquitos, likewise, were suitably satiating and a nice upgrade from the budget place they’d hit up after leaving the former Winkelson Brothers’ station.

With several drinks in him, Jack was feeling warm and happy even though the world was a little wobbly around him. “Guys… thanks for taking me in.”

“Uh oh, I sense a sentimental speech coming on,” Finn quipped.

“No, really!” Jack insisted. “Things were pretty rough after my childhood stage acting dreams didn’t work out. I got involved in petty crime, and I was floundering for a long time. Deep in debt, few friends, and no one I could trust… I just wanted a fresh start. I know you were just using me at first, but over the last few days I’ve started to feel like one of the team—and this cybernetic eye has even grown on me.”

“Well, you’ve grown on me, too,” Alyssa gave him a gentle punch in his arm.

“Yeah, you’re all right,” Triss smirked.

“I vote we keep him,” Finn said. His words were fairly slurred, being three drinks deeper than everyone else.

“Really?” Jack’s eyes lit up. “I can stay after this mission is over?”

Alyssa shrugged. “If we’re still alive, sure. You’ve been a good boy.”

Triss reached over the table and ruffled his hair. “That’s a good boy!” she said in the same tone as one might praise a dog.

Jack yanked his head away from her but secretly he didn’t care. He was the new guy and a little hazing was to be expected. For once, it was nice to be part of a team.

CHAPTER 15: Hazy Recollections

Jack awoke with an impressive hangover. The spinning of the world around him from last night had subsided, but his head ached and his stomach felt like he’d spent all night in zero-g.

He assessed his surroundings and found that he was in his bed on the lower bunk in his cabin.

However, Finn was passed out half on Jack’s bed and half on the floor. “Where’s the cake?” he said as he woke with a start. “Ugh.” He clutched his head.

Jack forced himself into a sitting position, making everything feel worse. “How many did we have last night?”

“I lost count.” Finn rubbed his eyes.

“Me too. I wonder how Alyssa and Triss are doing?”

“I doubt they’re up yet.”

The two men slowly stood up and stumbled toward the door.

“I think I’m still a little drunk,” Jack commented when he got to his feet. The world seemed like it was tilted at an angle. It was then that he realized his cybernetic eye implant had been knocked off-center. He twisted it back into position. “Never mind. Just hungover.”

Finn slid the door open and they stepped into the hallway.

The scent of slightly burned coffee filled the common room. Triss and Alyssa were seated at the galley table, looking perfectly rested and refreshed.

“About time you got up,” Alyssa said. “Looks like you had a rough night.”

“How are you not dead?” Finn moaned. “You were matching us drink for drink.”

She shook her head. “Oh, we switched to non-alcoholic daiquiris after the second round. You must have been too busy to notice, and afterward you were too drunk to have noticed much of anything.”

“Should we remind them about the exotic dancers?” Triss asked.

Alyssa looked over Jack and Finn. “Maybe we better not.”

“You can’t make a comment like that and not elaborate!” Jack exclaimed. He winced at the sound of his own loud voice.

“You had a group of exotic dancers that took a liking to you last night,” Alyssa said. “I think you went to make out in the corner for a while.”

Jack nodded with satisfaction. “Was she hot?”

“Oh, you misunderstand,” said with a little smile. “It was a group of men. But they were hot, yes.”

Triss smirked. “They said you were pretty.”

“If they called him pretty, then I must have been their god,” Finn declared.

“You got as much attention as you could handle, don’t worry,” Alyssa said. “You wandered off to a back room for a while and I’m not sure what went on, but when you came back you looked happy. Then you tried to crash another bachelorette party.”

Finn nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“What do you mean ‘another’?” Jack asked. “And I’m surprised I didn’t zero in on the bachelorette group. That’s normally my thing.”

“Oh, you did,” Triss clarified. “You were the center of attention with the first group.”

He smiled smugly. “Oh yeah?”

Alyssa nodded. “They had a great time with you.”

Realization sparked in Finn’s bleary eyes. “Oh, that explains things. I was wondering…”

“Wondering what?” Jack searched the others’ faces for clarification.

“Look in the mirror,” Alyssa suggested.

Jack hurried to the washroom to look in the mirror over the sink. To his surprise, a fully make-upped face stared back at him, complete with false eyelashes, mascara, painted eyebrows, eyeshadow, rouge, and lipstick. With the flush on his face hidden beneath the rouge, Jack returned to the galley area. “Did this happen before or after the exotic dancers took a liking to me?”

“Before, of course,” Triss said, holding in a giggle.

“You probably spent a good three hours at the bar that way,” Alyssa shook her head as she chuckled. “You really have no game—just walked up to the bachelorette party sloshing the drink in your hand and babbling about rabbits, or something. They sat you down and put on your face.”

“I think it kind of suits him, don’t you?” Triss commented to Alyssa with a twinkle in her eyes.

Alyssa nodded. “Very striking.”

Finn reached up to check his own face.

“No, you’re good,” Jack said. “Looks like I got all the honors this time.”

“That’s not all you got…” Triss snickered.

“I don’t want to know.” Jack returned to the bathroom to wash up. Unfortunately, the lipstick and eyeliner proved to be one of the more permanent varieties.

By the time he was showered and dressed, his headache had receded and his stomach was much more settled. He found the others still in the galley munching on leftover taquitos. Sadly, they weren’t nearly as good as when fresh. Nonetheless, he ate until he was an appropriate level of full.

“What do we do until it’s time to head into the GiganCorp lab?” Jack asked.

“Charades?” Finn suggested.

While not a terrible suggestion, Jack soon regretted agreeing to the idea because the others took the game as an opportunity to mime Jack’s various escapades from the previous night. The prompts included winners such as, ‘Jack having one too many’, ‘Jack and the dancer get it on’, and ‘Jack being prettified’. He didn’t find it nearly as amusing as the others did.

After two hours, it was time to prep for the GiganCorp break-in. While everyone geared up with what they’d need for their roles, Jack took the opportunity to practice changing the modes for his cybernetic eye using his thoughts. It took concentration and several attempts, but he found that he was able to cycle through the different settings.

By mid-afternoon, everyone was ready to head into the lab.

Jack wasn’t surprised to find that he’d been nominated to carry the canister containing the actinium. Triss insisted, however, that all scans showed the canister was containing the radiation, despite their initial fears. All the same, he couldn’t help feeling a little nervous carrying it in a backpack—especially since everyone else gave him a several meters buffer while they walked over to the facility.

They gathered outside the main entry gate, which presented more like the approach to a luxury beach resort than a research laboratory. Tropical trees lined a paved path and bushes with red flowers circled an elaborate three-tier fountain topped with a giant G.

“Everyone ready?” Alyssa asked.

They nodded.

“Okay. Sending the happy hour announcement now!” Alyssa said as she sent the invite via her mobile.

Three minutes passed in silence as they waited for the marketing offer to do its thing. Then, people began flooding out of the front doors.

“Bottomless margaritas?” one woman in a white lab coat was saying. “And anywhere in the restaurant—not just the bar? Wow!”

“I know, it’s amazing!” her colleague replied.

Alyssa nodded with satisfaction as she did a rough headcount of those leaving. “That should clear out the lab pretty well and be enough to overwhelm the host at the restaurant. We should have a good half an hour before they realize that the pricing offer isn’t real.”

“And by then the smell of fried awesomeness will have captivated them.” Finn got a blissful, faraway look in his eyes.

“Stay focused,” Alyssa stated. “We’re going in.”

“That’s what he said,” Jack snickered.

Alyssa rolled her eyes and then led the way across the remainder of the front walkway. She confidently strode into the building lobby with the others in tow.

At the back of the lobby, two guards dressed in white body armor were seated behind a reception desk. They looked over the new arrivals.

“You don’t work here,” the guard on the right said.

“Yeah we do,” Alyssa lied. “We were onsite at a client meeting and wearing street clothes for the day.”

“Oh, okay,” the guard replied.

Alyssa walked over toward the controlled access door on the left of the lobby. She stealthily placed the nano induction module over the keycard reader. “Didn’t you two get the message about bottomless margaritas and three credit taquitos at Mexcelente?”

The two guards looked at each other.

“I told you we shouldn’t have turned off email!” the one on the left exclaimed.

“Better hurry!” Alyssa urged while she activated the induction module to override the keycard’s connection to the central database. “Everyone else is already on their way over. We’re just dropped off some stuff we brought to the meeting and then we’ll join you.”

“Think it’s okay to run over for a few minutes?” the guard on the right asked the other.

“Yeah, no one ever comes in here. It’ll be fine,” the left guard replied.

“Great!” Alyssa swiped her keycard over the disabled access pad. The light turned green. “See you over at Mexcelente!”

The guards rose from their desk. “See you there! Thanks for letting us know.”

Jack, Finn, and Triss darted through the door before it closed, with Triss grabbing the nano induction module as she passed by.

“This security really is a joke,” Jack said when everyone was on the other side and the door was closed.

“Oh yeah, it’s awful,” Alyssa agreed. “Hellana, ‘high security’ labs like this, it’s all the same—perpetuate a reputation of being secure and rely on those rumors to maintain security.”

“So robbing a bank…” Jack ventured.

She nodded. “Walk in and take whatever you want. Most will even give you a goody bag just for coming in.”

“Done it. It’s true,” Finn added.

“Huh.” Jack began planning his next venture.

“All right,” Alyssa said, turning to the task at hand, “the radiation suits should be down here.” She directed them to a side corridor. “I think it’s this way…”

The interior walls were all stark white plastic panels that had a glossy sheen under the light cast from the illuminated ceiling. White tile covered the floor, and a black baseboard lined both sides, with a black cap wrapping the corners of walls at the hallway intersections to increase visibility.

“Yes, here we go.” Alyssa stopped next to a section of white paneling that had an orange rim. An image of a hazmat suit was depicted on the center of the panel. “Jack, switch your vision over to the electromagnetic field mode.”

He concentrated on the eye controls and saw his left field of vision switch to the desired setting. “Got it.”

“Do you see any wires?” Alyssa asked.

“Yes, going from the emblem at the center up to the right edge of the case.

“Okay, now switch to infrared,” Alyssa instructed. “Is there any hotspot where those wires disappear into the wall?”

“No, just blue and green,” he said.

Alyssa nodded. “Excellent, so it’s not wired to an alarm.” She pressed the emblem on the center of the panel and the door opened. “You can go back to normal vision. That’s all we needed.”

“That’s it?! You can’t be serious.”

“I meant for now, Jack. We still need the eye to mimic a retinal scan.”

“But still… Why did you need to take my eye and give me this implant for that?” he exclaimed.

“Well, we couldn’t very easily walk around with a scanner,” Alyssa countered.

Jack looked down at their bags of gear. “Oh, really?”

Alyssa shrugged. “In retrospect, it probably wasn’t necessary for this part. But look how useful you got to feel! And you did say the settings were cool.”

“Yeah, I guess they are…” Jack admitted.

“Anyway, time is wasting,” Alyssa said. She turned back to the cabinet, which contained a dozen suits in shades of yellow, green, blue, and pink. Alyssa handed Jack one of the pink suits.

He sighed and set down his backpack containing the actinium before he took it from her. “Seriously?”

“It matches your lipstick.” She grinned.

Alyssa took a yellow suit for herself and gave Felix blue and Triss green. They helped each other into the awkward headpieces and checked the seals.

Once satisfied that everything was in order, Alyssa removed the actinium canister from the backpack and carried it into the main hallway. “Here we go.”

She popped the seal.

Five seconds passed while they waited for the radiation signature to be detected.

An alarm blared in the hall and the lights changed to red. The alarm subsided momentarily for an automated announcement, “Radiation leak detected. Proceed to the nearest safe room and await instruction.”

Their plan to empty out the facility seemed to have been effective, as they saw no one enter the hall to go to the lockdown rooms. Not having time to wait around, the group followed Alyssa further inside toward the specific lab where the prototype MEC was developed.

The main corridor was blocked by an emergency containment door.

“Time for us to earn our keep,” Felix said with the grin to Triss.

They pulled out electronic equipment from a small duffle bag and tapped into the control panel next to the door. Alyssa had explained that keycards couldn’t override the emergency protocols to prevent some well-meaning worker from flooding an area with radiation while trying to let someone through the door.

The sealed door proved to be no barrier for Finn’s and Triss’ skills, however, and the group was soon back on their way.

Jack lost track of their path as they wound through the corridors and down several stairwells, with Finn and Triss disabling the security doors as needed.

“I can’t believe you remember your way around here,” Jack commented when Alyssa made yet another turn.

“I spent years here. It’s difficult to forget,” she replied. “Ah, here it is.”

She had stopped outside a lab entrance with sliding double doors. ‘Top Secret’ was written in giant red lettering above the door.

“A little on the nose.” Triss smirked when she read it.

“No room for ambiguity, that’s for sure.” Alyssa located a biometric scanner next to the door. “Okay, Jack, you’re up.”

“Hold still,” Triss instructed, and she went to work with Finn on syncing their computers with Jack’s cybernetic eye.

A minute later, they had him look into the retinal scanner. The light shone green on the lock and the doors slid open.

On the other side, a woman looked up in surprise. “Who are— Alyssa?”

Alyssa removed the hood of her hazmat suit, no longer needed so far from where they’d left the actinium. “Hi, Mom.”

CHAPTER 16: Heist

“Alyssa… care to explain?” Jack slipped off the headpiece of his own hazmat suit.

The captain let out a long breath. “Okay… So, when I said I worked here at GiganCorp, I maybe should have mentioned that I was on the team working on the MEC with my mother, Mariah, here. My father is the Director of this R&D division.”

Mariah crossed her arms. “What are you doing back here, Alyssa? I thought your clearance had been revoked when you ran off with your girlfriend.”

“Administrative oversight,” Alyssa replied. “I see you had no trouble taking all the credit for my work.”

“This was always a team effort. And you left the team,” her mother replied.

Finn raised his hand. “Sorry to interrupt the family reunion, but we have a job to do.”

Alyssa nodded. “He’s right. Sorry, Mom, but we’re going to take the MEC.”

“Like hell you will! Guards will be here any moment,” Mariah responded.

“Nope.” Finn shook his head. “Everyone is busy imbibing and snacking until they realize they’ll have to pay full price.”

Mariah worked her mouth. “You mean you just walked in here and you think you can walk right out?”

“That’s precisely what’s going to happen.” Alyssa headed for the back of the lab.

Three workstations in the middle of the space were filled with electronic components and a holodisplay for overlaying various digital models with the physical parts.

Jack scanned over the various components and tools scattered on the workstations, looking for anything worthy of adding to his collection of random things. A compact soldering gun caught his eye.

He reached for it. “Is that—”

“No, we’re only here for one thing,” Alyssa stated.

He sighed. “Fine.”

The centerpiece along the back wall was a plexiglass enclosure containing a pedestal topped with a compact metallic cylinder approximately eight centimeters in length and two centimeters in diameter. Blue grooves ran the length of the sides up to the black caps on the ends.

“It looks even better in real life,” Alyssa murmured as she admired it.

“You did a brilliant job with the design, I’ll give you that,” her mother said. “But you walked away from it when you walked away from us.”

Alyssa scoffed. “This will never be used for good so long as it’s with GiganCorp. You have to know that.”

“It’s business.” Mariah shrugged. “You’re the one who couldn’t separate family from the day job.”

“I was doing a fine job of it until you asked me to commit corporate espionage.”

“So you went to work for a weapon’s dealer instead? Great career move.” Mariah sighed. “You could have been running this company in another ten years, Alyssa. Your vision is wasted.”

“Not wasted at all,” Triss interjected. “She just had a vision bigger than yours.”

Mariah smiled but her eyes were narrowed. “You must be the one who caused her life to derail.”

Alyssa examined the lock on the case containing the MEC. “My life is right on track, Mother. It just isn’t the path you wanted for me.”

“It’s a real pleasure to meet you, by the way,” Triss said to Mariah with thick sarcasm.

Jack could see that the situation was on the precipice of devolving into an argument about parenting techniques and child rebellion, so he elected to follow Alyssa to the back of the room and assess the case with her. “Let’s get the MEC and get out of here. The restaurant could catch onto our ruse at any time,” he urged.

“Right.” Alyssa took a centering breath. She placed her hand on the biometric lock for the case; it let out an angry beep.

“The central security team may have overlooked your access, but I didn’t,” Mariah said. “You’ll never—”

Finn knocked her on the back of her head with a metal frame component that had been on one of the workstations. “Sorry, Alyssa.”

“No apology needed,” she replied. “I was about to do that myself. Help me get her over here.”

Finn and Alyssa dragged Mariah’s unconscious form to the MEC’s case. Alyssa grabbed her right hand and placed it on the biometric scanner. The display prompted for a password.

“Triss, a little help?” Finn said.

“On it.” Triss took her hacking kit and hooked into the console. She ran through the password combinations; in a matter of seconds, a match appeared and the case unlocked. “Huh. It was ‘Fuzzybutt0ns’, apparently.”

“Ah,” Alyssa nodded. “Good ol’ Mr. Fuzzybuttons. He was my pet rabbit.”

“Oh, you never mentioned him before,” Triss commented.

Alyssa scowled. “Yeah, it’s a bit of sore subject.”

“Why, what happened to him?” Jack asked.

“My parents decided it would be a great life lesson to eat him for dinner. Figures Mom would immortalize that event with her password.”

Jack’s mouth dropped open. “Your parents made you eat your pet rabbit?”

Finn whistled between his teeth. “That’s some messed up parenting.”

“Yeah… I’ll just be the one to say it,” Triss cut in. “Your mom is pretty awful.”

“No need to tell me.” Alyssa dropped Mariah on the floor and opened up the MEC case. She gingerly took the device from the pedestal and examined it. “I’ll find a way to get this into the right hands—somewhere as far away from here as possible. We need to grab the schematics, too.”

“I’m on it.” Finn pivoted to one of the workstations so he could access the files and grab the relevant documentation.

Triss handed Alyssa a carrying case for the MEC. “What do we do with your mom?”

“Lock her in the closet, I guess,” Alyssa suggested. “Someone will find her eventually.”

Jack helped Alyssa and Triss drag Mariah to a closet on the side wall and prop her up inside. She stirred when they had her in position and then began snoring softly.

Alyssa was the last to step out from the closet when they were finished. “Maybe we can come to terms with each other eventually.”

Triss took her hand. “I’ll be here to support you no matter what happens.”

“Thanks.”

“I hate to break up the tender moment,” Finn interjected, “but I have the files. And I just checked the security feed and we’re about to have some company. Looks like not everyone got our email about Mexcelente, and some of the guards that stayed behind seem to have found our actinium.”

“No need for the suits anymore?” Jack asked.

“Not as far as I’m concerned.” Finn began removing his. “The actinium has been removed.”

The others quickly stripped down to their regular street clothes and grabbed their gear.

“We’ll have to make a run for it,” Alyssa said. She drew her laser pistol. “And we might have to shoot our way out.”

Finn readied his pistol and grinned. “Oh darn.”

CHAPTER 17: The Great Escape

Jack followed Alyssa, Triss, and Finn out of the lab. Moments after the door slid closed behind them, rapid footsteps echoed down the hall from the direction of the exit.

“That’s the only way out,” Alyssa said. “If they shoot at you, shoot back.”

“No need to tell me twice.” Triss aimed her laser pistol in front of her.

“No argument here.” Jack readied his weapon. Without the containment canister or hazmat suit, he felt nimble and ready for anything the guards could throw his way. He smiled with anticipation for the thrill of the fight ahead.

Alyssa noticed his enthusiasm. “Why don’t you go first, Jack.”

He groaned. “You just want them to use me for target practice instead of you.”

“Obviously. Go on!” she urged.

With a sigh, he loped down the hall. “I have no idea where I’m going, by the way.”

“Follow the bad guys,” Triss replied. “It’s a fair bet they’ll be blocking our path.”

“Yay—” Jack’s sarcastic retort was truncated by a laser blast zipping by his ear. “And they found us.” He ducked around the corner of the nearest side corridor.

“Pretty sure they knew where we were the whole time.” Alyssa slid in next to him and crouched low to the floor.

“Hand over the MEC and come out with your hands up!” a male guard called out.

“Gonna pass on that.” Alyssa reached her hand around corner and opened fire.

“Take cover!” the guard ordered his companions.

Jack peeked around the corner as Alyssa pulled back, and he fired at the shoulder of someone wearing white body armor who was taking cover in the next hallway intersection. The shot connected and the guard sprawled dead on the ground.

“Nice shooting,” Alyssa said. She poked her head out enough to spot a target and fired, taking out another guard.

Triss and Finn were hunkered down on the other side of the hallway intersection opposite Alyssa and Jack, and they were engaged with their own set of guards.

“We’re picking ’em off!” Finn cheered. “Keep at it.”

It was Jack’s turn to take a shot while Alyssa planned her next move. He switched glanced around the corner, seeing one of the white-clad guards running across the hall to reposition. Jack fired two shots in rapid succession and the guard was struck in the leg and then his torso, causing him to fall backward with a cry.

“We’ll have them in no time,” Alyssa said.

“Jack, help us out on this side,” Triss said. “This is a better angle.”

“All right.” Jack prepared to jump across the hall. He lined up a leap and dove for it, unaware that one of his boot lashings had come undone.

Jack tripped the moment he left cover. He found himself standing hunched over in the center of the hall, completely exposed.

A dozen laser shots zipped all around him. Miraculously, none connected.

Not wanting to chance it, he finished his run across the hall and ducked to safety with Triss and Finn.

“That was close!” he breathed.

“We need to press forward,” Triss said. “Just seven more to take out and then we can run to the next intersection.”

Jack dropped to his stomach and positioned himself below where Finn was standing and Triss was crouched.

The three of them took aim and fired at the five remaining guards in their line of sight, while Alyssa took out the two guards visible from her angle. The seven guards fell to the ground amid their slain comrades.

Jack rose to his feet. “Body count is kind of stacking up.”

Alyssa assessed the pile of guards in the ineffective white armor. “That’s what they get for trying to take us on.”

“We’re kind of terrible people, aren’t we?” Jack realized.

The other three shrugged.

Jack brushed it off, and they resumed their forward push. Just shy of the intersection where the first wave of guards had taken up position, a new wave suddenly appeared down the hall. The guards began firing before Jack and the others could take cover.

A torrent of red blasts filled the corridor, completely surrounding the group. Yet, no one was struck.

“These guys have terrible aim,” Finn laughed and continued walking forward, remaining unscathed by the enemy barrage.

Alyssa shook her head with disbelief. “I think they are literally not capable of hitting us.”

Jack fired at one of the guards and his shot landed square in the guard’s chest. “Meanwhile, I’m not even trying to aim and I hit them every time!”

“This is simultaneously awesome and ridiculous,” Alyssa agreed as she also opened fire while continuing forward.

“Good to be us, I guess,” Finn said as he took out another guard.

Triss laughed. “Look! I’m firing with my eyes closed and still have better aim than them!”

“I guess it won’t be tough getting out of here after all,” Alyssa said.

They continued working their way through the hall, firing randomly and taking out the guards while remaining untouchable. In short order, they reached the lobby where a final defensive line was waiting to stop them.

“You’ll never get away!” one brave guard shouted. He released two dozen blasts at the group.

All the shots struck the floors and wall around them, forming a singed outline of where they were standing.

Alyssa smiled. “You get an ‘A’ for effort, but we’ll be on our way now.”

They walked out the door while the guards continued their hopeless assault.

“We’ll get you!” one of the remaining guards called out. “You don’t stand a—”

Jack blindly aimed behind him and took out the heckler. “Best heist ever.”

CHAPTER 18: Nowhere to Run

Still laughing and joking while they casually strolled away from the GiganCorp lab, the group returned to the Little Princess with the MEC safely in hand.

“So, what’s our next move?” Jack asked as soon as they were on the ship. He flopped down on the couch. “Getting the MEC was easy enough, but we still have the Vorlox after us, and your friends from Svetlana’s crew need rescuing.”

Alyssa frowned and took a seat at the galley table. “I just wanted to get the MEC and be done with everything. Why did the Vorlox have to come along and make everything complicated?”

Triss coughed into her hand, “Plot Device Principle.”

Alyssa ignored her. “I guess we have no choice but to meet with the Vorlox and try to negotiate for our friends’ releases.”

“But where do we find the Vorlox?” Finn asked as he shoved Jack’s legs aside to make room on the couch for himself to sit. “They told us to get the MEC in two days—which we’ve now done—but there were no instructions about where to meet them.”

“Maybe they’ll find us?” Jack speculated.

“I don’t want Svetlana or the others to get hurt.” Alyssa shook her head. “I guess we just head up into space and see what happens.”

Without further delay, Alyssa and Triss piloted the Little Princess into orbit.

“Should we stick around in this system?” Finn questioned when the main space station around the planet was visible out the window in the common area. “I mean, the guards had terrible aim so we got away, but what if GiganCorp sends the authorities after us?”

“Good point,” Jack seconded. “We should probably put as much distance between us and this planet as we can.”

“Sending the authorities after us would mean admitting what was stolen,” Alyssa pointed out. “I’m not sure they’re ready for the breakthrough to be public knowledge.”

“There are ways to keep it vague enough,” Triss countered. “We should play it safe.”

“And what about the Vorlox? They probably know this is where we’d get the MEC, so it’s a logical place for them to come looking for us,” Alyssa stated. “If we go anywhere else, they might think we tried to run and will kill everyone.”

“Maybe we should go back to the Winkelson station?” Triss suggested. “That’s where we last encountered them and they told us to get the MEC for them.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to be implicated in the station’s destruction or those deaths,” Alyssa objected.

Jack raised his hand. “Not to be a downer, but we just killed about fifty people on camera.”

Triss groaned. “You’re right—we never set the camera on loop.”

“Not to mention my mom,” Alyssa realized.

“Outlaws!” Finn cheered.

“We have seen the power of reputation…” Triss mused.

“The possibility of warrants is a whole other matter and will have to wait,” Alyssa said, refocusing. “We just can’t get caught before we make sure our friends get free. Given that, we shouldn’t go to the Winkelson station. The other place we’ve encountered the Vorlox is where Luxuria was destroyed.”

“Where it all began,” Jack murmured.

“How delightfully full-circle, I know.” Alyssa took a resolute breath. “That’s where we’ll go.”

The Little Princess made the jump to hyperspace moments later before anyone could think of another reason for them to do something different. In reality, there was no clear course of action. They had in their possession one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in two centuries, authorities could come to arrest them at any moment, a band of potentially crazed killers was after them, and their friends’ lives were on the line. Going anywhere was a risk, but at least going back to the site of a former home was a return to the familiar.

When the ship had completed its initial acceleration, Jack kicked Finn from the couch so he could stretch out. “I’m so tired. Hangover sleep is not good sleep.”

“Well,” Alyssa emerged from the cockpit, “this might be the perfect chance for me to test out the MEC’s application with coffee brewing.”

“Moment of truth!” Triss called out from her seat at the flight controls.

“If this doesn’t work, then we can start working our way down the infinite list of other things we can do with it. But if it does…” Alyssa trailed off as she turned her attention to rummaging through the galley for the parts she needed to complete her contraption.

Jack watched her work on the galley table for the next half hour, mounting components from other equipment to the frame of the existing coffee brewer. Based on the deftness of her movements, she must have theorized a design in the preceding months. Eventually, the MEC was the final piece to be bolted into place.

“This should do it…” Alyssa said at last. She loaded in the coffee beans and activated the machine.

A blue glow illuminated around the contraption and it hummed with the bright tone of an angelic chorus.

After ten seconds, the glow dissipated and the aroma of brewed coffee filled the cabin.

Alyssa removed the single-serve cup from the machine and waved it under her nose. “So far so good.” She took a sip. “Stars! This—” She took another sip. “You have to try this!”

She ran to the cockpit and handed the cup to Triss. Her friend took the cup and smelled it cautiously. “It does have a great aroma.” She took a sip. “WOW!”

The Little Princess rolled to the side as Triss’ hand jerked on the controls.

“Let us in on it, come on!” Finn urged.

Alyssa returned to the common room and handed him the cup.

Finn sampled it. “Alyssa, you’re a genius.”

“My turn!” Jack pleaded. He took the cup from Finn, only to find that there was barely a sip left. He took the warm, brown liquid into his mouth. It was the perfect temperature to satisfy without risk of burning, and the flavor exploded on his taste buds. The coffee had none of the burned or bitter flavor he’d come to expect, but instead it was like his mouth had just been hugged by a chocolate teddy bear. “Wow… This coffee is, like, really good.”

Alyssa’s eyes lit up. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely. I could see this being the next big craze.” Jack looked at the empty cup. “Can you make some more?’

Alyssa enthusiastically prepared second, and then third, portions for everyone. In case anyone wanted more later, she also filled a metal thermos with extra coffee, which would hold it at temperature for at least eight hours. Considering that they had no idea when, or if, the Vorlox would show up at their chosen destination, an energy boost might be needed later on.

The rest of the hyperspace jump was spent in a marvelous caffeine buzz. Jack made his bed and cleaned the bathroom, then completed all the dishes and straightened up the cabinets. Never had he felt so delightfully energized. The coffee must have had a similar effect on the others, as Jack noticed that Finn was organizing all the equipment for computer hacking and Triss appeared to be cleaning up the central database files while Alyssa programmed some new navigation subroutines.

By the time the Little Princess was preparing to drop out of hyperspace, the interior was ready for a photoshoot and the systems were operating with fifteen percent greater efficiency.

“I haven’t been this productive and focused… ever!” Jack exclaimed. “I think you’re really on to something with this MEC-brewed coffee, Alyssa.”

“I was just going for flavor,” she replied. “I never dreamed it’d have these bonus effects. It must have something to do with the energy field changing the chemical properties.”

“Regardless of the science behind it, I’m hooked,” Finn said.

“I never should have doubted you.” Triss gave Alyssa a proud smile.

Alyssa beamed. “Thanks, guys.”

The ship exited hyperspace a kilometer from the wreckage of the Luxuria. To their surprise, the Vorlox battleship was waiting for them at the broken structure.

“Well, looks like we guessed correctly,” Jack said.

The front console beeped. “Incoming communication,” Triss told them. She accepted the call.

The weapons on the Vorlox ship sprang to life—casings rolling back from the giant laser guns and massive hydraulic arms training the weapons toward the Little Princess. “Do you have the MEC?” the Vorlox representative asked over the comm.

“Are our friends okay?” Alyssa countered.

“They are fine,” the Vorloxian replied. “And they won’t be harmed so long as you give us the MEC without a fight.”

The Little Princess lurched as it was suddenly grappled in a tractor beam and pulled toward the mammoth Vorlox ship. “Prepare to be boarded. You will hand over the MEC.” The communication ended.

“I can try to break free…” Triss said.

“No, if we resist the others are as good as dead,” Alyssa told her. “We’ll need to pretend like we’re cooperating until we can figure out another way for us all to escape.”

“Um, would this be a bad time to point out that we can’t fit everyone in here even if the Vorlox lets them go?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” everyone replied in unison.

“In that case,” Jack said, “I’ll just say that it’s great we got everything all cleaned up before we have company.”

CHAPTER 19: Trapped

“We can’t just give the MEC to them until we know Svetlana and the others are safe.” Alyssa ran from the cockpit into the common room to remove the MEC from the coffee maker. With the device in hand, she stood next to the galley, paralyzed with indecision. “Where can we hide it?”

“I don’t know!” Jack looked frantically around the room. “One of the thermoses over there, maybe? Hurry!”

Alyssa dashed to the cabinet containing the drinkware and selected one of the polished metal thermoses. She unscrewed the top and dropped the MEC inside.

The Little Princess shuddered as it came to rest on the floor of the hangar within the Vorlox ship. Fists pounded on the outer door.

“What should I do with it now?” Alyssa hissed.

“Why are you asking me?” Jack shot back, glancing between her and the door. There was nowhere to go.

The door dropped open as the controls were overridden from the outside.

The thermos launched from Alyssa’s hands toward the galley counter. It landed on the countertop, knocking over the thermos filled with extra coffee. Both containers clattered onto the metal floor and one rolled under the couch.

“Hi! What can we do for you?” Jack greeted the Vorloxian soldier.

“Where is it?” the man demanded. He was wearing black body armor and his face was hidden behind a full helmet.

“Where’s what?” Jack shrugged, trying to nudge the other thermos into hiding with his toe.

“The MEC. Hand it over now!” the Vorloxian demanded. “Is that it?” He spotted the thermos Jack was trying to hide and stepped toward it.

“Be careful with that!” Jack warned, trying to stall while he thought up a better plan. “It’s… highly irradiated. It may cause a runaway reaction if it’s opened in this small a space.”

The soldier hesitated with confusion, and rightly so. “Radiation and air exposure aren’t the same—”

“You don’t have to take our word for it,” Triss cut in. “But what would the other Vorlox say if you blew up the only working prototype of the MEC?”

“They would laugh,” he replied.

Jack and Alyssa exchanged glances with Triss and Finn.

Jack decided to roll with it. “That’s right—they would laugh. And just looking at you, I can tell that you are one to do the laughing, not the other way around.”

“I crush anyone who laughs at me!” he bellowed.

“That’s right! So let’s not open that canister here, okay?” Alyssa suggested.

The soldier’s gaze passed between them. “Fine. Come with me to Grant Pumba.”

“You mean ‘grand poobah’?” Triss clarified.

“What? No! Grant Pumba is the name of our mighty Vorlox leader.”

Finn snickered. “Oh, this is all going swimmingly.”

The guard carefully picked up the thermos from the floor and then ushered everyone off the ship.

Seven more Vorloxian soldiers were waiting in the hangar. They surrounded the crew of the Little Princess and directed them through a series of utilitarian hallways of polished steel and up a lift. Due to the elevator’s small size, four guards first rode up with Jack and Alyssa, followed by the other four with Triss and Finn.

The destination floor had more refined finishes than the corridor leading from the hangar, including low-pile carpeting and integrated touch-displays in the walls.

“What is your leader going to do with us?” Alyssa asked the guards.

“He will need to tell you himself,” one of the guards replied.

They reached the end of the hall, which terminated in a sliding door. The guards stepped forward and the door opened automatically, revealing a sophisticated conference room complete with an oblong conference table and holodisplay. Behind the table, a man and two women were seated in sleek swivel chairs.

The guards took up position along the front wall with four to either side of the entry door. The guard carrying the thermos stepped away from his post by the door just long enough to place the container in the center of the table within arm’s reach of the three seated individuals.

“Please, take a seat,” the man sitting in the chair at the center of the table said, gesturing to four chairs across from him. He was just past middle-aged and, like his female companions, appeared to be a completely normal human.

“Are you Grant Pumba?” Alyssa asked as she and the others complied.

“I am,” Grant confirmed, smoothing back his brown hair touched with gray. “I must apologize for all the armor and pistol secrecy. The MEC is very important, as you know.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Alyssa said hesitantly, “but you don’t seem like the crazy murderers the rumors have made you out to be.”

Grant laughed. “Oh, that all did get rather out of hand.  It was necessary, though, to complete our work.”

“What work is that?” Jack questioned.

Grant looked to the dark-haired woman on the left. She folded her hands on the tabletop. “My name is Irine,” she stated. “I’m the Director of Research and Development for Competron.”

Jack’s mouth fell open. A quick glance to his right confirmed that his new friends were equally shocked.

Alyssa shook her head. “I’m confused.”

“You’re not the only mole to have ever been placed within a corporation, Alyssa,” Irine stated. “Competron sent our own to GiganCorp, but unlike you with your position, ours came back to us. We learned that the MEC was almost production-ready and we needed to act.”

“Most of the weapons and other dangerous black market tech circulating through the major channels originated with GiganCorp,” Grant explained. “With the MEC on the verge of going public, we knew that anything that could be augmented with the MEC needed to be taken off the street while there was still an opportunity to do so.”

“As the Director of Humanitarian Aid,” the other woman at the table added, “it was clear to me that Competron would never be able to continue our mission-driven work if GiganCorp’s products became little more than tools of destruction.”

“And we couldn’t go after GiganCorp directly,” Grant continued, “so the next best thing was to take out the supply network for distributing those weapons. With that severed, even once the MEC was released, it would take much longer for the technology to work its way back into the hands of the truly dangerous individuals.”

Irine nodded. “And to take out that network, we couldn’t very well show up in Competron-branded ships. So, we invented the Vorlox persona as a distraction.”

Grant examined the confused faces of the Little Princess’ crew. “Everything you may have heard about us was part of that fabrication. In reality, our sole mission has been to take out the distribution network that could result in the MEC being used for harm.”

“Is that why you blew up Luxuria?” Alyssa asked.

“That case is rather interesting,” Grant replied, folding his hands on the tabletop. “It was the next target on our list, but when we arrived, the station had already been destroyed. We fired a warning shot at your ship when we spotted you, but you jumped to hyperspace.”

“If you didn’t destroy the station, then who did?” Alyssa asked.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Grant said. “We picked up the escape pods from Luxuria—as we would anyway after taking out a base, to see if the weapon’s dealers are open to an alternate career path. When we chatted with Svetlana, we learned that you, Alyssa, were a bridge between GiganCorp, Competron, and the mission of getting the MEC design out of GiganCorp’s hands.”

“Beth,” Irine indicated the blonde woman to Grant’s right, “had the idea to allow you to continue your mission to get the MEC with the hope you’d be successful and be open to siding with us once you knew what we were doing.”

“How is Svetlana cooperating with you?” Alyssa asked. “She’s was the top weapons dealer in this sector. I’d think she’d—”

“We offered her and the other members of her crew jobs in medical sales. Very lucrative,” Grant replied.

“Oh.” Alyssa shrugged.

“And I do hope you’ll consider working with us, as well,” Beth said. “The MEC can help so many people if we leverage Competron’s connections. You’d be well compensated.”

It took Alyssa several seconds to find her voice. “What do you have in mind?”

“Improving planetary shields from stellar debris, power core for artificial organs to help the sick, portable electronics to bring education to children in remote settlements. The list goes on,” Beth replied. “The heart of it, though, is we want to spread happiness.”

“And all of that is possible with what you have hidden in this,” Grant said, gazing with admiration at the thermos placed in the center of the table.

“They said it might explode,” the guard who’d boarded the Little Princess warned from his post along the wall.

“I doubt that,” Grant said, reaching for the thermos. He unscrewed the top. “Wait, what’s this?” He stared with dismay at the contents and sniffed. “Is this coffee?”

“Ah, yeah, the MEC must be in the other thermos…” Jack mumbled.

Alyssa glared at him, then looked back to Grant. “I’m not convinced you’re telling the truth. How can we know anything you said is true?”

Grant didn’t seem to hear her. “Wow, this coffee smells incredible!” He took a small sip from the thermos. “Stars! This…” he took several gulps, “this is the most amazing coffee I’ve ever tasted! And I feel all tingly—and instantly energized! What’s your secret?”

Alyssa’s eyes widened with surprise. “Well, I was playing around with using the MEC as a power source…”

Grant grinned. “Forget everything I said before. This, right here, is the answer we’ve been looking for.”

He passed the thermos to Beth and she tasted it. “Stars, you’re right! If anything would bring people together, it’s this.”

“Come again?” Finn asked.

“Making sure people are safe and smart is one thing, but a product like this would make them happy. No one would want to take up arms if they could start their day with a cup of this magical deliciousness,” Grant said.

“You want to monetize it?” Alyssa asked.

“Oh yes,” Grant confirmed.

“What happened to wanting to make sure they were telling the truth?” Jack asked her in a whisper.

“As long as we get paid, who cares?” she whispered back to him. Then, louder, “It’s my design and I already had plans to bring it to market. If you want to use it, then you’ll need to buy me out. And my friends here get a cut.” She smiled at her companions.

“Do you have the actual MEC and the schematics?” Grant asked.

Alyssa nodded. “I do.”

Grant smiled. “Then I think we can work out a deal.”

CHAPTER 20: New Horizons

“I’ve never been rich before!” He still couldn’t get over the number of decimal places now showing in his bank account balance—or the fact that the numeral was no longer red with a ‘-’ in front of it. With his grandmother’s expenses pre-paid for the next ten years, his warrants cleared and debts paid, the future possibilities were endless.

Alyssa seemed far less enthusiastic. “They’re paying us to stay quiet about the Vorlox and Competron being one in the same. That kind of money isn’t as satisfying as if we’d earned it.”

“We’ll get Spacecups up and running,” Triss assured her. “I’m glad you didn’t cave on those licensing rights.”

“Yeah, I know.” Alyssa sighed. “I guess part of me hoped I’d get away from corporate politics, but instead I’m locked in for life.”

“Hey, money is money,” Finn chimed in.

“I second that. We need to spend it!” Jack exclaimed.

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to blow through millions in a matter of days, aren’t you?”

“Do you know how many gadgets I can get now? Plus, I can finally get my own ship like I always wanted,” Jack replied. The Little Princess had been a compromise for his budget, but this was his chance to get a real ship with more than four compartments. With the seed money, he could even start a proper transportation business.

“You know,” Finn ventured, “we could get an even better ship if we pooled our resources.”

Alyssa and Triss exchanged glances. “I guess we did say we’re a team now,” Alyssa said. “I saw too many people drift apart because of money while I was growing up. I don’t want the same to happen to us.”

Triss nodded. “And, frankly, traveling through space alone is lonely and boring.”

Jack lit up. “Does that mean we get to go spaceship shopping?”

Triss released a long breath. “I guess it does.”

“Four cabins and a wet bar. That’s all I ask,” Finn stated.

“I like all of those things,” Jack agreed.

“I’m sure we can agree on features we want,” Alyssa said.

She was wrong.

The shopping expedition began well, with the team salivating over spacious floor plans and the latest interactive features. As they started to narrow down their options, however, it became clear that each person had a distinct vision of what features an ideal spaceship should contain.

“I don’t know what you have against a round, rotating bed.” Finn crossed his arms with a huff.

“I have nothing against the bed, just having it in the middle of the common room,” Alyssa replied.

“The sparkling lights were a nice touch,” Jack commented.

“We need something practical that will work for all of us,” insisted Triss. She scanned over the digital catalogue again under the watchful eye of the shipyard proprietor. With the swipe of her hand, she selected a vessel they had previously bypassed due to its hefty price tag. “What about this one?”

A model of the gently used yacht appeared on the holoprojector. It was ten times the size of the Little Princess and at least three times as fancy, based on the interior images.

“Five cabins, three washrooms, separate galley, a dining room,” Jack read off, excitement building in his chest.

Finn’s eyes lit up. “Full-wall viewscreen across from a wet bar.”

“And a bathtub!” Triss looked to Alyssa. “I want.”

Alyssa evaluated the listing. “It’s more than we budgeted.”

“Hardly a constraining factor,” Triss replied. “We’ve earned a little splurging. Plus, don’t you want to be captain of something you can boast about?”

The shipyard proprietor waddled over to the sales kiosk, apparently having picked up on their interest. “She’s a beaut, ain’t see?” he said. “Got a few quirks, but what ship doesn’t?”

“What’s it called?” Alyssa asked.

“Registered name is the Regency Star, but you’re welcome to change it when we transfer the ownership.”

“That’s a great name,” Jack replied. It was regal, gender-neutral, space-y…

“I hate it,” Alyssa stated.

Finn groaned. “Then we’ll re-name it. Just look at that interior! We can spread out, and I could even fit a round bed in that starboard cabin.”

Alyssa looked around at the faces of the crew. “Okay, fine. I’ll agree to this ship, but on one condition.”

*

Jack reclined on the palatial couch in the common room of the newly christened Little Princess II. “I could get used to this.”

He’d hated Alyssa’s name suggestion at first, but it somehow fit the vessel. The captain’s condition to change the name had oddly unified the team, since they were first brought together by the original Little Princess. Jack never would have dreamed his short-lived ownership of the craft would have netted him friends and a major ship upgrade within a week, but he was happy to have fate finally smile upon him.

Not surprisingly, he’d been relegated to the worst sleeping chamber on the ship, which shared a wall with one of the washrooms. Though the washroom should have been for his sole use, and despite there being a preferable cabin amidships, the three other crewmembers had insisted that one of the washrooms and the other cabin be reserved for guests they would likely never have.

As a result, Jack was awoken every time Finn flushed the toilet in the middle of the night, or whenever the waste treatment system cycled—which was every half hour. The setup was less than ideal, but it was still a significant improvement over being subjected to Finn’s night terrors.

The common area, at least, was an exquisitely appointed place for Jack to relax and feel like a full member of the crew. As Jack stretched out on his couch of choice, Finn reclined on an adjacent couch he’d adopted as his own, and Alyssa and Triss nestled into their plush, reclining chairs.

“We definitely made the right choice getting this ship,” Alyssa said.

“We can really make it ours.” Jack pondered various redecorating options that might elevate the neutral décor.

Finn rolled over so he could face the other members of the crew. “I almost don’t know what to do with myself. It’s been three whole days with no one trying to arrest us or shoot at us.”

“No complaints here.” Jack crossed his arms.

“It’s great the Vorlox turned out to be friendly,” Alyssa began, “but I can’t help wondering who destroyed Luxuria.”

“Svetlana made a lot of enemies over the years. Whatever was going on with that, it’s not our problem anymore,” Triss replied.

Alyssa shook her head. “I’m not convinced she’s going to let us go so easily.”

“She did forgive Jack’s debt,” Finn pointed out. “Sounds like Competron offered her a good deal. Maybe she’s turning over a new leaf.”

“No, someone like her craves power. She’ll get back in the game eventually,” Alyssa said.

“Not our problem.” Finn waved his hand.

Triss nodded. “Agreed. I’m choosing to focus on our good fortune. We have this beautiful new ship, and we can do anything we want.”

“All right, I do have to admit that our newfound freedom is nice,” Alyssa conceded. “Plus, that galley! I can really perfect the MEC-brewed espresso with that kind of workspace.”

Jack smiled with contentment. He had no illusions that all dangers were behind them, but for the first time in years, he didn’t have to worry about being destitute and homeless in the next day or week.

“I never thought I’d be on a ship like this,” he murmured.

“Hey, you’re part owner of this ship,” Finn corrected.

“It’s crazy. A week ago, I was scraping together every credit I could to pay for the Lucile—er, Little Princess. I know you begrudgingly let me stay, but seriously, it means a lot to be here with you.”

Alyssa softened. “I think all of us have struggled to find a place to belong at one time in our lives or another. Having each other’s backs is what separates us from some of the other criminal-types out there.”

Finn nodded. “Except, we’re supposed to be respectable businesspeople now.”

“Technically, that wasn’t part of the agreement with Competron,” Triss countered. “They arranged for our outstanding warrants to be dismissed, but no part of that said we can’t go back to our old ways.”

Alyssa cast her a stern look. “We don’t need the money. We’ve set out what we accomplished to do—break up the GiganCorp monopoly. Now we can travel and do whatever else we want. No need to get involved in anything shady.”

Triss sighed. “I guess you’re right. Maybe we can work our way through that travel guide of all the must-visit space station diners.”

“Speaking of which,” Finn said, “who’s hungry for taquitos?”

THE END

—  —  —

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CADICLE: AN EPIC SPACE OPERA SERIES

“Appealing characters and detailed worldbuilding draw the reader into a tale of politics, sabotage, kidnapping, telekinesis, and clones. [...] DuBoff weaves together sympathetic characters, an intriguing plot, devious villains, exciting space adventure, and hopes pinned on a chosen savior.”

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The Taran Empire is fighting a secret interdimensional war... and they’re losing.

Wil Sietinen is torn between two worlds. As a High Dynasty heir and the Tararian Selective Service’s most promising telekinetic Agent trainee, Wil is expected to be nothing short of exceptional in every way—even though the weight of responsibility is slowly crushing him.

When Wil is captured by the Bakzen, a mysterious race skilled in advanced telekinesis, he learns he is the prophesied Cadicle. Foretold to have powerful abilities unlike any other, he can help end a secret war waging within a hidden dimensional rift, and time is running out.

However, as the dire nature of the war and the truth about his own abilities begins to unfold, Wil realizes that he and his family are at the center of a generations-old galactic conspiracy. Enemies are not as they seem, and the future of the entire Taran Empire hangs in the balance.

Wil holds the key to victory, but saving his people may come at the ultimate price.

A timeless space opera epic, the Cadicle series spans three generations as one family challenges destiny to win a war and lead a revolution that will change the course of an empire.

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About the Author

Nebula Award finalist and USA Today bestselling author A.K. (Amy) DuBoff has always loved science fiction in all its forms, including books, movies, shows, and games. If it involves outer space, even better! As a full-time author, Amy primarily writes timeless science fiction and science-fantasy with broad scope and cool tech. When she’s not writing, she enjoys travel, wine tasting, binge-watching TV series, and playing epic strategy board games.

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XENOVIRUS
by Kevin McLaughlin

A deadly virus has gone global on Earth.

Doctors are falling ill and dying as they race against time to develop a vaccine.

To keep them safe, a select few are sent to the only place completely safe from the infection: the tiny lunar colony. For Carmen, it’s just the opportunity she’s wanted: a chance to prove she’s every bit the virologist her famous father is.

Patrick wants nothing more than to remain on his beloved moon forever. Up there in command of his team is the place he loves best in the universe. And now they have to babysit a bunch of doctors and lab techs. He knows how important this mission is, but the sooner they’re finished with their work and gone, the better.

Then he meets Carmen, and everything changes. Being alone on the moon suddenly isn’t enough for Patrick anymore. But desperate people do dangerous things, and there are billions of desperate people back on Earth…

Copyright © 2016 Kevin McLaughlin

Xenovirus (this story) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

CARMEN WORKED hard to draw breath. The books she’d read about rocket takeoffs were right: it felt like a giant hand was pushing her back into her seat. She could still breathe, but it was a lot less comfortable than she was used to! She felt the beginnings of a little anxiety but pushed it aside. It was harder to quell her excitement as the powerful engines blasted the shuttle aloft.

She’d never been in space before. What an awesome opportunity! And yes, nepotism had a little to do with her being allowed to go. Her father being appointed leader of the expedition probably helped a lot. But she didn't really care. She was going into space. That was what mattered.

Her excitement must've shown her face. "Your first time, too?" the man next to her asked. He looked like he was straining to breathe a little, but wasn’t having as hard a time with it as she was.

"Yes," Carmen gasped out. Then she laughed, a bubbly sound filled with joy. It just rolled out of her – she couldn’t help herself. It had been too long since she’d laughed like that. On the world below her, there was too little to laugh about right now.

The source of the outbreak was never seriously in question. A team in Antarctica was digging up meteorites, looking to bring them home for analysis. They were looking for mineral composition data or something boring like that. Carmen didn’t recall for sure, and it had been months since she’s read the initial news reports. What that team accidentally discovered was something else entirely, though.

One of the Antarctic team became sick before they even returned home. Nobody thought anything of it. Just another cold. But within a week the entire team was ill. Within two weeks, the entire team was dead. If things had stopped there, the whole event would've been a strange but curious anecdote. But by the time anyone realized there was an outbreak situation, it was too late. The virus – that's what they had discovered the thing was, eventually – spread like wildfire. No one on Earth had any natural immunity. Not to this virus, because it wasn't from here. Lab analysis of the virus left scientists certain it had evolved someplace other than our planet.

And that might spell the end of humanity, if someone didn't figure out a way to stop the virus.

Which was what her father intended. Earthbound labs hadn't seen much success in finding a cure for the virus. But someone had the bright idea that since the virus came from space, they might have better luck finding a cure in low or zero gravity environment. Personally Carmen thought that was bullshit. It was bad science at best. More likely, some politician didn't want the lab testing to be taking place anywhere close to his home, and came up with the idea as a way to ensure the research was being done as far away as humanly possible.

There’d been a base on the moon for two years now. It was small, but it was slowly growing. There were not a lot of amenities, but there was a basic lab and the ship she was riding in was carrying out everything else that her father would need to find a cure.

"So, are you going up with the med techs, or the engineering geeks?" the man next to her asked.

"Medical," Carmen replied.

That was where the nepotism came in. Carmen's father was a virologist. He was widely considered one of the best in the world – privately, Carmen thought he was the best, but she recognized she might have a personal bias. After finishing medical school she followed in her father's footsteps. And she was a fairly respected neurologist in her own right, though nothing near her father's stature. When her father was assigned as the head of this mission, he was pretty much handed a blank check by the United States government. Whatever Dr. Rosa said he needed, Dr. Rosa got.

Dr. Rosa said he needed his daughter to go with them to the moon. Carmen Rosa got a ticket on the same rocket her father was taking.

In the back of her head, Carmen had niggling doubts about whether her father had invited her for her expertise, or just to keep her safe. The virus had spread worldwide on Earth. Tens of thousands of people had already died, and the number of sick might already be in the millions. No place left on the planet was really, truly safe. But the moon was still clean. The lunar base, completely cut off from Earth, had been carefully isolated. Everything going up was sterilized – twice. The passengers and crew were carefully decontaminated after undergoing a battery of tests to ensure they were not carriers of the virus.

So did her father want her along because he respected her expertise in their field, and wanted her help? Or was he sending her to the one place that he knew she wouldn't die of the virus before he could find a cure? She didn't know the answer, and part of her didn't really want to.

"Wait – are you Dr. Rosa’s daughter?" the man next to her asked.

Carmen nodded. She wondered how often she would be asked that question in the days ahead.

"That's awesome!" he said. He smiled at her. He had red hair, and freckles covered most of his face. He had to be a couple of years younger than her. He certainly seemed friendly enough, though. And Lord knew, she can use someone to talk to up here!

"Yes, I'm Carmen," she said.

“I'm Jacob. It's awesome to meet you.”

She smiled back, wondering how many times a conversation she was going to hear the word ‘awesome’.

And then they hit the edge of space, and everything changed.

The sudden shift took Rosa by surprise. She knew intellectually what to expect for the transition from high thrust to sudden weightlessness. But when the main thrusters cut off, it was like being tossed off the top of the world. Her body told her that she was falling, and for a moment she could feel terror boiling up inside her.

Then her mind took over again. Falling was nonsense. She wasn't falling at all. She was flying!

What an amazing experience. She set aside the faint grumbling from her stomach, which was still trying to adjust to the lack of up and down, and unbuckled herself from her seat. Next to her, Jacob was turning a color somewhere between white and green, holding a hand over his mouth. If he heaved, it was going to get everywhere!

"Didn't you take the space sickness shot before you left?" she asked him.

He shook his head, growing greener by the moment. She couldn't really chastise him - she had opted not to get the anti-nausea shot, too. She didn't want her first moments in space tainted or diminished by sedating medication. But where her stomach seemed willing to tolerate the experience, his clearly was not. She looked around for a space-sick bag. The last thing she wanted was bits of...stuff...floating around here in zero gravity!

There they were! She snagged one of the small packets from the pouch in front of her seat. She ripped open the plastic wrapper and opened the bag inside.

“Here,” she said, handing the device to Jacob. He took it with a grateful look, pressing the opening in front of his mouth.

Carmen wasn’t sure if he was going to barf or not, but she wasn’t really feeling good about sticking around to find out. At the same time, she felt bad about just flitting away and leaving him feeling miserable by himself. She floated there next to her chair, undecided.

“Everyone all right in here?” The woman’s voice came a voice from the front of the compartment. It was the co-pilot, who’d helped get them strapped into their seats before takeoff. She kicked off from the hatch, up near the cockpit, and drifted down the center of the compartment, checking faces as she went.

“Anyone having second thoughts about the space-sickness shot?” she asked. Carmen saw she already had a little plastic container with syringes in her hand. She looked around, and saw a number of green faces in several nearby seats.

“Over here, I think,” Carmen said, waving at Jacob. Jacob nodded his head vigorously, looking even more miserable.

“Here to help,” the woman said. Carmen read her nametag as she went by. It read Sullivan. With deft hands, the woman opened the plastic contained, while hanging on to the chair by hooking her feet. She slipped on a pair of plastic gloves, pulled out one of the prefilled shots, and popped it into Jacob’s arm.

“There. You’ll be right as rain in a little bit,” the woman said. “How about you, hon?” she asked Carmen.

“I think I’m OK, thanks.”

The woman scrutinized her carefully. “You look fine. Tell me if you change your mind, though. Plenty of others around here to see to, anyway.” She rolled her eyes.

“Is not taking the shot a common problem, Ms. Sullivan?” Carmen asked.

“Amy, please. And yes.” She pushed off to the next chair, and administered a shot to the man suffering there. “Lots of newbies think that they’re going to be the ones who can manage space without feeling sick. Most of us can’t. Most people feel at least a little sick. You got a headache yet?”

Carmen nodded. “A little,” she admitted.

Amy smiled. “Got some Tylenol for that, if you want.” She fished a packet out of a pocket and pushed it gently through the air. It floated the distance between them, and Carmen caught it easily.

“Water?” Carmen asked.

“They’ll come around with some drinks in a while. But for now, you can run back to the galley – next compartment back. Ask for a water bulb there.”

“Thanks for the help!” Carmen said.

She turned to look at Jacob again, who seemed a little less ill. She was excited about the idea of getting out and about, and seeing some more of the ship. So far, all she’d seen was this room. They were going to be stuck on board for two days – she might as well explore a little.

“You up for looking around a bit?” she asked Jacob.

“No,” he said with a wry grin. “Maybe in a bit. Feeling a little better, but I think I’ll just sit here a while and get whatever amounts to space legs. You go ahead.”

Didn’t have to tell her twice. Carmen always did better on her own, anyway. She flashed him a smile in return – no harm in being polite. Then she kicked off gently in the direction Amy pointed. Or she meant to, anyway. But instead of jetting gently in the direction she wanted to travel, she realized that she was drifting off to her left. She was going to crash into the row of chairs, and she gritted her teeth in embarrassment.

There had to be a way to stop herself. She tried to twist about, so she could get her feet where they could hook on to something. But all she did was start spinning as well as drifting. That little burst of nausea she felt when her stomach first reacted to zero gravity came back with a vengeance as the world spun past her eyes.

“Whoa there,” Amy said, gently catching her by an ankle. “Take it slow. You’ll be popping around like a pro by the time we reach Luna, but it takes time to get used to moving around up here.”

“So I see,” Carmen said, feeling a little sheepish.

“Still feeling OK?” Amy asked her.

She really wasn’t, Carmen realized. Her stomach was the worse for wear after the tumble, and her head was really pounding. But she figured the former would quiet if she could just avoid making like a human carousel, and the latter she could fix with the Tylenol and some water.

“Yeah, I’ll be OK,” she said. It wasn’t really a lie. She would be OK.

“All right then, off you go. I’m headed back to the cockpit to relieve the pilot. He gets grumpy if he doesn’t get his coffee. You get along.”

Carmen got. This was a big ship, and there was a lot to see. She wanted to get about seeing it – as carefully as possible. This time, she moved more carefully, keeping one hand in contact with something at all times, moving hand over hand. She wasn’t surprised to see there were a lot of handholds and contact points spread over the interior of the ship. But she was grateful all the same.

When Carmen reached the hatch at the far side of the compartment, she caught a rail bolted to the wall and brought herself to a stop. She pulled her tablet from a pocket and brought up a map of the ship’s interior that she saved there before boarding. It seemed like it might come in handy, and she hadn’t quite had time yet to commit it to memory.

The nose of the ship was the cockpit, where the pilot and co-pilot stayed. After that were passenger compartments. There were two levels of compartments, one stacked atop the other. Upstairs, they had two rows of small semi-private rooms, two bunks to a room. Actual places to lie down and sleep. Carmen figured by the time she reached the moon she’d be dying for a chance to lay down in a real bed. The bottom two compartments were significantly less posh. They amounted to rows of chairs, which could be tilted back far enough that you could almost stretch out in them. She messed around with the controls before takeoff. It looked like something one could probably fall asleep on, if you were tired enough. But it wasn’t going to be very comfortable.

Luckily, they’d be at the lunar base in about forty-eight hours. So the discomfort wouldn’t last too long.

Back from the passenger area were the passenger service sections. There was a galley, for preparing food, and a dining area where passengers could eat in shifts. The map showed a few other rooms in that section of the ship. There was an infirmary, for example, and a few storage rooms.

And then there was the rear half of the ship – all taken up by cargo space. A lot of the cargo this trip was the supplies for her father’s work. And her work, she reminded herself. She was determined to prove she was along for more than just her last name!

Maybe she could slip back into the cargo space to see how those canisters fared during takeoff. If things had shifted, fallen... It could set back their work if certain pieces of equipment were broken or damaged. And time was of the essence. She felt each hour pass by like she was watching sand sift through an hourglass. Carmen had seen the videos of some of the worst affected cities. Houston was a disaster area, and many other cities were just as bad. The worst part about a global epidemic was that nowhere was really safe. People were dying all over.

The sooner they could get to the moon and start working on a cure, the better.

She slipped the tablet back in her pocket and pulled herself closer to the door. An electronic sensor spotted her and opened the hatch, the door receding into the wall with a hiss of pressure equalizing. Carmen pulled herself through. The next room was interesting. Staff were folding open tables in the dining area, preparing for people to arrive – but the tables were on the ceiling, and all the walls! She felt a moment of disorientation, watching a table unfold on what felt like the wall next to her. She shook her head gently. No up, no down, remember? She tried to wrap her head around the concept, and how it would impact every bit of day-to-day life here. At least on the moon, they’d have gravity – even if it was only a fraction of Earth’s. Here, life was very strange.

Carmen nudged herself away from the door gently. The huge room presented an interesting puzzle. The galley - where presumably she could get some water - was almost directly across from her. But how best to get from here to there? If she pushed off too hard, she'd never break in time. But she didn't want to end up suspended in mid-air. She'd already been rescued once in the last fifteen minutes. Requiring a second save from another crew member would be more embarrassment than she could stand.

This wasn't space. Carmen knew the air in the compartment would slow her down. But how much? She wasn't sure. It was hard to gauge how fast to push off. There might be another way, though. She eyed the tables and chairs, all carefully attached to the hull. They had to be for the passengers, to give them the feel of a meal. The tables all had velcro on their surfaces to keep things from drifting away, and the seats all had straps to hold someone in place while they dined.

A gentle nudge pushed her off toward the nearest table. She caught hold with her right hand, and brought herself to a stop. Carmen exhaled, smiling. This was going to work! She shoved off toward the next table, pushing a little harder this time. Again, she caught herself just fine.

"Heads up!"

She looked to see where the voice was coming from, and spotted a man wearing the shipsuit of a crew member. He had pushed off from the same doorway she'd come through, but he hadn't given himself a gentle nudge. He'd kicked away hard, flipped end over and, and was gliding past her feet first. He caught the edge of a chair with a grace that made her envious and brought himself to a stop just a couple of feet from where she clung to the edge of her table.

He was around thirty, she guessed. Red hair, cut short - most of the full time spacers seemed to keep their hair cropped fairly short, she'd noticed. He had a little beard growth, just some stubble from a day or two without shaving. And he was wearing a smile that made her stomach do flips.

"Trying to get over to the galley?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied. She wasn't doing that badly, either. She'd figured out how to get there, right?

"Want to take the fast way?" he asked, still smiling.

“Um. OK?” Was she babbling? What was he asking about? What fast way?

“You’ll need to let go of that,” he said, gently pulling her fingers from the table. “Hold on to my hand.”

She wrapped her fingers around his. His hand was larger than hers, warm, and solid feeling. He slid closer to her, and gently took hold of a loop on the side of her suit. Then he kicked hard, carrying them both away from the table, out into the middle of the room.

Carmen held back a squeal of glee, but only just.

It was like flying. The closest thing she’d ever felt to how she imagined the birds must travel. They flew across the room, tables zipping by under and above them. He looked at her, and must have seen something of her joy in her expression, because his face lit up with a smile that touched her heart.

Then they were almost across. He swung his legs around, bent his knees a bit, and absorbed the impact from the landing into his legs. They both began to rebound, and Carmen started to wonder if they’d drift back out and need a rescue. But he caught a rail with one hand, still holding her with the other, and swung them both down to the large window looking into the galley.

“What can we get you?” asked a man in a white ship’s uniform inside the kitchen.

“Just water for me, please,” Carmen said.

The white-suited man looked at her companion. “Coffee for you, right Patrick?”

“Yup. Black, and -”

“Sweet. Yeah. You ask for it the same way every time, Pat. Not gonna forget.”

The galley crewman handed her a small plastic ball, about the size of a softball. It was translucent plastic, filled with what looked like water, and felt squishy. He placed the thing in her hands carefully, and she held on to it with just as much care. It looked a little like the squeeze bottles of lemon juice you might see in a supermarket, complete with a pull-out drinking spout on one end. The familiar shape and unfamiliar purpose was a little jarring, but she carefully pulled the drinking bit out and experimentally brought it to her lips. She sucked gently through the tube and got a trickle of fluid - cold water. Sucking harder got an even faster flow.

She was thirstier than she'd realized, and drank half the bulb before she remembered the tylenol. She downed the two tablets with some more water, although she was pretty sure her headache was already less severe than it had been. Carmen was glad she seemed able to adapt quickly to being in space. She might be up here for quite a while.

The two crewmen were still chatting, so this seemed like a decent time to slip away and check on the medical supplies back in the cargo area. She glanced back at the one who'd helped her across the room - Patrick. Her hand still felt warm where he'd held it, and she rubbed the spot self-consciously. Carmen turned away, hoping that she wasn't blushing enough to be noticed.

The cargo section was just to the rear of the one she was in. She spotted a tube-like corridor leading in the right direction, and pushed herself off gently in that direction. She managed to land about where she aimed and stopped herself by grabbing a rail. She'd get the hang of this yet!

The tube was easy. It was designed for crew to get from one end to the other without too much trouble. The lighting flickered on as she went down, automatic sensors detecting her movement and turning on the lights. The ship wasn't some maze you could get lost in, after all. It was more like a huge airliner.

At the far end of the tube was a closed hatch, and this one didn't open as soon as she reached it. She looked around for the display - all passengers were briefed before takeoff on basic ship safety, which included checking the atmosphere display on all closed hatches. You didn't want to open a door if there wasn't enough air on the other side.

But the display was showing green - which meant equal atmosphere on both sides of the door. Why wasn't it opening for her? She examined the display panel, and saw a little padlock symbol. She pressed the symbol, and it vanished, to be replaced by a display of numbers, like a pin-pad.  Password locked. To keep out whom? Everyone on this mission was carefully vetted before launch. It wasn't like people were going to steal anything. Where were they going to take their ill-gotten gains on the moon, anyway?

She recalled an old trick from college, and wondered if the same thing might work here. The panel was a flat pane of glass. Carefully, she pulled herself close to the glass, took a deep breath, and exhaled. Her breath misted the glass – except where oil from peoples’ fingers lingered on the glass. Sure enough, there were four buttons with oil on them: one, two, three, and four. She chuckled. It couldn’t really be that simple, could it? But then, she seemed to remember reading somewhere that the most common password was ‘password’. So maybe?

She pressed the buttons on the panel: one, two, three, and then four, in order. The door beeped, the lock symbol vanished from the screen, and the hatch hissed open. She was in! Before the door could change its mind – and before someone spotted her and told her not to go back there – she pulled herself through the doorway and into the cargo hold.

It was always easier to beg forgiveness for something than it was to ask for permission.

Chapter 2

CARMEN STAYED close to the wall in the cargo area. She’d never been down here before, but the map on her tablet said that it was one extremely large room. It was hard to tell that from where she was, though. The entire are seemed filled with crates, lashed to the walls and floor with thick nylon straps. Between the rows of cargo containers were alleys that she could float through – but not a lot of space for seeing what was about.

In fact, the place was pretty simple. The containers were laid out in rows, with alleys between the rows. She pulled herself along, looking to see if she could figure out how the place was organized, but whatever system they used was beyond her. She was still curious about finding her father’s lab gear, but it looked like everything was packed in pretty well back here. There wasn’t going to be much risk of things flying about and being damaged.

Something clinked, the sound of metal on metal echoing up through the rows of crates.

The sound caught Carmen’s complete attention. What could it have been? Something badly packed and falling over? Maybe there were rats in here, floating around confused without gravity. The image of rats drifting about in the hold, pinwheeling their little legs as they tried to run in the air made her chuckle.

She was curious, so she pulled herself along down the row of crates, in the direction she thought the sound had likely come from. And then there was another clattering sound, a lot like the first. It was close – had to be in just the next row over. She drifted that way.

It was the wall of the cargo area. And not just any wall. Just ahead of her Carmen could see the huge cargo airlock – a set of double doors big enough to handle the enormous crates stored inside. They looked large enough to pass a small shuttlecraft. Right now, the inner door stood open, while the outer airlock door was closed.

Another clatter. This time, Carmen could be sure. The sound was coming from inside the cargo airlock.

She drifted closer, some instinct telling her to keep quiet. Once she reached the edge of the airlock, she grabbed hold and snuck a peek inside. At first, she didn’t see anything. Then she saw a bolt pop out of the wall to join three others floating in the room. It popped out with enough speed that it banged into the far wall with that same metallic clang that she’d heard several times now. Four bolts floating in the air – and now an entire panel was being pushed away from the wall.

Behind the panel was a man.

He was dressed in heavy duty work clothes. Boots, heavy khaki pants, and a heavy work shirt. She didn’t see any identifying marks on the clothes; they looked like just normal clothing someone might wear every day, if that someone was working with their hands most of the time.

Then Carmen saw his face, and she sucked in her breath hard. He was sick. Not just sick – he was sick with the alien virus. She was pretty sure of it. He had all the symptoms – the fever slick face, flushed cheeks, dripping nose, and even the raccoon black eyes. That last was a late state symptom. The brain was starting to bleed, and pressure from the bleeding was forcing blood out into the sinuses.

The man would be dead within hours. But in the meantime, he was likely to be irrational, even dangerous. That was a side effect of the bleeding – once the virus got into the brain, the victim could have periods of delirium or hallucinations.

For a moment she was flat out terrified. She’d never been this close to someone infected with the virus before. If he so much as coughed near her, she’d catch it, too. And no one had recovered yet. Everyone who got the virus died.

She couldn’t let her fear stop her from acting, though. The entire ship was in jeopardy. She didn’t know how this man had gotten aboard – the ship had been searched, the area specially quarantined. Every precaution was taken to ensure that all passengers and crew were clear of disease, and that no one who’d been infected went anywhere close to the ship. Somewhere along the line, someone had to have helped this man. It was vital they figure out how he got aboard. But for now, it was even more important to ensure that he stayed put. If he got out into the ship, everyone aboard could die.

She looked around for the airlock control panel. There it was – set into the wall on the far side of the open door from her. She started slowly working her way hand over hand around the edge of the door. But the doorway was huge – it was going to take her a long time to get around to that panel. It might be more time than she had.

Carmen was sweating, her fingers slick, which made it even harder to hang on. Any moment, the man was going to spot her fingers, and rush out at her, and she’d be dead. She peeked at the panel – still so far away!

“Hey! You there!” the man shouted from inside the airlock.

He’d seen her! No time for anything else now. Carmen aimed herself at the spot where the control panel was, and pushed off hard from her perch. She glided through the air across the open access – watching the man carefully as she went. Luckily, he seemed too started to take action, and he was too far away to infect her. Now if only she could stop herself once she reached the panel.

She was going too fast! She’d misjudged, and she was going to pass by completely. Carmen stuck out an arm as far as she could, reaching for the edge of the doorway. Her forearm slammed into the metal hard. She bit her lip to stop herself from yelling, and her arm was throbbing. She didn’t think she’d broken it, but it hurt like hell.

The move had worked, though! She brought herself to a stop just a foot from the panel she needed. The man inside was moving now, pulling himself along the wall toward the doorway. She touched the panel, and another number lock display came up.

Could it be the same number password? She tried it: one, two, three, four.

The airlock doors snapped shut, slamming into place before the man could get out. A red light started flashing overhead, and a klaxon sounded an alarm. Shutting the door must have set off some sort of safeguard or alert. All the better, really – Carmen needed help on this. She wasn’t sure what to do with the man now, but there must be something they could do to help him. He was sick – she was a doctor. That made helping him her business, even if he was someplace that he wasn’t supposed to be.

It took less than a minute for crew to respond to the alarm. Three of them jetted into the cargo hold. One of them was the man who had helped her across the dining area to the galley – Patrick. He pushed off hard from the same door she’d come in through, gliding to her side and pulling himself to a stop by the panel. He checked the panel quickly, shutting off the alarm. Then he turned to glare at her.

“What did you think you were doing, playing with the airlock?” he barked. “You could have spaced yourself!”

“I wasn’t playing with it!” she shot back. She was surprised at the sudden hostility. He’d seemed so nice, before. Why was he yelling at her now? “There’s a stowaway.”

He blinked, and turned to look through the window into the inner airlock. “Damn it!” he said. “He’s infected, isn’t he.” It wasn’t a question. Everyone knew what the symptoms looked like, at this point.

Carmen nodded anyway. “Yes.”

Patrick grunted, and went back to the control panel. She watched over his shoulder, wondering what he was doing. She saw a question flash: Safety Override? For a moment she wondered what he was doing. Then the flashing red lights started again – this time, inside the airlock. The man she’d locked inside pounded on the door. She couldn’t make out what he was saying through the thick plating, but she could hear him shouting.

Patrick pressed another button on the panel. It flashed. A handprint scanner appeared.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“The computer has safeguards,” he replied, his voice hollow. “Only someone with command authorization can open the airlock from outside, if it detects a living person inside the lock.” He reached out to place his hand on the print.

Carmen caught his hand before he could complete the motion. “Wait – you’re going to open the airlock?” she asked. She couldn’t believe this was happening.

He turned and looked her in the eyes. “You said it yourself: he has the virus. Do you have a cure?”

“Well, no. But there must be something we can do!”

“And risk all of us? You might be willing to risk the lives of everyone on this ship, but I can’t do that,” he said. “This mission is too important.”

“Don’t you dare!” Carmen said. How could he be so cold? So cruel? You couldn’t just kill a person like that. It wasn’t right. And she’d trapped the man in there! If he just opened the airlock and jettisoned the sick man like so much trash, it would be her fault. She locked the door.

“I have no choice,” Patrick said.

“I’ll get the captain,” she said. “He won’t let you do this.”

Patrick cocked an eyebrow at her. She heard a cough from behind her and looked over her shoulder. The two crewmen who’d come in with Patrick were there, floating right behind her. One of them was the source of the cough.

“That is the captain, ma’am,” the crewman said.

She blushed. How was she supposed to have known that? It didn’t make it any better, either. She’d been told the man running this ship was also in command of the moon base, running the entire mission. But he wasn’t the only important person out here. Her father was, too. She bit her lip, on the verge of telling him she’d tell her father on him. But the last thing she wanted to do was use the privilege that came with her father’s name.

Besides, she realized that her father would undoubtedly be informed anyway. An incident like this – a sick stowaway – indicated a major breach in security somewhere. Reports would be filed. People would be questioned. The people in charge down on Earth would do everything they could to find out how he’d gotten aboard. Her father would be told.

“Please,” she said at last. “There has to be another way?”

His eyes softened, and for a moment thought she saw a crack in the ice. Then it was there again. “I wish there was,” he said. Then he pulled his hand free of hers, and placed it on the palm sensor.

Carmen heard the sound of motors whirring somewhere in the airlock. A klaxon went off again. The sick man hammered on the door, screaming and shouting. Then there was a thunk, and the sound of rushing air. After that she heard nothing at all from inside the airlock. He was gone.

She closed her eyes, crushed inside by the feeling of utter helplessness. She’d locked him in there. It was partly her fault that he was dead now. But what else could she have done? She couldn’t let him get out into the ship. She hadn’t had any alternatives.

“You’ve made me party to murder,” she said softly.

Patrick took her hand in his. She opened her eyes again. He was looking at her strangely. “No,” he said. “You did the right thing. You might have saved us all, by locking him in there.”

It was small consolation. The man was still dead.

“Come on,” he said. He sounded tired and empty. “Let me get you back to your seat.”

Too many questions, and not enough answers. Patrick pulled himself forward into the ship’s cockpit after dropping the woman off. She seemed more than a little stunned by the experience, and he really couldn’t blame her. It was a nasty business. The place on his wrist where she’d grabbed him still felt warm. He remembered her pleading for the stowaway’s life. The look in her eyes, that intensity! If there was anything he could have done to give her what she wanted, he would have.

Hell, he didn’t want to kill that man. That never should have happened in the first place. Nobody could get on board his ship without some outside help. Security was damned tight even during good times – which these were certainly not! So how had he gotten here? And what was he trying to accomplish?

Amy was in her seat when he arrived. “Heard there was some trouble out back?” she asked.

“Stowaway.”

“Shit. Sick?”

“Yup.”

She reached for her buckles in reflex, getting ready to unbuckle and go – somewhere. He didn’t know where she was thinking to go. He waved her back into her seat. Everyone was so damned hair-trigger when it came to this virus. Even Amy, and she was level-headed as you could get. That’s why he had her as his second in command out here.

“It’s dealt with,” he said.

She stopped moving. Inhaled. Exhaled again. “OK,” she said.

“A passenger spotted him, locked him in the airlock.” He slid into his seat and buckled himself down. His eyes scanned the computer screens displaying the ship’s status. Everything looked good.

“What’re we going to do with him, Pat? We don’t have a place to quarantine sick people,” Amy said. She still looked worried. And it made sense to be. There were damned few really safe places left right now, and the moon happened to be one of them. He could understand not wanting to lose that sense of security.

“He’s not going to be a problem, Amy,” Patrick replied. “I opened the outer airlock. He’s gone.”

She gaped at him for a moment, then snapped her mouth closed before answering. “Jesus, Pat. You spaced him?”

He turned back to his displays. The last thing he needed was more of this crap from someone else. He was still burning from having had to kill the man in the first place, and the verbal thrashing he got from the passenger only made it worse. “I don’t need this from you, Amy.”

“No, of course not. Sorry,” she said. “Nothing else you could have done, Pat. Just…Jesus. I’m sorry.”

It was the least crappy call of a few crappy calls. He pushed buttons on his console, trying to find something to occupy his mind. He was going to have a lot of spare time for the rest of the trip out to the base to consider what he’d done, and if it had really been the only good choice. Too much damned time. He found himself checking out the passenger manifest, wondering who that woman was. Finally he found her photo.

“Was that who found the guy?” Amy asked, peeking over his shoulder at his screen.

“Yeah,” he replied. And it could be trouble. Carmen Rosa. Rosa! Damn it, that was the doctor’s daughter. Not only was she supposed to be Doctor Rosa’s primary assistant, she was also the guy’s kid. Their one biggest VIP on this entire mission was that doc, and he’d already allowed his daughter to be in jeopardy. And pissed her off, too.

In theory, he was going to remain in charge of the moon base. He knew the place. He knew the domes, knew the dangers, knew how to make things happen out there. But in practice, Doctor Rosa had been given pretty much unlimited budget and unlimited access to resources and personnel. So he knew damned well that if he pissed the good doctor off, his ass was going to be back on Earth faster than he could blink.

And Earth didn’t even seem like a nice place to visit just now, let alone get permanently grounded on. He had sudden visions of being transferred to someplace in Texas, or some other major hot zone for the disease.

“I think I ought to go back and fill Doctor Rosa in on what went down,” he said.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Amy said. “I’ll hold down the fort till you get back.”

The computer said that Rosa’s room was upper deck, first door on the starboard side. Patrick unbuckled and pushed his way back out of the cockpit. The cockpit door snapped open as he approached, and he floated out into an open space. There were small flights of stairs here, to use while in gravity. But out here in space? He could fly, here. He pushed off and glided effortlessly across to the hatch into the upper deck. That never got tiresome. Compared to walking, gliding around in space was like a dream. The only nightmare was the idea of being trapped back on Earth again. He’d stay out here forever, if he could. If they’d let him.

But for health reasons, a year was the most they’d usually allow anyone to spend on the moon, and his time was already up a month ago. The powers-that-be in the US government ordered him to stay put until this crisis was over, but once they solved the virus issue he was due to be grounded. It might be years before he got another serious space mission again. There were lots of people trying for not a lot of spots.

He reached Rosa’s door and knocked.

“Enter,” said a muffled voice from inside.

He opened the door. There was only one man inside the room – of everyone on this ship, only this one man merited a room to himself. The extra bunk was full of crates, carefully lashed to the wall so they wouldn’t budge. Supplies, Patrick guessed.

The doctor himself was a slender man, wiry even. He wore glasses, had a mustache and tufts of hair near his ears, but was mostly bald on top. His skin had the same light brown tinge his daughter’s did. He was seat-belted into a chair, working on a computer on the room’s only desk when Patrick came in. Instead of being upset at the disturbance, he looked up with a smile that brightened his face in a way that Patrick couldn’t help but find appealing.

“Yes? Can I help you?” Rosa asked.

“I’m Patrick Wynn,” he replied. “We met, back on the ground, sir.”

“Yes of course – our mission commander,” Rosa said. “I’m sorry, I’d stand, but I don’t really have my space legs. Or my space anything else, really.” He shrugged in a self-deprecating way.

“No need, sir. I just wanted to pass you a report on an incident a short while ago. We had a stowaway, sir. Sick. He had hidden away behind a bulkhead panel in the main cargo airlock.”

Now Rosa did look alarmed. “Where is he? If he interacts with anyone at all…!”

Patrick shook his head and made a calming gesture with his hands. “He never came close enough to anyone to pass on the infection, and we’ll have the area sterilized once we land. He was contained inside the airlock by one of the passengers, and I…” Patrick steeled himself, gritted his teeth before rushing on. “I activated the outer door and cycled him into space.”

Doctor Rosa looked grim. But he nodded to himself, not really looking at Patrick or anyone else. “Yes, probably right,” he said, not really to anyone in particular. Then he looked straight back at Patrick again. “Nothing else you could have done. No facilities to house the sick on Luna, are there? No quarantine facility.”

“No, there isn’t.” Although perhaps they could have worked out something. Put up an emergency dome as temporary housing, something to keep the man alive… Damn, but he was overthinking this. The man was dead anyway, would have died within days. Keeping him alive would have put them all at risk. Which would have been insane.

“Doctor Rosa, there’s one other thing you should know,” Patrick added. “The passenger who found him was your daughter. She isolated him before he could get out and infect the ship.”

“She is all right?” Rosa asked. “You’re sure he never came close enough to infect her?”

“I reviewed the video feeds myself,” Patrick said. “Never came within twenty feet.”

Rosa heaved out a sigh and relaxed. “She did well, then. Maybe bringing her along was even a better thing than I had believed.” He looked up at Patrick, cocked and eyebrow and half a smile. “Do you think it was nepotism, my bringing my daughter with me out here to the one truly safe place humanity has left?”

Patrick recalled Carmen’s hand on his wrist, her hot words, the tenacity she demonstrated – and the smarts she’d shown, in figuring out the right thing to do and taking immediate action. He found himself recalling her face, too. Actually he couldn’t forget it even if he tried. Her cheekbones had sharp angles, her long dark hair pulled back into a braid… He felt himself flush a little, and he thought carefully about how to answer. “I think she’s a remarkably capable woman,” he said.

Rosa looked amused. “A cautious answer. I like you, Patrick. I think we will work well together. And we must. Too much is counting on us to fail.”

“I agree completely, sir. You let me know what you need, and I’ll do whatever I can to help,” Patrick said.

“Good. For now, I need to continue my study of all this research – everything that has been done to look at the virus, to attack it, and to try to defend against it,” he waved at his computer. “All in there.”

Patrick whistled. How many men and women had been working on this, back on Earth, and this man was trying to organize all their studies, all their results, all the data they’d gathered, and collate it into something useful. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said.

“Thank you,” Rosa said. “And thank you for your update – and your candor.”

Patrick left the doctor to his work. It was still a long way to the moon, and he had far too much time on his hands between now and then. He headed back to the cockpit to file his report with Earth. Nobody was going to be happy to hear about the stowaway. Some heads were sure to roll over that one.

Chapter 3

CARMEN BOUNDED down the corridor, carrying a big box of machinery for the new lab. She’d never have been able to lift this, back on Earth, let alone bounce around with it. Walking about on Luna might not be as much fun as the gliding around in space had been – she really felt like she was getting the hang of it, just before they arrived at the lunar base. But it was still pretty awesome.

Luna exerted less than a fifth the gravity Earth did. She weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds on Earth – here, she was less than twenty five! It was like the best crash diet plan ever. She felt light as a feather.

Which was a good thing, seeing as how the ship was parked almost a quarter mile from her father’s lab, and they had to hand-carry most of the equipment. There were a few lifting machines to pick up larger loads and carry them, but they were moving those big crates one at a time. It was slow going, and her father wanted everything set up as soon as possible.

So he had everyone on the new medical team hauling stuff to the lab dome by hand.

The lunar base was pretty small. It was made up of a bunch of dome shaped habitat modules – each manufactured on Earth and imported to the moon by ship at huge expense. There was a ring of six domes all connected by tube-like hallways, with one central dome in the middle. And sticking off one side like some sort of strange growth was the new lab dome. It had been set up while they were still en route on the ship, and it wasn’t really finished yet. But it would be soon, if her father had anything to say about it.

She set her load down carefully and bounded back down the hall for another load. That meant going around the ring to the far side of the base, then out the tube they’d extended from the base to the ship. It was a bit of a hike, and she’d made it three times already. It would be nice to see some new scenery!

As she was leaving, she heard her father grumbling while he stood over one of his machines. She bounced her way over to his side.

“What’s wrong, dad?”

“Hmm? Oh, electricity,” he said.

“What?” she asked. Sometimes he could be a little distracted, and it made conversations interesting.

“Electricity. We still don’t have any. The power conduits are in place to provide power to this dome, but there isn’t any flowing.”

She frowned. “Have you checked in with the admin building?” That was the dome in the middle of the complex. Everything was run from there, pretty much.

“Yes, but they say turning on the juice is an outside job.”

Meaning outside the dome, in a space suit. The thought of being outside gave Carmen a rush. What an amazing feeling that must be!

“How long will it take?” she asked.

“They couldn’t say. It sounds like their personnel are all tied up unloading. The problem is, we’re going to lose refrigeration on these samples before long. We may need to move them to another dome.”

Or just get someone to turn the power on, Carmen mused. She wondered briefly if Patrick would help her get the electricity running, if she asked. He’d been so nice about helping her in the galley – and then so cold when it came to dealing with the stowaway! She shivered at the memory. No, she didn’t think that she could rely on him for help.

Then she thought about Jacob. He might be willing to give her a hand! All she had to do was find him.

“I might know someone who can help,” she told her father. She bounded away before he looked up to reply.

Jacob said he’d be working as an engineer. Where would he be, right now? Probably helping to unload, like everyone else, right? She pulled out her tablet. The base computer had all their personal details on file, and was tracking their location. She’d see if she could find him that way.

It worked! The computer system was incredibly easy to navigate, and finding personnel turned out to be an elementary function. Carmen guessed that if you needed to find someone because there was something wrong, you probably needed to find them right away. In space, small problems became bigger ones quickly.

Jacob was in the central dome. She marched down the hall, around the ring, to the short hall that ran into that dome. It was larger than the other domes, maybe twice the size. No one was around by the doorway, so she walked right in.

Inside, Jacob was directing a few other men carrying heavy loads of equipment. “Over there, by the printer,” he said, gesturing at a machine about the size of a big van. Carmen was intrigued, and walked over to tap him on the shoulder. He jumped at her touch.

“Hey! What is that thing?” she asked.

He relaxed when he saw her. “It’s a 3D printer,” he replied. “A big one. And that gear they’re bringing in is stuff I’ll use to upgrade the unit’s design. By the time I’m done, it’ll be able to make just about anything we can design.”

“Anything?” she asked, dubious.

“Well, anything we can model. It can’t print a circuit board. It can print a chair, or all the parts for a bike, or similar stuff. With the new upgrade, it’ll even be able to print new habitat domes. And with some work, and a few other parts, I think I could even get it to print new printers.”

“That’s awesome!” she said, and meant it. It really did sound cool, and would probably be very useful. But she had a bigger issue right now: sample containers that were losing refrigeration. “Jacob, I’ve got a problem. I was hoping you might be able to help me out?”

“If I can, sure. It’s a little crazy around here right now,” he said apologetically.

“It’s my father’s lab. There’s no power.”

“Really?” He rubbed his chin. Then he went over to a console and poked at the screen a few times. He pulled up a schematic of the base, and examined it for a moment before turning back to her.

“Everything looks like it’s hooked up right. But the power all comes from the central hab-dome, right where we’re standing, and is routed through cables to the other domes. The lines are in place, so someone must have forgotten to flip the breakers when they hooked it up,” Jacob said.

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Carmen said.

“Eh. Harder than it sounds. The breakers are outside, where the conduit is plugged into the dome.”

“Outside! Why outside?”

“Something to do with safety regs. Can’t run a high voltage power cable through a crew passageway. And nobody has set up separate passages for power to make them easy to service. Not yet, anyway.” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Maybe with the new adaptations to the printer we can do that, now…”

“Jacob, focus,” Carmen said. “My dad’s samples will lose refrigeration soon. They’re on battery power, but that will only last so long.”

He looked confused. “Can’t we just move them into another dome and plug them in there, for now?”

“Live virus samples, Jacob. You want them sitting near where you sleep?”

He blanched.

“Yeah, me either,” she said.

“Well, I’ll get one of the guys to help me as soon as I can. They’re busy for a bit, and protocol says we can’t go out there solo. Have to use the buddy system outside.”

Carmen felt a rush of excitement. Wait – this could be her chance to get outside the base in a spacesuit? On the first day here? How incredible would that be? She smiled sweetly at Jacob.

“You could just bring me, if all you need is someone to watch your back,” she said.

“Are you rated for EVA?” he asked. His voice challenged her – he knew this was her first trip into space, so he already knew the answer to that question. And Carmen wasn’t stupid enough to lie about it.

“Of course not. But this is an emergency, right? And you’d be following regs.” She inhaled and crossed her fingers for luck, then rushed on. “Not like we’d be out there long anyway, right? Simple job, out and back quick?”

“Yeah, we could get it done fast. OK,” Jacob said. “Follow me.”

He took her to out of the main room, off to the far side of the center dome. There was an airlock here. Probably to help with maintenance on the other domes. An easy way to get outside and get things done. Jacob popped a suit locker on the wall next to the airlock, and started pulling out chunks of spacesuit. Businesslike, he slipped the bulky elements of the suit over the ship-suit she still wore from the trip up here. His hand slipped getting the top over her chest and brushed her breast, causing him to blush furiously. She hid a smile at his reaction.

Poor guy. She wondered how often he got friend-zoned. Probably way too often, and she could already tell this time wasn’t going to be any different, even if he couldn’t. He was nice, and she liked him. But there wasn’t any spark.

Finally he had her all suited up and ran system checks on her suit. Then he started getting himself ready as well. She watched him click the pieces of suit together, hoping this job didn’t take too long. They’d already burned so much time. Carmen wondered how long her father’s samples had before the battery power ran out.

“OK, check my suit. Make sure the locking points are all good,” Jacob said over his suit radio. She gave each one a tug, but as near as she could tell he had done a good job.

“Looks good,” she said. “Where’d you learn to do this, anyway?”

“Back on Earth. In a swimming pool,” he admitted.

Carmen sucked her lower lip. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that! She recalled that this was his first time in space, too. Both of them would be taking their first walk outside here.

“You good?” he asked. Something of her fear must have shown in her face. She looked up at him, forced a grin, and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

“Then let’s do this.” He stepped into the airlock.

She followed. This one wasn’t like the big cargo airlock on the spaceship. It was more like the passenger one – about wide enough for two people to stand side by side, if they were not in suits. It was really only big enough for two suited people standing one in front of the other. The space felt a little claustrophobic, a feeling only augmented by being locked into a close fitting and bulky space-suit.

Jacob pressed the touch screen panel beside the outer door, and the door behind Carmen snapped shut. Suddenly the feeling of being trapped in a tight space became incredibly intense. Sweat broke out on her brow. She was breathing faster, and she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. This was a terrible idea. She was going out into one of the most hostile environments imaginable for the first time, with someone else who’d never been out there before. They were both going to get killed. She was about to open her mouth to tell Jacob to stop – they’d find another way to secure the samples. But he’d already cycled the air out of the lock. The light above the outer door turned green, and it opened. Jacob stepped outside, and Carmen found herself following him if for no other reason than to escape the metal coffin of the airlock.

It was daylight outside. The sun beat down on them, and her visor quickly dimmed to protect her eyes from the bright light. Looking around, all she could see was white. The domes were white, a fine coat of dust covering them to make them blend in with the ground. She took a few gentle steps, each footfall stirring up more dust. Many people had walked out here before – she could see their footprints scattered all over the area, hundreds of boot prints all overlapping one another.

That made her feel a bit better. It wasn’t like she was exploring someplace no one had ever been, after all. People walked out here all the time. She took an experimental bound that carried her half a dozen feet, and landed as lightly as if she’d floated back to the ground. This wasn’t going to be so hard.

“Look up,” Jacob breathed.

She followed his advice, and gasped. All she could see was stars. But it looked like she could see all of them. It looked like every star in the galaxy had gathered in the lunar sky. She’d read poetry written on Earth comparing the stars in the sky to jewels on velvet. If only those poets could have seen this! The view from any place on Earth paled.

“The breaker is over here,” Jacob said, breaking her from the view. He’d walked over to the lab dome, and was standing next to a pile of heavy cables that ran there from the central dome. That must be the power conduit. Jacob bent forward and opened the breaker box.

“Odd,” he said.

“What’s that?” Carmen asked.

“It looks like the breakers are all set correctly.”

She bounded over next to him. “So what’s wrong, then?”

He knelt down next to the box, poking inside it. “I’m not sure. It should be working just fine. Let me try uninstalling the breakers and setting them back in place. Maybe one of them is socketed badly.”

Carmen stood back and watched him work. To her, it looked like a large gray box with a bunch of smaller black boxes stuck into sockets inside it. She knew how breakers worked. But she didn’t know what was wrong with these ones. She was curious, so she watched everything Jacob did, tracking his every moment. So she spotted the small blue spark as he worked one of the breakers out of its socket. That didn’t look right.

“Jacob, I don’t think–”

She was cut off by a much brighter flash of light, a huge spark that jumped from the breakers up to Jacob’s hands. He yelled – she could hear him over the radio. And then he fell backward. The hands of his suit were blackened and smoking. And he wasn’t moving.

“Shit,” Carmen said. “Jacob? Answer me, Jacob!”

She went to his side and looked into his helmet. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving at all. If he was out of the suit, she could see if he was breathing, check his heart rate. How could she do that here? She exhaled – and saw the breath mist the bottom of the glass faceplate a little. She leaned over, and watched for any misting on Jacob’s plate.

Nothing.

“No you don’t,” she said. The suits had gripping points on the shoulders. She grabbed his so she could drag him over to the airlock, but she found there was no need. In the low gravity, she could pick him right up. She grabbed his arm instead and slung him over her back. The mass threw her balance off a little, and she wobbled with the first couple of steps. But she was quickly making good time to the lock.

“Hang in there. I’ll have you inside in a minute,” she said. She pressed a button on her left wrist to change radio frequencies to the emergency channel. Everyone with a radio would pick up her message. It was seriously time to call for help.

“Medical emergency at the central dome airlock,” she called. She hoped someone would come running. Jacob was going to need treatment, fast, and she still didn’t know her way around well enough. Where was the medical bay? If his heart was stopped by that burst of electricity, where was the nearest defibrillator?

“Roger, help is on the way,” came a reply over her radio.

Carmen exhaled in relief. She’d never been so glad to hear another voice. It was her fault Jacob was out here in the first place! She’d never be able to live with it, if anything happened to him because she’d been in a rush.

She reached the airlock, and touched the panel. She felt it buzz under her fingers. But the red light above the door didn’t change. Was it cycling? It ought to be ready for them, still in a vacuum state. Why wasn’t the door opening up?

Again and again, she pressed the panel, frustrated. The door wasn’t opening. She looked inside through the window, but everything looked normal. The inner door was closed. Even if the airlock had refilled with air and had to cycle that out before opening, shouldn’t it have finished that by now?

Then she saw faces inside. They went to the panel beside the door, and…nothing. She could see them working on something on the inside door, and then one of them was talking over a radio, saying something she couldn’t hear.

This wasn’t good. They couldn’t get the door open!

“Airlock doors are frozen,” someone said over the emergency channel. “What’s the nature of the medical emergency?”

“Electrical accident,” she said. “Victim is unconscious. Not sure if he is breathing or not.”

“What does his cardiac monitor say?” the voice asked.

Cardiac monitor? The suits had cardiac monitors? Where was the display? She set Jacob down – if his heart was stopped, it had already been a couple of minutes, and he was running out of time, fast. She searched his suit. Where was it?

“Carmen.”

This time, she knew the voice. It was Patrick, the captain from the ship. Oh, she was in so much trouble now. She could hear it in his voice. With her luck, he’d want to space her, too.

“Yes?” she replied.

“The readout is on the wrist computer. Same display that controls the radio. Press the heart icon on his wrist,” he said.

She did as he said, and a medical display popped up. The suit was monitoring breath rate, heartbeat, oxygen level, radiation exposure, and body temperature. And thank god! Jacob was still breathing, his heart still beating. Slowly – but it was a nice, steady beat.

“He’s still breathing,” she said.

“Good. Now hang tight, I’m on my way to you.”

How, she wanted to ask. But she held her tongue. He seemed pretty calm. No sense antagonizing him. Actually, she admired that calm. She’d seen plenty of people who fell apart in a crisis, and she couldn’t stand it. She was in her element hip deep in the middle of a mess. She’d worked more emergency rooms than she could count, in the few short years she’d been a doctor. Chasing viral epidemics left one in hot zones way more often than not. And her dad was getting on in years – he’d started relying on her as his eyes and ears.

She remembered calling one now-ex-boyfriend from a clinic in Israel, once, where she was tracking a possible Ebola outbreak. He’d asked what all the noise in the background was. When she’d calmly replied that the area was under a rocket attack, he hadn’t believed her. So she took video. He completely freaked out. She broke up with him shortly after.

There was something very unattractive about people who couldn’t handle themselves when things went bad.

She felt a vibration, and looked up. Something was coming over the dome! She looked more closely and realized it was a person, in a space suit, with some sort of flying setup. A thruster pack. That had to be Patrick on his way to get her. He wasn’t just coming around – he was flying over to her.

He jetted over her, setting down a few feet away. The blast from his landing kicked up huge plumes of dust, and she covered her face with her arm instinctively at first, before remembering that the suit mask would keep the dust away from her eyes. His suit was the same as hers, but the thruster pack on his back looked like a huge turtle shell. It was clearly heavy, too. In the low gravity they could carry a lot more, but she’d already learned that the additional mass made moving with a heavy load difficult. That thruster had to weight about as much as Patrick did himself, but he took slow, careful steps toward her and never lost his balance.

“You OK?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He picked up Jacob’s body, hefting it over a shoulder. It was a lot of weight, and he did wobble getting Jacob into position. But he managed. “What happened?”

“Electrical burst from the breakers,” she said, pointing at the offending machinery. “Knocked him out.”

“We’ll take care of him first. Then I’ll get someone out here to look at the problem,” he said. “Now, I need you to stand on my feet.”

She blinked. “What?”

“I can’t hold him and hold you and still steer this thing. I need at least one hand free to control the thruster pack. So I need you to stand on my feet and hold on tight to me. You OK with that?”

“Yes,” she said. Gingerly, she stepped up onto his suited feet. The boots were reinforced, though, and she remembered that she weighed almost nothing out here. She wasn’t going to hurt him. Hanging on though – to what? She reached around his side – there was a handle on his hip. She grabbed on to that with her left hand, and then slipped her right hand up under Jacob’s still form. She wrapped those fingers into the spacesuit fabric as best she could.

Standing on his feet, she was as tall as he was. They were almost nose to nose, only the glass of their helmets dividing them. And why was that thought making her pulse race even more than thinking about flying?

“Hold on tight,” he said. “I won’t fly high. If you lose your grip, keep your feet down and knees bent. Don’t forget, you can fall from a lot higher here than you can on Earth.”

She nodded. He looked down at his wrist, which had some sort of display she’d never seen before. It looked like it must be an interface for the thruster. Then he did something with a control in his hand, and they…

…were…

…flying!

“Ohhhh!” She couldn’t help exclaiming. This was amazing! She looked down, watching the domes slide by underneath them. Patrick wasn’t feathering the thrusters, the way he had coming to get her. It looked like the extra weight was pushing them hard. But it was working. They sailed up, and then straight toward the ship, still sitting a short distance from the domes.

“Why the ship?” she asked.

“There will be unloading equipment nearby. We can use one to haul him to medical. Fastest way.”

All too soon, they were sinking toward the ground, raising huge plumes of dust as they approached. Carmen would have happily continued flying out there for much longer – but Jacob was still in danger, and she still needed to figure out something to save her father’s samples. Maybe Patrick would help with that, after all?

He brought them down right in front of the ship’s crew airlock. Carmen stepped off his feet and got out of the way as he cycled the airlock and hauled Jacob inside. She followed him in. A few seconds later, and the lock was done filling with air, the inner doors open, and crew were there, taking Jacob off his shoulder and pulling the spacesuit off Jacob as fast as they could move. Patrick unlocked the thruster pack from his back and undid his helmet.

“How is he?” Patrick asked.

“Breathing. We’ve got a cart ready to haul him to medical.”

Carmen undid her helmet and took it off. She bit her lip. Jacob looked so pale, lying there. If he was badly hurt…!

“Go, get him moving,” Patrick said. The crewmen had a stretcher already waiting. They lay it on the floor next to Jacob, rolled him to his side, and slid it beneath him. Then they were off, carrying him away.

Once they were gone, Patrick whirled on Carmen. “What the hell did you think you were doing out there?”

“I–”

“You’re not rated to be outside. Have you ever even been in a suit before? You sure as hell had no clearance for it. I’d know, because you’d have had to get it from me.”

Carmen struggled out of the top half of her suit. “The power was out in my father’s lab. I went to get help, and Jacob said he couldn’t go fix it without a second person.” She shrugged. “I was a second person.”

Patrick groaned, putting away bits of his own suit. “There are rules here, Carmen. For a reason. This place can get you killed in a hurry if you’re not careful.”

She slid out of the bottom half of the suit. “Dad’s samples,” she said, remembering. Maybe Patrick could help her out? He’d been pretty sharp in a crisis just now.

“Huh?”

“Dad’s virus samples are losing refrigeration. I don’t know how much time is left, but…”

He was already moving, leaving her behind in the airlock. “I need an electrician in the hall for the new dome, stat. No, I don’t care what else you’re up to right now, Fred.”

Carmen shoved the bottom half of her suit back into the suit locker and chased after him. He was headed down the ship’s corridor fast – making tracks for the main cargo bay.

“Just like that?” she asked.

“Just like what?” he replied. “Right now, your father’s work is the most important thing going on up here. Nothing takes priority over that. Come on.”

The cargo area was mostly emptied out already. They’d unloaded pretty quickly – there had been a lot of big cargo containers in this space! Patrick swept past all the work still going on and headed for the big airlock doors, which were sitting open. Carmen almost stopped in her tracks when she saw them, but managed to keep going. She felt a stabbing pang of guilt whenever she thought about the man she’d trapped. The man Patrick executed without looking like he even cared. Seeing the scene of the incident brought back bad memories.

He wasn’t waiting for her, though, and she wasn’t about to miss whatever was happening next. She’d see this through.

The airlock was connected to the domes by a long tube made of stretchy material. When the ship wasn’t here, it was tucked back in against the dome. That first dome was all storage area, anyway, so it made for a quick unloading site. When the ship docked, they ran the tube out to the cargo doors, connected it, and opened the side of the ship up to facilitate unloading. It was an awesome setup. But the ship landed a good ways from the dome for safety – five hundred feet or so. To get back and forth quickly, they used machines like forklifts for the heavy lifting, and Segway devices for people who needed to get back and forth fast.

There was only one Segway sitting on this end of the tube. Patrick hopped on, and looked back at Carmen.

“Get on,” he said.

She gingerly stepped up behind him. This was just like stepping on his feet and hanging on while he flew through the air, right? She put her hands on his hips, and he started the Segway down the passage – fast! She quickly realized her grip wasn’t tight enough, and slid her hands forward around his waist to hang on tighter. That forced her to press her entire body up tight against his.

Totally like the space suit trip. Except that this time there were no suits between his back and her front. Or her hands and his abs. She could smell him through the ship-suit he wore, the faint scent of sweat after being stuck in the space suit a while. She wondered what she smelled like and wrinkled her nose at the thought. She was already starting to daydream about showers. You couldn’t shower in zero gravity, of course. But water was rationed out here on Luna, so no showers here even through the gravity would have made it possible. There was water though. And soap. She’d be able to get clean maybe, once all this was over.

They were almost through the passage by the time she’d gotten done daydreaming about being clean again. He slowed down as they reached the dome and went inside. This first dome was packed with stuff just shipped up from Earth. She guessed a lot of it was probably food. They’d sent a lot more people along than usual. The lunar base was generally a tight knit team of a dozen or so men and women. Her dad had over a dozen people just on his research team, and that meant they’d sent along tons of support staff too. The population of Luna had quadrupled overnight. It was a lot of extra people to feed and house.

“You can relax a bit now,” Patrick said, intruding on her thoughts. Carmen realized with a start that she hadn’t relaxed her grip even after he’d slowed the vehicle down. She eased her hands back to his hips again, shifting her weight back so that that was their only point of contact.

They sped around the ring of domes until the reached the passage out to the new research lab. A heavyset man with a bushy beard was standing there, a duffle bag in one hand. Carmen guessed that had to be the Fred that Patrick had spoken to on the radio.

“No power to the lab you said, right?” Patrick asked her as he pulled the Segway to a stop.

Carmen hopped off. “Right.”

“I hooked those lines up myself, boss,” Fred groused. “They should be working fine.”

Patrick looked down the hall into the lab. The lights were all off. People were moving around inside using flashlights and portable lanterns to see. He cocked an eyebrow at Fred.

“OK, OK!” Fred said. “I can see it ain’t working.”

“We’ll need to run a temporary conduit down the passage,” Patrick said.

“That’s against regs,” Fred replied, a warning note in his voice.

“So is messing up Doctor Rosa’s chances of finding a cure. You know how many people will die if we have to ferry more virus samples out here?” Patrick said.

“No?” Fred replied, his tone saying the word like it was a question.

“Me either,” Patrick said. “But too many. Put the conduit in.”

Fred dumped his duffle on the floor with a long suffering sigh and began digging around in the contents. Soon a couple of enormous cables had been unearthed from its depths, and he was hauling them over to a big socket in one of the walls.

“Fred’ll take care of it,” Patrick said to Carmen. “We’ll have power on in a few minutes.” He didn’t tell her that the power would already have been on if she’s simply come to him with the problem in the first place, but she could see it in his eyes. And it was true. Maybe she should have taken the problem to him in the first place, instead of going to Jacob.

Jacob! “Can we go see how Jacob is doing now?” Carmen asked. She wasn’t even quite sure where the sick bay was, although she was pretty sure she could look it up on her tablet.

“In a minute,” Patrick said. “I want to go talk to your father, first. Come with me, please.”

His tone said it wasn’t a request. She followed.

Her father saw Patrick as soon as he came in. He must have heard something of the commotion down the hall. “Mr. Wynn, so good to see you. We have a problem here…”

“Please, call me Patrick. I’ve heard about the power problem. I’ve got a man working on a temporary solution right now. You should have power within a few minutes.”

“Oh?” Doctor Rosa said. “Excellent! You have my thanks.”

“Sir,” Patrick said.

“Yes, was there something else?” Doctor Rosa asked.

“Your daughter brought word to one of the engineers about the issue, and the two of them went outside to solve the problem. He’s down in medical, unconscious. She’s unhurt, but could have been. I’d appreciate it if you would brief your staff,” he said with a pointed look at Carmen, “not to take any more trips outside without direct authorization from central control. We’d like to make sure everyone remains as safe as possible during their stay here. The moon is not a safe place.”

Her father gave her an intense stare. Not a glare, perhaps, but a serious look. He pursed his lips. “Yes, I will. I assure you, Patrick, my staff will not be breaking your rules again.”

“Thank you, sir. Now if you’ll excuse me, I wanted to go check on out injured man,” Patrick said.

“Very good. Do let me know if he is all right? I’d be happy to come help…” Doctor Rosa said.

“We’ve got an excellent trauma guy, Doctor. Ex-Special Forces. Thanks, though.”

Patrick turned to go. Carmen went to follow him, but her father caught her hand in his. She turned, and this time she could read the disapproval in his eyes.

“I need you here in the lab please, Carmen,” he said.

With an effort of will, she managed to not roll her eyes. It was going to be a long day. “OK, Dad. Patrick, let me know how Jacob is, please?”

Patrick looked back over his shoulder at her. “I will,” he said. He flashed a smile – was that sympathy she saw there? Whatever it was, it vanished as quick as a flash and the stern mask settled back into place.

Chapter 4

PATRICK GROWLED under his breath. That woman was going to drive him around the bend. First she was in the wrong part of the ship – which reminded him, he needed to change the damned password on the ship’s locks. Then she saved the day by trapping a man whose presence could have killed everyone aboard. If she hadn’t been there it might have been a disaster, which made it hard to fault her for being in the wrong place! But then she yelled at him for doing the hard but right thing and spacing the virus victim.

And now this! Yes, the power issue was a serious problem, and yes, it needed solving right away. So instead of coming to him for a fast solution, she went to one of the brand new junior staff, batted her eyelashes at the kid, and got him to take her on an unauthorized walk outside that almost got him killed.

She was seriously going to drive him space-happy. And getting her out of his head? Impossible, at this point. He could still feel where her hands had been wrapped around him, where she had pressed up against his back for the Segway ride. He’d enjoyed that ride a lot more than he should have.

He passed Fred in the hall. “Give me a holler over the radio when the job is done,” he said.

“Will do, boss,” Fred replied. “Almost through, just got to run the power cord down the hall.”

“Good,” Patrick said. “Got another job for you, after.”

“Yer kill’in me, boss.”

“Not yet,” Patrick said with a grin. He hopped back on the Segway and sped off down the corridor for medical. Real medical, not this new lab the doctor was setting up. That place made him nervous, frankly. I mean, he knew they were going to set up an airlock inside the lab, and that all the work with real virus would take place in there. And intellectually he knew that finding a cure for a virus meant you needed to have some of the real virus around. But having the stuff on the moon made everyone jittery, and he wasn’t immune to it.

He reached the medical bay. They had an excellent trauma unit here. They needed it. It was two days to get someone back to Earth, so if anything bad happened out here that they couldn’t stabilize in place, the person died. Accidents happened. The moon wasn’t a playground, and people got hurt. So he’d pushed for getting the best equipment possible, and they had an amazing guy running the show.

David MacInness was just a nurse practitioner, not even a ‘real’ doctor. But he had fifteen years in the US Special Forces as a medic before retiring to go back to civilian life. Life outside the military hadn’t suited him. When the call came for medical personnel with trauma practice to go into space, he’d jumped in with both feet. David went out on the first run with Patrick, Amy, and a handful of others. All the rest of the original crew had died or moved back to Earth. They were the last three.

Patrick jumped off the vehicle and stepped into the bay. There was only one patient right now. Nobody else was sick, just the kid he’d rescued. Jacob, that was what Carmen had called him. And it looked like he was going to be OK. He was awake and chatting with David, anyway, so it looked good.

“What’s the prognosis, doc?” Patrick asked.

“The patient will live,” David replied. “I want to keep him in here overnight, just to be sure. That was a nasty jolt he got. But everything checks out so far.”

“I feel OK to get back to work, sir,” Jacob broke in. “Really.”

“No, time for that tomorrow,” Patrick told him. “Listen to the doctor’s orders.” He wanted to as what made him think he could take a suit outside without authorization. But it was clear from the kid’s face that he knew he’d screwed up badly. Ripping him apart in front of other people wasn’t Patrick’s style. Best to save that chat for later. “We’ll talk in my office tomorrow morning, once you’re out of here.”

That was enough to make the kid wince and blanch at the same time. Patrick kept a stern straight face, and David managed to do the same. It wasn’t the first time someone had come out here and gotten into trouble within a day of arrival, after all. So long as the trouble wasn’t fatal, it was usually a good learning experience.

“I’m sorry I screwed up, sir,” Jacob said quietly.

“You’re alive. Let’s keep you that way,” Patrick said, clapping him on the top of the shoulder. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

Then he headed back out again. Time to link up with Fred. There was something really odd about those malfunctions. Jacob was a newbie to space, but how the hell had he gotten a jolt like that changing a breaker? It didn’t make sense. It should have been an easy out-and-back-in job. And then there was the airlock in the central dome. It had failed, failed so badly that nobody could get it open from the inside to pull Carmen and Jacob back in.

Now random failures happened sometimes. But two, close together like that? It struck him as odd, and worth checking out.

* * *

Carmen helped her father empty crates of fragile supplies and place them into shelving units. She had to be careful. The light gravity made moving things trickier than usual. She was used to seeing something and assuming its weight before she lifted it, and everything here weighed less than it looked.

Her father also hadn’t spoken to her since Patrick had left. She waited until the other staff were a little ways away from them before trying to speak with him.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I was trying to help.”

He stopped messing with the machine he was calibrating and looked up at her. “Carmen. Of all the people out here on this mission, I count on you the most to be mature, solid, responsible.”

“Thanks?” she said, not sure where this was going, but she had a bad feeling in her gut.

“Don’t thank me. Live up to that expectation. You had no business being out there and you know it,” he said.

She winced. She did know it. But at the time, she’d been honestly trying to help as best she could. “I’m sorry, Dad.” What else could she say? She felt horrible. Her father was in the middle of the most important work of his life – maybe the most important work anyone alive was doing. She wanted nothing more than to help him achieve it. She knew now that she should have gone to Patrick in the first place. The man was clearly making her father’s project his top priority. He’d bent over backwards to get her and Jacob back inside safely, and then turned around immediately to fix the electrical issue as soon as he heard about it. If she’d just gone right to him, Jacob would never have been hurt and the power would have been fixed that much sooner.

She still couldn’t get over how cold he looked, when he cycled the lock and put that poor man into space. It haunted her. Even more so now that she’d been around him more, since it didn’t fit with what she’d seen of him since then.

“You know that people are saying I only brought you to keep you safe,” her father said, breaking her away from her thoughts of Patrick with a jolt.

Carmen sucked in her breath. She had worried people might be saying such things, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth. Sometimes, truth hurt. Carmen realized that she desperately didn’t want to know what he was going to say next. If he’d really brought her out here just to get her out of danger, then it would be more than she could bear. She was smart, damn it! And good at her job. All she needed was a chance to prove that.

“I know. Dad. And I’ll make sure to make you glad you brought me,” she said, cutting him off before he could say any more. He seemed like he wanted to add something, for a moment, but instead just nodded sharply and returned to his work.

She would make him glad he’d brought her along.

* * *

Fred was already looking at the airlock door before Patrick arrived. He’d pulled the panel, and hooked it up to a tablet from his duffel bag of tricks.

“What happened to it?” Patrick asked.

“Hmmph? The door?” Fred said. “Dunno.”

Patrick paused. He wasn’t used to that. Fred never admitted defeat. He was the go-to man on all problems and defects with the domes, and there was always plenty to keep him busy. Patrick had seen him worry at a problem for hours, wrestling it into submission.

“Look, see?” Fred said. He flicked a button on his tablet. The inner airlock door snapped open. He flicked the button again, and the door closed. “Works fine.”

“Fred, I have video of that door not opening during a medical emergency. I watched two engineers try to make that panel function, and neither of them could get the door open. Now you’re saying it fixed itself?”

“No, boss. I’m saying there was nothing to fix. It wasn’t broke,” Fred said. He fiddled with the tablet a bit more. “But look here.”

Patrick looked over his shoulder at the tablet screen. Fred was reading the log of computer activity on the door. There, right near the bottom, he could see the activation entry from when Jacob and Carmen went out. And below that? There was another entry, which read that someone had attempted to access the door, but it had been unable to comply due to an air leak in the inner hatch.

“So there was a malfunction, then,” Patrick said. “An air leak?”

“No, boss. I checked the door over. No leak now.”

“Someone fixed it?”

Fred shook his head. “I checked the camera log, too. According to the camera, nobody messed with the door at all.”

Patrick paced over to the door and checked the seals himself. Everything looked as it ought to. The material was worn, too. Used. You could tell if there was fresh sealing material added to a door. It still had that shiny black look, and this stuff was matte.

“What the hell happened, Fred?” Patrick was tired of playing guessing games.

“My best guess is it was a computer error, boss. Maybe a random bit of cosmic ray flipped a bit in the program, or something.” He shrugged.

Patrick thought about that a moment. Radiation could impact computers, sure. It had happened tons of times, since the early days of the space program. Nothing new there. If the right chip was hit at the right moment by the right bit gamma particle, a single flipped bit could work some nasty bugs into a computer program. But something still bothered him.

“If it was a random bug, how did it get fixed?” Patrick asked.

“The door’s equipped with self-diagnostic systems,” Fred said. “If it saw an error, it would run a self-diagnostic test. And if the test came back without error, that ought to over-ride the error result. It looks like it was just really bad timing, boss.”

“Well, it’s working now. Let’s get out there and see if we can get that electrical system back on line.”

“You mean I get to go play with wires that already fried that kid, right?” Fred complained.

“Yup. You know you love a hot wire,” Patrick said, grinning.

“Oy,” Fred replied.

They were both old hands. It didn’t take them long to get suited up and outside. Once they were both out of the airlock, Patrick tested the doors to make sure they were going to be able to get back in again. No problem. The doors cycled and opened without a hitch. Whatever the bug in the system before, it was gone now. That was good enough for him. Fred was already over by the new dome’s breaker unit, so he went over to join him.

“How’s it look?” he asked over his radio.

“These breakers are mostly fine. But this one,” Fred said, pulling it free, “is a melted mess. Must have shorted. Don’t worry, I brought a spare. I’ll swap it out.”

Patrick stood back a bit and let the man work. Fred was good at his job. The last thing he needed was someone hovering so he’d have something else to grouse about. Patrick went over the details of the accident in his head.

The wiring was installed to the new dome, but something had been faulty, and power wasn’t getting through. That was probably the fault of the bad breaker. So Carmen got the engineer to go try to fix it. The bad breaker shorted when he tried to pull it, and he got zapped. Then they tried to go back in and a random error had the door malfunction at a bad time. It seemed like he could probably put this issue to bed. The problems were both solved, and nobody had any lasting injury. Even that engineer Jacob would be OK by tomorrow, and probably more cautious in the future.

He shook his head. He was just worried over nothing. Or maybe overthinking the whole thing because his head was turned by a pretty face. Except she wasn’t just a pretty face, was she? He smiled at the thought. No, Carmen had spunk, and spine. He admired that.

The repair didn’t take too much longer. Fred popped the broken one out, set a new one in, and flipped a few switches. “That should do it,” he said.

Patrick called the central dome on his radio. “Fred says he’s fixed the electric in the new dome. Can we verify?”

“Lights are on,” came the reply.

“Thanks. We’ll be right back in.”

He went to the airlock door and pressed the control panel, half expecting that it wouldn’t work and he’d have to walk all the way out to the ship. But it functioned fine. Whatever the bug was, it seemed to have corrected itself. He’d have the crew keep an eye on the door for a while, but they couldn’t afford to take it out of commission and really do a full tear-down, not while they only had two airlocks. They really needed a third. It was something he was going to have to add to the list of things to get from Earth.

The manifest for this trip was a disaster. Oh, they’d gotten everything the good Doctor Rosa had asked for, and enough food supplies to keep them all in business for a year. But he’d asked for new surveying tools, more instruments to explore the surface of the moon and learn more about its geography. He had sensors out all over the surrounding area, and they were getting simply awesome data back, but he needed more sensors and better computers to process the raw data into something usable.

Instead, they sent him the materials to add three more domes to the base. He didn’t understand it. They were only using the space they had at about half capacity. Three more domes would be useless, wasted space. So he had three huge cargo bins sitting in storage, because he was damned if he was going to waste everyone’s time putting up new domes that nobody was going to use anyway.

He was used to the bureaucratic bullshit, at this point. Nothing new to find that he’d only gotten half the things he asked for, and was sent a pile of crap someone else thought he ought to need instead of the things he actually needed. He’d take care of it in his office later – put the list of things he needed in the next shipment order, along with a terse letter to the guys on Earth responsible for making sure those lists were filled. If they kept sending him more crap he didn’t need, he was going to end up having to put up one of those new domes just to store the unnecessary crap. In the meantime, they’d run out of parts for things they actually needed.

Predictably, the thought of running out of parts brought his mind back around to Carmen again. She was obviously still upset with him over the incident on the ship. He wished he could undo that – find some other way. Hell, maybe he could have used one of those new domes to store the guy in quarantine here on the moon. But he hadn’t known he had them until he was already here. And besides, he’d seen videos of how the people sick with this virus died. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t pleasant, and he was pretty sure he’d done the man a favor by putting an end to it for him in a quick and relatively painless manner.

But it wasn’t like he could just explain all that to Carmen. So what could he do that would win back her trust? He found himself wanting to do that with an intensity that surprised him.

Chapter 5

CARMEN LOOKED UP from her work. She stared, watching the machine chug away at the samples they’d carefully prepared. One of those samples might be it – might be the cure that saved millions from the virus. She had to work at not holding her breath, and looking around the room she could tell she wasn’t the only one. Lab techs and doctors alike were hovering, waiting for the results to come back.

There wasn’t much work to do until they did come back. The most likely result was that all their samples would be failures. And that was OK. It was expected. They’d analyze the failures, learn from the data they collected, and try again.

But the idea that they might just win the lottery and break the virus on the first try was like an attractive nectar, and they were all trapped.

“That’s enough of that,” Doctor Rosa said, his voice sounding firm without being unkind. She broke her gaze away from the samples – her Dad was looking at them all with a smile on his face. She had to grin back. He’d been through this process many times before. He knew precisely how they all felt. But it would be hours before those samples were ready for analysis, and they were all wasting time staring at them like it was a pot of water getting ready to boil!

“I want you all to get out of this lab,” Doctor Rosa said. “You’ve been working very hard. Go read a book. Catch a nap. Eat something. Bathe,” he said, looking pointedly at one of the male lab techs who’d gotten a little shaggy over the last three days. “There won’t be any results for at least six hours. Come back then.”

One by one, everyone began filing out of the room. They all looked a little dazed to Carmen’s eyes. She knew how they felt. There was life outside this lab? After spending so much of the last three days working in here, it almost felt like she’d forgotten about the outside world. She was determined to work harder than anyone else, though. It was the only way she could earn her place here.

“You too, Carmen,” her father said in a chiding tone.

“Oh!” she said. “I’d meant to stick around and help you out…tidy up, if nothing else.”

“There’s nothing left to do, Carmen. Go. Rest. I am sure you can find something to occupy you outside this laboratory for six hours.” He patted her on the shoulder. “You’ve done well. Now rest, because we have more work to do again soon. I need you fresh, and sharp.”

Carmen stood up. “OK, Dad. I’ll be back later, I guess.” She felt as dazed as her co-workers had looked. She set down the tablet that she’d been working on and headed for the door. Six hours. What to do? It was still morning, as the base went. Everyone used Eastern Standard Time here, to keep it simple. She’d only been on shift for a couple of hours, so she wasn’t at all tired. There were a few books she could read…

She hadn’t eaten much at breakfast, and it was heading toward lunch time. An early lunch might be nice. She worked her way around to the dining area. It was really an entire dome, at this point. Carmen had heard that they’d only started with a small space here for food prep, but in preparation for the expanded crew they had cleared out an entire dome for food storage, prep, and eating. Now they had enough tables in place to seat about half the total personnel compliment on the base.

The room was pretty empty as Carmen came in, though. A couple of women from the lab were sitting in the corner, chatting. Carmen took a bowl of stew from a smiling woman working the food line.

“Gracias, Elspeth,” she said.

“De nada,” the woman replied, still smiling. Carmen smiled back. It was hard to keep a smile off your face around that woman, and she had rarely skipped meals since arriving on the moon, as a result. That, and Elspeth gave her a chance to practice her Spanish, which was otherwise getting rusty.

She took the stew and found a seat at an empty table. The two women looked deep in conversation, and Carmen felt loathe to intrude. Instead, she pulled out her pocket tablet and took her father’s advice: she opened a book she’d only just barely started reading, and tabbed to the next page. While she read, she took bites of the hot stew.

One down side of eating in lower gravity: you were limited in what you could prepare and eat. Crumbs and such would eventually fall back to the floor, but things tended to scatter. So thick meals like stew were among the easiest things to prepare and serve. Luckily, Elspeth was a wizard with her meals, and knew the recipes for more sorts of stew than Carmen had even heard of before coming here. Every meal was delicious, which made up for the lack of variety in texture.

She dug into the novel as she ate. It was a romance novel, set some four hundred years ago. A private preference, these books, but she enjoyed the diversion and fantasy. Plus, on her tablet, she could read whatever she wanted and no one else could see what she was reading.

“Carmen. Good to see you.” The voice came from right behind her, and made her jump. She turned, setting down the tablet, and found herself looking up into Patrick’s face.

She inhaled sharply. He was close – had he been reading over her shoulder? She’d let herself get distracted. How long had he been standing there?

“May I?” Patrick asked, gesturing to the chair next to her.

Carmen nodded, and he slid into the seat. Now their eyes were at the same level, and she found she couldn’t break her stare away.

“So I heard the lab is making progress?” he asked.

Shop talk. He wanted to know how the cure was coming along. She could do shop talk… And why did she feel a pang of disappointment? “Well, it’s just the first test,” she said. “It’s unlikely to give us what we’re looking for. There’s probably still a lot of work to be done.”

Patrick nodded. “But until the results are in, you’ve got some free time, right?”

Where had he heard that? “Yes,” she replied cautiously.

“Listen – I know you wanted to spend some more time outside,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea for some of your crew to get certified in the suits and lunar vehicles, and get some experience out there. I’ve got to do a survey run for the next couple of hours, and I was wondering if you’d like to come along?”

Carmen blinked. Was this the same man who’d all but ordered her not to step outside again? Where was this coming from? To be fair – he had said something about not going out without admin permission. If she went out with the base commander, she supposed that ought to qualify! She realized she was staring at him open mouthed, and looked down at her watch quickly.

Still more than five hours before she was due back at the lab. Plenty of time. She looked back up at Patrick and shivered.

“I’d love to. I have to be back in the lab in about five hours, though,” she said.

“That won’t be an issue,” Patrick replied.

She found herself watching his face. He was so expressive right now, so excited. Nothing like how he looked when he locked his face down. She really appreciated these moments all the more for how rare they seemed to be.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. The stew was about done, so she picked up the bowl and brought it over to the kitchen.

“We’ll take one of the hoppers. I have four survey stations I need to check out.”

“Hoppers?” she asked.

“Come see,” he said with a grin.

Burning with curiosity, she followed him around the ring of domes. Two domes down, they were in a section she hadn’t explored yet. It had been so hectic these past days – there just wasn’t any time to go wandering.

“What is this place?” she asked. It was obviously a research lab of some sort, and pretty well appointed. It wasn’t bio-research, but she recognized tools for geology, chemistry, and there was plenty of gear here that she’d never seen before, too.

“It’s the home of my pet hobby,” Patrick explained, making an expansive gesture with his arms. “It’s where we work to better understand the moon.”

“You do research here?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, a quizzical look on his face. “Yes. That’s why the station was built here in the first place, you know.”

She hadn’t. It wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to, beyond hearing bits and pieces in the news about how things were going on the one and only very expensive lunar station. It made sense that there was research going on here, but – if she was honest with herself, she hadn’t expected Patrick to be one of the people doing it. She’d had him pegged as a pilot, administrator type. She needed to re-assess her preconceptions!

And damned if that didn’t make him seem twice as sexy.

“Come on, I’ll show you the Hopper,” Patrick said. She followed him through the room, and down a short hallway. At the end was something that looked a bit like the hatch on an old submarine, hanging open. He grabbed the rail at the top and swung himself through.

Carmen followed a bit more tentatively, not really sure what she was going to bang into if she went too fast. She realized as soon as she crossed the threshold that she’d entered a vehicle of some sort. The space inside was a sphere of transparent material with two seats, both side by side and facing the front. A broad control console rested in front of the seating. Looking through the glass, she saw thrusters attached to the body of the thing, outside the dome. And landing gear.

“It’s like a little spaceship?” she asked.

“More like a submarine designed to operate in low or zero gravity,” Patrick replied. “Come sit down, and I’ll close the hatch.”

She sat. He pulled the hatch in behind her, and turned a wheel, locking the door into place. Then he took his place in the seat next to her. Patrick flipped a series of switches, and the console came to life.

“Base, this is Hopper One. Detaching clamps,” he said.

“Roger, Hopper One. Good hunting,” said a voice over the radio.

Patrick touched a control on the console, and the entire sphere jolted a little. Carmen found the web straps of a seat harness on either side of her and belted the straps into place.

“Just the magnetic locks letting go,” Patrick said. “You ready?”

“Ready?” Carmen said. For what, she wanted to ask. But he took her response as an affirmative, not a question. Patrick gripped two control joysticks on the console, pushing a button on one.

Just like that, they were airborne! Carmen gasped, watching the domes recede under them. The floor was as transparent as the rest of the dome. She saw jets of something that looked like smoke or steam when Patrick hit the thrusters, but aside from that she had a clear view of the land below. She gripped her seat firmly with both hands, hanging on for dear life.

“How high are we?” she asked.

“The altimeter is right there,” Patrick said, pointing to a display with numbers that were climbing steadily. “We’re a hundred feet up right now, see? I’m going to take us up to about five hundred and stay there. You OK?”

Carmen closed her eyes, and then opened them again. She looked ahead, where she could see the horizon of the moon’s surface spilling away before them. It was a glorious sight. Finger by finger, she forced herself to relax her hands.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she said, forcing herself to take even breaths as she slowly relaxed. The more she relaxed, the more she was able to enjoy what she was seeing. “It’s really beautiful up here.”

His eyebrows went up a little in surprise. Aha! So he had done that fast ascent to see if he could shock her. She smiled. Well, he had his fun, but she wasn’t that easy to scare.

“I’m glad you like it. It’s too stark for most people,” he replied.

She could see that. It was stark – bare rock, and fields of dust. Craters, mountains, boulders, cracks and crevasses all displayed themselves beneath the hopper. The terrain was geographically diverse. But it was missing the play of color that you’d see on Earth. No blues, no greens. No amber fields, or rolling hills covered with corn. Despite that, she could see the beauty here.

“I do like it,” she said.

They flew on in silence a little while, each taking in the scene rolling by outside. But the lunar landscape looked much the same in one place as it did in another to Carmen. And she realized she didn’t know much about the mission they were on. Patrick said this was more than just a joyride to show off, right?

“What are we doing?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Right,” Patrick said, looking over at her. “I have little stations set up, collecting surface data. But they need maintenance. Nothing lasts forever out here, especially if it’s not tended regularly. We’ll check out four of them, but I’m especially worried about one down on the south pole that’s acting up.”

“Isn’t that far?” she asked.

“It is. But we’re moving pretty rapidly. We’ll be there in two hours, work for a bit, and then be back in time for you to be back at the lab.”

Now she was really curious. Two hours seemed an awfully long way away for a remote station. “Why so far?”

“It’s the pole,” he said. “There’s ice down there, in some of the craters, where the sun never shines. Water ice. It’s a great resource for us. This station is doing all sorts of readings – radiation, temperatures. But it’s also a control and charging station for a bunch of little robots that are checking the craters nearby for water.”

“Water seems like such a simple thing,” she said.

He laughed. “On Earth, it is! But out here, it’s life. It’s expensive to get water up here from Earth, but the more humans we bring here, the more of it we need. So if we can find some decent supplies already here…”

“Then you can bring more people, expand the base, maybe even have a small city here,” she said.

“City!” Patrick seemed startled by the idea. “Well, I suppose. But we’re a long way from being ready to build a city here.”

He seemed lost in thought after that, and Carmen felt awkward interrupting his musing. He was such a strange man! Every time she thought she had a bead on him, he went and showed her some new aspect to his personality. It made him both frustrating and fascinating at the same time.

A short while later Carmen felt the thrusters shift and looked over at Patrick again. He was working the controls, and she realized that he was throttling back, applying thrust to slow them down. They must be closing on their destination. She looked outside, but all she saw was more craggy rocks and ridges.

“I’ll bring us down near the site and show you around,” Patrick said.

“We don’t have suits, though?”

“We won’t need them. The Hopper has arms that will manage the maintenance we need to do today. If there was a more complex malfunction, I’d come out with a suit. But mostly I think we just need to blow dust off the solar panels. And probably clean another rock out of one of the robots’ charging ports.”

She nodded, trying to picture what the work would look like. She’d see soon enough though. Patrick had stopped their forward motion altogether, and now the Hopper was descending. The ground was coming up fast, and Carmen found herself clutching her seat in spite of herself. But Patrick braked gently a few times, and their downward plunge slowed, then halted just a few feet above the rocky ground. Their ship, seeming even more like a soap bubble to her this close to the ground, came to rest with a gentle bounce as the legs absorbed the weight.

He’d set down on the ridge of a crater. Through the glass bubble, Carmen could see dusty solar panels spread out above a crate-like structure the size of a refrigerator.

“If the water is in the craters, why set the base up on the heights?” she asked.

“Need the light for the solar panels,” he replied, setting the ship down gently on the ground. Carmen shook her head slightly at her folly. Of course they needed the sunlight. She could see the panels herself, right? Thankfully, he seemed happy enough about her curiosity to overlook her stupid questions. She held her tongue and watched him work instead.

Patrick goosed the thrusters just a little, and their ship jumped up about two feet into the air and two feet forward. It settled back onto its landing legs as gracefully as the first time, but now Carmen had a much better idea why they called these things “hoppers”! They’d closed about half the distance to the little automated outpost. She looked at Patrick. His brow was furrowed with concentration. His entire being seemed focused on those controls. He hit the thrusters again – a tiny spurt – and they went up and forward another foot. They came to rest about a foot away, and he relaxed back into his seat.

“It’s a pain in the ass if we bang into something in one of these,” he said. “The sphere is strong – aluminum oxynitride. It’s designed to survive even small meteor strikes. But the mass of the Hopper would crush those solar cells, for example. And anytime we bang into anything, we have to take the Hopper offline for a full series of inspections. Takes forever.”

“Do they ever fail inspections?” she asked.

“Not that I’ve seen. These are tough little machines.”

Patrick flipped out a new set of controls, and a pair of arms extended from the front of the hopper. He extended one arm out to the side of the boxy structure and plugged it in there. Then he ran the other arm back and forth over the solar panels, blowing air out through a nozzle over each pass. Dust drifted clear of the panels, leaving behind a smooth matte-black surface instead of the dusty white they had been.

“What’s the other arm doing?” Carmen asked, her curiosity overcoming her resolve to stop asking questions while Patrick was busy.

He didn’t seem to mind, flashing a smile at her. “It’s doing two things. Charging the battery of the platform from our engines, because the solar cells were so dirty that the thing was running on backup power. And it’s also downloading the last few weeks of data so I can go over it when we get back home.”

Home. So odd that he called this place home. It wasn’t like he’d been here that long – how long did they let someone stay in space, anyway? A year? Two? But he called those domes home without any hesitation or irony. She wondered what it took to get a person to feel like this place was home.

“Why so much data?” she asked. “Couldn’t it just transmit the data back?”

“I haven’t been able to get out for weeks now. Between preparing for your father’s arrival, and then running out to get him – it’s been tough to keep our primary mission on track at all, right now.”

She opened her mouth to reply that the people dying on Earth were more important than some rocks, but he cut in before she could say it.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, holding up a placating hand. “I know your father’s mission is crucial. I’m not complaining. I’m just explaining why we’re behind. And it can’t transmit the data because we don’t have communication satellites orbiting the moon, and there’s no line of sight. Radio just won’t reach. So we Hop out here as often as is practical and pick up the data dumps ourselves.”

He went back to his work then, dusting off the device. Once it was fairly clean, he used the same arm to pull a panel from the side, slipping out a circuit board and replacing it with another. He was deft with the controls, his hands lightly moving the robotic arms as easily and delicately as they’d controlled the Hopper on its flight and landing.

Carmen realized she’d been watching those hands too long and flushed, looking away. What the hell was wrong with her? She pushed the images of those hands touching her from her mind. Come on, she wasn’t in high school. She ought to be able to control her daydreams better than this. But something about Patrick’s manner – his obvious physical abilities coupled with a quick intellect – was incredibly appealing to her. The man was hot.

“Just about done,” he said, apparently oblivious to the effect he was having on her. Thank goodness. She could feel her cheeks pinking a little at the idea of him realizing what she’d been thinking about.

He withdrew the arms into the Hopper. The machine looked so much different, just from what – a half hour of work? She glanced at her watch. Not even quite that long. The solar panels gleamed darkly against the pale lunar dust.

“And we’re done here,” Patrick said. “Bored yet? Or you OK to come see the next site?”

“I’d be glad to come. Maybe I can help some…?” Carmen asked.

“Sure, I can show you how to use the controls,” Patrick said. “Let’s get up high, so we can get line of site with the base and check in.”

“OK”, she replied.

Then he shot her a wicked grin that she knew spelled trouble. “Hang on!”

He gave the engines a nudge and the Hopper started pushing gently against the ground. Then he drove up the thrust – and they were flying into space, rocketing skyward. Carmen felt herself shoved back against her seat. Carmen let out a whoop, clutching her seat harness and breathing rapidly. They were going fast! She looked down, and saw the ground plunging away from her. She gulped.

And then the acceleration went away. Patrick kept just enough thrust to stay aloft. He was laughing, a deep belly chuckle that warmed her heart.

“Sorry,” he said. “Not laughing at you. Just been too long since I’ve really goosed one of these things like that.”

“They’re amazing,” she said. “We’re basically in space, right?” She looked out and could see the curve of the moon. She knew enough to be sure that meant they were very high up.

“Yup. Best way to get line of sight,” Patrick said. “Which we ought to have now.”

He pressed the transmit button on the radio, saying, “Base, this is Hopper One checking in.”

“Hopper One, this is base. You’ve got trouble.” Amy’s voice buzzed out of their radio. She sounded anxious, and Patrick’s eyebrows shot together immediately at the tone in her voice. He leaned forward over the controls.

“What’s up, Amy?” he asked.

“Early warning sats picked up a CME about twenty minutes ago. It should be hitting in about five minutes. You don’t have much time, Pat,” Amy replied.

Chapter 6

“SHIT,” PATRICK SAID. He started punching numbers into the onboard computer, but his frown only deepened as he read whatever results it was giving him back.

“CME?” Carmen asked, worried at how alarmed Patrick was becoming.

“Coronal mass ejection,” Patrick replied. “Solar flare. It’s a big one, from the data Amy sent me. And… The computer doesn’t think we can evade it.”

“So we’re going to glow in the dark?” Carmen quipped.

He looked over at her, face still grim. “Not if I can help it, no.”

Patrick flipped the radio back on again. “Base, the computer is telling me there’s no way to get back to you in time, even on max burn. And it says there’s no way to get to the far side of the moon to use it as a shield, either. I’m going to take us down into a crater and try to nestle in through the storm.”

He was already cutting the thrusters, sending the Hopper into a dive back toward the surface. Amy’s voice replied over the radio, her broadcast already scratchy as they lost line of sight. “Roger. Storm expected to last thirty minutes. We will send the shuttle the moment it’s all clear.”

“Roger. Hopper One out,” Patrick said. He poked a display on his screen and it lit up with numbers. Counting down. It read three minutes, and the seconds were ticking away.

Patrick brought the thrusters live, pouring on the speed as he dove toward the surface. Again Carmen was pushed back hard against her seat – but this time was all the more terrifying because of the uncertainty involved. Patrick wasn’t laughing with the joy of flying, this time. He was flying to try to save their lives.

“I know a little about how radiation works,” Carmen said. “How do we use a crater as a shield?”

“The transparent aluminum that the Hopper is made from is actually a pretty good shield all by itself. And we have an emergency popup shelter in the back, too – gives just a little more shielding,” Patrick said, jerking his thumb back toward a box stowed behind their seats. “But there are some spots in these polar craters where the sun’s light never touches the surface. If we can get in there deep enough, it’ll stop even more of the radiation from the storm.”

She could see the crater he was aiming for now. It loomed below them like a dark sore on the surface. The walls of the crater were still high peaks, towering over the surrounding terrain. The area inside those walls looked as dark as space, from here. It was like a pool of shadow.

“How can I help?” Carmen asked, her nails biting into the cushion of her seat in an effort to stay calm.

“Right now, you can’t,” Patrick said. “Staying as cool as you are helps, though. Most grounders would be sitting in that seat screaming my ears off. So thanks.”

“You’re welcome?” she bit out, feeling torn. Should she be feeling miffed, that he thought she’d be a screaming mimi? Or glad that he’d noticed she wasn’t?

Then they were inside the crater, following one of the steep walls straight to the bottom. The Hopper had lights – enough to see by, barely. Enough to watch the crater wall slide by astonishingly fast as they dropped like a stone into the darkness. Carmen kept her mouth shut tight, but she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes, much as she wanted to. Watching the cliff face rocket past in the lights was awful. Not seeing it would have been worse. She looked at the timer: fifty-eight seconds.

Then Patrick ignited the thrusters, and their downward movement slowed so fast that Carmen was thrown up against her straps. She looked down through the transparent floor, the flare of the thrusters showing the bottom of the crater just a few feet below the Hopper. The thrusters flared for another few seconds as Patrick eased back on the power. And then they were on the ground, settled onto the Hopper’s legs.

Patrick flipped on overhead lights in the Hopper, giving them a good view of the interior, even if the light didn’t reach very far outside. It was pitch black out there. He undid his seat harness and jumped from his seat, bouncing gently against the back wall and pulling himself to the floor. He pulled at the box he had pointed out earlier – the one he said contained some sort of shelter space.

Carmen undid her own harness so she could go help. “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

He undid a set of straps and opened a huge tube, something like a flexible duct. “Grab hold of that end,” he said, holding it out to her. She did as he asked. The thing was heavy! Even in the moon’s gravity, it was a lot of weight for her. It felt like a lead apron you’d use to protect against an x-ray on Earth – which was probably precisely what it was, she realized. She glanced over her shoulder. The timer was down to thirty-five seconds.

When she looked back, Patrick was hooking the other end of the tube to the ceiling, attaching it to a strap there. Once he finished he said, “OK, let go.”

She released her grip, and her end dropped to the floor, where it hung loosely. It looked like some sort of alien sleeping bag tied to the ceiling of their little craft. It was matte grey, and dangled heavily, coils of some sort of thick wire inside the tube giving it structure.

“Wait – we’re getting in that?” Carmen asked.

“The crater and the Hopper will help, but this will shield you from the rest of the radiation,” Patrick said.

“Bet you use this trick on all the girls,” Carmen muttered under her breath. She picked up the end of the tube.

“Get in, quick,” he said. She looked at him, and saw the frustration and fear etched in his face. She regretted her joke immediately. And she realized that he wasn’t planning to get inside the thing with her. Which made her angry. What the hell was he thinking? There was room for both of them in there.

“We have no time for this male heroics crap,” she growled. With a jerk, she picked up the bottom end of the tube. She got a quick glimpse of the timer as she did: nine seconds! She hauled the thing up over her head, took two fast steps toward Patrick so that her chest was pressed tightly against his. She had a moment to see the startled look on his face before she brought the tube down heavily over both of them. It hit the floor with a thud, cutting off light. The air inside felt heavy, and Carmen found herself breathing faster. Patrick moved then. His body sliding against hers as he knelt down. She could feel his breath against her belly, the warmth of his exhalation sending flutters through her.

He reached down, sliding a hand over her leg, and…picked up her foot? He set the foot down again on top of something. Then he did the same with her other foot. He jerked hard on something, and she felt the material under her feet shift.

“There, the bottom is sealed,” Patrick said. He stood back up slowly, his nose tickling her as it brushed her breast. The contact made her shudder, and not in a bad way.

“What?” she asked. Carmen tried to make her brain work, but all she could think about was his chest, which was now pressing up against hers, and how damned tight-fitting the outfits they wore were.

“I sealed the bottom. We should be safe from the radiation now.” He reached up to touch something up top, and fresh air poured into the tube. “And now we’re hooked up to the ship’s air, so we won’t suffocate.”

Carmen could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke. She could see in her mind how the corners of his lips would quirk up. She wished she could see the smile with her eyes, instead of just imagining it, but it was too dark to see anything. All she could do was imagine the look on his face…and smell the clean, warm smell of his body. And feel him standing there in front of her. He shifted his leg off to the side a few inches, which brought his hips closer to hers, and her own lips parted in reaction.

She wondered if he had really planned to stay out there. And why. It was fine to be gallant when there wasn’t any danger. But gallantry for the sake of her comfort when it put him at risk? She felt her anger stirring a little again at the thought. That was plain stupid. And Carmen found it insulting, as well.

Then Patrick shifted his weight from one leg to the other in front of her again, and she had a hard time thinking of anything except the way his chest felt sliding against hers. And wondering what it would feel like without the ship-suits they wore.

Whatever his reasons, he’d been trying to save her. Had saved her.

“So we just wait here?” she asked.

“Yes. Sorry it’s not a more comfortable spot to ride out the storm,” he replied.

She was feeling plenty comfortable, tucked into a tight space with his hot body pressed up against hers. She just wasn’t quite sure how to let him in on those feelings. When had she become shy about a guy? That wasn’t the way she usually operated. She went after what she wanted. But here…? She suddenly realized she didn’t want to screw things up.

Doing something might blow…anything with Patrick. But doing nothing at a moment like this could, too.

Carmen always preferred action to inaction.

“I think it’s just fine,” she whispered. She reached up, her hands finding his shoulders in the dark. Then she leaned up and in, her lips looking for his in the dark – and finding them.

* * *

For a moment Patrick was too stunned to move. He felt Carmen’s hands on his shoulders, and had just long enough to wonder what she was up to before her lips were pressed against his. That was enough to send his libido into screaming overdrive. He’d already been having enough issues. Standing in a dark, close space with his body pressed against a beautiful woman, it was all he could do to hold still. He’d had to shift sideways once already so she wouldn’t notice that he was already quite stimulated by her presence.

But now? Her lips moved sensually over his. Her tongue flicked out to taste his lips, and he parted them just a little to allow his own tongue to meet hers. Patrick slipped his hands up over her hips, pulling her body closer to his.

Her lips parted for his tongue, and he used it to probe her mouth. Her kisses grew more passionate, her hands exploring the hair at the back of his neck while she explored every inch of his mouth with hers. Her nails scratched at the nape of his neck, and he moaned into her mouth. She slid her leg up along the outside of his thigh, the slick fabric of their ship-suits making a susurrus of soft sound. Her touch was like fire, setting him alight.

Gasping, he leaned back from the kiss for a moment. He needed to get a breath, cool down. Keep at least a little control. But she wasn’t to be deterred. The moment his lips left hers, she simply moved them down to his neck, fingers sliding to the zipper on the front of his shirt. She slid the zipper down a few inches, her tongue and teeth rasping at the skin of the top of his chest as she exposed it.

He moaned again, unable to help himself. He slid his hands up her sides, over her shoulders, and buried his fingers in her hair. She had his top unzipped halfway to his navel now, and her hands slipped inside his shirt to touch his skin while her lips kissed where they could. Patrick gently lifted her face back toward his. He wanted those kisses back on his lips. He was hungry for them in a way that astonished him. She understood instantly and her lips met his in another flurry of passionate kissing.

This time, he moved his hands down from her hair to the back of her neck, gently tracing lines with his fingernails. Her kisses grew even more intense in response. He slid his right hand over her shoulder to her front, teasingly playing with her zipper. Except it wasn’t teasing. Patrick realized that he wanted her – wanted to feel her skin against his, wanted more than just these kisses. He wrapped his fingers around the zipper and pulled down, opening her top halfway to her waist in a single motion.

Carmen gasped into his mouth, her tongue twisting about his. He slipped his hand inside her ship-suit and slid it up her side, her smooth skin like a brand under his fingers. They reached cloth – she was wearing a sports bra – but that gave him only a moment’s pause and then his fingers slipped under the cloth. He cupped her breast in his hand, and she moaned, arms wrapping around him to pull him closer.

Patrick pushed the sports bra up, revealing more of her skin. He wanted all of it touching his. Her hands slid down his sides inside his top, slipping over his hips, around his butt. She pulled him in closer, her mouth still working hungrily against his. He reached up to her shoulders with both hands and yanked the ship-suit down from her shoulders, the sleeves pinning her arms lightly to her sides. He moved his mouth to her neck, then to those newly-bared shoulders. She was panting into his ear, the sounds tantalizing to him.

With a jerk, she yanked her arms free from her sleeves, letting the top half of her suit slide free. She was bare to the waist now, except for the bra, and even as his lips caressed her clavicle she ripped that off over her head.

He smiled even as his lips dipped lower over the curve of her breast, making her writhe against him. She moaned into his hair, fingers reaching around the back of his head to hold him closer to her. Not that he minded!

Her hands went to the fabric of his ship-suit, still in place over his shoulders. She grabbed a handful in each of her hands and yanked hard, pulling it down over his arms. Patrick felt her exhalation near his face and turned his mouth up to meet hers. Now their chests were touching, sweat slick and gliding against each other as their kisses grew even more passionate.

Patrick felt her hands on his hips, pulling the suit down over them, and he groaned. Her touch was like fire on his skin. All he could think about was how much he wanted to feel her body against him.

Clang!

The sound of metal on metal jarred him back to reality with a cold splash of reality. More clanging noises, and the Hopper shook gently around them.

“What the hell is that?” Carmen asked. She sounded as breathless as he felt. Her arms were still draped around him, both her hands still dangerously deep into his pants. God damn it, this was the worst timing ever!

“It’s the shuttle,” he said, fighting to keep his voice under control. He was shaking with desire for her, even now, even knowing they were about to lose their moment of privacy. “They’re picking us up.”

“So soon?” she asked, sounding petulant. She jerked her hands out of his pants and wrapped them around herself.

He didn’t laugh. It would have hurt her feelings, and besides – he felt the same. Amy was their other certified pilot. She must have fired up the shuttle the instant radiation levels were low enough to be safe, and burned on maximum thrust all the way here. He knew he ought to be grateful. If they’d been caught out in the full brunt of a bad solar flare, they’d have needed medical attention right away. But he was pretty sure they hadn’t taken much of a dose at all, not tucked away as much as they were.

Which just left him feeling frustrated. But they didn’t have much time left. Amy was lifting them into the air even now, and she’d use maximum burn all the way back to base.

“We’d better get dressed,” he said. Did he sound as sulky as she did? He thought he probably did, and the thought made him grin ruefully. He pulled the top of his ship-suit back over his shoulders and zipped himself back up.

Then he crouched down to open the bottom of their cocoon. She flinched away from him when he did, which surprised and hurt him. A few minutes ago, hadn’t they just been…? Why would she back away now?

“Are you OK?” he asked.

“Sure. Fine.”

She didn’t sound fine, but he didn’t have time for this right now. Amy would expect him to radio her. She knew it would take a minute to get out of the shelter, but if he didn’t call her soon, she’d assume he was unable to, and it would be a mess explaining why he wasn’t dead or dying.

“I’ve got to radio the shuttle,” he said. He opened the bottom of the shelter and light spilled into their hidden spot. Carmen yelped.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s cold out there!” she said, chuckling a little. It was good to hear her laugh again. He was worried that she was mad at him for the bad timing of their rescue. Ha! He would’ve done just about anything to have the shuttle come just fifteen minutes later.

He lifted the bottom of the shelter a bit and slipped out. He went over to his console and sat down in the control seat, checking his gauges. Shit, they’d been in there for half an hour. How had that much time gone by? It had felt more like ten minutes. Maybe he was wrong – he would have needed the shuttle to be slower by more than just another half hour…

“Shuttle, this is Hopper One, thanks for the rescue,” he said drily.

“Glad to be of service,” Amy replied. “You two OK?”

Patrick glanced down at the dosimeter tucked into his pocket. All of the long-term staff wore them up here, because…shit happened, and you never knew when you’d want to know how many rads you’d been getting lately. But his hadn’t budged. The crater wall, the Hopper hull, the shelter – that trifecta had probably been overkill, if none of the solar flare had leaked through at all.

But he couldn’t regret using a little overkill, in this case. He smiled.

“We’re clear, Amy. Nothing got in.”

“Awesome sauce,” she replied. “The doc still wants his daughter in medical right pronto for a checkup.”

Patrick sighed. How could he have forgotten that little bit of complexity? That Carmen’s father was basically his default boss, at least for the time being? That he might not take kindly to someone dragging his daughter off, putting her in danger, and then…

Yeah. He might not appreciate it overly much. He winced. If she talked to her dad, the fallout could be explosive. He’d need to play it very cool for a bit, or he was liable to be ordered back to Earth and replaced with someone less interested in sleeping with the doctor’s precious daughter. And he was, if he was being honest with himself. The memory of their time together in the radiation shelter still burned in his mind like a brand. If Amy hadn’t shown up, he’d still be in there with her. And damned if they wouldn’t have bared even more skin by now. Standing up in a tiny space wasn’t the easiest way in the world to manage, but he was pretty sure she’d have been game to try.

Carmen slipped out of the shelter and slid back into her seat. He glanced over at her. She looked a little rumpled, but otherwise more or less composed. Her cheeks were the faintest bit pink, though, and he could see little dots of perspiration at her temples, and in the hollows of her clavicles.

He flashed her a smile, and she returned one, if a bit wavering. It was something. He was feeling a little shell-shocked, himself. She had to be much the same. Patrick lost himself for just a moment in her eyes. What the hell was he going to do? Here was this incredible woman. And he wanted her – wanted to show her how good they could be together, and not just in the sack. He wanted to see her smile at him, to enjoy those flashes of her brilliance. Not to mention her daring.

But how the hell was he supposed to manage that without being kicked back to Earth and stuck into some hellish corner of the planet as punishment? He turned his face back to his controls. He had a lot to think about, once they were back at the base.

Chapter 7

CARMEN SETTLED HERSELF into her seat to mask her shaking. She was probably blushing crimson, too. And there was Patrick, looking all proper and done up… And she was a mess. It simply wasn’t fair. He grinned over at her, and she gave him a shaky smile in return.

She looked outside, but the ground was rocketing past with dizzying speed. She could see the shuttle above them. It had picked them up with a clamp, and was carrying the Hopper like an egg nestled against the bottom of the ship. It was flying really fast though – far more swiftly than Patrick had flown them out here. She guessed Amy must be trying to make the best possible time back to the lunar base. But the effect was that looking out the front window was a nauseating experience.

Carmen closed her eyes to give them relief from the view, but with her eyes closed all she could think about was her skin bare to the waist, Patrick’s chest pressed up against hers, his mouth on her mouth and everywhere else he could think to put it.

She opened her eyes again before the memories made her make some truly embarrassing noises.

“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Patrick said.

“Making excellent time,” she replied drily.

“Sorry about that,” he replied, frowning.

What was he sorry about? Sorry about the speed with which they were returning? Sorry they were interrupted? Or sorry about the entire thing? Carmen tried to sort through her own feelings. Stuck in a small dark space with a hot guy, things had seemed so much simpler. But now they were out again, and dressed, and… Patrick moved a hand to touch a control on his console, and all she could think about was him putting his hands on her again.

She took a deep breath, let it out, and took another. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She wasn’t about to let her hormones control her.

“Back to the grind, when we get in there,” she said, keeping her voice light. “I hope the data we grabbed from your site helps you in your research.”

“It’s your research that I hope goes well!” he replied. “Of the two of us, your work is a lot more time sensitive than mine.”

Carmen suddenly wasn’t quite so sure. After all, they had a good test for the virus, didn’t they? And how hard would it be to set up more domes up here? If it came down to it, find enough water on the moon somewhere, and you could probably move a bunch of people up from the surface and build a city of uninfected human beings out here. She wondered if anyone else was already thinking along those lines. Hadn’t Patrick mentioned something about getting shipped a bunch of extra materials for new domes, instead of the supplies he’d actually asked for? She wasn’t positive. And somehow, it didn’t seem like the right time to ask.

The shuttle was already setting down, settling to the ground near the domes. Off toward the habitats, Carmen could see people rushing to extend the long airlock tube.

“Honestly,” Patrick said, exasperated. He keyed the radio. “Stand down. No radiation injuries were sustained. I’ll dock the Hopper and we’ll proceed to medical just to be sure, but we’re OK, people.”

“You kids had some folks mighty worried,” Fred’s voice came back to them over the radio.

“Sorry about that,” Patrick replied, trying not to chuckle. “Occupational hazard.”

There was a clunking sound as the shuttle released their Hopper from its clamps, and they dropped softly about two feet to the ground. Patrick eased on the thrusters, and took them slowly out from underneath the shuttle.

“Listen, we should talk,” he said. Carmen looked over at him, her face heating up all over again. He looked worried, to her. Worried about what?

“About…?” she asked, waggling her eyebrows at him. Hey, he ought to be made to feel at least as uncomfortable as she was. But he just chuckled.

“It’ll have to wait, I suppose. We’ve already got company waiting for us in the lab.”

Carmen looked over to where he was taking the small craft, and there were indeed a group of people standing in the hall just inside where they’d be docking. She winced. One of them was her father.

“I am about to get so much crap,” she muttered.

“I’ll take the heat for it,” Patrick said. “No way anyone could have known about the solar flare. They just happen. But maybe I shouldn’t have taken you out so far.”

He settled the Hopper back into its docking cradle. Carmen exhaled, inhaled. She had to say something to him, something that mattered. But what?

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” she said at last.

“Not…any of it?” Patrick asked hesitantly.

“Not a bit,” she said, smiling as she unbuckled from her seat. She bounced up and pressed the panel to cycle the door open. That would do, she thought.

The Hopper door opened up, and the buzz of voices hit her like a wave. Two guys in blue ship-suits had a stretcher with them, for crying out loud. A man and a woman who looked like some sort of grease monkeys were standing off to the side a little, but they were practically bouncing from one foot to the other waiting to get to do whatever it was they had come to do. Probably had to do with either the Hopper, or the data Patrick had brought back. Hell, maybe both.

And there was her father in the middle of it all. He was like an island of calm, standing there, arms crossed, staring – past her shoulder?

Carmen looked back over her shoulder. The Hopper was there. Patrick was still inside shutting the systems down. But her father wasn’t looking at him. She realized that he was looking at the radiation shelter. They’d left it hanging there from the roof of the Hopper. It hadn’t occurred to either of them to take it down. Up close, the thing might look like alien air ducts. But from this distance, it looked more like a sleeping bag hung up to dry.

She turned back to her father, who flicked his stare from the shelter back to her face.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. A question.

She flushed and looked down. An answer, and not the one she’d meant to give.

When she looked back up, he’d already walked away.

Carmen sighed. That would be all sorts of fun to deal with, later on. Her father had very old school ideas about relationships. The idea of his daughter stuck in very close confines with some man was enough to upset him. And then she’d blushed, which no doubt had given him all sorts of ideas.

Ideas which were probably not too far from what had actually happened. Why the hell had she blushed?

The medics swooped in about then. “Just lie down, Carmen. We’ll get you checked out.”

“I’m totally OK to walk,” she protested, but they slide the stretcher over and looked up at her with such earnest eyes that it was hard to resist them. She sighed and sat down on the stretcher. They brought the head up, and rolled her away.

“What about Patrick?” she asked.

“Him? We try to put him on a stretcher, he’ll tell us to take a walk outside,” one of the medics said.

“Without a suit,” the other one added, chuckling.

“Don’t worry. Sounds like you’re fine, but they want to check you out in medical just to make sure. That was a big storm, and if you’d been exposed, even in the Hopper…” His voice trailed off.

His partner picked up the thread. “Well, let’s just say you’re glad you weren’t.”

Carmen shivered. They’d been in serious danger. And then they’d…what? Ignored the danger and just gone for it? Were the sexy times just their way of ignoring the dangerous storm hammering down on the moon just outside their fragile bubble? If that was all they were, did it mean anything at all? Or was it just two people who needed someone to touch in a tough moment?

She didn’t know. And she wanted to know. Carmen surprised herself, realizing that she actually wanted it to be more than that. She’d go talk to Patrick. Feel him out. See if she could figure out how he was feeling about their little interlude together. If he felt the way she did, or not.

* * *

It took far longer than she’d expected to get through the medical process. They wanted to make absolutely sure she hadn’t soaked too much radiation out there. Blood tests, mostly. And then the wait for the results.

“Can’t I go back to work while I wait?” she asked.

Doc MacInness frowned at her. “Well, you could… But I would prefer you stay here and rest, just in case.”

She didn’t know him very well. Her free time since arriving here had been pretty limited, and didn’t extend to chatting with balding men her father’s age. But she did know that her dear dad had been having coffee with him some mornings. So that was the end of that. If she reported back to her father without a clean bill of health, he’d turn her right back around and she’d be back in the medical bay bed anyway. No sense fighting the inevitable. She smiled, nodded her assent, opened her tablet and got back to reading for a little bit.

Her alarm chimed just before the lab tests on potential viral cures were due to be done. It was time and past to get back to work. Which meant she’d been sitting here on her duff reading for over an hour. She hopped out of bed and slipped her shoes back on. Then she left the small room where she’d been parked and went to find the doctor, or a medic, or somebody who could release her back to her job.

That took another half hour. She was tapping her foot on the floor by the time they were done with her paperwork, but at last it was complete. The blood tests were negative. She’d picked up more radiation on the shuttle trip out to the moon than she had in the last day.

With a deep sigh, she headed out of the medical bay back out into the hall. She was late. They’d already have the test results, and she’d missed the big reveal. There would be a heap of work to do, and the entire team would be in there hammering away at it without her.

Lost in thought, she rounded the corner into the hall and slammed face on into someone trying to come in to medical.

“Sorry!” she said, extracting her nose from the chest in front of her. She’d lost her balance a bit, but the person she collided with had both her arms in a strong grip. A strong and familiar grip.

“That’s OK,” Patrick said to her. “I was hoping we might bump into each other, anyway.” He smiled down at her and slowly released her arms.

She felt warmth creep back into her cheeks at the look on his face. His touch on her arms brought back oh-so-recent memories of his touch in other places, and she felt lost for a moment, staring up at him.

“Me too,” she said, finally taking back control of her voice, with some effort. “But the lab – I’m late already. Got to go.”

Patrick nodded to her. “Go do, then. I’ll see you.”

She nodded back and then hurried away. God, that was awkward! She was going to have to sit down and have a chat with the man, that’s all. They couldn’t keep having moments like that. It was a small base. They’d run into each other all the time, and she’d be a blushing, bumbling mess all day.

Carmen got her breathing back under control as she continued toward her father’s lab. Her strides grew longer and more even. The pink left her cheeks – she could feel the heat draining away. She smiled at the silliness of it all. She was behaving like a school-girl with her first crush. But that wasn’t her. She was so much more than that.

Sure, Patrick had turned out to be much more than he seemed at first, too. And she’d more than enjoyed their time together in the Hopper. And not just the part after they’d gotten into the storm shelter! He was deep, and thoughtful, and also good in a crisis. All things she admired.

But this wasn’t her life. This time out here on the moon, it was hopefully an interlude for her. They’d solve the viral crisis and be back on Earth before too long, a vaccine in hand. She’d go on to her next assignment someplace. With luck, this experience would net her enough credibility in the field to get some plum assignments once she was back.

And Patrick? She shook her head, still smiling. His heart was out here. She could tell that from the conversation on their ride. He loved this place. She could understand that love. The moon was beautiful, for all that it was also stark and dangerous. He’d made his home here. She didn’t know how long he’d continue his work here, but he was clearly happy in it. Their lives were very different, and moving in very different directions. Chance had happened to bring them together for a moment, but she doubted that it would last.

* * *

All thoughts of Patrick vanished the moment she entered the lab. The place was a madhouse. People were scurrying about. Lots of people. Judging from the number she saw in the room, her father had called for an all hands on deck work session. That could only mean one thing: they’d had an unexpectedly promising result from the initial test sequences.

Carmen caught one young lab assistant by an elbow as she hurried by. The woman stopped long enough for a smile. “Can I help you, doctor?” she asked.

“Just got in, Martha. What’s going on?” Carmen asked, waving her hands at the room in a general way.

“Oh! Yes, I heard. So glad you’re safe. Were you very scared?” Martha asked.

“We were pretty well shielded,” Carmen replied, feeling exasperated. Did everyone on the base know? “Now, what’s going on?”

“Oh! Yes, one of the tests came back with a positive marker. We’re prepping it to test on live virus now,” Martha said.

That was good news. Carmen sometimes thought that Martha was a little bit slow. Her manner of speaking didn’t demonstrate great intellect, anyway. But she was really reliable, and quite good at getting things done when she was asked. Carmen made a shooing motion with her hands. “Back to whatever you were doing, then,” Carmen said. “I’m sure it’s important!”

“Oh! Yes, I will, thanks,” Martha said before rushing off.

Carmen shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. She wondered if she was going to be glad when she didn’t need to hear “Oh! Yes!” every day, or if she would miss it.

She glanced over at her father, the cool center of the storm that filled the room. He was working on something at a computer station, and directing staff around him as well. It looked like he had things well in hand, but… They only have five medical doctors out here as part of their team. And she was one of them. Time to go beard the lion in his den. Her father would need her help.

He looked up when she grew near. His eyes scanned her up and down, as if inspecting her for signs of illness or injury. “Clean bill of health?” he asked.

“All clear,” she replied. “The Hopper and the radiation shelter shielded me completely from the storm.”

He turned to look at whatever he was doing on his console, nodding a little absently. “Good that you were with someone who knew how to get you both to safety,” he said. “But perhaps you should stay at the base from now on.”

He looked up from his work and gave her a smile. “I’d hate to lose one of my best doctors out there in the wilds of space.”

“Dad, I’m one of your only doctors, out here,” she protested half-heartedly. “Faint praise.”

“All the more reason to keep you safe, then,” he said. “Here, I need your help. We have to run tests. We might have a vaccine already! I have Martin and Martha queuing up some rats to test on. Come, see.”

And just like that, it seemed like he’d left his earlier moodiness behind. Carmen wasn’t sure she bought it. Her father wasn’t stupid, and he wouldn’t have forgotten her untimely blush earlier. But if he was willing to set it aside and get back to work, she was happy to do the same. She came in closer and leaned over the back of his chair, peeking at his screen.

They had a lot of work to do, but this was the work of her life. Nothing was more important than what she was doing with her father right now. Everyone – all of humanity – was counting on them. She’d check in with Patrick later – after the results from the tests were in, maybe. That would be a good time, she thought. Either she’d have success to share, or failure to commiserate about. Either way, it would be a good excuse. The plan set, she regretfully pushed thoughts of Patrick aside for a while. She needed her entire focus on her work right now.

Chapter 8

PATRICK SAT in front of a computer console in his office, watching data stream by. He tucked his hands behind his head. It would be a little while before the computer finished making sense of all the data they downloaded from the research site. He could relax a little, until then. Damn shame they hadn’t had time to get to the other ones, but this was a good start, at least.

A knock on his office door got his attention, and he kicked his feet off his desk. A bad habit that he never wanted the other staff here to see.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened, and Amy popped her head in. “Safe to come in?” she asked.

“Yup, all clear,” he replied, sighing a little. The rest of the base might be oblivious, but Amy at least knew something had gone down with Carmen in the Hopper. She might not know what, but they’d been working together for too long for her to not know.

She slipped into his office. It was a tight squeeze in here for two adults, with his desk and chair taking up a lot of the room already. Amy didn’t let that slow her down. She parked herself on the edge of his desk, and set two drinks down.

Patrick glanced at the cups. “Beer? Not even gonna ask how you got a hold of these.”

“Good. Don’t. Just enjoy ‘em,” she replied with a smile. She popped the top off her own beer and leaned back against the wall, sipping her drink.

Patrick shrugged, popped the top of his, and sat back in his chair, eyeing Amy. She wanted something from him. That much was clear. The best way to find out what she was after was to sit her out, let her spill it. She’d never been a patient sort. He shouldn’t have to wait long.

He was right. She drew another gulp from her drink and sighed theatrically. “Damned stupid thing you did out there in the Hopper,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Her dad could make all sorts of shit for you,” Amy said. “And you know it. And you messed about anyway. Putting your whole career on the line for a piece of ass, Pat? What the fuck?”

“Doctor Rosa and I are getting along just fine,” Patrick replied.

She made a humphing noise in her throat. “You do her?” Amy asked. Blunt as always.

Usually, Patrick was able to handle her directness. He even liked her for it. But today, it threw him, and he wasn’t sure why. He flushed scarlet at the thoughts invading his imagination. “No, I didn’t,” he said. But oh yes, he had wanted to.

“Hmmm. I would have thought you’d been in her pants, the way she was acting. Got close though, Pat?” She leaned forward, bringing her face only a few feet from his. “This close?”

She slid off the desk, then, and sat down on his lap. Amy wasn’t a small woman, but in the lunar gravity she only weighed thirty pounds or so. It wasn’t her weight that took his breath away. Amy’d never put any moves on him before. Where the hell was this coming from?

Before he could react, she wrapped her arms around his neck and brought her face nose to nose with his.

“This close, maybe?” she asked in a husky whisper. “Or closer?”

Patrick could smell the beer on her breath. She’d clearly had more than just a few sips this evening. “Packed a couple away for courage before you came up here?” he asked drily. He kept his voice level, but it wasn’t easy.

“Maybe I did,” she drawled, running fingers through his hair.

“Amy, we are so not doing this,” Patrick said. He lifted his arms to untangle her fingers.

“And why not? Pat, if you wanted a bed buddy, all you had to do was ask me. You didn’t need to go hunting up the skirt of some groundsider.”

She leaned in close, her lips darting to find his. For a moment Patrick considered giving in. It had been a hell of a day, and he could sure use some way to vent some steam. But that wasn’t the relationship he and Amy had. And it wasn’t the relationship he wanted with her. Besides, the person he really wanted to be kissing was Carmen. Making do with Amy wouldn’t be fair to any of them. Gently, he pushed her away. Her tongue darted against his lips insistently for another second, but then she backed off. She was still sitting on his lap, but her arms were no longer wrapped around him. Her eyes were wide open, staring at him.

“Shit. You care about that girl, don’t you?” she asked, stunned. Slowly, she uncoiled herself from his lap. “Oh shit, Pat. You are so in it deep. You have no idea.”

Amy stood up, still babbling things that Patrick simply didn’t understand. In it deep? He was willing to admit to himself that he did care about Carmen – more than was safe, maybe. But how did that make him in it deep? She was shaking her head, her eyes still wide.

“Oh, Pat. I am so sorry,” she said. She grabbed her beer from his desk and downed the rest of it in a single gulp. “I thought I could save you the heartache, but…”

Amy turned to go, opened the door, stepped halfway out, and turned back.

“How did you fall in love with her so fast?” she asked.

And then she was gone before he could say a word, out his door and down the hall, leaving him gaping. In love? Him? He’d had dates. Hell, everyone went out and had a little downtime party time when they were on Earth, it was only natural. But love? That was something for groundsiders, or for those people lucky enough to find someone they could partner off with on the moon base. Which didn’t happen often. And if you married someone while you were out here, the moment either person got a transfer, both halves of the couple were straight back to Earth. The powers that be didn’t want to be responsible for splitting up families. So most people who wanted a long space career stayed single, these days.

Love wasn’t something he’d ever looked for. Or thought much about. He loved the moon. He loved his work here. He loved flying the shuttle back and forth between his birthplace and his home. But finding a person to love? Crazy talk.

And yet, when he touched his feelings about Carmen, he could feel the intense emotions around their far-too-short time in the shelter together. That was sex. He could recognize that. But he touched pain, too – pain at the thought of losing her, pain at the thought of not seeing her face again. In his experience, love meant pain. Joy, too. Sure. But you knew it was love when it hurt.

Which meant Amy was probably right, as usual.

But what the hell did that mean for him? Carmen wasn’t going to be staying out here. She and her father’s team would solve the mystery of the virus, and then they’d be going home again. And he certainly planned to stay out in space for as long as he was allowed to. He had no real interest in going back to Earth to stay, not anytime soon, anyway. There was still too much to do out here, too much to explore and see.

His computer beeped at him to say it was done collating his data, reminding him that he’d been working on some of those things when Amy had barged in. Amy! What had she been about? He typed commands into his keyboard to call up the raw data in a plotted form that was easy to understand. She’d never jumped him like that before. Why now? Was she jealous of Carmen? And what was she talking about right before she left?

The plotted data popped on his screen. He reached up, slid some spreadsheets aside, and pressed a button for another format. What the hell was that? He was seeing some astonishing readings. His fingers went back to the keyboard, flying over the keys. He needed to go back to the raw data, to verify it. Rows and columns appeared on his screen and he scrolled through them carefully. Everything checked out.

He went to the video feed the little robots had sent back. It was scratchy, and not the best quality. But he couldn’t deny what he was seeing. They’d found it. His little bots had found the lunar holy grail. It was right there, in the same deep crater he’d used as a shelter for him and Carmen.

Water ice. And not just a little bit, either. It looked like there was a damned glacier at the bottom of that crater. Tons of ice. Enough to supply that small city Carmen had been joking about. Water was one of the only resources they had never had enough of out there, and it was something they needed for anything they wanted to do. But now, they had more water ice that he’d dared dream existed here – and this was just from one lucky crater! Where there was one, there were bound to be others, too.

Life on the moon was about to change in a huge way. He jumped up from his seat, excited. He ought to go tell someone. The whole team should know – this was huge! This was life changing for all of them.

Patrick thought of running off to tell Carmen. She’d love to hear about it – probably be as excited as he was. The city – her idea – might happen after all. Imagine this place with hundreds of people here. Or maybe they’d leave this place intact, and build a new site closer to the crater with the water. Hard to say which would work better. They’d need to do feasibility studies, and see if the ice was really pure all the way through, and – lots of work.

Only fair to tell everyone at once. They all had a stake in this. He tapped his earpiece. “Control, this is Patrick.”

“Control here,” came the reply.

“Who’s this?” Patrick asked.

“Jacob, sir. What’s up?”

One of the new guys, Patrick recalled. The one who’d been hurt when he and Carmen went outside to fix the electricity. “Jacob, can you retransmit for me? I want to go out over the PA system to everyone in the base.”

“Got it, sir. You’re live.”

Patrick took a deep breath. This might be one of the most important things he was ever able to announce. He stood up. Somehow, that seemed appropriate.

“Base, this is Pat. I’m thrilled to announce that one of the research outposts has found a crater with copious water ice. We’ll need to do physical inspection to be sure of the amount, but preliminary data says we’re looking at tens of thousands of tons of the stuff. Staff leaders meet in the conference room in one hour for a strategy meeting. I’ll get the kitchen to bring up coffee. This is probably going to be a doozy of a meeting.”

He took another breath, and then went on. “To all of you – congratulations! This is a defining moment in our mission here. I want to thank each of you for all the work that has led to our success.”

Patrick clicked off his radio. His door was still open, and through it he could hear the reaction to his words. The shouts, the whoops, the clapping – all made it down the hall to his office just fine. He sat back down in his chair, feeling more satisfied than he had in a long while.

Now to inform Earth. He wasn’t sure what they’d recommend. There were plans in place for what to do when they found ice. They’d known all along that they would some water ice here. But he didn’t think anyone had guessed there would be so much, so close together and easy to extract. This was going to turn some heads on Earth, for sure. He got to work typing his report.

Chapter 9

CARMEN WAS exhausted. First the excitement of earlier in the Hopper – had it really only been this morning? Since getting back to the lab, there’d been nonstop effort. Her eyes burned from looking at things under a microscope. But the job was done. The rats had been inoculated. Now they had to wait five days, to see if the vaccine worked. The animals needed time to build antibodies against the virus.

A vaccine was only half of the solution, though. Ideally, they needed a cure as well. That was proving more than challenging. So far, nothing was stopping the virus. None of the normal antiviral drugs were having any effect at all. It didn’t make sense to her. They’d tested a broad range of drugs on the virus, but it shrugged off everything they hit it with. Something ought to have at least some effect on the damned thing!

She was trying a different tactic, now. Working a relatively quiet corner of the lab, she was using a fairly simple set of tests to break down the virus into its component parts. That had been done before, of course. But she was going to go a step further. Once the analysis was complete, she’d have the entire structure of the virus and its DNA genome mapped. She could then compare both to the database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information – which had similar data on thousands of known viruses.

If she knew what viruses this bug was most like, then she would have a better shot at figuring out which course of treatment might be most effective. It seemed like a logical step. She was surprised no one else had tried it yet, in fact. The virus had been sequenced a few times already. But no one had published a paper discussing which other viral structures it was similar to.

The thing had to have come from somewhere. Once she knew where, then she was pretty sure she could figure out how to kill it.

“That’s a dead end,” her father said.

She looked up from her work and glanced over her shoulder. He was standing there, watching her progress. How long had he been there?

“Why?” she asked. “It seems the obvious thing to do.”

“And it’s been done,” her father replied. “But there were…problems.”

He had Carmen’s entire attention now. She turned her chair around to face him. “What sort of problems?”

“Here,” he said. “This is a classified document I am sending you, Carmen.” He tapped the tablet in his hand a few times.

She waved her hands around the room. “Half of what we’re working on here is classified information.”

“Not like this. It’s the virus. It’s why the problem has been so hard to solve.”

She frowned at him, but picked up her own tablet to read what he’d sent. The email opened easily enough, and she popped the attached paper open. It was a classified report detailing the same study she’d been trying to do. And the results were more than surprising. Carmen opened her mouth to say something but closed it again as she continued scanning the paper. By the time she was done skimming the text, her jaw had dropped.

“That’s impossible,” she said.

“That is what I thought when I read it,” her father replied. “Nonetheless, it is true.”

The team working on the initial viral outbreak had been thorough. They’d done all the right tests, and compared the virus to the database. Initial results had shown it was a new virus, one they’d never seen before. But they’d kept digging. Then they had the idea to test the meteorite samples the Antarctica team brought back with them. And they found their virus, deep in the core of one of the samples.

Which of course made no sense at all. Ice might harbor a viral sample, but it was unlikely to survive entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The little fragments of rock and metal that the team had been collecting weren’t likely to have a viral sample embedded in them. It wasn’t impossible – but it was highly improbable.

But not this rock.

Carmen studied the diagram. Once they discovered which rock housed the virus, it had been carefully examined. The meteorite had a hollow core, which was filled with ice. Again, not impossible – but preposterously improbable. The ice held the virus. But it wasn’t just one virus. The little bit of water ice in the middle of the rock was teeming with thousands of viruses. Most of them did absolutely nothing to humans. They didn’t have the right proteins to connect to human cells – or the cells of any other Earth creatures, Carmen was betting.

But as she flipped through the data, something became immediately obvious.

“None of the viruses contained in the meteor were related, even a little bit”?

Her father shook his head. “No. Each one was unique.”

“That’s impossible,” she said. “Evolution would indicate that there would at least be some similarities between some of the viruses.”

“True,” Doctor Rosa replied.

“If they evolved,” Carmen said.

“Also true,” her father said, his face a grim mask. “Now you see why this document is classified, and why you have never seen it, and I did not just show it to you.”

There was no way you could have thousands of completely unique viruses in a random sampling. Some of them would be related, would have shown similar structures. It was impossible. Which meant the only answer was that the viruses in the meteor had not evolved.

They’d been manufactured. And put inside the rock.

“We’re sure the rock wasn’t made by some nut on Earth?” she asked.

“Geology report makes it very clear that the material is extra-terrestrial in origin.”

Her head whirled. This changed everything. Moving the research to the moon made a lot more sense, all of a sudden. Among the things they’d brought with them was that original rock, complete with its massive pile of engineered viruses. Who knew how many of the others were dangerous, too? Better to put the research someplace where quarantine could be absolutely assured, if anything went wrong.

The meteor itself was like a cosmic biological weapon. Someone had made all those viruses with as broad a range of possible protein shells as possible. Whatever had manufactured them didn’t know what the target species looked like, so they couldn’t tailor a specific virus. But they created a huge range with the idea that one of them would probably work. At least one of them had, and now people were dying.

And the virus wasn’t the biggest threat. The biggest threat was whoever had made it.

“That’s why our work here is so crucial,” her father said softly. “Because the worst is still coming.”

* * *

The next morning, all the rats they’d injected with the vaccine were sick. The vaccine hadn’t helped the animals to build immunity. It had actually given them the virus. It was a crushing failure, and Carmen couldn’t help but feel desperate. Her grim mood was shared by the rest of the team as well. Most of them had family and friends on Earth, and anyone back home was in constant danger of becoming infected. The virus was spreading like wildfire, despite all the attempts to quarantine affected areas.

Her father would have none of it. “Come now,” he said. “We knew the first attempt would likely fail. And we have another batch of samples ready to run initial tests on. Perhaps the vaccine will be in there.”

A few people attempted half smiles, at that. He shook his head.

“This is not science. Science is not about hoping for the result. It is about finding the answer. Slowly, methodically, eliminating each wrong answer until the right one is discovered,” he said.

Carmen stood up. She still didn’t feel as hopeful as her father, but the melancholy mood wasn’t getting them any closer to curing this disease. “The old man’s right, folks. Let’s get the next set of buns in the oven.” She clapped her hands, and the team chuckled at her jibes, then got back to work. She heaved a sigh. The sooner they got the next trials cooking, the better.

“Old man?” her father said. He cocked an eyebrow. “Buns in the oven?” His tone sounded scandalized, but he was smiling.

“Yup. And let’s hope one of these isn’t a wrong answer,” she said.

“Indeed,” he replied.

Carmen picked up her tablet, going back over her notes. “It’s pretty obvious why the last trial failed,” she said.

“Reactivation,” he replied.

She nodded absently, reading over her notes. They’d used an attenuated virus in the rat trial. Basically, they’d tried to “turn off” a batch of live virus, and injected a specific model of turned off virus into the rats. The theory was sound: their immune systems would think the attenuated virus was live, and would mount an immune response, which would then let them fight off the real virus when they were exposed to it later.

But what had happened was very different. The attenuated virus had performed as expected in their initial tests, but when it was injected into a live host it reactivated. Their vaccine was as lethal as an exposure to the regular virus.

“I’m looking over the other plausible models for attenuation, dad. But I don’t think any of them are viable. I think they’re all going to reactivate,” Carmen said.

He settled back into his chair, rubbing his chin with one hand. “That will make a vaccine more difficult.”

“We might do better looking for a treatment, instead of a vaccine,” she replied. “I’m noticing that the neuraminidase inhibitors had some effect. Not enough to make a difference,” she went on quickly, because it looked like he was about to object. “But it might be the right track.”

“Give it a shot,” he said. He picked up his tablet and typed a few words. A moment later, a tome appeared on her tablet. “Doctor Jeremy Greene has been working on that method, back on Earth. I’ve sent you his research.”

“Thanks, I’ll take a look.” She opened the huge document. How much of it had her father read? He had brought so much data with him, so many reports of research by so many doctors and scientists. Carmen knew he’d been pouring over them as much as he could, but every day more information was flooding up from teams on Earth working the problem.

Carmen had an advantage over Greene and most others working on the problem, though. Her eyes were open now in a way that most of those scientists were not. She was over the shock of her father’s revelation the night before. Now she was simply determined to unravel the mystery. And unlike most of the people working on a solution, she had an advantage. She knew this virus wasn’t natural. It had been engineered. It was a weapon, not the result of nature. The thought still gave her chills.

But it might be a good thing. In her experience, that meant it was inherently weak. Nature built things to be strong because things that weren’t strong went away. That’s how evolution worked. But strip away evolution, and all you had was the ingenuity of the people – or aliens – doing the making. She would bet on Mother Nature over someone in a lab any day of the week.

She was convinced these viruses had a weak spot. She just needed to find it.

Ideally someplace less distracting. The lab was bustling with people getting ready for the next sequence of testing, and it made reading this Dr. Greene’s documentation more difficult than it ought to be.

“Dad, I’m going to take this back to my room and give it a thorough reading.”

“That’s fine, Carmen. We’ve got time before this batch of buns come out of the oven,” he replied. Then he went very still. “But Carmen? No trips outside the domes this time, please?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, dad. Not planning on it.”

Carmen wondered how long he was going to play the protective mother hen. She was betting on forever. The man would be in the ground before he stopped trying to protect her from the world. And oh, god, but she would miss him when he left. She stood up to go, but then had an impulse and walked over to him instead. She leaned over and gave her father a kiss on the cheek.

“And what did I do to deserve such an honor?” he asked her, smiling broadly.

“Just you, being you,” she said. “And with that, I’m off. Be back in a bit!”

She stepped brightly from the lab, smiling to herself as she went. It was good to give him a little something nice. He was annoying as all get-out sometimes, but he meant well even when he was being too nosy. And she loved him.

Chapter 10

PATRICK READ the email a third time, still not quite believing what he was seeing. Command back on Earth had given him his marching orders. And they were not at all what he’d expected.

He snapped his fingers, and the screen shut off. He hadn’t misread any of it. But what were they thinking? He had to talk this over with someone. After her odd reactions the other night, Patrick wasn’t as sure about talking to Amy as he once had been. And there weren’t too many other people on the base who he trusted implicitly.

What about Carmen, though? She was smart, and able to keep her mouth shut when called for. He hadn’t seen her since running into her just outside sick bay yesterday, and it would be nice to see her anyway. Hell, it would be a lot more than nice.

“Computer, locate Carmen Rosa, please,” he said. They all wore communication units that allowed tracking, but you had to have authorization to get a location. Only supervisor level personnel could do that. He wasn’t abusing that privilege, he told himself. He was just saving time, finding out where she was.

“Carmen Rosa is in Dome Four, room sixteen,” the computer replied. It popped up a helpful schematic, just in case he didn’t already know the base by heart. Which he did. That was her room. What was she doing there already? It was only just past ten in the morning. He’d have expected she would still be in the lab.

Still, this made for an easier quiet conversation anyway. He didn’t need to have a dozen people around while he talked about his command issues. He got up and started moving, a smile slowly tugging at his face.

It would be good to see her again.

He reached the door and hesitated. If she was in there, was she there for privacy? She might not welcome the intrusion. Maybe she was sleeping. Or working. If she had wanted to see him, she knew how to find him. He wasn’t ever a difficult man to locate.

And when had he gotten so damned cautious? He shook his head, trying to clear it. Her opinion of him mattered, sure. But he needed to still be himself. He wasn’t changing who he was, not for her or anyone else. He raised his hand and knocked gently.

“Come in,” she said through the door.

He stepped inside, and she looked up. Surprise was the first thing he saw register on her face, but it was followed quickly by a look that he hoped was welcoming. He thought so, anyway. She was draped over her bed, lying on her belly in a way that was incredibly distracting to him. She had a tablet in front of her, open to some sort of book. That was twice he’d stumbled across her when she was reading.

“I hope I’m not interrupting?” he asked.

“Ugh, you are, but I could use the break, to be honest.” She set aside the tablet she’d been reading. “This is the driest stuff I’ve read since medical school. What’s up?”

“I could use your brain, to be honest,” he replied.

“Oh?” She pulled herself up to a sitting position and swung her legs to the floor. With a sweep of her arm she gestured to the one chair in the room. “Please, have a seat.”

The bedrooms here on the base were all pretty simple. One bed, one small desk and a chair, and a chest of drawers built into a wall. Everyone got the same, so nobody got to argue about more space or better facilities. It was one thing Patrick had prided himself in about the lunar base, right from the first. Even the leaders of the expedition like himself didn’t have any bigger room than anyone else. Everything was solidly made, most of it right here on the moon by pouring silicon powder into the enormous three-D printer.

He sat down on the chair, swinging it around to face Carmen. Her eyes caught his immediately and swept him away. For a long moment he couldn’t remember why he was here. All he could think about were those stolen kisses on the Hopper, and how her body had felt pressed up against his.

“So, you wanted my brain?” she prompted. Her eyes were sparkling.

He blinked. “Yes.” He blinked again, trying to clear his thoughts. She leaned forward, elbows on knees and chin propped on her hands, her eyes locked on his intently. He took a breath. Important to remember to breathe, he thought wryly.

“I send a report of what we found back to Earth,” he said.

She popped up at that. “Right! I heard you over the speakers. Congratulations! All that water – that’s amazing. Just what you were looking for, right?”

He nodded, her excitement fueling his. “Yes. And we’ll be mining it soon enough. But it looks like they want us to abandon this base.”

“What?” Her face fell.

Patrick frowned. He hadn’t wanted to upset her. “Not right away. It’ll take a little while to set up the new base. But we have orders to take all the spare dome parts, pack them up, and set them in place inside the crater with the ice.”

“Hmmm,” she said, blinking in thought. “How many domes?”

“Just three,” he said. “That’s what they sent up on the last supply run.”

“Why only three?” She tapped her tablet a few times. He peeked at what she was working on – she was bringing up lunar topography. She scrolled across to the southern pole, then handed him the tablet.

“Show me where the crater is?” she asked.

Patrick knew that landscape by heart. This image was a little funny – not the same as being there. But even so, it wasn’t hard to find the right pool of shadow. He scrolled to the spot and zoomed in.

“There,” he said, handing the device back to Carmen.

She had the tablet plunk a few roughly dome-size circles into the crater. They barely filled a corner. The available space was huge. She looked up at him and made eye contact.

“I see what you mean,” he said. “There’s room for a lot more than three domes in there.”

“And now there’s oxygen for a lot more than three domes worth of people in there,” she said.

Patrick made a skeptical noise. “That city you were talking about?”

“Well, at the time I was thinking about a someday thing. Way in the future,” she said. “But now? There are some really scared people back there on Earth. They moved the best virologist in the world out to the moon – to the moon, Patrick! Why?”

He looked at her blankly. He’d just followed the orders to bring Dr. Rosa out here. He hadn’t really thought about whether those orders made sense or not. He figured they must… Why would they send the premier research team out to the moon if that wasn’t essential to their research?

“Because the moon was the best place to research a space based virus?” he suggested.

“That’s what the media has been saying,” she replied. “The truth is, being up here slowed us down. We lost days prepping to go, days more setting up. And frankly, nothing up here works the way it ought to.”

He made a protesting sound, which she waved down.

“No, you run a good base,” she said. “But everything is harder up here. Lab experiments don’t work the way we expect them to in the lower gravity. We have a limited supply of everything – on Earth, they’d be throwing whatever we needed at us. Here? The nearest place to get new live rats for testing is a two day round trip away.”

He leaned back in the chair, thinking about her words. If what Carmen was saying was right, why had they sent the team out here at all? Maybe to keep them safe from the virus? But they could do that at the bottom of some mountain fortress. There was no need to go to the moon.

“Why do you think they did it, then?” he asked.

“Honestly?” she asked him, looking nervous.

“Please.”

“Pat, it sometimes takes decades to create a vaccine for a new virus,” she said. “Now, we’ve gotten better at it over the years. But this virus is…alien.”

He almost thought she’d meant to say something else, instead of alien. She had paused, and thought over the word for a minute. What was she holding back?

“So making a vaccine might take a while?” he said.

“There are some viruses we’ve worked on for decades and still never found a vaccine for. We’ve got some good treatments for HIV, but no vaccine and no cure. We might never be able to solve this one, either,” she said. “I think it’s entirely possible that some people on Earth are hedging their bets. This virus is a death sentence right now, so a city on the moon safe from the virus might be looking a lot more appealing than life on Earth.”

Patrick made a scoffing sound. “Seriously? I think you give them too much credit, Carmen. Most of them are not like you. Most grounders would never survive up here.”

“You’d be surprised how much people are willing to live with in order to stay alive,” she said softly.

He stopped talking and looked at her carefully. He’d never seen Carmen so bereft. Her eyes were cast down at her hands, which sat in her lap palm up. Her shoulders were hunched forward. As he watched, a tear dripped onto one of her hands.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

Her voice was so quiet he could barely make out the words. “No one is surviving the infection,” she said. “If we can’t find a cure, we’re looking at a death toll of over a billion people by the end of this year, and two or three billion more next year.”

She sobbed. “If we can’t do this, I will never be able to wash that blood from my hands,” she said, before breaking down in tears. “And I don’t know if we can.”

Patrick stared at her a moment, unsure what to do. Carmen was an incredible woman, who’d shown nothing but strength at every turn. And now she was clearly bleeding out right in front of him. Emotionally, anyway. He’d never been the best at handling his own feelings, let alone helping others deal with theirs. He supposed that was why so many of his friends were like Amy and Fred – quiet people who kept to themselves. People like him.

But he…cared for Carmen. He wasn’t quite ready to jump any deeper than that. Even that little admission made him hurt to see her hurting, though. He couldn’t see her be hurt without trying to do something. So he did the only thing he could think of. He stood up from the chair and sat down on the bed next to Carmen. Then he gently wrapped his arms around her.

For a moment she froze, and he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. In an instant, she’d whirl on him for putting his hands on her while she was vulnerable, and she’d kick his ass out of her room.

But then she softened, like butter just beginning to melt. She leaned into his embrace. And a moment later, she wrapped her arms around him, and was sobbing into his shoulder. He sat there and let her cry, holding her just tightly enough that she knew his arms were there, and not so hard that she felt trapped. She shook with her grief, and he knew that she was crying for all the people who had died of this virus, and all the ones who would die tomorrow, and all of the other tomorrows until she found a way to stop the illness and cure the sick. It was a terrible weight to bear. But he didn’t know how to tell her to set it aside.

She wasn’t a fool. He knew that intellectually she understood those deaths were not her fault. But emotionally she felt each one as a blow anyway.

Patrick kept holding her, gently stroking her back with one hand. He couldn’t think of anything else that he could do that would help more.

So he was taken completely by surprise when her face turned up toward his, her lips finding his mouth. Her kisses were soft this time, without all the fervor of the time in the Hopper. But they were no less earnest. If anything, their kisses felt even more passionate for being slower and more careful. More thought out, more considered.

Patrick brushed her hair back from her face. Her eyes were closed, her face the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. And he’d never felt so conflicted. This wasn’t fair to Carmen. She was hurting, and he…he wanted this very badly. He wanted her lips against his with an intensity that almost hurt. But not like this. Not when she was just looking for comfort. So he pulled back from their kiss. She opened her eyes, and they were filled with the unasked question – why did he stop?

“I don’t want you to regret anything we do together,” he said, his voice a soft murmur. Her lips were still dangerously close to his.

“I have not regretted anything we have done. Not one moment,” she replied, her tone matching his. Her eyes sparkled with her tears, but her face and her voice had lost the grief. She gave him a small smile, and then leaned in to his lips again. This time he didn’t pull away.

He was lost in her mouth, the sensual way her tongue felt against his, the softness of her lips. Each kiss was gentle, passionate, and – real. Patrick found himself wishing that they could just go on like this forever.

And then he heard someone clear his throat. Carmen jumped back from him like she’d been burned. Both he and Carmen turned and looked up toward the door, where Carmen’s father stood. He’d opened the door halfway, and was standing half in and half out of the room, as if unsure whether to barge in the rest of the way or beat a retreat. His eyes were narrowed, his bushy eyebrows down, and his mouth was cast in a scowl. Patrick winced. The man was clearly furious.

“I approved you going to your room to work, Carmen, not to kanoodle,” Dr. Rosa said. Then he turned his baleful gaze on Patrick. “But as it happens, I have a need of you as well, sir.”

“How can I help?” Patrick asked, standing up. He’d do whatever it took to calm the situation down and relieve the doctor’s anxiety.

“World Health has found a survivor, in the middle of the Texas quarantine zone. Initial indications are that he’s immune. They’ve moved him to Atlanta for safekeeping,” Rosa said.

“That’s incredible news!” Carmen said. “If he’s immune, we might be able to figure out how, and from there…”

“A cure, yes,” Dr. Rosa said. “I’ll be returning to Earth immediately to pick him up and bring him here. They’ve sent me all the data they have on the man, and he seems very promising.”

“We’re not due to return to Earth for supplies for another two weeks,” Patrick said. “But I’m sure we can get cleared for a special trip under these circumstances.”

“You’re already cleared. We depart as soon as you can warm up the shuttle engines,” Dr. Rosa said. “Please go do so while I talk with my daughter a few minutes.”

Rosa came the rest of the way into the room, stiffly holding the door for Patrick. He hesitated a moment, glancing at Carmen. She gave him the faintest of nods, and he took that to mean she’d be OK. He started out the door.

“Oh, Mr. Wynn?” Rosa said, before he closed the door. “On your way to the shuttle, you may pick up any personal belongings you have in your room. I’ll be returning to the moon base with a more suitable pilot. One less likely to distract my staff.”

Before he could protest or reply, the door clicked closed behind him. Patrick heard the lock turn over in the door. He stood there a moment, trembling. Of all possible outcomes, this was probably the worst he could have imagined. Rosa was going to send him back to Earth and dump him there. With the luck he’d been having, Rosa would use his political pull to have Patrick sent somewhere singularly unpleasant. And he’d never be in space again.

His hands were shaking. He went back to his room to pack his things, feeling like a man on his way to the gallows.

Chapter 11

CARMEN WATCHED her father close and lock the door, barely able to breathe. She wasn’t sure what he was going to say, or do. All of this seemed very out of character for the gentle man she’d admired and wanted to emulate. But this anger! The relish in his voice when he’d meted out his punishment for Pat was shocking. She’d known men like that, but her father? Sure, he’d frowned when she went out on dates, but he’d been off on business as often as he’d been home when she was a teen.

She put her hand to her mouth. He’d never actually gotten to see her go on a date, had he? When he was home, they’d spent the time together. She’d gone off with friends mostly when he was away. And then she was off at college – she’d dated people there, too. But he never saw it.

Carmen blinked, seeing her father through new eyes. Did he think she was still a virgin in need of his protection? If so, he was in for something of a shock. But she’d have to be careful. He was furious, and unless he calmed down, he’d banish Pat. She didn’t want that, and not just because she was growing more and more to count on having him around. She knew how much being in space meant to him. She couldn’t bear to be the cause of Pat being grounded!

“You’ll be gone a few days,” she started, cautiously probing his mood. “Anything you’d like me to focus on in particular?”

“Focus on? I wanted you to focus on your work. Not some pretty face you ran to as a distraction.” He waved a hand dismissively. “You can do what you want. I’m leaving Doctor Levins in charge of the lab.”

Levins was the only man on the team older than her father. She raised an eyebrow, but kept her opinions to herself for the moment. He was not just an old man – he was out of date, and woefully out of his element up here on the moon. Her father never should have brought the man here, so far away from what he was used to. No matter how good he was at his job, if he couldn’t do that job effectively on the moon, then he should have been left on Earth.

“Father, I think you’re making a mistake about Patrick,” she said. She wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, but he seemed more resigned than furious, so why not try the direct approach?

“The man had his hands all over you when I came in. And what were you doing with him alone on that ship, in the solar storm?” he retorted.

“Then you should send me back, not him,” Carmen said. “He’s been on this base for years now. He knows it like his own bones. He’s one of the most experienced people on the base. Don’t you think removing him will hurt the mission?”

“It doesn’t matter, if he–”

“Send me back, instead,” she insisted. “Or keep us both here. But sending him away is wasteful.” She used the word intentionally. Her father abhorred waste.

His reaction stunned her. She expected him to argue back, or even shout at her. Instead, he simply crumpled into her chair. She saw clearly in that moment how exhausted he was, how much the strain of the work here was telling on him. He never let that show, back in the lab. He was always the hero there, always the strong center. But in his wilted face she could see all the strain and despair and pain she’d unloaded on poor Pat just a short while ago – magnified, because her father was the one actually in charge. He’d been charged with saving the human race from extinction.

It was a brutal load to carry.

Carmen knelt next to him and gently reached out to stroke his arm. “Father,” she said. “When was the last time you slept?”

“I sleep every night,” he replied stiffly.

“For how many hours? Two? Or three?”

He didn’t reply, which told Carmen that her guess was more or less accurate. He was exhausted, and the strain was starting to crack his usually calm demeanor.

“The one thing I cannot do is send you back, Carmen. You know that. I cannot protect you, there,” he said.

He brushed off her hand and stood back up, resolve locking his face into a cool mask again. “I will rest on the shuttle ride. And I think we will do fine without Mr. Wynn. The rest of his people seem quite capable, and I am sure that there is someone more practical who can be sent up from Earth on the return flight.”

He stalked out of her room, calling back over his shoulder as he left. “Report to Dr. Levins. If you want. Or hide in your room like a child if you prefer. We’ll solve the virus once we have this immune person up here with us anyway, so the work until then is irrelevant.”

He shut the door solidly behind him as he went. Carmen was left staring at the closed door, wondering how things had gone from wonderful to terribly wrong so quickly.

* * *

Patrick smelled Amy’s perfume the moment he opened the door to his room. He sighed, and almost just closed the door again. He didn’t need to deal with her right now. And frankly, he didn’t have a lot of precious belongings in his cabin worth hanging on to. He was going to toss everything into a bag.

He growled under his breath. He was getting tired of being chased around. With a shove, he pushed the door open hard enough that it knocked against the wall.

Amy was inside, all right. She was clothed at least – after the way she acted in his office, he was half worried she’d be lying in his bed naked. She was in his bed, draped elegantly over the covers, but she still had her ship-suit on.

“Well, Pat. I’m guessing you’ve screwed the pooch?” she asked.

He grunted in reply and picked up a shoulder bag.

“Doc Rosa kicking you off the base?” she asked, sitting up. She seemed startled at the idea. “I wasn’t sure he’d try to go so far. You gonna fight it?”

“I’ll try,” Pat replied. He had some connections on Earth, too. You didn’t get to a position like his without having some friends in some of the right places. He didn’t have the sort of clout Rosa did, but maybe it would help.

“But you don’t think it’s gonna work,” Amy said. It wasn’t a question.

He stopped packing his bag and looked at her. “Wouldn’t be packing my things if I did.”

She flopped backward onto his bed, her arms splayed out, her hair drifting down more slowly than the rest of her in the light gravity, framing her motion. She smiled up at him invitingly. “I did say that if you were just looking to dip your wick, that I was available. Without all the complications.”

Her fingers went to the fastener at the front of her shirt, opening the zipper a half dozen inches. Enough to show that she wasn’t wearing anything beneath it.

“Last chance,” she said, a teasing tone to her voice.

She was hot. No denying that. But Patrick wasn’t interested. Between being upset at likely losing his job – and his career in space – and wondering how on Earth he was going to see Carmen again, he just wasn’t in the mood. No matter how inviting Amy’s bosom looked.

But they’d worked together a long time. She was trying to be nice. Or something. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, anyway.

“I have to report to the shuttle right away,” he said. “We’re leaving as soon as I get there. Rosa is probably already there waiting – can’t risk making him more angry right now.”

Amy made a noise in her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, but didn’t say anything. She zipped herself and then sat up. “Pat, more seriously. Be careful, this run. Earth is getting nasty.”

He looked around the room, only half paying attention to her words. He was pretty sure he had everything that he really needed. Was this the last time he would see this room? Was this the last day he would stand on the moon? The idea filled him with dread.

“Nasty how?” he asked absently.

“Riots. Militias. People doing what they can to stay alive,” Amy replied. “Be careful.”

He stepped close and offered her a handshake. “I will. Thanks.”

She stood up and took his hand, but instead of shaking it she pulled him into an embrace instead. “Be safe down there,” she whispered into his ear.

Then she let him go and fled his room without another word.

The room was still around him. It felt sterile now, with his few belongings tucked into a bag. He glanced around once more to see if there was anything else he should take with him, but nothing jumped out at him. He wasn’t the sort of man who felt the need to surround himself with tons of personal belongings, anyway. People who needed things around them tended to do poorly in the cramped confines of a space station, ship, or lunar base anyway.

He left the room and shut the door.

The hallway from his room to the ship was oddly clear of traffic. Usually he would have run into someone on the way, but today – not a soul. Just as well, really. He didn’t want to see anyone. How could he explain that he probably wasn’t coming back from this trip? What reason could he give – an angry father, upset that he kissed the man’s daughter? Anger burned in his gut. They weren’t in high school. And he wasn’t some creep out to deflower Carmen and run off. He liked her. Cared about her.

And now he was losing her. The thought hit him like a punch in the gut.

He reached the ship and powered up the engines. He’d only worked his way halfway through the checklist before Dr. Rosa’s voice came over the radio.

“I am aboard and ready to leave. Please expedite our departure.”

Patrick ground his teeth together. Like that wasn’t what he was already doing. He rushed his way through the rest of the pre-flight list as quickly as he could and still be safe. Damn the man if he thought Patrick was going to skip steps just to get off the ground ten minutes faster! But he finished soon enough. Too soon, really.

Patrick looked out through the cockpit windows at the moon’s landscape. He tried to soak up every detail that he could, memorize every shadow and highlight. He loved this place.

He looked over at the domes, and saw the dome that housed Carmen’s cabin. He wondered if she was still there. Was she crying? Was she safe? He wouldn’t be here to protect her, or hold her when the tears got away from her next time.

Patrick thought he was going to miss Carmen even more than the moon. Which was strange to him… He never thought he’d feel that way about anyone.

No help for it now. The only help he might find would be on Earth, when he’d have to fight for his right to return. He hit the thrusters and the shuttle lifted off from the ground, burning brightly as he plugged in the course to return to Earth.

* * *

Carmen sat in her room a while, trying to soak up the shock of it all. One minute she had been basking in the warmth of Patrick’s arms, and the next her father was in her room, and sending Patrick away. She’d heard the thrusters of the shuttle’s takeoff. There wasn’t anything she could have done to deter her father right now, not without getting Patrick into even more trouble than she already had. She felt guilty enough about that as it was! If only she’d listened when he first pulled back! He was so sweet about that, too, not wanting to take advantage of her. The thought made her smile. Like it hadn’t been her, kissing him!

That thought brought her back around to her father again. He’d barged in here, unasked, without so much as a knock on the door. He’d been damned near irrational over the incident. OK, lack of sleep excused some of it. She could hope that he would be thinking more clearly by the time he reached Earth – if he actually slept during the trip. Somehow, she thought he would use the time to catch up on his reading instead.

But some of it was just his paternal nature taking over. There wasn’t anything she could do about that, not directly. But what about taking a round-about approach?

She hopped up from the bed and sat down at her desk chair, powering up the console there. She wanted the full size screen and keyboard for this. Her father said that Earth had sent up enough data on this immune person to look promising. If it looked promising, then there were lab results – maybe even more. Worth a look.

Carmen opened the lab work folders and searched for the new files, but they were nowhere to be seen. Which meant her father hadn’t bothered to add them to the lab folder before he left. They were still in his personal folders, or maybe even still in his email. Carmen exhaled, wondering if he’d done that by accident, because he was so exhausted – or deliberately, to keep her out of the data? The latter made no real sense. He should want the team to have access right away. But if he wasn’t thinking clearly, nothing was certain.

She punched up the email connection on the local server and entered her father’s user name – easy enough, it was in every email he’d sent, and she’d gotten enough of those. Somewhat harder was the password, but even that wasn’t too difficult. She’d guessed his email password years ago. She’d never told him that she knew, and never said what a stupid password it was, even though she had wanted to so badly! Her uncharacteristic restraint would pay dividends today if he hadn’t changed the thing.

Carmen typed the password into her console. Miranda – her mother’s name, dead for ten years. But Carmen’s father had never so much as dated again, at least as far as she knew. The password was a dead giveaway. If the man ever entertained romantic notions with another woman (and she wished he would), then he would have changed the thing.

But he hadn’t. His email opened for her, and the top message was from the World Health Organization, on Earth. Complete with a whole bunch of attached folders. She downloaded them all to her console, and carefully logged out of his email. No sense leaving traces that would let him know his account was compromised.

The WHO had sent her father a wealth of examinations and data. She scanned the initial medical reports. The man – a teenage boy, really – had been found in the quarantine zone, showing some of the early signs of the illness. He’d been taken to a treatment facility, which was basically a big tent city where soldiers were escorting the sick so that volunteer medical personnel could watch over them while they died.

But this one didn’t die. He got better.

That got everyone’s attention quickly. They didn’t have any survivors from this virus. Not one person lived through it. Some people lasted a while – the longest was a few weeks. But no one got better after becoming ill. At first they thought he had simply been sick with something else. But no – when they tested his blood for antibodies to the asteroid virus, there they were.

The antibodies that no other human had been able to build, and which might make creating a cure possible. Carmen could see why her father was so excited. Almost, she could excuse him barging into her room without knocking first. This was exciting stuff. The sort of thing you pray for, as a virologist. The virulence of the virus itself was working for them, in this case. With a less lethal virus, it might take a lot longer to find someone who was immune. But with everyone who caught the virus dying, the one in a million person who was immune to the thing was like a flower growing in the middle of a fresh-cut lawn.

She opened some of the other attachments. The doctors on Earth had done their homework on this guy. They had electron micrographs of the virus trying to crack into a small sample of the teen’s blood. She watched the images flick by her screen – really, it was a collection of still images, not a video. But it played out the virus’s attempt to invade his cells. She watched as the virus effectively broke into his cell and injected its DNA. The cell followed the new instructions and started manufacturing new virus.

And then along rolled an antibody cell – which enveloped the cell and killed it. It looked like the boy had somehow gotten the lucky straw, and simply had better antibodies to deal with this thing. Which didn’t really make sense. Antibodies were created by the body as a reaction to an invader. All of the patients she’d seen had developed antibodies. They just didn’t work fast enough to stop the virus before it spread through the body, out of control. So what was different about this kid? She had a sense that the doctors who’d examined him had missed something, but she wasn’t sure what it was.

She pulled up some stills she had made, back on Earth, from another patient. This patient had died. There was the virus again, infecting the cell. The cell began making new virus, just like in the other images. And there was an antibody, swooping in to kill the infected cell and stop the virus! But before the antibody could swallow the infected cell, new virus sprouted all over the cell membrane and broke away. The cell was destroyed, but not before dozens of new viruses were released.

Carmen flicked back to the boy. She played the images one after another, chewing a fingernail. She ran both sets of images side by side, carefully matching the time stamps. One thing became very clear – the boy’s antibodies weren’t any faster than anyone else’s. So why was he still alive?

She looked closely at the cell, right before the antibody swallowed it. No virus escaped from the boy’s cell. The cell had built plenty of new virus – she could see it breaking through the membrane. But none of it broke away from the cell. It was trapped on the cell membrane!

That had to be it. The research she was reading – it was about stopping the virus from breaking free from the cell membrane. About stopping it from spreading to other cells. And this boy’s cells had figured out a way to do that. The key wasn’t in his antibodies. It was in his cells.

Now all she had to do was figure out how his cells were doing it. She sighed, tapping her fingers on her desktop. Easier said that done, with Levins in charge of the lab. He wasn’t going to want lab resources spent on anything except the vaccine they’d been working so hard on. She’d have to find a way to manage him if she was going to have a shot at working on this. But how to do that?

Chapter 12

PATRICK SAT IN the command chair of the shuttle. He’d been ordered to leave the engine hot, which meant by regulation they needed a pilot in the seat. He was stuck here, grinding his teeth together. He glanced down at his tablet. No messages. He’d tried reaching out to some of his contacts, to see if he could stop Dr. Rosa from getting him grounded. But so far nobody had responded, which felt faintly ominous.

At least the flight back to Earth had been uneventful. Rosa had stayed back in the cabin area, with a couple of crew to take care of his needs there. Patrick had stayed forward as much as he could, preferring the solitude of the cockpit. Without Amy here to fly with him, he had a lot more work to do, anyway. He hadn’t wanted to ask Amy to come – too much chance that she’d end up tarred and feathered with the same brush.

He’d landed the bird in Florida. Which was a mess, but not as bad off as Texas. It was the nearest spaceport to Atlanta, where the guy they had to pick up was located. The guy Rosa was going to pick up, anyway. Dr. Rosa had assured Patrick that he’d have a new pilot with him when he returned.

But in the meantime, he had to keep the engines warm, in case they needed to lift off quickly. The virus had spread through the Florida panhandle, and down the west coast. No confirmed cases near the spaceport yet, but people were panicking. It was messy out there, and Patrick could see a few fires burning in the distance. He wasn’t sure what was burning, but it wasn’t good.

The radio squawked. “Package is inbound, arrival in five minutes. Stay at your post with the engines hot until you’re relieved.”

Relieved. As in, replaced. So Rosa had managed to get a new pilot sent up. Damn him. “Roger,” he said into his microphone, he voice flat. What else was he supposed to say?

Patrick daydreamed briefly about just taking the shuttle away. Flying back to the moon. Oh, they’d come get him eventually. But at least he’d get to go home one more time before he was grounded. It was only now sinking in that he was done. His career in space was over. Finished with a kiss.

He couldn’t find it in his heart to be angry with Carmen, though. He knew the risks, and he’d taken the chance anyway. Truth be told, he still wasn’t sure that he missed the moon as much as he missed Carmen.

The shuttle was parked out on a huge landing strip. On the moon, he could just lift off straight up. But here on Earth, the shuttle would have to take off like a jumbo jet, gain altitude like a plane, and then go supersonic to break out of the atmosphere. Off in the distance Patrick could see the control tower, and the buildings where the spaceport’s crew worked. He saw a vehicle leaving the tower, heading toward his ship. That would be the doctor and his new pilot.

Patrick sat there, watching the car get larger through his window. Another few minutes, and it would be at the shuttle. It would drop people off…and pick him up. He ground his teeth together, wishing there was something he could do. Another glance at his tablet showed him nothing new. Nobody was going to save his ass today.

He looked back up at the car, and was startled to see that now there were two vehicles. A big supply truck was coming from the hangars to the west. Probably more gear that the doctor needed. Or maybe just random supplies that the powers-that-be wanted to send to the moon. More domes, perhaps. Whatever they were bringing, it didn’t matter much to Patrick now.

Another minute and they’d arrive. He stood up from his console and went aft to open the hatches. No sense delaying the inevitable any longer. He was more used to gliding through these passages than he was walking them, but either way he knew the route by heart. His palm-print opened the passenger hatch, hot air roaring into the cool space within the ship. The day outside was hot – Florida weather at its worst. Patrick blinked a few times in the bright daylight, trying to get his watering eyes to adjust. A black SUV was just pulling up alongside the shuttle. That would be the doctor. He squinted, and saw the big white cargo truck still making its way closer.

A pair of men in dark suits stepped from the front of the SUV. Patrick saw the bulges of pistols and raised his eyebrows. Amy was right. Things really were getting bad down here. One of the men scanned the field. His eyes seemed to linger on the cargo truck for a moment, but then they turned to him, instead.

“Mr. Wynn. I’m to escort you back to the tower after the doctor is aboard,” the guard said. “My partner will be relieving you as pilot.”

Patrick nodded. He had expected as much. The other guard went to the rear door of the vehicle and opened it. Dr. Rosa stepped out, holding one hand at his brow to shelter his eyes from the sun. He saw Patrick and scowled, looking away quickly. Rosa reached back inside the vehicle to assist someone else out.

It was a kid. A teenager, anyway. Kid looked as frightened as anyone Patrick had ever seen. His eyes darted about like a scared bird. Rosa was saying something to the kid, hopefully something reassuring. It seemed to work, whatever he said, because the kid slowly eased his way out of the SUV.

Patrick heard the sound of a diesel engine shifting gears, and looked back over at the cargo truck. It wasn’t downshifting to stop, though – it was still accelerating!

Time seemed to slow down for Patrick. He sprinted down the ramp and grabbed Rosa by the arm. The guards seemed confused. Both pulled their guns, one aiming at the truck, the other at Patrick.

Patrick yanked hard, pulling the doctor away from the SUV. He heard gunfire, and pain lanced through his left leg. It crumpled under him, but he doggedly hung on to Rosa’s arm. He wasn’t even sure why he was trying to save the man, except that he knew he meant the world to Carmen, and she meant the world to him.

He hit the ground hard on his left side, the doctor landing on top of him. All his wind left him in an instant. Things started moving at twice normal speed, then. He could barely keep up.

The truck plowed through the space where Rosa had just been standing and smashed into the side of the SUV. The SUV may have been armored – probably was. But the truck had the advantage of mass. The SUV’s window’s exploded in showers of glass. There was a sound of rending steel, and the SUV came apart under the impact, chunks of steel flying about like enormous shrapnel.

Patrick levered himself up onto an elbow. “Come on, doc!” he shouted over the noise. “We have to get onto the shuttle!”

He forced himself back to his feet. His left leg was screaming at him every time he put even a little weight on it, but he hobbled to the ramp and started hopping his way up it. Rosa was right behind him. A glance over his shoulder showed him carnage. Men were jumping out of the truck. They had weapons – assault rifles. The guards went down in a hail of bullets. The kid Rosa was escorting made a sharp yelp as the rounds hit his body, and Dr. Rosa looked back at the sound.

“No!” The anguish and horror in that one word were terrible to hear. Rosa stopped in his tracks, his hands flat at his sides.

“You can’t help him! Come on!” Patrick shouted, grabbing his arm. Just a few more steps and they’d be aboard. The engines were still hot. They could get away.

He turned to run those last few feet, but someone fired a rifle at the ramp in front of him. He stopped in his tracks, raising his hands slowly and turning around.

“Careful!” said one of the armed men. “We need him alive.”

“Who are you people?” Patrick asked. There were six of them, all armed. All white men, youngish. None of them were wearing uniforms. Just jeans, tee shirts, and sneakers. The one who’d spoken had some boots on, sunglasses, blond hair with a scruffy beard, and a southern accent. They didn’t look like terrorists. They looked like desperate men.

“You cretins,” Rosa said. “You killed him.” He shook his head, looking down at the still form of the teen laying on the ground. “The one hope we had, and now he’s dead.”

“We need both of ‘em alive, boss?” one of the gunmen asked.

“Yeah, the one bleeding there is the pilot. The other one is the doctor. We need ‘em both,” said the guy in sunglasses. “Get the others out of the truck.”

Two of the men went around to the back of the truck and opened the doors. There were people in there? Patrick winced, partly from the pain in his leg, which was getting worse. And partly at the thought of being in the back of that truck when it impacted the SUV. It would not have been a fun place to be.

His eyes got even bigger when he saw who was coming out. The first to step down was an old woman, holding her forehead. Blood dripped through her fingers. Behind her were more people, all banged up. He thought he saw one broken arm there, but mostly just a lot of bruises. Women, children, and the elderly. That was the cargo the truck carried.

Patrick felt the ramp tilting under his feet. He reached out to the rail to steady himself before he fell. But then his left leg wasn’t supporting him anymore, and he half-fell anyway. Why did his leg hurt so much? He looked down. The sleek silver cloth was stained a deep red. Shot. He’d been shot, that’s right.

“Better patch him up, doc,” said the sunglasses man. “He dies, so do you.”

Strong hands were there, probing the wound. Patrick screamed in pain.

“I need the med kit from inside,” a voice said. Patrick couldn’t tell who it was. His eyes were closed.

* * *

Patrick came to with a start, feeling like liquid fire was burning its way through his veins. He sat up fast, breathing as hard as if he’d been sprinting, his heart pounding a mile a minute.

“What the hell?” he managed to gasp out.

“Sorry,” Dr. Rosa was kneeling beside him. “They said I needed to wake you up.”

“Drugs?” Patrick asked. A glance down at his leg was more than he really needed. Rosa had cut open his pants leg and put a dressing on the wound, but there was a lot of red on the cloth and on the dressing. He’d lost a good deal of blood.

Rosa nodded in reply. “You’re going to really feel it later,” he warned.

Patrick looked around. Two gunmen stood nearby. He realized he wasn’t on the ramp anymore. They’d moved him inside the ship, and they must have sealed the hatch. Of course they did. The spaceport would have sent reinforcements to take back the shuttle. So why hadn’t they?

“They’re using us as hostages,” Rosa said. “They said they’ll kill us if the men outside assault.”

Now that was a credible threat. They weren’t going to risk Rosa getting killed, not if they thought they could negotiate. “So what do they want?” Patrick asked.

“We want you to take us to the moon,” said the sunglasses man. Only now, he didn’t have his glasses on anymore. Somehow, his face looked familiar, but Patrick couldn’t place him. “We knew they’re preparing to evacuate key people to the moon base, keep ‘em safe there until the good doctor here completes his miracle cure. We’re just making sure that our people are among the key people.”

Patrick levered himself up into a sitting position. “And what makes you think that I will take you there?”

The man laughed, and leaned in close. “I could always shoot you in the other leg. After all, you don’t need your legs to fly this shuttle, do you? But right now, I just need you to negotiate our takeoff with the tower over there.”

Patrick closed his eyes. He was stuck with these people. No easy way out of this one. Earth wasn’t going to risk attacking the shuttle, not at the cost of losing Dr. Rosa. So he wasn’t going to get any help from outside. He looked over at Rosa, who seemed a little pale, and had to stifle a grin at the man’s discomfort. There was a certain pleasurable irony in the fact that he now held in his hands the life of the man who’d tried to destroy him. But it was a short lived humor. He couldn’t let Carmen’s father come to harm before, outside, and he could no more allow it to happen now.

He reached a hand up to his captor. The man took it, and Patrick used the arm to pull himself up to his feet. “If we’re going to be shipping off together, could I have your name?”

“Most folks call me Ed.”

“I’m Pat. Shall we?”

“Oh, after you,” Ed drawled, grinning and waving him ahead.

Patrick limped up the hall toward the cockpit. He popped the hatch and stepped inside. Ed and one of his men came in right behind him, making the space a bit cramped. He sat down, sighing with relief as the weight came off his wounded leg. Whatever Rosa had given him was dulling the pain some, but his leg still felt like it had a hot poker stuck in it every time he stepped.

“If I just take off, they’re going to shoot us down,” Patrick said.

“With the doctor on board?” Ed scoffed. “Don’t worry. I want you to talk to ‘em anyway.” His voice sounded calm, but Patrick could see him sweating.

Patrick turned back to his console and keyed the microphone. “Tower, this is Patrick Wynn, over.”

“Wynn, what the hell is going on over there?” The voice replying was authoritative and loud. Sounded like someone in the military. Probably an officer. They tended to talk in that tone of voice.

“Well, sir, the shuttle has been taken by six armed men, accompanied by some noncombatants,” Patrick paused there to see if Ed reacted. He’d just handed his team some valuable intelligence about his captors, but Ed didn’t seem to realize that he ought to be objecting. Good enough. “Dr. Rosa and I are alive. The rest of the doctor’s party is dead. Our captors want to lift off.”

“This is Colonel Pierce, U.S. Air Force. Put their leader on the radio, Wynn.”

Patrick turned toward Ed, holding up the microphone. Ed shrugged and took it.

“Yeah? What d’you want?”

“You the leader?” Pierce asked, then without waiting for an answer, he went on. “I want to come out to talk to you. To negotiate. You don’t want to go to the moon. You just want someplace safe, right?”

“That’s the general idea, yes,” Ed said.

“Then let’s see if we can come to some sort of deal. I’ll come out to you. We talk. Fair?”

“We can talk,” Ed replied. “But one bit of monkey business, and the doctor dies. You get me?”

“I get you. Just don’t be rash. He’s your only card here,” Pierce said. “You burn him, we’ve got no reason to hold off. We’d be all over you.”

“You play us straight, he’ll stay alive,” Ed said. Then he handed the microphone back to Patrick, who set it back in the console cradle.

Patrick was starting to feel woozy again. Whatever the good doctor gave him was wearing off. He’d been shot, lost blood, been doped awake, and now he was coming down off the drugs. Blackness started to creep around the edges of his vision, and he found himself fighting just to stay conscious.

“You don’t look so hot,” Ed said.

“Don’t feel so hot,” Patrick replied, sweating with the effort.

“Here comes that Colonel,” Ed said. Patrick looked out the cockpit window, and there were three vehicles racing across the runway toward them. Three pretty big vehicles. Why so many? Was this Pierce bringing out an entire platoon of security forces?

He must have dozed for a few minutes. The next thing Patrick knew, there were new faces coming into the cockpit. They ignored him, so he kept his eyes closed. Better they think he was actually unconscious. He cracked his eyelids just enough to see what was going on. These new men were in uniform – United States Air Force. He opened his eyes the rest of the way in relief. The cavalry had arrived.

“Thank god,” he said. “How’d you take them down?”

The men glanced at him but didn’t reply. One of them sat down in the copilot’s seat and began checking the console. Patrick recognized the pattern. He was doing standard pre-flight checks. He was getting the shuttle ready for takeoff.

“Guys? What’s going on?” Patrick asked.

“Shut up,” one of the soldiers replied. “The Colonel thinks you might be useful, but if you get annoying, we can always space you.”

What the hell was going on? Patrick made to rise, but then the engines came alive and the ship rumbled down the runway. He hastily took his seat back and strapped himself in. He wasn’t going to get any straight answers from these men.

And then they were airborne, clawing their way upwards out of the atmosphere. Patrick knew this course, had flown it scores of times. They were headed for orbit. The shuttle accelerated, going supersonic, and he blacked out for a few minutes again.

When he came to, he was floating against the straps, and people were talking nearby. It was great to be back in space again, but he had a bad feeling that all was not well.

“You were supposed to keep the kid alive,” Pierce said. “The kid, and the doctor. How hard could it be?”

“He got in the way of a few bullets,” Ed said. “Your men were shooting back at us. My boys got carried away.”

It sounded like both men were just outside the cockpit compartment. Pierce and Ed in league? This day kept getting worse.

“At least you kept Rosa alive,” Pierce said. “Speaking of whom…” His voice trailed off, and Patrick could hear more voices coming their way.

“Sorry, sir. He said he needed to speak with you. Said it was urgent.”

“Yes, doctor? How can I help you?” Pierce said.

Patrick was done with listening to voices. He wanted to be out there and see what was actually going on. He opened his eyes. The cockpit was empty except for the pilot, who was focused on his console. With an effort, Patrick unclipped his straps and floated free of the seat.

“You awake?” the pilot said. “Good. Jeffries? Come stow this guy somewhere in the back.”

Another soldier pulled himself into the cockpit. He looked a little greenish.

“First time in space, Jeffries?” Patrick asked. “Don’t worry, I’ll follow you. Already been shot once today.” He gestured at his leg and winced theatrically. It didn’t take much acting – the leg wound hurt like hell again.

He pushed off lightly and flitted out of the cockpit into the open passenger space beyond. Ed was there. So was Dr. Rosa, a soldier with officer rank on his shoulder that had to be Pierce, and two other rank and file soldiers.

“Wynn! Awake at last,” Pierce said. The man looked to Patrick something like a cat with a feather caught between his teeth. Smug didn’t even begin to cover it.

“You two planned this thing together?” Patrick asked, incredulous. It seemed the most unlikely team imaginable.

“Ed here used to work for me,” Pierce said. “So when I needed some muscle – and he needed a way to get his family away from the virus – well, our interests just naturally went together.”

“Except he didn’t,” Dr. Rosa said. “Get his family away from the virus.”

Everyone stopped moving.

“Tell me what you mean, doctor,” Pierce said, his voice chilling.

“I examined his people. At least one of them is sick. Maybe two or three,” Rosa said.

Nobody needed to ask what they were sick with.

Chapter 13

CARMEN CARRIED the steaming mug over to Levins’s desk. “Your coffee, doctor.”

He took the drink from her hand, beaming at her. “Thank you, Carmen. You’ve been invaluable since your father left. I couldn’t have done all of this without you.”

She managed not to frown – barely. His ‘all of this’ amounted to almost nothing, chasing down the ongoing dead-end of the vaccine that she was increasingly convinced would take years if not decades to finish. Another batch of test samples was brewing, but Carmen had already written them off. There was no chance that the things would work.

Her new place of work was nestled between a pair of consoles. She’d tucked a chair in there, and had plenty of computing power to work on her hypothesis. So far, she’d had some modicum of luck producing some theoretical samples of a cure. What she was trying to do was find a chemical which would stop the virus from exiting an infected cell – essentially stop the spread of the virus through the body, to buy time for the body’s own immune system to deal with the infection.

It wasn’t a new theory. The same tactics had been used to build anti-influenza drugs. Applying the method to curing an alien virus was complicated, but Carmen was convinced that there was a way. First – because she’d seen the videos in her father’s email, and that was clearly how the teen’s immunity worked. And second, because her gut said that it just made sense. The virus wasn’t natural, after all. It had been made. And she knew that human doctors would never manufacture a virus without also making the cure. She imagined aliens would have much the same qualms about releasing bugs they could not control. Which meant there had to be a way to stop the thing. She just needed to find it – and her gut said she was on the right track.

Carmen was keeping Dr. Levins out of her way by the simple expedient of making the man coffee whenever his cup ran dry. He was ensconced as the ruler of his new domain by the time she got down to the lab, and he was clearly chuffed at the promotion. His hackles went up as soon as she arrived – she was popular with the lab crews, and he felt threatened. Carmen figured he’d be easier to manage if he didn’t feel like she was working against him.

Thus, the coffee. It interrupted her work, but it kept him happy and smiling. It also made him not question whatever it was she was working on. If she was making him coffee, then she must be a team player, doing her part, right? She chuckled. If only he knew… In fact, he was overdue to find out.

She didn’t have to wait much longer. A clatter from the center of the room got her attention. Levins had dropped his tablet to the floor. He bent over to retrieve it, but blanched white only halfway down. He stood back up and rushed from the room as quickly as he could.

He returned a few minutes later, looking much relieved. Carmen hid her grin. His relief would not last long. He bent again to collect his tablet, and sat back down. That lasted for all of about five minutes, and then he ran out the door again.

Carmen kept her seat and waited. She had time, and it was important to be patient.

Her tablet buzzed. She checked her watch. Fifteen minutes. Which was about right for Levins to get down to the infirmary, for them to confirm that yes, he did indeed have a gastro-intestinal problem, and for them to find him a nice bed to rest in while they checked him out. The tablet buzzed a second time. The call was from Levins. She pressed the button to accept his call, standing up and walking into the middle of the room as she did.

“Carmen! Thank goodness,” Levins said. He still looked fairly pale, but he was laying back against some pillows, and looked more comfortable now at least.

“Dr. Levins,” she replied. “What’s the matter?”

“I seem to have caught a bug. Or maybe some bad food. Something,” he said. “I’ll be down here for the rest of the day at least, I fear. I really don’t feel well.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry to hear that.” Carmen was in the middle of the room now. Her voice and the tablet volume were both high enough that about half the crew had taken notice.

“Can you take over in the lab for now?” Levins asked her. “Keep things running smoothly?”

“Of course. Don’t you worry about it,” Carmen replied. “We’ll keep things going here. Just get better.”

“Ah, good. Thank you, Carmen.”

“Oh – I was working today on some tests my father and I were discussing before he left. They have to do with why he went back to Earth so abruptly.” Carmen crossed imaginary fingers and went for it. ‘You don’t mind if we keep working on that, do you?”

“Mind? A project for your father? Of course not,” Levins said. He winced, sweat beading on his forehead. “I have to go. Use your judgment for priorities. You’re in charge. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

And just like that, the lab was hers. All it took was the gentle application of a few large doses of laxatives into the man’s coffee. He drank four cups of the stuff before it took effect. Best of all, the medic wouldn’t give him medicine to stop the loose bowels, because if it was bad food or a bacterial infection, that could do more harm than good. So he’d be out for at least the next twelve hours or so, she figured. Maybe longer if he needed some time to rest after the symptoms abated.

Carmen felt a little guilt over dosing the man. He wasn’t a bad person. But he wasn’t capable of thinking outside the box. He was a longtime friend of her father’s, and he was good at plodding, methodical work. But that wasn’t what they needed right now. They needed a leap forward to a solution.

Which her father was going to provide soon anyway, once they could study the immunity that boy had in some detail. Her father would listen, if she showed the time-stamped scans of the cells side by side. And he’d see the same thing she had. Whatever was letting the teen’s cells stop the viral spread, they’d see it for themselves once they had him here.

So why the rush to solve the problem before her father returned?

Her father’s harsh words were like a wound in her mind, always there, never relenting. He’d written her off. A child, he’d said. The work until he returned was irrelevant, he’d said. And he’d all but outright admitted the only reason she was here was because he wanted to protect her. None of which was OK with her. So yeah, part of her motive in trying to solve the problem quickly was to prove to her father that he was wrong.

But part was also… She was more worried about Pat than she was willing to admit to herself out loud. He was back on Earth by now, and her father planned to leave him there. She knew the odds were Pat was going to be left in hot water on a planet that was a mess and getting worse daily. The sooner she could solve the virus, the sooner Patrick would be safe. And solving the virus would mean she could go back to Earth again. If he wasn’t here on the moon, there was little about the place that interested her.

Carmen cleared her throat. Most of the team had been paused for the few moments since she’d signed off the tablet call, waiting for her to say something. They all knew something was up.

“OK,” she said. “New marching orders.”

She tapped her tablet a few times, sending files to the two big screens on the lab wall. “This is what my father and I were working on before he left. This is what the main project is going to likely shift toward once he returns.” She set the two time-stamped sets of images running side by side.

She had everyone’s attention, now. “The right hand image is a normal virus patient, normal immune response. Notice on the left hand image that the virus is unable to break away from the cell membrane.”

Everyone was watching the screens. She could hear people sucking in their breath when the antibody came along and destroyed the infected cell. The entire team was holding back cheers right now. Or tears. Or both. Most of them had family on Earth, after all. Family that was at greater risk with each day that passed without a cure.

She looked around the room, and knew she had them. If she’d tried this display with Levins, he would have insisted on waiting. Her father was due back in just a few days, after all. Levins didn’t have the drive to overcome his inertia. But he was out of the way now. The entire team heard him pass lab leadership over to her. If some of them were smart enough to wonder now if she’d engineered his removal, they were also probably bright enough to recognize why she’d done it.

“I have a list of potential molecules which might do the trick,” she said, loud enough so her voice carried around the room. “But we need to try anything that might work. I want all efforts diverted to this.”

“Dr. Rosa, where is this second set of slides coming from?” That was Dennis Farmer, a big black man who looked more like a retired boxer than the excellent doctor that he was. He was the only other doctor senior to her on the moon – the only person who might try to take the project away from her. Carmen thought quickly. She needed to not lie. That wouldn’t help her, not in the long run. Bad enough that she’s have to deal with Levins if he discovered she’d dosed him with a laxative! But she also needed to have this man on her side. She had to tell a careful truth.

“It’s classified. I’m sorry,” she said, putting as much contrition as she could into her words. “I don’t have all the details myself yet. But I’m confident my father will brief us all on his return.” There, all true, and just enough information to give Farmer confidence in her plan.

It worked. He nodded up and down vigorously. “Of course,” he said. “So we’re laying the groundwork for him, getting things ready.”

“Precisely. And the more work we can get done before father gets back, the faster we can finish this cure and get it to the people who need it most,” Carmen said. “So let’s get to work, everyone! Everyone on Earth is counting on us to be brilliant. Let’s not let them down!”

The team went into motion. They’d been working together for a while now. They all knew what to do from here. Like a well honed machine, they would get the work done, and report results or problems to her. She took her father’s usual place, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, working on her tablet. She had computers analyzing the images of the virus, trying to find molecules that might fit into it, like a key into a lock.

She’d heard a cough from the doorway and glanced up. It was Amy. As soon as she saw that she had Carmen’s attention, she beckoned. Carmen didn’t know Amy all that well. They ran into each other from time to time, but they hadn’t chatted. For the most part, her father’s virus team and the rest of the base personnel remained their own separate worlds.

No, Carmen didn’t know her well. But she knew people. Amy’s face was pale. Her hands were shaking – not a lot, but just enough that Carmen was able to see the tremor from across the room when she looked for it. Her eyes were red. Had she been crying?

Fear slammed Carmen in the gut. It was Pat. Something had gone wrong. That had to be what this was about.

She walked across the room as calmly as she could manage. It wouldn’t do for the staff to see her race over in a panic, although that was her first response. Whatever Amy was upset about, it might have nothing to do with Pat anyway. It might be something totally different, she told herself – ignoring the voice in her head telling her that she wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Amy, what’s wrong?” she said softly, as soon as she was close.

“You need to come with me,” Amy said.

“Of course,” Carmen replied. “But what’s going on?”

“Easier to show you than ta tell you,” Amy replied, starting off down the hall. She stopped after a few paces to see if Carmen would follow. With a small shrug, Carmen set off after her.

Amy led her down into the central dome, and then out into the one reserved for the lunar research, where the Hoppers were stored and Pat did so much of the work for his projects. A big chunk of the work station had been cleared, and a large box assembled in the middle out of silicate panels. The crate looked odd, out of place. It wasn’t something that was manufactured on Earth. Someone had built it here, using the three-D printer to produce the parts.

“Now, what’s going on?” Carmen asked. Amy was fishing for something in a toolbox resting on a work bench. Her back was turned, so Carmen couldn’t see what she was doing. She took a step closer.

Amy turned around. She was holding a large pistol in her hands.

“Get into the box,” Amy said.

“What the hell?!” Carmen said. She raised her hands, more in reflex than anything else. “Amy, what are you doing?”

“Just get in the box, and you won’t be hurt.”

Where had Amy gotten a gun? There were no firearms on the base. Hell, it was crazy to have a gun in space at all! What if she shot through the dome, blew a hole in something vital in the machinery? She could kill everyone with that thing.

Carmen took a step toward the box. “OK, Amy. I’ll get in the crate.” It was a good size for a little cell, she realized. About six feet square – so half a foot of clearance over her head. Not a lot of room inside. She took another step, and was able to see inside. Nothing in there but plain walls, floor, and ceiling.

She looked back over at Amy. The pistol looked bigger than ever, pointed at her head from only a couple of feet away. Amy gestured with the pistol, waggling it a few times in a casual way that made Carmen wince, hoping she wouldn’t accidentally pull the trigger. “Go on, keep moving.”

Behind Amy, a bit of movement caught Carmen’s eye. Someone was back there, hiding behind one of the work benches. Reddish hair poked out from the hiding spot, and then part of a face. It was Jacob! But would he help her? She had to at least give him a chance.

“I am moving,” Carmen said. “But what’s going on, Amy? This is crazy!”

“Not so crazy,” Amy said. “My brother, the rest of my family back on Earth? You think I was just going to leave them all there to die?”

“No,” Carmen replied. “I have family there too. We all do. That’s why we’re trying to cure the virus.”

“And how’s that working for you?” Amy spat. “I know the bigwigs are planning a huge new colony, down there at the south pole in that glacier that we found. They figure they’re going to pick and choose who lives and who dies. Well, surprise. Not anymore. Not since we took the shuttle.”

Carmen stopped in the doorway of the box. Took the shuttle? “Is Pat OK?” she asked.

“You bitch. Don’t know what he sees in you,” Amy said. “Weak little prissy little thing like you? Pfffa. Pat’s fine.”

Amy took a few steps forward, and Carmen backed away from her – into the box. She was surrounded on all sides except one by the box – and Amy was standing between her and the only way out. Amy switched the gun to a one handed grip, still keeping it trained on Carmen, and reached down to pick up a matching panel from the floor. As Amy lifted the panel up, Carmen saw how it tabs on the thing would drive right into sockets in the walls of the cage she was in. Insert tab a into slot b, part of her mind gibbered at her. The panel would lock into place as soon as Amy shoved hard on it. There was no door. Someone would have to cut her out.

Carmen saw more movement behind Amy. Jacob had slipped out of his hiding spot. Was he coming to help her? She had to hope he was. Maybe she could buy him some time?

“Amy, there’s no holes. You can’t – I’ll suffocate!” Carmen said. The fear in her voice wasn’t feigned.

Amy ignored her words and kept pushing the wall up higher. “It’s not airtight. It’ll be kinda dark, and you might get a bit thirsty, but you’ll last a while. The shuttle will be here in two days. You’re insurance.”

There was only the smallest gap between the wall and the rest of the box. If Carmen was going to do anything at all, it had to be now. If she was insurance, she was betting that Amy wasn’t actually planning on shooting her. The gun had to be at least partly a bluff.

She was breathing so fast that she was almost hyperventilating. A few more inches, and Amy would lock her in. Was she the sort of person who sat, helpless? Or could she do something?

Carmen took a deep breath and rushed forward at the panel, hitting it near one of the sides. Amy was lifting from the middle, so the whole panel twisted in place, and then she was out! She tumbled out of the confined space and lost her balance, not used to moving so fast and hard in the low gravity. Carmen fell hands-first to the floor. She scrambled to get back to her feet as quickly as she could.

“I told you to stay put!” Amy shouted, swinging the pistol at Carmen’s head. Carmen ducked, barely avoiding the weapon.

Carmen hit the ground and pushed off hard with both hands. The force of the push was enough to launch her into the air. Amy’s backswing with the pistol missed her as she dodged backward.

“Stupid bitch. I don’t need you alive that badly,” Amy said. She leveled the pistol at Carmen. Carmen dove sideways, trying to get one of the work benches between the her and the gun.

There was a loud metallic thunk.

Carmen stood up and peeked over the edge of the bench. Jacob was standing there, a heavy wrench in his hands. Amy was laying on the floor. She wasn’t quite out – she was still moaning softly. Either Jacob hadn’t hit her that hard, or she really was just that tough. Time to make sure she didn’t cause any more trouble for the immediate future.

“What’s going on, Carmen?” Jacob asked.

“No time. Help me get her in the box,” Carmen replied. She dashed forward to grab one of Amy’s arms. She didn’t really need Jacob’s help – she’d forgotten again how light everything was here. But he grabbed the other arm anyway. Together they pulled Amy into the crate, and then quickly locked the final panel into place. The tabs clicked into their slots with a finality that made Carmen shiver. That had almost been her.

“Now, can you tell me what’s going on?” Jacob asked.

“I wish I knew,” Carmen said. “It sounds like some of Amy’s family hijacked the shuttle.”

“That shouldn’t even be possible.”

“Tell me about it. But that’s what she told me,” Carmen said. “I need to call Earth.”

“Come on. I’ll help you set up a satellite link,” Jacob said.

The call didn’t take long. Jacob had managed to stay standing through the first couple of minutes, but had plopped himself down heavily into a chair part way through. Carmen didn’t blame him. If she hadn’t been sitting from the beginning of the call, she would have lost her feet too. As it was, she couldn’t believe what she was being told.

“So this colonel has taken over the shuttle, and they’re on their way here?” she asked.

“That’s right.” The voice on the radio was a Doctor Melissa Sanders, directing the efforts in Florida to piece together how this had happened. “Dr. Rosa is aboard. Your father’s safety is of great importance, of course – but we don’t know if anyone aboard is infected. Keeping the moon virus free is the most crucial thing.”

“Why is keeping the moon virus free more important than saving the man working on the cure?” Carmen demanded. Although she had an inkling, she wanted to hear it from this woman.

“If you’re half as bright as your records say you are, then you already know the answer to that,” Sanders said.

“The extra domes,” Carmen said.

“Yes. And we have another hundred more domes, ready to launch. And a list of names of people to live in them. It’s not as long a list as we’d like, but it’s shorter than a lot of people who aren’t on it want.”

Carmen leaned back in her seat, exhaling hard. This was all going too fast. “You’re really that sure that the virus can’t be cured?”

There was a long pause on the other end, and Carmen thought for a moment that she’d lost the transmission somehow. When Sanders finally replied, she sounded utterly defeated. “We had all our hopes riding on the one immune human we’d found. With him dead… I think the odds of seeing a vaccine anytime soon are too slim to count on.”

“But I think I know how that teenager’s immunity worked,” Carmen blurted.

Dead silence again. Then, “Miss Rosa. Are you sure you have this on frequency hop? Is this secure?”

Carmen looked over at Jacob, who nodded vigorously. “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.

“You say you know how the immunity worked. How?”

“I read over the data you sent to my father,” Carmen said. She decided it was time to spill everything she had discovered. If anything happened to the base out here, then at least someone back on Earth could pick up the baton. “It’s pretty obvious if you look at the slides. The boy’s cells were stopping the virus from escaping infected cells, giving the immune system time to destroy the compromised cells.”

“Shit. If you’re right… How does this help the vaccine?” Sanders asked.

“I thought you were a doctor? Carmen asked, suddenly a little suspicious.

“Of engineering, damn it. How does it help?”

“Oh,” Carmen said. She grinned a little. Time to explain in layman’s terms. “It won’t help with a vaccine. It might help with a cure. I’ll send the data we have so far down to you.”

“But you might be close?” Sanders pressed.

“We might have a workable cure in a few days. It might take a few weeks.” Carmen shook her head to clear it. “Hard to say. I need to get back to the lab and direct people.”

“All right, Dr. Rosa,” Sanders said. Carmen noted the change from ‘miss’ to ‘doctor’. Apparently she’d gone up a rank in importance? “Do what you can. I’ll get your data to the doctors down here. In the meantime, you need to prevent the shuttle from infecting your base. If this cure fails, the moon might be the last chance humanity has.”

“How are we supposed to stop them, if they decide to land here?” Carmen asked.

“We’re working on that. We’ve got some ideas down here. We’ll let you know as soon as we have something more solid.”

“OK. We’ll be standing by,” Carmen said.

What else could they do? She thought of Patrick, stuck up on that shuttle with a bunch of people who were going to be getting increasingly desperate. And if any of them were infected, they’d become dangerous – unstable. She shivered, hoping none of them had been crazy enough to bring the virus onto the shuttle.

Chapter 14

PATRICK COULD feel the tension ratcheting up to intolerable levels. Something was going to burst soon. He had a bad feeling in his gut that someone was going to die. He gave a subtle twist of his body, changing his drift slightly so that he was gliding close to Rosa. Damn it, but he’d worked hard enough to keep the old man alive for Carmen. He couldn’t let him catch a bullet now.

“Ed. I am so very disappointed in you,” Pierce said.

“I did everything you asked!” Ed replied. He crossed his arms over his chest, the picture of righteous indignation spoiled badly by how green his face looked. The man was space-sick.

Pierce wasn’t. He’d probably been smart and given himself a shot before they took off. Patrick doubted that Ed and his people had been given access to any anti-nausea medications.

“Well, you took the shuttle, yes,” Pierce said. “But you killed the kid. The one we needed to make a cure? Yeah, he’s dead.”

It was impossible to miss the menace building in Pierce’s voice. Ed hadn’t missed it, either. His fingers went creeping toward the pistol holstered at his side. But if Patrick had seen that motion, what was the chance that a trained soldier like Pierce hadn’t seen it?

“That wouldn’t be so bad, Ed. Because there’s no virus on the moon,” Pierce said, his voice silky-smooth and deadly as a cobra’s hiss. “But then you brought it up here with us!”

He didn’t give any warning. Pierce simply drew his pistol and fired, timing the shot with the last word of his sentence. Ed saw the draw in progress and tried to bring out his own weapon, but it caught in his holster, and Pierce’s shot sent him tumbling. Big round balls of blood spilled from Ed’s chest and back. He tumbled feet over head, spinning around a full circle. Still bleeding, he managed at last to draw his own weapon.

Pierce saw the threat and fired twice more, blowing two more holes in the man. Ed managed to return fire with only a single shot that zipped by a foot from Pierce’s head.

Pat tried to cover Rosa as soon as the gunfire erupted, shoving the old man out of the way against a bulkhead. “Pierce!” he shouted. “Are you insane? Shooting the wrong thing in this shuttle and you kill all of us!”

Pierce chuckled. “No worries,” he said, waving his pistol in the air. “Frangible rounds. The bullets will break apart if they hit something. I’m not going to punch any holes in your precious hull.”

“You’re not,” Patrick said, pointing a finger at Pierce. Then he jabbed it at Ed’s body instead. “But what about him?”

Pierce blinked and looked over his shoulder, glancing to see where the Ed’s round had impacted. Patrick almost went for the man then, but Pierce still had two guards standing by. There wasn’t much point in trying to fight them three against one, not when they had all the weapons.

“Shit,” Pierce said.

Pat didn’t like the sound of that. And Pierce wasn’t coming back aft toward them, either. “Stay here,” he said to Rosa. Then he pushed off, heading toward the cockpit. One of Pierce’s guards looked like he might try to stop him, but he was already in motion, gliding down the center of the corridor, and these land-huggers were clinging to bars on the walls. Patrick remembered how daring Carmen had been, even in those first hours in space. She hadn’t needed to cling to the walls – she’d instinctively tried to learn to fly. It took a special sort of person to do that. In his experience, most people clung to something solid, just like these soldiers.

Maybe he’d known Carmen was something special right from the beginning, then.

He reached out and used a rail to stop his forward momentum, coming to a halt a bit behind Pierce. He didn’t want to startle the man – he’d already proven willing to use that pistol. Patrick didn’t want to give him an excuse.

He didn’t need to get closer, anyway. From where he was, he could see into the cockpit over Pierce’s shoulder. And what he could see looked pretty bad.

Pierce was checking the pulse of his pilot, who was slumped forward against the console. Pat could already tell that there wasn’t going to be a pulse. Huge balls of blood floated near the dead pilot, and more oozed out of a wound in his chest. Ed’s round had done damage after all. Pat scanned the cockpit window for cracks or a hole, but it seemed intact. The exit wound from the front of the pilot’s chest was said that the bullet had to have gone somewhere, though. Into the console? He couldn’t see to be sure.

“How bad is the console?” Patrick asked, in as calm and non-threatening a voice as he could muster.

Pierce still startled, his hand venturing close to the pistol he’d re-holstered at his side. Patrick held up both hands, palms facing Pierce. “Whoa. Just here to help,” he said.

“The console?” Pierce asked. “How the hell am I supposed to know? Get me a medic!” he roared over his shoulder to the men down the hall.

“I think it’s too late for a medic,” Patrick said. He could smell singed electronics. A short? If it was still sparking, it could start a fire. He needed to get in there and take a look.

Pierce yanked the dead man free from the seat, sending globs of blood floating around the compartment. “Gah. Hate this no gravity shit,” he said.

“The air scrubbers will clean most of it up,” Pat said. He helped ease the body backwards down the hall, out of the compartment – out of his way. Once it was clear, he slipped forward to check the panel. It had a hole in it, and he thought he could see the tiniest wisp of smoke drifting from the hole. Possibly still a short, then. He yanked out an emergency kit and opened it, digging inside for the screwdriver set.

“You’re a pilot, right?” Pierce asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Taking off this panel before the short in the console ignites the whole thing and we end up with a raging fire in the cockpit. All right with you?” Patrick asked, trying hard to scrub the irony from his tone. He didn’t think he’d done a very good job, but it seemed like Pierce didn’t mind, or was too distracted to notice.

“Fine. But when you’re done with that, you’ll take over flight duties,” Pierce said.

“And why would I help you?” Pat asked, breathing hard while he lifted away chunks of the console.  It was weightless, sure, but it still had mass. Moving it around was a pain. Pulling the panel out without bashing it into any of the other delicate bits in the cockpit was proving challenging.

“Because if you won’t help me, I don’t really need you alive,” Pierce said.

Pat found the bullet, lodged in a tangle of wires. The thing must have shorted out half of the controls. This wasn’t going to be an easy repair. He could still fly the shuttle from the other panel, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

“If the doctor is right, we’re all dead anyway,” Pat said.

“I find myself too attached to my skin to give it up quite that quickly,” Pierce replied.

Pat looked up at the man. He was clearly scared, and out of his depth. He’d taken some insane chances, seizing the shuttle. Pierce must really believe in his gut that this virus spelled the end of everything, or at least the end of civilization as it had been. He was a fanatic. Nothing Pat said was going to deter him from his course. And hell, even if he refused to fly the shuttle, Pierce might get lucky, land safety, and infect everyone at the moon base. Kill all of them. Kill Carmen.

Patrick gritted his teeth. He couldn’t let that happen. And there was only one thing he could think of which might prevent it.

“Yeah, I’m attached to mine, too. I’ll fly for you,” Patrick said. He reached out his hand to Pierce. Pierce took his hand and shook it – gently, so they didn’t go spinning.

“Welcome to the team then – pilot,” Pierce said.

* * *

Carmen paced back and forth. Everyone in the lab was staying away from her, giving her some space. She couldn’t blame them, and felt a pang of guilt at the thought. She’d nearly chewed the head of one of the lab assistants. Metaphorically, thank goodness, but it still wasn’t going to help her win any popularity contests. Why did everything have to take so damned long, though?

She had to wait to get results of their tests. She had to wait to hear from Earth about what was happening on the shuttle. Worst, she knew which of those two waits was worrying her more, and she felt guilty for putting Patrick above the rest of humanity. Which didn’t stop her from worrying more about what was happening to him than she did about the cure they were working on.

So when Jacob’s voice came over the PA: “Carmen Rosa, please report to the control room,” she could sense but not quite hear the sigh of relief around the room. She didn’t want to leave – but she had to find out what news Jacob had gotten. She looked up and saw Dr. Farmer nodding at her. Vigorously.

“But...”

She didn’t a chance to finish before he cut her off. “Young lady, I’ve been doing this work since you were in diapers. You showed us where to look, but you’re responsible for the whole base now. Go do your job, let us handle this one.”

That was still a lot to take in. In charge of the project to find a cure, that she could wrap her head around. But when Sanders put her in charge of the whole base – that was overwhelming, somehow. If things continued to go south on Earth, the moon would be humanity’s last refuge. And she was now its custodian. Carmen breathed in deeply – she was going to hyperventilate if she kept thinking down that path.

“OK. But give me a call as soon as we have anything,” Carmen said.

“Of course,” Farmer replied. His tone implied that was obvious, and was just the smallest bit patronizing.

Carmen narrowed her eyes. “I mean it. Any results, I want to see them right away.”

Farmer smiled. “So like your father, you are. Yes, I’ll call you myself. Now get!”

She got.

Jacob was practically hopping from one foot to the other by the time Carmen made it to the control room. He was sitting at one of the consoles, wearing a headset. Listening to what? He pulled the headset from his ears as she walked in.

“You’ve got to hear this,” he said. He turned up a dial, and the radio started playing over the system’s speakers.

“…Wynn, flying the lunar shuttle on approach to moon base. We have at least three people on board sick with the virus. We’ve sustained damage to the cockpit, including to incoming radio, but can still control the ship well enough to land. Declaring an emergency, we will need medical attention on arrival, and probable quarantine. Arrival at the base in 46 hours. Repeating message. This is Patrick Wynn…”

Carmen’s first reaction was to look for a microphone, to reach out somehow and talk to Patrick. He was alive! Thank god. Even once she realized that this was just a recording, cycling over and over, she still felt a huge weight come off her shoulders. He was alive. Now, how to reach him? They’d taken damage. Patrick couldn’t receive a message from her even if she sent it. How had the ship been damaged? And the virus was on the ship! She wanted to burst into tears, torn between relief he was alive and fear that he soon would not be. It was too damned much.

Then her next reaction was anger. The shuttle had been taken. The terrorists who’d taken it had been stupid enough to kill one of their best chances at working out the cure quickly, and then they’d brought the virus on board, too? How stupid could they be? And now Pat was helping these people land here and infect everyone else at the base?

“I’ll kill him myself,” she growled. How dare he risk the lives of everyone here? Carmen felt a deep pang. She’d thought he was made of better stuff than that.

Jacob shook his head at her. “You won’t have to. Look here,” he said.

He was pointing at a screen display showing a bunch of math and the shuttle’s approach vector to the moon. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it. “What does it say?” she asked.

Jacob looked startled, but then grinned. “I forget not everyone is geeky about the same things I am,” he said, amused. Then his smile vanished and he got serious again. “Pat’s lying.”

His words sent chills down Carmen’s arms.

“What do you mean, he’s lying?” she asked, not really wanting to know the answer – because whatever it was, Jacob’s tone promised that it was far worse than what she already knew.

“You’re angry at him because he said he’s coming here with infected people, right?” he asked.

Carmen nodded, amused that the tables had turned. When they’d first met, she was angry with Pat because he hadn’t brought an infected stowaway to the moon. Now she was angry because he was. Funny how fast things – and people – could change.

“Well, you can stop being mad then. He’s not coming here. Look at the course,” Jacob said, pressing a few buttons. The expected vector of the shuttle tracked out ahead of it on the screen, projecting its path. It would reach the moon, all right. It would come almost close enough to kiss. But then the shuttle veered off away from Earth and the moon entirely – headed for deep space.

“What does that mean? What’s he doing?” Carmen asked.

“He’s coming close enough to the moon that he’ll fool anyone watching over his shoulder, unless they’re a pilot themselves. They’re all going to think he’s taking them right here – up until he uses the moon’s gravity to sling the shuttle away from us. With a lot more velocity, too.”

“Are you sure? Can’t he just change course?” Carmen asked.

“He could,” Jacob said. “Right up until he actually enters the slingshot maneuver. After that, I don’t even think the shuttle has enough fuel to brake and come back. I think he’s trying to let us know what he’s planning.”

She stared at the screen. He wasn’t risking anyone’s lives except his own and the people on that ship. He was going to sacrifice himself to save the rest of them.

“Is there any way we can talk to them at all?” she asked.

Jacob shook his head. “Not if their ability to receive is broken. Maybe Pat can fix it, and talk with us. But I don’t think that’s going to be his priority up there.”

Carmen quietly agreed. She tracked the course the computer plotted for the shuttle across the screen, each centimeter tracking the inevitable doom of the shuttle and everyone aboard. She blinked back tears. She hated being this helpless. Her father and Pat, both up there, and there was nothing she could do to help either of them.

Or was there?

Carmen’s mind started churning through possibilities. They couldn’t land the shuttle because of the virus. The armed terrorists on board were something of an issue, too. But the main problem was the virus. Cure the virus, and she could still save them.

“Jacob, how long until they hit the point of no return?” she asked.

“About forty hours, maybe forty two. Why?” he replied.

“I need to use the PA system.”

To his credit, Jacob didn’t blink, and he didn’t ask her why. She liked that, even if it gave her the jitters that people were starting to just follow her orders without asking any questions. He handed Carmen the headset he had been wearing, flicked a few switches, and gave her a thumbs up.

She took a deep breath.

“I need everyone’s attention,” she said. “Dr. Rosa and Patrick are both on the shuttle, on their way to the moon. All of you know that. What you don’t know yet is – the shuttle has been hijacked by terrorists, and they have brought the alien virus aboard.”

Carmen took another breath. She had to make this convincing. She was going to need every single body in the base working together if her plan was going to have any shot at all.

“I don’t think there’s a single person on this base that doesn’t love one of those two men. We have to help them. But the only way we can save them is to do the impossible.”

She looked at Jacob. He was smiling at her, his expression rapt. If he was any indication, she ought to have everyone’s full attention.

“We have forty hours to finish the cure for the virus, or Patrick and my father will slingshot around the moon and exit at an irrecoverable velocity. Forty hours to do this, or both of those men will die. I need everyone – all hands, every single body in the base – to report to the viral lab. I’ll assign duties there. Carmen out.”

She took the headset off and laid it on the table. The thing felt like it weighed a ton, even though it must actually only be a couple of ounces here on the moon. Carmen sighed, straightened her back. She felt a new sense of purpose, and a grim determination. She was not going to let them die. Neither of them. Both of those men were too damned important to her. She couldn’t separate them from each other in her head – she wanted them both back, here, safe. She loved them both.

That realization made her tear up again, and she shook her head to clear it. She needed to focus now, more than ever.

“That was a good speech, Carmen. But do you really think you can do it? Cure the virus in less than two days?” Jacob asked. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, but… It sounds like a long shot.”

“It’s possible,” she said. “We’re on the right track. I can feel it.”

“But even if you can make the cure, how do we tell Pat? He can’t receive our messages. He’ll never even know that you succeeded.”

“That,” Carmen said with a smile, “is your part of this mission. I need your help with something that’s right up your alley. In fact, your geeky hobby gave me the idea.”

Chapter 15

PATRICK WOKE UP to a beeping sound and someone poking his arm. The console was chirping at him – something needed his attention. And the guard Pierce had set to keep an eye on him was jabbing him in the arm with his toe. Pat blearily wiped his hand across his eyes.

“I’m awake, I’ll deal with it,” Pat said. The poking stopped.

He checked his watch. They’d been traveling almost two days, and he was exhausted. He’d only gotten two hours of sleep during that little nap. It wasn’t enough. He ached all over, and he was pretty sure that he was already running a temperature. The virus had spread like wildfire through the ship. The air filtration systems weren’t designed to stop something that small, and the virus was extremely infectious. If anyone wasn’t sick yet, Pat was pretty sure it was only a matter of time.

There’d been some gunfire, somewhere back in the ship. That was about six hours ago. He’d shrugged and stayed put. It wasn’t like he could do anything – to help, or to stop the gunmen. Pierce was clearly still alive, and in charge, otherwise his goon in the pilot’s seat would have been replaced. Pat was in the co-pilot’s spot, where the electronics were still mostly working.

He wasn’t really complaining about the goon, either. The man was luckily as dumb as a box of rocks. The guy might have been able to figure it out if Patrick had set a course for the sun – but he doubted it. As it was, the course he’d set had been completely undetected. Even when Pierce came forward a few hours back, looking pretty sick himself, he’d taken a look out the front, seen the moon growing ever larger in the window, nodded in a self-satisfied way, and headed aft again. Probably to shoot someone, Pat groused.

Well, it would all be a moot point in about four hours. The shuttle would accelerate like mad, entering the slingshot. It would either shake itself apart and turn into a fireball, or it would sling itself off into the abyss. He’d have gone for slamming the ship into the moon, but there was always the chance someone would spot that and stop him. This way, by the time these assholes knew that there was something wrong, they’d all be passing out from high g-forces. And by the time they woke back up it would be way too late for them to do anything but cry about it.

He cut off the annoying beep. Something was wrong with one of the airlock doors. It was malfunctioning. The thing kept trying to open itself up, and then stopping before it did. Patrick watched the pattern for a few moments, thinking that there was something familiar about it. He was so tired, though. The flashing light of the alert was mesmerizing, blinking on and off, off and on. It wasn’t a steady pattern, either. He tried to think what could be causing the error – but hell, the shuttle had enough bullet holes through stuff at this point that he could imagine all sorts of random issues cropping up. At least the airlock wasn’t going to be too important.

There wasn’t much else Patrick could do to fix the bug without actually going back to the airlock and isolating the remote systems to control it. Which he didn’t have the energy to even think about right now. He left the beeping muted, the little light flashing away.

“Patrick, could I have a word?”

He looked up. It was Dr. Rosa, floating in the cockpit doorway. Patrick peeked past him, looking for his escort – but he didn’t have one. No soldier following him around.

“Sure,” Patrick said. He turned to the solider sitting next to him in the pilot’s seat. “Just keep an eye on the console, OK? I’ll be right outside. Call me if anything flashes or alarms go off.”

The man sat up quickly, looking alarmed. His eyes went to Patrick, then to the console, then back to Patrick again. “I…”

Patrick cut him off. “It’s all on auto-pilot. Just don’t touch anything. It’ll be fine. I was just in there napping, remember? Don’t worry.”

The guy still looked worried. Pat hid a grin as he flitted aft. These people were starting to get too sick to argue much. Of course, he wasn’t feeling any better than they were. And it was a grim reminder that they were all going to be feeling a lot worse, soon.

Rosa had backed away from the cockpit a bit, grabbing hold of a seat near the front of the passenger area. He wasn’t far from where Carmen had sat, on that first journey out here. It seemed like so much time had passed, but it really hadn’t been that long. Pat could almost see her sitting there… Was that just his missing her, regretting that he’d never see her again? Or was the virus already working its way into his brain?

He’d have to trust himself, at least for now. Patrick just hoped he could keep it together long enough to get the job done. He worked his way over to the doctor, who looked, if anything, worse than Pat felt. He was pale, sweating, and his breath was a little ragged. But he didn’t have the telltale raccoon eyes that meant he was on death’s door. Not yet, anyway.

“What’s up, doc?” Pat asked with a wry smile.

“It’s definitely the virus. We’ve had our first fatality back there,” Rosa said.

Like there was any doubt? “They’ve got you helping their sick?” Pat asked.

Rosa nodded. “What else could I do? It’s not like I would be able to avoid exposure anyway. I might as well do what I can to ease the suffering of the dying. I am still a doctor.”

Patrick nodded his understanding, his head lolling more than he intended with the motion. He leaned back against the cool bulkhead wall and closed his eyes a moment. Maybe longer than a moment, because when he opened them, Rosa was shaking his shoulder with a concerned look on his face.

“You’ve got a fever,” Rosa said, his voice accusing.

“We’re all going to have a fever soon,” Pat replied.

Rosa looked away a moment, scanning the compartment. When he was sure they were still alone, he looked back at Pat, pulled himself in close, and whispered, “You cannot help these people, Patrick. You must not.”

“Oh, for the love of god. I saved your life at least twice in the last couple of days,” Patrick said. “You’d think that you might trust me at least a little?”

Rosa blinked. “The last I heard, you were taking this ship back to the moon, so that this virus can kill everyone there. Including my daughter. You know damned well that we won’t be able to stop them from going inside. By the time we get there, half of these men will be suffering from brain hemorrhage and violent dementia.”

Patrick wanted to slug the smug bastard. If he hadn’t been an asshole in the first place, Pat never would have been in this situation. If Pat hadn’t tried to keep the man alive, he’d have been able to close the hatch in time, and blast off before the shuttle was captured. But no – he had to go try to be the hero, and save Carmen’s dad. No matter how much he didn’t deserve it.

“I love your daughter,” Patrick blurted out, a harsh whisper. “You asshole. Do you really think I would let anything happen to her?”

That seemed to take Rosa aback. His jaw gaped, his eyes got wide.

“You really never considered that I might actually care for her?” Pat went on. “She’s an amazing woman. Why would I not?”

Pat smiled. He’d actually rendered the man speechless. Thank god. Maybe he’d think a little bit now. Pat knew Rosa wasn’t a stupid person – quite the opposite. He was just crazy over-protective of his daughter. A little protective, Pat was used to. And agreed with, even. Any parent wanted what was best for their kids. For whatever reasons, Rosa had just taken it farther than most folks would.

Patrick turned away from the man. It was too late to worry about it, anyway. Too late to get mad about it, too late to salvage a relationship, and too late to do anything but make sure this shuttle never got anywhere near Carmen. Ever. He reached out for one of the hand grips, to pull himself back into the cockpit. Not too much longer until they hit the point of no return. After that, they could do whatever they wanted to him. He was already a dead man walking – infected with a virus that was going to kill him soon enough. What could Pierce and his men do that was worse?

“Wait,” Rosa said, placing a hand on Pat’s shoulder with a surprisingly gentle touch.

Pat turned back, surprised to see the old man’s eyes wet with unshed tears.

“I have, perhaps, misjudged you. You’ve saved my life,” Rosa said. “And now you tell me you are saving Carmen’s, too. I cannot ever repay you for that.”

“You don’t need to repay me,” Pat said.

“I disagree. But it’s too late now for that, I fear,” Rosa said. He fished into his pocket for something, found what he was looking for and fished it out. “Perhaps I can help you, at least.” He handed a small packet to Pat.

The packet contained pills. “Tylenol?” Pat said, smiling at the memory of how he and Carmen met in the first place.

“Something like that, but a good deal stronger,” Rosa said. “Take one every three or four hours. They should hold the fever at bay, long enough for you to…long enough, anyway.”

Patrick slid one of the pills out of the paper packet and dry-swallowed. It went down hard, but it did go. Hopefully it would help as much as Rosa thought it would. He could feel the lethargy and weakness getting stronger. And he still needed to be on his toes for at least a bit longer.

“Thanks,” Pat said.

“Thank you,” Rosa replied.

“For saving her?” Pat asked. Then, feeling especially daring, he added, “Or for loving her?”

“Yes,” Rosa said. He smiled, and reached out a hand.

Patrick took the offered hand and shook it.

* * *

Carmen’s pacing brought her back into the control room. The place was almost empty, far from the busy hub it usually was. Jacob was still sitting there, trying to work some magic with the systems in an attempt to contact the shuttle.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” Jacob replied. “I’ve managed to patch into some remote system controls. But there’s no sign Pat or anyone else aboard is actually understanding anything I am sending.”

Carmen pulled up a seat and slid it over next to Jacob. “How are you sending the message?”

Jacob made a face. “I’m using the malfunction alert system to send Morse code. It should show as flashing lights on the pilot’s console.”

Carmen frowned. That wasn’t the most reliable tool in the world.

“I know,” Jacob said, seeing her expression. “But it’s the best I could come up with.”

“No sign that they’re getting the message at all?”

“None.”

She leaned back in the chair. It wasn’t a hard message. All Jacob had to do was get them to hear one word: cure.

They’d found it about six hours before. It hadn’t been that hard, once they knew what to look for. OK, that was a lie. It had taken nonstop work from everyone at the base, plus every asset on Earth that Carmen could tap into, for them to solve the puzzle. All they had to do was find the right molecule to bind to the virus and keep it from leaving the cells. Carmen lost track of how many variations they tried before they figured it out. No one had stopped to take a break – every member of both teams worked together tirelessly to find the cure.

It turned out that a small tweak to an old drug – oseltamivir – worked pretty damned well. Like the original drug, it would likely work best if given in the first day or two of symptoms, but it should help the body’s own immune system overcome the virus. It was still early to know for sure, but it seemed like it was working in the rats they were using to test the drug.

She’d already sent all their information back to Earth via an encrypted communication. Other doctors would look at the work, maybe improve on it a bit, do some live testing with humans who were already infected, and if it worked put the stuff into mass production. They were certainly going to need a lot of it.

The base crew was having a holiday. They’d earned it. Carmen figured most of them were already sound asleep, trusting her to deliver the cure to Pat and her father. There were two problems with that. The first was the armed gunmen on the ship, but frankly she was pretty sure if she could get the shuttle to land, she’d find them absolutely willing to turn themselves in as prisoners in exchange for the cure she had.

No, the bigger problem was the radio on the shuttle – which still wasn’t receiving anything they sent. She figured Pat probably had bigger things to worry about that fixing the radio, but it would have been a lot easier to tell him he didn’t need to send the shuttle off into space if she could talk to him!

Jacob had tried everything he could think of, and none of it was working. Which meant it was up to her. She took a deep breath, trying hard to calm her nerves and convince herself that this wasn’t crazy. Instead, she thought about Patrick, dying slowly up there of a virus that she’d cured, when she could have saved him.

No questions. She’d never be able to live with herself if she didn’t at least try.

“It’s time, then,” she said to Jacob.

He grimaced. “I can keep trying a little longer…”

“I think you’ve done what you can,” she said. She laughed nervously. “Trust me, if there was another way, I’d be happy to use it.”

“But…”

“Let’s do this, Jacob. Before I lose my nerve. They need us.”

He held her gaze for a moment, as if sizing her up. “I wish I could go along,” he said.

“So do I. But I need you down here to handle the remote access on the shuttle. I won’t be able to control the airlock.”

“Someone else? Anyone else?”

“They’d all try to talk me out of it,” she said. “And Patrick doesn’t have time for me to convince them.”

He nodded, the gesture an admission of defeat as much as of her being right. Carmen smiled, feeling a warmth toward the young man who’d helped her out so much. She stepped over to him and wrapped him in a hug.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Get going,” he grumbled. But he was smiling.

She headed down the hall away from the control room. In Pat’s research lab, the little prison was still standing. She tip-toed past it without turning on the lights, trying not to disturb Amy, but the woman must have heard something. Amy started banging on the inside of the wall.

“Let me out, damn it! Let me out!”

Carmen ignored her and kept walking. Amy could get out when they had someone up here to take her into custody more properly. The last thing she wanted was that woman wandering free on the base making more trouble. She walked on through the lab, the light from the hall casting long shadows. She reached the Hopper bay at last, placing her hand on the panel. It lit up, casting a dim glow into the alcove.

“Going someplace?” a man’s voice drawled.

Carmen jumped, whirling around. She pulled the only weapon she had from her pocket – an auto-injector loaded with medicine.

“Gonna stab me to death with your needle?” Fred asked, looking down at the thing.

“Not unless I have to,” she replied. “Why are you here?”

“You’re go’in up to help Pat, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Fred said. He made it a simple statement of fact.

Carmen thought about it a moment. Having someone else along would improve her odds of success. But Fred and Amy had been close friends. She jerked her thumb back over her shoulder at Amy’s prison.

“How do I know you’re not working with her?” Carmen asked.

“Because if I was, I’d have let her out,” Fred said, his voice still bland and matter-of-fact. And it was a fair answer. Carmen had one other question, though.

“The shuttle is full of the virus, Fred. I can give you a dose of my cure, but it’s not been tested on humans yet. It might not work.”

“You think it works, though. You’re sure enough to be willin to risk your life to save him?” Fred asked.

Carmen nodded.

“Then I’m in.”

She made her decision. If he was willing to put his life on the line to help Pat, who was she to say no? She put away the injector and pulled out a smaller one. Grasping it firmly, she took a step toward Fred. He shied away, holding his hands up.

“Wait, what’s that?” he asked.

“I need to give you a dose of the cure as a prophylactic. To stop the virus before it really starts to get going,” she said. She bared her sleeve, showing a mark on her arm. “See? Already gave myself a dose, too.” She stepped in close and grabbed his wrist in a tight grip. He sighed and winced theatrically as she shoved the needle into his arm.

“The things I do,” he said. “We ready now?”

“Yes.” Carmen placed her hand on the panel, which lit up again and opened the hatch. On the other side of the hatch was Hopper One – fueled and ready to go. She stepped inside and took the pilot’s seat. Fred followed her and sat down in the other chair. Carmen put on one of the headsets resting on the console and brought the computer to life.

“Base, this is Hopper One, radio check,” she said.

“Hopper One, read you clearly,” Jacob replied.

“Base, I’ve got a passenger. Fred’s coming along. Is that going to mess with your math?”

There was a pause. “No, we’re good,” Jacob replied. “You two sure you want to do this?”

Carmen’s hands shook a little, and she wished more than anything that people would stop asking her if she was sure. Of course she wasn’t sure! She didn’t know if the cure would work. She didn’t know if the Hopper could actually link with the shuttle as it approached the moon. She didn’t know if she could get aboard, and didn’t know if they could save Pat and her father even if she did manage to board the shuttle.

None of that mattered. It was time to go.

“We’re ready, base,” she said. “Uncoupling now.” She pulled a lever and the electro-magnets holding the Hopper against the base shut off. The drifted the short distance to the ground.

“We’re on the ground, base. Handing over control to you,” Carmen said.

Fred looked over at her, alarmed. “Say what?”

“Pat’s got the shuttle coming in at top speed. We have to take the Hopper higher and faster than anyone’s ever taken one before. Jacob explained it to me by saying it’s like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. You feel up to doing that yourself?” she asked.

“Oh, shit,” Fred said. He sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.

“Hopper One, you are lifting off in five..four..three..two…”

Carmen missed hearing Jacob say the word ‘one’. When she should have heard it, she was distracted by what felt like a huge hand slapping her down into her seat. The pressure stayed there, becoming a weight pressing down hard. Carmen had to fight for every breath. All around her, the Hopper was shaking hard, making rattling and groaning noises as the thrusters poured on more speed than the thing had ever been designed to handle. Pat had said these little bubbles were tough. Today, she was putting that to the test.

Red pooled at the periphery of her vision, and black spots danced in front of her eyes. There was a roaring sound in her ears. Carmen was grateful that she didn’t have to steer the ship. She could barely move a finger, and it was getting so hard to take even the smallest, gasping breath. Then suddenly she couldn’t breathe at all. Her efforts to suck in air were useless – nothing in her body wanted to work. Her lungs screamed for air, and she strained to take in even the smallest bit. Carmen wanted to yell, to scream, to tell Jacob to slow them down, that they were dying! But her lungs were empty. She had nothing left to shout with. The black spots moving in front of her eyes grew larger, until they swallowed up everything.

Chapter 16

PATRICK WOKE UP to another buzzing alert. He reached out an exhausted arm to silence the thing – and then woke the rest of the way once he saw what the computer was alerting him about. A proximity alarm? Out here? He shook his head to try clearing it. The drug Rosa had given him was still helping some, but he still felt awful. He slipped another of the pills out of his pocket and swallowed it.

Next to him, the soldier who was supposed to be guarding him looked a lot worse. He was red, flushed, his eyes closed. His breath was ragged – not gasps, but not a healthy sound, either. Pat sighed. Not much he could do for the kid but let him sleep through it. He shut off the audible alert and pulled up the screen for nearby space. Something small had matched course and speed with them. Even as he watched, it was sliding up alongside the cargo airlock.

Pat flicked on an external camera. It was a Hopper! Someone from the base? What they hell were they doing up here? Some sort of rescue? Crazy people. Pierce would kill them.

He had a sudden horrible thought that one of the Hopper’s passengers was Carmen. He didn’t know why he thought that – although it was certainly her style. She was the sort of woman who’d go launch an impossible rescue mission if given even half a chance. How the hell had they even gotten a Hopper up here, anyway? They weren’t spaceships – they were meant to flit around on the moon.

He couldn’t let Carmen do it. He yanked the ship sideways, trying to pull away from the Hopper. It followed, and even as it came closer Pat was horrified to see the cargo airlock doors opening. They were opening the doors remotely!

Quickly Pat punched up the error code’s he’d been getting before – little flashes of light on his dashboard, in a repeating pattern. He cursed quietly. The fever really had messed with his brain – he should have seen this right away. Long and short flashes – they’d been sending him a coded message. He didn’t remember Morse code, but he ran the flashes through he computer and got an answer quickly enough.

Cure.

Hope hit him like a hammer. If Carmen had a cure, maybe they could get out of this yet. Maybe they could all survive this mess after all. He stopped jerking the controls around, and the Hopper dashed into the bay, braking gently before activating electro-magnets to lock itself to the ship’s hull. The airlock doors closed, although the inner ones stayed shut.

Whoever they were, they’d come aboard now. The real question was, how could he help them against Pierce and his men? He thumbed through the cameras, fingers fumbling with the console controls. Pat cursed under his breath. He should be able to do this blindfolded! He rubbed his forehead, wiping sweat away from his brow. A few droplets went spinning away, the lack of gravity causing them to drift in little free-falling balls of smelly water…

Pat snapped his focus back to the task. His mind was starting to drift. The fever was burning through even the meds Rosa had given him. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d last taken a pill, but couldn’t. Didn’t matter anyway – what was a little kidney damage if he was dying anyway? He took the pill.

He knew it would take a while to work, but just the act of taking it seemed to help him focus again. His fingers found their way to the controls with some semblance of their old, practiced routines. He tapped into the camera in the airlock. There was the Hopper. As he watched, the hatch started to open up – and Carmen pushed her way out of the vehicle into the open space of the airlock. For a moment he hoped that he was having fever dreams. This was something out of a nightmare. She wasn’t even wearing a helmet! If one of Pierce’s crew spotted the Hopper, or her, and opened the airlock… It was the worst thing he could imagine.

His fingers flew over the keyboard, executing the commands to open the airlock door. There! He reached out to press the button to execute the command – but someone slapped his hand away from the console. Then another blow landed, this one on the side of his head, just under his eye. Pat’s head snapped sideways, and if it hadn’t been for the straps holding him in his seat he’d have been knocked into the wall.

He looked up, trying to see through the stars dancing across his vision. It was Pierce who’d struck him, Pierce who’d picked the worst possible moment to come check on the situation in the cockpit. Pierce who was staring down at him, his face flushed red, a muscle in his cheek twitching – and the first hint of bruises showing around his eyes. The virus was making his brain bleed.

“Knew I couldn’t trust you,” Pierce said, taking another swing.

Pat managed to bring his arm up in time to stop the blow. His other hand went to the buckle holding him strapped to his chair. He needed mobility – right now! Pierce didn’t know much about moving in space. But he was strong – and the virus was going to make him more dangerous and unpredictable than ever.

Pat slipped off the straps just as Pierce slammed two more blows in on his head. But this time, he wasn’t stuck in place. Pat rolled with the first punch, letting the impact push him out of the way. The second barely connected at all.

Pat lashed out with one foot as he slid backward toward the wall. His boot connected with Pierce’s jaw, but the man rolled away from the impact. Pat braced both hands against the wall and kicked hard with both feet. He timed it right – Pierce was trying to close on him again, and his feet slammed into the man’s gut. Pierce grunted, and Pat could hear the air rushing out of his lungs as he flew backward again.

The soldier who’d been sleeping away in the chair was awake now, but groggy. He was working at the fastenings of his straps, trying to get free of the chair. Soon as he got up, he’d be another problem for Pat to deal with – one too many. He reached down and grabbed a wrench. He didn’t have time to aim too well before flinging it. He had to throw and pray. But his aim was good, and the thing cracked into the kid’s skull with a sickening sound. He was back out again.

Grounders would forget that just because something was weightless out here didn’t mean it lost its mass. A thrown steel tool still hurt.

Pat whirled back to his console. He had to do something to save Carmen. No time for anything fancy, but the commands he’d entered were still blinking there on his console. He pressed the execute button. The airlock doors started to open. Carmen pushed off toward the opening, and someone else was following close behind her – was that Fred? What the hell did the two of them hope to accomplish up here, anyway? His heart warmed to see her, but he wanted to shout to her, to tell her to run while she still could.

He heard movement to his left and looked up. Pierce was there, sailing through the cockpit toward him – the same wrench Pat had just thrown gripped tightly in his hand like a club. Pat cursed his luck – the tool must have bounced right where Pierce could grab it. He didn’t have time to move clear, so he raised his right arm to try to block.

The wrench slammed into his forearm, pain lancing through the limb, jarring him as far up as his shoulder. Worse, the blow sent him into a roll, spinning out of control toward the cockpit seat. He collided with it head first. Pat fought to get his feet between him and his attacker, but Pierce was too fast. He closed in before Pat had the chance to react. Again the wrench came crashing in toward Pat’s head. He tucked his head behind his arms, trying to protect his skull.

Pierce hammered blows against both his arms. Pat heard something crack with the third blow. The pain was more intense than anything he’d felt before, but he managed to deflect two more blows. Vainly he tried to push away, but Pierce grabbed his shipsuit by the collar. This close, Pierce couldn’t miss. The next wrench swing took Pat in the head, and he didn’t feel any more blows after that.

* * *

Carmen still felt more than a little queasy. She was glad she hadn’t had to fly the Hopper – she’d never have been able. That red-out had turned into a blackout. Fred wasn’t any better off – both of them were knocked out, and only woke up after Jacob parked the Hopper in the big cargo airlock on the shuttle.

So they were in. And they’d had a real stroke of luck – somehow, the inner door was already opening. That was something Carmen had worried about. Fred assured her he could open the thing, hotwire it. But she was just as glad to see it already open and waiting for them.

“I’d go for it,” Jacob said over the radio bud in Carmen’s ear. “Whatever you do, don’t hang around in the airlock.”

Carmen privately seconded that motion. She couldn’t help but remember the first time she’d seen this space. She remembered the sick man, already dying, remembered her desperate rush to lock him in. It was like it all happened just yesterday. And she remembered Patrick ejecting the hapless man into space. She shuddered at the thought. Jacob was right. They were far too vulnerable here.

Fred wasn’t so sure. “It don’t smell right,” he said.

“I think it was Pat, trying to help us,” Carmen said. “But trap or not, we need to move. The bad guys might not know we’re here yet, but that won’t last.”

She pushed off for the doorway into the rest of the ship. It was hanging halfway open, like someone had pushed the button but was even now considering changing their minds. Carmen shook her head to clear the thoughts. They had to move, yes. But if she started thinking that the bogeyman was watching them, waiting to pounce… She just had to hope that it really was Pat who’d opened the doors, and was looking out for them.

Carmen looked back over her shoulder, realizing that Fred wasn’t with her. “You coming?” she called back softly. She didn’t want her voice to carry through the open airlock doors.

Fred was rubbing his arm where she’d injected him with her cure. “You sure that stuff will work?”

“Nope,” she replied. “But you’re already exposed either way. So you’d better hope it does.”

“Shit,” he replied. Then he shook himself like a dog shedding water, and pushed off from the Hopper to join her in a motion that seemed surprisingly graceful in such a big man. Fred glided to a stop alongside her and peeked his head out through the opening. He ducked back inside.

“Looks clear,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for her answer, he darted through the gap into the cargo hold. Immediately gunfire ripped through the space he’d just been, bullets pinging off the cargo door. Carmen screamed – she couldn’t help it, the noise was too loud, too sudden. She dove back behind the cargo door, the steel reassuring against her back.

Where was Fred? Had he been hit? How many gunmen were out there? She thought it had sounded like only a single gun – so maybe just one person? But she’d never fired a weapon before. She was more than aware that most of her education on the subject came from bad movies. The sound effects from films didn’t do the real thing justice.

She didn’t have a weapon. None of them did, really. The best she could do was slide the large multi-dose injector she’d brought along out of her pocket and palm the thing. Carmen knew that scream had given away her position. Someone was going to come looking for her.

It only took a few moments. But it wasn’t the menacing figure she’d expected. A boy’s face appeared in the opening of the airlock, barely old enough to shave but still dressed in fatigues and carrying a rifle. He brought himself to a rough stop, only just catching hold with a free hand before he tumbled into the airlock. He clearly wasn’t too good at maneuvering in space yet. He swung his gaze around and saw Carmen, his eyes widening. He had the telltale raccoon mask. He was sick – very sick. He only had one hand on his weapon, and he seemed confused about how to grip it properly while still hanging on to the airlock door.

Carmen used his hesitation to her advantage. She reached out and grabbed the arm that was anchoring him in place with one hand, and then stabbed her hypodermic down with the other. The boy yelped – and let go out of reflex. He drifted, tumbling a few feet away from the door.

Carmen grabbed hold of the edge and darted inside. She glanced around, half expecting another shooter to open fire on her as soon as she came into sight. But there was only silence inside.

She knew just what to do this time, anyway. I quick push brought her to the airlock control panel, and she ran the sequence to close the door. It rumbled for a moment and then snapped shut. She heard the guy she’d locked inside yelp, and peeked in through the window to be sure he was all right.

He wasn’t really all right. The injection she’d given him had a sedative along with her cure. But the cure would take a good long while to work on him, if it could save him at all in this advanced stage of the disease. And the sedative would take a few minutes to work. In the meantime, the virus had him in a rage. His face was mottled with red, his mouth contorted into a grimace. He was yelling something – Carmen couldn’t hear what. But she saw the threat. He had his rifle in both hands now, aiming it at her. Before she could duck, he fired. The bullets hit the window and left star-shaped marks there. He saw that his bullets weren’t helping, and turned instead toward the Hopper. The first rounds bounced off, but if he kept shooting, he was going to eventually hit something vital in the small craft.

“Jacob,” Carmen called through her radio. “Anything explosive in the Hopper? If one was shot?”

“Yes, it uses compressed gas for thrust. It could explode if it was punctured.”

“Shit,” she said. She reached out to the airlock controls, her mind and heart at war. Her mind knew what she needed to do. The boy was still firing. Any moment he might blow the Hopper, which could kill all of them. She remembered the sequence to open the outer door by heart, even if she’d only seen it executed once.

Was this how Patrick had felt? His hand hovering over the control, knowing that he had to kill the man inside the lock, hating that fact and wishing there was something else he could do?

The thought made her understand him with a complete clarity she’d never had before. She owed him an apology.

Her hand pressed the button.

The outer door opened with a snap and a whoosh of air. The boy inside the lock never had a chance. He didn’t even try to grab for anything. One moment he was there, alive, someone she might be able to save. The next he was gone, drifting in space somewhere in the shuttle’s wake.

Chapter 17

CARMEN LEANED forward against the panel, hot tears forming little bubbles that drifted away from her face and tangled in her floating hair. She’d been so cruel to Pat, back when she first met him. She’d been furious at him for making what she’d been so sure at the time was the wrong call. He’d looked like a callous monster, and in the back of her head she’d wondered sometimes what she was doing with a man who would execute someone like snapping his fingers.

And now she’d done the same thing. She’d killed someone to save everyone else on the ship, the same as Pat had done. It hurt to have killed the boy, even though she couldn’t see that she had any choice. And it was just as painful that she’d been so harsh with Pat. She wanted nothing more than to see him again right now. For both apology and comfort. She cycled the outer door closed again, and pumps began refilling the inner lock with air.

“Unngggh.”

The groan came from somewhere behind Carmen, back in the hold, and made her jump. This was no time or place to fall apart, and she wasn’t a fall-apart sort of woman, anyway. She turned and looked for the source of the noise. Her instinct said that it was probably Fred. Was he hurt? Had he been hit by the gunfire?

She keyed her radio. “Fred? Where are you?”

“Over here,” he replied over her ear bud. His voice sounded ragged. Carmen saw a hand waving from a pool of shadow behind a stack of shipping crates. She pushed off from the door and flitted to his side. He was keeping himself from drifting by holding one of the crates with one hand. He had the other hand planted firmly against his left calf. Even holding as tightly as he could, some spheres of red blood drifted free.

“How bad is it?” Carmen asked. Fred must have been hit by one of the bullets. Carmen had a sudden and savage sense of satisfaction over spacing the soldier, and then immediately felt a pang of guilt for feeling that way. Too confusing to worry about right now anyway.

“Are you both OK?” Jacob asked over the radio.

“I’m fine, but Fred’s hit,” Carmen replied.

“Went right through,” Fred replied. “Hurts, but wrap it up and I should be OK for a bit.”

Carmen looked around trying to gauge how much blood Fred had lost by measuring the balls of blood floating around. Maybe only a few ounces? It looked like less than a pint, anyway, and a man Fred’s size could generally spare a pint without feeling it too much.

“At least you won’t have to walk on it,” she said. The bullet hole had weakened the fabric in the leg of his ship suit enough that she could rip it off and tear it into strips.

Fred chuckled, then inhaled sharply as she put direct pressure on the wound. He got several shades paler as she wadded cloth into both sides of the wound.

“You sure you’re OK? You’re not going to fall out on me, are you?” she jibed. She hoped he wouldn’t. She needed his help, and the best way she could think of to ensure he stayed with her was to imply he might be too weak.

She was right. He looked affronted, and glared at her. “Took worse hits than this, lady,” he said. “Jus’ patch it up.”

Carmen wrapped the dressing with strips of cloth, and tied the ends tightly over the wound. It wasn’t perfect. Fred really ought to have a proper cleaning and surgical care for his leg. But it would keep him from bleeding to death for now, and that would have to do. Carmen let go of Fred’s leg and he wiggled it experimentally. He gave what sounded like a satisfied grunt and then looked up at her.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to move. I’m surprised nobody else has wandered in here yet. Let’s get somewhere more quiet.”

“Jacob, we’re moving now,” Carmen said. No response came back over the radio. “Jacob?”

“They’re jamming him. Which means they know we’re here and where we came from. Let’s go,” Fred said.

Fred pushed off from the cargo, carefully favoring the injured leg but working his way across the hold with an agility that Carmen envied despite his injury. He led them off to the rear of the hold, near the engines, and opened a hatch.

“Inside, quick,” he said.

Carmen ducked in. Lights flickered on as motion sensors picked up her presence. The space wasn’t large, and was mostly crammed full of space suits. It felt positively claustrophobic once Fred joined her inside and closed the door.

“We should be safe here for a bit. Now, tell me how you planned to take on an entire ship full of armed soldiers?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” she replied. “I planned to cure them. I find that people who aren’t in immediate danger of dying tend to do less stupid things. This whole mess happened because people are afraid. Take away the fear…”

“And you take away the reasons for these guys being assholes? Might work.”

Carmen sighed. “It might have, if I’d gotten here a day or so earlier. Now I’m not so sure. The infection is pretty advanced in some of these people.”

“Will it still work?” Fred asked. He looked alarmed, and she felt the same. What if Patrick and her father were already bleeding in their brains? She wasn’t confident that her cure could save someone that far along.

“Maybe,” she said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “But they’re likely to be irrational, even violent. They’re not just going to sit down and listen to reason just because we have a cure.”

It was a real mess, and she didn’t see an easy solution. The problem wasn’t going to solve itself, either. In fact, it would get worse, the longer they waited. And every minute that went by dropped the chances that her cure would help the people she loved.

That word was still sending an icy ripple down her spine, but it still felt right. Which made her more determined than ever to find a solution.

“Fred, how do we disable everyone on the ship without killing them?” she asked. There had to be a way, and if anyone knew it, she had a hunch it would be him.

“Well, a few ways. Most of them require a little more prep work than we seem to have time for,” he replied. “But the easiest is jus’ to mess with the air from the environmental control panel. Change the gas mix a bit, and people will likely jus’ pass out.”

That wouldn’t be great for patients already ill, whose bodies were fighting for their lives against the virus. But once they were out, she could get them on oxygen if she needed to. The first aid station on the shuttle wasn’t bad. The aid station back on the moon was even better, of course – but they’d be stuck in quarantine until it was certain that none of them were infectious anymore, so that was out. Earth was the best bet, but it was days away. She’d be stuck with what resources she had on the shuttle – or what could be carried in from the moon base – to keep these people alive until their immune systems could take over.

“We’ll do it. Where is the panel?” Carmen asked.

“Either the cockpit or engineering. The cockpit will be guarded like mad. Engineering is a better bet, but for sure they’ll have someone down there too,” Fred said in a warning tone.

“Who’s sick, and who already knows he is dying from an incurable disease. I doubt he’ll be at his most vigilant,” she replied.

“Fine, we’ll try it,” Fred said. Then he started shucking off the top of his ship suit.

“What the hell, Fred?” she said.

“What?” he asked, tossing the top aside. “Got to be in space suits, otherwise we’ll get knocked out at the same time as everyone else does, right? Space suits are here. Now get undressed.”

Carmen grumbled, but he was right. Someone needed to invent a suit you could just get into with street clothes. She stripped her top off, grateful for the sports bra, and ignored Fred’s struggles to get his pants off over the dressing she’d put on his leg. Carefully not looking his way at all, she shucked off her pants as well so that she could slip into one of the skin tight coolant suits you had to wear inside the suit.

But the tight garment got stuck somewhere around her shoulders. She blushed furiously, knowing what she had to look like. She had no leverage, nothing to push against. No gravity to help her guide the garment down her body. And enough of it was covering her face that she couldn’t see where it was stuck.

“Hold still,” Fred’s gruff voice was gentle but firm. She did as he asked, blushing so hard that she was sure her bare midriff was bright red too. His hands reached up and pulled something by her shoulder, and then pulled down on the coolant shirt. It was magically unstuck now, and slid easily down over her body. Fred’s fingers avoided her skin with the same grace that he glided between cargo boxes outside.

When she could see again she looked up at his face, half expecting to see a leer there, but his face was bland and businesslike.

“There,” he said. “You should be all set. I’ll need your help getting the leggings over this dressing.”

She pulled the rest of the coolant suit on herself, wondering at how badly she’d misjudged the man. He was much deeper than she’d figured. But then, he was a friend of Patrick’s – so deeper made sense.

Helping each other out, they were quickly suited up. Instead of hooking up to large backpacks full of air, Fred connected their air supplies to small bottles of oxygen that could be clipped to their belts.

“Less bulky than the big ones, so we can move around faster. But only good for an hour,” he said. “You’ve got to get another before then.” He showed her how to change out the bottle. “You can find these in the emergency lockers all over the ship.”

And then they were out of excuses to wait any longer. Carmen took a deep breath of canned air, the taste odd on her tongue. They had a time limit now, even beyond the one they had before. She was acutely aware of each second passing by as she tucked her clothes away into a cubby. She took out the big injector first, though. She had a hunch she might need it. That, she tucked into a loop on her thigh, and fixed in place with a velcro strap.

Fred opened the door cautiously and peered out. He was moving more slowly than he had exiting the cargo airlock, and it wasn’t just pain from his wound. Carmen realized he was taking the soldiers much more seriously now than he had before. They were a deadly threat. She followed his lead, looking all about for any movement before leaving the suit locker.

“Engineering is right this way,” Fred said. He led the way out of the cargo hold into the rear of the ship. A door waited at the far end of the hall. It was closed. Fred didn’t pause. He tapped a code into the panel. Carmen heard whooshing sounds from the other side, and shouting.

“I pulled the fire alarm,” he said. “Compartment inside is being filled with non-flammable gas. My guess is anyone in there will spill out here about…”

The door snapped open. Two men floated out, retching and gagging. Neither of them was armed. Fred punched the first in the head, hard enough that Carmen felt the crack of the impact. The man went limp. The other saw the threat but was so miserable that he tried to raise his arms in a position of surrender.

Fred seemed to pause a moment as if considering that, and then shook his head. “Sorry, bro,” he said, and slammed a huge fist into the second man’s head.

“I’ll make sure neither of them wake up anytime soon,” Carmen said. She injected each of them with a dose of the cure – mixed with her sedative. They’d be out for hours.

“Let’s go,” Fred grunted. “That fire alarm will alert the cockpit and the rest of the ship.”

Once they were both inside, Fred shut the door and keyed in a code to lock it. “It won’t hold them forever,” he said, pushing off from the door and drifting over to a console.

The door had a glass window, so Carmen kept watch, worried that the enemy might come at them any time. “How’s this going to work?” she asked anxiously.

“I got to override all the safety protocols an’ then flood the ship with the wrong mix of gasses. I’m telling the computer to do something it was programmed not to do. Gimme a few minutes.”

Carmen saw a head peek around the corner down the hall, only to duck back. “I don’t know if you have a few minutes,” she said. “They’ve found us.”

Fred mumbled “Shit,” under his breath, but kept typing away.

She kept her eyes peeled down the short hall, watching for movement. The soldiers knew where they were. What would they do? Storm engineering? If they figured out what Fred was trying to do, they could just get into space suits and changing the gasses wouldn’t even help anymore.

But they didn’t do either of those things. Instead, they shoved two tied up men into view. Carmen sucked in her breath, hard. It was Pat – and her father. Both of them looked all right, although Pat had some bad bruises on his head and her father looked more scared than she’d ever seen him before. It wrung her heart to see them like that, floating at the end of the hall, their hands tied behind their backs, gags over their mouths, their eyes wide.

“Fred,” Carmen said, barely able to speak. “We’re out of time.”

A hand holding a pistol slid into view. The gun was aimed casually toward Pat, and Carmen almost shouted in fear and anger. Then the man holding the gun dropped into view. He was middle-aged, with dark hair that was cropped short, dressed in military fatigues. She guessed this had to be the man in charge of the soldiers who’d taken the ship. The man gestured with his gun toward the door – clearly, he saw her through the port-hole in the door.

She shook her head. There was no way she was going to open the door for him!

The man shrugged, his face almost a little sad, and aimed the gun back at Pat’s head. He said something that Carmen couldn’t hear through the door. Pat closed his eyes. The soldier pulled back the hammer of his pistol.

“Wait!” Carmen screamed, banging on the window. “No!”

She reached down and keyed open the door, pulling it ajar just enough to shout out through the gap. If they rushed, she hoped she could close it again in time. “Wait! You don’t need to hurt anyone!” she shouted. She hoped they could hear her – she knew her suit was muffling her words some. “I have the cure!”

“That’s a bold claim,” the soldier called down the hall to her. But he lowered the pistol a little.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Who are you?” Carmen asked.

“I’m Colonel Pierce. I own this ship now. You must be Carmen Rosa – the good doctor has told me about you.”

“That’s me,” she said, aiming for a bright tone and falling somewhere short.

“Girl, if you really had the cure, why not just wait on the base for us to get there?” Pierce asked.

Carmen tried hard to take the man’s measure. He was sick. Even at this distance, she could see the beginnings of bruises under his eyes, so the virus was in his brain. He’d be irrational, and reasoning with him would be hard. But she didn’t have a lot of choice.

Should she tell him that the shuttle wasn’t headed to the moon? That Pat had set a course which would doom the shuttle to drift off into deep space? No, she decided. He might not believe her. And even if he did believe her, he might react irrationally toward Pat, even kill him out of anger at the betrayal.

“The sooner a patient gets the treatment, the more effective it is,” she replied. Which was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth. “Every hour counts.”

“Then you brought the cure with you,” Pierce said. “Give it to me.”

This was dangerous. While she had the cure, she had an edge. As soon as she handed it over, he wouldn’t really need her anymore. But she really did want to do the injections. The cure was also laced with a powerful sedative. They’d all be knocked out in short order. But she needed to get all of them at once, or as close to that as she could.

She put on her best ‘doctor voice’, loud and paternal – “Do you know how to administer the right dose, in the right spot, at the right times? It takes more than one dose, and each one needs to be administered correctly for the drug to work.”

Pierce paused for a moment, seeming to consider her words. Then he laughed, and spread his arms wide. “Please, then. Come minister to the sick.”

Both Pat and her father shook their heads. It was pretty clear they wanted her to stay put. Pierce saw their movement as well. He brought the pistol back up again, this time aimed at the side of her father’s temple. Carmen watched her father close his eyes, saw his lips moving through the cloth gag.

“Or I can redecorate the interior of my ship in crimson,” Pierce said in that same affable tone he’d been using all along.

“No!” Carmen said. “I’ll come.” She slipped out into the hallway, carefully closing the hatch behind her. She heard it latch solidly, and hoped Fred would be able to lock it. At least he’d be safe – she might need his help shortly.

Chapter 18

SHE PUSHED OFF from the door and drifted down the corridor toward Pierce. Once she was about halfway down, two soldiers slipped into view and pulled themselves toward her. She flinched when the first grabbed hold of her arm, but neither of them were rough with her.

“Please just come along, miss,” one said.

“We’re not gonna hurt you,” the other added.

She wasn’t sure if she should believe them or not, but she had a feeling they meant it. They were both young – not much older than the soldier she’d fought earlier. Young, impressionable boys, that was who Pierce had brought for his little coup. That made her even angrier with the man. These kids were scared, more than anything. They were dying, they knew it, and she’d tossed the worst sort of golden apple into the middle of this mess: hope.

They presented her to Pierce, who floated with one hand on a rail, the other still holding his pistol. He tucked the gun back into a holster on his belt. With the free hand, he reached out toward Carmen’s face. This time, she did flinch – but all he did was undo the clasp for her helmet’s faceplate and lift the glass shield. It rose like a visor away from her face with a hiss of escaping air. She glanced at her tank – already two thirds empty? How had so much time gone by?

“Why the helmet, Doctor? Why the space suit? What were you up to down here?” Pierce asked.

“Avoiding undue exposure to the virus. It’s medicine, not a miracle cure,” she said. “Speaking of which, would you like to go first?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Pierce said, drawing back from her a little. “I’m not feeling so trusting right now. Your friend is still back there in engineering, after all – yes, I have video feeds, and I know there are two of you.”

“But you have me here, now,” Carmen said.

He shifted his grip a little, his eyes flickering over her. She’d rarely felt so uncomfortable under a man’s gaze. “Yes, but how do I know that’s the cure, and not poison? No, I think we start with your people first, and then you can help my men and I.”

Carmen had to fight back a smile. She’d more or less expected that. There was no way those soldiers were going to let her inject them without some sort of proof. So there wasn’t any poison, nothing that would do lasting harm. Just a little sedation that would put them out for an hour or so. Enough time for her and Fred to find a more lasting solution.

But there were a lot of them here. She looked around. Pierce had eight soldiers here. She’d have to move fast, or the first people she injected would pass out before she got a chance to finish with the last ones.

“I’m fine with that,” she said, masking her concern with nonchalance. “The sooner people are injected, the better their odds of survival anyway.” That got the attention of Pierce’s men right away. She could see them forming a line already, jostling for position. Each of them had such desperate hope written across his face that it was almost painful to see. She’d do what she could for those men. Some of them might be too far gone for her to cure – but she’d try her best.

Carmen turned to Patrick. He was younger than her father, and probably would pass out from the sedative a bit more slowly. Seconds might count. She’d inject him first, then her father. Her eyes met his as she drifted very close to him. There was so damned much she wanted to say to him, but right now was completely the wrong time. There would be time for that later – if she pulled this off.

“This will sting some,” she warned, reaching down onto her suit leg and pulling up the injector. She made a big show out of dialing up the dosage. It wasn’t a hard process, but better they didn’t know that. She found his deltoid easily enough. Even through the space suit’s gloves, running her hands over Pat’s should raised goose bumps on her arms. Her mind flashed back briefly to the moments they stole together during the solar flare.

Then she brought the injector up and against his arm. A quick tap and a hiss, and the medicine was in. Carmen saw Pat flinch, and knew that arm was going to be sore for a while until the medication spread out a bit. “Sorry, Pat,” she said.

She drifted over to her father, who was saying something through his gag. She could only make out one word: “How?”

“Neuraminidase inhibitors gave us the start, Dad,” she said. “It’s not a vaccine. But it will give the infected a fighting chance. Earth already has the formula.”

He said something else as she prepped the injection. She thought it was “I’m so proud of you.” But it was hard to tell for sure. He jerked when she injected him, reacting even more strongly than Pat had.

“Dad never did like needles,” Carmen explained. “Who’s next?”

Eight hands went up.

Carmen looked over at Pierce, who still wasn’t moving from where he hung. He was watching the whole scene dispassionately. The chill on his face unnerved her. “Pierce? Do you want dibs on the next dose?” she asked. She wanted him sedated ASAP. He scared her more than these kids ever could.

“No, a good leader takes care of his men first,” Pierce said. “Go on.”

She ground her teeth together. She’d have to move fast. No telling how long before Pat or her father went under from the sedative. She needed to get to all nine of them before that happened.

Carmen started in. The soldiers had already formed a line, which helped. Being in zero gravity didn’t. It simply took her longer to move around from one person to the next. Sweat was beading on her brow by the time she reached the last man. How much time did she have left?

He was tall, and heavily muscled. It took her less than a moment to find his bicep – it was hard to miss. But she had to be careful to avoid the patch on the sleeve of his uniform. She brought the injector up, aware as she had been this whole time of Pierce keeping a watchful eye on her.

“Hey, what’s wrong with that guy?” asked the man she was about to inject.

Carmen looked up, knowing what he was talking about even before she saw. Pat was floating in the air, his head lolling off to one side, clearly unconscious. Next to him, her father likewise drifted in sleep. She looked up at the man’s face, seeing the storm clouds of anger building there as he realized if not what she’d done, at least that something was very wrong.

She stabbed home the injector, pumping a dose of the medicine into the man’s arm before he could react.

“Ow!” he said, his hand reaching out to his arm out of reflex.

“It must be the virus,” Carmen lied, hoping she’d be believed. “Quick, help me get them to the infirmary!”

Pierce pushed off with a grunt, floating to where her father hung suspended in the air. Carmen held her breath as he took a pulse and then lifted an eyelid. Pierce knew what to look for. Damn it!

“You’ve drugged them!” he roared.

“Sir, I don’t feel so…good,” one of the soldiers said.

Carmen looked around. Two of the soldiers were already lightly snoring. The one speaking joined them a moment later. The rest stared at her in horror.

“It is a cure. It’s also a sedative. Just so you’ll rest,” she told them. “You’ll be fine.” She hoped that was true. Some of them were pretty advanced in the disease. Better to tell them something hopeful that to have them terrified as the drug slowly dulled their senses.

Pierce was still unimpeded, though. “You bitch!” he said, his face mottled red.

Time to get the hell out of here! She pushed off hard, jetting back toward the main hold even as Pierce struggled to chase after her. He had nothing solid to push against. Carmen caught a glimpse of him struggling his way toward the wall as she shot away.

Carmen was moving fast – way more quickly than she really thought was safe. She shot into the cargo hold and only narrowly missed the first row of crates. She twisted, and dodged the next set, zipping between two rows of the big containers. But then another set loomed directly in front of her. She could see them in her path, but there was nothing she could do to slow down. There wasn’t anything in reach that she could grab. She tried to flip around, so her head wouldn’t crack into the cases, and managed to get about halfway through the turn before she smashed into the storage units with her left shoulder.

All the air went out of her lungs in a whoosh, not even leaving enough for a shout of pain. She bit the inside of her cheek, copper flavor filling her mouth. But worst, her whole side hurt. She didn’t think she’d broken anything – quite – but her shoulder, arm, ribs, and hip on her left side hurt worst than she’d ever hurt before.

For a moment she hung there, barely able to move. She reached out her right hand to grab on to the crate she’d collided with so that she didn’t drift away, but that was all the movement she could manage. Instead, she focused on breathing, Every breath was painful, every inhalation like fire lancing into her side.

“I’ll kill you,” Pierce said, from somewhere below her. She jolted at the sound. He was close, and must be coming closer. He might be moving toward the front of the ship more slowly than she had, but he’d catch her soon enough if she didn’t move.

If he was following her, at least he wasn’t hurting Pat or her father. If she could draw him away… But there were only so many places on the shuttle to run. She needed help.

Her radio chirped, and Fred’s voice came out of it. “You OK out there?” he asked.

“Yes!” Carmen gasped. She’d all but forgotten Fred in her rush to get away. “Any luck on the air system?”

“Nope. But all those soldiers are out like a light. Need me to come help you?”

“Yes, please!” Carmen said. Then she paused. The biggest threat wasn’t Pierce. It was that the ship would follow Patrick’s course and fly off into deep space. “Wait. Can you wake up Pat?”

“How?”

“There must be a first aid kit in engineering. Look for some epi-pens.”

“Will that work?”

She hoped it would. Adrenaline to counteract the sedative should work. “Yes.”

There was only one place on the ship that she thought she might be able to lock herself in. She’d only visited the cockpit a few times, but didn’t airplanes have a lock on the cockpit, to keep people away from the pilot? Maybe the shuttle had the same feature, since it too was designed to carry crew and passengers. It was the only thing she could think of, the only place which might have a lock on it. Besides, maybe she could shut off the jamming from the cockpit and Jacob could guide the shuttle in remotely.

It was slower going than she wanted. Her left arm wasn’t working well – every time she bumped it against something it flared with pain again. So she was stuck pulling herself forward from handrail to handrail with just her right hand. She exited the cargo area and shut the door behind her. The cafeteria space beyond looked pretty much the same as it had the first time she’d seen it. Carmen found herself wishing she had a gun, or something that would let her blow up the control panel on the door so that she couldn’t be followed. Pierce had to be right behind her.

She kicked off hard, aiming herself at the far side doorway. It was open – the corridor beyond seemed small and dimly illuminated from here. Carmen remembered Pat helping her glide across the room on her first visit here, and prayed he was OK. All Pierce’s men should be out by now. It was just him she had to deal with now.

“I see you,” Pierce called out in a sing-song voice. Carmen looked over her shoulder and saw him steadily making his way up toward her, moving hand over hand along the rails. Her gut clenched when she saw the look on his face.

No time to waste. She aimed her body as best she could at the far side, trying to ignore how small the open corridor seemed from here. Then she tucked her legs up underneath her and pushed off hard, launching herself out into open space.

She was flying. It was exhilarating – and terrifying. She had nothing to hold on to, out here. There was nothing to slow her movement. She might as well be falling toward the ground on Earth, and for a terrible moment her brain started to react as if that was what was happening. Adrenaline smashed into her system as her body reacted to what felt like a fall. With a struggle she re-oriented herself, using force of will to convince her mind that she was jumping up instead of falling down. It wasn’t easy, and she panted with the effort of holding panic at bay. The far wall loomed closer and closer.

A growling sound from below her got Carmen’s attention. Pierce had made the cafeteria, and jumped across to follow her. He had pushed off even harder than she had dared to, and was gaining on her! She held her breath, hoping that she could evade him long enough to get into the cockpit.

She shot through the doorway, still moving at a good clip. A moment later, he slammed into the edge of the doorway with a bang and a curse. Carmen allowed herself a little half smile. It wasn’t nice – but it felt good.

She was floating through the passenger berths now, and slowed her forward movement a little by tapping her hands on the chairs as she went by. There were people here but she realized they were not going to be a threat. Women, children, and a few men too sick to be up helping Pierce. Some of them were gasping for breath. All were showing signs of infection. She might be able to save some of them, if she could get the cure to them in time.

“Found the epi-pens,” Fred said over the radio. “How many do I use? There are three.”

“Hit him with two adult pens,” she said.

“Why two?” Fred replied.

Carmen growled under her breath. “Little busy here! I’m at the cockpit.”

The cockpit door was just ahead. Carmen caught herself on the edges of the doorway to stop her forward motion. Just her head peeked into the space beyond. Nobody was inside! Pierce hadn’t left even one man behind to monitor the ship’s course?

The moon loomed in the windows. They had to be very close to the moment when Pat’s course would put them into a slingshot around the moon. There was no coming back, once they did that.

Carmen drew her legs up into the cockpit – until she felt hands lock around her left ankle! She looked down, and saw Pierce hanging there, both hands holding her tight.

“Got you now,” he said.

He brought his legs down to a rail and locked his feet in place. Then he pulled hard, almost yanking her out of the cockpit.

Carmen screamed and kicked down hard. The first blow snapped his head back. She kicked him again and again with her free leg – and he lost his grip! Swiftly she drew her legs back away from him. The door, the door – she had to shut the door. She grabbed the big metal frame and started to swing it closed.

Pierce smashed into the door from below with enough force to send her flying back away from it. He slid up into the cockpit, a wicked grin on his face. Carmen backed away from him, but there wasn’t much space in here. No room to maneuver. Piece drew a knife from his belt.

“I’m going to cut you out of that space suit. And then I’m going to get real creative with you,” he said.

Carmen was breathing hard. She needed to keep a clear head, look for a way to get the advantage. She pulled out her injector and dialed up a huge dose. If she could get that into him, she might have a chance of keeping him off her long enough for the sedative to work.

Pierce saw the device and snarled. “Not going to help you, honey.” He dove in at her faster than she could react and slapped her hand, knocking the injector away. It slipped from her fingers and lodged against the console. Pierce continued his mad rush, his left hand trying to reach for Carmen’s throat, and not quite managing it thanks to the suit’s helmet. His right hand still held the knife. Pierce stabbed downwards, trying to slash at the fabric of Carmen’s suit. It seemed he planned to make good his threat, but Carmen didn’t want to wait around to see what his idea of creative might be.

She grabbed his right wrist with both of her hands, stopping the knife cold. Pierce snarled at her, and pulled back his left hand to punch her. He swung. She turned her head so that his fist impacted the hard side of her helmet instead of her face. He howled with pain and rage, twisting his knife hand. The point was only a few inches from her chest now, and he wasn’t trying to cut the suit anymore. He was driving the point straight in.

Carmen gasped for breath. Pierce’s sweat-stink filled her nostrils. His face was right there, inches from hers. She tried to slide away from him but he stayed close. Carmen’s back was against the window now. She had nowhere to run, and Pierce had his feet planted in the pilot’s seat, so he could push against her.

“Going to slice you right open,” he said.

Carmen gritted her teeth together to keep from screaming. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. She looked aside, trying to look away from the deadly knife.

And saw that Pierce still had his pistol in its holster.

She twisted sideways, taking one hand away from the knife. The blade skittered past her, striking hard against the window behind her. She had the butt of the pistol in her hand. Moving faster than she’d ever thought she could, she whipped the weapon up and brought it around to aim at Pierce.

He saw the threat and dropped his knife, grabbing for the gun. His hand slapped it sideways at the same moment as she pulled the trigger. The gun roared, deafening thunder. But the muzzle was turned. The bullet flew at the window, instead of at Pierce.

Carmen heard a crack behind her. Where the bullet impacted, a huge spider web of cracks grew. She had just enough time to slam down the faceplate of her helmet before the window blew apart into fragments, spinning out into space. Carmen fell halfway out the window before she managed to stop herself.

The air whooshed past her. Pierce tried to check his forward movement, fighting to hold on to his seat. Carmen brought a booted foot down on his face. Stunned, he released his grip and slammed into Carmen. Both of them rocketed out into space. She could see him mouthing something at her – she thought it was “you bitch”, but she couldn’t hear him in a vacuum. She shoved him away from her, hard, and he was already freezing up. He didn’t even struggle.

The shuttle glided away from her. When the decompression pushed her out of the cockpit, it shoved her away from the ship, too. The shuttle engines were still off. But it was going straight toward the moon, and she was now drifting off at a sharp angle into space.

Carmen looked at the moon, tracking the shuttle as it grew further away, and gulped. She’d never been out in space, not like this. She doubted she’d have turned down a spacewalk on a good day, but this was anything but.

“Someone will come back and grab me,” she said aloud, as much to hear a voice as anything else. Pat would be out for a while, but Fred was still awake, right? She fiddled with the radio controls, making sure it was operating well so that she could reach someone when they came back for her.

A beeping reached her ears. At first she thought it was the radio – someone trying to contact her already? Then she saw the icon flashing red on her helmet display. Low oxygen? She should still have some… She looked down at the little bottle, remembering how little had been left before. The suit must have continued pumping air out of the bottle even though her faceplate had been up.

She had less than ten minutes of air left.

Chapter 19

PAT’S FIRST SENSATION was stinging pain on his right cheek. A moment later, the pain repeated itself on the other side. He opened his eyes, and saw Fred – about to take another swing at him. He reached up and blocked the slap. Then he reached over, grabbed Fred’s arm, and twisted – hard. Fred grunted but had no way to stop the spin. Pat let go and Fred crashed into the hallway ceiling.

“Damn it, Pat! That hurt,” Fred complained.

“So did the slaps,” Pat said. His head was still fuzzy. What the hell had happened? He looked around. The lights were all flashing red. Rosa was floating there, still tied up and unconscious. And a big collection of Pierce’s goons were here, too, all out cold. No sign of Pierce – or Carmen! Memory came flooding back. She’d injected him with something, and then started in on Pierce’s men. He’d fallen asleep.

“She drugged us?” Pat asked.

Fred nodded. “Didn’t have much choice. I watched it through the doors. She had to prove that the drug was safe, so she proved it on you. I brought you around with these,” he added, holding up a handful of spent epi-pens.

Pat grinned. His head still felt like it was full of mud, but he was awake. That was something. “Where is she? And where’s Pierce?”

Fred frowned. “Last I heard, she was up in the cockpit with Pierce in hot pursuit.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing?”

Fred waved his hands at the flashing lights. “See all those? The ship automatic alarms and emergency systems at work.”

“What happened?”

“Explosive decompression,” Fred said, each word grinding out like he didn’t want to say them. “In the cockpit. I checked the cameras – both she and Pierce were blown outside before the emergency doors shut.”

Outside meant a death sentence for Pierce. He hadn’t had a suit on. But Carmen had – she might still be alive out there. And the shuttle was getting further away every second that passed!

Pat’s head whirled as he tried to move too fast and his body just didn’t have the reaction time. He blinked back the grey at the edges of his vision. He didn’t have time for dizziness or nausea right now. Carmen needed him. “How long ago?”

“Maybe a minute,” Fred replied. “But all we had were bottles for air – mine ran out about ten minutes ago. Hers might last longer...”

“Get us slowing down and turn the shuttle around,” Pat said.

“Will do. What are you going to do?”

“Try to save her.”

Pat pushed off, darting up into the cargo hold. The red flashes made the place seem more ominous than he’d remembered, and the occasional dizzy spells weren’t helping. What the hell had she dosed them with, anyway? He still felt sick from the virus, and now he felt sick from her sedative, too. But the cure was real – he knew that much. Fred wouldn’t have come along on this hare-brained mission if he didn’t believe in Carmen’s cure.

Pat reached the cargo airlock where the Hopper was still waiting. He tapped controls on the console, and the inner doors opened back up. His eyebrows rose when he saw marks on the aluminum shell that looked like the result of automatic gunfire. Hopefully the thing would still fly! Only one way to find out. He slipped inside the Hopper and flipped a few switches, bringing the small craft to life.

All of the telltale lights on the control console glowed green. “Miraculous,” he muttered. They really had built the thing tough as nails.

He used the Hopper’s computer to cycle the airlock, closing the inner doors and opening the outer ones once the air was vented out. Pat cursed twice while the vents slowly did their work. He tapped his foot the entire time. Every second mattered right now. Every second put Carmen a little further away.

The moment that the outer doors were open enough to let the Hopper out, Pat released the magnetic locks on the hull and activated the thrusters. Acceleration shoved him back into his harness as he jetted clear of the shuttle. He got a quick glance at the cockpit. The window was a ruin. There was nothing left of it, and he could see how they would have been flung free.

He wasn’t going to find Pierce. The man’s body was lost out there in the black. But Carmen’s suit had a strong transponder. The Hopper was designed to be able to handle emergencies like this one. He could track her suit.

Pat’s fingers raced over the keys, setting up the system. There! He had a signal. It was miles back, faint with distance, but it had to be her. He cranked the thrusters up as high as they would go. The Hopper leapt toward her at his command, the shuttle vanishing from sight.

He turned on his radio and set it to the same channel Carmen’s suit would be using. “Carmen, can you hear me?”

No response.

Pat’s heart ached with fear. He had to be in time. She couldn’t be gone. He’d find her, get her into the Hopper somehow, and then…

How was he going to get her into the Hopper?

He didn’t have a space suit, and the Hopper didn’t have an airlock.

“Shit.”

It was too far to get her back to the shuttle. The thing was flying away from them at top speed. Fred would bring it back around, but it would take time – time Carmen didn’t have. She needed air. Which meant he needed to get her inside the Hopper fast. If her suit was empty, then every second counted. He was going to have to get creative.

There she was! He saw the glint of sunlight against her suit. “Carmen, I see you. Hold on. I’m coming,” he said into the radio microphone. Pat didn’t know if she could hear him or not. There wasn’t any response. He didn’t know if that was because her radio out, or if she’d passed out. How long had she been out there? How many minutes since her bottle had run dry?

He started to decelerate. If the Hopper was going too quickly he could smack right into her, or pass by completely. Carmen’s still form kept getting larger as he got closer. Just a little more reverse thrust… He slowed the Hopper down to a crawl and came up right alongside her. She still wasn’t moving. If she was conscious, she’d have done something – waved, wiggled, something. Pat’s heart was in his throat, seeing her drifting there motionless. She was only out here because of him.

A few keystrokes brought the electromagnets on the Hopper’s rear to life. A few gentle puffs of the thrusters brought those magnets close enough for them to pull the metal in Carmen’s suit close. There was a soft thudding sound as her suit came to rest against the Hopper.

Now for the hard part.

Pat’s hands raced over the keyboard, overriding safety features. Damned if they hadn’t made this hard to do, but he knew all the back doors to make things happen on this machine. Air began to hiss out of the Hopper back into the storage tanks. The air pressure gauge rapidly plummeted from one hundred percent downward. It started getting harder to breathe fast. Pat grabbed a small air tank from the emergency kit. The Hopper didn’t have a suit for him, but the air would keep him going. The pressure went below 50%. Pat staggered to the rear of the hopper. He wouldn’t have a lot of time. Even with oxygen, the low pressure would knock him out and then kill him if he didn’t reverse it fast. Sparks flashed in front of his eyes. He slapped the panel on the back of the ship, and the door slid open. Air rushed from the Hopper out into space, and the ship obligingly pumped more in, trying to keep the interior at forty percent pressure.

The result was a whirlwind, air pouring through the ship. Pat hoped that the lower pressure might keep the wind down just enough…

He reached through the opening into space. There was nothing out there but a long fall into forever. If he slipped, lost his grip on the ship, he’d drift away and die in minutes. One hand locked on a loop of Carmen’s space suit. He pulled, hard, and yanked her free of the magnets. With an effort he brought her the rest of the way into the hopper and slapped the panel to shut the door again. It slid shut, and the wind stopped.

Pat floated there a moment, shuddering, gasping. He wasn’t thinking clearly. The air was still too thin. He saw the oxygen mask, snatched it from where it was floating and took a breath. Cool air flowed into his lungs, and almost instantly he felt a little stronger. His fingers hurt where he’d grabbed Carmen’s suit. He ignored the pain and pushed himself back to the controls, reset the atmosphere to normal. Air hissed back into the cabin.

Carmen still wasn’t moving. She was in her suit – he had to get her out! He grasped the helmet and worked the catches free. The movement was difficult – his right hand was stiff, as well as sore, and swollen. The helmet came free. There wasn’t a hiss. Her air bottle had been completely empty.

Pat looked down. Carmen wasn’t breathing. He felt for a pulse in her neck, and for a terrible moment couldn’t find one. There it was! His own heart leapt in his chest. Her heart still beat, but he needed to get her breathing again. He pushed Carmen against the wall of the Hopper and braced her there carefully, one of his arms holding both of them in place while the other tilted her chin up. He took a deep breath – the air in the Hopper was blessedly back to normal. He brought his lips to hers. She was still warm. He remembered their first kiss, and hoped more than he’d ever wished for anything that this wouldn’t be their last.

He exhaled into her mouth, and felt her lungs expand. Pat took another breath, and exhaled between her lips again, breathing for her.

He waited, watching to see if there was any reaction. His fingertips found her pulse more easily this time. Was her heart beating a little more strongly? He took another breath, placed his mouth over hers, and exhaled again. Her lungs rose, fell. He took a deep breath and went to breathe for her again, but as soon as his lips brushed hers, Carmen began to cough. Patrick held her gently as her body took over breathing again. He brought his oxygen mask up to her mouth and held it there while she took long, gasping breaths.

Carmen opened her eyes. Her smile broke his world and remade it again in an instant.

“I love you,” he said.

Her smile grew. “I know,” she mouthed.

Chapter 20

CARMEN WATCHED from the Tower as another dome was inflated with fresh air mined out of the very surface of the moon. The Tower – everyone on site was already calling it that – wasn’t very big yet. But it would be, in time. It was two stories tall, and would grow to at least fifty. One nifty thing about lower gravity – you could build a crazy tall structure. The plan was to extend the height of the tower clear out of the crater, so that they would have direct line of sight to other nearby bases, and so that the tip of the tower would never be in shadow.

“How many domes will there be, in all?” her father asked. He spoke softly. She could hear regret in his voice, and worry, and loved him for all those things and more besides. She looked away from the construction, met his eyes, and smiled.

“Who knows? At least twenty. But I think it will grow larger. Much larger.” They’d found even more reserves of water ice on the moon. With careful recycling of the oxygen, they could eventually have hundreds of people living here, maybe thousands, without ever bringing up another drop of water from Earth. The greatest expense of expanding the lunar city was always bringing up water and air. Without those as a factor, who knew how large they could grow in time?

She turned back to watch the work being done. They were silent for a long moment, and she wondered if he would ever say what he was thinking. Her father was a good man, but he was as stubborn as they came.

“I’m sorry, Carmen,” he said after a long pause.

She turned her head sideways to look at him. “For?”

“For getting in the way. You never would have been in danger if I hadn’t...”

“Yes, I would have. We’ve been through this. You still had to go to Earth,” she ticked off each statement on her fingers, “the shuttle still would have been hijacked, and I still would have had to rescue you.” She grinned, taking some of the heat out of the statements.

He nodded, waving his hands in surrender. “I know. I agree! Allow an old man his remorse, woman.” Then he put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“About staying out here?” she asked. She was being coy, and that really wasn’t fair to him. She relented. “Or about Patrick?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Yes,” she answered back, eyes wide open, a broad smile on her face. “Truly, dad, I haven’t felt so sure of anything since I was in medical school. They need you on Earth to help make that cure even better. And they need my help out here, to help prepare defenses so that we’re ready for whatever comes next.”

Carmen looked back out the window. This wasn’t going to just be a city. It was going to be Earth’s first line of defense against whatever came at their home planet from out there in the stars. It still wasn’t public knowledge that the virus had been built as a weapon. That information was still highly classified. But humanity now knew that it wasn’t alone. There were other things out there – and at least some of them were unfriendly.

She’d become very famous, very fast. Everyone in the world knew Carmen Rosa as the woman who had saved the human race. She’d gone back to Earth with Patrick and her father for a short while, and burst into tears the first time someone had come up to her, knelt down, and kissed the hem of her shirt. She’d cried the second, third, and fourth times, too. By the fiftieth, all she wanted to do was be someplace away from all these people. She couldn’t possibly live up to their expectations.

So she argued for a base on the moon. The material existed. And the virus was clearly a first strike weapon, designed to clear any indigenous life out of the way. The virus might have been something that some alien race simply seeded out into the universe. Or it might be the precursor for an actual invasion.

If it was the latter, the invasion would likely not be far behind. A base on the moon would be easier to launch ships from than their mother planet. They could keep things secret there which would be much more difficult to hide, back on Earth. And the governments which knew about the existence of aliens didn’t want to spread the word yet. They worried it would case a panic.

They gave Carmen her base. They even put her in charge, as executive director of the base. In turn, she named Patrick as the base administrator. The military was sending people up, too. Mostly Air Force and Navy. She’d need to learn how to get along with them, but she’d worked with the military in the past during outbreaks in some rough corners of the world. She could do it again.

She heard someone cough behind her and turned, beaming. She knew that gentle cough by now. Patrick smiled back, coming up alongside her.

“Doctor Rosa, your shuttle is just about ready to depart,” Pat said.

Carmen took her father’s hand. “Come. I’ll walk with you there.”

Doctor Rosa reached out a hand to Pat, who accepted the gesture gravely. The two men shook, and then partway through the shake the older man smiled and pulled the younger into a hug that surprised both Pat and Carmen.

“You did well out there, my boy,” Doctor Rosa said. “Take care of each other. And keep in touch!” he admonished Carmen.

“We will, dad,” she replied.

Rosa stood there, nodding at both of them a few times, almost absently. Carmen didn’t miss the hint of moisture in his eyes. She could feel her own eyes tearing up a little, too. She’d never lived so far away from her father as they would be now. Then he turned on his heel, and walked away. Carmen heard him whistling a little tune as he walked.

“Well, he’s in a good mood,” Pat commented once the doctor was out of earshot.

“He does seem to be,” Carmen admitted. She laced her arm around the small of Pat’s back. “Wonder why?”

He looked down at her. “He loves you. And you’re happy. That makes him happy.”

“Mmmm. You make me happy,” Carmen said.

“I’m glad.”

They looked out the window at the domes growing steadily on the crater floor. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us,” Carmen said, heaving a deep sigh.

“We do,” Pat agreed. “But first, I thought you might want to come inspect our new quarters with me? We should make sure everything is just right.”

Carmen could feel her cheeks heating up. “I’d love to.” She was sure everything would be as right as it could be. And she was looking forward to every moment of it.

THE END

—  —  —

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WHEN THE STRONG FALL: A SHORT STORY
by Sarah Noffke

One organization is holding back worldwide chaos.

The Lucidite Insitute secretly controls the world affairs, intervening in deadly situation before they escalate. They are the reason the world hasn’t turned to chaos.

But what happens when a dark evil seeks to destroy this place that protects the planet? Technology and advanced systems can only help so much. Sooner or later when the strongest fall, inevitable chaos ensues.

Can the Lucidites recover in time to protect the world they value so much?

Copyright © 2019 Sarah Noffke

“When the Strong Fall” (this story) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

All rights reserved.

First US edition, 2019

Prologue

Some say that home is where the heart is.

That’s bullshit.

Just some bullocks that people say to make themselves feel good.

Home isn’t where the heart is. That’s in your chest. Look it up. Every goddamn anatomy textbook will prove I’m right.

Home is, plain and simply, the place that you like more than anywhere else. It’s where you go when you’re fucking tired of the rest of the world and the shitshow it’s constantly putting on for the dumbasses on this planet to watch.

Home is not some warm place where a cozy fire is always burning, and pot roast is cooling on the kitchen table.

Sometimes the best homes are cold. Damp. Full of repugnant technology and people who talk too fucking much. Still, that can be home despite its annoyance. Despite the frustrations that never seem to end inside those walls. Despite all the jerks who crowd the place, it’s the best goddamn place in the world.

A home isn’t where the heart is. I get the metaphor, but it’s worthless. It’s just a cozy little set of words that doesn’t mean anything at the end of the day.

You want to know what home is? You want a definition that you can actually do something with?

Home is the place you’d die to protect.

There. It’s that simple. No frills. No poetry. Just a law. One I stand by forever.

I’m Ren Lewis, and if you mess with my home, you’ll die.

Chapter One

What was once referred to as the “crown jewel” of Pasadena sits almost unoccupied on this late spring night. The queen of England, my home country, probably loathes that repugnant Americans stole that phrase to refer to a modern building.

Cars motor by on the neighboring streets, and a dog barks in the distance. A baby screams somewhere at my back, though it sounds like saxophone music. Both should be outlawed: babies and saxophones. Dogs too. And possibly cars, as well. Only the weak need them for travel.

I shake away this fantasy of a world without noise disturbances, and focus on one of the few people I know to be occupying City Hall in Pasadena, California on this night. He goes by the name Yen Tang, but I’ve taken to calling him Fuckface. Sometimes I call him Jackfruit when I’m not feeling like my typical hostile self. Today, though, I’m tired, so Fucker will have to do.

Fucker strolls out onto the lower balcony under the dome of City Hall. He’s irritatingly early, the fuckface. His black hair is slicked back, and his slanted eyes scan the area around him. The person he has come to meet isn’t there yet. She won’t be showing up on time, since I locked her in her office on the second floor. It wasn’t because I wanted her to be late to this meeting, but rather because she annoyed me by throwing a stapler at my head when I spooked her by hiding in the dark corner of her office.

Pamela Bagwell won’t remember that I broke into her office, or that she nearly assaulted me with office equipment. And more importantly, she won’t recall that she told me about this meeting’s time and location. After the mind control I did on the woman, she’ll be lucky to be able to feed herself properly over the next couple of days.

I spared her, not doing any serious brain damage with my mind control, but it wasn’t out of remorse. She’s a corrupt politician, hence the meeting with a man who I suspect to be behind a major conspiracy—one I unfortunately don’t know enough about. Hopefully that will change soon.

Fuckface checks his watch and visibly sighs. Pamela is late. She’s also a bloody idiot who couldn’t supply me with details on Yen or the meeting about to take place. For all the bribes she’s taken, she should really know more about the people she works for.

One thing is immediately evident, though: Yen doesn’t trust Pamela. Or maybe it’s the other way around. There’s a reason the two are meeting on the first balcony of City Hall, out in the open. And although this makes it easy for me to spy on them from the front of the building shaped like a giant boob, I’m going to have to get closer before Pamela figures out how to unjam her office door.

I prepare myself to teleport up to the balcony, a trick I learned so I didn’t have to take common transportation—or really any transportation. I don’t even have to waste my brain cells, with the body generator the Lucidite’s Institute uses, also known as the GAD-C. No, gone are the days when I must stoop to such ridiculous methods for getting around. Now all I have to do is close my eyes, focus, and poof, I magically appear wherever I goddamn please.

Right now, I wish that was my armchair, but alas, duty calls.

Taking a steadying breath, I’m seconds from teleporting when I notice a shadow move on the upper balcony. Someone is up there, just under the dome on the upper story. I step farther into the shadow of the tree blocking me from view and narrow my eyes. My red hair usually makes me stand out. It always has gotten me more attention than I wanted.

A face I wasn’t expecting materializes on the balcony above Yen Tang. The last time I’d seen this person, I’d been abducted, beaten, and left for dead. She looks to have recovered from the excursion we had together.

Stealthily, she slides out into full view and then camouflages herself into the exterior of the railing and statues, nearly disappearing from view. That’s a skill she didn’t have the last time I saw her. However, I can still make out her figure if I focus, since chameleons don’t work on me.

I’m a master, with my mind control, telekinesis linked to touch, teleportation, and ability to produce illusions. One has to be way more skillful than me for their tricks to work, and I’ve yet to meet a person of that caliber. For instance, most tricks of the eye I’ll be able to detect. It’s a perk of having seen it all. Oh, and also probably because I sold my soul to the devil a long time ago.

I let myself get so distracted watching the wannabe ninja that I almost don’t see Pamela Bagwell hurry out to meet Yen Tang. She’s breathless, glancing nervously over her shoulder. She must have seen something out of place that I left behind. Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.

Her nervousness immediately puts Fuckface on edge. His head whips back and forth, but he doesn’t see me in the shadows. He also doesn’t notice the girl who has hooked a rope around the railing above him and is lowering herself over the side so she can get closer to eavesdrop.

Pamela keeps shaking her head, nervousness evident in her every move. This isn’t going as smoothly as I would have liked. I would blame myself for potentially messing up the meeting by tampering with her mind, but this is the closest I’ve been to Yen in months. I just need to get a little closer.

I’m just about to teleport when Fuckface rushes off, disappearing into the building. Pamela follows, appearing rather disoriented, like she’s lost in museum.

Dammit.

Following Yen now won’t get me anywhere. It’s been like this for months. Even though he’s not a Dream Traveler, he knows how to disappear without a trace. Although he’s only a lame Middling, he can move quite stealthily. I can’t figure it out. And more importantly, I have no fucking clue what he’s working on—only that it is most certainly sinister.

I close my eyes and teleport up to the top balcony. The sensation is always the same. A bit of an inside out feeling followed by a bit of nausea that I quickly shake off.

The view when I blink back to consciousness is different than before. I’m looking out at the grass and trees where I’d been standing, almost at the top of City Hall. In front of me, I hear a commotion as the girl suspended by the rope struggles to climb back up.

I cinch my hand down on the rope securing her, instantly alerting her to a problem above her. She sucks in a quick breath that speaks of her panic.

I smile.

This really is too easy.

Taking my time, I peer over the edge to see Nona Fuller struggling. Her hands reach for the rail of the balcony as she tries to high step. She halts at the sight of me. At first, terror crosses her youthful face, followed by annoyance.

“You,” she accuses, spinning in her harness as the ropes dangle underneath her.

“Oh, yes, me,” I say, a proud ring to my voice.

“Are you what ran them off?” Nona asks, again trying to hike herself up.

Her long, blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail, and she’s lost some of her child-like features, filling out her face a bit. Although she’s barely fifteen, I know she’s more skilled than most double her age. Still, I won’t be telling her that. Not in so many words.

I shake my head and click my tongue. “No, I didn’t run Yen Tang off. I’m not the one precariously hanging over the side of a building to spy.”

“I can’t get any closer,” Nona said between breaths in a whispered voice. “Every time I do, Yen senses me somehow and flees. I figured this was the best way.”

I look out at the city growing bright with night lights. “Yes, I suspect he’s far from here by now.”

Still struggling, Nona sighs loudly. “Can I please get some help here?”

I pull out my trusty pocketknife. The blade opens with a sharp sound. “Sure, I’ll cut you down.”

“No!” Nona says too loudly, holding tightly to the ropes. “I meant will you offer me a hand?”

I tilt my head to the side. “Oh, that’s ever so boring. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather take the way down? It’s faster.”

“Ren,” she says, kicking her feet.

“Oh, fine. You’re always so boring.” I reach over the side of the balcony, nearly scuffing my suit jacket as I offer the girl a hand.

With an ungrateful expression, she takes it, and in one swift movement, I haul her up and over the side of the railing. Nona drops my hand when she’s secured herself on the rail, climbing easily over to safety. She jumps to a standing position, and I realize immediately that she’s blending into her environment in case anyone caught her dangling over the side.

I step back into the shadow, not eager to draw attention to myself either. A moment later, Nona joins me, her rope and climbing gear in tow.

“So, what are you doing here, Uncle Ren?”

I grimace. “Don’t ever call me that.”

“I thought that Ren was your name,” she dares to joke. “Are you going by ‘Mr. Lewis’ now?”

“You know I meant the ‘uncle’ part. I almost vomited when you said it.”

I narrow my eyes at my niece. She has a much better sense of humor than my repugnant sister, who is currently turning her pointy nose up at the rice pudding they serve her at the state mental hospital. I’m certain she believes that her reality is a dream and soon she’ll wake up to find herself at the Ritz Carlton with room service and a closet of designer clothes.

I laugh to myself. Karma is a bitch, and the closest my criminal sister, Lyza, will ever find herself to an Armani suit is if I ever let her grovel at my feet—which I never plan to do. However, her children…well, they are immeasurably better people than my traitor sister. They must have gotten it from my mum and pops. Their goodness definitely skipped Lyza.

“What are you doing here, Nona?” I ask.

“I’m spying,” she says simply because she wants to test my patience.

I blow out a long breath. “No shit. But why?”

“Because I know that Yen is up to something,” she states. “Middling Corporation has a ton of sketchy business surrounding it. Dream Travelers have been going missing all over the world, and I’ve tracked the disappearances to Yen’s company.”

She definitely didn’t get her brains from Lyza. I hide my surprise. “How’d you figure this out?”

She shrugs. “I’ve been watching. They’ve been releasing all that weird technology and supporting legislature that indirectly affects Dream Travelers. It only made sense that they were behind the disappearences. But I haven’t been able to find anything concrete.”

Even though it’s dark, I’m easily able to study the microexpressions on the face of the girl before me. She isn’t lying. And impressively, she was able to piece together something that most skilled agents for the Lucidites have missed. Even some of the head officials have dismissed my concerns when I stated them.

Middlings, those who don’t have the skill of dream travel and psychic powers, aren’t supposed to know about us Dream Travelers. They aren’t supposed to know that we can travel anywhere using our subconsciousness, or that the Lucidites are a secret organization that oversees most of the world affairs. And yet, Yen Tang’s manufactured technology can pick up on Dream Travelers when in the dreamscape.

And even the name of the company is suspect. Middlings don’t know we call them that. They just think they are humans. They believe they are the only humans on this planet, not realizing there is a superior species that’s been overseeing them since the beginning. But Yen…he has a different worldview, and it has been my goal to know how he got it and what his ultimate plan is.

And then there are the missing Dream Travelers. Nona is right. They have been tracked to Middling Corp…but no further.

“Why are you here?” she asks, almost like she’s sensing my current thoughts.

I yawn. “I was bored and out for a cuppa.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, you know something. Did the news reporters find something on Yen?”

I wish.

The psychics who usually report on events in the future that concern global security have been blinded to Middling Corp, another point that worries me.  Most at the Lucidite’s Institute have dismissed my concerns. They say I’m overreacting. It’s because I took that bloody demotion. It was supposed to be for my fucking sanity, but it won’t help if every goddamn person doesn’t do what I say.

I take a deep breath.

I’m used to being in charge. This agent business is taking some getting used to. But still, I think it’s best for me. At least it’s getting me out into the field.

I sucked in a breath of smog mixed with pollen, and cough. Hurr-fucking-ah for fresh air.

“The news reporters aren’t seeing a damn thing about Yen or Middling Corp,” I finally disclose.

“Then why are you here?” Nona asks.

“Because.”

I could just dose her with mind control and teleport away, but I don’t. Nona is smart. She’s agile. She didn’t give up when we were locked in that freezer and left for dead by her own mother…my sister. Nona is better than most.

“Have you considered becoming an agent for the Lucidites?” I ask her.

She arches an eyebrow at me. “I prefer to work alone.”

I indicate the rope she’s gathered up and slung around her shoulder. “That can get you tangled up real fast. Wouldn’t you rather have resources? Backup, maybe?”

“Where is your backup?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I prefer to work alone.”

Nona steps back, into a darker shadow. “Me too.” Then she springs off the building, disappearing into the night.

I shake my head. My fucking relatives are all pains in the ass.

Chapter Two

The Lucidite Institute is a five-story facility buried at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. It is full of mind-blowing technology, mindless eccentrics who blab too much, and possibly the best human to have ever lived.

Although I’ve never been the type to need to be around “my tribe,” I still consider the Institute, exclusively occupied by Dream Travelers, to be my home. Over two decades ago, I entered this facility to seek refuge from a deadly threat. I stayed because it’s the best goddamn place in the world.

What the Lucidites do, most will never know. That’s because they don’t seek praise for saving the planet time and time again with their premonitions of the future, or agents who risks their lives for the greater good. They do it because they fucking care.

I totally don’t get it. But hey, I like having a purpose in life, and the Lucidites definitely gave me that. A way to put my godly powers to use.

Trey Underwood doesn’t jump when I teleport into his office at the Lucidites Institute.  Most would have startled, offered me a rude expression, and told me to knock next time and give them privacy. The head official of the Institute simply raises his chin from the report he’s studying and gives me a calm smile. He’s sitting behind his overly ornately carved desk, which is not only a monstrosity based on its size, but also looks out of place surrounded by the cold, stainless-steel walls of the room.

It’s the same throughout the Institute. Steel walls. Blue carpet. Zero windows.

“You look like shit,” I say, noting the bags under his blue eyes and the disheveled appearance of his normally slicked-back, silver hair.

“It’s good to see you, Ren,” he says, tugging on the medallion around his neck. It’s a nervous habit he does when there’s a problem he can’t solve. I’ve rarely seen him do it.

“What happened?” I ask, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

“It’s nothing,” he says, motioning to the chair across from his desk. “Tell me how you are. How’s Dahlia? Does Adelaide like training?”

“No. Fine. And who cares,” I answer. “Tell me what’s going on.”

His eyes fall on the report he was reading when I popped in. “It’s nothing. It’s literally nothing. A total lack of information from the news reporters.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, actually taking a seat, although I almost always prefer to stand.

“The amount of reports has been drying up for a while,” he explains. “But now there’s hardly anything.”

I comb my hand over my clean-shaven chin. This happened before, when a powerful Dream Traveler was blocking our clairvoyants from seeing events of interest in the future. It is those catastrophes that the Lucidite agents intervene in, stopping crisis after crisis before it happens. However, the person responsible for jamming those reports is dead. I know that for a fact because I killed her with my bare hands.

“Someone is behind this,” I finally say.

“I’m certain that you’re right,” Trey says. “I’ve reached out to multiple Dream Traveler organizations, but they can’t offer anything different. It’s like there’s a universal block.”

I stand abruptly. “I’m going to go and talk with Shuman. Without reports from her department, we’re useless.”

“That really should be Trent’s job,” Trey says, but there’s no conviction in his voice.

For twenty years, I ran the Strategic Department, assigning cases to agents. Only recently, I took a demotion, stepping into a role as an agent. I figured it would keep me young or finish me off.

Can’t say which one I’d prefer.

I lower my chin and regard Trey from hooded eyes. “Do you want to stop me, old man, from doing what needs to be done?”

He cracks a smile. We’re the same age, but a lifetime of social responsibly toward a planet of people who are obsessed with self-destruction has taken its toll on Trey. He definitely wound up on Earth by accident and became my friend for reasons I can’t even fathom.

“You know that Shuman doesn’t like it when you poke your nose in her business.”

I tap the button beside the door, and it slides back into the recesses. I flash a toothy grin. “Yes, I know. That’s mostly why I’m going to do it. Getting a rise out of that stone-faced woman gives my life meaning.”

Chapter Three

I’m not considered a warm person with a cheerful disposition. However, Shuman, the head of the News Reporting Department, makes me look like a fucking Labrador Retriever. She’s about as cuddly as a hacksaw.

When I was in charge of the Strategic Department, she used to get all bent out of shape because I’d harass her news reporters and pressure them to do their bloody jobs better—see cases with more precision, and give my agents more time to intervene. Some people don’t like to be micromanaged, though. I always told Shuman that she should be happy that I didn’t use mind control on her to get what I wanted, but she didn’t see that as a charitable action.

Some people…

I breeze into the Panther room, also known as the News Reporting Department. It’s dark and smells of people who wear too much patchouli. I fucking loathe hippies. They are always flipping tarot cards and pointing to asinine reasons for things that science explained long ago.

You, Jerimiah or Sunshine or whatever your dumb name is, didn’t get into a fender bender because Mercury is in retrograde. It’s because you’re a fucking idiot who didn’t look where you were going before merging lanes. This or that isn’t a sign that you’re destined to do whatever. There are no signs. Just life. Go cut your hair, wash your face, and shut your bloody mouth.

Shuman has her arms crossed in front of her chest and is standing squarely in the hallway when I approach. She’s wearing her usual leather vest and sour expression. Her long, black hair is braided down her back, and the bohemian warrior has her amethyst eyes narrowed at me.

I point to her forearm. “Remember I offered to pay to have that tattoo of that rattlesnake removed? That offer still stands if you want to take me up on it. No one is going to take you seriously with a serpent printed on your body, not to mention that getting a date will be impossible, but that’s probably also due to your sullen nature. Boys like a gal who smiles every once and while.”

“The rattlesnake is my spirit animal,” she says in her usual breathy voice.

“Oh, how cute. My spirit animal is the devil. That’s where I get my relentless charm and red hair.”

“You’re here because of the lack of reports, and you are going to try and tell me how to do my job,” she states with confidence.

“You know, your clairvoyance takes all the fun out of things. How am I ever supposed to throw you a surprise party if you keep this up?”

Her thin lips form a hard line. “The news reporters are being blocked.”

“No shit,” I say. “I’m here to unblock them. Where’s Roya?”

Roya Stark is the best news reporter the Lucidites have. She’s also Trey Underwood’s daughter. She doesn’t like special treatment, which is why I verbally abuse her at every turn. Oh, and also because she’s a royal pain in the ass.

“She recently saw an event that needs intervention,” Shuman says.

“Good. I’ll take it.” I snap at the woman before me.

“I sent her directly to the Strategic Department with the report.”

I blink dully at her. “Why would you do that when you would have known I’d be coming?”

“Because it’s better if you take the assignment directly from Trent.”

“Oh, you love to play this fucking game, don’t you?” I pretend to ask. “You’re manipulating the situation. You see some future event where I need to do something, so you’re bloody orchestrating this whole thing. Why don’t you save us all the time and trouble, and just tell me what I need to do so that I avoid whatever or do whatever or make whatever happen?”

Shuman remains impassive.

After a moment, I sigh loudly. “Fine. You want me to work this case related to this report, don’t you?”

She nods.

“But like a fucking puppy, you want me to go and fetch the report from my supposed boss, is that right?”

“Trent is your boss. You appointed him,” she corrects.

“That’s not really how bosses work, but I get that you’re still struggling with the English language, so no biggie. I won’t rub it in your face by mentioning it.”

Most would have given me a good sneer after that jab. Shuman merely turns around and marches off.

I sigh again. “Fine! Fine!” I say too loudly, knowing how Shuman loves her quiet, peaceful atmosphere. “So I guess we’re not addressing why your reporters aren’t seeing a damn thing lately?”

She turns and looks at me, a cold expression in her wise eyes. “I’m aware of the problem, and it’s being handled.”

I study her. The woman before me isn’t dumb. She’s knows something. I can see it. But she also thinks there’s a fabric of time that needs to be preserved and not altered too much. “Certain events need to happen,” she’s said many times when I’ve caught her withholding news reports. For every disaster she’s allowed me to stop, she’s kept me from another one.

I stalk over to her, trying to look down at her, but she’s pretty much my same height, which is impressive.

“What do you know? What are you not saying?”

Shuman lifts her chin. “All I can say is that there is no way to stop what is coming. I’ve tried.”

I want to grab her by the forearm and haul her into the air, but I stop myself. “What does that mean?”

“It means, that you need to take the case I gave to Trent.” Shuman draws in a deep breath. “That’s the best way to minimize damage. Avoiding a catastrophe will only draw it to us faster.”

Chapter Four

Shuman might be an annoying bitch, but she’s probably right. I wanted to argue with her about her cryptic words, but it would do us no good.

I like to control things. That’s why I’m a fucking brilliant agent. I can change bad men into good ones with my mind. I can make people see things that aren’t real. I have changed the past, the present, and the future. However, Shuman has a different ability and it burdens her in different ways. I’m certain that if she sees something bad coming and says we can’t avoid it, she’s right. It’s fucking annoying. But all I can do is follow the path that she’s laid out for me.

I walk straight into Scapes Escapes, the department area I designed years ago. There’s a meeting going on in the main room. Trent, my successor, is at the front of the room, talking to a dozen agents around the table. I stride straight into the space and extend a hand to him.

He buttons his mouth shut, confusion written on his face as he looks between me and my outstretched hand.

“Ren, what are you—”

“Report,” I say at once to the guy half my age who hasn’t aged as gracefully as me. His dark brown eyes are full of life, but the responsibilities of the job are too much for him, at least for now. “Give it to me now.”

“But I was just about—”

“To give me the report,” I say, wondering why Shuman wanted me to get this directly from Trent. I know she has some lame ass reason that I won’t figure out until later, and it will make my head cramp.

“There’s only one report, and I figured that—”

“Did you figure that you’d give it to one of the many agents in this room who have a tenth of my experience?” I pretend to ask, sweeping my hand at the curious agents all staring wide-eyed at the exchange.

“I haven’t decided yet who will take this case,” he admits.

Trent will one day make a good head official for the Strategic Department. That’s why I picked him. But he isn’t there yet. He relies on his confidence when he should be using logic. And sometimes, he puts his heart into matters that should involve only reasoning. We all have an arsenal to use when dealing with things, but picking the best weapon at the right time is key. Unfortunately for Trent, he’ll have to learn through trial and error, because he wasn’t blessed with my talents and abilities.

At times, I wish I wasn’t either. It is an absolute burden.

I snap my fingers. “Give. Me. The. Report.”

He isn’t even good at pretending. His head toggles back and forth, but if I had Shuman’s ability to know the future, I’d already see clearly what happens next. A moment later, he reluctantly pulls the piece of paper from his pocket and places it in my hands.

“It’s rather complicated,” he warns.

“I think I’ll survive,” I say, striding back for the exit.

“And it’s going to require technology,” he calls at my back.

I stop. Tense. Grimace. “That’s fine,” I finally say. “I’ve been looking for a reason to slam my head against something hard. Visiting the head scientist for the Lucidites will give me that much-needed reason.”

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Trent asks when I continue my trek to the exit.

I turn and face him, careful to avoid the eager eyes looking back at me from the agents who used to do everything I said. “Sounds like it’s time to take a holiday.”

“But Shuman says we should remain here, just in case,” Trent argues.

Again, the little witch is up to something. It’s not nefarious. If anything, I trust her implicitly. She’s trying to help in her own weird way.

“Then stay here. Read a fucking book. Play cards. I suggest that you, Trent Reynolds, take an online class on management.”

He gulps. Nods. Gives the agents staring between us a reluctant expression.

I shake my head, realizing that not until Trent can stand up to me, can he effectively lead the department that flourished under my reign. The serious expression in his eyes tells me he knows this all too well.

Chapter Five

Aiden Livingston is by far the worst human being to have ever lived. He’s a fucking scientist. That’s not why I loathe him, although science is the very bane of my existence. Aiden Livingston is, in essence, too cheerful, too optimistic, and too loud. It’s like God wrapped everything that I hate into one person, and poof, the head official for the Science Department of the Lucidites was born.

As usual, the music in Aiden’s lab is blaring when I stride into the disorganized space. Wires and carcasses of projects gone awry litter the many workstations. I keep my eyes on the report I took from Trent, rereading it for the third time. It doesn’t make any sense.

For being the only case that was reported, it’s trivial yet complex. It only involves saving the lives of a few people. I’m not trying to belittle the amount of human lives, but usually, news reports involve major events. Earthquakes that affect hundreds of thousands. Terrorists attacks in large cities. Diabolical masterminds bent on world domination. Not six people locked in a bank vault. It seems like a waste of my time.

However, Trey Underwood would disagree. He believes that every life counts, even if said life is lived by a jar of mayonnaise with the inability to think for itself. Unfortunately, that comprises most of the individuals on the planet.

Trey and I’ve been round and round on this, and he is adamant about their lives being valued. I only ever argue with him about it anymore to try and get a rise out of him. It doesn’t work, but I’m confident I’ll catch him on an off day, and the monk-like man will raise his voice or even use terse words. It’s a dream of mine. We all need them to keep going.

“There is my favorite person!” Aiden says too loudly over the music when I halt in his lab, still reading the report.

Somehow, these six jackfruits are locked inside of an old abandoned bank vault in Minneapolis. The security system hasn’t been operational for decades, so the authorities don’t know they are there. Getting the system back up and overriding the old controls would take more time than the people have. Their oxygen is running out. A normal Lucidite agent wouldn’t even be successful at this case, since getting to the vault would also take time, whether by traditional travel means or by using a GAD-C.

I guess it will have to be me who saves the fucking day…yet again.

Aiden is standing squarely in front of me, waiting for my attention. He can wait a bit longer though.

I flip through the report, deciding exactly how I want to handle this case. Sometimes when things are overly simple, that means they need a complex solution. The opposite is usually true. But something in this particular situation doesn’t add up, and I don’t know why, which is infuriating.

“I heard a rumor that you might be working the bank vault case,” Aiden says, teetering back and forth on his feet like a chimpanzee at the zoo who can’t figure out how to stand properly. “You need my help getting it opened? I’ve got a couple handy dandy options for you.”

Unrushed, I hold up a single finger to pause the scientist from polluting my brain any further with his useless chatter.

Why this case, I wonder. Usually the news reporters get a dozen cases every single day. Now, only one. But why this one?

When I finally pull my gaze up, I grimace at the scientist more than I would have expected. It isn’t because he’s wearing a repugnant grin, though he is doing that. It’s like his face is stuck with a dumb smile plastered across it. But no, to make him appear even more like a wanker, he’s wearing a small human attached to his chest in some sort of baby-carrying contraption. The child has Aiden’s same spiky, black hair and Roya’s eyes.

“What is that?” I ask, pointing at the boy.

Aiden laughs like I’ve told a joke. “Roya is busy working on something, so I have Max today. Since he started walking, he’s—”

“Don’t care,” I say, cutting him off.

“But you did ask why I had Max,” Aiden said, thrusting a victorious finger into the air.

“No, if you were paying the least bit of attention rather than lactating like a female gorilla, then you would have heard me clearly ask, ‘What is that?’ I was referring to your offspring, which you appear to be wearing because your penis has obviously fallen off.”

Aiden covers the drooling child’s ears, like it matters at all. “Roya and I believe in co-parenting, which means I take on half the respon—”

“Do you want me to kill myself?” I ask, quite seriously.

Aiden slams his mouth shut. Gives me a look of confusion. Shakes his head. “Well, no. You’re a wonderful person who may have a tough exterior, but I believe—”

“Then stop telling me about your family dynamics, or really anything about your personal business. Knowing the details of your life sends me into a downward spiral of depression that will surely only end with suicide.”

Aiden salutes like the moron that he is. “You got it, Captain. So, this bank vault business, eh? It’s sort of tricky, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t, but that’s because I do think,” I answer in a dull voice.

“Well, I only meant because we don’t know if there are explosives linked to the trigger for the unlocking mechanism,” Aiden explains. “It was brilliant for this person or group or whatever to use this particular vault, because—”

“What is the solution for freeing these people?” I ask, my patience gone.

At first, Aiden appears a bit deflated that I won’t let him drag on about science. Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to break his spirit. I’ve tried countless times.

He recovers quickly, flashing a smile. “So, my first idea was to override the—”

“I don’t care how you got to the solution,” I interrupt. “I’m not one of your nerdy friends who you play Dungeons and Dragons with on the weekend in your parents’ basement. I’m a man with a case to solve and, because God has it out for me, I’ve been forced to rely on you for a solution. Tell me what it is so I don’t have to look at your face any longer.”

Aiden chuckles. “I was just thinking that it’s been a while since we’ve seen each—”

“Unless you want that child of yours to learn some new vocabulary, give me the repulsive piece of technology that I’ll need to free those people,” I threaten. “Otherwise, little Billy is going to learn new names to call you.”

Because he wants me to kill him, Aiden laughs again. “His name is Max, actually. He’s named after…”

Thankfully, the chimp can be taught.

He straightens, grabbing a small black device off a workstation. “As I was about to say, this is probably the most effective and safest way to free the hostages.”

I’m about to grab it, but hesitate. “Will this give me cancer or fry my brain?”

“Anything can do that, depending on how it’s used,” he says with a dumb laugh.

“What does it do?” I ask.

“Since I can’t ascertain that unlocking the main door is safe, I think that cutting through the vault is the best way,” he begins. “Now, you might be saying to yourself, ‘But, Dr. Livingston, that will take forever.’”

“I’m not,” I say dully.

“Or you might be wondering how much equipment you’ll need in order to saw through at least two feet of steel,” Aiden continues.

“Still no,” I say.

“Well, thanks to some mind-blowing technology, all you have to do is draw the perimeters of what you want to cut out with this,” Aiden pulls a simple piece of chalk from his lab coat. “Then you stick this device as close as you can to the center of whatever you’ve drawn.”

He hands me the device and then eagerly rubs his hands together.

“Now, here’s the most exciting part!” he continues gleefully. “You don’t even have to back that far away. Once the countdown finishes, a spark of light will run along the chalk line that you’ve drawn. It won’t make noise, emit an odor, or give off heat. Isn’t that great?”

“I guess,” I say with zero inflection, turning around and making for the exit.

I’m already looking forward to not being in the bright lab with music shredding my eardrums, when I come to an immediate halt. Standing in the doorway are two people. One I can’t stand, but respect greatly. The other one I can stand, but she needs to keep bending over backward to try and earn my favor.

“I told you he’d be here,” Roya says, a sullen expression on her face. “I figured he’d need Aiden’s help with the case.”

I roll my eyes at the young woman with long, blonde hair and probably enough psychic voltage in her head to light up the state of New York. Trey’s daughter had to go off and marry Aiden, making them the most annoying couple to have ever existed. That’s how people match, I guess. They have to be compatible on the same level of awfulness.

“I don’t need that lab rat’s help,” I say, a bite in my tone.

Roya points at the dumb device in my hands. “Then what’s that?”

“Something I’m thinking of using to kill you with,” I say.

She bats her eyelashes and scowls at me.  “No you’re not, you need me.”

“To do what?” I ask. “You’re pretty worthless at giving news reports lately.”

“We’re stalled,” she states. “That’s all. The news reporters will be back in action soon.”

“Not if you keep standing around here wasting space, you won’t,” I fire back, sliding between Roya and the girl standing beside her, not making eye contact, although I sense she’s trying to bore a hole in my brain with her electric green eyes.

“Well, I delivered the report that you’ve got now,” Roya says at my back as I trot down the stainless-steel hallway. “You’re welcome!”

“Get back to work, Roya. The future isn’t going to save itself, you know,” I say.

I know that getting away from the girl who Roya told about my whereabouts is futile. She’ll follow me to the ends of the Earth. Not out of love or loyalty, but because before she was born, she signed a contract with God promising to try my patience at every single turn.

I’m almost to the elevator when she yells out, her cockney-accented words cutting straight through me.

“I deserve to go on this case with you,” Adelaide says.

I turn and face my only offspring…that I’m aware of. “No, Addy, that’s not how life works. You aren’t entitled to fresh air, food, shelter, or love. If you have any of that, it is simply a gift that you should be grateful for. And this case? It’s mine. Because, well…I fucking want it.”

Adelaide—who is in her early twenties, and inherited my red hair, bad attitude, and all of my psychic powers—stomps over to me, looking up, fire in her green eyes. “This isn’t fair. I’ve been sitting around this underwater freakshow for weeks waiting for a case. Trent promised me that I’d get the very next one since my training is about to end. Then you waltz into the Strategic Department and take it. And you didn’t even acknowledge that I was in the room when you did it!”

“You were there?” I ask with mock astonishment. “I didn’t see you, but now that you mention it, there was a strange smell.”

“Ren!” she yells, because no one took the time to teach her any manners.

I would have, but I didn’t even know she was alive until a year or so ago, when she showed up at a restaurant and ruined my lunch…and my life. At least for a little while. Yes, I’ve grown to appreciate the fact that I have a daughter, but only also with a great deal of remorse. She’s absolutely just like me in every way. Well, without having a dick…and good parents.

The only reason that I’m not defiling all the world by abusing my powers is because my mum and pops taught me right. Unfortunately, poor Addy didn’t have that. She had a crazy Middling mother, and a father who didn’t know she existed. And like I said, she’s just like me, which means she’s more powerful than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the population. And that means that, just like me, she’s destined for great things and also a life of misery. That’s plainly and simply how it goes.

“I want that case,” my ungrateful child says. “Trent was about to give it to me before you walked into the Strategic Department and strong-armed him.”

“That’s not what happened,” I say casually.

“I was there!” Addy yells. “You don’t even show him respect in front of his agents. How do you expect him to lead the department when you treat him—”

“The way I treat Trent shouldn’t affect the level of respect he gets from the agents,” I countered. “Actually, the way he responds to me might be the only way he’ll get real respect from them. He could have stood up to me. He could have faced me as an equal. Instead, he cowered. I can’t blame the department for doubting him.”

“We know full well that if he stood up to you, you’d make him dry his hair while standing in a running shower.”

I smile. “Would you like to dry your hair in the shower? I can make that happen.”

She shakes her head, knowing that I won’t use my mind control on her. Actually, I won’t use it on anyone in the Lucidite Institute, because I’m a kind and just man. Well, and also because Trey Underwood asked me not to many years ago, and I do things he asks…sometimes.

“My point is,” Addy says, seeming to try and regain her composure, “that case you’re going on, the only one available, well, it’s supposed to be mine. My first big case. My first chance to prove myself. Please let me have it.”

I draw in a breath. “There will be other cases.”

She sighs loudly. “I know that! But I want that one.”

“We don’t always get what we want. That’s why I’m standing here, putting up with your abuse, when I would rather be sitting in my armchair and doing pretty much anything else.”

She rolls her eyes because she’s an irritating little brat who needs to be sent to finishing school. I keep threatening to do it, but she’s got that whole free will thing.

“We both know that you’d rather work a case any day than take time off. That’s why you stole the only case available.”

I shake my head. “No, Addy, I took the case because I’m the best agent for the job.”

“I’ve got all your powers,” she argues. “I can do everything you can.”

I disappear and then teleport on the other side of her. “Oh, can you now?”

Addy whips around and huffs. “Okay, fine! I don’t know how to teleport yet, but I’m working on it. Still, I’ve harnessed my mind control.”

I wave my hand in the air, and a duplicate image of me pops up from the floor behind Addy. It then speaks.

“Oh, and what about your ability to create illusions? Have you mastered that yet?”

She shakes her head radically. “No! That’s really hard. It’s taking some time.”

I allow my illusion to disappear as I sigh. “Then may I suggest that you stay here and practice while the experienced agent takes care of this case.” I step around my daughter and head back for the elevators.

“When are you going to stop ruining my life?” the little heathen yells at my back.

I tap the button for the elevator and casually turn and face her. “Never. Ever. That’s what parents do. We make it so you wish you were never born.”

“Mission accomplished,” she says in a hot whisper.

I step onto the elevator when it arrives, and face my daughter. “Practice, Addy. You never know when the next case is coming, or when you’ll need the full extent of your powers. Life won’t wait for you to be ready for its challenges. Instead, you’ve got to be one step ahead…always.”

Chapter Six

I know as soon as I’ve teleported to Minneapolis, Minnesota, that something isn’t right.

There isn’t anyone shooting at me. In front of the bank vault is nothing standing between me and the ones I came to rescue.

That’s highly bizarre. Usually there’s a deranged gunman who I have to wrestle and then bore into his mind to subdue. But all there is here is silence, reminding me that I’m alone—aside from the six hostages on the other side of the steel door.

I take a deep breath and consider staying here longer than I need to. It’s peaceful and about as cozy as the Institute, with its metal walls. Also, there are no jackfruits annoying me with their ideas and free-flowing thoughts. It’s just me for a change, which is nice.

Leaning back against the cool metal, I close my eyes. I guess I could have allowed Addy to accompany me on this excursion, but I’m not sure it would have taught her anything. She really has to learn to do things on her own, and taking field trips with dear old dad is definitely not teaching her that.

And also, she needs to learn patience. Things don’t happen when we want them to. They happen when they’re ready, not the other way around.  She’s already surpassed training faster than usual, thanks to Trent’s lackadaisical methods. I keep telling him to follow protocol, and he keeps stating that I only like it because the protocol is mine.

Duh, dude.

I open my eyes, unable to relax with the knowledge that the six hostages are running out of air on the other side of the steel door. My consciousness always spoils everything.

Oh, Middlings always ruin my respite with their life-threatening situations and dying. I let out a breath and pull out the chalk that Aiden gave me.

I have to hand it to him, it’s a very clever device. I like that it doesn’t make noise, have a scent, or really draw any attention to itself. Too bad I can’t tell him that; he’d just be more repugnant the next time I see him. No, the best way to deal with types like him is to act unimpressed. They’ll continue to reach, hopefully while not being as loud, and then everyone will come out better off.

I draw a large rectangle, mirroring the shape of a door big enough for six normal-sized adults to fit through. If any of the hostages have eaten too many second servings at dinner, they’ll have to stay put.

That’s the rule, and I can’t change it, I think as I toss the chalk back into my pocket.

I pull the small black device from my other pocket, immediately wondering how it’s supposed to adhere onto the slick wall in front of me. I turn it over several times in my hands, but it’s seamless. There’s no way to attach it. No sticky side. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Deciding to give it a go and place the device in the middle of the rectangle I’ve drawn. When I pull my hand away, I’m slightly amazed to find that it sticks in place. I keep my hand hovering there, just in case it falls to the ground. However, four robotic legs appear out of unseen slots and grip the surface.

It’s fucking science and not at all as exciting as if it happened by magic. Still, I have to give Dr. Monkey Ass credit. It’s sort of smart. Kind of.

Once the legs stick into place, the device sinks deeper into the steel door, like it’s made of putty and not pure metal. Then the light show starts, just as Aiden described. It isn’t bright or noticeable. There is no smell or noise. Actually, most wouldn’t have even noticed it unless made aware. I noticed it though, because I’m not a blind idiot who glosses over important details in my environment.

When the light fades away at exactly the moment that the path of the chalk line is completed, I step closer. I’m not sure what happens next. I walked out of Aiden’s lab before I could get further details, but they probably would have only melted my brain.

I press my hand to the space beside the black device and suck in a breath. My fingers knock the large plate of steel a tiny degree. It’s enough to widen my eyes and make me realize the implications.

The doorway has been cut fully. All I have to do is displace this piece of metal, and the hostages inside will be free. They’ll have fresh air. They can move on with their meaningless lives, where they eat too many overly manufactured foods and put too much waste into the world. But they will be free. And so will I. Then I can return to my home in Malibu and lie in my armchair doing nothing. Or…I can return to the Institute and find meaningful things to do with my time.

I’m just about to knock the piece of metal out of place when I freeze. I can’t get over the feeling that this is too easy. Too well coordinated. I’ve never been one to be paranoid, but right now, in this perfect moment, with the luxury of free time on the horizon, I sort of am.

I shake off the feeling and press my hand straight into the metal. It falls back with one swift movement, bringing a wave of light and odd smells.

Footsteps are the first thing I hear. Then a guy pokes his head through the opening. He isn’t young, but he isn’t old. About thirtyish, with soft brown eyes and a relieved expression.

“We did it!” he says, a wide smile on his face.

I shake my head. “I don’t believe you did a damn thing. But you’re very welcome.”

Another head pokes through. A woman with cornrows and a toothy grin. “I knew we’d guessed all those clues right.”

I draw in a breath, straightening to a standing position. They must have been without oxygen for longer than I thought. “What do you mean by clues?” I ask.

“Oh man,” a short guy calls, jumping out at once. He shakes my hand, and I immediately know all his darkest secrets. The thoughts I didn’t even want to know he had.

It’s horrible. I’ll need therapy after reading his thoughts. He’s to blame, although he didn’t realize that I have telepathy linked to touch. I should have a warning plastered across my head that says, “Don’t touch me unless you want me to puke.” Still, I’ve found that most will still accost me because they like causing me pain and also spilling their innermost thoughts. It’s like confession, except I don’t get to take advantage of them afterward. Well, I could, but I don’t…usually.

“That was way cooler than they said it would be,” the short guy says.

“Who said it would be?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at the buffoon.

More people spill out of the open vault, none of them appearing as distressed as most hostages I’ve seen. Actually, they are wearing delighted grins, like they just got off a dumb amusement park ride.

“The guy,” the short fella says. “The one who hired us.”

My hand instinctively reaches for my mobile telephone in my pocket, but I pause. “Hired you? Who hired you? For what?”

The guy, who might be related to Aiden, laughs. “Oh, come on. Don’t you work for the same escape room company?”

I narrow my eyes at the guy, considering if I should kill him now or wait. “I don’t work for an escape room company. I just saved you from death.”

“What are you talking about?” the first guy chimes in. “It was just a puzzle. And we figured it out not a moment too soon.”

“Who put you in that room?” I ask the tallest guy, knowing that talking to short people is a waste of my time. They misunderstand things for so many reasons, but mostly because they are underdeveloped.

“The guy,” he answers. He snaps his fingers. “What did he call himself? The captor? Yeah, that was it. The captor. And he said that, to finish our challenge, we had to tell our rescuer something. Sally, you remember what it was?”

The girl from before comes forward. “Of course I do. He said to tell our rescuer, ‘I thought about taking you down too, but I have better plans for you. And I figured that watching your precious Institute burn would be the best punishment until I can finish you myself…’ Or something like that.” She laughs excitedly, but I’m already dialing.

This has been a trick. The worst trick in the world. And now it’s starting to click in place in the worst possible way. If what I think is happening, then we’re all doomed, starting with the Lucidite’s Institute, which means most will be dead soon.

Chapter Seven

Trey doesn’t pick up when I call. That’s typical. He never does.

I then try Trent, Shuman, Aiden. I even try Roya because I’m a glutton for punishment. None of them answer.

I’m desperate, my hands shaking, when I try my last resort.

“Dad!” Addy yells into the phone.

I pull it away from my ear with a sneer. “What have I said about calling me that?”

“Dad, there’s an attack on the Institute,” Addy says, her tone elevated. “It’s horrible. I don’t know how they got in.”

“Who?” I yell in a hurry.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “They’ve blocked all our ways out.”

“How?”

“We can’t get to the GAD-Cs,” she says. “We can’t even dream travel. There’s some sort of force field. It’s so strange. I’m locked in the Strategic Department.”

“Look around,” I encourage. “What do you see?”

“Smoke,” she says. “Lots of it. And water spraying in from the walls. It’s horrible. We’ve lost a lot.”

My heart aches as it sinks down to my stomach. It was a trick. But why? Who wanted me away? Who wanted to attack the Institute?

Then like a bunch of building blocks, it all fits together.

Middling Corp, my past cases, the institute, the hostages’ message.

“I figured watching your precious Institute burn would be the best punishment until I can finish you myself.”

Yen Tang.

I know who he is now. I stopped him once, when he was less powerful. Less of a threat. But now he’s figured out how to attack the ones he hates the most, Dream Travelers. And he’s come after the one who put him away originally. Me.

I knew him as Andy Chang. A murderer. A criminal. A destroyer. And he made me one promise when I put him away:

“I’m not done,” he told me from the other side of the bars. “I’ll come back and destroy your precious Institute, the Dream Travelers who pretend they own this world, and, more importantly, you.”

I end the call without saying goodbye to Addy, grinding my teeth together.

Yen Chang thought he could go after my home and win. But he was wrong. There are few things that I’ll die to protect, but the Lucidite Institute and the people who live there are one.

My daughter might be a pain in the ass, but she’s my daughter, and there’s no way she’s dying while I still have breath in my lungs to fight to protect her.

THE END

—  —  —

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LOOPING
by Ell Leigh Clarke

Just another day in space, en route to visit a wizard of space and time. As one does when one is saving the world from the Big Bad.

Or at least as Bentley and the crew of the Chesed have to.

Nothing could be more normal... at least for this unlikely band of ex-gods in a world where they are little more than amortal vagabonds.

It doesn't take long before life on the ship takes a turn for the bizarre and Bentley finds herself thrust into a life and death conundrum she needs to resolve in order to save her oblivious team from total annihilation.

Her only ally? The person she can least rely on...

Looping (this story) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

This story Copyright © 2019 Ell Leigh Clarke

Edited by Robert Brooks

ProsperityQM LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact vip@prosperityqm.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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First US edition, 2019

Version 1.01.01

The Sword-Mage Chronicles (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2018-2019 by Ell Leigh Clarke

Chapter One

Bentley was used to the occasional unpleasant wake-up call aboard the Chesed. Sometimes Shango would rouse the crew at odd hours to handle some form of emergency. Or at least, what qualified for an emergency to Shango. Sometimes Loco would get drunk and stumble into the wrong room and make a big scene before being escorted back to his. And sometimes it was just her alarm going off, exactly when it was supposed to be but much sooner than she would have liked.

The slap in the face that awoke her this morning was a new one. She clutched her smarting face with her hand as she rolled off the bed, getting to her feet and spinning to face whatever threat had assaulted her in her sleep.

Her lover, Svend, slept peacefully on the bed, his body a few inches to the right of where he had been lying when she had fallen asleep and his hand on the spot where her head had been resting. It seemed he had tossed in his sleep and unknowingly smacked her. Bentley had known there was going to be a lot to get used to sharing a bed together, but this was ridiculous.

Svend was handsome, in a gentle, kind of soft sort of way. His blond hair which he normally kept neatly styled to the side was now matted with bedhead, the light stubble on his chin that he thought made him seem more manly still had not grown to more than a speckling. The white undershirt he slept in conformed to sleek muscle, not bulky like most of the other soldiers Bentley had ever met but more of a runner's physique. Nothing about a first glance at him would give even the slightest indication that he was actually an android.

That was sort of the point. Svend was part of the newest generation of androids, designed to look and behave as indistinguishable as possible from humans. Apparently, part of that was tossing in his sleep. As Bentley rubbed at her aching head she wished that they had left that part out.

She got up on the bed and gave him a light kick with the edge of her foot, flipping him to his back. He moaned and rolled over, intent on going back to sleep. “Oh, no you don't.” She prodded him with her foot some more, pushing him gently towards the edge of the bed until he slid right off it. There was a crash followed by a scrambling sound as the covers followed him.

Svend slowly rose from the floor, grumbling and rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes. “What was that for? You know, if you wanted to wake me there are gentler ways to go about it.”

Bentley gathered the covers from the ground and pulled them back onto the bed with her. “You mean like the 'gentle' way you woke me?”

Pushing some of his matted hair out of his face, Svend looked at Bentley with confusion. “What? What'd I do?”

“You hit me. I mean, you didn't mean to, but your hand struck me right here.” She brought her face closer to his so he could see what was surely a growing red mark around her nose and forehead. Her face got close to his, and for a moment it lingered there, her eyes locked onto his, both of them frozen in time. She broke away, embarrassed, and pulled herself back into her blankets.

All these weeks together, she thought, and I'm still not used to being with him.

Bentley and Svend's relationship was still fairly new, and neither of them seemed to have too much of an idea of what they were doing. Their time together was often spent either in awkward silence or cycling through the same two or three topics over and over as they tried to strike up a real conversation. Somehow, the latter was worse.

Svend tried to inch his way back on the bed and was stopped when Bentley pushed her legs out to block him. “Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – you know, I wouldn't even intentionally – I'm not used to sleeping next to anyone, I think.”

Bentley gave him a stern look. “Well, me neither. But I don't go smacking you in your sleep.”

Svend gave up on getting back on the bed and instead rested his back against the wall. “No, but you did just kick me off the bed.”

“You deserved it.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Did I?”

“Probably.” She sighed and threw the covers off of her. It was about time to be getting up anyway. “I don't know. Seems like the kind of thing you shouldn't have to practice, doesn't it? People have managed to share beds for millennia without beating each other up. Why can't we get it right?”

Svend looked thoughtful, tapping his finger to his chin as if in deep contemplation. “Maybe it is because we are required to have so many other skills for the things we've been through, we had to give up something…somewhere. You know, you had to learn how to befriend gods and … whatever the hell Legba is, and learn how to use that sword and save everyone from certain destruction, and I … well, I'm sure I learned something along the way. You can only be the master of so many things, so maybe we gave up something most people find simple.”

Bentley got out of the bed and made her way over to the closet which contained her simple wardrobe. “So you're saying to have the skills to do our jobs, we have to be terrible at sharing a bed?”

Svend shrugged. “Pretty much.”

She pulled out a fairly plain black outfit and tossed it on the bed. “Is that also why we're so bad at talking to each other?”

Though Bentley had said it lightly and meant it as a joke, Svend looked notably uncomfortable with the statement. “No that's – I think we're just still getting to know each other, that's all. Maybe when things are less crazy we'll have better luck.”

Bentley began to undress and noticed that Svend, despite having seen her body numerous times already, averted his eyes as if he suddenly found the wall very fascinating. “Less crazy than what? It's not like there's much going on right now.”

Svend's focus on the wall did not waver. “Well, maybe not at this second, but think about it. We just got out of a battle for the survival of my kind, where you wielded a weapon we still don't fully understand, and now we're on our way to pick up some space-wizard who lives like a hermit on a rock in the middle of nowhere 'cause he might have all the answers. We haven't exactly had 'normal' time together.”

She finished pulling the black crop top on, only after which did Svend finish his study on the wall. “I don't know if 'normal' is in our near future. That's the nature of the work we've found ourselves in.”

Bentley walked over to the room's single mirror and gave herself a quick look over. She wasn't one for a great deal of makeup, particularly not when she was out in space hundreds of light-years away from the nearest bit of civilization. Still she liked to at least check that there wasn't anything weird on her face for Loco to mock her about. The face that looked back at her was one that she was still getting used to, a consequence of the loss of her memories, but it was an attractive enough one, she thought. Perhaps a bit on the rough side, she knew when she scowled she could look absolutely fierce, but when she smiled the right way she could almost pull off the sweet and innocent look. She pulled her dirty blonde hair back into its usual ponytail, pushed her remaining bangs out of her face and tucked them behind her ears.

In the reflection behind her, Svend was looking more and more distraught. He could be an emotional one, even more so than any of the humans Bentley could remember meeting. Perhaps she ought to be more sympathetic towards him. He was, after all, going through a lot, having left his people to follow her on this crazy mission and pursue this relationship. But sympathy was in short supply given everything Bentley herself had been through. It was tough to always be the stoic one, the shoulder to cry on, when she could use some support herself.

She sighed, turned to him and tried to find something to say. “Maybe we could…” No conclusion to that sentence came to her.

Svend attempted to compensate, “Do you think we should…” He also came up short.

“I mean, if we have time, maybe we could…”

“Or later, when we're not busy…”

They were saved by their awkward exchange of non-committal plans by a knock on the door. Jelly Bean's voice called to them from the other side, “If you both are awake, Shango has requested the crew gather on the bridge A-S-A-P. That means, 'as soon as possible.' If you are not awake, please awake now.”

Bentley was relieved by the distraction, though she also felt guilty for being so relieved. “We're awake, Jelly. Tell Shango we will be right there.”

Svend made eye contact with Bentley, then awkwardly looked away as he made for the door. “Guess I should go back to my own room to get ready. See you on the bridge?”

“Yeah. We'll continue this conversation later. And Svend?”

He paused at the door looking back at her.

Bentley gave the most reassuring smile she could muster. “We'll figure it out.”

That seemed to be enough for him, and he smiled at her before leaving to prepare for the day. Bentley just wished that she felt half as confident  as she sounded.

+++

The rest of the small crew of the Chesed was already gathered when Bentley arrived on the bridge. Shango, Loco, and Olofi, the three Iwa, stood together near the captain's chair. The trio were something close to fallen gods, cast out from their home and forced to live among the rest of the mortals, though Bentley had rarely seen anything godlike from them, perhaps besides Loco's inhuman alcohol tolerance. Sitting in a chair near the navigation console was the ship's new engineer, Jade, the only other human on the ship besides Bentley. Svend had somehow beaten her here, possibly because of the detour to the kitchens she took to grab a coffee, and was sitting by the viewport. And standing as always, at the ready to assist in any way she could, was the android operator, Jelly Bean.

Shango had on his stern, commanding face this morning, meaning this meeting had been called as part of his official powers as captain of the Chesed. That meant he was probably about to give an order that the other Iwa, particularly Loco, were going to have a problem with and he needed all the authority he could muster. With his rugged face and salt-and-pepper hair that made him seem like a wizened military veteran Shango had an air of command that few could question. “Good, Bentley is here. Now we can get started.”

Loco cut in using his typical flagrant disregard for authority, “I assume this meeting is to discuss what has become of all the good booze on the ship? A real crime, whatever happened to it. Look at the cheap swill I've been reduced to.” To accentuate his point he took a deep sip from the silver mug in his hands, frowning to show his displeasure even as he gulped down the contents.

Olofi shook his head at his companion's behavior. “That's no mystery: you drank it all. And isn't it too early for you to be drinking again?”

Loco grinned and sloshed his cup in front of Olofi's face to mock him. “Maybe early for you, Mr. Vanilla, but for me this is mighty late. And no, I didn't drink it all, there should be about a week's worth left of the good stuff. I know how to ration, you know?”

Shango cleared his throat to regain control of the conversation. “I have hidden your special stash, Loco. I will return it to you, but first we have some work to do.”

“You what?!?!” Of the three Iwa, Loco was the largest in terms of pure bulk. He had a bruiser's body, all mass and no definition. Usually his face was plastered with a sardonic smile that suited his sloppy dress and messy crop of black hair, but when he got mad and imposed his bulk against you, he could be quite intimidating.

Not to Shango, though, who was plenty familiar with Loco's nonsense. He didn't even flinch. “I said I hid your special stash. The one you keep under the pantry that you think no one knows about? You'll get it back when we're done.”

Loco grumbled but didn't say anything aloud, opting instead to take another slug from his cup.

Bentley took a seat at the table near the Iwa, wishing Shango would get to the point. It was too early for this. “So what is it you want us to do? Systems checks?”

Shango tapped on a panel on his forearm and everyone's corteX was suddenly updated with a list of chores to be done around the ship. “It's cleaning day.” There were the predictable groans and protests from the rest of the crew but Shango seemed to have already firmly made up his mind. “Look, I understand everyone needed some time to unwind after the last battle. I did, too. But we've really let the ship go to hell in the meantime. There's garbage everywhere, the kitchen is filthy, and I'm pretty sure something’s rotting in the fridge. That would explain the smell. It's one thing to need a break, but my ship is not a flying trashcan.”

Loco snickered. “Well, your ship does carry trash, and it flies, and what's a can anyway but a metal vessel for carrying stuff? So I'd say, technically, it is a flying trashcan. Wouldn't be if you just let us eject our trash into space like I've been suggesting for a long time, instead of waiting till we hit a designated disposal station.”

Shango did not look up as he tapped on each item in the list of chores to assign to a crew member. “You know that's against regulations.”

Loco raised his cup again and frowned when he found it empty. “What do you think is going to happen? Are the space police going to ticket us for littering?”

“With our luck?” Olofi asked. “I'm actually glad we're going to be cleaning up a bit. We've all just been kind of moping around since the battle. It'll be good to actually do something, and I bet we'll all feel better when the ship is nice and clean, too.”

The captain tapped his display once more. “I'm glad you feel that way, Olofi, cause I have a very special job that requires your attention: the bathrooms.”

Olofi had perfect tan skin, free from even the smallest of blemishes, that meshed with the rest of his way-too-pretty-for-a-guy features to create a profile not unlike you would find on the cover of a romance novel. Bentley found it amusing to watch him go from tan to white at the mere thought of having to clean the bathrooms. “Oh, come on, I'm sure there's plenty to be done around the ship."

“There is,” Shango agreed. “Which is why I'm so glad I can count on you for this. I can count on you, can't I?”

Olofi had been caught in a trap from which he couldn't escape. “Yeah … yeah, I guess you can…”

Shango placed Olofi's name next to 'Clean the bathrooms' on the chore list, thus sealing his fate.

Loco put a hand on Olofi's shoulder. “It's a noble thing you do, old friend. I'll think of you every time I take a piss from this day forward.”

With another press of the display, Shango added Loco's name to the list. “You're on garbage collection, Loco. A lot of it is the empty bottles you've been leaving around, anyway. Start here, around the bridge, and work your way down.”

Loco suddenly didn't find things quite as amusing anymore. “Wait a second, isn't collecting the trash Jelly Bean's job?”

The face that appeared in the large rectangular monitor that Jelly Bean had for a head displayed a sad expression. “I collect all trash left in the appropriate trash receptacles twice a day. I do not collect garbage left sitting out. This prevents a misunderstanding in which I throw away something still in use because I mistake it as trash. It all looks quite the same to me. At what percentage of remaining volume is a bottle of alcohol considered to cross the threshold from beverage to garbage?”

Loco looked dejectedly into the bottom of his empty cup. “I'm too sober for this.”

“You just finished drinking!” Olofi declared.

“Yeah … the cheap stuff.”

Shango finally turned his attention on Bentley. “Bentley, you're on kitchen duty by process of elimination. See if you can find the source of that smell while you're at it. It's really unpleasant.”

Bentley sighed, wiping down kitchen counters and hunting for a mystery smell was not exactly how she wanted to spend her day. There wasn't much point in fighting it, though. On the plus side, maybe the time alone would help her figure out what to do about Svend. “Fine.”

Jade was still sitting at the navigation console, seemingly protected from these duties by an imperceptible bubble. “Sorry, guys. I'd love to help you clean up, but I do have system checks to do. Good luck, though.” She didn't sound really sorry.

Svend was left standing alone, confused, as the rest of the crew started to split apart to their various duties. He approached Shango. “What should I do?”

Shango cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You're a guest on this ship, Svend. I wouldn't require you to do any of the cleaning duties.”

The young android seemed very uncomfortable with that. “It wouldn't be right for me to just sit around and do nothing when everyone else is working, you know? Plus, it's not like there is a lot else for me to do. Surely I can be of some help somewhere?”

Shango sent the list of duties to Sven's corteX. “You can be 'at large.' See who needs help and how you can make all these duties go faster.”

Svend turned to Bentley, and for a moment it seemed like Bentley was not going to get her alone time to consider how to handle her relationship after all. She was saved by Loco, who took Svend by the arm and led him off to help him collect the trash. “Come on, the quicker we get this done, the quicker Shango will give me my booze back.”

Bentley found that Shango had not been exaggerating the state of the kitchen. They really had been getting lazy lately. The sink was piled high with dishes, the counters were covered in some sort of sticky substance Bentley couldn't identify, and there definitely was some kind of mysterious smell coming from somewhere. She supposed having saved an entire race from certain destruction wasn't a good excuse for living like a slob.

For around an hour she cleaned, starting with the dishes and moving on to the counters. Unfortunately her time alone wasn't magically giving her the answers to her problems. Life seemed so much simpler when the only things she had to worry about were lost memories and the wrath of vengeful fallen gods. Why'd she have to make things so complicated by throwing a strange new romance into the mix?

Jade’s voice came over her corteX, “Hey, guys. I'm getting some weird readings down here in the Engine Room. It's probably nothing, but I could use a hand to take some measurements while I run some tests. Any volunteers?”

Olofi's voice chimed in before anyone else got a chance, “Yes! Please, yes! I'll be right there.”

Shango's deeper voice came next, “How are the bathrooms coming, Olofi?”

A long pause. “They're… half done?”

“Uh huh. Anyone closer to finishing their job?”

Bentley took a look around the kitchen. There was still some work to be done, and she still hadn't been able to identify the source of the smell, but it was looking leagues better than when she had first come in. “I can come, Jade.”

Olofi's voice was heartbroken. “But… I could… please?”

Jade sounded amused by all this. “Thanks, Bentley. I'll see you down in the Engine Room.”

Bentley left the kitchen and made her way down the hall towards the ladder that would drop her into the Engine Room. The Chesed was spacious enough for the small crew to be comfortable but it wasn't large by the standards of space travel. Bentley had walked its halls enough to navigate them by memory so she wasn't really paying attention to her surroundings as she went, lost in her thoughts about the events of this morning.

Which is why she didn't notice the floor was wet until she slipped on it and landed right on her rear. She groaned and rubbed her sore tailbone. It seemed fitting for the way this day was going.

Jelly Bean came up to her, the face on her monitor displaying concern. “Bentley, are you injured? Do you require assistance?”

Bentley managed to pull herself back to her feet, though she did a bit of slipping and sliding along the way, nearly winding right back on her rump. “I'm fine, Jelly Bean. Why are the floors all wet?”

The android gestured over at the mop bucket at the end of the hall. “Shango instructed me to mop all the floors on the ship.”

“Did he also instruct you to leave out the 'wet floor' signs?”

“He did not. Should I add that to my instructions?”

The back of Bentley's pant legs were completely soaked. “Might be for the best.”

Jelly Bean produced a cloth and tried to wipe down the back of Bentley's legs, though she only succeeded in spreading the water around. “Would you like me to perform a spinal readjustment? It may help with the soreness from your fall.”

Bentley pulled herself from Jelly Bean's attempt at help. “No, I'm alright. Thanks, Jelly Bean.”

Carefully making her way across the wet floor, Bentley finally made it to the access ladder. Down in the Engine Room Jade was already deep into her work, rushing from console to console, tapping a few buttons on a screen in her hand, then moving on to the next. Jade was very attractive, almost intimidatingly so, looking more like a model than the brilliant engineer she actually was. Even the plain overalls stained with grease she was wearing couldn't really distract from her figure.

Jade looked up from her screen just long enough to give Bentley a nod of recognition. “Thanks for coming. These readings are really – well, weird doesn't begin to describe them. They keep changing… one second showing normal, the next displaying something completely out of whack. Like, fish swimming through air weird. I think there must be something wrong with the sensor system itself, a bug that's causing it to give inaccurate readings, but I'm having a tough time tracking it down.”

Bentley was passably tech savvy, though she was definitely out of her element here in the Engine Room. The walls were covered in thick pipes she could only guess the purpose of, the consoles all read out letters and numbers that might as well have been Sanskrit symbols, and the large metal housings of the engine's main components looked alien to her. “Well, I'll help in whatever way I can. What do you need?”

Jade moved over to one of the metal housings and set down her screen. “I'm going to run some tests, and you are going to watch the readouts, on the panels I direct you to, for fluctuations. We're going to see how long it takes for the anomalies to occur, which should point me in the direction of the bug. You ready?” She didn't wait for Bentley to respond before speaking into her corteX. “Captain Shango, I need to drop us to sub-light to run some tests on the engine. Shouldn't take more than half an hour.”

Shango's voice came over the cortex, “Understood. Let me know what you find.”

The engines hummed as Jade made the switch to sub-light thrusters. She directed Bentley to the first console, situated on the wall between a green pipe with a bunch of letters on it and a red pipe with a bunch of numbers on it. “What does it say now?”

Bentley had to lean in to the screen to read the small yellow numbers. “Uh, looks like, 170–262.”

Jade was rushing between the metal housings with the energy of a jack rabbit. “Are you sure that's a '1' and not a lowercase 'l'?”

“Uhm...” Bentley got as close to the screen as she could without pressing her face against it. It was hard to tell. “Maybe? Does it make that big a difference?”

“Very much so, yes. A lowercase 'l' there would be good, a '1' there would be a big error.”

“That's confusing. Why wouldn't they just use an uppercase 'L'?”

Jade chuckled. “Oh no, that would be an entirely different thing. We'd all be dead if there was an uppercase 'L' there.”

The screen in front of Bentley flashed and the numbers changed. “Hold on, it says something new. p81–173.”

“What, already?” Jade's face scrunched up in thought as she tapped rapidly on her screen. “That makes no sense. Come on, let's check another one.”

One after another Bentley helped Jade check the various readouts as she ran tests and tried to find some commonality between all of them. Like the first, each panel would begin with a normal reading and suddenly change to something that made no sense. Well, made no sense to Jade. Neither of the readings made any sense to Bentley.

Jade was slowly growing more and more frazzled by her lack of ability to make sense of the errors. Grease stains on her arms and face had joined the ones on her clothes as she reached into the metal casings to make adjustments. At some point she started accusing Bentley of giving the readings wrong just to mess with her. After a somewhat heated exchange, that misconception was cleared up.

As they were preparing to start from the beginning again, a call came over their corteXes. It was Shango. “We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.”

Bentley and Jade made their way carefully past Jelly Bean's slippery floors and got back to the bridge in time to see the rest of the crew gathered closely around the captain's chair, looking at a screen projected directly in front of them. It showed what looked like a storm, vortexes of dark clouds lit up briefly by flashes of blinding lightning, all swirling rapidly together in a chaotic fury.

“What planet are we looking at?” Bentley asked as she maneuvered herself closer to the screen.

Shango's face was hardened with concern. “Not a planet. This is right in front of us. All around us, actually, surrounding us. We're about to fly right into it.”

Olofi, still wearing thick blue scrubbing gloves, stared. “That shouldn't be possible. How can there be a storm in the middle of space?”

Shango shook his head. “I don't know, but I don't like it. Better not take any chances. I'm going to turn the main engines back on and we'll jump past them. They ready to go, Jade?”

Jade fidgeted nervously. “Yes! I mean, they should be? I haven't actually found the problem, but it’s probably just the sensors. I think. The engines were working earlier, so they should be fine for a short time.”

Loco, who had found something else to fill his cup with, was being his usual self. “Oh, good. The engines are 'probably' fine. So we'll only just 'probably' not die when we turn them back on.”

Jade scowled and looked like she was about to retort when suddenly the ship began to shake. It rocked back and forth like it was caught in the grip of a giant angry toddler. Bentley was thrown off her feet and slammed into the center table. She saw Svend rush over to try to help her, but he too was lifted from his feet before colliding with the captain's chair.

Shango was gripping the base of the chair with white-knuckled fists. “We entered the storm! But why aren't the Inertia Dampeners working?”

Jade had somehow gotten herself tucked into a corner, feet pressed up against the wall to stabilize herself, and was tapping away frantically on her console. “They are working! The ship is shaking itself apart from the inside! The storm must be messing with the important systems – the engines are all online! We need to go!”

Shango growled but the controls refused to heed him. “I'm trying! We can't make the jump, nothing’s working!”

The frantic engineer continued to struggle, beating at her console as if force would make everything work. “It doesn't make any sense! The engines are all online! Why won't it…”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off as the bridge cracked apart, metal and glass flying around, sparks from torn wiring raining down upon them. Everything went dark as the power failed.

The world spun around Bentley as she tried to find any purchase in the darkness. A light in front of her momentarily illuminated the remains of the bridge. It took a moment before she recognized the light as flames, flames that were quickly approaching her.

So this is how it ends, she thought. Surviving all those battles just to be killed by a random storm in the middle of space. Well I guess that's just how it goes.

She prepared herself for death as the explosion of the ship consumed her.

It turned out that exploding felt very much like being smacked in the face.

Actually, that was a smack to the face.

Bentley rolled off her bed, landing on her back and quickly springing to her feet in panic. On the bed, Svend was sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware of how his hand had once again slapped Bentley awake.

What the hell is going on?

Chapter Two

Had it all been a dream? It had all seemed so real, and yet there was no evidence of what had happened. The ship was peaceful and quiet, just  like on any average morning. She was pretty certain she had gotten a nasty cut on her head when she had been sent flying, yet the only ache she had now was from Svend's slap.

Speaking of which …

She jabbed out and punched Svend in the side, not gently. He flipped over with a feminine shriek and rolled off the bed. “Wait – what? Who? What's going on?”

Bentley was not feeling particularly merciful this morning. “You hit me again, you jerk.”

“Again?” Svend picked himself up off the ground groggily. “Wait, I hit you? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to – you know, I wouldn't ever intentionally – I'm not used to sleeping next to anyone, I think.”

This all sounded awfully familiar to Bentley. It was not a conversation she wanted to repeat. “Hey Svend, what do you remember about yesterday?”

Svend blinked, clearly disoriented by the sudden change in the conversation. “Uh, not much happened yesterday, I think? You did some reading and I had Shango teach me a little bit about the ship. Why?”

It was seeming more and more like what Bentley remembered was a dream. “Do you recall Shango calling us all together to do a cleaning of the ship?”

Svend sat back down on the bed. “No, I don't think so. Though that probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Have you smelled the kitchen lately?”

Bentley's head was spinning so she collapsed back onto the bed and buried her face in the pillow, trying to get it to stop.

She felt Svend's supportive hand on her back. “Did I really hit you that hard? Should I go get Jelly Bean to take a look at you?”

“No, that's not it.” Bentley felt like she was losing her mind. “Have you ever had a really realistic dream? One that's so real that it leaves you shaken when you wake up?”

“Well, androids don't dream. Not in the same way that humans do, anyway. We get … more like a reflection of the last day's events. I've heard human dreams can be very intense, though.”

Bentley flipped over and looked her android lover in the eye. “Not helpful.”

Svend shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. What did you dream about that's got you so shaken?”

She sighed and hoped that she wouldn't come off like a crazy person. “A storm. In the middle of space. This ship being destroyed. All of us being killed.”

“That's rough. But hey, it was just a dream, right? We're all fine, the ship is fine. We could go right now to prove it. I bet Loco's already up and half drunk.”

“No that's alright.” She pulled the blankets back over her. “I think I just want to rest a little bit more. Join me if you think you can go thirty minutes without smacking me.”

Svend laid back beside her. “I think I can manage.”

She barely got the chance to shut her eyes before the knock came at the door. “If you both are awake, Shango has requested the crew gather on the bridge A-S-A-P. That means, 'as soon as possible.' If you are not awake, please awake now.”

Jelly Bean's words sent a chill down Bentley's spine. She lay paralyzed in the bed, unsure of what to do.

Svend groaned and rose. “We'll be there in a minute. Guess I need to get back to my room to change. See you on the bridge, Bentley?”

Bentley didn't move besides a slight nod. “Y-Yeah.”

She lay there for a while after he left before deciding that she was being silly. There was no such thing as prophetic dreams.

Well, at least she thought that was true, but after meeting gods and techno-mages she wasn't so sure anymore.

+++

She arrived at the bridge to find a scene much like at the beginning of her dream: the three Iwa gathered around the captain's chair, Jade sitting at the Navigation console, and Svend standing by the viewport.

As in her dream, Shango had on his commanding face. “Good, Bentley is here. Now we can get started.”

Bentley could replay the entire conversation in her head. Next came Loco's complaint about his missing alcohol.

To Bentley's surprise, Loco said nothing. He was drinking from the same silver cup she remembered from her dream, but he remained quiet. Perhaps her dream had been just a dream after all. She took a seat at the center table, much as she had done in the dream.

Though Loco's comments were excluded, Shango's actions continued as they did in the dream, tapping a panel on his forearm to give everyone the list of chores. “It's cleaning day. Look, I understand everyone needed some time to unwind after the last battle. I did, too. But we've really let the ship go to hell in the meantime. There's garbage everywhere, the kitchen is filthy, and I'm pretty sure something’s rotting in the fridge. That would explain the smell. It's one thing to need a break, but…"

“Your ship is not a flying trashcan,” Bentley finished for him.

Shango cleared his throat, surprised. “Why, yes. That is exactly right. Glad you get it, Bentley.”

Loco snickered. Bentley remembered at this point Loco was supposed to make a stupid joke about the technicality of calling the Chesed a trashcan, but, other than his laugh, he remained quiet. It was strange that, other than Loco, things were playing out exactly as they had in her dream. Perhaps even prophetic dreams can't predict Loco's strangeness.

Olofi picked up his point in the conversation. “I'm actually glad we're going to be cleaning up a bit. We've all just been kind of moping around…"

Bentley jumped to her feet. “I'll take the kitchen.”

She left the group of stunned Iwa as quickly as she could. Admittedly, jumping up and volunteering to clean wasn't really like her, but she needed to get out of there before they saw her in a total freak-out. Once she was alone in the kitchen she took a moment to try and reflect on what was happening and come up with a logical explanation for it.

Maybe she had heard Shango complaining about the state of the ship yesterday and it had caused her to dream a scenario in which he called everyone together to clean. That wouldn't have been prophetic, just coincidence. And yes, he was using some of the exact same phrasing as in her dream, but what about Loco? Maybe Shango was just so predictable that her dream could guess exactly how he would demand the crew to straighten up.

Still, there was only one way to know for sure, and that was to wait. She stood in the kitchen for around an hour, waiting for a call to come on her corteX that would tell her that the day was playing out exactly as she dreamed it. When she was convinced enough time had passed she let out a sigh of relief. It had been just a dream after all.

Now she supposed she actually did have to clean the kitchen.

Jade's voice on the corteX froze her in her tracks. “Hey, guys. I'm getting some weird readings down here in the Engine Room. It's probably nothing, but I could use a hand to take some measurements while I run some tests. Any volunteers?”

As in her dream, Olofi piped up to volunteer, trying to escape his bathroom duties, and Shango shot him down.

Bentley was already rushing towards the Engine Room. “I'm on my way, Jade.”

It was clear now that something beyond the natural was going on here. Sure, it could still be coincidence, the fact that Shango called for the ship to be cleaned and Jade needed a hand with the engines were themselves not particularly unusual events. But she didn't believe in that much coincidence. Which meant that if she did nothing the Chesed could face the same fate as in her dream. She hoped that, with warning, Jade could figure out what the problem was so they wouldn't be destroyed in the storm.

She was so intent on reaching the Engine Room she completely forgot about the wet floor and again slipped. This time she had been walking faster and the slip was much more forceful, causing her to hit her head on the slippery floor.

The world blinked out for a moment, and when it came back into focus she found Jelly Bean standing over her. “Bentley, are you injured? Do you require assistance?”

Bentley groaned in response and rolled over onto her side. Her head was pounding like someone was beating on the side of it with a hammer. Jelly Bean reached down to help her back to her feet, which she was able to do after a couple of false starts. “Damnit Jelly Bean, wet floor signs! How hard is that?”

The face in Jelly Bean's monitor displayed sadness. “My apologies, Bentley. I will be sure to put them down when I mop from now on. Should I take you to have your head examined? Your fall looked quite serious.”

She blinked a few times to clear the stars from her vision. “There isn't any time. Got to save the ship. Need to get to the Engine Room.”

Jelly Bean's face displayed curiosity. “I'm sorry, Bentley, is there some danger I am not aware of? Should I inform Shango?”

Bentley was still too dizzy to think quite clearly. “Yes! I mean, maybe. I don't know. There might be. That's what I need to go find out.”

“You sound disoriented. You should lie down for a while. Allow me to escort you back to your room.”

She shook the robotic assistance off. “No, really, I'm fine. It's probably nothing.” That's what she said, but she still hesitated. “Tell Shango to watch out for storms. That might not make any sense, but just watch out anyway.”

Jelly Bean's face displayed confusion. “Very well, I shall warn him about that, as well as about the bump to your head.”

Bentley groaned but knew she wasn't going to get anywhere so she gave up. Fortunately, by the time she descended the ladder to the Engine Room most of the worst throbbing in her head had subsided.

As in her dream, Jade barely glanced up at Bentley as she arrived. “Thanks for coming. These readings are really – well, weird doesn't begin to describe them. They keep changing, one second showing normal, the next displaying something completely out of whack. Like, fish swimming through air weird. I think there must be something wrong with the sensor system itself, a bug that's causing it to give inaccurate readings, but I'm having a tough time tracking it down.”

“And you want me to give you readouts as you perform tests on the engines.” This wasn't going to work. Nothing they had done in the dream had gotten them to bottom of just what was wrong with the engines. Jade must have been on the wrong track.

Jade was giving her a look of surprise. “You're one step ahead, I see. Nice to know I'm not the only one here who knows what we're doing. I'll just let Shango know…"

“I think you're wrong.” Bentley didn't know enough about engines to give any competing theory, but she needed Jade not to waste her time on the wrong track. “About the bug. I don't think it’s just a sensor problem. I think there is a real problem with the engines we need to figure out.”

Jade finally looked away from her work enough to study Bentley. “What makes you say that? Also, what happened to you? You look like a mess.”

Bentley became aware that her entire backside was wet from her time on Jelly Bean's wet floor. She probably was not looking her most convincing. “I slipped. But that's not important…”

“Did you hit your head?”

“No. Well, yes. But this isn't the head injury talking. I can't explain why I know the problem is with the engines.” Not without trying to convince you about prophetic dreams, anyway. “Let's just call it a gut feeling. But you have to trust me. This could be catastrophic.”

Jade arched an eyebrow at her and seemed to be contemplating whether a prank was being played on her. “Well, whatever. The tests are relatively the same, and I'll still need your help getting readings. I'll just keep an open mind that there might be a real problem instead of just a sensor bug.”

Bentley let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. That's all I'm asking.” It was something. Jade might not look it, but she was the most brilliant engineer Bentley could ever remember meeting. If anyone could figure this out, it was her.

She threw herself into the work, being very careful when giving Jade her  readings, looking closely for the small differences between the lowercase 'l' and the number '1', timing on her corteX down to the millisecond how long the readings took to go from normal to strange. They were working as an efficient team, clearing twice as many readings as Bentley remembered doing in the dream.

The result was, unfortunately, the same. Jade couldn't make heads or tails of the strange readouts and grew more frazzled about this inability as their work progressed. Bentley wished she could offer her some hint, a clue that would point her on the right track, but her dream was proving completely useless here.

Time was up when Shango's voice came on the cortex, “We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.”

Oh no! No, no, no, not again! Was there still time to change things? They had failed to diagnose the problems with the engine, but maybe they could avoid the storm this time? In the dream, the engines only failed after they had entered the storm.

Bentley bolted back up the ladder and slid on her heels across Jelly Bean's wet floor. She made record time to the bridge, where the others were already gathered looking at the visual of the strange space storm.

She called out to Shango immediately, “Shango, we can't enter that storm! We need to get out of here, now!”

Shango was stern faced. “I agree, I don't like the look of it. I was just waiting for the clear from Jade to use the engines.”

Jade came onto the bridge right behind Bentley. “You're clear. They should be fine until I get another chance at diagnosing them. They were working fine earlier, after all.”

Bentley saw the storm growing larger on the screen. “Quickly!”

Shango didn't need the further prodding. He punched in the order on his console, pushed down for the Chesed to make the jump away from the growing storm...

Nothing. He tried again with the same result. “The engines aren't coming online. They won't respond.”

No, but we're not in the storm yet!

As if responding to her thoughts, the ship began to shake and rock violently as it entered into the mysterious storm clouds.

“We’ve entered the storm! But why aren't the Inertia Dampeners working?”

“They are working! The ship is shaking itself apart from the inside!”

It was all playing around exactly the same as she remembered it. Around her, panic set in as the crew were tossed around by the shaking of the doomed ship while Shango and Jade tried in vain to save it. Svend was tossed aside trying to reach Bentley. Olofi flew into the ceiling. Loco …

Loco was holding onto a railing with one arm, his drink cup in the other. He seemed mostly unfazed as he tried to pour the sloshing liquid down his throat, instead getting most of it all over him. “Ah well, here we go again. Maybe third time's the charm?”

Bentley looked at Loco, mouth agape, as she realized what he had just said. He remembers.

Before she had a chance to figure out what that meant, the bridge came apart.

Chapter Three

Loco smacked the top of his head. As with the previous two times he had lived this day, it began with him in the crawl space under the pantry, at the moment in which he had hit his head on the bottom of the wooden shelf. That first morning he had been down there trying to find his secret stash of high quality booze and had accidentally raised his head too high. That was before he had learned that Shango had hidden his booze somewhere else. Overall, it was an inconvenient way to start the day, especially when you had to do it three times.

He pulled himself out of the crawl space using his elbows and dusted himself off. If things played out the way they had the last two times, Shango would be calling to them in a few minutes to gather so he could attempt to demand that they clean the ship. As usual, Loco would send Svend to do his actual cleaning duty while he searched for where Shango hid the booze. The good thing about reliving the same day over and over again was that it gave you extra chances. There were only so many places on the ship Shango could have hidden it. Maybe this time he could convince Svend to ignore cleaning and help him look?

In the meantime …

The cheap swill he poured into his silver mug every morning tasted like old battery acid but it got the job done, and there was no way he was facing this day for the third time completely sober.

Now where hadn't he checked? The Engine Room, but he doubted even Shango would go so far as to hide the expensive alcohol all the way down there. It would be ironic though, if the reason they have been exploding so much was that his booze was leaking on something important and making the engines fail. Bentley's room? He had searched almost all the others over the past two days, maybe he could sneak into hers while she was assigned to the kitchen...

As if thinking about her summoned her, Bentley appeared at the door to the kitchen. This was new. On his previous two passes through the day he had not seen anyone until he had been forced to come to the bridge.

Bentley was still in her nightclothes and was panting as if she had run all the way here from her room. “You remember.”

Loco calmly sipped his drink. He decided if he couldn't figure out where Shango had hidden his stash soon, he was going to need to find something to mix with this swill to make it more palatable. “Remember what, now?”

She was agitated, which wasn't exactly new. “Yesterday. And the day before it. The ship being destroyed!”

It seemed the fun advantage he held over the rest of the crew had already come to an end. “Ah yes, that. Yeah, I remember. Doesn't seem like anyone else does. Besides you, anyway.”

Bentley paced back and forth across the front of the room, her face scrunched up in thought. “Why just us, though?”

Loco supposed telling her that he didn't actually care why was a poor idea. “Maybe we're just that much smarter than everyone else. Our brains can handle what they can't.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, I don't think that's it.”

He mocked being offended. “I'll have you know you're talking to a god. Our brains are on a whole 'nother level.”

“Shango and Olofi are also gods.”

“Yeah, well, we can't all be winners.”

She groaned and gave him a very serious look. “I guess it doesn't really matter why us. Maybe we've just been given another chance because the universe likes us.”

Loco scoffed. “Excuse me, have you met the universe? It's kind of a dick. Certainly doesn't want to do us any favors.”

“The important thing is, now that we know what's going to happen, we can stop it. Come on, we have to go warn Shango.”

Loco laughed and took another sip of his drink. “Oh, yes, I'm sure that will go over well. 'Hey, Shango, you won't believe this, but our ship already exploded. Twice. Why aren't we dead? Because space-magic is making us live the day over and over again. What, no we're not drunk. How dare you! Okay, maybe a little drunk.’”

It turned out Bentley was not in the mood to argue. “Stop being an ass and come on.” She grabbed Loco by the arm and dragged him by force from the kitchen and towards the bridge. For such a small woman she could be shockingly forceful.

“Fine, fine, I'm coming,” Loco conceded. “Though I think you're missing what a big opportunity we've been given here.”

Bentley clearly did not catch his meaning based on how she remained so stone faced.

Ah well, maybe next time she will. We have all the time in the world.

+++

Shango was the only one already at the bridge when Bentley and Loco arrived. “Oh, Bentley. You're up early. I was just about to call for everyone, actually.” He took in what she wearing and coughed. “Perhaps you'd like to change first? It can wait.”

Bentley felt like her nerves were way too frayed to go all the way back to her room to change before making sure Shango knew the dangers ahead. “Shango, there is no easy way to explain this. The ship is in danger. Sometime later today we're going to fly into a storm…”

“We shouldn't be stopping by any planets today,” Shango cut in.

“Not on a planet. Just kind of… in space. A space storm. I know that's strange, but you’ve got to listen. The engines are going to fail from a problem Jade is going to be unable to diagnose, and then the storm is going to shake the ship apart.”

Shango ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “And you know this how?”

Bentley tried to phrase it in a way that would make her sound the least crazy. “Cause I've already lived it. Twice. We all have, except for some reason you don't remember. Loco does, though. Tell them, Loco.”

To Bentley's horror, Loco did not. “I have made it a personal goal to remain as intoxicated as possible throughout this whole trip. I couldn't tell you whether time was repeating, or skipping, or doing a loop-do-loo. What day is it, even?”

Bentley's mouth was open in shock at the betrayal. “You, how could you? You know very well… What the hell is wrong with you?”

Shango shook his head. “That's a question I've been asking for centuries.”

Loco faked being hurt. “If even my dear leader is going to be cruel to me, I can go and get drunk elsewhere. I think I'll go hunt for my special stash. Someone seems to have misplaced it.”

“He'll never find it,” Shango said with an uncharacteristic grin on his face after Loco left.

Bentley knew that Loco had just made pleading her case dozens of times more difficult. Still, she couldn't quit. “Shango…"

He cut her off. “Maybe you ought to get some more rest, Bentley. Sleep off whatever is getting you so anxious. You have been under a lot of stress lately, what with the battle and the sword, and this mission to try and recruit your space-hermit mentor, and stress can manifest itself in strange ways. I'll excuse you from today's activities so you can rest, which you may find pretty lucky since I today I intend to get everyone to…”

“Clean the ship.” Bentley hoped that she could use her knowledge of how events would play to get Shango to believe her. “The ship has gone to hell since the battle, and you've had enough, because your ship is not a flying trashcan. You're going to trick Olofi into volunteering to clean the bathrooms, and you're going to assign Loco to trash collection since much of it is his empty bottles anyway. You're going to ask me to clean the kitchen, and particularly to hunt whatever is the cause of that rotting smell. And you'll have Jelly Bean do the floors… but she won't put out the wet floor signs and it will be a big hazard.”

Shango grew quiet for a while, studying Bentley with an intensity only someone with his centuries of experience could muster. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Alright I believe you.”

Bentley was so sure she had heard him wrong that she got unnecessarily angry, only to have her anger deflate when she realized the truth. “You do?”

Shango gave a passive shrug. “We've been through a lot of weird stuff in the short time we've been together, more than all the rest of my years living among mortals combined. It's better to give you the benefit of the doubt, that this is just one more weird thing for our collection, than to ignore your warning while risking my ship. But we still have to figure out what's going on. I think you should start at the beginning”

Bentley took a deep breath and then quickly spilled out in detail how the past two days had played out for her: gathering for cleaning jobs, the call from Jade that she needed help with the engines, the storm, the destruction of the ship. Shango listened quietly, nodding occasionally but saying nothing.

He thought on it a while after Bentley had finished the story, tapping his fingers on the armrest of the captain's chair. “So it seems the problem stems from not being able to get back into hyperspace after switching to sub-light and getting close to that storm. It seems that the answer is simple: don't leave hyperspace today. We should be able to skip right past the area of space of your mystery storm. Jade will just have to wait to run her diagnostic until tomorrow.”

It was such an absurdly simple plan, but Shango was right. As long as they were in hyperspace they wouldn't encounter the storm, and without the storm their ship wouldn't tear itself apart. They were saved.

Bentley was overcome with relief. “Thank you, Shango. I knew you'd figure out what to do. Now, I think I'll take you up on getting that extra rest. I left Svend … quite suddenly this morning.”

The mystery of the repeating day might not be solved, but at least she had managed to save the ship. With this in mind she felt free as she made her way back to her room.

+++

“Everyone, on the bridge, now!” Shango's orders called to the crew a few hours later. The tone in his voice led Bentley to fear that things might not be as settled as she thought.

She arrived on the bridge to find a scene that was disturbingly familiar: the rest of the crew gathered around a screen that displayed the swirling clouds and lightning flashes of the storm. It was the same as the last two times, just before the ship had been destroyed.

Bentley rushed up to Shango, who was futilely inputting commands into his console. “What happened? I thought we weren't going to leave hyperspace!”

Shango's teeth were grit in frustration. “We weren't. The ship just dropped out on its own, and now it refuses to go back. None of the controls are responding.”

Nearby, Jade tapped busily on her screen. “It doesn't make sense. The engines still show they are running. There is no reason we should have dropped to sub-light, much less why we shouldn't be able to get back into hyperspace right away.”

Bentley felt her panic begin to kick back in. “Maybe we can dodge the storm with the sub-light thrusters? Can we get around it?”

Shango shook his head. “No good. It's already completely surrounded us, and closing in. Even if we could stop dead in our tracks it would have us soon.”

True to his word, a moment later the ship began to rock violently as the storm consumed it. Everything seemed to slow for Bentley as a scene she was beginning to grow quite familiar with played out for a third time.

“We entered the storm! But why aren't the Inertia Dampeners working?”

“They are working! The ship is shaking itself apart from the inside!”

She crouched down, tucking her head between her legs, and waited for the inevitable. The shaking grew worse, there was shouting and the sound of metal tearing, darkness …

Then the smack.

Somehow this repeated wake-up call was even more frustrating than constantly dying. She slapped Svend's wayward hand away from her face, causing him to roll over and sleep on his other side, a stupid smile on his face. If she didn't know better, she'd think he was having pleasant dreams.

She pulled herself out of bed and decided on her next course of action. Loco remembered but he was completely useless. Bentley wasn't sure what Loco was playing at by refusing to help her in saving the ship, and decided it was probably best she didn't know. It was undoubtedly a selfish and stupid reason.

There were so many unanswered questions. How many more times would this happen? Would they continue to repeat the same day over again until they saved the ship, or could any loop be their last? If she failed to save the ship this time, might they all remain dead? What was the problem with their engines? What was the mysterious storm that was destroying their ship?

It seemed she was no closer to answering these questions than she had been on the first day. She needed help, but who could possibly figure this out?

It was going to have to be Shango again, if she could repeat her performance convincing him of the upcoming danger. His first plan had failed, but Shango was the wisest of the three Iwa and captain for a reason. If anyone could figure out a way out of this cycle of destruction it was him.

“So remaining in hyperspace didn't work?” Shango asked after Bentley had pled her case, updating the story with their latest failure.

“The ship dropped out of hyperspace on its own, right in the middle of the storm.” She was grateful that Shango was hearing her out on this again. Though they had yet to come to a solution, just knowing that Shango believed her and was putting the power of centuries of experience behind them made her feel more confident in their odds.

Shango became quiet, thoughtful, as he tried to process all this information. Bentley could almost see the wheels turning in his mind as the experienced Iwa considered all the possibilities. “It would seem our problems lie in our engines somewhere. They either fail us in getting away from the storm, or drop us right into the middle of it. If we can diagnose the problem in time to prevent our engines from locking us out of hyperspace at the critical moment, we should be able to get out of there.”

Bentley remembered her and Jade's failed attempts at diagnosing the engine problems. “I don't know. We always run out of time before Jade has even a clue about what the problem is.”

Shango wasn't deterred. “That was just with the two of you. This time she'll have the assistance of the entire crew. It is the top priority.”

A short time later the entire crew was gathered and Shango tasked them with the sole mission of diagnosing the problems with the hyperspace engines. He was right: more hands made faster progress. Jelly Bean interfaced with the ship's AI, getting Jade more direct and up-to-the-moment measurements, as well as a history of the strange fluctuations that had recently occurred. Svend and Olofi were on manual labor, helping Jade get under the heavier parts of the metal housing and pulling off bits of copper piping so that she could inspect inside of it. Bentley continued to do what she had done previously: running back and forth between consoles and giving Jade readings that she couldn't understand. Loco … well, he stayed out of the way, at least.

The extra hands helped, and more than once Bentley heard Jade make an “ah-ha!” or an “I see, very interesting”, things she had not heard when it had just been the two of them. Bentley had dared to get her hopes up that they would be able to figure this out after all.

And they might have, too, if they didn't run out of time. Shango's voice came over their cortex, “The storm is here. Tell me you have something, Jade.”

Jade scratched her nose, leaving a grease stain across it. “Yes! Well, kind of. The hyperdrive is behaving strangely because it seems to be trying to operate in multiple states. It's hard to explain … it's like the drive is on in multiple different modes at the same time, but because it can only function in one mode at a time it ends up locking itself up. That's why we're getting so many weird and conflicting readings.”

Shango's voice came quicker as the storm approached. “Can you fix it?”

Their engineer sighed and shook her head, dejected. “Maybe if I had more time. Days, maybe weeks. This is a strange case, our engines theoretically shouldn't be doing any of this, and there's a lot of stuff to sort through to figure out why and how to solve it. I'm sorry.”

The ship began to shake. Bentley knew what came next.

Shango's voice came again, “Everyone brace yourselves. This is going to get bad. And Bentley?”

Bentley could barely muster the will to respond. “Yeah?”

“We'll figure this out. If you get another chance, another time through, we'll get there.”

“Yeah.” She wanted to believe it.

The ship's shaking increased, and Bentley covered her ears and closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.

Smack.

In frustration, she kicked out, hard, sending Svend flying off the bed, sheets and covers coming with him. He landed on his back and flailed there like a fish out of water. His foot thwacked against the bedpost hard, and Bentley got a small amount of satisfaction in his grunt of pain.

He finally managed to get back to his senses and removed himself from the pile of blankets and sheets that had been wrapping him. “What the hell, Bentley.”

She shot him a cold look. “That's one. As far as I'm concerned, I still owe you four more.”

With that, she left a confused Svend behind as she marched out of her room and again made her way down to the bridge. She wasn't sure what would be different this time but what else could she do? Give up?

Loco answered that question for her, surprising her by meeting her halfway to the bridge. “Good morning, sunshine. Sleep well? Besides the whole, getting blown up again thing?”

Bentley was not in the mood. “Out of the way, Loco.”

He held up his arms in a gesture of surrender. “Come on, don't be like that. We are both part of an elite little club here, one in which we're the only two members. You're just cranky 'cause you haven't learned the club perks yet.”

“Perks?”

Loco's smile was so wide that Bentley knew whatever he had planned was going to be big. “We're going to have some fun, Bentley.”

Chapter Four

Bentley was not encouraged by the gleeful way Loco said 'fun' but she found herself following him nonetheless. Partly out of morbid curiosity, and partly because she wanted to put off having the same conversation with Shango she had already had with him twice, but now with an additional failure to explain.

Loco led her to the kitchen and had her wait while he dug around the fridge. His snickering the whole while was not comforting.

She grew impatient. “Do we really have time for this, Loco? You know as well as I do what's going to happen later.”

He pulled a panel off the bottom shelf, revealing a hidden compartment at the base of the fridge that Bentley had not been aware of. “We have all the time in the world.”

The smell hit Bentley in the face and it became clear that whatever the source of the rotting smell was she had been hunting earlier, it had been hidden in that compartment. “God, Loco, what is that? It smells like regurgitated rotten eggs!”

Loco's expression was filled with childlike mischief. “This is a little toy I discovered on our last pit-stop. The smell is actually from the liquid it's being preserved in, the substance itself is actually odorless.”

Bentley recoiled with a hand over her nose, trying her best to suppress her gag reflex, as Loco pulled out a glass jar of purplish-brown liquid. He took the jar to the sink and dumped its contents down the drain, catching two balls in his hands as they came out. After rinsing them off under the tap they revealed themselves to be clear orbs roughly the size of a quarter.

She let herself breathe again once the last of the liquid had disappeared down the drain, though she figured it would be days before the air scrubbers finally cleared the smell. “What are those?”

Loco remained frustratingly evasive. “The source of our fun. Come on, we need to brew some coffee, I bet Olofi and our dear captain could use the pick-me-up.”

Bentley watched with strange fascination as Loco brewed two cups of coffee and plopped one of the orbs in each. She could figure out what was going to happen next, clearly he was going to give these to Shango and Olofi to drink and have a laugh at whatever negative effect they had, and she knew she should stop him. But Loco's brazenness gave her pause. His attitude led him to frequent arguments with the others, particularly with Shango whose authority he didn't seem to entirely recognize, but to outright poison them …

Compelled to see this to its conclusion, Bentley followed Loco to the bridge, where Shango and Olofi were already gathered.

Shango broke off whatever conversation he had been privately having with Olofi when they entered. “Bentley, you're up early. And Loco… did you ever go to sleep?”

Loco smiled innocently. “What, can't a guy decide to get an early start to the day? Look, I even had time to brew up some coffee. Help yourselves.”

Shango eyed Loco suspiciously. “If this is related to your missing alcohol stash… ” He still took the cup. “A small coffee bribe isn't going to be enough to get them back.”

Loco shrugged as if he had been caught red handed and gave the other cup to Olofi. “Can't blame a guy for trying.”

Satisfied that he had determined the cause of Loco’s trickery, he didn't hesitate to drink from the spiked coffee. “You'll have a chance to earn them back. I was just about to call everyone to the bridge to assign cleaning duties for the ship. If you actually do the job I assign you without complaining, I will return your alchloho nad oyu anc rainmen durnk orf eht erst of eht ript orf lal I acre.”

It took Shango a moment to realize that had just vomited word soup. “Twah eht ellh?”

Olofi's eyes narrowed on the cup in his hand, which he had already drunk from. “Shango, are you alright? Loco you son of a bitch what idd oyu od? Rae oyu unts?”

Loco started laughing like a madman as his two fellow Iwa began to berate him in a nonsense language. Bentley had no idea what was going on. Had Loco's nonsense finally given Shango a stroke?

Bentley smacked Loco on the back of the head, knocking him out of his reverie. “What did you do to them?”

He smiled back at her while rubbing the back of his head. “What we did. You came along for the ride, making you just as guilty in this.” Seeing the daggers flying from Bentley's eyes he decided to explain. “It's a little treat called an ‘Anagram Bit’. It messes with the speech center of the brain and scrambles your words by rearranging the letters in what you want to say. It's used as a party favor in a game where you say a key phrase and everyone else has to guess what it is you are trying to say. It's actually pretty fun… until you get kicked out for coming up with overly sexual key phrases in a game played with children.”

Shango was not amused. “Uyo semmed thiw ym cheesp sa a koej!?”

Olofi seconded the statement. “Cool oyu pustid dastarb!”

“Wow, I can understand when someone is cursing me out even in gibberish.” Loco's smile couldn't get any wider.

Bentley could not believe she had let it come to this. How could she ever get Shango's help saving the ship now? “Wait, people intentionally mess with their brain just for a party game?”

Loco dismissed her concerns with a wave. “It's harmless. You just take one of the Unscramblers and your speech returns to normal.”

“Then give them the Unscrambler now!”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I didn't buy any. Didn't seem like a good investment when the effect wears off in a day anyway.”

Bentley grabbed Loco by the shoulders and shook him. She was angry enough she wished she could shake his stupid head off his body. “What is wrong with you? Don't you remember the ship is going to explode!? We are all going to die!”

Shango's eyes went wide. “Teh hisp si gingo ot plexode?”

Loco gingerly removed Bentley's hands from his shoulders. “It doesn't matter.”

“What do you mean it doesn't matter? We're all going to die!”

“Are we?” He reached out and pinched Bentley's arm, causing her to cry out and recoil. “Last time I checked dead people don't feel pain, and yet you've already 'died' four times.”

Bentley couldn't deny the logic, however much it made her want to punch Loco in his cocky face. “But shouldn't we be working to save the ship? How many more tries do you think we have?”

Loco shrugged. “I don't see why there should be any limit. The storm is clearly sending us back in time when the ship is destroyed. I don't know why only the two of us remember it, but who cares? Eventually you'll figure out a way to save the ship and escape the storm, but in the meantime… why not just enjoy it? We've been given all the time in the world to do whatever we want, why would you want to throw that away? I mean, it's not an ideal situation, it'd be much better if we got time-stuck on a half-casino, half-brewery planet, but I'll take it.”

Shango tried again to get some explanation. “Morst? Tens abck ni item?”

“Hmmm, now that I'm hearing it, this actually is kind of annoying. Probably should have bought the Unscrambler after all.”

Bentley spared an apologetic look for the long suffering captain before turning her anger back on Loco. “So what, you just intend to dick around until I find a way to fix all this?”

“No, I'm saying you should use this time to have some fun, too. Isn't there anything you wanted to do if you had more time? Or something you have not been allowed to do because of Captain Tightass's rules? Nobody is going to remember what you did tomorrow, so there are no consequences to what you do today. Curse someone out, play a prank, or just use the time to catch up on your reading. You're a nerd, you like reading, right? You have from the moment the day starts until the ship enters the storm to do whatever you want. And, you know, once you've had your fill of free time, then you can be the responsible one and save the ship from destruction.”

There was actually some logic in Loco's absurd argument. Bentley had been given very little time for personal stuff lately. Even the down time traveling to Legba's rock hadn't been exactly personal time for her. There was always something Shango needed from them towards the operation of the ship, a consequence of having such a small crew. And that was when he wasn't grilling her for the hundredth time about what she knew about Legba and his strange techno-magic powers. And when she returned to her room Svend was there, and while she wanted to be with him, sometimes their relationship was as stressful as being back on the battlefield.

Was Loco actually right? Could this extra time actually be a blessing? It wasn't as if it was hurting anyone to take a few extra times through the day. The destruction of the ship was certainly unpleasant, but no one would remember it the next day. And it was probably going to take several more attempts to save the ship, anyway. Shango had failed twice even with her warning, and he would almost certainly fail again. Maybe after she had some personal time to clear her head she would be more useful for finding a solution out of this.

Bentley was sold. “Alright, I'm in.”

Loco blinked in surprise. “Really? I thought it would take more convincing than that. I'm proud of you, Bentley. I knew there was someone who appreciated fun buried in there somewhere.”

“So, I can do whatever I want now without fear of the consequences?”

“That's right, because come tomorrow nothing that you did is going…”

Bentley struck out with a short jab to Loco's throat. He dropped back in shock, clutching his throat and wheezing. After the shock wore off he tried to laugh, a raspy, choking sound, and nodded approvingly.

Shango gave Bentley a pleading look. “Selpea ellt em hawt si nigog no?”

“Sorry, Shango. I promise I'll fix everything in a few days. In the meantime, uh… try not to stress too much about the storm. It'll all work itself out.”

With that Bentley left the Iwa behind on the bridge, ready to use her newly discovered free time to its fullest extent.

+++

“Are you certain Shango is okay with this?” Jelly Bean asked, the face projection on her monitor displaying concern. “Perhaps we should double check with him.”

Bentley gave the android a stern look. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Jelly Bean's projected face displayed hurt. “No, of course not, Bentley. If you say you got his permission, of course I believe you.” She walked up to the console on the captain's chair, which Bentley had gone through great lengths to ensure Shango was not around on this pass. “Artificial gravity being disengaged… now.”

One of the ship's many electric hums, the ones that play so constantly in the background that you no longer notice they are there, went silent, and Bentley began to rise from the floor. She waved her arms through the air to swim upwards, then tucked her legs in her arms to do a spiral through the air.

She had been enjoying her time in zero-gravity for only a short while before Shango came in to ruin her fun. He was pulling himself along using grooves he found in the wall, moving with such grace that for a moment Bentley thought he was enjoying the zero-gravity as well. Until she saw the look of anger on his face. Olofi followed in behind him far more clumsily, smacking his head on the doorframe and spiraling face-up towards the ceiling.

Shango pulled himself towards the captain's chair. “What is going on here?”

Bentley floated herself towards him. “I had just realized: I've been in space for a long time, but I can't remember ever taking any time to enjoy the benefits of it. Like zero-gravity. Isn't being weightless kind of fun? Come, swim with me.”

Shango looked at her like she had just proposed some act of indecency. “What has gotten into you, Bentley? Are you drunk?”

She was a little. Loco had shared some of his booze with her. “Of course not.”

He shook his head disappointingly. “Jelly Bean, turn the gravity back on.”

Bentley had been expecting this and kicked off the wall closest to her, launching herself at Jelly Bean. The android was much heavier than her, and thanks to their current weightlessness she was able to grab her by the arm to stop in the exact spot she wanted. Bracing her feet, she pushed off the console hard enough to push her, taking them both to the far side of the room.

Jelly Bean spun in the air, a disoriented face appearing on her screen. “Bentley, what is the meaning of this?”

Bentley spun her around a few more times for good measure. “This is for not using wet floor signs. Do you know how many times I've slipped already?”

“I do not understand.”

She was having such a good time torturing the poor android she didn't realize Shango had already reached the console by the captain's chair himself. The artificial gravity returned with a soft electrical hum and Bentley went crashing into the ground.

She groaned and decided maybe she'd had enough fun for this loop.

+++

“What is this about, Loco?” Shango asked as Loco led him to the lower parts of the ship, an area mostly used for storage.

Loco was doing his best to remain stone-faced, but it was tough when he was filled with so much humor over what he was about to do. “Shango, how often do you know me to be awake this early for any reason? Do you think I'd be bothering you this early if it wasn't important. Trust me, you're going to want to see this for yourself.”

Shango was suspicious, but he felt obligated to see this through just on the rare chance Loco was being serious here. Loco led him to one of the furthest storage rooms, currently empty except for one oddly placed bucket. Shango gave Loco a look that said if this is some kind of joke, I'm going to make you regret it.

Loco gave a fake bow with a sweeping gesture into the room. “After you. I think you'll find this very important.”

Deciding it was best to just get this nonsense over with, Shango took a few steps inside the room and looked around. Nothing immediately caught his attention. “What am I supposed to be looking at, Loco?” No response. “Loco?”

The door slammed shut and there was the sound of the lock being put into place. Shango rushed to the door and slammed on it with his fist. “Loco, are you insane? Let me out of here right now or I'll have you locked up for the entire trip!”

On the other side of the door, Loco rapped lightly with his fingers. “I know you found my hidden stash of high quality booze that I hid under the bottom of the pantry. Despite many, many days looking for it, I cannot seem to find it. You're pretty good at hiding things, you know? We could probably make a decent living as smugglers, no ship inspection would turn up contraband. Anyway, I've decided it would be quicker to just get you to tell me where it is. As soon as you tell me where you've hidden them, I'll let you out.”

Shango slammed at the door harder, creating a resounding bang that would have certainly alerted the rest of the crew if they weren't so far below the main deck. “Loco, I'm giving you one chance…”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard it before. Last time I tried to lock you in your room, but you just called Jelly Bean to let you out. Boy, were you pissed. This time I had to pick a spot where your corteX wouldn't get any signal. Remember when I 'bothered' you about getting a signal booster on the ship, and you told me, 'It's a waste of money,' Bet you're wishing you had invested in one now.”

Shango fiddled with the door handle and tried to use his weight to leverage the door open, but it was useless. “You really think I'm going to give in to this kind of immature temper-tantrum?”

Loco's voice was whimsical. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But I'll find exactly the right kind of temper-tantrum to get you to talk eventually. I'll leave you to think on it a while, come back to check on you later. If you need to use the bathroom, I left a bucket in there for you.”

He left laughing as Shango yelled his name behind him.

+++

“Look, I understand everyone needed some time to unwind after the last battle. I did, too. But we've really let the ship go to hell in the meantime. There's garbage everywhere, the kitchen is filthy, and I'm pretty sure something’s rotting in the fridge. That would explain the smell. It's one thing to need a break, but my ship…”

Bentley cut in on the speech she had already heard a dozen times. “Is not a flying trashcan. Yeah I know. Hey, Shango, you know there's something I've been meaning to ask you. It's been bothering me for a while now.”

Shango was caught off guard by the aggressiveness in Bentley's tone. “Uh, yes, Bentley, what is it?”

She got up from her usual seat at the center table and walked up to the captain's chair. “You are always talking about just how messy the ship is and are lecturing us on how lazy we've been in maintaining it…”

“Always? I haven't said anything since we left…”

Bentley continued, ignoring his protests. “But you live on this ship, too. I've seen you use the kitchen and leave the dishes in the sink. Or put trash on top of the bin when it's already overflowing. You've been slacking off just as bad as the rest of us.”

“Well, I…”

“But you came up with this big list of cleaning chores for us to do, and you're going to put our names next to each one like a kindergartner's chore wheel, and yet… all this time, I don't think I've seen you assign any of those duties to yourself. What exactly do you intend to do while the rest of us are cleaning?”

Shango cleared his throat and looked around at the crew nervously. “Well, someone needs to supervise things. Make sure all the duties are done right…”

Loco laughed loudly, a boisterous, intoxicated laugh that let Bentley know just how much he had already drunk on this loop. “Oh, naughty, naughty, Shango! You were going to sit back and let us do all the work! Not that I was going to do any, anyway, I always get Svend to do my job.”

Svend looked uncomfortable to be dragged into this conversation. “What? I didn't… I don't recall that.”

Bentley grabbed Shango's wrist and flipped through the chore list on his corteX. “If you ask me, the captain should do the biggest, most important job on the ship. Set an example for the rest of the crew and all that. And since you tried to get away with doing nothing, it shouldn't be a pleasant job, either.” She stopped the list at just the duty she was looking for. “Bathrooms. An important task that only someone with your leadership could pull off. Won't you show us how hard work is done by taking on such a challenging task?”

Shango had been caught in a trap, just as he had been planning to trap poor Olofi. “Oh, uh, yes. Of course I can handle the bathrooms myself. That shouldn't be a problem.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “That's our captain. I knew we could count on you.” As she left the bridge she stopped by Olofi just long enough to give him a knowing wink. “You're welcome.”

And one more quick pause after leaving the confused Iwa to give an instruction to Jelly Bean. “Wet floor signs! Anytime you mop, put up a wet floor sign!”

+++

Loco came striding onto the bridge, face brimming with confidence and a cocky stride to his step. All eyes were on him and he basked in their admiration. Shango's eyes were wide with awe, Olofi's mouth was open in a frozen stare at his glory, Jade was shielding her eyes from his greatness, and Svend averted his eyes lest he be blinded by the radiance.

For Loco was walking the bridge completely in the nude. His lucky crewmates got to get a good look at what a truly masculine body looked like. In a way, it was too bad that they would not remember this tomorrow, as this kind of lesson could be very helpful to them when they needed to get a measure of a man.

Shango put his head in his hands. “Why are you naked, Loco?”

Loco stretched out, putting one leg up on a nearby chair and letting it all hang out. “Whatever do you mean? I'm just being comfortable. It is important to be comfortable on your own ship, don't you think?”

The captain grimaced. “Is this because I hid your special stash? For the love of god, man, I'll give them back. Just put on some pants!”

That had not been Loco's intention, and it didn't feel great that, after the dozen different tortures he had tried on Shango to get him to give up the location of his booze, it was the sight of his naked body that had finally broken him. Still, he'd take it. “Why, yes, that is what this is about. Give me the location and I'll grab my pants on the way.”

Shango sighed. “By the trash compactor, on the shelf above. I was going to get you to clean up today, and you would have come across it when you got to the end, but you win. Now get out of here.”

The irony that if he had just done the duty assigned to him in the first place he would have already found his stash was not lost on him. He just chose to ignore the lesson. “Well, I guess I will be off, then. Good day, gentlemen.”

“Just go!”

Loco was practically skipping as he made his way to his precious high quality booze. And the greatest thing about the time loop was he could drink it all, and it would be full again tomorrow! No reason to ration, just enjoy. Maybe he'd even share some with Bentley.

Maybe.

+++

Smack

Bentley might have been enjoying the time this repeating day had granted her, but she really wished there was a better way to start it. She had given up on punishing Svend for his abuse. Technically he had only done it once, on accident, even if she had memories of it happening close to two dozen times. All she did now was gently remove his hand from her face and place it at his side.

She rolled over and tried to decide what she wanted to do with her day. When she had first decided to follow Loco's advice and enjoy the loop she spent one pass timing how long she had between Svend's wake-up slap and the Chesed entering the storm that would destroy it. She had roughly seven hours and forty minutes from beginning to end on each loop. Long enough to watch a movie or a few episodes of whatever shows the ship's computers had stored, read half a book, or entertain the crew with whatever random thing came to her mind. But options were limited: they were in deep space so getting anything new on the computers was out of the question, and they didn't have enough time to get to any information hub to download more. She could learn new skills, but she couldn't physically improve herself because her body seemed to return to its previous state at the start of each loop.

Not that she particularly minded having little to do. While Loco was most excited by the antics he could get away with without any consequences, Bentley was most enthusiastic about having something she had not had for a long time: down time. Time to just lie down and unwind and not have to worry about swords, the fate of humans and androids, or the mystical ways of Legba.

Maybe she would just spend this entire loop in bed. That wouldn't be so bad.

Next to her, Svend stretched and opened his eyes. “Bentley. Uh… hi, I mean, good morning.”

Bentley smiled at him. “Good morning, Svend. Sleep well?”

Svend sat up and pushed the covers off of him. “Yeah, it was good. I mean the sleep, I slept well. I mean, everything was good.”

She didn't feel like getting up so she just kept lying there. “You toss in your sleep, you know?”

He looked embarrassed. “I do? I'm sorry, I… this is all very new to me. Hopefully it doesn't bother you too much.”

“It doesn't… until you smack me in the face and wake me up.” She rubbed at her nose, which was sore, but a pain that she was so familiar with by now it barely bothered her.

Svend went into panic mode. “Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Are you alright?”

Bentley rolled over on her side so she could look more directly at her lover. “I'm fine. Though I'm actually curious about something: are you always going to be so nervous when we're together?” Having no fear of consequences meant she could finally say what she wanted to say without worry.

Apparently, androids could blush. “It's not that I'm nervous. Not really anyway. I'm just… I don't want to mess this up. I don't really know what I'm doing here, and I mean that in more than one way. On this ship, around this crew, here with you. It's all so… strange. And I don't really feel like I fit in. But I want to. And I really want to be with you. I just don't know when the wrong thing is going to come out of my mouth.” His face went from red to white. “Wait, was that the wrong thing?”

She couldn't help but chuckle at the hapless android. “No, that was fine. Look, I know I come off as a stone cold badass…”

“A sexy stone cold badass,” Svend corrected.

“Right, a sexy stone cold badass, but it’s not like I'm going to gut-punch you for saying the wrong thing. We can't always be walking on egg shells with each other. Eventually we have to be comfortable enough with each other to just be ourselves.”

Svend looked like he had been lectured by a teacher. “Yes, I… yes. I know that. I want that, too. I just… it is going to take some practice, I think. Until we're more comfortable. And we just haven't been together that much. I mean, we've been together. But we don't spend a lot of time together during the day. You're always kept so busy with your work on the ship, and I'm not usually given much to do, so I'm just left, you know, sitting around. Maybe when things are less crazy we'll have better luck.”

Bentley remembered Svend saying this once before. And yet when would things be less crazy?

Of course, she had all the time in the world right now. “Then let's spend some time together. Stay here with me today. We'll spend the whole day together.”

Svend was caught off-guard. “What? Well, yeah, that would be great. But won't Shango need you for something?”

As if on cue, a knock came at the door. “If you both are awake, Shango has requested the crew gather on the bridge A-S-A-P. That means, 'as soon as possible.' If you are not awake, please awake now.”

There was no way she was going to Shango's morning janitorial meeting again. “Tell Shango I am not feeling well today, I'll be remaining in bed.”

It was not that easy to get rid of Jelly Bean. “Have you fallen ill? Should I provide you with medical attention? I can take your temperature. Do you prefer oral or anal thermometers?”

Svend came to her rescue. “It's alright, Jelly Bean, I'm in here taking care of her. I have… all the thermometers. You should go to the bridge, I'm sure Shango will need you with Bentley absent.”

There was a moment of silence, as if Jelly Bean was calculating all this. “Okay. If you decide you need medical care, contact me at once.”

Bentley sighed in relief. “Will do. Thanks, Jelly.”

Svend and Bentley were left alone, with nothing to do but spend time together. And they used that time to great effect. Physically, mentally, and emotionally the two of them grew closer, working through the awkwardness of their relationship. By the end of it, Svend could even speak to her without stumbling over all his words. Just most of them.

They knew that they still had a long way to go, that there was still a lot to figure out between them, but their confidence in the relationship soared. It reminded them of why they had wanted to be together in the first place, and taught them that all they really needed was time. They could make this work.

“We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.” Shango's voice on their corteX signaled the end of their day together.

Svend pulled himself up as if getting ready to get out of bed. “Guess we should go up there, huh?”

Bentley shook her head and pulled Svend back to the bed with her. “Don't worry about. Just stay here with me for a little longer.”

He didn't argue, and the two of them spent the end of the Chesed together.

Smack.

Another day, another wake-up slap from Svend. Bentley wasn't even mad this time, she was riding a high on their relationship from yesterday. She shook her lover awake like an eager girl.

Svend groaned and rolled over, then blinked a few times as he came awake. “Bentley. Uh… hi, I mean, good morning.”

Bentley froze hearing Svend's stumbling words. “Good morning, Svend. Sleep well?”

“Yeah, it was good. I mean the sleep, I slept well. I mean, everything was good.”

They were back at square one. This wasn't a surprise, it was exactly how the loop worked. Only she and Loco were able to remember the previous day, for whatever reason. Of course Svend wouldn't remember their day together.

That didn't protect her from feeling gutted. They had come so far, but it didn't matter. Nothing that happened during these loops mattered, because nothing could change. Svend would always be awkward around her, every single day.

Svend looked at her with concern. “You alright, Bentley? You look pale.”

She just about leaped out of the bed, startling Svend, but she did not want to face him right now. “I'm alright. I just need to go. Busy day. See you later.”

“Wait, aren't you at least going to get dressed?” Svend called after her as Bentley stormed out of the room and sought solitude deeper in the ship.

Chapter Five

Olofi scrubbed the toilets vigorously. Bentley had to admit to being impressed by how diligently he attended to his duties, even the shitty ones. It was inspirational, in a way. Not in a 'want to get down on your knees and help' kind of way, but in a 'feel kind of bad for not doing so' kind of way.

“How many times have you lived today?” Olofi asked.

Bentley had already explained it to him several times, but she knew he wasn't taking her seriously yet. They had been through this before. “About thirty or so. There were a couple I decided to sleep in all day which I might not be counting correctly, so the number might be thirty-one.”

He didn't look up from his duty. So committed. “And how many have I been through?”

“The same number, you just don't remember. Most of the time you spend the day cleaning the bathrooms.”

That made him frown. “Well that sucks.”

“It does. I've gotten you out of it before, but I don't have time to do that every day.”

Olofi got up from that toilet and moved on to the shower. “I appreciate the effort.”

They were circling the part of the conversation where Bentley proved it. “Alright, look, we've been through this before. So here's exactly what you're going to do. You're going to grab the white brush. Now you're going to drop it to prove me wrong and try to grab the blue brush. Now you'll realize you left the blue brush behind you. Now you're going to say, 'That's just a coincidence.'”

“That's just coincidence,” Olofi repeated simultaneously.

“Now you're going to say, 'How are you doing that?' And then, 'Okay, fine, I believe you.”

Olofi obediently said the exact words in unison with Bentley. He was staring at Bentley in shock as if she was some kind of witch, his cleaning duties finally forgotten. “So is this some kind of tech-magic that you were taught by Legba, or are you really repeating this same day over and over.”

She smiled, satisfied. “I'm really repeating the day. It starts with me getting smacked by Svend in bed, and ends with the destruction of the ship.”

His face paled as he contemplated what this meant. “The ship's going to be destroyed? We need to do something? What can we do?”

Bentley shrugged. This isn't what she wanted to talk about right now. “There's nothing really we can do. It's too late in the day to even try. But everything will be fine and back to normal after, you just won't remember any of this.”

Olofi seemed like he couldn't decide whether he should be in panic or confused. “So why even tell me this?”

“Because I need your advice.”

“On how to save the ship?”

She frowned. “Don't be ridiculous. I need… moral guidance, I guess you could call it. And you're the only person on this ship who is consistently making the effort to make the right, 'good' decision.”

Olofi was embarrassed to have it put so bluntly. “I try. It's not easy, but… it means a lot for you to say that, Bentley.”

Bentley slapped him on his shoulder in an act of camaraderie. “Oh, Olofi. I would never say that to your face if I thought you were going to remember it tomorrow. It would go right to your head.”

That deflated him quickly enough. “Oh.”

Bentley took a seat atop the lid of the freshly cleaned toilet. She wasn't worried about ruining her clothes, she knew that after Olofi had cleaned it that toilet was clean enough to eat off of. “I've been using these loops as free time, but I'm starting to feel guilty. I mean, you guys don't remember the pranks me and Loco play on you…”

“Loco?”

“Oh, yeah, he remembers, too. Anyway, what I want to ask is: do you think what I'm doing is immoral? I mean, no one is hurt, in the long term, anyway, and I get a bit of stress relief. But it bothered me when Svend didn't remember our day together. We bonded, and today he's back to treating me like a stranger. I have this experience, and he doesn't, and it makes me… uncomfortable. What do you think?”

“I think you're being completely and totally selfish.”

Well, that didn't go as she expected. Bentley realized that she had been seeking reaffirmation that what she was doing wasn't wrong, and grew defensive when she was challenged. “What? How am I selfish? I'm always giving up everything for the sake of others. My memories, my safety, my life. How is spending a little time to myself selfish?”

Olofi removed his big blue cleaning gloves and set them on the sink. “Because you are getting that time at the expense of others. How many times have we died so you could have your fun?”

Bentley was desperate to get him to understand. “It's not like you actually die. You are always fine the next day.”

“But we don't know that when it happens. We experience terror, fear of our demise, maybe even pain as the ship is destroyed, and we don't realize that it is all going to be okay. And that's not mentioning the cruelty of your 'fun.' We might not remember it, but we're still people, your friends, and you're fine with upsetting us? That's cold.”

A stabbing guilt hit her hard. Olofi wasn't holding back here, and unlike him, she would remember this conversation. “But… Loco said…”

He shook his head. “If you're on the same side as Loco, that should be your first indication that you're in the wrong.”

Bentley couldn't argue the point. “You're right. I… I need to fix this. I'll find a way to save the ship.”

Olofi gave her a very serious look. “There is one more thing. A very important thing.” He put his hands on her shoulders in a pleading gesture. “Please, please, don't leave me cleaning these bathrooms for all eternity. I'm a god, you know. I've already suffered enough coming here, I don't deserve this kind of fate!”

She returned the look. “I promise, your days of scrubbing toilets are numbered.”

Bentley marched off with praises of gratitude following behind her. She went up to the main deck, where it didn’t take her long to find who she was looking for.

Loco grinned when he saw her. “Hey, 'Fun Bentley.' That's the nickname I've given this new laissez-faire version of yourself. Been up to anything fun this pass?” He saw the look on Bentley's face and his grin faded. “Oh, no. 'Fun Bentley' is dead, isn't she? 'Stickler Bentley' is back.”

She put her hands on her hips and stared him down. “I should have never listened to you. We've been wasting all this time while our friends have suffered because you convinced me it was okay.”

“Hey, in fairness, you didn't need much convincing.”

Another stab of guilt. “Fair enough. I'll take my share of the blame for our wasted time. But it's over now, so you may want to put off doing anything stupid you don't want your friends to remember, because this cycle is going to be broken sooner rather than later.”

He put on his 'charming' smile, the one he used whenever he wanted something. “Come on, there's no reason to be so hasty. I have a bunch of irons in the fire already. Surely you can give me like … another week to have my fun? Oh, I know! Did I tell you I found where Shango hid my special stash? High quality booze, fresh in the bottle every day. I'll share with you, if you give me some time.”

The anger in her face showed she would not be swayed again. “It's over, Loco. You can help, use your ability to remember the loop to get your friends out of this danger, or you can continue to be a selfish bastard, but either way, I'm going to save our ship and our friends.”

Loco was stunned speechless for perhaps the first time in his life. Bentley turned on her heels to find Shango and gather the rest of the crew.

She needed to make up for lost time.

Chapter Six

“We all agree this is crazy, right?” Olofi, who had been the one to convince her to do something in the first place, was ironically proving to be her biggest skeptic this time around.

She had not succeeded to gather the crew in time on the last pass, but as soon as she received her wake-up slap today she had been rushing to Shango to ask him to call an emergency meeting. Everyone was gathered at the center table on the bridge, but unfortunately she was having a tough time convincing them of the danger they were in. Loco was being unhelpfully quiet, as she might expect from him.

Shango tapped the edge of the table with is fingertips. “Pretty crazy, yes. But not unbelievable. We have all been through many strange and usual things since joining together. Why should this be any different? Do we really want to take a chance that she's telling the truth and do nothing while the ship is destroyed?”

Jade was tapping on her console to get readings from the engine. “I'm not seeing anything unusual from the engines. Everything is reading normal, no sign of the strangely shifting readings that Bentley says should be there.”

Bentley was getting frustrated at their skepticism. Perhaps she should have come privately to Shango like she had those first two days, since he was quick to believe her and could order the rest of the crew to help without telling them why. Then thought it would be best if everyone knew what they were up against and were working together. She was regretting that decision.

We really need to have code-words for these kinds of things. Stuck in a time loop: Clock Spinner Red. Possessed by an ancient alien entity: Double Trouble Blue. Loco has been arrested by a hyper-religious culture for blasphemy: Average Tuesday.

She leaned over the table. It was a good thing it was bolted to the floor or she might have flipped it. “Why would I make this up, Jade?”

Jade waved her hands in front of her in a placating gesture. “I'm not saying you're making it up. I'm saying the evidence doesn't support your version of events. Maybe there's another explanation. In your story, you say you fell a couple of times, right? Maybe you got a concussion and it gave you a weird dream?”

Jelly Bean was standing at her usual spot along the wall closest to the table. “Should I perform an examination on Bentley's head?”

The look that Bentley shot Jade was fierce enough to cause her to recoil. “The only one who is going to have a concussion is going to be you in a second. Look, you never call for assistance until a couple of hours after we all split. The engines must behave normally until then.”

Olofi scratched at his stubble from not shaving yet. “Why are you the only one who remembers?”

Bentley looked over at Loco, who had opted for complete silence in this meeting. She could point out Loco also remembers the loop, but that would put him on the spot, and she still remembered how he behaved when she had brought him to Shango that first time. He could sink her entire argument just by denying it. “I don't know why I remember. Maybe that's one of the keys to figuring out how to break the loop.”

Shango clearly wanted to believe her, but the others made good points. “Do you have any proof of what you say?”

She stopped to think about it. Her only strength was knowledge of how this day would usually play out. Maybe she could use it. “You were going to call a different meeting today, Shango, to assign us cleaning duties. You have a whole list of duties on your corteX you were going to send us. You found Loco's hidden stash of alcohol and were going to hold them ransom unless he picked up all the trash. Olofi was going to be tricked into cleaning the bathrooms. I was going to be assigned the kitchen. And you intended to do nothing yourself on the grounds of 'supervising.' Oh, and you were going to have Jelly Bean clean the floors, but neglect to tell her to put down the wet floor signs. A real hazard.”

All eyes went on Shango, awaiting to see if he would confirm or deny all of this. He cleared his throat, likely hoping to skip past the whole part about him intending to do nothing. “Alright, Bentley. You've convinced me. Let's save the Chesed.”

It felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The others still held their reservations, but they would listen to Shango. Together they would find a way to escape the storm.

Shango took control of the meeting from there. Unfortunately, his first idea was a familiar one. “So it seems the problem stems from not being able to get back into hyperspace after switching the sub-light and getting close to that storm. It seems then the answer is simple: don't leave hyperspace today. We should be able to skip right past the area of space bypassing your mystery storm. Jade can perform a thorough inspection of the engines tomorrow.”

Bentley hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it had to be done. “We tried that already. The ship dropped out of hyperspace on its own and was still destroyed.”

Shango's eyes narrowed in an expression that Bentley knew meant he was in deep thought. “Then I suppose the problem lies with the engines themselves. We'll put all our resources towards supporting Jade's investigations into the hyperdrive and figure out what the problem is before we reach the storm.”

Unfortunately, this plan had also not worked out for them, as Bentley then explained. “When we tried that, we ran out of time. Jade was just beginning to understand what the problem was, but said she might need days or weeks to fully understand it and devise a solution. That's time we don't have.”

Jade gave Bentley an interested look. “Do you remember exactly what I said? What had I figured out?”

Bentley wracked her brain, trying to dig back past a hazy month of misbehavior to a conversation she had overheard as the ship was torn apart. “Something about the hyperdrive attempting to operate in multiple states. I didn't really understand any of it.”

With the brightness in Jade's eyes, Bentley might have told her that her favorite celebrity was waiting in the Engine Room, as opposed to a catastrophic problem that could lead to all their deaths. “Very interesting. I wonder how that is even possible. This is pretty exciting.”

At least someone is having a good time with certain doom.

Shango rose from his seat and walked over to the viewport looking out into the blackness of space. The crew was quiet while they waited for him to give an order that would save them. Bentley never lost hope that something was kicking around in his brain. Something that his centuries of experience among mortals had taught him would help them out of this mess.

What he said was what she least expected. “I think we need to face the fact that the Chesed is doomed. This time around, at least.”

That caused a rabble from the people at the table. Olofi and Sven went immediately into the protests that it was wrong to give up, Jade was making assurances that she could figure out the problem, even Jelly Bean was getting in on the action, coming up with other possible courses of action that had not yet been explored.

Shango held up his hand for silence. “Listen to me. The problem clearly has to do with our engines, we’ve figured as much out in previous passes of this day. But we also know that Jade can't solve the problem in the small number of hours we have available. Bentley recalls her saying she needed days or weeks on this problem. There's just no way we are going to be able to get to the bottom of it in the time we have.”

Svend was looking dejected. “So, we just give up?”

That didn't match Shango's eyes, which shone with resolve. “No. We keep working. If Jade needs days or weeks, we'll give it to her. We won't quit until we've solved this problem.

Jade stopped tapping on her console at the mention of her name. “Wait, but I'm not going to remember anything after the reset. My work will never make any progress if I can't get it all done in one day.”

“You won't remember anything, but she will.” Shango pointed at Bentley. “Just like now, when she told you about the hyperspace multi-phasing problem, something that had taken you an entire day to figure out you learned in moments. Start working on the next phase, then, before the storm destroys the ship, teach it to Bentley. She can pass that on to you in the loop and you can start from there, and then the next loop, and so on, until eventually you have come to the solution.”

Bentley saw one major hole in the plan. “Uh, excuse me, Shango. I don't know anything about engines, and I rarely understand what Jade is talking about when she's working on them. I just give her readings and try not to confuse L's with 1's. There's no way I could repeat back Jade's findings in accurate enough detail to be useful.”

“Not without context!” Jade chimed in, her excitement returned. “You know, I've always wanted someone I could talk shop with. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who gets excited about getting into the guts of a big-ol' engine and seeing what makes it tick. When I'm done teaching you, you'll be ready to maintenance your own hyperspace engines.”

And that's how Bentley found herself enrolled in Jade's Very Special Starship Engine Mechanics class. At first she was sure she would be the only student, but to her surprise Loco showed up to the very first class.

Bentley wondered what awful thing he was planning being there. Was he trying to sabotage her to keep the loop going? “Shouldn't you be off doing something dumb like setting Shango's shoes on fire?”

Loco just shrugged. “I'm bored, and like you said, I can't do too much stupid if there's a chance you're going to fix the loop. So I'm just going to sit here and mope and remind you of what you've done.” He thought for a moment. “But that whole shoe idea was a pretty good one. Wonder if I have time for it...”

Jade, for her part, was an incredibly eager teacher. “I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about how our hyperspace engines work, starting from the beginning. We're going to learn physics, guys!”

And that was when Bentley was subjected to the worst torture of her life: advanced mathematics. She wasn't exactly dumb, quite the opposite, but the levels of theoretical math that Jade was throwing at her was far beyond anything she had ever been taught. The worst part was that any notes she took disappeared when the loop restarted. She had to rely entirely on memory, and on several passes she had to be retaught things Jade already went over because she was remembering them wrong.

First there was basic hyperspace theory. Bentley found it weird that it was still technically considered a 'theory' when the practical application (hyperspace travel) was so common, but Jade informed her that though they could build technology that used hyperspace travel, the way it worked was still fairly mysterious, and the common theory had a few holes that were the subject of scholarly debate.

Then she had to learn all the physical parts of the Chesed's hyperspace engine. For this Jade took the entire engine apart to show Bentley how it worked, piece by piece. “Good thing everything’s going to go back to the way it was after the reset, otherwise I have no idea how to put this all back together,” Jade joked. Or at least, Bentley thought it was a joke.

Once Bentley had a solid enough grasp on how hyperspace worked and all the associated terminology, it was time to learn what the readings meant. She was refreshed on where all the readouts in the Engine Room were located, and run through what standard values they could expect, the various units of measurement, and what kind of errors one might encounter when taking a reading. It still didn't explain to Bentley why a lowercase 'l' and the number '1' had to look so similar on the displays.

Bentley was even given some hands-on time with the engines, under Jade's less than careful supervision. “Learning by mistake is great,” she liked to say. She was really taking advantage of the fact that any damage Bentley did to the engines would be cleared when time looped again.

Eventually Bentley learned enough that Jade was confident she could repeat her findings without messing up too much and work began for real in determining the cause of the engine problems. Bentley's part every day was to convince everyone that the time loop was real (a task that became easier and easier as she memorized more of the conversation and could repeat it verbatim), then memorize a bunch of facts and figures for Jade to repeat to her on the next loop.

It was about two weeks into her work with Jade when the engineer postulated a theory as to why Bentley specifically retained her memories. “You said you wake up every morning with Svend hitting you in the head?”

The wake-up slap was just a fact of life that Bentley had come to see as unavoidable, as inevitable as death and taxes. “Yeah. In the upper face and forehead.”

“This is just a theory, but I think that slap is the reason you retain your memories. Let's call it 'cranial recalibration.' Let's say this is not true time travel, but a kind of… reset button that is hit every day. You know, game over, start again from the last checkpoint. Ever play any video games? Never mind, not important. During the reset, everything is set to exactly the state it was at the point in time we have been returned to. That includes our memories. But what if the 'smack' is hitting you at the exact moment your memories are being reset? You may be causing a glitch in the system where your brain is jolted from the reset state to the one that has all your memories.”

Bentley remembered Loco telling her that his days each started with him smacking his head while looking for alcohol. She hadn't made the connection that they both began their days with a head injury. What were the odds? “I think you're on to something, Jade. And to think, I've been grouchy at Svend all this time for hitting me in the morning, but if it wasn't for that we might have been caught in this destructive loop forever.”

Jade sighed. “You're so lucky. I wish someone was hitting me in the head at the exact moment of the reset.”

“Yeah, right.” Bentley rubbed the sore spot on her nose. “Lucky.”

With Bentley's help, Jade was eventually able to reason the cause of the Chesed's engine failures during the storm. Bentley knew the answer had come to her when Jade did a little excited dance like a little girl asking her parents to use the potty while saying a bunch of 'Oh!'s and 'Ah!'s. She called a crew meeting to go over her findings.

“Who here is familiar with quantum theory?” she asked unironically, and actually looked a little disappointed when no one raised their hand. “Oh, well, guess it's not important that you know that much. The crib notes are: quantum stuff is really, really small, and at that scale things get kind of wacky. Quantum particles don't behave the way everything else in physics does. Usually this doesn't mean much to us, cause at our scale, we don't notice any of the weird stuff that goes on down there. But in this case, it is our problem.”

She tapped a few buttons on her console causing a projection to pop up that seemed to show a cluster of swirling clouds interspersed with frequent lightning. “What Bentley has been experiencing as a 'storm', well I guess technically what we all have been experiencing but only Bentley remembers, is actually a field of unstable quantum particles, doing… well, I could postulate all day, but it would all be theory and you wouldn't really understand anyway. Needless to say, it is an incredibly strange occurrence that I don't think anyone has ever observed before, so in a way, we are quite lucky.”

This time it was Shango who muttered, “Lucky.”

Jade tapped on her console a few more times, and the projection changed to one of the engines. “Basically, the shielding that the Chesed has to protect us from things like cosmic radiation aren't really rated for this kind of quantum clusterfuck. It starts to mess with our internal system, hence the ship being observed tearing itself apart from the inside. And more importantly, it messes with our engines, whose hyperspace capabilities are also rooted in quantum theory. That's why the engines show themselves to be running in multiple states: there's the true, operational state, and a chaotic one to match the storm outside.”

Shango looked like he had grown tired of pretending to understand what she was talking about. “So how do we fix it? When we tried to simply stay in hyperspace and avoid the storm, the engines stopped us in the storm, anyway.”

“Good question! See, the engines and the storm are linked in a way, now. So the state of the hyperspace-granting parts of our engines now match the chaotic state of the storm, which they probably have since the first time our ship entered it. We can input whatever command we want into them, but those commands will be ignored in favor of the engine seeking out the storm. Of course, the ship can't survive being in the storm, so it is destroyed, and somehow in doing so is reset to an early point in time. I'm afraid I still am struggling with that part. There's a theory of time travel involving quantum probability that might have something to do with it.”

Shango rested his head on the table. “Fixing it, Jade! Fixing it! How?”

Jade blinked, as if she suddenly remembered where she was. “Oh, uh, right. Sorry, just got a bit excited. Well, I have a theory.” Another projection replaced the current one, this one of the ship with what looked like a large bubble around it. “We can't avoid going into the storm, but we might be able to come up with a defense against it. A bubble created using the hyperspace engines by reversing the particles that have caused its new states should work. If we can survive passing through the storm, the engines should return to normal and we could resume our journey in hyperspace.”

Shango breathed out loudly. “Good, let's do that.”

“Well, there are a lot of calculations to do, yet. Enough to keep me busy for days. I'm going to need some more help to finish it.” Jade turned to Bentley, who could not hide under the table in time. “You ready for more fun work?”

Bentley sighed. “Yeah. Lucky me.”

+++

A few days later, they were ready with the calculations for Jade's 'hyperspace bubble.' Despite all of Jade's lecturing, very little of the formula actually made sense to Bentley, but she was fairly confident she was able to repeat it bit by bit so Jade could make the final few tweaks to prepare the engines.

Today was the day they were finally going to try and break out of the loop.

As Jade worked and Bentley observed in the off chance she needed to learn something for one more go around, Loco approached her. “So this is it, huh.”

Bentley's head hurt from cramming and she wasn't really in the mood for whatever Loco had to say right now. “You going to beg me for one more chance to do something stupid consequence free? Cause it's a little late for that.”

Loco scoffed. “Nah, I'm done with that. This ship is actually pretty boring, when you think about it. If I could only get time-stuck on a planet of loose women and booze … ah, well. Go get time moving again so I can get some new booze, would you? Even my high quality stuff is starting to lose its luster after I've had it every single day.”

Somehow this didn't do much to disarm Bentley's frustration with him, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. The time was getting close to activate the bubble.

Back on the bridge, Shango called everyone together to let them know they were approaching the storm. On the screen, the roiling, occasionally lightning-lit clouds were being prominently displayed. The crew was gathered around the screen, nervously watching the encroaching storm. It was a scene Bentley had become all too familiar with.

And yet this tension was something she hadn't felt in a while. She had grown so used to the destruction of the Chesed, so desensitized to it, that she had barely felt more than if she was watching a rerun of an old sitcom. But now there were stakes. This was the culmination of everything they had been working on. If they couldn't break the loop here, they might never be able to, or they would all die.

And that thought was horrifying.

Jade was the only missing crew member on the bridge, since she was needed in the Engine Room when this all went down. Bentley was required at the helm, as the only other person in the crew who knew the inputs into the hyperspace navigational commands to complete the bubble. In theory.

An alert that Shango had set up on the screen flashed red and he called out the order. “We're entering into the storm now. Everyone, ready!”

Bentley took a seat in the captain's chair and breathed deeply to steady herself. She knew her part by heart, or at least she hoped she did, but it was still nerve wracking.

Jade's voice sounded over her corteX. “The engines are prepped and ready to create the hyperspace bubble. It's all you now, Bentley.”

Bentley opened up the navigational commands on the captain's console and input the passcode to manually override all the default calculation software. She entered a long string of variables that the software thought were commands for traversing hyperspace to their next destination but should, hopefully, instead get the engines to produce the bubble around the ship. There was only a brief moment to double check the variables she had entered before it was time to put it to the test.

The alert on the screen in front of Shango began to blink. “Now, Bentley!”

Bentley activated the hyperdrive and the engines came the life. The ship began to shake, and at first Bentley was sure that their timing must have been off and it was too late. But the shaking proved to be much milder than the kind the storm was usually responsible for, and right now the ship seemed to be holding together. Not that it stopped her from gripping the captain's chair so tight her knuckles went white.

Jade's voice crackled again onto their corteXes. “The hyperspace bubble was successfully created! We just need to ride it to the end of the storm. Good work, everyone.”

Bentley let out a sigh of relief and glanced over to the viewport on the opposite side of the bridge. The storm raged outside, and this close Bentley could see that what they took as clouds on their screens was actually millions, billions of long, impossibly twisted threads, speckled with an infinite number of white sparkles that illuminated the strands enough for them to be made out in the blackness of space. Sporadically one of these would suddenly grow bright along its entire length, creating an effect that looked like lightning. For such a destructive force, it was actually kind of beautiful.

Especially when it was kept several meters away from the ship by a white hot, almost translucent bubble that surrounded it.

It seemed they were really going to make it and Bentley let herself relax. Turns out, she had relaxed prematurely.

The shaking of the ship began to grow worse, from a low rumble to a full scale tossing of its insides. The standing crew were tossed from their feet, and Bentley had to clutch the captain's chair for dear life to keep from being thrown from it.

Jade's voice called out over their corteXes, “The hyperspace bubble is failing! Our engines couldn't…”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off as a series of explosions rocked the ship. The power went out and the bridge was thrown into complete and total darkness.

Not again, Bentley thought as she desperately slammed on the console to try and bring it back to life. Not again not again not again! This was supposed to be it!

Though she couldn't see it, she could recognize the sounds of the bridge tearing itself apart around her.

Somewhere, Shango was shouting. “Bentley! Don't forget…”

...

Smack.

Chapter Seven

Jade looked over the calculations for the hyperspace bubble that Bentley had written out for her. She was quite excited about them, and made a lot of comments as she looked through them about how her past selves were geniuses.

Bentley was feeling less enthused. She had gathered the crew together again, as she always did, but she wasn't sure what good it was going to do. They had failed, and it was clear that they were never going to get out of this loop. She tucked her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, shaking herself gently.

She had wanted more time to herself. Now she was going to get all the time in the universe.

“Hey, can I see that for a second?” That was Loco's voice, which was out of place enough here in the Engine Room that Bentley was thrown out of her self-imposed misery.

Loco was looking over the sheets of formula, a very bemused Jade watching him as he scanned sheet after sheet. “Here, this is what I was looking for.” He passed one of the pages back to Jade. “This part here is about engine power outputs, right? But isn't there a more efficient equation, one that's used for extreme-distance long-term space travel.”

Jade examined the sheet and scratched at her chin. “Why, yes, yes there is. I hadn't considered it because we don't use it often, but if an exploration ship is going out into deep space, where there is nowhere to recharge the engines, and intends to be there for a while it requires incredibly efficient energy use from its hyperdrive. If the problem with our last attempt was the engines failing to keep the bubble open for the length of the storm, than perhaps …” She trailed off into a quiet muttering, putting the sheets down and scribbling all over Bentley's formulas with newly modified ones.

Bentley's shock was apparent on her face as Loco cockily strode past her, a stupid grin on his face. “How did you – were you actually paying attention during Jade's lectures this whole time.”

He scoffed. “What, me, pay attention to that nerdy shit? Of course not. But you two were always going on and on about that crap, and I was around and had to hear it. I must have picked up some stuff through osmosis.”

She could pick up the small signs of his discomfort and knew he was being dishonest. He would never admit it, but he wanted to help. She smiled at him, a silent thanks for giving them new hope.

Loco's cocky grin returned. “Or maybe it’s just because I'm an all knowing god and I had the answer all along. You really should be nicer to me. Maybe leave the occasional offering.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

There wasn't much for Bentley to do while Jade worked through the new calculations so she sat back and tried to relax. It wasn't easy; even with the new possibility of success Loco had given them, she was still feeling discouraged. If this wasn't enough, would there be another miracle?

She slowed her breathing and forced herself to calm down. Her mind became clear as she forced all the negative thoughts away. What she needed was a few moments of quiet. Peace.

Calm.

Finally, Bentley. I've been trying to reach you for weeks.

The voice in her head came so suddenly that it startled Bentley out of her calm and she leaped to her feet with a startled yelp. Jade looked up from her notes to see what happened.

“Uh, sorry, stubbed my toe,” Bentley lied poorly. Fortunately, Jade didn't need a lot of convincing to go back to her scribbling.

Bentley knew that voice. It was one she had spent a long time around as he had taught her to use the sword and introduced her to meditation. The mysterious man who laid at the end of this trip the Chesed was taking.

Legba.

She sat back down and ran through the meditation exercises he had taught her. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Clearing the mind of all other thoughts, focus just on breathing. Let all the concerns of the material world just slip away, inconsequential.

As she fell into her meditation, she began to sense the familiar presence of Legba through the mental connection they shared. It was just like when he had been mentoring her. During that time, he would only communicate to her through their connection. He could talk physically, but when he did he insisted on being a cryptic asshole. Well, he was still a cryptic asshole when talking mentally, but at least then he would occasionally say something useful.

It was different, trying to communicate from this distance instead of meditating next to each other. She hadn't even been aware it was possible. Everything was distorted, like speaking to someone over the phone with a bad connection. But even with the distortion, the form that appeared in front of her mind’s eye was undeniably Legba. With his dirty face, unkempt beard, and clothing that looked like it may have never been washed, Legba looked more like a homeless drifter than one of the most powerful figures in a universe that included gods.

He smiled when Bentley appeared before him, though there was a tinge of disappointment in his eyes. “You haven't been practicing your meditation much, have you? To be thrown so quickly and easily from our contact like that.”

Bentley wanted to make sure she projected a frown at him, but grabbing onto any emotion threatened to knock her out of her meditation so she maintained a neutral expression instead. “Good to see you again, too, Legba. And no, I haven't been meditating a lot lately. I … haven't had the time.”

Legba smiled knowingly at her. “Have you not had nothing but time lately?”

It was sometimes frustrating how you could get nothing past him. Was mind reading one of his powers? “Well, I guess you could say that. We were traveling – to you, actually, since you decided to disappear in the middle of the battle without saying anything, and we came across – I guess what Jade calls a field of unstable quantum particles. It's been destroying our ship repeatedly, but only Loco and I remember it. We're trying to devise a way out of it but … I'm not sure if we're on the right track.”

The lack of reaction on his face told Bentley that Legba already knew all of this. “That is why I have been trying to get in touch with you. I had sensed this quantum instability in the system, it has been interfering with some of my own abilities, as well. I did some searching for the cause, and wouldn't you know it. I wasn't the least bit surprised when I found that you were in the center of it. The universe seems to draw you into these kinds of things, don't it? Or do you seek them out? Perhaps this is the result of a heart for adventure.”

If it was possible for her to roll her eyes in meditation she would have. “Hardly. So are you going to help us?”

Legba, as usual, seemed allergic to giving a direct answer. “It is not just you and your ship who this impacts. Each time your ship is torn apart and is sent back to its original state in the moments before the fluctuations began, the quantum instability grows larger. It has already expanded to surrounding systems, and the growth is exponential. A few more times and the whole galaxy may be stuck in your quantum loop, forced to relive the same day over again just as you and your crew do.”

The shock of that nearly knocked Bentley right back out of her meditation. Being stuck in the loop was awful, but she never imagined it endangered anyone not aboard the Chesed. All that time she had selfishly spent on herself was actually putting the whole galaxy in danger. If she couldn't fix this, it would all be her fault.

But Legba still hadn't agreed to help, though she was sure he knew something useful. She needed to try a different tack “You know the plan we have devised, where we create a hyperspace bubble to escape the storm — well, the field of unstable quantum particles we have been calling a storm because it kind of looks like one — It failed the first time but we just made a change to our engine's power efficiency calculations. Are we on the right track?”

“Oh, absolutely. You have done everything that can possibly be done to increase your ship's chance of survival. I'd say your plan has a 96.4% chance of success.”

If they weren't separated by thousands of light years she would have hugged the dirty old bastard. “That's a relief.”

“And that is why your ship will certainly be destroyed again.”

That is what it took to knock Bentley back out of her meditation. She swore, drawing Jade's attention, and stormed off from the Engine Eoom to find a place where she could be more alone.

What the hell did he mean that the ship would be destroyed again? Didn't he just say they had a greater than 90% chance of success? Legba's mysterious crap was really getting the better of her this time.

Bentley went back to her room, locked the door, and had her corteX play some relaxing music to drown out the persistent electrical hums of the ship. She didn't feel calm right now, she felt like running around her room and throwing things in panic-rage. But she kept at it, waiting and waiting until the rush of energy faded and her body naturally started to relax. She blocked out the worldly distractions, sought peace, and eventually found it.

Legba was shaking his projected head when she found her connection with him again. “This is why you need to practice your meditation more. You are as easily startled as a cat when dogs are nearby.”

Bentley had to force herself to suppress her growing frustration. “Well, can you blame me? You just said nothing we can do is going to stop the loop, which is going to expand to encompass the entire galaxy!”

“I said no such thing. I told you your plan has a 96.4% chance of success. That's pretty good.”

“You also said our ship was going to be destroyed anyway.”

“Yes.”

They were going around in circles. Bentley needed to pose a more specific question to get anything useful from him. “Why is it going to be destroyed if our plan has such a good chance of success?”

Legba smiled, approving of the question. “What do you know about probability at a quantum scale?”

“Let's pretend I know nothing about it.”

“Oh, it is an interesting topic, I suggest you look into it. A simple way to look at it is this: whenever there is a chance of something happening it both happens and doesn't happen. The world we perceive is the world of the most likely probability, whatever has the highest chance of happening is what occurs. That is why you can sit in a chair and not randomly slide through it, even though there is a chance that the particles composing you and those of your chair could sync up in exactly the right manner for you to phase through it, that is incredibly unlikely, and thus in our world it does not happen. But while it might not happen in our perceptions, it does happen, in a different quantum state of our universe. There are an infinite number of quantum states for our universe, with an infinite number of Bentleys trying an infinite number of times to get out of the time loop she found herself in.”

Sometimes she wished the answer to things was just, ‘Because its magic, that's why'. Much easier to understand. “Are there any Bentleys who all this makes sense to?”

“Why, yes. An infinite number of them.”

She sighed, or she tried to, but it came across on her mental projection as a kind of whistle. “So, if I'm following this at all, you're saying that because there's a chance that our ship will escape and a chance it will be destroyed, both things are going to happen. But shouldn't we perceive the world in which we escape since that is the higher probability.”

He gave a little clap. “Yes! Very good. And normally, you would be absolutely right. But this time, there is an additional variable that is throwing a new complication into the mix.”

There was always something. “And what is that?”

Legba pointed his finger at the top of her head. “Your memories. At the quantum level, things behave differently depending on whether they are being observed or not. And you and the Iwa have already observed the destruction of the ship, that is your expected result now, and so that will continue to be your perceived universe. You can try as many times as you like, but because your memories will continue bringing you to the same conclusion no matter what you bring your probability of success to.”

It took effort not be forced out of her meditation again, but she managed to hold on to the link. “So you're saying that because Loco and I remember the ship being destroyed, it's going to be destroyed?”

Legba paused and looked thoughtful. “Why, yes, I guess that is the simplification of the matter. Perhaps I should have just said that instead of going through the whole explanation about quantum probability.”

“So it's hopeless.”

“Oh, no. No, no, not hopeless. If your memories are the problem, the solution is easy.” He held out his hand as if handing over the solution. “You simply must erase your memories.”

Bentley succeeded in making her projection frown. “I've already lost my memories once. It's not a pleasant experience.”

“Well, not all of your memories this time. Just the ones about your time in the loop. Oh, and I suppose you will need to leave the knowledge of how to escape the storm, otherwise things will just start from the beginning again.”

“Won't that knowledge be contradictory without my memory of how I got it?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely so. But I wouldn't worry too much about it, humans are very resourceful in explaining away such phenomenon.”

If there's one thing Bentley never wanted to happen again, it was to have her memories messed with. If there was a second thing, though, it would be to be stuck in a time loop aboard the Chesed for all eternity. “So how would I go about erasing this memory?”

Legba wore an excited smile. “I will teach you how to make one of my favorite tools: the Memory Scooper. I believe you will be able to construct one just out of the stuff on your ship, though you may have to cannibalize some systems. How attached are you to the ship's life support?”

“We kind of need that. For breathing.”

“So spoiled. Well, we'll figure something else out. Anyway, what you're going to want to do is get the largest spoon you have…”

“I'm sorry,” Bentley cut in. “Did you say spoon?”

“Yes, a spoon. I suppose it doesn't technically have to be a spoon, any vessel with a handle and a curved end will work, but it's a Memory Scooper. It just doesn't feel right without the scooping motion.” He mimed a gesture like scooping up ice cream from a bowl.

“Fine, I’ll get a spoon. What's next?”

+++

“So you're going to stab this thing into my head and that's going to scramble my brains?” The tone of Loco's voice showed what he thought of the idea.

Bentley was holding the makeshift Memory Scooper Legba had instructed her to build. The old serving ladle was now covered in wires, transistors, and miniature energy cells, and at the deepest part of the ladle's curve there was a nasty looking spike, which all the aforementioned wires led to. “Not stab, exactly. It's more like a scooping motion … in your ear … with a spike.”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds much better. Thanks for clearing that up, Bentley.”

She waved the converted ladle in front of him and he flinched. “Look, we don't have time, okay? The loop is about the start again. If we don't do this, the whole galaxy can be caught with us. Is that what you want?”

“The more the merrier?”

Olofi, standing off in the corner by the viewport, laughed. “Wow, Loco, I never knew you were such a coward.”

He glared at his fellow Iwa. “Who are you calling a coward?”

“Well, you're scared of a little needle, aren't you? And here I thought you were this big, tough guy. I only wish I was going to remember this, I'd never let you live it down.”

Loco grumbled but couldn't do anything about it. “Fine! Let's just get it over with.”

Bentley handed the device over to Shango, who looked it over warily. “Everything should already be set up according to Legba's instructions. Hit the button on the front side for Loco, and do the one in the back for me. A little green indicator will flash when the appropriate memories have been removed. Hopefully, I did all the building and setup right, and you're not about to erase my knowledge of the alphabet and how to wipe my own ass.”

Loco frowned. “Olofi's wiping mine if I forget how.”

Olofi was not smiling anymore.

Shango turned the device over in his hand. “Are you sure about this, Bentley?”

“No, but there's no other choice. We're out of time.”

He nodded, and flipped the switch on the bottom to turn the power to the device on. “Good luck, Bentley. See you soon.”

Chapter Eight

Smack.

Bentley received a rude wake-up call in the form of a smack to the face. She rolled off the bed and spun to face whatever it was that had decided to assault her in her sleep, but all she was faced with was the slumbering form of her lover, Svend. Apparently he had rolled over in his sleep and accidentally hit her. The smarting in her face did not care that it was an accident.

She got up on the bed and gave him a light kick with the edge of her foot, flipping him to his back. He moaned and rolled over, intent on going back to sleep. “Oh, no you don't.” She prodded him with her foot some more, pushing him gently towards the edge of the bed until he slid right off it. There was a crash followed by a scrambling sound as the covers followed after him.

Svend slowly rose from the floor, grumbling and rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes. “What was that for? You know, if you wanted to wake me there are gentler ways to go about it.”

There was something familiar about that response, though Bentley couldn't put her finger on exactly what. Well, this probably wasn't the first time she had knocked him off the bed, he had probably said something similar before.

What followed was an awkward conversation between the two new lovers, as were many of their conversations when the two of them were alone. Their relationship was new and confusing to both of them, and neither really knew how to behave.

Fortunately, they were both saved from their inability to communicate by a knock on the door. It was Jelly Bean. “If you both are awake, Shango has requested the crew gather on the bridge A-S-A-P. That means, 'as soon as possible.' If you are not awake, please awake now.”

A short time later, Bentley made her way down to the bridge, where Shango declared that today they would be cleaning the ship to make up for allowing it to get in such a bad state over the past few weeks. “...There's garbage everywhere, the kitchen is filthy, and I'm pretty sure something’s rotting in the fridge. That would explain the smell. It's one thing to need a break, but my ship is not a flying trashcan.”

Loco was in a particularly bad mood since learning that Shango had hidden his special stash of booze and wouldn't return it until after the ship was cleaned, and when he was in a bad mood he got even more sarcastic than usual. “Well, your ship does carry trash, and it flies, and what's a can anyways but a metal vessel for carrying stuff? So I'd say, technically, it is a flying trashcan.”

This conversation also felt familiar to Bentley. When was the last time Shango had instructed them to clean the ship? Maybe this just felt like déjà vu because there was always conflict between Loco and Shango when it came time to straighten up the ship.

Eventually duties were assigned. Poor Olofi had gotten himself trapped into cleaning the bathrooms. Loco took Svend to help him collect trash, though everyone knew he was probably going to have Svend do all the work while he searched for where Shango had hidden his booze. And Bentley was left in the kitchen.

As Bentley cleared out the fridge, she couldn't figure out the source of the rotting smell that was stinking up the kitchen. It certainly wasn't anything on any of the shelves. On a hunch, she decided to search for a hidden compartment underneath the bottom shelf, and was surprised when she found one. I never knew this was here. Wonder what made me check for it? I must just have great instincts.

In the hidden compartment she found a jar of the foulest smelling liquid. She had no idea what it was, but whatever it was, its time in their kitchen was done. The entirety of its contents went down the drain including two small balls.

She had been cleaning the kitchen for around an hour and making good progress when Jade's voice came over her corteX. “Hey, guys. I'm getting some weird readings down here in the Engine Room. It's probably nothing, but I could use a hand to take some measurements while I run some tests. Any volunteers?”

Olofi was the first to volunteer, but he was shut down immediately by Shango, who told him that he needed to finish his assigned duty.

Bentley started making her way towards the Engine Room. “I'm on my way, Jade.”

She was walking quickly as she made her way down the hall that would take her to the access ladder for the Engine Room. So quickly, in fact, that she nearly slipped, and would have if she hadn't noticed the floor was wet in time. Thankfully, she was able to catch herself in time and keep on her feet with nothing more than an embarrassing stumble.

Jelly Bean rushed over to her. “My apologies, Bentley. Shango has instructed me to mop all the floors on the ship. I am glad you were not hurt.”

Bentley waved it off. “No harm done, I suppose. But you really should put down a 'wet floor' sign when you mop. The next person might not have my cat-like reflexes and could seriously hurt themselves.”

“I will make a note of that. Thank you, Bentley.”

She reached the Engine Room and helped Jade run her diagnostics by reading out loud the outputs on the various panels located around the room. Bentley instinctively knew she had to be careful to read them correctly, because certain digits, like the lowercase 'l' and the number '1' looked frustratingly alike.

While they were working, another revelation came to her, though she wasn't sure from where. “Hey, Jade. Do you think it is possible the reason the readings keep changing isn't because of a bug in the sensors, but because the engines are trying to run in multiple states at the same time.”

Jade pulled herself away from her work to shoot a curious glance at Bentley. “That's shouldn't be possible. It's far more likely a sensor problem. Although … if it was something so strange and unique as what you suggest, that would be really interesting. And much more fun to test for.”

A short amount of testing later and Bentley's theory ended up being proven correct. Jade was as impressed with Bentley as she was excited about the implication. “That was brilliant, Bentley. Where did you even come up with that idea? I would have never considered it.”

She just shrugged, legitimately unable to come up with an explanation of where her stroke of genius had come from. “Maybe it is from my lost memories? Perhaps I was like a physicist before all this?”

Jade beamed. “That would be so cool! I'd be curious to see what else you know, I'd love someone to talk shop with. But first … we should probably try to figure out what's causing this problem and how to fix it before it causes something bad.”

They did not get much longer to work together before Shango broke in on their corteX. “We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.”

Bentley and Jade made their way carefully past Jelly Bean's slippery floors and got back to the bridge in time to see the rest of the crew gathered close around the captain's chair. Everyone looking up at a screen projected directly in front of it. The screen showed what looked like a storm, vortexes of dark clouds lit up briefly by flashes of blinding lightning, all swirling rapidly together in a chaotic fury.

Bentley's first instinct was that they were looking at a storm raging on some distant planet somewhere, which was the only thing that made sense. But there was this gut feeling that this was something else, something that made a lot less sense. “Is that … is that storm here?”

Shango was seated in the captain's chair, entering commands on his console. “That's right. This is right in front of us. All around us, actually, surrounding us. We're about to fly right into it.”

Olofi hadn't removed his thick blue scrubbing gloves, which for some reason looked natural on him to Bentley. “That shouldn't be possible. How can there be a storm in the middle of space?”

“I don't know, but I don't like it. Better not take any chances. I'm going to turn the main engines back on and we'll jump past them. They ready to go, Jade?”

Bentley interrupted before Jade could speak. “Shango, I don't think that's going to be possible.”

He looked away from his console to glance at her. “Why not, Bentley?”

Yeah, why not, Bentley? There was something ticking around inside her head, something she couldn't explain. All she could do was give voice to it and hope it wasn't crazy garble.

“I think what we're seeing here is actually a field of unstable quantum particles, and they're messing with our hyperspace engines. That's why Jade was getting such weird readings before. If we try to activate the drive they won't work and that field will destroy us. But I have an idea that might get us through this.”

Bentley was fully aware that she might be humiliating herself. For all she knew she was just shouting some techno-drivel she had read in an adventure novel somewhere. But if she stopped now she would only look more stupid, so she was committed.

She walked to Jade, who was looking at her with eyes eager to help her intellectual equal. “We're going to create a hyperspace bubble to get through this field. I'm going to send you a list of very specific calculations. I'm going to need you to haul ass to the Engine Room and get them set up to match them. Hurry, we have only minutes.”

Jade burst into action, riding her wave of excited energy, without even waiting for Shango to approve Bentley's plan.

Speaking of Shango, there was one more hurdle for Bentley to overcome if she was going to finish her crazy stroke of what was either brilliance or lunacy. She strode with as much confidence in her step as she could muster right up to the captain's chair, where Shango watched her curiously.

“Shango, I need that seat. I also need you to give me the passcode to override the automatic calculations for the hyperdrive. I need to input the right ones manually.”

He didn't budge from his seat. “You realize one misplaced variable in the hyperdrive calculations could lead to the engine overloading and the whole ship being destroyed. This isn't a game.”

Bentley wanted to argue with him, but she still couldn't explain how she knew what she had to do. The closer they got to the storm, and she could see from the screen they were only moments away from entering it now, the more confident she was that this was the right course of action. But without some better explanation than “maybe I used to be a physicist,' she wasn't going to be able to convince anyone of that.

“Oh, let the girl have her chance.” Her defender came in the strangest of all forms: Loco. “Look at her, she clearly knows what she's talking about. That's a level of confidence you have only when either you know exactly what you're doing, or you're five drinks deep and been challenged to wrestle. And no one here's been greased up in baby oil, so I think it’s the first.”

Olofi looked as stunned as the rest of them. “I don't know what's going on, but I'm willing to die in a hyperspace explosion to not risk spoiling this rare moment of Loco being nice to someone.”

Loco scowled. “Damnit, where's the baby oil? You and me, Mr. Vanilla!”

The ship began to shake as it entered the inner edge of the storm. There was no time.

Shango grimaced, deep concern written all over his face, but conceded. “Fine. But this better work.” He entered the passcode into his console to override the automatic calculations and gave his seat up to Bentley.

Bentley's fingers flew over the console as she entered the long formula she somehow knew. The shaking in the ship was getting worse. Things were flying off tables. Glass shattered. Svend was knocked off his feet and thrown into Jelly Bean. Olofi tumbled to the back of the bridge. Loco pulled out a bottle of alcohol he had gotten from somewhere and took a big swig as he clutched onto the bolted center table with his other hand.

Shango was clutching on to the other side of it. “Hey, you found where I hid your stash.”

Loco was forced to spit out some when the ship's shaking caused the bottle to hit the roof of his mouth. “Yeah, well you left it in plain sight by the trash compactor. Some kind of stupid scavenger hunt you had there, making me find it by tossing the trash. You could have just asked me to straighten up.”

“I did.”

Bentley didn't know how much time there was left as she entered the last couple of variables into the formula. Maybe a minute? Less? The shaking was intense now, threatening to throw her from the chair. Something overhead cracked and the severed wiring shot sparks as it descended down into the bridge, freed from its housing. The ship couldn't last much longer. Could Jade make it in time?

The answer came over the corteX just a moment later. “The engines are ready! Hope this works!”

Bentley hit the control to activate the hyperdrive. There was a whir of energy as the engines came online. The ship continued to shake and Bentley was finally tossed from her seat. She rolled uncontrollably across the floor, trying to stop herself as she saw she was about to come face to face with a large shard of the broken glass. Svend reached her just in time, grabbing and shoving her in the opposite direction. The two of them, limbs entangled, rolled towards the front of the bridge.

The lights flickered as the power threatened to fail. Bentley had been wrong. Whatever nonsense had gotten into her head had not saved them. The whole ship was going to come apart and it was all her fault. She held onto Svend for dear life as the vibrations of the ship grew.

And then they suddenly subsided. They didn't stop completely, but they had been reduced to a low rumble, a small quivering compared to the earthquake they had just been experiencing.

Svend helped Bentley get back to her feet. Around them, the rest of the crew was also rising, a little bruised but mostly unharmed. The sparks stopped raining from the loose wiring as the ship's emergency power shut-offs cut the energy from the affected sections.

Loco downed the last of the contents of his bottle, most of which had spilled during the quake. “So, I guess it worked. We all get to live?”

Bentley got a look at what was going on outside through the viewport and pointed. The hyperspace bubble had formed, a white hot, almost transparent film around the ship separating it from the thin, black strands that composed the storm. “See for yourself.”

Jade's voice popped into their corteXes. “Did you all see that? I think we just did something no one has ever done before. I bet we could write a paper on this and become famous. Well, Bentley could, anyway, she's the genius. I want to learn more about how you came up with all this when I get back up there, Bentley!”

Bentley wasn't sure what she was going to tell her. She could barely even remember parts of the formula she had used, much less how she had come up with it. Guess she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Shango looked around at the damage to the bridge and shook his head. “And we just finished cleaning up, too.”

Loco came up behind him and put an arm around his shoulder, leaning on him in his intoxicated state. “Oh come on, it doesn't look that bad.”

There was another sparking and a large piece of the metal roofing came crashing down, landing directly on the center table and shattering it and causing a large cloud of dust and wood splinters to erupt into the air.

They stood there for a while as the dust settled and the last bits of wood rolled across the ground past them. “You weren't too attached to that table anyway, were you?” Loco asked.

Shango sighed and put his head in his hands. “Jelly Bean, get the broom.”

Chapter Nine

“The Ellis-Ocrom Conjecture?”

Bentley shook her head. “Sorry, never heard of it.”

“The Twining Hyperspace Theorem?”

All she could do was shrug. “Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Certainly you've heard of the Rimwalldy Law of Space Travel?”

It sounded vaguely familiar. “That's the one about how time impacts people in hyperspace different?”

Jade's eyes lit up. “Yes! So you do know!”

Bentley scratched her head. “I mean, I know of it. I heard it somewhere. But I don't remember whether it was that time impacts us more or less in hyperspace.”

Jade sat back in her seat and pouted. “Are you sure you're not just acting like this because you don't want to hang out with me and talk about engineering and physics?”

“I swear, that's not it. I really don't know anything about hyperspace physics or the way starship engines work. How I came up with that formula … it might really be something from my past memories that I don't have access to. I don't remember any of my life from before. I could have been a physicist, or maybe once I just watched a really in-depth documentary on hyperspace theory. Or maybe I was just a book nerd who once read a tech-fantasy that actually turned out to work in real life. If I ever get my memories back, I'll tell you.”

The engineer sighed and slumped in her seat. “Yeah, I guess you're right. But if you do end up being a brilliant physicist, you will come and hang out with me and talk about it?”

Bentley put a hand on her shoulder. “I would really like that. I just … wouldn't get my hopes up too much.”

“Well, it was still pretty cool. I mean, a quantum storm? A hyperspace bubble? That was so awesome! It was like a space opera written by a physics genius!”

“It was, wasn't it? I wonder if Legba will be impressed with us, figuring all that out without him.”

Jade smirked. “You can ask him when we finally get to his rock. I bet he'll be jealous he missed all the fun. Even someone like him can't have seen something like that before.”

“Hmm... I wouldn't be so sure.”

Shango came into the kitchen and grabbed a cup of coffee. “Bentley. Jade. I'd like to get some more work done on repairing the bridge today. I'm going to move the spare table from storage and try to get it installed. We also have some glass fixtures to replace. Can you both come by in a few minutes?”

“Actually, Shango, I've been meaning to talk to you.” Bentley got up to drop her cup in the sink, which was already beginning to pile up with dishes again. “I'd like to have today off. You've been working me pretty hard, I think I've earned it. Plus, I did save your ship.”

He looked surprised but didn't protest. “Oh. Well, I suppose that's fine. Take the day. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

Bentley walked back to her room on her own, and waiting outside her door like she had asked, was Svend.

He cleared his throat nervously when he saw her. “Bentley. I'm here – I mean, obviously I'm here, you have eyes. Nice eyes. Uhm, what I meant to say is, you asked me to come here and so I came here.”

She chuckled at the fact that he couldn't even say something that simple without stumbling over his words. “Come on in.”

They went into her room and Bentley sat with him on her bed. “I've been thinking a lot, ever since the incident with the storm the other day– By the way, I never properly thanked you for keeping me from getting a face full of glass, did I?”

Svend looked embarrassed. “Oh, you don't have to thank me. I just kind of lucked out when I grabbed you.”

“Nevertheless, thank you for saving my pretty face.”

“You're welcome. I like your pretty face.”

She laughed and moved in closer to the young android. “Like I was saying, I was thinking about why it is that we're always so awkward around each other.”

“We are?”

She gave him a look that said 'Seriously?'

“We are,” he agreed. “I don't want to be, I just – sometimes I get tongue tied around you. I don't want to say the wrong thing and ruin this. I'm terrified about ruining this.”

“It's my fault, too,” she admitted. “We haven't spent much time together since you came on the ship, and that's because I'm always busy. But I want to make the effort to spend more time with you. I told Shango I'm taking the day for myself, and the two of us are going to spend the entire day together.”

Svend coughed and wrung his hands in embarrassment. “I … I appreciate that. I do. So what are we going to do today?”

She smiled and leaned in towards him. “I'm sure we'll think of something.”

+++

Jade frowned at the clock readout being displayed by the Chesed's computer system. They had received an update ping the last time they had dropped out of hyperspace to rest the engines. The pings are supposed to ensure all ships are synced to Universal Time after the effects of time dilation from space travel. It’s not unusual to find your clocks slightly changed after receiving a ping, but it was usually a matter of minutes, or perhaps hours for extremely long distance travel.

This was a difference of months. According to the current clock displayed on the computer, they were roughly three months in the future from their last update. That was impossible. There must be a bug in the ship's timekeeping system, but for the life of her she couldn't find it.

She sighed and decided to let it go. After all, she was an engineer, not a software specialist. She'd bring the problem to Jelly Bean's attention later, she was better at interfacing with the ship's computer.

Plus, there was already plenty to keep her busy down here. The engines took a beating creating Bentley's hyperspace bubble and were still only running at half efficiency. When she was done with them, they would be at greater than 100%.

She rolled up her sleeves, wiped the grease on her hands onto her pants, and got back to work.

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by Ell Leigh Clarke?

The Sword-Mage Chronicles

Three gods kicked out of the Unseen World. One chick with a sword. In space. What could possibly go wrong?

When you wake up with no memory of who you are, you know it's probably going to be a bad day.

That's exactly what Bentley thought—but she had no idea how bad.

When she saw the wires connecting her to a strange, glowing sword, and an old guy bleeding out next to her, she started to get an inkling.

And then she met the Three.

Three gods cast out of the Unseen World, condemned to make their way in this universe as best they can. Naturally, after 300 years wandering through space, they've devolved into rogues in robes; hustlers with a (strange) moral code.

While desperately trying to keep from being thrown out the airlock, Bentley discovers that the Three have a secret. A secret that involves the sword, the Unseen World, and a big bad that's hell bent on hunting her down.

With the fate of both worlds hanging in the balance, Bentley has to survive long enough to figure out how to get the Three on board and stop the fabric of spacetime from being torn apart.

But that starts with figuring out the significance of this damn sword!

Can’t get enough Bentley? You’re in luck… there’s more.

Receive updates and a series list from Jelly Bean, and a FREE(!) story “The Atropos”, by registering your cortex/ email address here: EllLeighClarke.com/Jelly

About the Author

Ell Leigh Clarke is a recovering theoretical physicist, professional geek, sci-fi novelist, and die hard Doctor Who fan. Though she is originally from England, she is mostly what her friends call a "digital nomad", hanging in whichever country calls to her... as long as it has good wifi, and coffee.

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Website: EllLeighClarke.com

TO FLY SABRINA: AN AEON 14 SHORT STORY
by M. D. Cooper

Cheeky would do anything to get back into the deep black.

Dumped on a backwater station by her former captain, and saddled with the ship’s debt, Cheeky’s once bright future as a pilot is looking grimmer by the day.

Pulling double shifts as a tug operator is barely keeping her afloat with loan sharks and deblt collectors constantly hounding her for credits. She watches the boards for new jobs, but with her debt and past, offers to pilot anything bigger than a shuttle never materialize—until she gets a bite.

A captain named Sera is looking for a pilot for her ship, a sleek freighter that looked more like a smuggler’s blockade runner.

Cheeky doesn’t care about what the ship does, she’ll do anything to get off station and fly Sabrina.

Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper

Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2019 M. D. Cooper

Editing by Jen McDonnell, Bird’s Eye Books

Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper

All rights reserved

Killian’s

STELLAR DATE: 02.11.8920 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Killian’s Bar, Junta Station
REGION: Cipira System, Dominion of Kyra

Cheeky took a long look at the barstool.

In a place like Killian’s, on a station like Junta, it was hard to know exactly what you were about to put your ass on. This particular stool had a decidedly sticky sheen that Cheeky did not want to feel up close.

It was times like this that Cheeky wished she wore clothes. Well, to be fair, Cheeky was wearing clothes, but her skirt didn’t make it down her thighs very far, and wouldn’t offer her much in the way of protection from whatever had dribbled off, down, or out of the last few patrons to grace the stool’s hard plas surface.

She looked at the other seats. None appeared to be in any better condition—many were considerably worse.

The bartender, a deathly pale woman who must not have seen anything other than the station’s artificial lighting in…well…ever, was talking to another patron a few stools down.

“Excuse me? Hey! You have anything I can use to wipe this down?” Cheeky asked the woman, gesturing at the stool while raising her voice over the general din of the bar.

The woman turned to Cheeky, blinked slowly, shook her head, and then turned back to the man she was talking to.

Cheeky blew out an angry breath and waved her hand. “Then get me two shots of vodka. Straight up.”

That got the bartender to move, albeit with the type of lassitude that a sloth would envy, as she ambled over to where Cheeky waited, reached under the bar, and pulled out a pair of shot glasses.

The two glasses clinked together as the bartender dropped them onto the counter. The woman heaved her shoulders as though she were performing the most arduous task imaginable as she turned and grabbed a bottle of vodka. Cheeky would have complained that it was bottom shelf swill—which it certainly was—but this place only had one shelf.

<You’re hilarious,> Piya, the AI that resided within Cheeky, commented.

<I know,> Cheeky replied. <Sometimes wisecracking in my head about Junta is the only thing that keeps me sane.>

<You can say that again,> Piya replied with a mental laugh. <You’re a right mess upstairs.>

<Thanks for the vote of confidence,> Cheeky said. <Just what I need right now.>

Once the bartender had splashed a reasonable amount of the (thankfully) clear liquid into the glasses, Cheeky dropped a hard credit chit—the last of her disposable income—onto the bartop.

The woman wordlessly pulled the chit off the counter, stuffed it in a pocket, and walked back to the other patron, where she resumed her conversation.

A stack of napkins sat nearby, and Cheeky grabbed one before pouring the first shot over the barstool’s seat. She let the vodka soak into the scratches on the stool’s surfaces for a minute, and once satisfied that the stool was as sterile as it was going to get, wiped it off with the napkin.

Cheeky tossed the napkin on the bar, hooked her right heel on one of the stool’s rungs, and lifted herself onto the seat. The second shot raced down her throat a moment later, adding the necessary courage to stay at Killian’s long enough for her meeting.

A meeting that couldn’t happen soon enough, even if it were likely to end in disappointment.

It wasn’t that Cheeky didn’t want to meet with the captain of the Sabrina. She wanted a job, and if she were honest with herself, just about any job would do. Driving tugs and hauling ships in and out of the Junta Station docks was killing her spirit.

Before her stint at Junta, Cheeky would have considered herself to be someone replete with an abundance of spirit—but not so anymore.

Generally buoyant spirit or no, Cheeky wasn’t sure she’d be a good fit for the Sabrina and its captain.

Cheeky had checked the ship out before coming to Killian’s—working for the Junta Port Authority had some small perks. She didn’t recognize the configuration of the Sabrina, but it was obvious that the ship had once been a pleasure yacht of some sort. It was too sleek and smooth to be a freighter by design, and its limited cargo space meant it wasn’t a bulk freight hauler.

However, it did look fast. Too fast. All of which painted the Sabrina as the type of ship that hauled cargo for people who needed items of dubious provenance moved quickly and discretely.

<What do you think, Piya,> Cheeky asked her AI. <Smuggler?>

<Does a duck quack?> Piya asked.

<I don’t know, I’ve never seen a duck.>

<Well, is water wet?>

Cheeky laughed. <OK, I get the sentiment. Still, how does a smuggling ship get any work if it’s so obvious what they are?>

<Maybe it’s how they advertise,> Piya suggested.

Who would smuggle things in a ship that was so obviously used for smuggling? Cheeky shook her head. Maybe it was all about hiding in plain sight.

Of course, at a station like Junta, no hiding was necessary at all. So long as you paid your docking fees and didn’t kill any of the wrong people, no questions would be asked.

Not that it really mattered. The events that had all but stranded her here marked her as nearly unhireable. Cheeky expected this meeting to be short and disappointing. Still, she had to try….

“What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” a sultry voice asked from her side.

Cheeky started; she’d been so lost in her ruminations, she hadn’t even heard anyone approach. She turned, ready to dismiss whatever undesirable suitor was attempting to gain her attention, and blinked in surprise as she recognized Captain Sera of the Sabrina.

“Uhh…” Cheeky stammered before coming up with a witty rejoinder. “Waiting for a girl like you to show up. Mission accomplished.”

Captain Sera was even more stunning than her profile picture had suggested: long dark hair, deep brown eyes, and a clear appreciation for leather. She wore tight black leather pants, a shimmering blue shirt that showed only a minimal amount of cleavage, and a long burgundy leather coat.

Captain Sera laughed. The sound of it was strong and sure as she swept her long coat out behind herself, and settled onto the next stool over before Cheeky could suggest wiping it down first.

<I sure hope she won’t stick to it when it’s time to leave.>

<Should be funny,> Piya replied.

“Am I that late?” Sera asked, giving a pointed look at the two empty shot glasses.

“One was disinfectant,” Cheeky said with a grim smile. “This place could probably use a date with a pressure washer…for a week.”

“I feel like I should have selected a better location for our meeting,” Sera said with a grimace as she shifted, her leather pants making a sticky sound as they peeled off the stool. “I just looked for the place with the fewest recent reports to station security.”

Cheeky chuckled. “Yeah, that’s because no self-respecting criminal would ever come in here.”

“Noted,” Sera said, as she waved a hand to catch the bartender’s attention, pointed at Cheeky’s shot glasses, and held up four fingers.

Several minutes later, after Captain Sera had cleaned off her stool and pants—something that Cheeky enjoyed watching—they got down to business.

“I looked over your creds,” Sera said, smelling the contents of the third shot glass before downing it with a slight shudder. “You have a good record; flown some pretty big birds in your day. How’d you end up in this backwater?”

Cheeky really didn’t want to tell the story. It was more than a little embarrassing, but it was the first question out of nearly every prospective employer’s mouth.

“Ship I flew was here on Junta,” she began with a sigh. “Making a delivery, and picking up some cargo for an outsystem haul,” Cheeky began. “It was supposed to be four-day layover, so I found a good place to hole up and have some fun.”

“And by that you mean…” Sera asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh…sex, drugs, loud music, more sex,” Cheeky replied. That wasn’t the part that ashamed her—though some captains had cut her off right there, citing the need for a more responsible pilot. Cheeky figured that was for the best. Anyone who couldn’t handle a good party wasn’t a fit for her anyway.  By her reckoning, you only lived once, and if you found something you enjoyed, you should do it.

Cheeky did things that she enjoyed a lot.

“I suspect I know where this is going,” Sera replied. “You got left behind.”

Cheeky nodded. Sera was quick. Any captains that didn’t end the interview after they saw her mode of dress and confirmed her party-girl lifestyle usually left once they made that connection. She was a pilot—a damn good one, if her record was all a potential employer looked at. The problem was, good pilots were like gold, and you didn’t leave gold behind.

Yet here she was.

“That doesn’t hold water,” Sera said, an eyebrow arched quizzically. “What else were you up to?”

A flush reddened Cheeky’s face. “Well, the captain was supposed to pay us crew once he sold the cargo we brought in. Problem was, he ran into some trouble and buggered on out of the Cipira System. I had been counting on that pay, and got stuck with a rather sizable bill.”

It was the truth, but most captains assumed it to be nothing more than a lame excuse. Cheeky had to admit that she would have assumed the same.

Captain Sera didn’t respond right away; instead, her dark eyes bored into Cheeky’s. Then she ran a hand through her hair. “Your record with the Port Authority says you’ve been here over a year,” Sera said. “What kinda partying were you getting up to, to rack up a bill like that?”

Cheeky laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Oh, it was a good time, but not that good. I had to resort to asking a local shark to lend me the cred to settle up. Let’s just say that his interest rate has outstripped my pay.”

Sera’s frown deepened, and Cheeky expected that this would be when the interview ended. She was ready for the inevitable dismissal, when Sera asked something new.

“And this was Captain Henshaw, of the Endless Sea?” Sera asked with what looked like anger in her eyes. “Has he returned?”

“Uh…yeah, that’s the dung heap who ran off. And no, he hasn’t come back.”

Sera’s look of anger turned to one of compassion. Cheeky wondered what the captain was playing at. These questions have nothing to do with my piloting ability, or what I would bring to a crew….

“Well, Cheeky, I can promise you one thing. No member of my crew would ever get left high and dry like that. Even if I did have to run off with my tail between my legs, I’d send someone for you.”

Cheeky was dumbfounded. That was the furthest thing from the response she expected—from the responses she had always received.

Most of the captains who came through Junta Station considered it Cheeky’s own dumb fault that she was in this situation. They looked on her as a hapless young woman who couldn’t manage her own affairs well enough to stay out of trouble—which meant she certainly couldn’t be trusted at the helm of their ship.

Still, here she was, praying that Sera would give her a chance.

“Who’s the shark, and how much do you owe?” Sera asked.

“Uh…guy named Genni; he operates out of a pawn shop not far from here, a place called Genni’s Pawn and Loans, surprisingly enough.”

“And the amount?” Sera asked with a raised eyebrow.

Cheeky wondered why this woman was asking for these details. Is she building up ammunition for my eventual dismissal? Will it involve mockery?

“Six thousand,” Cheeky replied dismally.

“Huh, not really that much. Are you on a bond not to leave the station? Other than for your work, of course,” Sera said.

Cheeky nodded. “Yeah, I have to stick around. Problem with the debt is that the interest rate is one hundred percent, and it’s assessed weekly.”

Sera tossed a credit chit onto the counter and rose from her stool. “Cheeky…” she began.

Cheeky braced herself. She’d been strung along for long enough. Then Sera surprised her yet again.

“Let’s go see Genni and take care of this little debt you have. Seems to me that six thousand is about the right amount for a signing bonus.”

Genni & Chur

STELLAR DATE: 02.11.8920 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Killian’s Bar, Junta Station
REGION: Cipira System, Dominion of Kyra

It took a moment for the words to sink in.

“Wha…what?”

Sera grinned. “Cheeky, you have a good record. One that the Port Authority won’t release unless they’re pressed—I don’t think they want to lose you. You hit some hard times, which is something I know all about, but that doesn’t mean you should be punished forever,” Sera paused and put a hand on Cheeky’s shoulder before continuing. “I think it’s time you got a second chance.”

Cheeky rose from her stool, staring intently into Sera’s eyes, looking for any sign that she was being played.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“I already told you,” Sera said. “You need a job, I need a pilot; you need a hand, I have hands. Now let’s get out of here before we stick to the floor.”

Sera walked out of the bar, and Cheeky hurried after her and out into the corridor.

“Captain Sera…I…”

“Just ‘Sera’. Or I guess you can call me ‘Captain’; together…no, makes me feel old.”

“Um, OK, Sera. That was the weirdest interview I’ve ever had,” Cheeky said.

Sera let out another of her confidence-filled laughs. “I already knew I was going to hire you, Cheeky. Stars, for your name alone, I would have probably given you the job.”

Cheeky wasn’t sure if that was an insult or not, but she bit her tongue. She could take a few jokes about her name—especially if that’s all it took to get her off Junta.

Sera continued speaking as they walked. “I’d checked you out quite thoroughly before I ever stepped foot in that hole in the wall. All I was doing in there was seeing how honest and forthright you were. I don’t have room in my life for backstabbers, double dealers, or smooth talkers. I want truth, raw and unvarnished. You gave me that.”

“I do tend to be unvarnished,” Cheeky said with a smile, warming up to Sera and her forthright manner. She was the strangest smuggler Cheeky had ever encountered—either that, or she wasn’t a smuggler at all.

“If by ‘unvarnished’, you mean unclothed, yes, I can see that. Don’t you get cold?” Sera asked.

Cheeky shrugged. “You get used to it. My mods also keep my metabolism running high to keep me warm. Clothing is so…antiquated.”

“I didn’t see where you’re from, originally,” Sera said. “Is it one of those back-to-nature animal places, or one of those cerebral, we’re-beyond-all-this-shit places?”

Cheeky laughed. Where she was from was certainly neither of those. “I was born on a ship. Grew up there, too. People onboard were pretty normal—ridiculously normal, to be honest. I needed some variety in my life. So I left to see the stars.”

Sera nodded. “Sounds familiar. Ah! There it is, just down on the left. Genni’s.”

A holosign featuring a rainbow and a pot of gold hovered over the establishment’s entrance, with Genni’s name flowing out of the pot and into the ether over and over.

Cheeky thought it was the dumbest sign she’d ever seen, but Genni had been enthralled by it.

Sera marched under the sign without a moment’s hesitation, and pushed open the door to Genni’s establishment. Cheeky followed after, excited, but a little scared of what might happen next.

So far, the Sabrina’s captain had been fair and honest, but Cheeky didn’t want to put too much hope in the woman’s generosity. She could still just be playing Cheeky for a fool, messing with her to get a rise out of a poor pilot down on her luck.

Genni’s was filled with the flotsam and jetsam that those who were down on their luck had traded for a few cred. A lot of it was junk—only valuable to the person pawning it—but there were some gems in the place. Like the plasma sword that hung over the counter, or the rare, first edition Star Killer full-immersion sims in a case on the wall.

“Hello?” Sera called out into the empty establishment. “Anyone here?”

The sound of something falling came through the back door, followed by a string of curses. Once the speaker—Genni, of course—had exhausted his limited repertoire, he ambled out, squinting at Sera.

“Buy or Sell?” he asked.

“Neither,” Sera replied. “I’m here to pay off Cheeky’s debt and ensure her bond is cleared.”

Genni was an unassuming man. Neither slovenly nor preening, he wasn’t really noteworthy in any way; he exuded a sort of…unnoticeableness. That was until he smelled the opportunity to make money. Then his eyes lit up, and his fingers began to curl and uncurl with excitement.

Cheeky found it rather unnerving.

“Cheeky, you say?” Genni spoke slowly, stroking his chin as though he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with Cheeky and what she may or may not owe. “Let me look her up and see what her current balance is.”

“6,042 credits,” Cheeky offered.

Genni glanced up at Cheeky as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Oh! You say so, do you? Well, let’s just check to be sure.”

He bent over a holo terminal and made a great show of flipping through records while hemming and hawing. A minute later he nodded, and looked up at the two women. I’m afraid Miss Cheeky has somehow mistaken her level of indebtedness. She currently owes me 18,501 credits.”

“What?!” Cheeky roared, unable to contain her outrage. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Genni looked down at his terminal as though it were responsible for the excessively large number and he had nothing to do with it. “Well, there are early payoff fees, late fees, debt transfer fee—”

“Hold up,” Sera interrupted with her hand raised in protest. “How is it possible to have early payoff fees and late fees?”

“Well, she’s been late paying for a year now. Each time she’s missed a payment, it’s accrued a late fee. However, that also starts up a new payment term, which you’re early on paying off.”

“What is it without those fees?” Sera asked. “Is it the 6,042 credits that Cheeky said?”

Cheeky hoped it was. Sera had told her quite plainly that honesty was her top interest. If Genni makes me out to be a liar…

Not that it really mattered. There was no way Sera was going to pay Genni’s fees. Eighteen thousand credits was a year’s wages, working for the Port Authority. She was going to be stuck here forever.

Genni stared down at his terminal once more and stroked his chin. “Yes, I suppose it is, at that. Not that it matters.”

As Genni spoke, a large shape in the corner stirred, making a low rumbling sound.

<And there’s Chur…> Piya commented.

Cheeky sighed. She hadn’t spotted them in the shadows, but it was obvious that the indistinct figure was Chur, Genni’s guard…person. No one knew if Chur was male or female, or if such denotations really applied anymore. Once a person added on four extra arms, a tail, a few hundred kilos of muscle and steel, plus a weird horned death’s head, it became hard to make out gender.

Rumor had it that a few bad mod jobs had cost Chur much of their memories, so even they didn’t know what they originally had been. Normally, chromosomes would at least give a hint—but Chur was a chimera with more different DNA than you could shake one of their arms at.

Chur rose and ambled into the light, where they stood, not actively threatening Cheeky and Sera, but certainly more than a passive concern.

“My…” Sera said as she looked Chur over. “You’re quite the…thing, aren’t you?”

Chur didn’t respond, and Sera looked away and took a step toward Genni.

“Staaawwwwp,” Chur gargled, and Cheeky watched intently, ready to make a break for it as Sera turned back toward Chur.

“I’m sure you’re a nice person…or maybe you were once,” Sera said. “But I won’t be cowed into accepting these ludicrous fees. So why don’t you go and slouch back into your corner, and let those of us with functioning brains hash things out?”

Chur didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, and Sera turned back to Genni. “Send your guard dog away before I put him away.”

Genni snorted. “No one puts Chur away. We have a mutually beneficial arrangement here, they and I.”

“Be that as it may,” Sera said. “I’m going to pay you the principal on Cheeky’s account, you’re going to write the rest off—probably saving you as much in taxes—and then you’ll release her bond. How’s that sound?”

Cheeky had no idea why Sera was going to such lengths to help her. The woman could be the most badass pirate in the galaxy, but she was unarmed, and Chur…well, Chur had enough arms to tear Sera’s clean off her body.

“Uh, Sera,” Cheeky whispered. “Maybe we should just go.”

“No,” Sera shook her head. “Cipira may be a shit fringe system, but we’re still in the Dominion of Kyra, and Kyra has usury laws.”

Genni shrugged. “Wanna call station security? You wouldn’t be the first. Be my guest. See what happens.”

Sera took another two steps toward Genni, and Chur lunged. The creature moved like lightning, and before Cheeky could even call out in warning, they were upon Sera.

Cheeky’s left foot pivoted, ready to run out of Genni’s, when she saw Chur freeze. The great big creature was practically on top of Sera, one of their hands centimeters from the captain’s throat. Sera’s face was graced by a broad smile as Chur quivered and trembled. Sera stepped to the side, and tapped Chur on the forehead.

With a long groan, Chur fell backward, crashed through a display case, and lay on their back, eyes staring at the overhead, limbs quivering.

Genni’s face drained of all color. “Whaa…what do you want?” he asked, his voice and body trembling.

“Same as before,” Sera replied. “Take the money, cancel Cheeky’s bond.”

Cheeky wanted to ask Sera a thousand questions. From why she was really doing this to how she had taken Chur down without even hitting the monster.

Genni nodded frantically. “Yes, yes, of course. How did you…?”

Cheeky approached Genni’s counter, keeping Sera between herself and the still-twitching Chur. She looked Sera over, amazed that the captain appeared just as normal as ever—barring her taste for wearing animal skin. She wasn’t holding any weapons, and there wasn’t a scratch on her.

“How did I take out your thing?” Sera asked Genni. “That’s something you can keep guessing about.”

Genni muttered something unintelligible, and Sera dropped an ident cube on the counter.

“This is what I was trying to give you when your attack dog got all growly,” Sera said.

The loan shark scanned the cube and his eyes grew even wider. “You’re Dominion Internal Investigations!”

“Yeah,” Sera said. “Cube has my tokens on it. I’ve authorized you to withdraw the credits. Do it now.”

Genni nodded frantically, and Cheeky stared at Sera in mixed wonder and fear. The woman was a DII agent, a member of the top-secret Kyran spy agency. What do they want with me? Is this some sort of crazy recruitment job? Cheeky was certain they had something wrong. There was no way that the DII was interested in her.

Any moment now, Sera would realize that. Then the jig would be up.

A minute later, Genni confirmed the credit transfer. “OK, I have the money; she’s free to go.”

Sera shook her head. “Nope, I still see her listed as ‘On-Bond’ with station security. I won’t be able to undock while she’s on my ship; that’s not really something you want to have happen, because then I’ll come visit you again, and I won’t be all friendly like I’m being now.”

“Uh…yeah, sorry.”

Sera waited, not saying a word, as Genni filled out the forms and submitted them to the station judiciary. She did, however, drum her fingers on the countertop the entire time. At one point, Chur began to stir, and there was suddenly a pistol in Sera’s right hand.

She held it close to her body, but aimed at Chur’s head. “Try something, big…guy. Make my day.”

Chur slumped back and remained still for the rest of the transaction. A long ten minutes later, Sera finally nodded with satisfaction.

“Good, I see that her bond has been lifted. I have registered her as a member of my crew. No departure locks are flagging Sabrina, which means our business here is complete.”

Genni didn’t say anything, but he did manage a sullen nod.

Sera turned to Cheeky and gave a winning smile. “And you thought he’d be difficult to deal with.”

“Uhh…well…there was the part where he had Chur attack you.”

Sera glanced back at Genni. “True, he did have a thug try to attack a DII agent. I’ll be sure to put that in my report.”

Cheeky couldn’t help a smile as Genni gulped and stammered. “Umm…well, Chur didn’t hurt you, can you put that in your report, too?”

Sera didn’t look back as she walked toward the door. “Depends on how smooth our departure is.”

Once they were out in the corridor, Sera picked up the pace.

“What’s the rush?” Cheeky asked, unable to contain her curiosity. “Some important DII mission?”

<I’m not DII,> Sera said, sending the message directly into Cheeky’s mind over the Link.

<What?> Cheeky asked, startled. <How did you fake an ident cube, then? I saw Genni verify it.>

<I’m very good at what I do,> another voice said, and Cheeky saw that it was from an AI named Helen.

<Cheeky, meet Helen. She’s the AI that I share skullspace with.>

<Such a lovely way to put that,> Helen replied dryly.

Cheeky still wasn’t satisfied with the answers she’d been given. <Seriously, what is going on here? Faking ident isn’t easy; what kind of smugglers are you? How did you stop Chur?>

Sera happened to stop her brisk walk next to a vendor selling fresh blueberry pies. The smell of them was so delightful that it distracted Cheeky for a moment, until Sera placed her hands on Cheeky’s shoulders.

“You’re going to do great with us, but we should focus on moving. Do you have any personal belongings that you’d like to collect?”

Cheeky considered Sera’s words. The woman didn’t seem to mean her any harm. Even if she was mysterious with a side of mysterious. Getting off Junta was a strong selling point—one that she’d put up with a lot to take advantage of.

“No, I don’t have anything; it’s all back on my old ship—or it was.”

“Good,” Sera replied. “I imagine that you don’t have much of a wardrobe, anyway.”

Cheeky gave a soft laugh. “Not in mass at least.”

“Spoken like a true pilot. Let’s go.”

A minute later, the pair of women boarded a maglev train that was bound for the outer docks where the Sabrina was berthed. They found an empty car at the end of the train, and Cheeky took a seat next to Sera, where she turned and stared into the woman’s dark eyes.

“Seriously though, I do really want to know: what is going on here?”

Sera shrugged. “I need a pilot, you have a good record and need a hand. That bit about second chances? I meant it. Plus, you’re probably a ton of fun to have around.”

<Shit, did she hire me because she thinks I’ll put out?> Cheeky asked Piya privately.

<Why, is that a problem?> Piya asked.

<Well, no. Sera’s probably a firebrand between the sheets, but that’s not why I want the job.>

Sera glanced at Cheeky, apparently reading her mind. “I don’t screw the crew, Cheeky,” the captain said with a laugh. “I meant that you seem like a genuinely fun person to be around.”

“Oh…” Cheeky replied, not entirely certain that Sera was telling the truth. “Still, that doesn’t explain how you can do what you do. I’ve never met a smuggler who has that level of tech.”

“Who says I’m a smuggler?” Sera asked with a mischievous grin on her lips.

“Hmm… maybe everything about you?” Cheeky replied. “You’re ready to shoot first, ask questions never, your ship screams ‘smuggler’, and you have tech that no normal freighter captain would have.”

Sera laughed softly. “Well, I’m new at being a smuggler and a captain; I’m still trying to get the hang of it.”

New? How interesting, Cheeky thought before asking aloud, “Who has been piloting the Sabrina up until now?”

“Just Sabrina,” Sera said.

“You mean you’ve had her on autopilot?” Cheeky asked, confused by Sera’s answer.

Sera laughed again, that strong sure chuckle. “No. Well, sorta. What I meant is that you can’t call her ‘the Sabrina’; she hates that. The ship is simply Sabrina.”

“Who is ‘she’?” Cheeky asked, even more confused now. Every answer Sera had provided since their meeting in the bar had created more questions.

“‘She’ is the ship’s AI. ‘She’ is also named Sabrina, and has taken to thinking of the ship as herself. Hence, prefacing the ship’s name with ‘the’ makes her think that you’re objectifying her.”

<Seems reasonable,> Piya commented privately to Cheeky. <I’d certainly object to being called ‘the Piya’.>

<Yes, but you’re not a ship,> Cheeky replied.

<I don’t see how that’s a requirement…>

“I’ll make a note of that,” Cheeky said aloud to Sera. “So has she been piloting the ship?”

“Sometimes,” Sera said. “She’s good at it, but she could use some mentorship. Also, a lot of stations won’t let you dock if a sentient AI has the helm.”

Cheeky knew that all too well. Too many people were afraid that an AI would lose it, and ram the ship into the station. In all honesty, humans doing the same would be much more likely, but that didn’t stop people from worrying about AIs.

The maglev was still two minutes from the stop at the outer docks when the train slowed, and three men entered the car.

“Ah, shit,” Cheeky whispered.

New Boss, Meet Old Boss

STELLAR DATE: 02.11.8920 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Dock Maglev, Junta Station
REGION: Cipira System, Dominion of Kyra

“You know these guys?” Sera asked as the three men approached them.

“Guy in the middle is my boss, Handley…well, I guess he was my boss until fifteen minutes ago.”

Handley sauntered toward Cheeky and Sera, a sneering smirk on his lips. “This how you give your notice, Cheeky? I have to hear it from Genni, of all people?”

“I was going to submit the forms once I got onboard Sabrina,” Cheeky said as she eyed Handley’s companions. They looked familiar; she had seen them around. Then it hit her. They were station security—out of uniform, which didn’t bode well.

“The Sabrina your ship?” Handley asked Sera. “Why don’t you beat it? Find yourself a pilot elsewhere. Cheeky works for the Port Authority. She has a contract with us.”

“I can terminate at will,” Cheeky said angrily, feeling more than a little embarrassed that Handley was doing this in front of Sera—not to mention more than a little worried that he’d try to use force to make her stay.

Handley snorted. “Wrong, Cheeks. I decide when you go. My will, not yours.”

“Excuse me,” Sera interrupted. “How much is your cut?”

“My what?” Handley said as he looked down at Sera.

“You know; cut, piece of the action, slim, take,” Sera replied with a broad grin.

Handley didn’t reply, though his cheeks did redden more than a little. “Look, l don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s time for you to beat it. This is between me and Cheeky.”

Sera rose from her seat to stand in front of Handley. Her eyes were a few centimeters above his, and Cheeky watched her old boss take a step back. Of course, the two other men both reached beneath their jackets in response—the implied threat all too clear.

“Cheeky is in my employ. She just terminated her contract with you, and signed with me,” Sera said.

<No I didn’t,> Cheeky replied privately to Sera.

<Well, quick, do it, so that this is legal,> Helen replied, passing the forms to Cheeky.

Cheeky began to attach her tokens and submit the forms while the confrontation continued to unfold before her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Handley said. “We’ll reverse that. Port Authority has dibs on her.”

Sera rubbed her face and sighed. “Let’s try this another way. I know how you run this op. Genni doles out the loans to people in need, and you guys make sure they stay on Junta, making just enough to keep paying their debt, but not enough to get off station. You probably pocket a hefty chunk, maybe even fifty percent. I can see that as being a mighty big incentive for you to keep people like Cheeky around.”

“Seriously?” Cheeky said and rose from her seat. “You’ve been in…in…cahoots with Genni?”

“That would be a very illegal thing to be involved in,” Handley said. “Certainly not something I’d condone. All I’m trying to do is make sure that one of our top tug drivers doesn’t leave in violation of her contract, and get herself into hot water—I’d hate to see those pretty cheeks of yours end up in the slammer.”

One of the guards chuckled at that, and Cheeky knew that jail would not be a fun experience with him around.

<Sera, maybe I should—>

<Not another word, Cheeky,> Sera said. <I have this.>

“So what happens if we just get off the train at the next stop and board my ship?” Sera asked.

“Well, not that you’d make it that far, but I’d put in a call to lock your ship down,” Handley said.

“Great!” Sera said with a broad smile.

<I don’t see how that’s great,> Piya said.

<Hush, girl,> Helen replied.

An instant later, Sera’s hand darted out, her fingertips striking Handley’s larynx. He stumbled backward, clutching his throat. Sera grabbed one of the poles on the maglev car and swung herself up into the air, slamming her booted foot into the side of Handley’s head.

Cheeky’s old boss fell to the floor in a heap, unconscious but gasping.

One of the guards had just pulled his handgun out when Sera’s boot hit it, knocking the weapon away. The other guard had his out, and was swinging it toward Sera, sure to hit the captain center mass. Cheeky lunged at him, keeping low, and grabbed his balls. She squeezed, twisted, and pulled, eliciting a piercing shriek from the man as he fell, trying to get free of Cheeky’s grasp while not losing a part of himself he’d like to keep.

A moment later, Sera’s boot hit the man under the jaw, and he went flying backward. Cheeky was certain she felt something pop in her hand as his package pulled free.

“Ewww…gross gross gross,” she muttered, and turned to see the other guard also lying on the ground, unconscious. “Wow, you’re quick.”

Sera clapped a hand on Cheeky’s back. “Nice work there, Cheeky. I think you’re just the right kind of pilot for Sabrina.”

“Why did you say ‘great’?” Cheeky asked.

“He said that he would put a lock on the ship. That meant he hadn’t yet, and all I had to do was take him out before he could make the call.”

“Shit,” Cheeky whispered as she looked at the three men. “We’re going to be in so much trouble.”

“Nonsense,” Sera said as she dusted herself off and straightened her jacket. “I’ve just left Handley a message outlining the evidence I have on him—which Helen was so kind to lift from Genni’s terminal when she hacked it.”

<You’re welcome,> Helen interjected.

“I also left similar messages for Handley’s two friends here, though the guy you took out won’t be doing much of anything till his time in the autodoc is done.”

“But how will we get off the train?” Cheeky asked. “When it reaches the platform, it won’t take too long for Station Security to realize that we were on the train along with these three.”

As Cheeky spoke, Sera touched each of the three men on the neck. It looked like she was ensuring that they were still alive, but with someone like Sera, it was impossible to know for sure.

<That’s why you’re getting off here,> Helen said as the train slowed to a stop. <The train won’t stop at the next station. I’ve sent it in for repairs, but since third shift just started, no one is going to find these three for at least nine hours.>

As Helen spoke, the maglev train car’s doors opened, and Sera calmly leapt off the train and onto the tracks.

<She’s kinda bossy,> Piya said to Cheeky. <I hope Sabrina is nicer.>

<Well, we’re going to find out for sure; there’s no way we can stay here anymore,> Cheeky replied.

“C’mon, Cheeky,” Sera called up. “Next train is just a minute behind this one.”

Cheeky took a deep breath and jumped out of the train, noting that their car was all alone; the rest of the train was long gone. Once they were clear, the doors closed, and the car soundlessly drifted off down the track.

Over the next fifteen minutes, Sera led Cheeky through a series of maintenance tunnels that she had no idea even existed, until they came out onto the outer dock’s long arch, only thirty meters from Sabrina’s berth.

The ship’s main hatch was open, and a dark-haired man leaned against the bulkhead at the entrance. It was hard to tell from this distance, but his eyes appeared closed and his posture was the very picture of calm repose.

Sera strode confidently across the docks, appearing as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Cheeky tried to emulate the captain, knowing from the vids that the best way to avoid being caught was to not look guilty.

When they reached the man, he cracked an eye, and spoke in what Cheeky could only describe as a bass-y whisper.

“Have fun out there?”

Sera smiled and tossed her head, causing her hair to fan out around her. “Always, Flaherty. Picked up our new pilot, too.”

“See that,” Flaherty replied as Sera walked past him.

Cheeky offered her hand. “Hi, I’m Cheeky.”

Flaherty’s hand slipped into hers, and he gave one firm shake. “That a name or an attribute?”

“Both,” Cheeky grinned.

The man had no reaction to her smile. In one fluid movement, he pulled away from the bulkhead and began following Sera into the ship. The action reminded Cheeky of a snake uncoiling before it began to pursue its prey.

She followed behind with the distinct feeling that Flaherty was one of the most dangerous individuals she had ever met.

<His boots don’t even make a sound,> Cheeky commented to Piya.

<Has to be some sort of mod,> Piya replied.

“C’mon, Cheeky. I’ll show you to your quarters, and then to the bridge. Helen has already filed the departure paperwork, and we’re twenty minutes from pulling away.”

As they walked through the ship, it was obvious to Cheeky that it had indeed once been a pleasure yacht—and a large one, at that. The ship was just over two-hundred meters from stem to stern, but with a six-meter overhead on the main deck, it could haul more cargo than one would expect at first glance.

Flaherty disappeared down a side passage, and Sera took a ladder up to what she called the ‘crew deck’, which turned out to be largely unchanged from when the ship had been a yacht. When Cheeky saw the size of her quarters—complete with her own personal san and water shower—she was speechless with joy.

“Benefits of being a smuggler,” Sera winked. “We don’t have to be all utilitarian all the time.”

Cheeky didn’t care if Captain Sera was a hardcore badass who could take down the likes of Chur and the station’s security like they were children; she was getting a hug.

“Thank you!” she exclaimed, and wrapped her arms around Sera. “You have no idea what this means to me. I won’t let you down.”

Sera chuckled and returned the embrace. “Cheeky, I know you’re going to fit in well here. Sabrina needs someone like you, and I can already tell that you’re going to be the heart of this ship.”

“I thought I was the heart of the ship,” a disembodied voice said through the ship’s address system.

Sera smiled and stepped back from Cheeky. “Cheeky, meet Sabrina. Sabrina, this is Cheeky, our new pilot.”

“Now she’s the heart and the pilot?” Sabrina asked. “What am I?”

Cheeky smiled nervously. “Hi, Sabrina. I really don’t want to take anything from you; I’m just here to help.”

“Take it easy, Sabs,” Sera said. “We’ve been over this. You know why we need another pilot. Besides. I have a suspicion that you and Cheeky are kindred spirits.”

<There are a lot of AIs around here,> Piya said over the public shipnet.

<Oh! Another AI?> Sabrina replied over the Link. <I bet you’ll be way more fun than Helen. She’s a bit stodgy,>

<You know I can hear you, right?> Helen asked.

<Yup!> Sabrina replied brightly.

“See?” Sera said. “Fitting right in. Let me show you the bridge.”

Five minutes later, Cheeky was settled into the pilot’s seat. It was at the front of the bridge, set half a meter lower than the rest of the deck so as not to obscure the view of the large holodisplay at the fore. While the space was small, the equipment was in good condition; Cheeky Linked seamlessly with the ship’s flight control systems.

“So, where are we going, Captain?” Cheeky asked.

Stars, it feels good to ask that once more.

“Well,” Sera mused from her command chair. “I have half a mind to find your old captain, Henshaw, and pay him a visit.”

Cheeky twisted in her chair. “What? Seriously? Why would you do that?”

“Well, you said he has your stuff, right? Besides, I know who he works for. I bet he’s in Gedri right now, or that someone there will know where he is.”

“We went through Gedri a few times while I was on the Endless Sea,” Cheeky replied. “That’s forty light years from here, though.”

Sera leaned back in her chair and smiled. “Perfect. We’ll have time to get to know one another. I think we’ll make a few stops along the way, too. We still need a few more crew on this ship.”

“It’s only you and Flaherty on a ship this size?” Cheeky asked, wondering if there was anything romantic between the two. She hadn’t gotten that impression earlier.

“Well, not anymore,” Sera said with a wink.

Cheeky turned back toward her console with a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. She found herself liking Sera a lot. The woman was hiding things, to be sure, but somehow she still seemed genuine—like she could be trusted.

Who knows…maybe this can be a real home?

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by M. D. Cooper?

Want to read more about Cheeky’s adventures on Sabrina? Dive into Destiny Lost, and see how a small ship gets caught up in a huge adventure.

About the Author

Malorie Cooper likes to think of herself as a dreamer and a wanderer, yet her feet are firmly grounded in reality.

A twenty-year software development veteran, Malorie eventually climbed the ladder to the position of software architect and CTO, where she gained a wealth of experience managing complex systems and large groups of people.

Her experiences there translated well into the realm of science fiction, and when her novels took off, she was primed and ready to make the jump into a career as a full-time author.

A ‘maker’ from an early age, Malorie loves to craft things, from furniture, to cosplay costumes, to a well-spun tale, she can’t help but to create new things every day.

A rare extrovert writer, she loves to hang out with readers, and people in general. If you meet her at a convention, she just might be rocking a catsuit, cosplaying one of her own characters, or maybe her latest favorite from Overwatch!

She shares her home with a brilliant young girl, her wonderful wife (who also writes), a cat that chirps at birds, a never-ending list of things she would like to build, and ideas…

Find out what’s coming next at www.aeon14.com!

Connect with M. D. Cooper:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/aeon14fans

Instagram: www.instagram.com/m.d.cooper

Website: www.aeon14.com

MAKING OF A RENEGADE
by Oscar Andrews

Destined to be one of the Federation's top covert negotiators, Captain Jack Klingerman has a history that has remained codeword classified.

When his father is taken by the Federation, Jack's life is set on a collision course with danger and betrayal: his very physiology being the reason he becomes coveted for military research.

Military research that is set to kill him...

Jack, still a child and under the care of a mother whose alliance lies with the authoritative government and her military employer, has to find a way to escape.

Before he is killed.

He just needs to survive long enough to become the renegade agent who would go on to save untold civilizations from war, and prove to be the Federation’s biggest accomplishment — and greatest mistake.

Making of a Renegade (this story) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

This story Copyright © 2019 Oscar Andrews

Oscar Andrews supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this story without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the story (other than for review purposes), please contact oscar@oscarandrewsauthor.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

First US edition, 2019

Version 1.01.01

Empire Rising (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2019 by Oscar Andrews.

Chapter One

In the living room of a comfortable but ordinary house on the planet T3, a bright-eyed and curious youngster stared in wonder at the known galaxy. Thousands of twinkling stars and misty nebulae hovered in the space in front of him — a holographic map. Out of all those star systems, less than two dozen had been explored and colonized. The Federation was big, but it was nothing compared to the galaxy itself. He shuffled closer and found T3, the third planet in the Sol system and the original home of all humanity. It looked so small, it was hard to believe he really lived there.

Hypnotized, he reached out a finger, touched one of the stars on the map, and text popped up: New Atlantia, along with the date of settlement and other facts about the colony. The boy smiled, delighted to think that there were other planets out there with people living on them.

Will I ever see those distant worlds? he wondered wistfully.

It wasn’t impossible. Both his parents worked for the Federation, and if he did well in school, he could do the same. He could go out to the far-flung settlements himself, see what life was like on New Atlantia! And all the other systems.

Excitement welled in his chest, making it difficult to catch his breath.

It was a happy idea. A furious voice pulled him out of his half-formed fantasy. “JUST SHUT UP, DIANE!”

His father was yelling again. Jack’s heart sank, his excitement slowly turning to anxiety. He hated it when his parents fought. The map now forgotten, he focused his thoughts on how sturdy their house was. The safest house on the block. That’s what the real estate agent had told his mother. It felt good to be safe, even if the man had really been talking about radiation from the sky and not his father’s angry shouting.

He knew all about the radiation. His teacher had told them: the magnetic poles of the planet were about to flip, so it was sometimes dangerous to play outside. Daddy didn’t believe it, though. He dismissed it as a lie and that the real estate people just wanted them to pay more for special walls and a special roof. He was glad Mommy had won that fight because otherwise, they wouldn’t live in the safest house.

He didn’t understand why his father hadn’t wanted them to buy the safest house in the first place. He was confused by half the things his father said or did. It just seemed like he was always mad.

Jack listened carefully to what was happening. His father was quieter now, but still just as angry. “Why did you interrupt me? WHY? Can’t you see that I’m working?”

His mother’s reply was calm and cool, like almost everything about her. “I didn’t see that at first, but as soon as I realized it, I stopped talking. Really, Paul. There’s no reason for you to act this way.”

“No reason for me to act this way? YOU’RE TALKING RIGHT NOW!”

Jack heard a beep, and a voice cut in over his parent’s argument.

“Everything okay there, Klingerman? We need your help!”

It was his father’s work, calling him on the holo system. When he answered the call, his voice was much calmer, although still icy. “Everything’s fine. What’s the current status?”

“The whole network’s down, it’s the biggest clusterfuck we’ve ever seen. The miners are drifting. If we don’t get them some guidance within the next few minutes, at least one of those ships is going to hit an asteroid.”

His father replied, “They could just as easily hit each other. Shit. Okay, send me everything.”

Jack didn’t understand everything they talked about, but he knew it was something to do with asteroid miners. He placed two fingers on the Sol System on his holo map and spread them apart to zoom in. The asteroid belt between T4 and T5 showed up as dust, reflecting faintly in the light from Sol. Somewhere in that dust cloud, people were in danger.

Daddy was saving them. Or at least trying to save them.

That was a good kind of job, to save people who were in danger. When he was a grown up, he wanted to have a job like Daddy’s. He listened in as his father worked.

Five holograms popped up at once — charts, schematics, and lists of numbers. There were other voices on the call and no way for Jack to tell one from another.

“Did you get it all, Klingerman?”

“I got it. Miller, figure out the security situation. It could be an attack, and I don’t want us back online till I know for sure. Williams, check the status of the backup versions. We should have automatically reverted to the most recent one and I don’t know why we haven't. Biskarret, I need you on the codes. I’ll look over the schematics.”

The man who answered sounded scared and irritated. “Check the codes, Klingerman? What the hell are you on about?”

His father was irritated, too. “What am I on about? What are you on about, you jumped-up half-wit? Narrow them down! Narrow down the list of codes to the most likely possibilities!”

“Do you have any idea how many of them there are? We don’t have any time for that!”

“Listen to me carefully, Biskarret.” His father’s voice was calm, but it was the calm of someone who was trying not to yell. This kind of calm scared Jack more than actual yelling. “If you don’t do what I say, I’ll come into work myself for the sole purpose of punching all your goddamn teeth out. Do you understand me? People are going to die if we don’t get back online!”

Biskarret was suddenly silent. Although Jack was frightened, he was also impressed. His Daddy was saving people, telling all sorts of people what to do, and they were doing it.

Grown-up life was usually boring, but this situation wasn’t boring at all. People were talking excitedly and all at once, and Daddy was reading four or five holo screens at the same time. He was studying a schematic and giving people instructions. People had stopped calling him Klingerman and started calling him “sir.” They were saying things like “Yes, sir,” and, “What should I do next, sir?”

He looks very busy, Jack observed, getting up from his map. I’m going to ask if he needs help. His Mommy caught him as he went by and clamped her hand down over his mouth. She whispered urgently in his ear, “Don’t interrupt Daddy! Daddy’s very busy!”

Now that he was closer, he could see the holograms — people sitting at desks, staring nervously at their screens or typing something very fast.

“Come on Biskarret, where are you?” his father demanded, “You’ve got the degree, don’t tell me you were just padding your resume! I need those codes!”

Another person replied, not Biskarret but a woman. “The Atlantic is now on a collision course with XT456. Repeat, the Atlantic…”

Biskarret finally answered, “I’ve got the six most likely codes. Stand by to receive.”

“Standing by,” confirmed Daddy, who seemed to have lost his interest in saying mean things to Biskarret.

“It could be any of the following: YBG-567, YBG-568, QSR-934, QSP-5649…”

Daddy yelled again, although this time he didn’t sound angry. “That’s the one! QSP-5649 will allow us to manually reset! Biskarret, you’re a lifesaver! Transmitting simultaneously to all channels.”

There were cheers from some of the holograms, followed by an intense silence. Jack’s mother still had one hand pressed tightly over his mouth while the other hand held him back from running to his father. He wiggled and squirmed, but he couldn’t escape her.

The woman cut in again. “Collision between the Atlantic and XT456 in sixty seconds. Fifty-nine… fifty-eight…”

Daddy’s fingers gripped the chair so hard Jack worried he might break one of the arms off. His eyes looked wild, and he just kept staring at the holo screens. His wife and child could just as easily not have been there at all, because he took no notice of them.

It looked weird and upsetting, to see his father so tense and fearful. He didn’t know what was going on, or what Daddy and the others were waiting for. Had they already saved the asteroid miners, or were they all just taking a break for some reason? If the asteroid miners were still in danger, why were they all just sitting around?

“Collision in thirty seconds… twenty-nine… twenty-eight…”

That didn’t sound good. It probably meant they hadn’t saved the asteroid miners at all, and that ship was going to crash into that asteroid. What would that be like, to bump into a rock in the middle of space? Would they all be killed, or would some of them be killed and some just hurt?

Another voice came through. “System on-line. Stand by…”

The woman called out suddenly, “Collision averted, collision averted! Atlantic has changed course!”

Now the cheers were much louder, and the people in the holograms were pushing themselves back from their desks and wiping the sweat off their foreheads. Biskarret was glaring at Daddy, but everyone else was looking at him like he was the biggest hero they’d ever seen.

An older man with white hair leaned in. “Sorry to call you at home on your day off, Klingerman, but we didn’t have much choice. You’re the only one who could have pulled this off. The only one.”

The woman who’d been doing the countdown smiled. “You just saved the lives of everyone on the Atlantic and who knows how many of those other ships. You and I have had our differences, but that was some fast thinking. Well done, Paul!”

Jack’s mother took her hand off his mouth at last. He didn’t go running to Daddy, though. He just stood where he was, overwhelmed by the whole situation. His father was too, or at least it looked that way. He waved vaguely at the screens as if it embarrassed him to have everyone praising him. Then he hit a button, and the holoscreens disappeared all at once. He slumped down in his chair and started breathing slowly.

Daddy still wasn’t looking at either Mommy or Jack. He was just staring at the wall like he was sleepwalking. Does he even know we’re still here? Why isn’t he happy? Everyone else was so proud of him!

His mother didn’t say anything at first. She just stood there like she was frozen, and Jack felt like he was frozen too. His chest hurt the way it did when he ran too fast or held his breath too long. If anybody makes a sound, feared Jack, something bad will happen. Daddy will get SO MAD, and something bad will happen... At last, his mother attempted to reach out to his father.

“Paul, that was incredible. You should be very proud of yourself. I know I am.”

Jack jumped in surprise. Why did she have to say something? Didn’t she know they weren’t supposed to talk?

As if by magic Daddy snapped out of it, and his eyes sparked with anger as he turned to look at her. “I don’t get you, Diane. You say you’re proud of me, you know how stressful it is for me to do what I do. But then you come right in here when you see me working, asking your questions like it’s no big deal. Do you have any idea how close that was? How many people could have died?”

She squeezed Jack’s shoulder and told him “Run up to your room, dear. Your father and I need to have a talk.”

Jack wanted to get away, to hide in his room until everyone was happy again, but he also wanted his Mom to pick him up, to hold him close, and make him feel better. She gave him a hug, but it was stiff, and it didn’t feel right, like all her hugs. It was like she didn’t really want to hug him. “Your father and I love you. This is just a hard time right now. Please go up to your room.”

Even though part of him wanted to bolt upstairs as fast as he could, Jack dragged his feet on his way across the room. He was still hoping his mother would turn and scoop him up or his father would stop being mad and just be nice to everyone. Then he heard his father’s voice. It sounded sullen, like his own voice when he got in trouble for something he didn’t do. “And there you go, making me sound like the big, mean, ogre. What’s our son supposed to think? Do you really want him to hate his father?”

His mother answered in her Calm Voice, the one she used when Jack was having a temper tantrum. “I don’t know how to talk to you when you’re in this state. It’s impossible to reason with you.”

The Calm Voice made his father madder than anything else. Jack stopped dragging his feet and sprinted up the stairs, hoping to make it through the door to his bedroom before the shouting and the yelling started up again. His father would be the first, but his mother would be yelling too by the end of it.

He wasn’t quite fast enough. At the top of the stairs, his father started asking questions loudly one after the other, too fast for anyone to answer. “When I’m in this state? What state is that? Why do you always have to put me down? Are you trying to make me think I’m crazy? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS REALLY ALL ABOUT?”

Jack bolted for his room, threw the door open, and slammed it behind him. Now his mom was yelling too. “YOU’RE FRIGHTENING OUR SON!”

It would all be yelling from here on out, and Jack was glad to have escaped it. They weren’t yelling at him, but it always made him feel like he was in really bad trouble. Up here in his room, surrounded by all his interesting things, he could shut it out. He could pretend it wasn’t happening, at least for a while.

Jack sat down on the edge of his bed and picked up his model Spitfire. It was the same type of fighter his mother flew for the Federation. She said it was named after another fighter from long ago.

The Spitfire model usually made him feel calm. The thing he loved most about it was that you could open up the different parts and see what it looked like on the inside. You could see all the wires and tubes, you could even see the engine. His mom said they’d done all of it right, that her plane really looked that way. He tried to get himself interested in looking at his Spitfire, but he couldn’t do it. His heart was pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears, and his face felt hot like he’d been sitting in the sun. He put it down with a sigh.

When Daddy was saving all those people on the ships, Jack was so excited and proud he could have jumped up and down. For a few minutes, he had wanted to be like Daddy when he grew up. Now he wasn’t so sure. He knew it was important, but his father had been so mean to that man named Biskarret. And even when he wasn’t being mean he was still yelling. Did everyone always yell at Daddy’s work? Maybe that was why he yelled so much when he came home, because he was just so used to it.

If Daddy’s job was a yelling job, then he didn’t want to be an engineer like Daddy. He wanted to be a doctor instead, like that kind man who had helped him when he hurt his arm. That doctor didn’t yell at all. He smiled and told little jokes, like the one about spacers eating their “rocket chips.”

When he saw that Jack was still scared he didn’t make him leave the room. He knelt down on the floor instead so he wouldn’t look so tall and twisted a medical band into a little doll for him. “This guy is your bodyguard,” he had explained with a grin. “He’ll keep you safe while the nanobots work on your arm. How does that sound?”

He still had the doll, which really didn’t look much like a person. He didn’t care though; it still made him feel safe. He kept it hidden in a special box underneath his bed, so Daddy couldn’t come in and take it away. He did that with toys sometimes, if Jack was in trouble. As long as he still had that little doll, Jack felt like nothing could ever happen to him.

There was a knock at the door, and a moment later his mother opened it. She poked her head in and asked, “Mind if I join you?”

A tear suddenly welled up in Jack’s eye. He wiped it off, and she came over and sat down next to him. “It’s okay, darling. The fight is over. Daddy just went out to get some fresh air.”

That didn’t make a lot of sense, because people didn’t really go out to get fresh air these days. The air outside was sometimes dangerous, so people just went from one building to another. It wouldn’t stay this way forever, but until the poles were done shifting it was safer to just stay inside a lot of the time. Jack didn’t ask his mother to explain, though. Grown-ups said a lot of things that didn’t really make sense.

He kicked his feet back and forth a little. It distracted him from what he was feeling. “I don’t understand why Daddy gets so mad.”

His mother put an arm around his shoulders, but it felt stiff and tense. “He’s just really stressed out. If the No-vote wins, his department will have to follow a lot of extra rules. They might even lose their funding. Try not to worry about it, though. It’s a grown-up problem, and the grown-ups will solve it. We’ll be alright either way.”

He knew she was talking about the Referendum, the big vote about who would get to be in charge. His parents were Yes people, so they wanted the Fleet to be more in charge than the Council. A lot of the other kids were from No-voter families, and they wanted the Council to be more in charge than the Fleet.

“Why are so many people No-voters?” he asked, confused. From what his parents discussed, it sounded like everyone should vote Yes. No one had ever told him much about the other side.

His mother took a deep breath. “It’s complicated, Jack. The Council wants departments like the one Daddy works for to be more accountable. They say we can’t be trusted to do what’s best on our own. Military families like ours just don’t agree. We think the Fleet has a long history of selfless service and we don’t need any civilian babysitters. I guess that’s over your head, isn’t it darling?”

“I understood most of it,” he replied, which was true. Jack understood a lot of things the grown-ups would never have guessed, although sometimes it all got overwhelming and people treated him like he was not very smart at all.

Mommy tousled his hair and cooed, “Of course you did. Now let’s go get your teeth brushed. It’s time for bed.”

He knew she didn’t believe him, but that wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing to Jack was that the shouting had stopped.

Chapter Two

In the VR Room at recess, Jack sat by himself on a ledge beneath one of the windows. He wanted to climb around on the rope ladders outside, but the teacher wouldn't allow it because the radiation levels were too high. The playground had deflection panels, but some days they just weren’t enough. All around the room the other children were wearing VR headsets and playing together.

Based on what the others were yelling, Jack guessed it was a dodgeball game about asteroid miners. That was kind of funny,  given what his father had done the night before. He didn’t join in, though. Jack liked VR, but he didn’t enjoy team sports at all. He always got the rules to different games mixed up with each other and the kids would laugh at him.

At least it’s a little bit quieter up here, he assured himself. That was really the only reason he climbed up on the ledge so often. There wasn’t much else he could do when he didn’t want to play with the other kids. Students were not allowed to be in the corridors at recess, and he had already gotten in trouble for going down to the basement once. The Loon Network was locked down while school was in session, so students could only access the school network and what the teachers called “appropriate materials.” That sounded a lot like extra schoolwork to Jack.

He slid back a bit further on the windowsill and hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself as small as he could. He didn’t want anyone to notice him. He just wanted to ignore all the shouting and drift off into his private world.

Not today, though. Mahmoud Tito was a larger boy, the biggest in Jack’s class, and one of the meanest. When he got hit by an asteroid in the VR game, he took off his headset and scowled in disgust. Then he noticed Jack on the windowsill. He smirked at the sight and started toward Jack with a determined look.

Not today, Mahmoud, Jack ruminated. Just go away…

But Mahmoud kept coming. A few months before, Mahmoud and two of the other boys had grabbed his feet and tried to pull him off the ledge. Jack didn’t want that to happen again, so he clambered down from the ledge to face the bigger boy.

“Hey, Nappy!” Mahmoud called out, using a British word for a diaper as an unfriendly nickname. “I heard something about you today. Do you want to know what I heard?”

“No, not really.”

Mahmoud imitated him in a baby voice. “No, not really! Come on, Nappy. Toughen up. You can’t be a baby diaper forever. I heard your parents are Feds!”

Jack was confused. What could possibly be bad about being a Fed? His mother flew Spitfires and his father had just saved some asteroid miners. “My parents help people.”

Mahmoud scoffed. “Your parents help people! Come on! Your parents are Feds! That means they want to tell everyone what to do all the time!”

Jack couldn’t understand why Mahmoud was so mad at him. “That isn’t true. My dad helps people all the time. So does my mom.”

Mahmoud’s face turned red. “Are you calling my dad a liar?”

He shoved Jack in the chest, and Jack stumbled backward a little. Mrs. Lane-Roc came running over. Mahmoud turned and gave her a guilty look.

“Mahmoud Tito, you stop that this instant! Hitting other people is not okay!”

Mahmoud pouted. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lane-Roc. I know it’s wrong, but Jack always thinks he’s better than everyone. Just because his mom and dad work for the Federation!”

Their teacher’s face was stern. “That’s no excuse for pushing or any other kind of hitting. Now you go play, or you can come with me and talk to the Socialization Counselor.”

Mahmoud did as he was told and Mrs. Lane-Roc turned to Jack. “Are you okay?”

Tears sprang into Jack’s eyes. He wanted to hug his teacher. She had helped him. She had seen that something was wrong, and she had helped him! “Yeah, I’m alright. Thank you, Mrs. Lane-Roc.”

She frowned slightly. “Of course.” Then she leaned in closer and spoke to him in a quiet voice. “I understand that you’re just trying to mind your own business, but please try to understand that talking about how important your parents are can hurt other people’s feelings, okay?”

Jack blinked like someone had thrown a ball at his face. What was she talking about? He hadn’t mentioned anything about his mom and dad being so important. He hadn’t talked about them at all until Mahmoud had brought it up.

“I’m… I’m never mean to anyone, Mrs. Lane-Roc.”

She sighed. “I’m sure you don’t mean to be. But please try to remember. Until the Referendum’s over, people are going to be tense with each other. Anyone connected with the Federation has to be extra careful. You never know what might set someone off. Do you understand, Jack? People are scared, and scared people get mad. You mustn’t provoke them.”

Jack still didn’t get what she was saying. Why was Mrs. Lane-Roc blaming him for what happened? Why was she mad at him when he hadn’t done anything wrong? He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. His teacher gave up and turned around. “Okay, class, it’s time to go back. We need to do our social studies!”

There was a chorus of groans, but Jack felt a little bit better when he heard her say that. In social studies, they learned about other cultures. These days, almost everyone on T3 was mostly the same, but there used to be different cultures all over the planet with different languages and religions and everything. When Jack was older, he’d get the chance to learn about some of the colony worlds in outer space. People out there were different from people on T3: they had their own ways of doing things and their own societies. Maybe he didn’t want to be a doctor after all. If he became an arch-anthropologist instead, he could study all those different cultures…

“Come on Jack, enough daydreaming,” scolded Mrs. Lane-Roc. “Let’s get to class.”

“Probably thinking about how big and important his daddy is,” Mahmoud half-whispered. The other kids laughed, and one of them whispered, “Fed-lover!”

Jack wanted to cry, but he held it in with sheer willpower.

“Come on, children,” ordered Mrs. Lane-Roc. They filed slowly back to class, and Jack sat down in his usual spot. Everyone else went back to ignoring him, which was definitely how Jack preferred it.

Mrs. Lane-Roc stood up in front of the class. “Today we’ll be learning about the Arabic culture, one of the many important societies of human history. Unlike some of the other cultures we’ve studied, many of today’s Arabic people still speak their own language. That’s especially unusual because Arabic is one of the hardest languages to learn.”

One of the hardest languages to learn? That sounded interesting. The idea that there were still people on T3 who spoke a different language, people who had their own way of living… it was like a mystery, and almost as exciting as studying the culture of a different planet.

Mrs. Lane-Roc was looking around as if she couldn’t find something. After a minute, she gave up. “I was going to show you all something, but I seem to have left it in the teacher’s lounge. I’ll be right back, children. Please read through your modules on the Arabic culture until I return.”

She left the room, but of course, hardly any of the children started reading their modules. Most of them slipped VR headsets back on and started playing games. Retro games were especially popular with them.

Jack opened the language app on his personal device and set it to Arabic. He mouthed the phrases to himself in silence. “Min faDlik... please. Shukran... thank you. SabaaH alkhayr... good morning.”

He knew that other kids didn’t really do this sort of thing, but he was different from the other kids. As Jack scrolled through the learning modules and glanced at the different lessons, anyone seeing the happy, curious look on his face would have assumed he was playing a VR game or reading a comic. The teacher was right, he realized. This looks hard!

The writing was different than what he was used to, and words seemed to change a lot depending on where they were in the sentence and what they were doing. How could anyone learn all this? Could he learn it?

His mother had met a person from another planet once, a Fleet officer who spoke seven languages, including Arabic. When she told Jack about it, she sounded impressed. She hardly ever seemed dazzled by anything. If he could teach himself how to speak Arabic, she’d be impressed with him too. Jack smiled at the idea of it. Just imagine it, mom beaming at him and telling his dad how smart he was…

It might be hard, but he could do it. He’d always been interested in learning other languages and had already taught himself how to greet people and say basic phrases in French, German, Japanese, and Russian.

Of course, it was easier for him than for the other children because his parents had given him the language-app brain implant a few years early. It was partly because his mom was a Fleet pilot and had a good health plan, but it was also something to do with his own brain.

There was something a bit different about him, he knew that. He heard his parents talking about it every now and then, but he couldn’t quite make sense of it. Sometimes it sounded like they were talking about how smart he was. They would say things like “well outside the normal range,” like he was way ahead of the other kids.

Sometimes it sounded like they were talking about how dumb he was, like he couldn’t understand what other people were saying. They seemed to think the language app would help with his “verbal comprehension,” as if he needed to catch up with everyone else his age.

Once his mom had even told his dad she felt guilty for dropping him off at the nursery almost as soon as he was born so she could get back to her career. She had asked him if that might be why he had “these verbal problems,” but his dad just got irritated.

Like so many other things, it didn’t make sense. But if he taught himself Arabic, his parents would know he was smart and had plenty of verbal comprehension. Even better than that, when he grew up, he could get into the Fleet and go to other planets like that officer mom had met. He could do interesting things instead of just being stuck on T3 all the time. He would work with people who were nice and fun to talk to, people who liked him and cared about how he felt.

A sudden BANG interrupted Jack’s planning. He gasped out loud and looked up with his eyes wide and panicky, but it was only a fire balloon. The other children were laughing and pointing at Mahmoud, who grinned and bowed.

Just about every kid on the planet loved fire balloons, but Jack hated them. He despised noise and he detested surprising sounds, like Daddy shouting or slamming a door. Fire balloons were both at the same time, especially when someone popped one while you weren’t looking.

Daddy often talked about things like fire balloons and VR headsets on his holo, ranting angrily about the “political and sociological ramifications.” He tried to ask his father what he meant by that more than once, but every time his dad would just get angry and start yelling again.

Mrs. Lane-Roc burst through the door. Children scattered to their own seats. She glared at the room but couldn’t keep an angry face up for long. “Now children,” she spoke at last, “you know as well as I do that fire balloons are not allowed in school. I expected better of you. Now instead of looking at what I wanted to show you — which I can’t find anyway — we’ll just read out loud from the module. Mahmoud, you can go first.”

Jack was already daydreaming again. Arabic was interesting, but he also had to remember to learn Modern Thanglish. He could start it next term, and by the time he was ready to apply to the Academy, he’d have it down. Getting into the Academy was important, and if you wanted to get in you had to have decent Modern Thanglish.

Mrs. Lane-Roc interrupted his thoughts again. “Jack? It’s your turn to read to the class, Jack. Try to keep up, now. I know it’s hard for you.”

Jack’s face burned as he opened the module. Why did everyone treat him like he was dumb? There were so many things he wanted to learn about, so many things that interested him, so why did Mrs. Lane-Roc say it was difficult for him?

Chapter Three

In the Department of Material Science’s medical station, Dr. Marius Jeong was preparing for a most unfortunate and unwelcome conference call. Behavioral problems were always uncomfortable for him to deal with because they forced him to take steps that could have a severe impact on an employee’s life or career.

This case was even more unhappy than the usual because the man they were about to discuss was the star of the department. An authentic genius, Paul Klingerman was much more than a brilliant troublemaker — the man saved lives. He had performed a brilliant rescue operation within the past few days. And this wasn’t a simple case of an addiction or personality disorder that needed treatment. It was much worse than that.

The call came in, and Dr. Jeong brought up the holo. As far as he could tell, the Board that oversaw his department was meeting on a space station. The purplish light in the background came from tinted windows, absorbing Sol’s rays to help power the structure. It made the men and women on the Board look garish and vaguely sinister.

After calling the meeting to order, Karen Medici addressed Dr. Jeong. “Thank you for joining us, Doctor. As you know, we’re meeting to address the situation with Paul Klingerman after his assault on Ander Biskarret. According to my records, he had previously threatened the same colleague. Is that correct?”

Dr. Jeong nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. During the incident with the mining ship network, he used threats of violence to motivate Biskarret into doing what he wanted. I’d like to point out, though, as a mitigating factor, that Biskarret proceeded to do something he didn’t think he was capable of doing, and it saved many lives.”

“Duly noted,” chimed one of the other Board members, a man named Dar.

Medici interrupted, “Duly noted? Irrelevant! The purpose of this review is not to resolve the question of whether people can be motivated by threats of violence — we’ve known that since the Stone Age. The purpose is to decide whether he’s a danger to himself and others. He came into his workplace, verbally quarreled with Biskarret, then assaulted him. That’s the line we said he couldn’t cross the last time his little outbursts came up as an issue.”

“What led to the quarrel?” inquired a large man with drooping cheeks. “If Biskarret did what he asked him to…”

Medici made no attempt to hide her irritation. “Does it matter? Biskarret filed a complaint about his abusive language, which he had every right to do. Klingerman’s response was to carry out his original threat.”

Dr. Jeong tried to intercede. “The nano-neurotransmitters…”

“We’ve already tried them,” explained another Board member. “At your insistence, Doctor. You said it could alleviate the symptoms of his anti-social anger. What went wrong?”

“He’s been unresponsive. But if we increase the dose…”

Medici spoke over him. “He doesn’t even realize he’s been dosed at all. How far down that ethical rabbit hole are you willing to go?”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” the doctor replied. “We’re well past the point where we can continue to handle this as discreetly as we had hoped. The man doesn’t know about his real condition, and that’s the crux of the problem. He probably just thinks he has an issue with his temper and wonders why he can’t control it. We need to bring him in for neurological scans and keep him detained until we know more.”

The Board members were surprised to hear him say this. He’d been an advocate of the hands-off approach, hoping the nano-neurotransmitters would stabilize Klingerman enough that he could be studied discreetly. Now he had decided to go all-in.

Medici wasn’t sure. “You want to keep him detained? Won’t that violate his legal rights?”

“Not if it can be shown that he’s a danger to himself or others. After the assault on Biskarret, our models indicate a 60% probability of domestic violence.”

Medici sighed. “We have to keep that from happening. It’s what we were worried about as soon as we determined there was a family conflict.”

Dar spoke up. “Does Klingerman realize anything is wrong with him? He must have noticed something!”

Dr. Jeong shook his head. “Not as far as I can tell. He hasn’t looked up any symptoms on the Loon Network, which is usually the first thing people do when they think they have a medical problem, and he hasn’t sought treatment or therapy. The evidence suggests he has no idea.”

“He’s probably so used to it he doesn’t even question it,”  Medici theorized, “and that’s even more dangerous. The last thing we want here is a domestic incident Our department would be blamed for it if that happened. And with the Referendum coming up…”

“I agree,” added Dar. “It’s time to take action. What are the prospects for a full cure, Dr. Jeong?”

The prospects were nil, or close to nil, but Jeong didn’t want to say that. This case was too unusual and important. “I can’t say for sure till I perform the scans, but I’d say we have an excellent chance. With my experimental techniques…”

“The less you say about that, the better,” Dar replied. “Let the Yes-voters worry about accountability. Real government depends on the exact opposite.”

Medici shook her head. “I know you think your cynicism is amusing, Dar, but it just exposes how adolescent your thinking really it is.”

The man chuckled, seemingly unperturbed by this criticism. “Who was being cynical? I believe in giving brilliant thinkers like Jeong here a lot of leeway. Unless they go around attacking people, like our unfortunate Mr. Klingerman.”

“So we’re agreed then?” she asked. There was no objection, so she turned to Dr. Jeong. “You’re authorized to detain him indefinitely. But he’s a valuable asset to the Federation, so the sooner you can get him back to his old self, the better.”

A thin and frail-looking old woman spoke up next. “'The sooner the better' means before the Referendum. At my age, I don’t see any point in mincing words. Your funding is in danger here. Understood?”

Their requests were meaningless. There wasn’t any realistic possibility of a full cure. Dr. Jeong’s goal was not to fix Klingerman’s brain but to understand it. As always with bureaucrats, you had to tell them what they wanted to hear or you couldn’t get anywhere. The best strategy was usually to phrase things so they got the wrong impression without actually lying.

Dr. Jeong had no choice but to agree “Of course. I’ll do all I can for him, and I’ll keep you posted at every opportunity.”

The call ended abruptly, which was probably the board’s way of reminding him who was boss. Dr. Jeong didn’t mind. They had just given him everything he needed. The abnormality of Klingerman’s symptoms, and the fact that normal treatments weren’t working implied that there was something fundamentally different about the man’s brain. A simple chemical imbalance or even a traumatic brain injury would have been more responsive to the nano-neurotransmitters. The cause of his symptoms must have been something else, as he had suspected all along. If he was right, this was the first genuine case of neurological mutation any scientist had ever had the opportunity to study.

A few seconds later, the formal authorization came through on his personal device. This had the effect of a warrant, so he forwarded it to Fleet Security along with an official request to supply the troops needed to make the arrest.

There was no point in waiting, not with so much work to be done. They would pick up Paul Klingerman that evening at home and get started on the research that could change the whole Federation. It was unfortunate that they had to disrupt the poor man’s family life, but he was most likely a danger to them anyway. In the end, it was best for everyone.

Chapter Four

Back at home with his mother and father, Jack was working on his language app. He’d been right about Arabic — the lessons were hard — but the more he worked on it, the more confident he felt. Things just seemed to fall into place for him. At first, he couldn’t figure out why they put sentences together the way they did, but soon he was doing it himself without even thinking about it. Totally absorbed, Jack stared at the holoscreen and practiced sample sentences while his parents cooked dinner.

“They sent out a messenger, but he did not come back… Ali is generous to orphans… God always knows what you have done…”

That last phrase was a little upsetting. It was like the holocams, but the holocams didn’t see everything. The idea of this God made Jack nervous, like he would get in trouble somehow even if no one saw him doing something wrong.

The other phrases were interesting and a little bit funny. They didn’t seem to be about regular life. There wasn’t anything about snacks or teachers or flying in a car. Instead, it was all about orphans and messengers and deserts. It made Arabic that much more fun, this feeling that it was all very strange and different.

He heard Mommy’s voice. “Could you pass me the salt?”

“Yeah, hold on.” His father was glancing at the holobox, where a newscaster was talking about the things that had happened that day.

The newscaster’s voice was stern and disapproving. “As the Referendum approaches, acts of sabotage and illegal protests by opponents of the Yes-vote have been on the rise. Chaim Aaronson, a prominent spokesperson for the No-voters, has condemned all forms of opposition that go beyond the limits set by law…”

The door chimed, alerting them that there was someone outside. Jack’s mother glanced at the holoscreen above the door.

“Paul?” she called in a half-whisper, her voice catching in her throat.

He snapped back at her. “I said hold on a sec, I’m trying to hear this!”

Then the newscast cut out, replaced on the holobox feed by the image of the men outside. There was a doctor in a lab coat, along with what looked like two soldiers with armbands that read FS.

Daddy wheeled around, snarling with anger and surprise. “What the hell? Fleet security? That bastard Biskarret…”

The door slid open. Jack’s father clenched his fists and glared at the man in the lab coat. “Dr. Jeong! What the hell are you doing in my house?”

Jack hadn’t been anxious about the men until now. People from Daddy’s work visited all the time; there was no reason for this visit to be any different. But Daddy was almost yelling. Something was different about this visit. His heart began beating faster, and he edged back away from the men.

Dr. Jeong’s voice was grave. “Good evening, Paul. I’m afraid I need you to come with me.”

Daddy sneered. “And why is that? How did you get here in anyway? My security system…”

“I’ll explain everything when we get back to the facility, but there’s nothing wrong with your system. As you know, any Detention Order can electronically override home security.”

He tapped his device and a hologram appeared. Jack could see green letters and numbers, but they were too far away for him to read except for the words on top: DETENTION ORDER.

Daddy moved slowly around behind the kitchen island. There was a knife in front of him, right next to a cutting board covered with a big heap of diced tomatoes and onions. His eyes went to it, and so did the doctor’s eyes. Dr. Jeong looked a little bit scared, but Daddy's expression was wild, like he might grab the knife and do something crazy.

Dr. Jeong glanced at the soldiers on either side of him and they fanned out, one going left and the other right.

Jack’s mother suddenly seemed to realize what was happening. Her voice cracked in fear as she cried out. “PAUL!”

Daddy’s voice was cold and calm. “It’s going to be okay, Diane. I’m not going anywhere. A Fleet Detention Order is an internal matter, it has no force of law except over Fleet personnel. And I’m quitting the service. As of right this second, you have no authority to enforce that order, Dr. Jeong.”

“That isn’t how it works, Paul, and you know it. You need help. Come with me to the hospital, and we’ll get it all straightened out. You have a serious medical condition.”

The soldiers were creeping closer, and Daddy’s eyes were darting from side to side.

“Hold it right there!” he barked. They stopped for a moment, and his hand hovered over the knife on the cutting board. He looked right in the doctor’s eyes. “Get what straightened out? That thing with Biskarret? What a load of crap! He was running his mouth, so I smacked it shut for him. What’s wrong with that?”

The doctor’s voice held a hint of empathy. “It’s atavistic. A reversion to primitive humanity. On some distant colony, world people might still act that way, but here on T3…”

“Here on T3! That’s a joke and you know it! You didn’t bring these jackasses along to hold my hand…”

One of the soldiers dove at him and Jack’s father tried to grab the knife at the same time. He didn’t make it. The soldier who had moved first grabbed his right arm, and the other soldier rushed in from the other side and grabbed his left arm. Jack’s mother screamed, a sound that made the child's gut clench with fear and concern. His mom hardly ever showed that much emotion, so it meant that something really bad was happening. The soldiers cranked Daddy’s arms up behind his back, and he thrashed from side to side like a dog on a tight leash.

Mommy burst out sobbing, “Oh God… oh God…”

Jack couldn’t help it. Seeing his mother sob like that was too much for him to take. He started yelling, “NOOO! STOP IT!!!”

Daddy bared his teeth in a grimace. Jack had seen him angry many times, but never like this. This didn’t even look like his Daddy. “You sons of bitches! You corrupt, ignorant…”

The doctor opened the door. “I’m genuinely sorry, Paul. It’s like I said, you have a serious condition — a brain condition. We’re going to help you, but you need to come to the hospital.”

Jack’s father went limp, and they were forced to drag him across the floor. “I’ll never cooperate! I’ll never accept this! YOU CANNOT HOLD ME!”

Despite his defiance, they had Daddy out the door in a matter of seconds. A chair toppled over, hitting the floor with a loud crash. Then they were gone, leaving Jack and his mother alone. He stopped yelling and just stared at the chair. Did they really just steal his Daddy?

Mommy dropped down on the floor and buried her head in her arms. She was making a horrible sound like a shrill keen. He had never seen anything like this before in his life.

He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, half to comfort her, and half to prod her back into her normal self. “Mom?”

She was so upset, Jack felt like he should do something to help her feel better. But he also needed his Mommy to help him feel better… and she wasn’t here. Can’t you do something, Mommy? Can’t you help me?

The keening stopped, replaced abruptly with a blank stare. He said “Mom?” again, but she responded with something that didn’t seem to be meant for him.

“They said something was wrong with his brain.” Her voice sounded dead, with none of the warmth he was hoping to find. She stared off into space, not acknowledging his presence at all. “Why can’t they just give him a nanobot injection? Most of these things can be cured with an update patch…”

Jack didn’t know what to say to that, and it didn’t seem like she was talking to him anyway. He kept staring at her for a little while, then decided she wasn’t going to help him. No one ever helps me. He rubbed the tears from his eyes, then turned around and stumbled half-blind to the staircase. There was only one thing he could do to feel safe again, and even if it didn’t really work, he still wanted it badly.

Climbing the staircase felt like climbing a mountain. Jack had to grip the railing tight to pull himself up. He still couldn’t see properly because of the tears in his eyes, and little sobs kept escaping him when he tried to breathe. When he got through the door to his bedroom he ran straight to the bed, then rooted around in the box until he found the little medical band doll. The nice doctor said it would keep me safe, that the doll was my bodyguard…

But if people could just come in and take Daddy away, then how was he safe?

Chapter Five

Jack hadn’t been to school in several days, but he hadn’t spent much time playing or even watching the holobox, either. Everything in the house felt weird and scary, especially because his mother was saying things that didn’t make sense. She had told his teacher there was something contagious going around and that Daddy was in the hospital because of it. If that was true, they would have taken him and Mommy too. Was his mother lying?

She talked with Dr. Jeong every single day, and sometimes, when she seemed really nervous, she called him more than once a day. He always said the same thing no matter how many times she called: “Call again tomorrow and we’ll have more information.” They never did.

Every time the doctor said that, Mommy got upset again. She would cry for a little while sitting on the couch, then she would just stare at the wall for a while like she’d done the first day. Jack tried to stay away from her as much as he could because it was so upsetting to see her like this.

Right now he was outside in the yard because the weather update told him the radiation levels were low enough to be safe, and it was a good way to get out of the house for a little bit. He wasn’t playing, just lying down and looking up at the clouds. He was almost as anxious as Mommy was but staring at nothing didn’t seem to help. He had no idea what would.

As Jack watched, a Loon Network balloon array floated lazily across the sky. Jack didn’t know exactly how it worked, but he did know that the balloons had computers in them and that they could talk to each other. That’s how most people stayed connected: anyone with an antenna could get on the network for free and look up anything they wanted.

Mommy and Daddy used a newer system called e-DNA, but that was only because they both worked for the Federation. If you didn’t work for the military or the government, you couldn’t use it. He liked the Loon Network better anyway. It was fun to look at the shapes the balloons made when they drifted over. Pushed along by the wind, they clustered into forms he could recognize. One would look like a clown and another like an elephant, while others would drift into triangles or rectangles.

He was feeling sleepy. Watching the balloons must have calmed him down. Feeling somewhat better, Jack got up and wandered inside. If I can find Mommy, maybe she’ll make me something to eat.

He heard a sound from the kitchen like a glass pan clinking on a surface. To Jack’s surprise, Mommy was already making some food. She turned and smiled at him when he came in, although the smile still looked sad to him. “I made lasagna!”

He grinned. Lasagna was his favorite, with slices of zucchini and chunks of broccoli. It seemed like a good sign that Mommy was cooking, and making his favorite dinner at that.

“Why don’t you sit over here and talk with me while I serve dinner,” she instructed. He pulled a chair up to the kitchen island but winced at the memory of the same chair falling over.

His mother gave him a concerned look. “It’s okay, darling. Your father and I work for the Federation, and the Federation put an end to the bad old days when companies could mistreat workers.”

He wasn’t quite sure why she’d said this, but he ventured a guess. “So, Daddy’s work… they won’t hurt him?”

“Oh no, darling. Definitely not. It’s simply out of the question.”

She took out the lasagna and put it on the counter, then cut him a big square and put it in a bowl for him. “Here you go. There’s a… possibility that whatever is going on with your father is some kind of workplace injury. The people at the Department of Material Science do wonderful work, but perhaps he was exposed to something that wasn’t good for him. Whatever it is, we can trust the Federation to make it right.”

Her hand was shaking a little as she cut her own slice. It made a mess, and she didn’t end up scooping any of the lasagna into a bowl for herself. Instead, she sighed and put the knife down in the lasagna dish. “I love working for the Federation. We both do. Whatever is going on with Paul… going on with your father, it must be in the best interest of the whole galaxy.”

Jack ate his lasagna, but what Mommy was saying still didn’t make sense to him. She trusted her work, and she went right on trusting them even when they did bad things, like stealing Daddy. In his own experience, you just couldn’t trust other people to do what you needed or be nice to you. They wanted to hurt you for no reason, like Mahmoud, or they acted nice but blamed you for things you didn’t do, like Mrs. Lane-Roc. Most of the time they just ignored you, and they only ever cared about their own selves. Didn’t Mommy know this?

He had finished his lasagna. His mother smiled, and her smile looked sad and hopeful at the same time. “Go on and get washed up, dear. I spoke with Dr. Jeong, and he said we can go in and visit Daddy.”

+++

An hour later, they were sitting in a waiting room at the Fleet Hospital, waiting for Dr. Jeong to come out and talk to them. They were in a special wing behind locked doors that buzzed when they let you in. There were doctors in lab coats, but there were also soldiers from Fleet Security. When Jack saw them, he almost jumped up and ran out the door. These were the same people who had taken Daddy. Would they take him too, or would they take Mommy and leave him alone?

They didn’t even look at him, but just kept staring straight ahead at nothing. He ignored them too. It was probably safer if they didn’t notice him. There was nothing to do here, no toys or books, and Jack wondered if Daddy was bored. Being bored made his father irritated, and he giggled at the image of Daddy getting mad at the doctors. If he got them in trouble, would they go to time out or what would they do?

Then again, it kind of seemed like his father was the one in time out. Was that what jail was, a long time-out for naughty grown-ups?

Dr. Jeong came out and went straight to his mother. “Mrs. Klingerman?”

She frowned at him. “Flight Sergeant Klingerman.”

“Yes… yes, of course. I’m sorry, Flight Sergeant. I have nothing but respect for all the training you pilots go through, and for all the work you do in keeping the colonies… linked to civilization here on T3.”

His anxious response seemed to provoke her.

“I see,” she replied. “Even us fighter jocks make a valuable contribution, if not quite as important as what you scientists get up to?”

“That’s not what I…”

“Never mind. I want to know how my husband is doing.”

Dr. Jeong sighed. “Paul has an unusual brain structure, a neurological mutation.”

Her hand shot up to her mouth, and she replied in a strangled voice, “A mutation?”

“Please, Flight Sergeant, it’s not as bad as it sounds. As you’re aware, neuroplasticity declines with age. Some of the branches of the neural system die off as a person ages, to make the brain more efficient and focused.”

She waved for him to continue. “Yes…”

“That’s not the case with your husband. His neurons have retained their youthful web-like structure, which is why Paul Klingerman can be so… brilliant. Unfortunately, it’s also what causes his brain to get overwhelmed. When your husband is swamped with excess information, he becomes overstimulated. And he becomes enraged. He can try to control it, but it’s physically impossible for him to keep it from happening.”

“Oh, my poor Paul. My poor dear. What are you doing for him? Can he come home?”

The doctor looked mournful. “I’m afraid not. He’ll have to remain here for further testing and treatment.”

“But why, doctor? Can’t you treat him with nanobots?”

“We’ve already tried. Nanobot technology is not yet advanced enough for a condition like his. Paul’s case is unique, and we’ll have to study him to learn how to help his situation.”

“An outpatient treatment…”

The doctor shook his head. “If only we could. We can’t possibly let him out into the general population, certainly not unsupervised. I don’t think you realize how serious the situation is. If we cleared him to go, he would most certainly face criminal charges for his assault on Ander Biskarret and would probably have to spend some time in a Rehabilitation Facility. The only thing preventing that right now is the fact that he didn’t act of his own volition, but under the influence of a neurological condition he cannot control. If we let him out without effective treatment, he would probably end up k…”

“Doctor! My son is here.”

Dr. Jeong glanced over at Jack guiltily. “Oh yes. My apologies. One thing I would like to emphasize is that he’s no less capable than other people. In many respects, he’s far more capable. From the perspective of evolution, a mutation like this could well be a benefit. It’s just that our society is not yet equipped to handle it. But your husband can still make a contribution, an important contribution.”

Jack’s mother brightened up a little. “I’m glad to hear that. I know it’s important to him.”

“Would you like to go in and see him now? It’s probably better, at least for now, if you go in one at a time. That way he won’t become… overstimulated.”

Jack’s mother turned and put a stiff hand on her son's shoulder for a moment. “Jack darling, I’m going in to see Daddy now. You can see him after me, but I need you to wait out here for just a minute. Will that be okay?”

Jack nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He felt like he couldn’t, like his throat was too tight to let the words out. She had said it would only be a minute, but as she went through the door with Dr. Jeong, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was going away from him forever.

+++

On the flight home in their personal car, Jack’s mother was talking as much to herself as she was to him. He just stared out the viewscreen, watching the world as it sped by beneath him. He didn’t want to think about what she was saying as she drove. Staring at nothing made it all feel far away.

“Dr. Jeong was helpful.” Her voice was distant, like she had shut herself off somehow. “He explained it all while I was in with Daddy, the… important contribution your father can make. Daddy’s really doing something great for science, something great for the Federation. And you can too!”

Fear stabbed through his chest. What is she talking about?

He bit his lip. “I can?”

“Yes, you can. You’re Daddy’s son, so there might be something special about your brain too. They want to test you!”

No, no, no!

Jack’s stomach hurt, a sour, painful, burning sensation. He gripped the seat hard, digging in with his fingers. “They want to test me? What do you mean? Are they coming to take me away from the house?”

“Of course not, darling.” She tried to sound like she knew this for sure, but she didn’t sound certain at all. Jack felt like he could throw up in the car, but Mommy didn’t seem to notice. She just kept talking. “I don’t know much about the details, but it’s a wonderful opportunity for you. A wonderful opportunity!”

Angry thoughts flashed through his mind. Mommy’s helping them! She wants to get rid of me… but that couldn’t be true, could it? He couldn’t look at her right now. He turned back toward the window and watched the lights of the city flash by below them.

His mother kept going, “I’m sure we’ll be alright, darling. It’s the Federation. I’m sure we’ll all… we’ll all be alright.”

Chapter Six

Diane Klingerman glanced around the flight deck, taking in the familiar chaos of Fleet Base Ares: fighter planes soaring off or gliding in, men and women running up and attaching fuel lines, engineers pulling panels and examining circuitry. She closed her eyes, letting the monstrous white noise roar of the deck wash over her, all the hissing and clanging and whirring of a hundred machines, everything from hydraulic pumps to ventilation systems, punctuated repeatedly by the shriek of the fighter plane engines as they took to the skies. She took a breath, savoring the harsh scents of fuel and metal.

She was back at work, and she could already feel it helping. The fear was lighter now, losing its grip on her mind and her body. When she sat in the cockpit and took off in her Spitfire, she would feel like herself again. She’d forget — for a while.

She opened her eyes, turned to the red door of the hangar in front of her, and read the sign: Squadron 7 Red Flight Command and Control. She looked straight ahead of her and the door buzzed, while an automated voice said, “Flight Sergeant Klingerman.” She marched down the hallway, conscious as always of her military bearing. The pilots who waited for her in the briefing room were not so formal. Like most other fighter jocks, they saw themselves as too elite for discipline. When she walked through the door, they did make some attempt to snap to attention, but they’d been lounging around, and their version of the salute was still too casual to really please her.

As the Flight Sergeant, Diane was responsible for giving the briefing. She frowned sternly at the members of her squad, letting them know without words that she expected a more serious attitude from them next time. She didn’t want to show it, but the truth was that she felt grateful to be back here at last. She loved her family, but never quite clicked with them — or with anyone else. She tolerated dealing with people so she could get back where she belonged, hurtling through space at the controls of a Spitfire. Even this briefing was just a means to that end. When it looked like everyone had taken note of her disapproval, she let them off the hook a little. “At ease, everyone. It’s good to see you all.”

One of the men called out to her, his voice as loud and friendly as if they were meeting at a bar. “Welcome back, Sarge!” He was known as Dowser.

She winced a little in response, not knowing how to respond in kind. She never hung out with the squad off-duty and didn’t even know if she’d be welcome to do so. Even with her fellow pilots, social interactions were never easy. She didn’t share their often crude sense of humor, nor was she part of their easy camaraderie, but they were always respectful, and that was all she could ask of them.

She made her voice as crisp as possible, shutting down any uncomfortable familiarity. “Here’s the mission. FFS Poseidon, a Class IV Cruiser, is in the system to return a diplomat. They won’t be hanging around, they’re off to some other system as soon as they’re done here. We’re flying as escorts to make sure the diplomat’s vehicle gets to the surface safely.”

The squad looked mildly disappointed. One of the women crossed her arms in front of her chest, looked Diane directly in the eyes, and said, “A milk run.” There was a murmur of agreement.

Diane shook her head. “We can’t assume that, Bug. Never say milk run till the mission’s over.”

Bug bit her lip. “I know, I know. Deliver the milk first.”

Diane went on, “I’ll be the flight leader, and Bug will be my wingman. Dowser, I want you as element leader with Hee-Haw as your wingman. Scooter, you hold back a bit and keep an eye on everything. Everyone got it?”

“Way ahead of you, sarge,” Bug confirmed. “That’s how we figured you’d call it.” One reason they respected Diane despite her awkwardness is that she had never been known to make a reckless decision. Her orders made sense and kept them safe. That mattered more than anything else.

Diane nodded crisply, confident that her crew would do what she needed. “Then let’s get up there.”

They left the hangar and filed out to their Spitfires, sleek and raptor-like space planes that bore no resemblance at all to their historical namesakes. Her own fighter was marked CIRCUS, in reference to a paper she had written about the Red Baron back at the Academy.

Her callsign irked her. It was a reference to a German fighter ace on a plane named after a legendary British aircraft at a time when the two nations were rivals. It seemed illogical, and illogical things were irritating.

Still, there was no sense complaining about it or the other pilots would only give her a worse one. And it could get a lot worse. The freckled redhead with the prominent front teeth was known as Hee-Haw. Dowser had his call-sign because of his ability to find hidden liquor, usually liquor belonging to other squadrons, occasionally liquor belonging to officers. As for Bug, her call-sign referred to a childhood anecdote involving the stomach flu. Whatever your fellow pilots noticed about you first, that was your callsign, until and unless they were more impressed by something else.

As she climbed into her cockpit and strapped in for the flight, Diane felt the anxiety and heartbreak of her home life drop away from her like discarded rags. “Circus” the fighter pilot was a totally different person from Diane Klingerman, the wife and mother. Diane never knew what to say or do. Every interaction felt difficult, and each conversation felt jagged and tense. Circus was the opposite: fluid and free, a bird soaring through the empty spaces. When she was in her Spitfire, the troubles of life on the ground no longer had any meaning. She felt alive.

The flight squad took off, one shrieking engine after another. They climbed up through the atmosphere without any conversation, just enjoying the freedom of flight. Everything went smoothly and all was calm. The Spitfires floated up through the clouds and the blue beyond them, streaking up toward the darkness of outer space. Diane breathed easy knowing she had made the right choice in returning to work. Between T3 and the moon, she saw their objective on her radar. Her voice was matter of fact, as if she was discussing the weather. “Approaching the Poseidon.”

The others acknowledged, and just a few seconds later she saw a second dot on her screen. It was the car they were escorting, with one of the Federation’s traveling diplomats inside. Travel to some of the more distant colonies was still difficult and time-consuming, in some cases inhospitable or even dangerous. New Atlantia kept access to the surface strictly limited; Gaia was caught up in yet another of their endless civil wars; Pyotr was under the domination of an uncontrollable crime syndicate. Under the circumstances, the Federation couldn’t maintain a permanent diplomatic presence on every colony yet. The traveling ambassadors filled in the gaps, doing their best to represent a central government with no real governing authority over many of its star systems.

Not everyone wanted that central government to get any more powerful than it already was. That’s why the diplomat needed an escort, even if Bug and the others considered the flight a milk run.

The car opened a channel on the holo, and a male voice came over their headsets. “This is Ambassador Menendez’s private vehicle. Are you the escort flight?”

Diane had no idea who else they believed it could possibly be — the No faction didn’t have its own fighter squadrons, after all — but the question did show a healthy sense of caution. “This is Flight Sergeant Diane Klingerman, callsign Circus. We’re Red Flight of Squadron 7, attached to Fleet Base Ares. We’ll be walking you in.”

A sigh of relief, then, “Understood and confirmed. We’ll follow your lead.”

What were they worried about? Although a terrorist attack was technically possible, it wasn’t that likely. Most of the No-voters had as much respect for the rule of law as any Yes-voter, and the extremists were just a handful of little splinter groups with no strong leadership or access to resources. Has the Ambassador’s office received a threat?

The real reason for the escort was much more mundane, even if the danger was still real. Over centuries of spaceflight, a tremendous amount of debris had built up around T3, a ring of trash that posed a serious hazard to any passing ship. Clearing all the junk out was a major priority, but the task would take many years. To get the diplomat home without any trouble they would have to use gravity mines, small objects composed of highly compressed matter capable of generating their own small gravitational fields.

The idea was to pull in random debris by dragging the mines behind the flight squad, with each mine tethered to its controlling fighter electromagnetically. Usually half of the debris would burn up on reentry and the rest could then be properly disposed of. Of course, this did require some fancy flying. The technique was to fly right at an object and then dodge it on the way by, resulting in a smooth capture by the gravity mines behind the plane.

“We’ve got the Ambassador,” Diane drawled. “Flip it over.”

The squad of Spitfires shot past the car, then turned their noses down in a tight U-shape, changing direction and heading back for T3.

Bug pulled up into her spot in the inverted-V formation, keeping her distance so the debris they were dragging behind them didn’t hit the Ambassador’s car. “Sounding chill over there, Circus.”

All the fighters were forced to fly some distance apart or ahead. This ensured a smooth flight path for the driver of the car but also meant that none of the fighters could really support the others except with long-range rockets — the one thing they were least likely to use on a mission like this.

As they formed up at some distance from the car, Diane spoke over the holo system. After Bug’s little comment about sounding “chill,” she gave her next order with a whip-crack urgency. “Deploy gravity mines!”

Hee-haw replied, deliberately exaggerating his country yokel accent, “I sure do love being a trash collector. Best job ever.”

“Can it, Hee-Haw.”

“You got it, Circus.”

Everything was going about as smoothly as it could — a milk run, as Bug had said. They flew trash missions all the time because it gave them a lot of flight hours while still contributing something useful to T3 society. There was no denying they were kind of boring, though — at least compared to actual combat, which was something that basically never happened. The occasional pirate-suppression mission or intervention in some colonial conflict was all they could hope for, but even those missions were so uncommon there was no realistic chance of earning fighter ace status by killing five enemy birds.

Hee-Haw wasn’t wrong, though: they were glorified bodyguards and trash collectors all rolled into one. Diane didn’t mind this. What she loved was the act of flying, and she didn’t need the ego boost of being called an ace. In her years of service, she’d only been in combat two times, and both of those incidents were brief.

That’s why the unexpected appearance of an extra dot on her radar screen came as such a big surprise.

It was coming in rapidly, though it must have been hiding behind a piece of junk just seconds before. A warning buzz on her instrument panel confirmed her suspicions. This object didn’t appear on any of the flight plan maps or schematics. That could only mean one thing: it must have been a small, unlicensed satellite.

Most of these illegal devices had already been captured or destroyed on previous trash runs, but no one could say they were completely wiped out. Most of them had originally been launched by criminal gangs or terrorists, hoping to interfere with passing ships. The thing might be automated, or it might be remotely controlled by someone on the ground. Either way, it was trouble.

Diane clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes as a surge of irrational anger shot through her. If the Yes-vote won, the Fleet would be able to deal with terrorists and criminal scum a lot more easily. She didn’t have any time to indulge these thoughts, though. There was nothing between the ambassador and the satellite, and it was closing in rapidly.

Without contacting the other pilots or even thinking about it consciously, Diane suddenly broke formation and dove down through the debris field. The Spitfire's inertia drive tech was designed to let it maneuver and respond like an aircraft, even in the vacuum of space, allowing pilots perform such sudden tactical movements no matter the atmosphere, or lack thereof. If she got up underneath the satellite before it could do anything, there was still a chance she could take it out. She expected it to launch an electronic attack on the car’s operating systems, causing the driver to lose control and drift aimlessly in orbit. Standard practice for a criminal satellite would then be to demand a ransom payment. Otherwise, the car would just be stuck in orbit forever with no way to get home.

It didn’t happen. As she dove and pulled up, the satellite shot something at the ambassador’s car. According to her system, it was a flying drill. If that device hit the car, it would bore straight through and shred everyone inside. This wasn’t a ransom attempt: it was an assassination.

Voices broke in as she adjusted her flight path, corkscrewing up out of her dive at an angle steep enough to intercept. “What are you doing, Circus? What’s going on, Sarge?”

She didn’t answer. Diane had no time or space to do anything but fly, and even then it would be touch and go. She hit the burners and shot straight at the flying drill like a flaming arrow.

Her holo system alerted her to the danger she was in. “Time until impact, three seconds. Two… One…”

She swerved, and the flying drill swerved with her as its systems interpreted her as the new target and locked on. She missed the drill by inches, but it reoriented in less than a second. If the drill hit her Spitfire, her plane’s systems would be ripped apart like fiery confetti. She’d be torn to pieces too, blood and bone in every direction. It was an ugly possibility, but not as bad as knowing that Jack would grow up without a mother or father…

No time to think about Jack. She just had to keep flying, trusting in her gravity mines to grab the horrible little weapon and render it harmless. In the back of her mind, she was dimly aware of voices on the holo.

“Illegal satellite, illegal satellite. Flying drill launch.”

Her voice was a whisper. “Little late there, guys…”

She heard a beep and glanced down at her radar. The mines had done it! The flying drill was safely contained, caught in the gravity field.

She called in her instructions. “Dowser, you’re closest to that satellite. Get a tracker on it. We’ll need to send a team up here later to remove it permanently.”

“I’m on it, Sarge. But holy shit…”

She returned to formation, dragging the drill behind her. The ambassador was safe. She had just prevented an assassination, and she knew she ought to feel great about that. But she was too shocked to feel much of anything. What did I just do?

Bug’s voice was awestruck. “What the hell, Circus, that was some fancy flying.”

“She ain’t Circus anymore,” said Hee-Haw. “She’s Driller now.”

A new callsign. Great. At least it wasn’t a bad one, and it even had something to do with a flying exploit. So far, so good…

“I don’t know, Sarge,” came Scooter’s voice, a little exasperated. “Why didn’t you ask us for help?”

Scooter was a new mother, so she saw things a little differently than some of the others. On top of that, Scooter was the one who should have seen the satellite first and given the warning — but Diane’s reactions had been sharper.

Diane shook her head, hardly even believing what she was about to say. “It didn’t even occur to me. I was going on instinct.”

This was so uncharacteristic of her that she had trouble admitting it, and the others knew it too. They laughed, but Scooter continued with her criticism. “You really shouldn’t put yourself at risk right now, you know? Didn’t you just say earlier that your husband and your kid were sick? You’ll want to be able to get back and take care of them...”

Diane’s voice was flat, verging on cold. “This is the Fleet. We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good. And if we do our jobs, the Fleet does its job and keeps everyone safe. Including my family.”

Scooter could tell she’d hit a nerve. “Consider me reprimanded. That was still incredible, the way you just grabbed it like that. Nice flying… Driller!”

Chapter Seven

At Jack’s school, Mrs. Lane-Roc was describing the Federation’s system of government. “The Federation government is democratic, whenever it can be. Can anyone tell me what that means?”

She glanced over at Jack, who would usually have been eager to answer a question like this. But he was distracted, too busy thinking about his father to focus on his teacher. A girl in his class put her hand up, and Mrs. Lane-Roc called on her. “It means we vote.”

“That’s right, Ellen, it means we vote. But we don’t vote on the law ourselves, now do we?”

Mahmoud scoffed. “The Council makes the laws.”

“That’s usually true, Mahmoud. But our system is mixed. Some things are under civilian control, like T3 itself. Some things are under the control of the military, like the off-world colonies. Military law applies when you’re off T3.”

“They’ll be telling us what to do here, too. As soon as the Referendum’s over.”

“That just isn’t true, Mahmoud. If people vote Yes on the Referendum, the laws will say exactly what powers the military has and what powers the Council has. If people vote No, everything will stay the way it is right now. Yes, Frederick?”

“Why isn’t the Council just in charge of everything? They’re the ones we vote for!”

“That’s an excellent question, Frederick. We do try to be a democracy, don’t we? That’s why we vote for the Council. But sometimes there are people who don’t want to listen to the Council and who cause all sorts of problems. That’s why we have a military, to make sure people listen to the Council when they need to. It’s for the good of everyone. The Referendum is our chance to decide what the Council will be in charge of and what the military will be in charge of.”

Jack was still too distracted to participate actively in the conversation. Not only had those men come to his house and taken his father, but it also looked like there was a chance they would take him as well. His mother said they wouldn’t, that they just wanted to give him some tests, but he wasn’t sure he believed her.

Anyway, why wouldn’t the school tests be good enough? He always did well in them, but he didn’t want any extra tests. It didn’t seem fair. First, they took my Daddy away, and now they want me to take extra tests on top of that! And what if they take me too? Will I ever be able to do anything fun? Will they even let me see Mommy anymore?

Whatever they were doing to help his Daddy, he hoped it was working, that they might be able to make Daddy less angry. If they could at least do that, it might make up for everything else.

A tone sounded from the ceiling, and Mrs. Lane-Roc announced, “It’s time for recess, children.”

They filed outside, but Jack was still just as lost in his thoughts as he had been before. He didn’t even notice Mahmoud coming up to him. “There you are! Jack the Fed-lover!”

He didn’t know what to say at first. Why is Mahmoud so mad? Why is everyone always so mad?

“The Federation helps people,” he muttered quietly.

Mahmoud stepped closer. “That’s a lie, Jack! You’re a liar! All Federation people are the same, you and your Mommy and Daddy and all the rest of them. You want to keep the Council from helping regular people!”

Jack surprised himself — and surprised Mahmoud even more — with the icy wave of anger that seemed to wash over him at that moment. He stepped even closer to Mahmoud and narrowed his eyes. “You shut up about my mom and dad.”

Mahmoud didn’t say anything a child would usually say in that situation. He didn’t say anything about “how will you make me?” or “you and what army?” He just stepped back a little.

Jack balled his hands up into fists just like his father did when he was mad. He was so angry that spit came flying out of his mouth when he talked and landed on Mahmoud’s face. “The Federation helps people. You don’t know anything!”

Mahmoud looked embarrassed for a second. Jack had made him step back, and that wasn’t something that usually happened. He seemed uncertain, but when the spit hit his face he went a little crazy. Wiping it off with the back of his hand, Mahmoud yelled, “You’re a liar!”

He stepped forward again with his eyes blazing and shoved Jack with both hands. Jack shoved back even harder, and Mahmoud stumbled and fell over backward. He tumbled to the ground, and from the sound he made Jack could tell all the wind had been knocked right out of him.

Mrs. Lane-Roc came running over, her face red with disapproval. “No fighting, children! NO FIGHTING! Jack Klingerman, you come with me!”

Why was Mrs. Lane-Roc blaming him for what had happened? Mahmoud was the one who had pushed him first. Did she only see what happened when he pushed Mahmoud back, or did she see the whole thing and blame him anyway?

It didn’t make any difference. Whatever the reason, his teacher was giving him all the blame. As they walked down the hall, she kept lamenting what had happened on the playground.

“Oh, Jack. What shall we do with you? It’s not your fault, I truly believe it’s not your fault. But violence is just not acceptable.”

“Mrs. Lane-Roc, Mahmoud…”

“It takes two, though, doesn’t it Jack? I know he provoked you, but that’s no excuse for putting your hands on him. It’s just no excuse. But I know you can’t help it…”

He didn’t like the sound of that. It sounded too much like what they’d said about his Daddy. Was Mrs. Lane-Roc taking him to Dr. Jeong?

He soon discovered that she was not: his teacher was only taking him to the office like any other naughty kid. Maybe, just maybe, she would make him go talk to the Socialization Counselor and leave it at that. If he was really good from this point on…

She marched him right past the door of the Socialization Counselor’s room and dragged him up to the door of the office. “You can sit right here for a minute, Jack.” She pointed at a chair in the hallway, where kids who were in trouble had to sit. “I have to make a holo call.”

He must be in really bad trouble then. “Are you calling my Mom?”

“You just wait right here. Everything will be okay. It’s not really your fault.”

Mrs. Lane-Roc closed the door, but her voice was loud enough that he heard her anyway.

“Yes, Doctor… mmm-hmmm. Well, would this be considered a symptom?”

Jack’s heart started to beat so fast he could hear it in his ears. He had done it now.

Chapter Eight

Several hours later, Diane Klingerman was still waiting in the lobby of the hospital. No one had told her what was going on, only that her son had been taken in for some emergency tests after an incident at school and that she would have to wait to see him. She could hardly believe it, but it made her feel sick to think about it. She tried not to.

To pass the time and avoid too much thinking, she was busy catching up on a lot of drudge work. The attempt on the life of Ambassador Menendez had to be accounted for to the smallest detail, so the Investigators assigned to the case could track down whoever was responsible and hold them accountable. But that wasn’t all. They were talking about giving her a commendation for bravery because she had saved the ambassador, but they were also talking about giving her a formal reprimand because she had broken protocol by flying off alone to deal with it. They couldn’t exactly give her both, so they would probably just end up doing nothing. That was fine with her, but meanwhile, there were all these forms to fill out…

And then there were the updates, everything from patrol reports on the latest trash run to flight rotations and schedule conflicts that had to be worked out without pissing anyone off too much. It wasn’t her preferred way to spend her time, but it was better than thinking about what was going on with Paul and Jack.

And there it was. She was thinking about it again even though she didn’t want to. She glanced up at the clock and was disturbed to find that she had already been waiting for four hours. What was keeping Dr. Jeong? The nurses had assured her that Jack was not in any physical danger, so why wouldn’t someone come out and talk to her?

She gave the clock a disapproving glare and went back to her busy work. It was just no use. Every time she tried to think about anything other than the situation at hand, her husband’s face or her son’s face floated back into her mind. She would never have expected this to happen to her.

Paul always had a temper, but he had never been a violent man, at least not to her. T3 society was pointedly egalitarian when it came to relationships, and an incident of domestic violence would certainly be enough to sink someone’s career. So maybe that was what had held him back. But she didn’t think so.

The thing was, Paul was never really that bad until just recently. He sometimes got angry for very little reason, and he seemed almost incapable of letting something drop and just getting on with life. But her parents had raised her with a good example of a successful marriage, and the firm injunction that all good relationships require a lot of compromise. She had done her best to live up to that lesson, and it was only a short time ago that things had started to get beyond her ability to handle.

Was Paul’s condition the cause of it all as Dr. Jeong insisted, or would he have been a difficult man to live with under the best of circumstances? Had she even been compromising in the first place, or just putting up with something she should never have to endure?

She hadn’t pondered it much until she had no choice, and now she didn’t know what to do. Paul was a brilliant engineer — a genius, really — and she was a fighter pilot, one of the most elite positions in the Federation Fleet. How could the child of such a match be anything other than happy and successful? She didn’t understand it. They had all the right ingredients for a perfect family, but in the end, it had turned into pure misery. Her husband was gone, and she didn’t even know what was going on with her son.

She just couldn’t take it, not if she went on thinking like this. She was a Federation pilot, a proud member of the armed services. She could control her emotions, she could shut them off if she had to. She had done it before and had been doing it for as long as she could remember. She could do it now.

She composed her face into a mask, let the heartache and fear fade away. She pretended she was flying, with nothing to think about but her Spitfire and the stars.

Dr. Jeong was standing across from her on the other side of the lobby, staring at her with a peculiar expression on his face. She knew he was only doing his job, but for a man who had just smashed her whole life to pieces, he seemed blandly professional, almost cheerful.

As for Dr. Jeong, he was thinking about how strange her expression looked. For a woman who had just recently been separated from both her husband and her child, she seemed weirdly unemotional.

As he crossed the lobby with his hands in his lab coat pockets, he found himself wishing there was something that would make this process easier. Diane Klingerman was so suspicious, so quick to take offense. He couldn’t show it, but Dr. Jeong was a little intimidated.

People used to have rituals to deal with this sort of thing, he recalled Why don’t we have anything like that anymore?

Handshaking, for instance. When two people met, they would extend their weapon hands and clasp them firmly, shaking them up and down to show that they were both unarmed. Such a useful social ritual, a simple way to put the other person at ease.

If he could only show her he meant no harm, that he had the best of intentions — but the handshaking ritual no longer existed, and nothing had arisen to take its place. He tried to put her at ease by smiling, but it seemed inappropriate under the circumstances and it felt false.

As the doctor approached, the sickly smile on his face made Diane’s skin crawl. Why in the world was he smiling, and why did it look so bizarre? Did he plan to open with a joke before he told her what he’d done with her son?

Still, the well-being and togetherness of her family depended on this man and his decisions. It wouldn’t do to offend him. She stood up and tried to return his expression as well as she could, and it ended up looking just as strange.

They stood there forcing smiles at each other for a few seconds before Dr. Jeong realized someone would have to break the tension. “Hello, Mrs… Flight Sergeant Klingerman. I’m sorry to keep you waiting for such a long time, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to keep Jack here overnight.”

“Is he… alright?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. It’s just that we need to run some tests. I’m sure you understand.”

“If you think it’s best.”

“I’m sure it is. You might as well go home and get some rest. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

Diane sighed. She’d heard this before. Still, at least her husband and her son were in Federation care. Whatever they were doing must be good for society. That was the whole point of the Federation, after all. She didn’t want to be seen as difficult or obstructive, not when it came to important Federation work.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, then.”

“Good night, Mrs. Klingerman.”

It didn’t even occur to her to correct him this time.

Chapter Nine

Early the next morning, Dr. Jeong was in his office sipping his morning cup of macca. The popular stimulant, mixed from a pink powder, was warm and soothing to drink. It tasted slightly sweet when fresh, and a single cup was enough to focus the mind for the day’s work. He cradled the mug in his hand and watched the steam rise and fade away, then took a sip and sighed contentedly. The perfect cup.

His holo beeped, and his assistant’s pleasantly professional voice disturbed his reverie. “Sorry to interrupt your macca, Doctor, but you have a call from Diane Klingerman.”

He put the mug down gently on his desk. “That’s quite alright, Christie. You can put her through.”

He would have preferred not to be interrupted until he’d finished his morning ritual, but he knew better than to snap at Christie about it. At the Federation Academy in Vienna, the professors always hammered in the importance of treating people well to build up social capital.

Dr. Jeong had learned the lesson well. When you invested in your people, they were much more likely to go the extra mile for you in the future. Human relationships were built on reciprocity, not authority, and even when you had authority officially, it was still better to remember that.

The question was this: how could he build up reciprocity with Diane Klingerman, so he didn’t have to lean too hard on his legal authority? He had her husband and her son, so she was all but powerless in this relationship. The key point was to make sure that wasn’t too obvious, so she didn’t panic and do something unpredictable.

In his Academy classes on sociology, they had taught him that all authority depended on force, but that the actual use of force implied a lack of authority. He needed to proceed with Mrs. Klingerman on that basis somehow, so his authority would never be questioned and would never need to be enforced.

Christie broke in again, a little flustered. “Okay, she’s here. Sorry for the delay. The call dropped while I was talking to you and I had to get her back.”

Dr. Jeong smiled serenely. “Of course, Christie. How can I help you, Flight Sergeant?”

Though he was prone to forget, the use of her military title made Mrs. Klingerman feel respected. It was an easy way to build the reciprocity he was looking for.

The holographic image of Diane Klingerman appeared in his office. It was an almost perfect depiction, creating the impression that she was in the room with him rather than at home in her kitchen or in some break area at her work.

Her face was a blank like it had been the night before. He was starting to think this was her baseline state, disturbed only momentarily by what had happened to her family. Now that the trauma of having her husband and son taken away from her was starting to fade, she was already getting herself under control again. Regardless, she had not yet given up on getting back the life she knew. “Can I come in and collect Jack now?”

He sighed. “I only just got into the office and we need to do a few more tests for the Project, but I’ll update you later this evening. Will that do?”

She nodded woodenly. “Later this evening.” The image flickered out, much to his great relief, as his mention of the Project had been a huge mistake. She didn’t even seem to notice, and he wasn’t sure she would have reacted if she had. She wanted her family back, but she was learning to accept the situation. Her flat tranquility seemed almost dissociative. It wasn’t pleasant to watch, but it did give him the time and space he needed to complete the preliminary round of tests that might land him the best job in Project Charlie. The culmination of everything he’d ever hoped for in life…

He brought up a holoscreen and looked over the data, noting with mounting excitement that the early tests looked extremely promising. If his suspicions were correct, Jack Klingerman was the subject they’d been waiting for. This was quite a coup, to be the man who had found the long-sought Subject. The search for someone with these characteristics had continued for quite some time now, with several researchers vying for the honor. If he could prove that he’d done it, he was almost certain to be appointed the head of Project Charlie. When the Project went live, he’d be right there doing the most important research in modern science.

Working on something like the Project had always been his dream. Even better than that, it was the sort of project that wasn’t likely to be touched by budget cuts if the No-vote won. The prospects of the Charlie Mutation were just too important for the Federation, and the Admirals would be willing to cut from other budget items rather than jeopardize this work.

Comparing the data sheets from Paul and Jack, Dr. Jeong was even more impressed. Both of the Klingermans were demonstrating cognitive abilities no one had ever seen before. Some aspects of the data even suggested that they might be capable of generating new types of brain waves. Did new brain waves imply new mental capabilities? There was no way to even predict what that might mean, but it had the potential to change all aspects of life if its full potential could be realized.

As striking as the numbers were, they made perfect sense. Without something like this, it’s doubtful a normal human would have been able to pull off the remote rescue of the asteroid miners. The amount of data involved had been astronomical, far too much for a normal mind to even begin to process in the time they’d been given. Paul Klingerman wasn’t just a genius like his coworkers assumed, he was more like a new type of human being. No wonder he had a hard time getting along without strife in the everyday world.

Returning to the issue of reciprocity with Diane Klingerman, the outline of a strategy was beginning to emerge. She was clearly a patriot and a strong partisan of the Yes-vote. Most military people were, but with her, it was more like a naïve obsession: she trusted the Federation unquestioningly and never second-guessed its long-term agenda. She didn’t even seem to doubt its means, always assuming they must be for the best.

She also seemed like one of those parents who saw their children’s career success as an extension of themselves. She’d want the best for Jack, he was sure of that, and a grateful Federation would promise much. All he had to do to win her support for the Project was appeal to her patriotism and her hopes for Jack’s future. The sense that she was doing the Right Thing would do the rest of the work for him.

Yes, that’s the key! Don’t tell her what to do unless you have to. Just assume she’ll play along, and she probably will. Everything in her life has prepared her to do exactly that...

Of course, he did have an option if he needed to use it, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to. He felt bad for her, and the disruption this would bring to the lives of Paul and Jack. He wasn’t without empathy. In the end, though, anything could happen on the frontiers of science. He couldn’t allow his instinctive sympathy to interfere with what the science demanded. Between his work and his feelings, there was an iron cage, and nothing could be allowed to breach it.

The big picture was more important than the feelings of any one individual. It was bigger than his own feelings, it was bigger than Diane’s or Paul’s — and it was bigger than Jack’s. He would do whatever he had to do to make Project Charlie a success.

Chapter Ten

Jack’s mother was not as tranquil about the situation as Dr. Jeong assumed. She just wasn’t ready to accept that the doctor was really planning to keep her son. I can understand why they’re holding Paul, she thought, he assaulted a coworker! But not my Jack…

Until they could treat Paul effectively, he would be a danger to other people. It was a sad situation, but at least they were giving him the best help available. The situation with Jack was not the same at all. Jack didn’t really do anything so terrible. Pushing and shoving, that’s all. Just kid stuff.

It was not acceptable, but the right way to handle it was through a meeting or two with the socialization expert. There was no reason whatsoever for them to hold him indefinitely. She was here to get him, and she didn’t intend to take no for an answer. But it had already been so long, and she felt her determination slipping away from her…

In the lobby of the hospital, after a long day’s work, she was waiting, once again, for someone to come out and tell her what was going on. Things didn’t make sense. Surely the Federation must have a good reason for keeping Jack so long, and surely Dr. Jeong must have Federation approval for this operation.

He had said something about “the project,” but what could that mean? Surely there wouldn’t be a whole project based around her husband’s strange medical condition?

Tapping her fingers nervously against her leg, Diane was suddenly struck by a bold plan. I’ll check the directory. My military login should get me access. I’ll see what department they’re keeping Jack in!

As soon as she had the idea, she knew she would act on it. It was too compelling to ignore, even though it was a minor risk. She logged in and checked, surprised to see that this particular Fleet Hospital was more of a research facility than a place for treatment.

There were indeed a number of projects listed in this department: cognitive functioning, behavioral abnormality research, stem-cell development. It could be under any one of these. Digging too deeply would only raise questions about her loyalty to the Federation, and she didn’t want that to happen with the Referendum coming up so soon now. If the Fleet decided to characterize it as misconduct, she could even be sanctioned. She gave up on her research and closed her device.

Dr. Jeong came out at last. Diane stood up with the most determined expression she could manage and looked the doctor directly in the face. “I’m here to bring Jack home.”

Her voice was confident, verging on authoritative. When she used this tone, people generally gave her whatever she wanted. Dr. Jeong cocked his head to the side and smiled slightly, a gesture that seemed vaguely smug to her. Did he intend to ignore her?

“Yes, I understand completely,” he began, “but let me explain our findings.”

She didn’t say anything right away, so he continued. “Jack’s brain structure is very similar to his father’s, but so far he’s not displaying the same symptoms. He doesn’t seem to get overwhelmed as easily by too much stimulation, although there’s no way to tell at this stage whether this is due to his youth or to some other factor.”

“So… he’s basically okay?”

“We can’t ignore that aggressive incident, but we’re not certain if that was related to Jack’s brain structure issues. It could just as easily have been triggered by family stress and have nothing to do with his condition. On the other hand, your son could be the key to answering a lot of questions.”

“What do you mean?” she questioned in a wary voice.

“Well, for one thing, we still have questions about your husband’s condition, and about the condition of others like him.”

“But didn't you say his symptoms were unique?”

“That’s true, they are… but the features that make his brain so different are not totally one-of-a-kind. They’ve been turning up occasionally for years now. We’ve been trying to study it, but until recently we still didn’t know whether this was a hereditary mutation or something else. What makes your husband different is his ability to function at a high level despite the mutation, at least until recently. Where most other people with this condition are scattered and confused, your husband’s condition seems more… integrated.”

“But what in the world does that have to do with Jack?”

“For one thing, his scans have established that the condition is hereditary. With cases on the rise, we need to understand the implications as soon as possible. Jack may be able to help us discover what this development will mean for the Federation and its future. He may be able to help us discover how to treat the condition, and what should be done on a larger scale. In short, the lives of potentially hundreds or thousands of people may well depend on our ability to study your son’s condition. His brain scans are already giving us incredible insights, things we’ve been unable to glean from any of the advanced cases we’ve seen in adults.”

Diane was overwhelmed. She couldn’t begin to think of how to respond. As the doctor waited for her to say something, she suddenly realized her mouth was hanging open. She closed it, but that was all.

“This new information is such a breakthrough, I’m confident that we can find a cure for your husband. Paul Klingerman is something of a hero after that incident with the mining ships. Getting him home and back to work again is a top priority. As for Jack, Paul is his father, so…”

Diane rallied, suddenly seeing an angle she could attack. “As his mother and legal guardian, don’t I have the right to take him back home with me no matter what? No matter how important he is to your research?”

Now it was Jeong’s turn to stand there with his mouth open. He obviously hadn’t expected her to try this tack and was not entirely prepared for it.

She put on her authoritative voice again. “I’m taking him with me.”

The doctor took a sharp breath, like he was steeling himself to do something he hadn’t wanted to do. “Technically yes, that would normally be the case. But this just isn’t a normal case. Due to the importance of Project Charlie, guardianship of Jack Klingerman has been legally transferred to this facility for the duration of the study.”

He opened his personal device and brought up a holo-doc. “As you can see, this document is counter-signed by the Chief of Staff. There is no higher authority you could appeal to.”

Now Diane was truly stunned. They’re taking Jack? How can they do that?

Her voice was strangely quiet. “What does this mean?”

She knew what the holo-doc said, but she just couldn’t believe it. No one would ever describe her as the warmest of mothers, but she had a sudden and painful memory. Jack as a baby, staring up at her with love and trust, his tiny little fingers wrapped around her thumb...

She stumbled a little as her knees went weak. There was nothing she wanted more than to pick him up and hold him, to hug him close and never let him go. The guilt that would haunt her for the rest of her life first came over her at that moment, but she somehow managed not to show it on her face. She needed to stay calm, at least on the surface, if she wanted to have any hope of figuring out some way around this.

Dr. Jeong was staring at her as if trying to decide whether she would explode or not. “I know this is upsetting, Flight Sergeant — but it’s not forever. Your legal guardianship will be fully restored, as soon as our study is complete. When Project Charlie no longer needs him, we’ll give him back to you.”

“I want to see him,” she blurted out. “I want to see him right now!”

The doctor smiled, knowing he had won the first battle. “Yes, of course. There’s one thing I’d like you to do for me, though, when you do see him…”

Diane knew she would do it, no matter what it was. If she didn’t do it, she couldn’t see him, and Jack would be in here all alone. “What is that, doctor?”

“Just something I need you to say. Like everything else, it’s for his own good.”

Chapter Eleven

While his mother was getting the news that she no longer had custody, Jack was lying in bed and looking out the window at the hospital grounds.

Not that he could see much through the tinted glass. Newer buildings used viewscreens instead of actual windows, but these windows were real glass, with a dark film over them to keep the radiation out on bad days.

The grounds looked spooky and sad through the film. Low, rolling slopes and an occasional lonely tree. It probably looked nice enough if you were outside in the sunlight, but the dark tint made it weird and a bit scary.

He remembered his father telling him once that there wasn’t enough money in the Federation budget to replace all the windows with viewscreens because they had to spend so much money getting food to the colonies. That’s what he was thinking about: his window was dark so that someone on a planet hundreds of light years away wouldn’t have to be hungry.

That’s what the Federation was all about, and that’s why his family was proud to be a part of it. People like Mahmoud just didn’t understand that. All they could think about was what they might have to give up or go without, not how they were helping other people.

The door slid open behind him and Jack turned around, sitting up in excitement. Mommy’s here! He untangled himself from his blankets and jumped up, then ran across the room and slammed into his mother, throwing his arms around her. We’re going home!

“There, there darling. There, there.” She draped her arms around him, but she didn’t squeeze. She didn’t pick him up and carry him out of there like he wanted her to. After hugging her as tightly as he possibly could for several seconds, Jack pulled back and looked up at her expectantly.

“Can we get ice cream on the way home?”

Something funny happened to Mommy’s expression, like she was trying so hard not to cry that it was twisting her face up. She spoke slowly and haltingly. “We… we can’t go home just yet.”

A cold shock of fear went through Jack when he heard those words. “What are you talking about? Why can’t we?”

“There’s something I need you to do for Mommy.” Her voice was hoarse, like she had a sore throat. “I need you to be strong.”

“I don’t understand!”

He felt tears in his eyes, but he was doing everything he could to hold them back. If he started crying, that would be like admitting it was really happening — and it just couldn’t be happening.

His mother composed herself, glancing nervously at Dr. Jeong. “The doctors still need to do some tests, they need you to help them with their… important work. You’ll be here with the doctors until the tests are done.” Her voice dropped until it was almost a whisper. “Just like when you visit grandma and grandpa and stay overnight. Or when you went to camp.”

He started sobbing. What she was saying was just so horrible. This isn’t anything like that time I went to camp! It isn’t anything like staying overnight at grandma’s house either!

This was more like jail. But how could he go to jail when it wasn’t his fault? He was shouting before he even realized it. “MAHMOUD PUSHED ME FIRST! ARE YOU JUST GOING TO LEAVE ME HERE FOREVER BECAUSE OF THAT?”

“No! Oh, no Jack, it’s not like that! You’re not being punished, darling! It’s not forever! It’s just until they get done with their tests!”

His mother looked stricken, like the guilt of leaving him here might kill her. But people felt guilty when they did something wrong. If she knows it’s wrong, then why is she doing it?

When he asked himself this question, it was like a wall of ice came down around him. It came to stay, and from that point onward he could always feel it no matter what else was happening. The cold came over him as a mix of sorrow and anger, and he started breathing faster and faster. She was his Mom, she was the one who was supposed to protect him and take care of him. That was her job, but instead, she was leaving him here all alone.

As his breathing got faster, Jack’s sight constricted. Like the dark film on the hospital windows, darkness crept up on everything. He felt like he was spinning around on a scary carnival ride. His mother and Dr. Jeong both faded from his sight, and he was vaguely aware of falling.

The world was gone. In a dark cloud, Jack saw nothing and imagined nothing. He knew he existed, but that’s all he knew. It felt like forever, but it also felt like no time at all. There was nothing there.

He opened his eyes — a moment later or a thousand years later, it could just as easily have been either one — and found himself on the floor. His mother and Dr. Jeong were kneeling over him. Their faces were worried, and there was an orderly in the doorway with a paper cup. “I brought the water, doctor.”

“Thank you, Phillip. Would you help young Jack to the bed?”

His mother’s hands were clasped nervously together. “He looks so pale, doctor.” She was obviously worried about him, but that didn’t make up for what she was doing to him. Nothing could.

Dr. Jeong held the cup to his lips. “Here’s some water, Jack. Have a sip.”

The doctor looked nervous too, but Jack didn’t think it was the same kind of nervousness. He kept glancing at Mommy as if he was worried that she might just grab Jack and run away. Jack wanted her to do exactly that.

The doctor put the cup on the bedside table. “This is more of a research hospital than a treatment hospital, but we have the best doctors and neurological experts on T3. You don’t need to worry about a thing. Jack will be well taken care of. In fact, he’ll get the best medical care available in the entire galaxy.”

As the orderly helped him into his bed, Jack was struck by a feeling he had never had before, a feeling that shocked and frightened him. He hated Mommy. As terrified as he was of being left alone, of being separated, he still hated her. The men who had taken his father away were bad, but Mommy was the one who was leaving him here.

When I get out of here, he promised himself, I won’t go home. I’ll run away instead. Then Mommy can sit and cry and I won’t even care.

His mother started talking again. He didn’t know it, but this was what the doctor had asked her to say. “There might be a cure for Daddy, and you can help them find it. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, darling?”

He didn’t say anything. With her hands fluttering like little birds, she kept on going. “They’re going to do a procedure so they can get a tissue sample. Some tissue from your… from your brain. They’ll put you to sleep, and then they’ll cut a hole in your head and take just… just a little piece. Don’t worry, darling. Your hair will grow back.”

Dr. Jeong was staring at Mommy like she’d gone crazy. “Mrs. Klingerman, Jack really doesn’t need to hear all those details!”

But it was too late. Just when Jack was sure things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they did. What in the world was his mother talking about? They were going to cut a hole in his head and take a piece of his brain?

Dr. Jeong glared at her. “Now he’s crying again!”

His mother looked from side to side like a panicking deer. “I… I was trying to help him understand what was happening… so he wouldn’t feel so bad…”

Jack didn’t want them to take his brain. Not even a little piece of it. Not even to help Daddy. His Daddy was mad all the time anyway. Maybe it would be better if the hospital just kept his father, if he never got better and never came home. But why did they want to keep him too?

Dr. Jeong spoke sternly. “I think it would be better if you said goodnight now, Mrs. Klingerman. We’ll let you know when your son is ready to come home.”

“I’m sorry, doctor… I’m just so sorry…”

All the sympathy was gone from the doctor’s voice. “Say goodnight to Jack, please.”

Mommy leaned down beside the bed and stroked Jack’s hair like she did when he was sick. That always soothed him, but this time he just ignored it. The worse she feels about all this, the better, he pondered. I don’t care!

Jack glared at the wall and wouldn’t even look at her. At the same time, every part of him cried out for her. He desperately wanted for her to hold him, to make it okay, to make him safe again. But she never would.

“Jack, please darling. Mommy loves you. This is just for a little while. To help Daddy. And to do something important for… for the Federation.”

Jack’s voice was totally cold. “I hate the Federation. And I hate you.”

His mother’s face became a mask. It was just like a doll’s face, no feelings at all. But just for a moment, before the mask came down, Jack saw more sadness than he had ever seen on anyone’s face before. He wanted to cry when he saw that, and he wanted to say sorry. But he didn’t say anything. She’s hurting me. I’ll hurt her too!

Her voice as she stood up was just as cold as his. “I’ll come back as soon as Dr. Jeong says it’s okay.”

She walked out the door, and she didn’t even look back at him. For another few seconds, Jack continued to stare blankly at the wall. He didn’t want the doctor to try to talk to him. Dr. Jeong just watched, but Jack couldn’t tell if he was trying to think of something to say or just watching him like he would watch a bug.

At last the doctor spoke. “We’ll start your testing tomorrow, Jack. It won’t be so bad, you’ll see. And you’ll make such an important contribution. Don’t worry too much about the procedure your mother was talking about. It’s really not as scary as she made it sound.” The doctor shook his head when he said this, as if he still couldn’t believe the stupidity of explaining the procedure in detail to a child. Then he turned around without another word and headed out.

As the door closed behind Dr. Jeong, Jack realized he was alone. Not just alone in the room, but alone in the world. His Daddy was gone, his Mommy was gone, and he had no friends. They had taken everything away from him.

Chapter Twelve

Jack shuffled slowly down the hall like he was half-asleep, clutching the small pair of scissors up against his leg so no one would see. He didn’t know how long he’d been at the hospital, but he wasn’t going to stay.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t decide how long he’d been here. The days just melted away and faded into each other like watercolor paint. They did so many tests here it all seemed the same. Tests where they hooked things up to his head and flashed weird lights in his eyes and made him answer all sorts of questions. Some of the tests even hurt, but they wouldn’t stop.

Just like his father, they had made him disappear.

He knew his Daddy was here, but he didn’t know where. Sometimes he wanted to see his father and sometimes he didn’t, but the doctors wouldn’t even tell him whether they would let him visit Daddy or not. They just kept saying, “Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.”

The same was true when he asked for Mommy, even though he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to see her again. When he did want to see her — when he cried and cried for her and asked if she was coming to visit him — they always told him she’d come see him soon. ‘Soon’ clearly didn’t mean the same thing to the doctors as it meant for him.

When Jack didn’t want to see her — when he was filled with hate for her, imagining how much she’d cry when he ran away and never came home again — they still said the same thing. “Don’t worry, you’ll see your Mommy soon.”

The doctors pretended to be nice but they were really liars. Jack didn’t believe a thing they said. As for the other patients, at least a few of them were fun to talk to. Mr. Dortlund, for instance. Whenever Jack saw him he would tell a story, and it was always a funny story. Or Ms. Carr. She liked to talk to Jack about books and history, and he thought maybe she used to be a teacher. Ms. Carr would even give him little quizzes sometimes about the things they talked about, like who the United States presidents were or what Napoleon did in Russia.

Those two were almost like friends now, or nice neighbors anyway. He would miss them a little, but he had a plan. He had stolen these scissors because they were nice and thin, with stiff blades. They ought to be able to pick the window lock. He knew it was possible because he had seen Daddy do the same thing once with an old lockbox he couldn’t find the key for. He didn’t know how it worked, but it looked like Daddy was just sticking the blade of the scissors in and slowly turning it. That seemed like something he could do.

Of course, he had to hide the scissors from Jim the orderly, who was walking beside him on the way to the room. That wasn’t too hard, because Jim was a terrible orderly. He was lazy and mean, but more importantly for Jack’s plan, he never paid too much attention to anything. He was always singing to himself as he walked down the hall, and it was always the stupidest kind of music, with lots of naughty words.

Jim noticed Jack briefly because he was falling behind. Hiding scissors against your leg made it harder to walk quickly. “Get going, shithead. I should be on break right now.” Then he started to sing again, half-under his breath. “You know you get me going when you walk in the room…”

The next line was mumbled and Jack couldn’t hear it, but he could tell it ended with “boom, boom, boom.” Jack had no idea what this song was about, but he knew it was naughty and he knew it was stupid. Now that he thought about it: stealing scissors so he could pick a lock was a whole lot naughtier than the song, but he didn’t care about the rules here anyway. These people were bad, or they wouldn’t have taken him away from his home. They were basically kidnappers, and there was nothing wrong about being naughty to kidnappers. Maybe rules don’t matter for grown-ups. Or maybe they’re something bad people make up so they can tell you what to do.

Still clutching the scissors against his leg, Jack entered the room as soon as Jim opened it. Jim glanced around and said, “Need anything? I didn’t think so,” and shut the door immediately. Jack heard the lock click into place and climbed up onto his bed. He didn’t know how long he had before they came and got him for another test, but he didn’t expect this to take all that long in the first place.

When his father cracked open that lockbox, it looked pretty easy. He opened the scissors up, pinched one blade between thumb and forefinger, and stuck it in the lock. Then he turned it sideways, and after just a few seconds the box popped open.

The lock on the window was much harder than that. He got the blade in, but whatever his father did to spring the lock turned out to be harder than it looked. He tried to turn it, but it just kept slipping on something and falling out again. He tried at least a dozen times before he took a break, and the same thing happened every time. One time the scissor blades almost closed on him and he had to drop the scissors quickly to keep from getting cut.

He wanted to give up then, but he didn’t do it. The lockbox had been easy for his dad, but some things weren’t. He had seen his father solve problems so many times he couldn’t count them, and even though Daddy often got angry, he never quit. He always solved the problem in the end, and when it was over he would stop swearing about it and go get a beer.

I can do this like Daddy would, trying and trying until the problem gives up. Jack slid the scissors back in the lock and worked on it solidly for the next hour without another break. He sometimes reflected on that moment later in life, though much of what had happened at the hospital was vague and hard to remember. The time he worked on the window lock, though — he would always remember that because it was the first time he proved to himself that he could solve any problem if he just concentrated and didn’t stop.

He jiggled the blade as he turned the lock and it popped open, just like the one on that old box of his father’s. He felt a surge of pride and pushed the window up all the way. Now the only thing that stood between him and freedom was a thin little screen, just like the ones on his windows at home.

He felt like a prisoner, but this place must not have been built for keeping prisoners. That lock was not so hard to beat, and there didn’t seem to be any other security at all. He could pop out the screen, wiggle out through the open window, and run for all he was worth. Once he made it off the grounds, he could hide in the city. There were abandoned buildings. He knew that because he had seen them before. He would find an empty building, sneak in when it was dark out so nobody saw, and then decide whether he wanted to go home to Mommy or just keep running.

Jack pushed out the screen, which fell down to the ground below. He slid through the window and let himself drop too, although the harsh glare of the sunlight made his eyes water and the impact as he hit the ground was a lot harder than he’d expected. He struggled back to his feet, saw a cluster of trees up ahead, and started to run.

Jack was faster than they’d expected, running as only a small child can run. The orderlies spilling out the door were way behind him, but then a guard with a gun came running out from the little hut up by the road, forcing Jack to veer to the left.

It cost him too much time, and he was forced to run in a zig-zag pattern because the guard was still in front of him and the orderlies were coming up from behind. He tried to make it to the cluster of trees, but the guard kept swerving and blocking the way. Nearly panicking now, Jack looked frantically for some other target, someplace he could reach so he could hide.

There was nothing at all, and the effort of looking cost him more time that he couldn’t afford to lose. Just as he gave up on finding a new goal and started his sprint for the trees, Jim slammed into him from behind and knocked him sprawling. The impact stunned him, and he lay there gasping for breath. Jim held him down, whispering, “You little asshole! You made me run!”

That was all Jim could do to him, because the guard and the other orderlies were there in seconds, hauling him roughly to his feet. Dr. Jeong came out, waving to get their attention. “Be gentle with the boy!”

Jim glared at him viciously, but the guard with the gun gave him a guilty look and one of the other orderlies frowned sympathetically. When Dr. Jeong got close, he was shaking his head as if disappointed. “Silent alarm, Jack. On the window screen. You should have known better. Now you leave me no choice.”

He turned to the guard. “Would you please escort Jack to Level Q?”

The guard seemed almost shocked by this. “Level Q? But that’s the mental…”

“Yes, exactly. Jack’s obviously having a much harder time than we expected maintaining his mental equilibrium, and at the moment he’s a danger to himself and others. For his own protection, the boy will have to be put in a straitjacket and kept in solitary confinement until the Procedure. It’s of the highest importance that he stay here where he’s safe. We’re on the verge of starting the most important part of the research… and the Referendum is only a few days away.”

The guard just stared at Dr. Jeong, not knowing what to make of this little speech or of the order he’d just been given. Then he sighed regretfully and took Jack by the wrist. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

Was this what his parents were talking about when they always went on about the Federation? Big men with guns who made you do what you were told, no matter how horrible it was? Jack threw himself down on the ground with a piercing shriek, and the orderlies had to fight to pick him up. He yelled and kicked, swiping at anyone near enough to reach. He wanted to bite them, he wanted to scratch them. It was hard for them to do it, but they got control of him anyway and picked him up.

For all his determination, for all his resourcefulness, Jack Klingerman was completely powerless.

Chapter Thirteen

Dr. Jeong was both thrilled and nervous. The pinnacle of his career to date had finally arrived, and the Procedure was about to begin. This experiment was the real purpose of Project Charlie and had been since the beginning. Only the lack of a suitable subject had delayed it so long, until the fortunate discovery of Jack Klingerman.

If only the cost had not been so high. It was hard to admit it, but the Klingerman family had been destroyed by the Project. Paul Klingerman was as good as broken and would never be able to return home. After one final attempt to reclaim her son, Diane Klingerman had left her flight squad and become a test pilot, a job so dangerous and demanding that it would take up all her time and attention. And as for Jack…

It might not be a good idea to think too much about the boy. The Procedure was risky, and he might not survive it at all. The responsibility for all this suffering was a heavy burden. Still, the potential benefits outweighed the costs. This research could help so many people. Guilty feelings and sentimentality were inappropriate.

And more importantly, his battle for control of the Project was near total victory. Despite the objections of some of the board members, there would be no inconvenient investigations or external restrictions to worry about. One final hurdle — a pro forma review by some military security adviser — and he would be left to his own devices to make the breakthrough they had all been dreaming of.

An assistant approached his workstation. “Ready for Phase 1.”

He looked over at Jack, lying unconscious in the Delta brainwave state while attached to an Entrainment Device. The Device was used to induce various brainwave patterns through light and sound. All humans were capable of the Delta state, though most people experienced it only in sleep or meditation. The nature of the so-called Charlie Mutation allowed other states, brainwaves that were never experienced by ordinary humans.

“Begin Phase 1.”

The assistant nodded and walked back to Jack. In their preliminary tests, they had already established that Jack could enter the Epsilon State and the Lambda State. That alone was amazing, but the point of the Procedure was to bring Jack into Lambda while he was attached to a prototype quantum device. According to all their calculations, a human who entered Lambda outside the bounds of relativistic physics would experience a fundamental shift in mental capacity. It was time to find out.

The assistant connected the Entrainment Device to the quantum prototype sitting next to it, then checked his screen to confirm the condition of Jack’s brainwaves. “Subject has entered Epsilon State.”

Dr. Jeong could see the same information through his own holoscreen, but it was always best to follow procedure and let the person using the device confirm all developments.

“Subject has entered Lambda State.”

This was it. When he gave the command, the electrode attached to the quantum induction device would be charged with a surplus of power, giving it the ability to bend time and space. With relativistic physics temporarily suspended, everything in Jack’s perception should become non-local. Either that or his brainwaves would stop entirely and Jack would flatline.

“Proceed to Phase 2.”

The assistant flicked a series of switches. “Phase 2 initiated. Doctor… this is extraordinary.”

Trembling in wonder, Jeong checked his holo screen. Epsilon and Lambda were new discoveries, the unexpected results of the Charlie Mutation. This was something new. The activity going on in Jack’s brain was completely unprecedented, something no other human being had ever experienced.

+++

Jack felt like he was in a dream, only much clearer and more lucid than any normal dream. He could see everything — literally everything, all at once. A woman halfway across the galaxy was holding her baby; a rose was opening its petals in a garden on T3; an old man was drinking something and crying on a space station near T5; a comet was streaking its way across an uninhabited system and then slamming catastrophically into a nameless world.

The information would have been meaningless and incoherent, a babble of chaos, if his mind had not quickly focused on the people he knew personally. Rather than trying to process the limitless vastness of knowledge flowing through and around him, his mind called up certain images, certain timelines for special notice.

It made him think of a comic book, the way he could see moments from the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. It was all very fast — or something that felt like speed, because time was not a useful concept — but it was hard to remember it or make full sense of it right away.

He saw a moment from several years ago, his mother and father on their first date. His mother was stiff and awkward, his father was mercurial, jumping from topic to topic with frantic brilliance. But she understood him, she could follow his train of thought and give him the kind of conversation he had always yearned for. In the next panel of the story, they were getting married, and the look of joy on his mother’s face was something he had never seen before.

Then his mother was pregnant, needing extra help in so many ways. His father was flailing, overwhelmed by the details, unable to focus no matter how hard he tried. Jack could suddenly see that his father loved him, had always loved both of them, and how much he had suffered. Something was wrong with him and he didn’t know what: a deep anger was taking hold of him. He lost his way, retreated from the marriage and the family, tried to live through his work. It was the same with his mother. As his father’s anger slowly ate up all their happiness, she also retreated inside herself. They had met each other as two lonely people, but marriage had only made them lonelier.

That wasn’t all. Jack saw so many things. The assistant and Dr. Jeong had timelines too. When he wasn’t at work, the assistant was caring for his elderly mother. She would die in a year, and he would come into a surprisingly large inheritance. Dr. Jeong had a large extended family, but they were all beginning to cut him out of their lives as they realized that he cared about his career much more than them. Jim the orderly had a private life as ugly as his personality, but it would all end soon. Jim would try to cheat a drug dealer and get shot in the face, and his body would be found in a dumpster.

Jack saw someone else, someone he hadn’t met yet. A man named Trent, his timeline deeply interwoven with Jack’s own. Both timelines spiraled into the future in close proximity, though he couldn’t see where the spiral ended. Perhaps not everything was set ahead of time? Peeking in on this timeline, he found Trent a confusing man. Intelligent and benevolent, manipulative and ruthless, Trent was a man who understood power and used it shamelessly, but also a man who wanted the best for humanity. He caught a few glimpses of other friends — a woman named Alice who became a robot and a man named Brad whose grin hid secrets.

He could see what would happen in his own life, and he could hardly believe it. He was really going to visit all those other planets. It was just like he’d dreamed! He saw glimpses of his future and was amazed and delighted: a dark purple mountain range, a city of pyramids, a desert of red sand, a shadowy gorge. He saw the stars, spread out before him like gleaming marbles in the viewscreen of his very own spaceship. He viewed himself as a grown-up, talking to important people while they listened closely to his every word. He’d been so sad at the hospital, but he would live a life of adventure and excitement. He would do big things.

It wasn’t all happy, though. He saw other things too.

A huge man with an evil face coming in at him with a bloody knife, next to a machine that could squish people up.

A big cage with metal bars, where they’d locked him in till they could decide what to do with him.

A spaceship burning, drifting slowly toward a doomed city while people screamed and ran in panic.

A bomb going off on a snow-covered mountain, and an avalanche roaring down at him while he ran for safety.

Tumbling over and over in the empty blackness of outer space, desperately trying to breathe…

Then his vision expanded, and Jack saw that he was right about the future. Chains of events branched off into possibilities, superimposed on each other as clouds of potential. Not everything was predetermined — humanity especially, which hovered uncertainly between possible destinies.

He observed the overall effect of humans on the galaxy, a mixture of hope and fear, of creation and destruction. There were real possibilities here for everyone to flourish, but there were potential dangers too, even absolute destruction. If humans could not transition to a peaceful way of interacting, developments in technology would eventually make it possible to destroy whole worlds, and the species would annihilate itself even as it spread across the galaxy.

The whole experience was fascinating, an awe-inspiring tableau he could easily have watched forever. He didn’t want it to end, he just wanted to see lives play out and learn, to understand and experience. But then the flow seemed to change. He started to lose the ability to focus on a single moment or a single timeline.

The effect was overwhelming, like trying to understand a sped-up film. He started seeing more and more, voices and visuals of things and places, people he’d never seen or heard of, pasts and futures all crowded on top of each other.

He began to panic, not knowing how to regain control. Though totally separated from and unaware of his body, he felt something similar to a wave of anxiety. There was a bright light in front of him, and it kept growing in intensity. He tried to close his eyes, but they were already closed. It didn’t help. Jack’s head began to hurt, and almost instantly the pain spiraled out of control.

Someone was calling his name. He didn’t know who, but the voice made him think of his Daddy at first. Am I late for school? Did I sleep in and miss my ride? Have I made Daddy late for work?

No, it wasn’t his Dad, but it was someone he knew, although he couldn’t say how or why. Whoever it was, they were saying his name over and over again. “Jack, I need you to get up. Jack, it’s crucial that you wake up now. Come on, son, we’re waiting.”

Jack opened his eyes and was shocked at first to find his body responding. Wherever he had just been, it was beyond the body. He had lost all awareness of his physical self and had almost lost the memory. Now here he was, and he seemed to have a body again. He needed to remind himself of how it worked, so he flexed his hands and pressed his thumbs and forefingers together just to feel the sensation.

Then Jack sat up. Standing there in front of him was the man who’d been speaking, along with several other people who stood behind him respectfully. They all wore Federation uniforms. Not like the ones used in the facility, but more like something soldiers would wear. They had guns at their hips, and some of them stood with their hands on their weapons.

The man smiled at him, but it wasn't friendly. Almost like he was making fun of something, maybe himself. “We’re taking you out of here, kid. The papers are all in order. Don’t worry, you’re my responsibility now.”

Dr. Jeong stood nearby, looking on in dismay and frustration. Jack knew something about Dr. Jeong, something the doctor would not have wanted him to know. He had seen Jeong’s timeline, and he knew the doctor had intentionally and recklessly risked his life. When they began the Procedure, the doctor didn’t know if he’d go into an amazing new brainwave state or just die on the spot. And there were other possibilities: a permanent coma state, incurable madness. The doctor had acted with a total lack of ethics or empathy, and right now he was worried he might even go to jail because of it.

Jack knew he wouldn’t, and that he would face no consequences of any lasting nature. He would resume his research, always looking for another subject with Jack’s special characteristics. The Charlie Mutation wasn’t just one thing: every person with the gene for it developed and manifested in a different way. He wouldn’t stop hoping, though, and he wouldn’t stop searching. Bitter until the end of his life about losing control of Project Charlie to the military intelligence people, he would end up using private lab space and his personal funds. All alone by the end, having alienated everyone who had ever cared about him, Dr. Jeong would finally go too far.

Thirty-three years in the future, the doctor would finally find someone with a version of the Charlie Mutation not too different from Jack’s own. An adult man rather than a child, the new subject would have a history of anger and violence, the same characteristics that had prevented the doctor from using Jack’s father for the Procedure. By that point, though, he would no longer care. Desperate to finally complete his work, Dr. Jeong would attempt the Procedure on the new subject — and be brutally murdered. Jack had seen it all.

It made him think. Just like the man who would eventually kill Dr. Jeong, Jack knew he was here because his brain was unusual. No, not just unusual. Special. Extraordinary. Something passed down from his father like a gift. If his brain was extraordinary, then maybe he could do something extraordinary with his own life.

He wanted to believe it, but he was scared. The whole experience had been like a dream. The memory was already fading from his waking mind. Maybe it was a dream, and nothing more. That must be it, he realized. No one can see the future.

But if that were true, why did he have such a vivid mental image of Dr. Jeong lying dead, his head bashed open and covered in blood?

“Don’t look at me like that,” commanded Dr. Jeong.

Jack turned away. The military man who had woken him up wondered, “Feeling anxious, doctor? Don’t worry too much, you won’t be charged. That’s not really how we do things in military intelligence.”

One of the other men smirked, and the doctor suddenly looked pale and sickly. They began to help Jack get disconnected — there were all kinds of wires with suction cups connected to his head, making him think of some old monster movie.

Dr. Jeong seemed compelled to defend himself. “I had full authority over Project Charlie, countersigned by the Chief of Staff. Full authority. I did nothing illegal.”

The man who was helping Jack shrugged. “That’s a debatable matter. Look up the Nuremberg Trials when you get home. I think you’ll find something in there about experiments on human subjects without explicit consent. It’s really a moot point, though. Our area of expertise isn’t the law as such.”

The man who had smirked before now chuckled quietly and put a hand on the back of the doctor’s neck. “Really, doc, don’t worry. All you have to do is stay quiet about Project Charlie. And not give us any reason to doubt your discretion. Yes?”

Dr. Jeong nodded miserably. Though his dream was fading, Jack suddenly had another flash of memory. The man who had woken him up was talking to Dr. Jeong, smiling an almost shark-like smile. “We’ll see, doctor, we’ll see. You can choose to look at it as a mere security review, if you really want to deceive yourself, but the subcommittee is making its decision today, and I can tell you this, they will be deciding to put Project Charlie under our control. You think your connections are that good, you’re free to use them. If it turns out you’re right, we have… other methods.”

The way things were working out, it looked like the doctor’s connections had failed him. The last of the wires dropped away from Jack’s head, and he stood up on wobbly legs. Jack was trying to remember the man’s name, but he couldn’t quite place it. Where did he know him from?

“Are you ready to walk?” the man asked. “You must be shaky.”

“I.. I’ll be okay. I just need to go slow.”

“Don’t worry about that, Jack, we have plenty of time. All the time in the world, really.”

He turned to the doctor and nodded curtly. “Dr. Jeong.”

It was a kind of acknowledgment or even a statement of gratitude for services rendered, but it was also a dismissal. The doctor nodded back. He seemed to be trying to maintain his dignity. “Lieutenant Trent.”

Lieutenant Trent… Jack remembered that name from the timelines he’d seen, although the details were fading rapidly, as with all the others. He did have a vague sense that it was Trent who had saved him in his dream, pulling him out of Dr. Jeong’s experiments and giving him an exciting future. And that matched what was happening, so maybe it was something he had really seen. He felt a rush of gratitude, but there was something else, a troubling feeling, but nothing he could put a name on.

Trent started walking, matching his pace to Jack’s. His men surrounded them, glancing from side to side discreetly as if checking for trouble.

The holobox in the lobby was playing the news. It made Jack think about his Daddy, a surprising stab of pain and loss. He had seen what ended up happening to his father, but he couldn’t remember what it was. As they walked past, he listened to the newscast in an attempt to remember.

“In the aftermath of the Yes-vote Referendum victory, protests have broken out in at least a hundred cities. According to Chaim Aaronson, the No-vote leader, this decision represents the first step in what he calls the march toward military tyranny. Here to discuss this provocative comment, we have Admiral Benoit…”

Trent noticed Jack watching. “You come from a Yes family, don’t you Jack?”

They walked out the door, and Jack was so relieved he forgot to answer. He was leaving the hospital where they’d kept him prisoner, heading for the carport. He could hardly believe it. The fresh air in his lungs felt pure and cleansing, although for all he knew the air was contaminated with radiation.

Trent’s men were grinning smugly, and Jack realized they were all reacting to the same newscast. One of them came up beside Trent and spoke quietly. “So when are we snatching Aaronson?”

Trent frowned. “We’re not. The man has every legal right to his opinions.”

Now it was the agent’s turn to frown. “You’re kidding, right?”

“If you want to keep a dog from running away, you put it on a long lead.”

The agent laughed. “You’re on a whole other level, Trent. We’re all novices compared to you.”

Trent turned to Jack as they reached the carport. “I want you to understand this, Jack. It’s important. The Yes-vote is what your father wanted all along, and I know your mother wants it too. Yes, it does mean that the military will have increased powers. It also means we won’t be subject to too much inconvenient scrutiny from the civilian Council. What it doesn’t mean is any sort of tyranny. All we want to do is to continue our important work, without any interruptions or misunderstandings.”

“Chief, he’s a little boy,” reminded one of the agents.

Trent looked Jack directly in the eyes. “This boy has seen to the end of time, haven’t you Jack? He’s not so little. Not in any of the ways that matter.”

Jack shuddered, thinking about what he had seen and what he had been shown. But it was nearly gone, just a few flashes of memory. Fragmented images from a long, strange dream.

“This is my car,” Trent explained. “Hop into the back and we’ll take a ride.”

Trent’s car was black and somehow official-looking, although it had no department logo. Jack clambered in and Trent sat down beside him. One of the other agents drove while some of them took a different vehicle.

“Am I… going home now?” Jack asked. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. He still ached for his mother, but the anger he felt toward her was still potent as well.

Trent smiled at Jack. “You’re safe now. I’m going to take good care of you. You’re coming back with me to the Federation Academy.”

“The Academy? Really?”

“Yes indeed. You see, Jack, Dr. Jeong was doing things he shouldn’t have done, but he wasn’t wrong that you’re different. Special, even. Because of your condition, the Federation feels that you will require special care until further notice. Of course, you have to continue your education, which Dr. Jeong was shamefully neglecting.”

Jack was confused. Why couldn’t they just bring him home? But the Academy was a school, a special school he had always hoped to attend someday. “What about my Mom?”

“She’s already signed off on this. She was eager to help, really. She wanted to get you away from Dr. Jeong, and the opportunity to attend the Academy isn’t offered to just anyone.”

Despite all his anger toward her, it still hurt Jack all over again to hear that his mother was not demanding for him to be brought straight home. His face fell, and he asked in a quiet voice, “Will I ever be able to see my Mom and Dad again?”

Trent looked thoughtful. “Well, we can probably arrange for them to visit you from time to time. Your father is still being studied in hopes of finding a cure for his condition. Don’t worry, though, we will see to it that you’re fine. And you’re going to make lots of good friends… starting with me.”

He smiled, and it was so convincing that Jack mostly believed it. He did have a strange sense, perhaps from his dream, that Trent wasn’t entirely what he seemed to be. There was something mysterious, a fog of possibilities… but then it was gone, too vague to be articulated.

At least for now, the most important thing to Jack was that he finally felt safe. Ever since those men had come and taken his father to the hospital, Jack had lived with constant fear. The worst time of all was after his escape attempt, when they had kept him in a straitjacket in a padded room while he screamed and cried for days. So much fear was exhausting, and now that he felt safe at last, sleep was closing in.

Jack closed his eyes as the car lifted off, but a growing sense of excitement kept him awake. He had always loved learning things before they took him. He had even spent much of his free time studying things that weren’t taught at school, like Arabic. He had often dreamed of going to the Academy. The greatest school in the galaxy, where diplomats, officers and politicians went to get their education. And now he was going there.

It was a strange mix of feelings. Betrayal and abandonment, loss and grief — but also excitement and opportunity, a sense of adventure and of new horizons. He opened his eyes.

Trent reached over. “A little something of yours, I believe.” He handed Jack his bodyguard doll, the medical band twisted into the shape of a person. Jack took it gratefully, then gave Trent a shy grin.

An empty feeling still gripped his stomach, though. Whatever else this might mean for him, he belonged at home with his family and he knew it. He should be there right now, playing with his galaxy model or any of his many other toys. Mommy and Daddy would be making dinner, glancing now and then at the holobox to find out the news. They’d be together. They’d be happy.

Well, maybe not. They hadn’t always been happy before all of this happened, especially not since his father’s condition got really bad. Maybe Daddy wouldn’t be there with them either way, and it would just be him and Mommy. But even so, the only reason he wasn’t at home was because of his Mom. She hadn’t stood up for him, and she hadn’t come to get him.

Jack looked out the viewscreen, watching the city recede below them. He might be safe and going someplace exciting and interesting, but he was still alone. As far as he knew, he always would be.

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by Oscar Andrews?

Empire Rising

To stop war from breaking out in the boon dogs of Federation space, Captain Jack Klingerman is pulled from “enforced leave” to answer the call.

Of course they’d send him, he figures. He is the Federation's top covert negotiator, with an outstanding track record of saving civilizations all over the Federation.

Glad to head back out into the field, he’s only slightly suspicious that his medical records, that only weeks ago had him grounded, are suddenly a non-issue.

Scooping up his friend and work partner, Ally, human consciousness in a concierge bot body, their first problem when they get “on site” at the distant planet is talking down the two rival sides that want to blow each other to kingdom come.

Minutes away from all-out war, if ever there were ever a time to pull out the stops on his uncanny negotiation skills, this was it.

Unfortunately, standing in the way of any resolution is an escalating dispute over a kidnapped scientist, and a stolen Zero Point Energy generator: a piece of tech that in the wrong hands could rip a hole in the universe.

Jack’s only chance at saving the entire space-time continuum as we know it is to unravel the sinister plot that is emerging, track the kidnappers and take down all manner of covert delta forces and black ops teams, across multiple planets, to retrieve the device.

All the while hoping that he can maintain a cease-fire back at New Atlantia.

Will he be successful?

Not necessarily — because there’s even more going on that he doesn’t know about.

For updates on Jack’s adventures, and special discount offers on books and boxed sets, sign up for Oscar’s newsletter here:

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About the Author

Computer engineer turned novelist, Oscar Andrews is an avid fan of all the sci-fi greats: Asimov, Clarke, Orwell, Huxley, and Bradbury.

He lives in Austin, TX with his two dogs.

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GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: A SHORT STORY

By Mark Leslie

The last man standing has never been so literal.

In a society that has become more divisive than ever, good people do horrific things just to survive and to stay ahead, and as for bad people – it was becoming more and more difficult to see the difference between the ones trying to break free from what is now referred to as the Deadzone and the ones now in charge.

Bronson Grace didn’t just need the job, he needed to live. He needed to redeem his past wrongs and prove that he was not just a worthy opponent, but a true champion.

And this would be the interview of his life.

Stark Publishing

October 2019

“Grace Under Pressure” Copyright © 2019 Mark Leslie Lefebvre

The characters and events portrayed in this short story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Visit Mark Leslie on the web at www.markleslie.ca

Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkLeslie

Sign up for Mark Leslie’s newsletter to receive a free eBook.

Grace Under Pressure

BRONSON GRACE WAS a little more than five minutes into the interview process when the bullets started flying.

The gunfire erupted less than a minute after the awkward silence that followed the interviewer’s words.

“You are here because you stand out above the rest and can truly make a difference in a veritable hell on earth. But there will be no resting on laurels here. In just a few moments the true test of your mettle will begin. Look to your left and your right,” the broad-shouldered hulk of a man in the military dress uniform said in a husky deep voice that made the rich baritone of James Earl Jones seem a bit soft and feminine. “Within the next half hour only two of the six of you are likely to be still be standing. Good luck.”

Bronson had heard similar sentiments in the initial class of his first year of college, when the instructor informed the freshmen that by the time Thanksgiving was upon them, as many as one third of the class would not make it. He had called those who couldn’t cut college and would drop out during the first break from school presented to them Thanksgiving Graduates. A few years later, in the police academy, Bronson had heard a similar promise regarding not only the attribution rates of the recruits, but of any of their marriages as well.

But in none of those cases had the “still standing” concept been that literal.

When Bronson agreed to enter into this process instead of most likely serving a twenty-year sentence for his crimes, he knew there would be no turning back. Returning to civilian life was not an option. And it wasn’t just that he couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, or even wonder about worrying over mundane things like paying rent or eating, but that it was really a way to finally seek penance and absolution.

Since being terminated from the NYPD nine months earlier, while he was incarcerated Bronson had been through all manner of interviews regarding his psychological makeup. So when he and the motley crew of five other candidates, all dressed in identical white jumpsuits and either beefy, well cut or built, as Bronson’s Dad used to say “like a brick shithouse” were led into the room and told to take their seats in a semi-circle of black vinyl folding chairs he figured this would be one of those group interview sessions. He thought this would be one of those occasions where one or more interviewers quickly pre-screens a group of candidates by firing questions at them to gauge how a person interacts within the group, and who emerges as a leader or dynamically shines above the rest.

In this case, though, the firing was of bullets, rather than questions.

Bronson knew he should have seen this coming, and mentally kicked himself for not being more prepared when it all went down. But it did make sense. The clues had all been there, well prior to the husky military behemoth entering the room.

After the administrative assistant, a short, slim redhead, had wordlessly led them into the long narrow boardroom and pointed out the chairs, she stood and broadcast a consistently bright and perky smile that washed generously across every candidate while she waited for the group to settle. Bronson noticed that she didn’t once make eye contact with any of them. That should have been his first clue.

When the group finally finished settling into their seats and the room was quiet, she said in a bright and cheery voice, “Sergeant DeBakey will be in to start your process in just a few minutes.” The word process rather than interview should have been Bronson’s second clue.

She then turned and walked out a door on the far side of the room, opposite the door they had all come in.

It was a long, narrow room, thirty feet by ten, a gray metal door on the left side of each end and a ten foot picture window in the middle of the room on the right. The far wall was occupied by what looked like a white-board, but it stretched the entire area of the wall until about a foot below the ceiling and went down all the way to the floor. The candidates were all seated in metal vinyl chairs in semi-circle at the end of a cherry oak boardroom table, and the only other chair was a Herman Miller Aaron style chair at the far end of the long table.

As the pretty petite redhead walked towards the far door, Bronson had plenty of time to watch her exit. But, instead of paying attention to the quiet click of the door through which they had entered being locked from the outside, (what would be his third clue) his attention and focus stayed on her tight little ass. It beamed at him through the smooth silky hug of her slacks, the movement of those cheeks just as perky and welcoming as the smile she had cast over the group.

Bronson chided himself for doing it, but maintained a laser-focused stare on her ass during her entire walk, his eyes still focused on the height of the door where her ass had been before the door closed and it disappeared.

Looking at cute young asses is what got you into this spot in the first place, he reminded himself.

Thoughts of the sweet young ass his eyes had followed on that fateful night in Orlando, of how that had led to the rape and slaughter of his wife and daughter, and of his own immediate and swift revenge on the men responsible and the mess that followed eventually brought him out of the lingering stare in sync with the door opening again.

A broad-shouldered Sergeant entered, strode directly to the single chair at the end of the room and sat in it. Although it wouldn’t be accurate to describe what he did as sitting. It was more that he dominated the chair, his large frame easily filling the space on the other side of the table as if he might still be standing over it. His head rotating ever so slowly, his eyes met each candidate’s individually, their beady stare penetrating into each one for no less than a minute each.

Bronson couldn’t help seeing the parallel to the way he surveyed the room and the candidates to the way that Arnold Schwarzenegger as the original 1980s Terminator scanned an area looking for his prey.

When he got to Bronson, he felt the man’s eyes bore straight into him, making him feel like he could see the mistake, the foolish single act of infidelity that eventually led to this day, this fate. Of course, the sergeant would have his entire history in a folder somewhere, would have read the entire sordid story of this police officer’s fall. Bronson Grace’s Fall from Grace, as one of the many articles about him had put it while outlining the story of an eighteen year police officer whose record was decorated with a Medal of Honor had been stripped of his shield and was festering in a jail cell waiting for his trial after engaging in an act of brutal vigilante revenge. But, Bronson knew, even without having those files, DeBakey’s stare would have cut right through to it. When he was being eyed by the large man’s penetrating glare, it was as if he was under microscopic scrutiny, that there was nothing DeBakey couldn’t know about him just from looking.

When his one on one silent surveillance ended, Sergeant DeBakey sat quietly for several moments longer, casting a look over the group that immediately took them all in, as if they were a single entity. None of the six men seated across the long table from him even dared to clear their throats in the uncomfortable silence.

Without further movement or gesture, DeBakey stood up, uttered his quick statement about how many might be left standing, wished them luck, then turned and stalked out of the room.

Bronson heard him bark a short quick order as the door was closing behind him.

“Begin!”

And begin it did.

A second-long low buzz filled the room. Then the wall Bronson thought was a white-board disappeared, dropping into the floor in a split second at the same time as the air above Bronson’s head cracked and snapped, and, then, a split second later he heard multiple gunshots ring out — though the rifles firing were obviously muffled by the sound of the multiple blasts still exploded in painfully loud echoes through the room.

Bronson knew the shots weren’t meant to be direct hits - otherwise, by the time everyone heard them, they would have already been shot.

No, the shots had gone high, aimed, most likely from mounted semi-automatic rifles aimed directly over their heads. The first shot, at least, was meant to instill shock and fright into the group, designed to put everybody off guard for the next round of attack.

“Cripes!” the guy to the far left yelled out just as the bald guy to Bronson’s immediate left jumped to his feet. Bronson saw, out of the corner of his eye, the man farthest to the right leap up in the same manner. The others had remained seated and began the process of slipping off their seats and down onto the floor.

“Down!” Bronson called, pushing the seat he was on back out of the way with a quick flick of his right leg as he sank into a crouching position. As he descended, he grabbed the pant leg of the white jump suit of the guy beside him with his left hand and pulled the man down just as the second round of shots fired.

The guy on the far right wasn’t so lucky. Bronson saw his neck snap back as he took a round to the head then crumpled to the floor.

“Fuck!” someone to Bronson’s right shouted.

Bronson glanced back to the wall behind him at the vertical pair of bullet holes immediately behind him. There was about a twelve-inch vertical gap between each one. As he looked, a third hole simultaneously appeared, again a foot below it, followed, quickly, by the blast of the rifles.

The gunshots were tracking down. And, according to his best quick guess, they were about five seconds apart each.

“The next one’s coming low,” Bronson shouted. “Below the table.” He then flattened himself on the floor an instant before the next round came. The two guys to his immediate left also pressed themselves low to the floor. The man next to the one on the far right who had been taken out in the second round of gunfire did the opposite and went high, diving onto the tabletop.

The guy to Bronson’s immediate right didn’t move in time and let out a low grunt as the bullet went into the top of his left shoulder. His legs and arms gave out underneath him and he screamed out in pain as he laid flat on the floor.

Bronson knew there was no ducking under the next round, that it would be coming just a couple of inches above floor level, so he pushed up to a crouched position, planning on leaping onto the top of the table. The two guys to his left were a split second quicker, had just done what he’d planned and there wasn’t any space. He glanced back at the parallel lines of bullet holes in the wall as he stood, then threw himself up against the wall in the vertical gap between the two parallel lines of bullet holes.

The fourth round came when and where expected. Bronson and the three guys sprawled on the tabletop were all fine. The guy on the floor, however, was hit again, and this time his screaming stopped.

The white polished wall that had dropped just before the gunfire started rolled back up, sealing the entire length of that wall closed again, and a low buzz, a long, full second one like the once that had been a prelude to the gunfire, echoed through the room.

“Cripes,” the guy on the table on the far left muttered.

The man to Bronson’s left, the bald guy he had pulled down out of the path of the second bullet round hopped down off the table and thrust his hand out. “Thanks,”

Bronson took the proffered hand, pumped it once quickly before letting go. “Welcome.”

“I’m Rex,”

“Bronson.”

“Is it over?” Rex asked.

“Not likely,” the man on the far right, the first to have jumped onto the table, said as he hopped back onto the floor. His steel blue eyes surveyed the other three men. “There’ll be more.”

“So what do you figure is next?” Rex asked as the man quickly surveyed the two dead bodies on the floor on either side of him.

“The first round tested quick reflexes. The second is most likely something different.”

“You’ve been through this before?” Bronson asked.

“I used to design tests something like this for these special assignments,” the man said. “The name’s Tim.”

“Okay then, Tim,” Bronson said. “What’s the next round?”

“I’m guessing we’re in it,” Tim said. “Coming in here, we’re all dressed exactly the same; we weren’t given a chance to speak a single word to one another, and we just watched one third of our group get cut down. It’s shocking, but none of us knew each other. This round is all psych. We get to learn a little about each other; at the very least each other’s names and other bits. Then, when the next attack comes, it’s that much more difficult on those who are left. Survival guilt.”

Bronson thought about the survival guilt that had plagued most of his waking mind ever since Patricia and Sophie were taken from him. He had slipped away after his wife and daughter were asleep to rendezvous with the cocktail waitress at the hotel bar at the resort where he and his family were staying. He had never done anything like that before, but there’d been something about the way the two had flirted repeatedly during dinner, and a dark, never-before-experienced desire had burned in his loins after, when he’d been returning from the men’s room, she met him in the short dark hallway, ground her tight little ass against his groin and said she got off at two in the morning if he wanted to meet for some hot action. It had been while he was out fucking Maria when their room had been broken into, Bronson’s wife Patricia and fifteen-year-old daughter Sophie had been raped and slaughtered while everything except Bronson’s wallet had been stolen.

As he had laid in his prison cell, every time he closed his eyes Bronson kept seeing his wife’s peaceful sleeping face as he had seen it before slipping away with the waitress Maria. “I’m so sorry, Patricia,” he would whisper over and over until he finally fell asleep. And every day when he woke, his first thought was to go and check on his daughter, the desire to watch her sleeping like he’d had every single morning of her life when Sophie was a young child.

The guy on the far left, the one Bronson had assigned the nickname of Cripes in his head, broke off from the group and ran to the door they had entered through.

“It’s locked!” he shouted, then ran down to the other side of the room and tried the door that the pretty young assistant and Sergeant DeBakey had both used last. “This one’s locked, too.”

“Captain Obvious,” Rex muttered, and Bronson shared a quick, knowing look with him.

“What about the window?” Bronson asked Tim. “Re-enforced glass?”

“Most likely,” Tim said, and seemed about to say something more when a quick short buzz interrupted him, then a panel in the wall across from the window popped open and a four-foot-wide drawer slowly slid out as if on a quiet hydraulic. The drawer was deep, filled with a black foam cushion and appeared to hold six handguns, arrayed in the foam in the same semi-circle their chairs had been in.

“Guns,” Cripes said. Having just tried the door on the far side of the room, he was closest to the drawer. He reached in, grabbing for the closet gun to where he stood. “Shit!” he yelled out, bringing his hand back as if he had been shocked. “Don’t touch ‘em. They’re electrified.”

Rex walked over to the open drawer and looked in, seeming to contemplate the layout.

“Don’t,” Cripes said, massaging his right hand with his left. “They’re booby-trapped.”

Rex looked back at Bronson and Tim then reached in, wrapping his hand around the pistol grip and pulled it out of the foam. “Six shooter,” he said, holding up the Smith and Wesson Model 36 revolver.

“What the hell?” Cripes said, as Bronson stepped forward and surveyed the spread of guns, noticing that Rex had successfully pulled out the gun corresponding with the seat he’d be in. Bronson reached for the third gun from left, matching the location of the chair he’d been in.

Tim stepped up beside Bronson, pointed at the gun on the far left and said to Cripes. “You want that one.”

Cripes hesitated, watching Tim pick up the same gun he had tried to pick up, but for which he had been shocked. “I’ll be damned,” Cripes said, seeming to finally understand what was going on. He reached to the far side of the drawer and picked up the gun on the far left side. There was no corresponding shock this time.

The four men stood with the guns in their hands and silently fondled them, each seeming to exude a relieved sense of power. Bronson guessed, based on the way the others held their weapons, that they had some experience handling firearms. He figured Tim was military, based on his knowledge of this type of test, and hadn’t decided if Rex and Cripes were ex-cops, like himself, or military.

“So we’re armed,” Rex said, looking at Tim. “What are we supposed to do? Shoot each other?”

“It could come to that,” Tim said, and Bronson thought back to the concept of two men left standing. Is that what they wanted? For the men to decide, at a certain point, to take one another out? Would it be just the last one or two men left standing who ended up passing the test?

“Except,” Rex muttered, popping the cylinder open and showing the others the chambers, most of which were clear. “There’s only one bullet.”

As Bronson thumbed the cylinder release on his own revolver to confirm the same was true with his own weapon, the long buzz sounded again.

Following the buzz, a low hissing sounded, coming from multiple locations in the room.

Cripes pointed towards the closest corner, at the thick white steam coming out. Jets of a cloudy mist were shooting into the room from all four of the corners.

“Gas,” Bronson said, and immediately tucked his chin down to his chest while lifting the front of his jump suit over his nose and mouth.

Rex walked over to the door they had entered, pointing his gun at the spot he figured was where the locking latch might be. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ve only got one shot.”

Tim slipped over to stand in front of the window, peering out.

“We’re about fifty stories up,” he said, looking down. “But there seems to be a ledge. Maybe six inches wide.”

Bronson felt his eyes starting to burn from the substance filling the room. It was odorless, and the stinging reminded him of the effects of tear gas. But there were many other odorless highly toxic nerve agents these white clouds could be.

“Stand back!” Cripes called out. “I’m going to shoot the window.”

Tim stepped back and Cripes fired his weapon. The blast was louder than the previously fired rifle shots, which had, at least, been suppressed.

The window spider-webbed from the spot the bullet entered, but the glass held.

“Dammit!” Cripes yelled.

Tim lifted his gun, aimed and fired. The blast echoed through the room and the bullet lodged in a spot just a couple of inches to the right of the spot Cripes had shot. A second series of cracks snaked out from that spot.

Bronson lifted his own weapon, took aim at the window . . .

. . . and was greeted with the vision of the waitress, Maria, at the end of the last pistol he had fired.

She’d been in on the whole thing; the tryst had been part of ensuring he was out of the hotel room so that her partners in crime could rob the place without him being there. Only, this time, they’d gone further, had decided to rape and slash the throats of the two female victims. Bronson had tracked them down within six hours of finding his beloved family murdered, and he killed the two men in cold blood. He’d been surprised to find Maria there, and paused, just a moment, to listen to her beg for her life, crying out that they weren’t supposed to kill, only to rob.

She didn’t even know about the rape, Bronson recalled her saying, just before he pulled the trigger that committed a bullet into the middle of the hot young waitress’ forehead a half inch below her pretty black bangs. The same forehead he had gently kissed less just hours earlier.

A loud coughing fit from behind him immediately snapped Bronson out of the memory of shooting Maria. He chastised himself yet again as he double-checked his aim and pulled the trigger.

The third time was the charm. The bullet punched through the glass, finishing off the job that the first two shots had started. Rex stepped forward, holding one of the vinyl and metal chairs they’d been sitting on closed and sweeping it through the pane, breaking off the remaining pieces of glass left on the sides and lower edge.

The open window might introduce enough of a fresh airflow to keep the gas that had been pumping into the room from overcoming them, but it seemed as if the jets pushed the substances out even faster after the glass had been shattered.

Tim was the first one out the window. Bronson watched him step out and onto the ledge below while reaching above to grasp what must have been a small outcropping somewhere above the window. The wind rippled at his jump suit as he moved to his right.

“There’s a ladder leading to the roof,” Tim shouted before disappearing beyond the window.

Bronson, who was the next closest to the window, slipped the pistol into the front pocket of his jumpsuit and stepped out, feeling bits of glass on the ledge crunching beneath the military issued boot he was wearing. He did his best not to look down, trying to block the life-long fear of heights from his mind as he reached up for the tiny decorative brick outcropping directly above the window. There was just enough space there to get about a quarter inch of his fingers into.

His eyes were still watering from the burning of the gas which he figured must have been tear gas, or some similar lachrymatory agent. Though he was clinging on a skyscraper ledge by the tips of his fingers, it felt good to be sucking in the cold fresh air.

Bronson shuffled to his right, relieved to see the metal ladder bolted to the side of the building was less than a dozen feet away while at the same time feeling as if it were an airport runway distance he needed to navigate.

He heard someone else step onto the ledge, coughing and hacking as they moved out into the fresh air. He didn’t look back, kept shuffling slowly across, each inch that he moved closed to the ladder a momentous achievement. In his peripheral vision, Tim had disappeared so far up the ladder that he was no longer visible. That brought Bronson a renewed sense of disorientation. Enough that he had to pause and take a deep breath before moving on.

As he started to slide forward again, a sudden blast of wind pulled at Bronson. It felt as if someone had wrapped an arm around him from behind and pulled back.

He lost the grip that the tips of his fingers had on the brickwork above and his right foot slipped off the ledge. He pitched to the side, letting out a yelp of surprise. Desperate, he tried to use the momentum of his fall and pushed off with his left foot, shooting as far to his right as he could as he descended.

Half a story down, the trajectory he’d sent himself on paid off, and he was close enough to grasp the rungs of the metal ladder.

As he successfully grasped onto the ladder with his right hand, feeling as if his arm might be pulled right out of the socket, the side of his head slammed into the horizontal section of the ladder and the wall simultaneously and his right knee cracked against the metal.

He hung suspended by just his right arm for a full second before he was able to get a foothold onto the ladder and reach out with his left hand.

But it worked. He was far more secure, clinging to the ladder, than he had been about four feet higher when he’d been scaling across the ledge.

He didn’t even bother to try to catch his breath. Looking up, he saw that the rooftop was only a single story up. More than anything, he wanted to get up the ladder and off the side of this building. The wind rippled against his jumpsuit as he ascended to the height he’d just been pulled off of by the wind. He could hear Rex grunting and coughing from about a foot away and looked over.

Rex was in the middle of a coughing fit, forcing his head into the crook of his arm as he hacked and tried to clear the residue of the tear gas from his throat. Though he was just a few feet from the ladder, it didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon. Cripes was just a couple of feet behind him on the ledge, and, like Rex, was hacking and coughing.

Bronson spotted blood on the upper lips of both men, the red spittle flying as their coughing fits continued.

As Bronson watched the two men who, just minutes earlier, had been strangers, struggling on the ledge, he hearkened back to the offer he’d been presented to be here. It had come during one of his interview sessions when the prison therapist speaking with Bronson about the guilt and self-blame he felt over his family’s death proposed the idea.

“You can never make up for your wrongs,” he said, “But you can decide to make a difference. Even one man can make a difference if he tries.”

Ensuring a solid grip with his right hand and both feet, Bronson reached out with his left hand.

“Here!” He shouted. “Take my hand!”

Rex paused for a moment before reaching out and grasping Bronson’s outstretched hand. Rex’s fingers and even his palm felt rough and calloused all over. In that moment Bronson decided that Rex had been a marine.

Bronson pulled Rex over the ladder, guided his one hand to a rung and then scaled his way up to move out of the way. He paused once he went up about four or five feet and spotted Rex helping Cripes in the same manner. He then turned his attention back on his own ascent and, moments later, was climbing onto the roof. Tim was reaching down to help Bronson with his final move, grabbing onto the back of Bronson’s jumpsuit and helping pull him over the top.

“Thanks,” Bronson said, and then turned to assist Rex in the same way Tim had helped him.

Once Rex was up, Bronson shuffled on his backside away from the edge of the roof. That was when he registered a thrumming noise that had been there the whole time, only he hadn’t been paying attention. Clinging for your life fifty stories up the side of a building might do that to a person. It was a helicopter, and it was close.

Bronson got to his feet as he surveyed the rooftop, looking for a place he might be able to take cover if they started shooting from the copter. There was a single stairway access about fifty feet away. But he also noticed a large landing pad to the right of it.

The helicopter was coming in for a landing.

“It’s landing!” he shouted to Tim.

“Yeah!” Tim answered, standing in a similar evasive pose.

He watched it slowly glide in, realizing it was, indeed, going to land on the rooftop, and then glanced back at Rex, who was leaning down over the side of the building and pulling up. He was likely helping Cripes make his way over the ledge and onto the roof.

But Bronson watched in complete surprise as, instead of pulling Cripes up and over, he pulled until the man was halfway onto the roof then sat back, swung a foot into his chest and kicked.

Cripes lost his balance and tumbled back below the edge of the roof.

“What the hell?” Bronson yelled, scrambling to the edge, realizing it was too late.

Rex whirled around, his revolver already pulled and aimed at Bronson’s chest.

Bronson lifted his hands, took a couple of steps back, reaching for the pistol he had pocketed but realized there was no use. Everybody except Rex had used their bullets. He was the only one armed.

Rex’s eyes bored into Bronson’s. It wasn’t quite as intense as the stare-down he’d received from Sergeant DeBakey, but the fact there was a live round of ammunition trained on his chest added a little tension into the mix.

A couple of seconds passed as Rex and Bronson stared at one another.

Bronson considered diving to the side. The man only had one shot, after all. If he missed, it’d be up to hand to hand combat to complete the deal.

He kept his eyes on Rex, waiting for the twitch in his eyes that might signal he was about to take a shot.

“You saved my life twice!” Rex yellowed over the roaring beat of the helicopter, the gun still pointed straight at Bronson. “For that I owe you!”

He then quickly swiveled the gun to his right and fired. Tim fell to the ground, clutching at the blossom of red that started to bubble out onto his stark white jumpsuit.

“Consider us even!” Rex said, throwing the gun to the rooftop.

A moment later, just as the helicopter was completing its landing, Sergeant DeBakey burst out of the rooftop stairway access door.

“Congratulations gentlemen!” DeBakey called out. Despite having been impressed with the man’s booming baritone earlier, Bronson was surprised as how easily it could through the noise of the thrashing helicopter rotors. “You’ve both passed the test. You’re cleared for your roles in the Deadzone.”

The Deadzone.

The way he said it, Bronson could hear the capitalization of the word; a word spoken with power, conviction and dread.

Almost every state had one now. And it hadn’t taken long. Less than ten months. The plague that caused either leprosy-like symptoms or homicidal rage had already consumed almost one tenth of the world’s population. And yet society still forged on. In the same manner that people ignored the effect of pollution and burning of fossil fuels on global climate change or even the obesity epidemic, they let what the media had dubbed the Zombie Virus take a back seat to other matters. There were, after all, football championships, misbehaving teen pop sensations and redneck reality TV stars to pay attention to. Offering up a couple of dozen square miles in which the infected could be sent to suffer a shameful degenerative and horrible death or perhaps devolving into mindless animals of rage; and ensuring that the infected stayed in the Deadzone areas to live out the rest of their miserable lives was all that was needed.

That, and making sure there was proper law enforcement to keep the Deadzone people in the Deadzone and away from the rest of society.

Which had been the offer made to Bronson.

He had nothing to live for; he was already wasting away in prison.

At the very least, in the Deadzone, his skills as a law enforcement officer could be put to use.

“Get onto the helicopter!” DeBakey said, stepping up to the men and clapping them each on the shoulder. “The ammunition and supplies you need are all on board.

Rex and Bronson stared at each other across DeBakey’s broad chest.

“I’m assigning you both as partners.”

Bronson considered it for a moment.

The concept of trying to make up for his wrongs by being an officer in the Deadzone had been, in the grand scheme of what his life had become, something to look forward to. But having Rex so close would certainly keep him on his toes. And for the most part, the only time he didn’t think about Patrica and Sophie and their loss was when he’d been fighting for his life.

In both cases, this could only be a good thing.

Bronson grinned at Rex.

The man grinned back at him, the glint of mistrust obvious in his eyes.

Oh yeah. Bronson would never not be on his toes.

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more dark fiction by Mark Leslie?

Nocturnal Screams: Volume 1 – Night Cries

Screams echo through the thick darkness of night in this series of Black Mirror meets The Twilight Zone series of short tales...

TASTE OF DARKNESS: Sensory deprivation takes on a new meaning when you let the darkness completely consume your senses of sight, sound, touch and smell, leaving you with the bitter taste of the encroaching darkness. And you'll be surprised what you find lurking there just beneath the surface and the cold, clear light of day.

THE PIZZA MAN: A group of students keep getting pizza deliveries that they never ordered. Is it a strange prank, or is there something more to the mysterious man who keeps showing up at their door?

LITTLE THINGS: Strange little creatures appear in the middle of the night, but Daniel is the only one who can see them. His wife, Joy, becomes distraught at the bizarre way her husband is acting, but, more horrifying is what the tiny little things are doing to her.

If you're looking for three quick jaunts into worlds where darkness mingles with the echoes of cries in the night, you'll want to crack open the pages and start listening for the nocturnal screams.

Get Nocturnal Screams: Night Cries

About the Author

Mark Leslie would be the first person to admit he's still afraid of the monster under his bed. And he will tell you that is likely why his books tend to focus on things that appear to live in the shadows. He is the author of more than twenty books that include fiction and thrillers, and paranormal non-fiction explorations. He has also edited numerous anthologies. With three decades of experience in bookselling and publishing, Mark is a seasoned and trusted book industryprofessional who embraces both traditional and indie publishing options.

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REBEL
by Jonathan Brazee

Michiko is on a personal mission of vengeance.

Michiko MacCailín is a member of the First Families, more concerned with her privileged lifestyle of ballet, spending time with friends, and planning her wedding than of the injustices suffered by the indentured workers of the all-powerful Propitious Interstellar Fabrication, Inc., the charter holder of the planet.

When her activist fiancé is murdered at a protest rally, she blames the company and embarks on a personal mission of vengeance.

Michi has some initial, if minor success, but when the company requests that the Federation send in the Marine Corps to quell the unrest, the stakes immediately get higher. Undeterred, Michi is not going to let the Marines keep her from extracting her revenge.

WARNING: This book contains some graphic violence that may not be suitable for all readers.

A Semper Fi Press Book

Copyright © 2015 by Jonathan Brazee

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system—without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Acknowledgements:

I want to thank all those who took the time to pre-read this book, catching my mistakes in both content and typing.  I want to thank Tom Rogers, my content editor, and John Baker, my copy editor, for catching my many typos and mistakes.  Any remaining typos and inaccuracies are solely my fault.

Chapter 1

Michiko MacCailín slowly took off her ballet shoes, grimacing at the bloody mess her feet had become.  These were special order handmade Rostov’s, supposedly the most comfortable pointe shoes available, and that had cost her almost 150 credits, but her feet had still taken a beating while she practiced her bouree.

She started removing the bandages that she had wrapped around each toe and used to pad the other pressure points.  With the blood, at least the bandages came off easily.  Taking some wipes out of her kit, she cleaned her feet off, wincing as the solution in the wipes hit the raw flesh.  She took another can out of her kit, and the cool spray of the NovaSkin was a relief.  In another three hours or so, her feet would be healed, ready for the next torture session.

Michi looked up from where she was sitting along the wall of the studio.  Melinda and Taro were working on their cambrè press lift, Melinda arching gracefully back as Taro lifted her with one hand.  Taro was Michi’s cousin, and the MacCailín family size was an advantage to him as he easily pressed the 38kg Melinda.

The family genes hadn’t done Michi any favors, though.  She looked past the two dancers to her reflection in the mirror on the far wall, subconsciously slouching as if to become smaller.  It didn’t do much good.  At 1.85 meters and 68kg, Michi was not a small girl, and for a female ballet dancer, that was not good.  As she had matured from a lithe dancing sprite into a woman, she had taken to wearing loose T-shirts to the studio, but those could not hide the swell of her breasts, the widening of her hips.  She had been a budding prima ballerina at twelve years old, the best dancer among the juniors in the company.  At 19, she was too big to partner with any of the boys and relegated to dancing alone in the chorus.

Michi watched the petite, breastless Melinda being pressed again and again in the air while Artair, the troupe’s balletmaster observed and critiqued.

It just isn’t fair, she thought for the thousandth time.

It wasn’t so long ago that Artair spent a good portion of his day critiquing her.  Now, he generally ignored her.

It wasn’t as if Michi could no longer dance.  Michi also had the MacCailín family athleticism, and she had adjusted well to her changing center of gravity as her body matured.  But ballet was a traditional art, and big girls had no place in it.  It had been this way for over 600 years, and it wasn’t going to change on some backwater planet in the Federation.

If she weren’t so stubborn, Michi would have taken Artair’s advice to move on.  She could have tried ballroom or synchro, two dance forms in which tall girls were accepted.  She could have gone into volleyball, five, or mixed martial arts, all sports in which she had dabbled.  But ballet was her passion, and she refused to give up.

The fact that her body attracted the attention of most of the men she met was lost on her.  To Michi, her body, that very athletic, skilled body that allowed her to complete even the most difficult ballet move, was a traitor.

She sighed and put on her street shoes.  Standing up, she gathered her kit.  No one said anything as she made her way along the mirrored wall and out of the studio.  With winter still hanging on, the day was brisk at about 8 degrees, and that lifted Michi’s spirits.  She liked it cold much better than the hot, humid summer days that could stifle Kakurega. She contemplated running home to change, but a quick glance at her PA told her she didn’t have time if she was going to catch the first speech.  Sniffing her armpit, she decided she wasn’t too rank, and her tights and sweatshirt would not be totally out of place.  She tried to call Franz, but there was no answer.  Michi was not surprised.  Franz would be focusing on the demonstration, and his PA would probably be refusing incoming calls.

Prosperity Square was normally only a ten-minute walk from the studio, but as she got closer, the mass of people streaming in made the going slower.  Michi was surprised at the turnout.  Each demonstration had pulled more and more people, but this looked like a huge jump.  Maybe the Workers’ Rights Party was beginning to find a message that resonated.  That, or maybe Propitious Interstellar Fabrication, Inc.’s ability to cow their indentureds and other employees was finally fading.

As both a Highland Clan member and a Kaitakusya, Michiko was a free citizen.  Both of her families had come to Kakurega long before the charter was granted to Propitious Interstellar.  The Kaitakusya had left Tanda for a new beginning on Kakurega about at the same time as the Highlanders came to farm the lush planet, and both groups easily mixed.  When the charter was granted to the company, both groups stayed, and now, most of the First Families provided services for Propitious Interstellar.  They were dependent on the corporation for their livelihoods, but not under its yoke.

Michi was aware of the issues the indentured, or Class 4 employees, had with Propitious Interstellar.  She couldn’t very well be in a relationship with one of the Workers Rights Party’s leading figures and not be aware.  Franz Galipili was only 25, but he had quickly taken a position of leadership in the party, his ability to arouse emotions as he spoke a vital asset.  Franz was an indentured, so technically, he was breaking the law by speaking out, but throughout history, all revolutionaries were criminals in the minds of their masters.

As a free citizen, Michi didn’t feel oppressed.  But she wanted to support Franz, so she showed up at each of his rallies.

Michi made it into the square and slowly worked her way forward to the platform that had been erected in front of the 10-meter-tall statue of the Propitious Interstellar corporate logo.  This wasn’t really the most logical spot from which to address the crowd in the square, but the symbolism was not lost on Michi.  That had to be the work of Tamberlain Jaderon.  The old man had finally worked off his indenture and was a free citizen, but his keen mind was an asset as he continued to support the party.

Tamberlain saw Michi approach the platform and gave her a smile and a nod.  He nudged Franz who turned and saw her.  Despite the hubbub, Franz quickly came to the edge of the platform and leaned down for a quick kiss.

“Hey, Chipper, glad you could make it,” he told her, reaching out to stroke her long black hair.

Franz was the only person to call her that.  The two had met at an All Hallows party, and Michi had been dressed as some sort of oversized chipmunk.  She had originally intended on being a squirrel, but when Yuzuki, her little sister told her she looked like a trinocular, she added stripes to set her off.  Ever since, Franz had called her “Chipper.”

“Good turnout,” she said, sweeping an arm to take in the still growing crowd.

“Even the jacks came out to play,” Franz said, tilting his head over his shoulder.

Michi hadn’t seen the jacks when she walked up. There had to be close to 50 of them, blocking B Street, the main route from the square to corporate headquarters at One Propitious Interstellar.  They had on riot gear and looked oppressive to her.

“Are they going to cause trouble?” she asked.

“I doubt it.  What are they going to do?  The people are just gathered to listen to our message.  I think they just want to make sure we don’t make an impromptu march up to One Propitious Interstellar.”

“As if anything you do is impromptu,” Michi said with a laugh.

“Well, you know how it is,” Franz said.  “Impromptu, planned, it all comes out in the wash.  Glad you made it, Chipper.  With my beautiful muse here, I will be inspired.”

Franz’ compliments were always over-the-top, Michi thought, but she still liked them.  Franz could have his pick of fiancés.  He was handsome, charismatic, and while an indentured, he was one with his own type of power.  The fact that he had picked Michi was a mystery to her, but one she appreciated.  She had even broached the subject with her father about buying out Franz’ contract.  She didn’t know if Franz would even accept, even if her father broke down and agreed, but if they ever set a date for their wedding, it would be far easier if he was a free citizen.

Someone called for Franz’ attention, and with a quick kiss on the top of her head, he stood back up and went to take care of whatever emergency had arisen.  Michi made her way slowly to the side of the platform where she could watch.  For once, her height was an advantage.  If Melinda had been there, she would need Taro to lift her if she was to see anything.  The thought of Taro, lifting Melinda in a graceful cambrè press lift while Franz and the other speakers railed against Propitious Interstellar struck Michi as funny, and she laughed out loud.  An older man standing in front of her looked around at her as she laughed, his expression disapproving.  Michi stuck out her tongue at the man, who grimaced and turned away, ignoring Michi’s louder laughter at his reaction.

It was another five minutes before the scratchy recording of the Propitious Interstellar anthem started blasting out over the crowd.  It was Propitious Interstellar policy that for any gathering of over 20 company personnel, the anthem had to be played.  Many people thought that this should be ignored at the rallies, but Tamberlain had convinced the rest to adhere to the requirement.  First, it served to leave the jacks with one fewer reason to take action, and second, the way they sang the anthem was a protest itself.  With a terribly scratchy recording playing, people took to trying to outdo each other in singing as off-key as possible.  It was getting to be a highlight of any rally.  So far, with the letter of the regulations being followed, Propitious Interstellar had chosen to ignore the farcical singing.

Michi joined in the singing.  As graceful as she was physically, her singing voice left a lot to be desired, and if she sang off-key, well, who was to say that it wasn’t purposeful?  As a free citizen, she didn’t even have to sing, but it was fun, and she got into the counter-spirit of it.

. . . for the good of all mankind, Propitious Interstellar Fabrication!

What a joke, Michi thought as the final strains died away.  Propitious Interstellar was a corporation beholden to its shareholders.  “For the good of all mankind” was not in their corporate policies.

Getting to be a regular revolutionary, aren’t we, she thought as she caught her criticism of the company.

Her father would not approve.  As a First Family, the MacCailíns made a very good living off of Propitious Interstellar.  Her father had a small fitting company that repaired the nozzle valves on fabricators, and he charged the company the going rates for the work.  It was enough to make the family quite comfortable.  Except for her Uncle Delwyn—who imported luxury food goods for sale to other free citizens, including Propitious Interstellar management—all her many uncles and aunts worked providing services to the mighty corporate giant.

The corporation needed the free citizens other than its employees to provide goods and services, and all free citizens were not limited for their own purchases to the corporate stores.  They could spend their money pretty much anywhere they pleased, and given the outrageous prices at the corporate stores, no sane person would buy anything from them.

The corporate store model was one of the major complaints of the WRP.  Given the wages allotted to the indentureds, it was difficult for them to work off their indenture as long as they kept piling up debt at the stores.  But people had to eat, they had to get clothed, they had to sleep somewhere.  Only 31% of Propitious Interstellar’s indentureds ever worked off their servitude, a rate far below that of most Federation corporations.

With the anthem over, Franz took the stage to welcome the people.  This was just a quick warm-up.  He would give his real speech later.  But he introduced two other indentureds, “regular” people who had sad stories to tell about how they’d been treated by Propitious Interstellar.  This had become part and parcel of each rally.  Tamberlain said it was to personalize the issue, to remind people that this affected each and every one of them.

The first person to talk was a middle-aged lady who had been close to paying off her indenture when she contracted a respiratory condition, one that was common among the granular fabricators.  The medical treatment, even though the condition was undoubtedly caused by her work, was not covered by Federation regulations, so she had to pay for the treatment, setting her freedom calendar back at least five years.

The Federation did have regulations that protected workers, including indentureds, but there always seemed to be a loophole, and indentureds didn’t have the funds to hire lawyers to fight for them.  Job-related injuries and illnesses were supposed to be treated at no charge to the workers, but unlike the workers, the corporations did have lawyers on staff, and in this woman’s case, they argued that her disease was a precondition.  The Federation advocate found for Propitious Interstellar, to no one’s surprise.

While Michi could feel for her, she was not as impressed with the next guy, a young man who seemed to rail at the very concept of the indentureds.  Michi was not going to bring it up, not to anyone in the crowd and not to Franz later that evening, but she wondered why the guy was complaining.  No one forced him to sign on with Propitious Interstellar, after all.  It was his choice, and his contract with Propitious Interstellar explicitly stated that he had to pay off his indenture.  That seemed pretty cut and dry to her.

The guy finally quit complaining, and then it was time for the main speakers.  Cheri Baliles was first as the party adjutant.  She was a former indentured, but now a free citizen, as were most of the party hierarchy.  Franz was an exception.  People currently indentured usually didn’t have the time to contribute to the party, and they had more restrictions on what they could do, what they could say.

Cheri announced that the noted human rights champion, Henry Jugos, had finally gotten his entry denial for Kakurega overturned.  It had taken over a year in the courts, but Propitious Interstellar could not stop him from coming, and he would be holding several rallies over the coming months.  This raised a big cheer from the crowd.   She went over the coming schedule and other administrative issues.  Michi tuned her out.  She was here for Franz, and that was about it.  She felt bad for some of the conditions suffered by the indentureds, but it really wasn’t her fight.  Instead of listening, she looked over the crowd trying to see if she could spot corporate shills.  Everyone knew they were in the crowd, but knowing and identifying were two different things.  Michi spotted one fervent young woman:  her eyes seemed too focused, her fervor too forced.

She’s got to be one, Michi thought.  That or she really was dedicated to the cause.

Cheri gave way to Hokkam Franchesi, the planet chapter chairman. Hokkam had been a Class 3 employee, not quite an indentured, but not quite a free citizen, either.  He had been a skilled technician who owed five years of service to Propitious Interstellar for his training.  Unlike indentureds, his five years was just that:  five years.  After that, he converted to a Class 1 employee, a free citizen in reality instead of just theory.  He’d taken the mantle of chapter chairman a year ago, and since then, the rallies and protests had become more frequent and better organized.

Unlike an indentured, Class 1 employees could be fired, but for whatever reason, Hokkam still had his job.  Michi would have thought that Propitious Interstellar would have let him go the minute he took over the WRP.

She glanced at her PA.  The rally would end in another 20 minutes, and Franz hadn’t even started to talk yet.  She knew he would be getting worked up.  He seemed so in control that few knew that he still got nervous before speaking to a crowd.  He was great with small groups of people, but large groups somewhat intimidated him.  He focused on a few people he knew and pretended that he was speaking only to them.  That was another reason Michi came to the rallies.  She was happy to let Franz focus on her.

Finally, it was his turn.  The crowd visibly perked up.  Part of this was that Franz was such an engaging speaker.  But a bigger part, Michi thought, was that he was an indentured, just like much of the crowd.  He hadn’t paid his debt off—wasn’t even close.

Michi shifted her position to the front of the platform.  Franz caught her eyes and smiled.  She knew he was getting ready to use her as his focus.  He would let his eyes roam over the crowd, but in his mind, he was just having a conversation with her.

“Friends!  Thank you for coming out on this brisk evening.  Luckily, we’ve got enough hot air up here to warm everyone up.”

The crowd dutifully laughed.  They were used to Franz’ demeanor by now.  Some people thought his folksy attitude and self-depreciating style was all an act, but Michi thought that was the real Franz.  He really was a humble man.  Humble, but on a mission, one he would never quit until he succeeded. He wanted to serve his fellow workers, and that compassion was only one of the reasons Michi loved him.  A “good” man was a term bandied about too easily, but with Franz, nothing else fit.  He was a good man through and through.

“We’ve heard some good news today.  Henry Jugos coming is a really great thing for us.  The fact that the courts sided with him against Propitious Interstellar is a sign, I want to think, that the Federation is finally shifting our way, at least in upholding the law.  The corporations are not the law, and they cannot pick and choose which laws they will follow and which ones they’ll ignore.

“But this is just one tiny chink in the corporate armor.  Propitious Interstellar Fabrication is not about to reverse its standing policies just because Henry is getting involved.  We have to force Propitious Interstellar to change.  We have to force the Federation to uphold the law.  And if Propitious Interstellar won’t listen to us, we have to take our case right to the top,” Franz said, using one arm to point up past the ranks of jacks and towards One Prop Inter Fab.

As he said that, the jacks shifted in their ranks.  Franz and those nearest B Street saw the movement.

“See that, the thought of us confronting the Propitious Interstellar leadership gets their hired guns nervous.  Well, we are going to confront them.  We will not stand by as they abuse the system, making slaves out of us.  Slavery has been banned for over 300 years, so why are we slaves for Propitious Interstellar Fabrication, Incorporated today?  We won’t stand for it.”

The crowd erupted into cheers and clapping.  It kept going on, and finally, Franz had to hold up his arms to quiet them down.

“My friends, Propitious Interstellar needs us.  Without us, the stream of goods flowing into the marketplace, and more importantly, the stream of credits flowing into the corporate coffers, would cease.  I ask, what would happen if we just stopped working?  How could Propitious Interstellar survive?”

Michi swallowed hard when she heard that.  A strike was patently illegal, and Franz was skirting close to the edge.  He could be arrested and jailed under Federal charges if he was convicted of instigating a strike. She wanted to catch his eye and motion for him to calm down, but he was on a roll.  She looked over to Hokkam to see if he would put the brakes on Franz, but the chairman was simply smiling and nodding his head.

“What would they do?” Franz continued.  “They could not survive, and they know it.  And that, my friends, is our leverage.  Our labor, our sweat, the very thing that puts those profits in the bank.”

Franz was interrupted again as clapping filled the square.  Once again, he had to hold up his hands to quiet the crowd down.

“I am not saying we should crush Propitious Interstellar or destroy it.  We just need to get them to treat us according to the law at the least, and as partners at best.”

There was stirring in back of the speakers’ platform.  Franz turned around to look behind him before turning back to the crowd.

“The PI goons evidently don’t like the idea of us being valued partners with the company.  But just keep calm folks.  We’ve done nothing wrong.”

The jacks?  What are they doing? Michi wondered, craning her neck to see over the platform.

“Calm down, everyone.  Don’t interfere with them,” Franz told the crowd.

Michi felt panic start to rise in her, a welling from deep in her gut that threatened to take over her body.  Franz hadn’t actually crossed any line, but he still was an indentured, and if the jacks wanted to take him into custody, they would.  Michi was sure nothing Franz had said would hold up in even a Propitious Interstellar admin hearing, but people had the habit of falling down a lot of stairs while in jack custody.

Cheri and a few others moved forward to stand in solidarity with Franz.  Hokkam, however, actually edged further back on the platform, away from Franz.

Chicken shit chairman, Mishi thought as she moved forward, intending to join Franz on the platform.  Since Michi was a free citizen and not an employee, the jacks had very little authority over her, and she had vague ideas of trying to protect her fiancé.

There was shouting in back of the platform and some screams as the jacks moved forward in lockstep, pushing aside anyone in their way.

“Don’t resist!” Franz shouted out.  “Let’s see what they have to say.”

Michi pulled herself up onto the platform.  From the higher vantage point, she could see the massed jacks bulling their way forward, several people falling down in front of them to be trampled under.  Other people had turned and were trying to flee, but the mass of others in the crowd worked as a barrier.

“Officers,” Franz shouted out, sarcasm oozing from his voice, “no one is offering any resistance.  If you want to talk with me, just come on up.  No one will stop you,” he said, holding his hands out as if he were going to be cuffed.

Michi was walking across the platform to join Franz when the first shot rang out.  She didn’t know from where it was fired, or even that it was a shot at first.  It registered with her, but only peripherally.  The fusillade that immediately followed was different, though.  The jacks had opened up and bodies were falling in front of their ranks.

“Franz!” Michi screamed as she bolted into a run to reach him.

“Stop firing!  Stop firing!  We are not resisting!” Franz shouted, his mic turned up high so his voice reverberated throughout the square.

He turned towards the jacks, running to the back of the platform.

Panic erupted through the crowd as people started screaming and pushing to flee.  More shots rang out from the jacks, and Michi saw more bodies fall.

“Get down, Franz!” she shouted, just steps behind him.

“I surrender, I—” Franz shouted, his voice cutting off as the front of his head exploded into a gout of blood and brain matter.

Michi let out a mindless scream of terror as she closed the last few steps to her fiancé.  She fell on his motionless body, pulling him up and into her lap.

No, no, no!

Franz was limp in her arms.  There was a small hole in the back of his head, and as she turned him over, she slid into tunnel vision.  His entire forehead was gone.

“Get an ambulance!” she shouted to no one in particular.  “He needs to get into regeneration.  I’ll pay for it!”

She was unaware of the screaming, the firing.  She was unaware when the firing stopped.  All she saw was Franz, his powerful body limp and lifeless in her arms.  Someone, maybe Cheri, came up and tried to talk to her, tried to take her arms from around Franz, but Michi pushed her away.  She was not going to let go until Franz was in the hospital.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that no one could survive that amount of damage.  There would be no regeneration.  But she refused to acknowledge that.

When the jacks approached her, she screamed that she was a free citizen, that they could not take Franz.  It took four jacks to pry her off of Franz.  She fought them, but to no avail.  They took Franz down off the platform and into a company ambulance that had driven up unnoticed bye Michi.  As the doors of the ambulance closed, it was as if Michi was a marionette, with her strings cut.  She collapsed into Cheri’s arms.

She was unaware when her father arrived, when she was helped into his hover, when she got home.  She was given a sedative and put to bed where she mercifully lost consciousness.

Chapter 2

“Are you OK?” Cheri asked as she got out of the taxi in front of the church and hurried up to Michi.

“No, but as good as can be expected,” Michi responded.

The last few days had been a blur.  After Franz had been killed—murdered—Michi had been briefly held and questioned until her father, with Ham Harris, the family lawyer in tow, arrived at Propitious Interstellar’s holding cell and demanded her release.  She had been taken to St. Graeme’s for a check-up, been sedated, and then taken home.

When she woke the next day, the enormity of what had happened finally hit her, and she broke down and cried, alone in her bedroom.  A couple of hours later, her mother poked her head in the room, and seeing Michi awake, convinced her to get out of bed and come out to the kitchen for coffee and a bite to eat.  Only her mother and Talla, the family maid, were in the house.  Her father was at work, her sister at school.  It didn’t seem right that they were just going about their normal routine at such a time.

When her mother told her that the company jacks would not release Franz’ body, Michi almost ran out of the house to confront the bastards, but her mother held her back, telling her the union was working on it.  Franz was an indentured, so the union did not officially have any capacity to be involved, but as they represented the 65% of free citizen employees of Propitious Interstellar, the company paid attention.

It still took two more days, but finally, Franz’ body was released.  With no family on the planet, Hokkam and Cheri had accepted custody, and the funeral had been planned for the next day.

Cheri hugged Michi, murmuring, “I know, dear.  We’re all devastated about this, too.”

“What’s going to happen now?  When’s the inquiry?” Michi asked.

“Hokkam’s going to be working on that.  He’s really taking this hard, you know, considering, so it might take him awhile to get his thoughts in order.”

“Considering?  Considering what?”

“Oh, that’s right.  You wouldn’t know,” Cheri said, looking to where Hokkam was getting out of another taxi.  “He feels personally responsible for Franz’ death.”

“Why?” Michi asked, momentarily confused.

“Well, it was him that told Franz to up the ante, to mention force and hint at a strike.  Hokkam thought it was time to elevate the pressure, and if Franz got arrested, it would bring more attention to our cause.  He never thought there would be any shooting.”

“Arrested?  Franz thought he was going to be arrested?”

“We thought it would be a possibility, yes.  I’m so sorry, dear.  If I had known what would happen, of course I would have stopped it,” Cheri said, tears forming in her eyes.

“And Hokkam told him to go ahead anyway?” she asked, anger beginning to burn away some of the lassitude that had taken over her soul since Franz’ death.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Cheri started.  “Franz knew the risk, and he wanted to do it.  Hokkam just—”

“Michiko, dear, I want to tell you again how sorry I am about this tragedy,” Hokkam said as he came up, cutting off Cheri.

He gave Michi a perfunctory hug and a peck on each cheek as Michi recoiled ever-so-slightly.  A stark vision of Hokkam, edging back from Franz just before the firing started splashed in her mind.

Not only does he tell Franz what to say, but then he hides from the consequences, Michi realized.

Still, she allowed Hokkam to kiss her cheeks and express his regrets.  She was saved from listening to more of his BS by the acolyte that came out and announced that the service was about to start.  She linked arms with Cheri and steeled herself to enter the nave.

As a member of The Clan, Michi was also a practicing member of The Kirk, although as The Clan and the Kaitakusya had intermingled, Shinto was also observed by many.  An amalgamation of religions was in the best tradition of Shinbutsu shūgō, after all.  She had never been in one of the planet’s Roman Catholic cathedrals, though, and was not sure of how they did things.  So, she was relieved to see the closed casket in the front of the apse.  She wasn’t sure how she would have handled it if Franz had been in an open casket as she had heard was done elsewhere.

Cheri escorted her to the second pew where they both took a seat.  Michi was annoyed when Hokkam stopped at the same pew, and the two of them had to scootch over to give him room to sit, but she tried not to let it show.

The service started, and most of it went by in a blur.  The priest said some words, there was the singing of some hymns, and various prayers were made.  It was actually quite similar to what took place in Kirk funeral services, which shouldn’t have been surprising as the Church of Scotland was essentially formed from the evangelical Presbyterian Free Church way back in the 1800’s, Old Reckoning.  Presbyterian churches shared much of the same litany with Roman Catholicism.

Michi stood up, kneeled, and followed along with the gathered mourners more by rote than by intention.  After Hokkam stood up to say what a great man Franz was, Michi’s thoughts turned towards revenge.  Not against Hokkam.  He was just a cowardly ass.  But revenge on Propitious Interstellar Fabrication, Inc., the ones who caused all of this.  She didn’t know what she would do, yet, but only that the company had to pay.

As Michi sat in a House of God, her thoughts were not on Christian forgiveness, but on vengeance.

Chapter 3

Michiko pinned the red wig she’d bought at Harrelson’s into place and then carefully pulled the hood of her cozy up and over her head.   She checked the mirror one more time, but even with the wig, her face was deep within the hood, out of sight.

She checked the rolled tissue she has taped inside each Clodder, up against the outer heel.  Both were secure, so she slid in her feet, careful not to dislodge the taped tissue.  She took a hesitant step in the heavy work boots.  It felt different, at least.  Whether it would spoof the surveillance cameras or not by giving her a different gait, she didn’t know.  Super Agent Franny Justice had used the technique in “The Pullman Gambit,” but flicks didn’t always adhere to reality.

Michi pushed open her door a fraction and listened.  The house was quiet.  She slipped out, crept down the stairs, and out the kitchen door in back.  She checked her PA: 11:45.  She had a hike in front of her.  If she drove her Sullivan, the hover’s position would be recorded and could be evidence against her if things went wrong.  For the same reason, she couldn’t very well call up a taxi, so it was a five km hike into the entertainment district.

One thing she hadn’t considered was that with two cozies on, she was getting pretty hot.  The night was cool, but the exercise and extra clothing was making the hike rather uncomfortable.  She slowed down her pace to keep from overheating.

Within 30 minutes, she was out of the residential area, the lights of the Slab visible ahead.  She didn’t head directly there, though; she turned left, instead, down G Ave, coming across the first people she had seen since she left her home.  A man and a woman were staggering past, leaning together for support, clearly drunk, and both in very good moods.  Michi waited until they passed, then stepped into the small garden in front of the Krishna shrine.  This was an area that Michi was positive was not under routine surveillance.  She gratefully pulled off her cozy and sweat pants before stashing them in back of the far-right bench.  Underneath, she had on another cozy, this one with the Firebird logo of Lipper University on it.  She felt a little weird wearing it.  Michi was not a big proponent of interscholastic rivalry, but still, the Firebirds were the “other” university in town as opposed to Michi’s own University of Holcomb Diamonds.

She settled this cozy’s hood around her face and then pulled out a few strands of the red wig so they were visible.

You can still quit, she told herself.  Nothing’s gone too far yet.

But she didn’t turn back.  Taking a deep breath, she walked around the shrine and went out on F Ave, a totally different person than the one who had entered from G Ave. Super Agent Justice would have been proud of her.

It still took her another 20 minutes before she entered the Slab.  It was almost 1:00 AM, and the party animals were out in force.  Consequently, the jacks were, too, keeping the peace.  Michi stood taller as she wandered through the bars, restaurants, hookah dens, and music venues, trying to find a target. Two drunk frat boys hooted at her, each raising his hand in the Firebird salute, but she ignored them.  Unfortunately, the jacks were ignoring her, too.  She tried to catch a few of their eyes, but with the hood over her face, a fat lot of good that did.

She hadn’t really thought things through.  She had a burning desire to extract some payback, but she didn’t really have a detailed plan.  Even if she could catch the attention of a jack, what was she going to do?  There were too many people out and about for Michi to do anything.

There was a place, though, where things were quieter.  Michi and her schoolmates had driven through the Gut a few times for kicks but had never even got out of the hover, much less wandered about.  She had to push down a little tremor that tickled at the back of her mind.  The area had a reputation, and good girls didn’t go there.

At that, Michi laughed out loud.  Whatever she was, whatever she was about to become, a “good girl” wasn’t it. She straightened her shoulders and made her way past the city’s elite as they sipped their specialty drinks and listened to the latest zhoul or boxbox tunes.  Michi had spent more than a few evenings herself doing the very same, but now she looked at the partygoers with more than a little disdain.

How could they party when the PI jacks could get away with murder? she wondered.

Michi walked several blocks more before turning right on Craxton.  Immediately, the lights of the Slab disappeared.

Welcome to the Gut!

Several shapes stood in the shadows, rentboys and rentgirls plying their trade.  They stirred as Michi made her appearance, but no one approached her.  She didn’t look the part, she guessed.  She was not dressed as one of them, nor did she look like a party girl out for a fling.  Party girls did not hide behind cozies, and they did not wear steel-toed Clodders.  It was just as well.  Michi wanted to quietly fade into the further recesses of the Gut where she could lay her trap.

A drunk came out of the darkness, making Michi recoil, but other than a slurred, “Hiya, baby,” the man was too far gone to be really interested.

One huge advantage of the Gut was that there was no surveillance there.  The company put it up, but the rentboys and girls immediately took it down.  The fact that PI bigwigs came into the Gut themselves probably accounted for the fact that the jacks didn’t seem too dedicated to keep replacing the cameras.  What happened in the Gut was not illegal, other than the inherent tax avoidance and some drug use, but still, not too many people in high places wanted their presence in the Gut widely known.

After a few minutes of wandering, Michi found her own spot: a small, alley leading back to nowhere.  She positioned herself at the front of the alley, a trapdoor spider monitoring her web.  If a civilian came by, she eased back until she was in the darkness, only to edge back out again as he or she passed.  It took more than an hour, and Michi was beginning to second guess everything, when a lone jack came sauntering by.

It was common knowledge that jacks sometimes demanded freebies from the rentboys and girls.  Everyone knew it was true—at least people repeated it, so it must be true.  Everyone also knew that college kids were in high demand in the trade.  So Michi stepped out farther in to the light, so the iridescent Firebird logo on her cozy seemed to take on a life of its own.  A jack, walking alone in the Gut.  A uni rentgirl.  This was a no brainer.

Only the jack didn’t even slow down.  He walked around Michi without saying a word.

“Uh, excuse me?” she said, afraid to lose the man.

With a sigh, the jack stopped, and with his body posture screaming resignation, turned around.

“Yes, miss?  Is there something I can do for you?” he asked without enthusiasm.

Michi had just realized that what they all knew about the Gut may be more rumor than fact, and she immediately changed tack.

“My friend, he’s, well, his dad’s a VP with the company. We bought some light, but something happened.  My friend’s back here, and he’s in trouble.”

The jack immediately became alert.  Light was illegal, and possession carried a stiff punishment.  And if the son of a company VP had taken it, well, the ramifications could be severe.  As a jack, one of his jobs was to make sure none of the higher ups were ever embarrassed in any way.

“Yes, ma’am,” he quickly said.  “Where is your friend?”

“Back here,” Michi said, pointing to the back of the alley.

The jack brushed past Michi, hurrying to find the VP’s son.  He got to the end of the alley and looked around in confusion.  “Where?” he asked as he started to turn around.

Michi’s roundhouse kick in her steel-toed Clodder caught the unsuspecting jack right below the chin and alongside the neck.  The man fell bonelessly to the trash-laden cement alleyway.  Michi followed through, pouncing on the man, giving the back of his head her elbow before she realized the jack was not resisting.  Warily, she got up, giving him a nudge with her foot.  The jack didn’t react, and it was only then that Michi saw the angle to the jack’s neck.  This jack would never be getting up again.

Michi jumped back, her vision narrowing as she almost lost her balance.  She had to take a few deep breaths to gather herself.

How the hell did that happen?

During Michi’s short foray into MMA, she had knocked out exactly one person.  In her second match, she had taken down her opponent and rained hammer fists down on the poor girl’s head until the ref jumped in to stop the fight.  Michi’s other three wins and her one loss came as a result of the judges’ decisions.

Michi knew how hard it was to get a solid enough strike for a knockout.  Yet here, in this unnamed alley in the Gut, she had somehow, against all probability, broken the neck of a trained jack.  She couldn’t believe it.

She moved back to the jack, then reached forward, only hesitating a moment before placing her fingers on the man’s neck, feeling for the carotid.  There was nothing.  He was dead.

Michi fell back onto her butt as she stared at the jack.  He looked young, only a little older than her.  She wondered what his name was.  She felt numb, but not sorry, and that surprised her.  She was a Clan girl, a First Family girl.  She was supposed to go to school, choose a profession.  First Family girls did not kill people.

Yet she felt no remorse.  In fact, she felt a sense of pride beginning to build up within her, an ember flaring into life.  She recalled how satisfying it felt when her foot connected with the jack’s neck, how solid it felt.

She reached out with one foot and gave the body a kick.  It jerked under her foot’s impact.

I did that, you glaikit boaby!  I did it!  I took your worthless life!  You weren’t worth a hair on Franz’ head, and now you’re less than that!

She felt a surge of righteousness at what she had done.  She knew the odds of what had just happened were infinitesimally small, so she wondered if there hadn’t been something else guiding her, some other higher power at work here.

Michi wanted to stand up and scream into the night, a lioness celebrating her kill.  She didn’t know what kind of sensors the jack had, and she knew she should get out of there before his buddies came to look for him.  Despite that, she had to stare at her victim for a few more moments, drinking in the sight and cementing it in her mind.

She stood back up and went over to the body, reaching across to slide the jack’s Jamison out of its holster.  The Jamison was the standard issue sidearm for the Propitious Interstellar jacks.  Some companies went on the cheap for their jacks, but not PI.  The Jamison was a sweet firearm, able to send out both lethal and non-lethal beams with a high degree of accuracy.  It was too bad that this jack wasn’t carrying a rifle, but the Jamison was certainly no slouch as a trophy.  Michi slid it in her cozy pouch pocket, and without another glance at the dead jack, left the alley.  There were fewer figures—service providers and customers both—still out, but she tried to walk with a purpose that might forestall anyone reaching out to her.  It must have worked as no one said a word.

In a few minutes she was back in the Slab, music still wafting out from various stages.  The lights seemed too bright after the dimness of the Gut.

Two jacks came walking up to her, and for a moment, she wanted to bolt.  She kept walking at them, going over the various kicks and strikes she could employ.

“Evening, miss,” one of the jacks said as the two passed her.

Her heart pounding, she realized that taking the Jamison had been a stupid act of bravado.  The gun bulged in her pocket, and if one of the jacks had seen it and searched her, her little war on the company would be over before it even started.

She debated tossing the gun, but that might be worse.  Instead, she made her way back to the shrine where she had stashed her other clothes.

Michi almost trashed the Firebird cozy, but then thought better of it.  The less evidence of her passing, the better.  The redhead wig came off and was thrust into the pocket with the Jamison.  She pulled on the other cozy and the sweat pants, and then slowly strolled out onto G Ave.

An hour later, she slipped back into her house and up to her room.  She stripped down, hiding both the Firebird cozy and the Jamison in the back of the bottom drawer of her wardrobe.

Michi didn’t even shower, but simply slipped between her sheets.  Within moments, she was out, and for the first time since Franz had been killed, had an uninterrupted and deep sleep.

Chapter 4

“Do you have something to tell us?” Michi’s father asked as she came in the door.

“No,” she responded in a surly tone as she dumped her backpack on the couch.

What do they know?

She made as if to go to the kitchen anxious to get out of her parents’ piercing stares.

“I think you do,” he said, stopping Michi in her tracks.

“We got a call today, from the uni, asking if you were OK.  They said you haven’t been to class since, well, you know since when,” her mother spoke up.

Relief swept through her.  This wasn’t good, but at least no one knew what had happened in the Gut last week, at least as far as her participation in it.

The murder of the jack wasn’t a secret.  It had hit all the news feeds, and scores of women had been gathered for questioning, most from Lipper U.  There hadn’t been a surveillance photo released, but the fact that it was mostly Lipper girls was pretty darn indicative that there was some sort of evidence of her with the Firebird cozy out there.

The jack’s name was Gerile Fountainhead.  He was 23 and a Navy vet who had been working for the company for only three months.  A native of RKR, he left behind parents and a fiancé.  Blah, blah, blah.  Michi didn’t care.  He was not a person to her, just a slab of cold meat.

That surprised her, when she was honest with herself.  She had always considered herself to be kind and caring, a good person.  But some of that inherent goodness had vanished at the rally.  She wasn’t even sure she felt a twinge of remorse for killing the jack.  For killing Gerile, she had to remind herself.  He did have a name.

She turned back towards her parents, put on a melancholy face, then said, “I . . . I just have not been able to concentrate since Franz was killed.  My mind is not working right.  I think I need time.”

She saw her father’s face soften.  Bingo! She was going to get out of this.

Then she noticed her mother’s eyes narrow.  “And where have you been going every day, then?”

Michi wondered if she could bluff it out, then decided it was too likely that someone would have seen her, so she decided it was better to admit to something.

“I’ve been down at the WRP.  They knew Franz, and they are working on getting the results of the investigation. I just feel better there.”

That seemed to put a stop to her father’s understanding.

“Michi, I hate to put my foot down, but you are going to have to stop going there.  It was bad enough when you were dating Franz . . .”

“Not dating.  We were engaged,” she muttered under her breath.

“. . . but what with everything that’s happened, you need to divorce yourself from that group.”

“But—”

“But nothing!  I know you were all hot and bothered when your firebrand was up there, all moral-like.  But his cause is not our cause.  His fight is not our fight.”

“So you are going to ignore all the injustice that is going on?” she shouted at her father.

“Injustice?  Is it injustice that Propitious Interstellar pays our bills?  That they pay for this house?  For yours and Yuzuki’s education?  For that Sullivan you got for your birthday last year?  Is that injustice?” he thundered back.

This was an old argument.  Most of the First Families made their livelihoods in service or selling to Propitious Interstellar.  Some people, especially from the Yamaguchis, went on to join the company itself in the management ranks.  The First Families, comfortable in their lives, liked the status quo and were afraid of anything upsetting the apple cart.

“And the indentureds?  What about them?” she asked.

“What about them?  They signed contracts to escape whatever shite-hole they came from.  The company is supposed to rescue them, then let them walk?  That’s ridiculous, girl.  And what are the Class Fours?  Twenty-five percent of the workforce?  Maybe 15 % of the planet’s population?  No lassie, this is not our fight.  And with all the attention on your rabble-rousing friends, we don’t need pressure being put on the family because your latest cause has you fomenting trouble.”

Michi just stared at her father, trying to form a response.

“Listen to him, Michi,” her mother said.  “Think of the family.  We do not need the attention, especially with contract renewals coming up.”

“You two just don’t get it, do you?  All you think about is your bank accounts, and to get that, you bow down to the almighty Propitious Interstellar and let them stick it up your arses.  There is such a thing as justice, as human rights, even if you’re too fat and happy to realize it,” she told her parents with conviction.

With that, she walked past her parents, opened the front door, and stormed off into the evening.

Chapter 5

Michi looked at Prosperity Square.  This was the first time she’d been back since Franz had been killed.  It looked different, peaceful, and that pissed her off.  The stands were down and the trash gathered, as if the company thought they could simply clean away the fact that her fiancé had died at that spot.

People moved through the square, going about their business.  Several were sitting on benches, eating their lunches or going online.  Some just sat, eyes closed and faces up, enjoying the spring sun.

Was she the only person to be angry?  Was she the only one who had taken any steps in revenge?

Even at the WRP, it seemed to be business as usual.  Michi had just left the office.  Cheri had expressed her regret, and it seemed real.  Hokkam actually had tears in his eyes as he hugged her.  He offered his support in anything she needed.  But what he couldn’t offer was answers.  The chapter was waiting for the company report on the incident.

As if that would be worth anything!  The company would whitewash everything.  Franz’ death would an “unfortunate accident" caused by the protestors themselves.  No one would be held accountable.

Michi shook her head in disgust.

Her dance gear kit hung from her shoulder.  She had intended to try to hit the studio, where she would normally go to work off the stress, but as she stood in the square, the mood just wasn’t in her.  She sighed and walked over to one of the benches close to the spot where Franz had been killed.  Nodding to the elderly lady sitting there sipping a tea, she sat down on the other end of the bench, facing the spot where the stage had been set up.

Right there, ten meters away, was the last spot where she had spoken with Franz, laughed with him, held his murdered body.  She didn’t know if there was anything, any essence of him left there, but she closed her eyes and forgot about the world.  If any part of Franz was still there, she hoped she could somehow sense him for one last goodbye.

Chapter 6

Michi had to park in the street in front of the house.  She recognized Reverend Calhoun’s black Hyundai in the driveway and briefly wondered if her parents were getting another of their marriage “tune-ups,” as her mother called them.

As soon as she walked through the door, though, all thoughts of parental discord faded.  Not only was Reverend Calhoun sitting on the couch, but the Right Reverend Duncan, the moderator for the Kakurega presbytery, was there as well.  Both honored men were sitting, sipping tea, and looking straight at her.  Her mother was sitting to their side, while her father was standing with his back toward her.

He slowly turned around, his face blank.  Taking a step forward, he reached down to the coffee table and picked up the Jamison Michi had taken from the dead jack.

“And what is this?” he asked calmly.

Michi’s heart fell, and she almost stumbled.

“It’s mine.  I bought it.  For self protection,” she babbled.

“Self protection, lassie?” he asked as the other three looked on silently.

“Yes.  There have been attacks on girls at school.  Just last week, a girl was assaulted on the quad.  I wanted protection, so I bought it.”

“And this?” he asked, using the muzzle of the Jamison to lift a piece of grey clothing.

Half of a red firebird could be seen as the cozy hung in the air.

“It’s a cozy, what of it?” she tried to bluster, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“A Tipper University cozy and a sidearm issued to the company security forces.  You needed both of these to protect yourself?” he asked, his voice even-toned, sounding calm.

Michi tried to raise the fire of anger.  “And you’re searching my things?  How dare you!” she shouted.

“When it’s to protect the family, damn right I do, young lady.  And when you endanger us all, I will!” he shouted, throwing the Jamison to the side where it crashed into the big stone fireplace.

“Now Malcom,” the Right Reverend said, standing up and taking a step toward him.  “We spoke about this.  Let’s hear what Michiko has to say, how she obtained these.  It might not be as you feert.  We dinnae know all the facts, either with that sad story or with your lassie here.”

He turned to Michi and said, “Now Michiko, please, come sit here.  Tell us what happened, child.  Did this weapon belong to Mr. Fountainhead?  Did he do something to you?  Don’t be afraid, child.  You can tell us.”

Michi stared at the Right Reverend.  He had only just started his one-year term as moderator, but Michi knew him as a church elder.  He always seemed like a nice, righteous man.  For a moment, she almost gave in, almost rushed to the couch beside him to pour out her story.  She had been keeping it bottled in, and now she realized it was gnawing at her, making her into something of a bitch.  She wanted to get it all out in the open.

She actually took a step before her rage, her Scottish radge, came flowing back, filling her arteries, taking over again. The Right Reverend didn’t give a flying fuck for her.  He was worried about fallout on the Clan and the rest of the First Families.  He was hoping that the jack had assaulted her, that she had somehow killed the jack in self-defense.

“Yes, he assaulted me!  Is that what you want to hear?  He assaulted me, and I fucking killed him for that.  And you know what?  I’d do it again, I would!”

Michi knew that the jack, that Gerile Fountainhead had personally done no such thing.  She was not that lost in her rage.  But the jacks had assaulted her by taking her Franz.  And Gerile was a jack.  He’d probably been there that day at the rally.  Maybe he’d taken the shot himself.  That was good enough for her.

She was not going to sit there and kowtow to her parents, to the church leaders.  She was not going to apologize.  At least she had the balls to do something about injustice, and she was not going to meekly try to deny the righteousness of her actions.

She spun around, too incensed to speak and bolted for the door.

“If you leave now, dinnae come back!” her father shouted out as she ran outside.

Michi hit the unlock for the Sullivan, but the door would not open.  She tried it again, but the door remained locked.  Turning back, she couldn’t see anyone.  But she knew they were watching, and they had disabled her hover.

She leveled a kick that did nothing to the hover’s side panel, then stalked around it to head into town.  One thing was now obvious:  she was on her own.

Chapter 7

“Cheri,” Michi whispered into her PA.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the number connected.  At least her parents hadn’t cut off her comms, too.

“Yeah, Michi,” Cheri’s voice came over the line.  “What’s up?”

“I’m sort of in a bind here.  My folks kicked me out of the house,” she told Cheri, the fact that it was she that had stormed out by choice glossed over.  “Can you put me up for a few days?”

There was dead silence on the other end of the line, then a hesitant, “Oh, Michi-girl, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.  We’re under pretty heavy surveillance now, what with all the recent troubles, and you’re still pretty clean of all the dirt.  I think you staying with me now could cause some complications.  You’re sure you were kicked out?  Your dad’s just not angry for the moment?”

“No, I think it’s permanent.  He told me never to come back.”

“What did you do?  I’ve never met him, but Franz seemed to think he was pretty even-tempered, even if a bit conservative.”

“Oh, it’s a long story, but really, Cheri, I need someplace.  I’m willing to take any heat that comes along with it,” Michi said.

“It’s not just you, Michi.  Me, too.  I’ve got to keep my nose clean.  Bringing in the fiancé of Franz sends a pretty powerful message, one I’m really not anxious to send right now.  They are still making random arrests over the jack murder, and I don’t want to draw any more attention to me.”

That took Michi aback.  She and Cheri had gotten close over the last few weeks, and she had fully expected being able to crash at her place until she figured things out.

“You really have no place to go?” Cheri asked her.

“No place.  Nada,” she answered.

“OK, wait for a few minutes.  I have an idea, but I need to check first.  I’ll call you back in five.”

Michi broke the connection, none too pleased that the call hadn’t gone as expected.  She was in front of a Seven, so she went in to grab a Coke.  It wasn’t until she started to walk out that she wondered if her credit had been cut off as well.  However, no alarms sounded as she walked through the sensors.  The familiar buzz of a transaction relieved her.  She pulled out her PA and checked.

Well, it wasn’t totally normal.  Michi had been on the family line of credit, able to charge pretty much whatever she wanted.  Now, she had been shunted aside to a personal line with a limit of 50 credits per month.  She knew that many people managed to survive on that, but she wasn’t sure how they did it.

Her PA chimed as she took a swallow of the Coke, and she snorted out a stream of the drink as she grabbed the PA and opened the call.

“Michi, I’ve got a place for you.  Do you know the Brown Bean on Gasperson?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“OK, I want you to go there.  First, let me see what you’ve got on,” she said.

Michi held out her PA and tilted it up and down so Cheri could see her.

“OK, fine.  I see what you’re wearing.  Go to the Brown Bean, order a latte, and sit wherever you can.  Someone in an orange jumpsuit will come and sit with you.  If you both hit it off, you can shack up with her for awhile.”

“What’s with all the secret agent stuff?  You’re not coming?”

“No.  We’ve got five jacks sitting outside right now.  Hell, they’ve probably broken the scramble on this call, but no use making it any easier for them.  Better you go alone without me.  Let me know what happens, though.”

Michi was still a little miffed.  She had expected Cheri to welcome her with open arms.  Instead, she was being sent to meet someone whose name she didn’t even know.  But beggars not being choosers and all, as the old saying went.  She drained the Coke, threw the can in the bin, and started the walk to Gasperson.

Twenty minutes later, she walked in the door of the Brown Bean, the aromas assaulting her nose.  She wondered if she really had to get a latte, but taking no chances, she placed her order.  She grimaced at the 1.2 credit charge.  That would never have fazed her before, but now, she knew she had to make some adjustments, at least until she could get her full credit line restored.

There was no one in an orange jumpsuit, so she found an empty table by the front window and settled in to wait.  It was almost another 20 minutes before Miss Jumpsuit arrived.  Orange was an understatement.  It had multiple shades of orange and even some reds that somehow revolved around themselves along her arms and legs, giving the impression of fire.  This girl was only 1.4 or 1.5 meters tall, and she couldn’t have weighed more than 40 kg, but she was obviously not afraid to make a fashion statement.  She got in line and ordered her drink, then looked around as if trying to find a seat.

She slowly made her way to Michi, pointed at the empty seat, and asked, “This seat taken?”

“Please,” Michi said, trying to act nonchalant.

The girl took a sip, and without looking at Michi, said, “Baggy yellow sweats, an old faded grey cozy, ratty blue jump-ups.  You must be Michiko.  I’m Tamara, and Cheri tells me I need to give you a place to stay.  So, we might as well get at it.”

She stood up and stared at Michi, her brilliant blue eyes barely above Michi’s sitting eye level.

“Well, you coming?”

Michi didn’t know what else to do, so she got up and followed Miss Jumpsuit, Tamara, out of the Brown Bean.

Chapter 8

“That’s just not good enough,” Michi said in exasperation.

“Calm down, Michi,” Cheri told her.  “We really are working on this.”

“It seems to me that you’re just sitting here waiting for the company to make its final report.”

“Michiko, I want to assure you that we are doing all we can,” Hokkam said.

Yeah, like you told Franz to instigate a strike, she thought.

“I loved Franz as a son, and I’m devastated about what happened.  Every word I said at his funeral was true, and I will not rest until we uncover the truth.  But you don’t know how the game is played—”

“I can assure you that this is not a game,” Michi snapped.

“No, of course not.  Sorry, poor choice of words.  What I mean is that you don’t know how we deal with the company or the city offices.  We can’t just bull in.  It takes finesse.  We’ve already filed a protest with the city.  We had a valid permit, so technically, the jacks had to protect us, and they didn’t.  So, we will have a legal argument, but we have to wait first for the initial report.  Once we see it, Su will go over it with a fine-tooth comb so we can choose our next course of action.”

Tian Su was the chapter advocate and a member of the board.  By reputation alone, Michi knew that if there was a legal opening that could be exploited, Su would find it.

“So you see, we are working on it.  Please have some patience.  Things are heating up, and if it looks like we’re addressing those other issues right now, rest assured that we have not forgotten Franz.  How could we?” Cheri asked.

Michi looked over at Rosario Del Mare, the chapter security chief.  He was an easy person to blame as he was in charge of keeping the protestors safe.  Rosario seemed to sense her blame, and his defenses were up.  He hadn’t said a word during the meeting but rather glared at her.

Kuso kurae, ye boaby, she thought, combining curse words from both sides of the family tree for greater effect.  If you would’ve done your job, my Franz would still be here, so take your glare and up your arse with it.

She looked at the three chapter board members.  They were cowards, all of them, professing to fight for justice, but afraid of the big, bad company.  She was going to get nothing done here.  If she wanted vengeance—more vengeance, that is—it would be up to her.

She stood up, cutting the meeting short.  She almost sat right back down when all three let their relief show on their faces, but she realized that would do absolutely nothing.  Cheri and Hokkam kissed her cheek goodbye, and Michi turned and stalked out of the office.

Michi had already extracted a degree of vengeance.  She really hadn’t intended to kill anyone, even if she had accepted it now as an unintentional consequence.  It was something she was almost totally at ease with, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to kill anyone else.  If she were going to take any further action, she would have to figure out what would hurt the company most, and then how she could get that done.

Chapter 9

Michi took a sniff of the tuna casserole.  It was one of Talla’s recipes, a real recipe, with real cooking, not just punching something into the fabricator.  Michi was far from a domestic goddess, but frankly, she was going a little stir-crazy in Tamara’s apartment.  She had been Tamara’s guest for two weeks:  she had cleaned the condo five times, and this was her third attempt at manual cooking.

It wasn’t Tamara who was the problem.  Her new roommate was funny, intelligent, and a great companion.  It was just the being cooped up, away from school and her friends, that ate at her.  She had gone to the WRP several more times, but the bustle there as the staff considered their reactions to the ever-increasing pressure being levied by the jacks pointedly bypassed her.  They didn’t have much time for a girl who hadn’t even been a member but was merely a girlfriend of a member.

The casserole smelled good, at least, much better than her attempt at spaghetti puttanesca the night before.  Tamara had tried to dutifully eat it, but after two bites, both girls had broken out into peals of laughter before dumping the sodden mess in the recycler.  They’d dialed up breaded cutlets and a salad on the fabricator and opened a bottle of malbec instead.

Michi glanced at the old-fashioned cuckoo clock above the holo.  Tamara would be home in another ten or fifteen minutes.  She placed the casserole on the table so it would cool, then started to rush to the shower to clean up.  She had stripped off her sweat top when she had to stop.

What am I doing? she thought.  We’re not married!

She shook her head as she grabbed the dirty top and pulled it back on.  She must be going crazy.  Even with Franz, Michi was far from meek and submissive.  She resisted giving her pits a sniff.  Tamara was just going to have to accept her, rank or not.

She plopped down on the overstuffed red couch and asked the house PA to turn on the news.  The lead story was the four “hoodlums” who had been arrested for “civil disobedience” the day before.  The teenagers had been taunting the jacks, and while it wasn’t reported on the news, several jacks had beaten them senseless.

Michi felt a slight twinge of guilt, one she quickly suppressed.  She knew she had instigated the current round of unrest when she killed that jack.  She hadn’t really intended to kill anyone, merely administer a beating, and despite the thrill she had felt at the time, it was still gnawing at her.  She wished she could confide in someone.  She had almost brought it up to Cheri two days before at the WRP, but Cheri was up to her ass in alligators, so Michi just let it lie.

“Hey there, roomie!” Tamara said as she came in the door. “Um, something actually smells good.  You order take out this time?”

“Very funny, haha.  I made it, and this time, you’re going to love it.”

“You sure?  Cooking doesn’t seem to be your forte, girl.”

Tamara Veal was a Class One employee of the company, a free citizen.  She had been born on the planet to two indentureds, and her parents were still under the yoke, but that status was not something that could be inherited.  The courts had upheld that for the last 70 years, and it was accepted by even the most conservative corporation now.

Tamara still worked for PI, though.  She was a component engineer working on QC for the organics used in a series of Propitious Interstellar’s products.  The job paid adequately, enough for her to pay for the condo and make payments on her parent’s debt (which was twice as large now as when they’d signed their contracts).

Michi had been surprised at how close she had become to Tamara.  Michi didn’t make many female friends, and in many ways, Tamara was so very different than her.  Petite, hard-working, and very fashion conscious, she seemed to be a polar opposite of the large, dress-in-whatever Michi.  However, they shared a warped and wicked sense of humor, and Michi thoroughly enjoyed her company.

Tamara shucked her company overalls, leaving them in a pile on the floor.  Wearing only a white tank and panties, Michi could see her myriad of tattoos.  These were not temporary tats.  They were done the old-fashioned way with ancient tattoo guns and covered almost all of her skin that was hidden by her work clothes.  Michi had been shocked the first time she saw them, but she was also fascinated and wanted to examine them in more detail, but so far, she acted as if the tattoos were nothing out of the ordinary.  Someday, though, she was going to get the background on all that skin art.

The two roommates bypassed the table, instead sitting down on the couch with the casserole between them, each digging in with a spoon.  They finished up the previous night’s malbec while watching a game show.  Michi was smart, and she knew most of the answers to the questions, but the quicker Tamara usually beat her to the punch.

When the host asked the three contestants for the name of the first cloned dinosaur, Michi launched into the attack, jumping on Tamara with a pillow, smothering the smaller girl so Michi could yell out “Annabelle!”

Tamara struggled underneath Michi, but the smaller girl had no chance.  Finally, Michi let her up.

“You cheated!” Tamara yelled out.  “And you spilled the food!” she added, taking a small handful of the spilled tuna casserole from the seat of the couch and flicking it a Michi.

“So, sue me.  I got the answer right, didn’t I?”

“You know what they say?  Payback’s a motherfucker,” Tamara said, licking the tuna residue off her fingers.

Michi was brought up in the Clan, and good Clan girls just didn’t curse.  She was somewhat fascinated at both how easily Tamara swore as well as her prodigious library of profanity.

“Hey, pass me the wine,” Tamara told Michi.

“Sorry, all out,” Michi said, holding the wine bottle upside down.  “You got any more?”

“We drank it all?  Oh well.  Have you ever had Snow Wine?” she asked.

“Snow Wine?  Never heard of it,” Michi said, wiping the bit of casserole Tamara had flicked at her off of her face.

“Oh, you’ve got to try it.  Farking brills!”

She jumped up and ran to the small pantry.  She reached in and brought out an opaque blue bottle.

“This is a new synth from Iverson Beverage.  We’re getting the license to fabricate it, so we’ve got cases of it for development,” she said, hopping over the back of the couch, landing in a sitting position.

“And you just happened to take some home?”

“QC, my darling, QC.  I’ve got half of the organics going into it, so I have to know what the distilled product is like, right?”

“Good enough for me,” Michi said, reaching for the bottle.

She took along swig, then handed the bottle back to Tamara.

Woah!  That is pretty good! she thought.

“Not bad,” she said instead.

“Not bad my grandmother’s hairy snatch,” Tamara exclaimed.  “Well, if you only think it’s not bad, then I guess you don’t want any more,” she added, tipping the bottle up for a swig.

“No, no, I didn’t say that.  I think I need to taste it again,” Michi protested, grabbing the bottle.

The Snow Wine had more of a kick than Michi was used to, and she was feeling pretty comfortable when the game show ended and the hourly news minute came on.  It was a quick snippet of the head of PI security stating that after an investigation, the security team that arrested the four “hoodlums” had been cleared of any wrongdoing.

“Oh, suck my balls,” the half-drunk Tamara said to the holo image.  “Cleared my ass.”

“I feel sorry for the four boys,” Michi said.  “Seems like overkill, but they did sort of ask for it.”

“Fuck they did.  A month ago, the jacks ignore them.  But with that drug killing of the jack in the Gut, the rest of the jacks are all on edge.”

Michi’s heart faltered a beat.

“We’ve never talked about that.  What do you make of it?” Michi asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

“What, that some jack got jacked?” she said, laughing at her own little joke.

“No, really.”

“What’s there to think?  Some stupid jack got involved with Light, taking payments, probably to look the other way.  He pissed off the wrong people and got ghosted.”

Michi felt the Snow Wine cloud her head.  She knew she should just shut up and change the subject.

“No, that’s not what happened,” she said instead.

“And how would you know that, my dear friend,” Tamara said, taking another long swallow before handing the bottle back to Michi.

“Because I did it.”

“Because you did what?”

“Because I killed him,” Michi said, feeling the weight of the world lifting off her shoulders.

“Ha, right!  And I’m the Chairman of the Federation.  Bow down before me!”

“Really, I did it.  I killed him. And he wasn’t involved with Light or anything like that.”

Something in Michi’s tone must have registered through Tamara’s slightly muddled brain because she stopped, took the bottle of Snow Wine out of Michi’s hands, and placed it on the table.

“What are you saying?” she asked calmly.

“I didn’t know he would die.  I was pissed about Franz, and I just wanted to jump a jack, to pay them back.  But somehow, I kicked him too hard, and I broke his neck.”

The momentary sense of relief she felt by unburdening dissipated as Michi felt a dread creep over her.  Why had she said that?  It was her secret, and it should have gone to the grave with her.

She risked a glance up at Tamara, who sat there, mouth open in shock.

“You’re serious about this, right?” she asked her.

“Yeah.”

“Holy frack!” she finally exclaimed, jumping up.  “By St. Chuck’s ass!  You fucking ghosted a jack?  You’ve got to tell me exactly what happened!”

She sat back down on the couch cross-legged, facing Michi, taking her hands in hers.

Michi turned towards her and crossed her legs as well, their knees touching.  She took a deep breath, and then started from the beginning, with her vague concept of revenge and through all the events of the night.  Tamara was quiet the entire time, her eyes sparkling with excitement.  When she was done, she sat there, waiting for her roommate’s response.

Tamara finally broke her silence with, “Well, roomie, I thought I’d heard it all.  But you, you take the cake.  I’m truly amazed.”

“So, you are OK with that?  I mean, I’m a murderer.”

“OK with it?  Michi girl, I am freakin’ impressed, and rather jealous.  You struck back at the assholes when all anyone else does it pass out leaflets and jabber at rallies.  You took matters into your own hands and got some revenge for your beau.  But it’s not over now.”

“It’s not?” Michi asked.

“No fucking way.  You and I are going to do it again!”

Chapter 10

“You really expect to attract attention in that?” Tamara asked Michi, pointing at the baggy sweats and oversized cozy Michi had put on.

“What’s the matter with what I’m wearing?”

“You look like the marshmallow man.  You’ve got the curves, so use them,” Tamara said.

“I’m not putting on rentgirl rags, if that’s what you mean.  I’m going to need to be able to move.  And we don’t want to attract too much attention anyway.  Secrecy, right?  In-and-out like phantoms, right?  Wasn’t that what you said?”

“Oh, my innocent little Michi,” Tamara said sarcastically.  “Look at my bammers,” she told Michi, turning around and pointing at the black, molecularly-thin tights that were currently in fashion.  “Shows my ass, right?  But still, not flashy enough to attract attention unless some guy is right behind me.  With your sweats, Georgina O’Merkhin herself wouldn’t turn a head,” she said, referring to the current flavor-of-the-month holo sex-kitten star.

“We need to get one of them to want to come with us, not bore one to death.  Go back to your room and put on a pair of your dance tights, at least.  And put this on,” she added, reaching to the floor and picking up one of her small tops that she had dropped there.

“Really?” Michi asked, dangling the top from one finger.  “Don’t you think it’s a little small?”

“Of course, it is, girl.  You’ve got a little more to stuff inside than I do, but so what?  You want him to be thinking about something else before you go all highlander samurai on his ass.”

Michi laughed out loud at that.  “Highlander samurai?”

“Yeah, I thought of it last night.  Brills, right?  You’re First Family, and Clan.   You’ve got them both by birth, and samurais are pretty kick-ass.”

Tamara was excited, and her voice was a pitch higher than normal.  The thought of going out and jumping a jack had hyped her up.

Michi went back into her room, slid off her sweats, then rooted around her dance kit for a pair of clean tights.  All were dirty, so she took the pair with the least amount of smell and put them on.  The top Tamara had given her was another story, though.  It was tiny!  She pulled it over her head and worked it down, trying to put everything in place.  She took a quick look in the mirror and almost took it right back off.  It didn’t cover much of anything, and while not a prude, Michi was still Clan, and as such, she was not as open as her roommate. In the end, she just zipped up her cozy, hiding the mini-top from view.

“That’s better,” Tamara said as Michi came out.  “Let’s go get this done.”

Michi was still hesitant about this “mission,” as Tamara kept referring to it.  Last time, she had been running on emotion and a mindless drive for vengeance.  Now, she wasn’t as driven.  Killing the jack had extinguished part of the flame that burned within her.  She had never envisioned actually killing a man, but now that it had happened, she was nervous as the two left the apartment and started downtown.

This was not a “kill” mission, however, as she had stressed to Tamara.  In the first place, killing the jack before had been a fluke.  Unless you used a weapon of some sort, killing with one blow almost never happened, despite what was shown in the flicks.  It took endless pummelings to have the potential for death.

In the second place, Michi realized that she really didn’t have the stomach for it.  She hated the jacks and all they stood for, but killing someone took a person into another realm, one to which she really didn’t want to travel.  Michi still clung to her past self:  the dancer, the treasured First Family girl, the student, the fiancé.  She liked that life, and she was afraid of the violent undertow which threatened to sweep her into a darker, more sinister world.

Without Tamara, she probably would have never ventured out again like this, eventually going back to her family and apologizing.  She knew they would embrace her return.  Instead, she was following her half-crazy roomie out into the night to jump a jack.  Maybe she was the half-crazy one for agreeing to it.

They made their way towards the Gut again.  The lack of working surveillance vaulted it to the top of their preferred hunting grounds.  The shrine Michi had used before was on the other side of the Slab, so this time, they stopped a few blocks short of the Gut, gave each other a kiss on the cheek as if parting (for the sake of any surveillance recordings), and then split up.  Michi went into an industrial parts store where she changed cozies in the toilet before coming out and walking into the Gut itself.

There was an old statue of some ancient Scottish hero in the middle of the Gut, a testament to when this was a high-end neighborhood.  The fine townhomes had fallen a long way into disrepair.  Michi stopped at the foot of the statue and waited for Tamara.

“You want Light?” a furtive voice whispered to her.

Michi ignored the bundled person, unsure if the pusher was a man or woman, young or old.  She kept glancing around, wondering how long she should wait.  She felt far more vulnerable this time than before.  She knew it was all in her mind, but that didn’t make her feelings any less impactful.

Tamara finally sauntered up in a bright pink cozy with silver spangles.  She stood out like a bird of paradise.  The rentgirls and boys tended to the colorful, but Tamara put them all to shame.

“Not too conspicuous there, are you?” Michi asked as they met up.

“Don’t you ever read the spy novels?” Tamara asked.  “With all this glitter, who’s gonna remember my face?”

“If we’re planning this based on novels and flicks, then we’re in trouble before we even begin,” Michi grumbled without acknowledging that what Tamara had said made sense, garnered from a fictional spy story or not.

The two women started aimlessly walking, trying to look like they fit in.  The Gut was not totally devoted to activities that pressed the boundaries of legality—or broke right through them, for that matter.  The office buildings in the center of town rose to the west of the Gut, and some of the newly renovated condos so high in demand were just to the east, so the upscale workers simply walked through the Gut to and from their condos.  It wouldn’t be long before the real estate on which the Gut perched would be taken over to build more condos, coffee shops, and hookah bars.

At this hour, most of the workers were already snug in their condos.  There were some stragglers, however, mostly people who had stayed for dinner or to put in the late hours in their attempt to rise through the drek to the upper echelons of power.  They walked with their heads down, ignoring the jetsam and flotsam that flowed throughout the Gut.  Michi wondered if they were afraid that if they looked, they’d see a fellow worker indulging in what the Gut had to offer.

“Check this out,” Tamara whispered before flouncing up to one head-down walker.

“Hey there, stud, you up for a drink?” she asked the man who merely put his head down further and sped up his pace.

“Told you this stuff works,” she said to Michi as she came back, using one hand to sweep over her pink cozy.  “I know that guy.  He hit on me last year at one of our recertification courses.”

Michi had to stifle a laugh.  Tamara was one surprise after another.  The girl had no filter.

They wandered about the Gut for over an hour, dismissing several prospects for various reasons ranging from one jack’s wedding ring catching the light as he walked his rounds to another being joined by two more jacks just before the two hunters closed in.

Michi had felt uncomfortable when they first started walking.  The Gut was not the kind of place she ever really thought she would be exploring.  But as they hunted for a victim, she forgot about the seediness of the hunting grounds as her excitement started to take over.  She had always been competitive, but this took it to a new level, one that quite frankly gave her a rush.

A few years ago, a cousin had come back on leave from where he served as a captain in the Marines.  At a family gathering, he had started on his “sea stories,” as he called them.  He had been in the fighting during the Trinocular War, and to the rapt attention of the younger cousins, said that the thrill of combat was addictive, that nothing else matched up to it.  At the time, Michi thought that was just bluster, but as she searched the warrens for her prey, she thought she just might understand what he’d been trying to say.  Michi had been reticent about Tamara’s mission, but now that she was on the hunt, she was eager to get to it.

“Over there, at your eleven o’clock,” she whispered to Tamara, when she finally spotted a likely target.

“Eleven freakin’ what?”

Eleven o’clock. Like in the flicks.  Twelve is right in front of us.  Eleven is ahead and just to the left.  Over there, across the street.”

“Why didn’t you just say that instead of going Hollywood on me,” Tamara grumbled.  Then, “Ah, I see what you mean.  Mr. Jack seems interested in us.”

“Mr. Jack” was a thirty-something, lower-level security specialist, based on the patch on his shoulder.  He was a little old for his rank, and Michi saw something in his eyes as he took in the two women that made her positive he was the type to throw around what little authority he possessed.

Tamara immediately started crossing the street, and Michi had to hurry to catch up.  The jack’s eyes lit up as the two walked up to him.

“And what are you two ladies doing out and about this fine evening?” he asked them as Michi could feel his gaze peeling off their cozies as he openly looked them up and down.

“Nothing, sir,” Tamara said.  “Just out for some fun.  Crunching actuarial numbers all day is so boring, and we need a little excitement.”

With a number of insurance firms downtown, that little comment could throw suspicion in that direction, if it came to that.  Michi had to give her roommate props.  Michi hadn’t even thought to come up with a backstory.

“Excitement?  Plenty of places for that, ladies.  The Gut, though, can be a little rough for office girls.”

“Oh, me and Stacy like it rough,” Tamara said with a throaty laugh.  “Maybe you know someplace, though, where we can go to find something exciting?”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh, you security guys are supposed to know all the naughty places, right?  Where things happen?  Maybe one where we could go but that’s not, too, well, dangerous?”

The jack was eyeing both of them.  Michi wondered if she should have unzipped her cozy a little, but doing that now would be too blatant.  They had to tease this fish before setting the hook.

Michi was glad Tamara was the one doing the talking.  This wasn’t her style.  Michi would rather have simply called out the man and gone at it.  Finesse was not something she had in her bag of tricks.

“What about her?” the man asked Tamara, pointing at Michi.

“Oh, she’s a quiet one, she is, out in public, but get her behind closed doors, she’s a tiger,” Tamara told him.

“Well, can you help us?  Where should we go?  But remember, we want it naughty, but not where we’re going to get in any trouble.  You know how the insurance companies are about moral standing.”

The jack seemed to be considering it for a moment before making up his mind.  He got on his radio and said, “Helmon, I’m taking my 30 now.  You’ve got it.”

He turned to Tamara and said, “Yeah, I know.  I run this section,” which Michi knew was a gross exaggeration, “so I know all the places. But two ladies like you can get into trouble getting there, so I’m going to escort you there and let them know you’re under my protection, OK?”

Hook set.

“Oh, you’d do that?” Tamara asked excitedly.  “Stacy, you hear that?  I told you this would be sparking!

“Lead on my knight,” she said, taking the jack by his arm.  “I’m so excited.”

“You excited too?” the jack asked Michi over his shoulder.

You don’t know how much, she thought.

Michi didn’t know what the jack had planned.  It was doubtful that he would have actually led the two into danger, and 30 minutes wasn’t much time for anything.  He probably wanted to impress them with his importance and then set up something after he was off duty.  It didn’t matter.  The guy was slimy, and Michi felt her endorphins kick in.

The jack led the two down Julian Street, which was far too open for Michi to strike.  She wondered if she was going to have to fake the need to take a pee when the jack turned down a smaller alley.

“This is a shortcut, so don’t be too scared,” he said, full of self-importance.  “I’m here with you, but don’t try this way alone.”

Michi decided she hated him.  Not that hating him was necessary, but it added a certain spice to what was going to happen.

Halfway down the alley, Michi coughed twice.  It was corny, but that was their signal.

“Oh, my shoe’s coming undone,” she said, stopping and bending at the waist as if to tie her shoe.

The jack stood over her, taking an unabashed look at her ass.

“Hey, jack,” Michi said.

The jack looked up just as Michi’s roundhouse kick caught him flush on the side of his face.  The jack stumbled but didn’t go down.

“What . . .?” he started, coming back with his fist cocked to swing at her.

Michi leveled a front kick at his stomach, missing and hitting him on his chest harness, but knocking him back a full meter.

“You bitch!” he gasped out, looking at Michi with unveiled hate.  He swayed as Michi just took in the sight, all hesitation about their mission now gone.

She should have attacked again and closed the deal instead of admiring her handiwork.  He stepped back and reached for his Jamison, pulling it out.  Michi tried to close the distance, hoping to connect before the woozy jack could pull the trigger.  She was afraid she would be too late.

She just started to leap into a superman punch when the jack crumbled in a heap.  Michi was so focused on him that she didn’t realize what was going on.  It took her a moment to take in Tamara, all 40 kg of her, standing above the jack with a truncheon in her hand.  She had a huge smile on her face.

“That was fucking brills,” she said, looking down in awe at the weighted leather club in her hand.

“Who’s the samurai now, sister?” Michi asked, totally taken off guard.

Nowhere in their admittedly spotty plan had Tamara been involved in the fighting.  She was supposed to set it up and Michi was supposed to close the deal.  And where had that nasty truncheon come from?

“Where did you have that thing?” Michi asked.

“My bammers leave nothing to the imagination, but the cozy’s pretty loose.  And like I told you, no one gets past the glitter.”

“I gotta give you cred,” Michi told her. “I think you saved my ass.”

“I think I did, too!  You may be the Samurai Highlander, but I can sure be your robin,” she said.  “Every hero’s gotta have her robin.”

“OK, you’ve got the job.” Michi said as she nudged the jack with her foot.

He was breathing smoothly, to Michi’s relief.

Some freedom fighter I am, she thought.  Happy when a target lives.

She bent over and took the Jamison out of its holster.  She looked it over for a moment before sliding it inside her cozy.

“Uh, as my second robin duty, you do know that you can’t fire that.  It’s keyed to that guy’s bios.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“And if you power it up, they can track it to you.”

“What, you think I’m stupid?” Michi said as her heart fluttered.

Actually, she hadn’t known either of those two pertinent facts.  She had even thought about trying the first Jamison out after she had gotten it home.  If what Tamara was saying was true, and Michi was sure it was, she would have had a platoon of jacks descending on her house, ready to take both her family and her into custody.  First Family or not, murder was a capital offense.

“So why do you want it?” Tamara asked.

Michi knew she should have put it back, but she was not going to back down.  It was the MacCailín stubborn streak.

“Just as a souvenir, nothing more.”

“OK, it’s your call,” Tamara said.

Michi instantly felt bad.  “Her call” would bring the weapon into Tamara’s condo.

“I’ve got a place I’ll ditch it for safekeeping.  But I want to send a message that this wasn’t some random mugging.  Shall we get out of here?”

“Yeah, that’s probably a pretty good idea,” Tamara said before walking over to look at the unconscious man.

Michi thought she might kick the man, but instead, she leaned over and kissed him right on the lips.

“It’s only fair,” Tamara said with a shrug before the two left the alley.

They made their way back to the statue before silently splitting up.  Michi sat down on the statue’s base, just a citizen taking in the sights.  Tamara was supposed to leave first, but after surreptitiously ditching the pink cozy, Michi watched her approach two young salarymen.  Within a minute, she had her arm hooked around one of them as they started off.  She looked back at Michi and gave her a wink before getting into a deep conservation with her new companion.

Michi didn’t know how far Tamara was going to take it.  She did like her fun, and she had been pretty hyped after hitting the jack, Michi knew.  She also realized that a man and a woman leaving the Gut together would be less conspicuous than two single women leaving.  Was Tamara merely using the guy as camouflage, or was he going to be her release of pent-up energy?

Michi watched Tamara go into a bar with the man, waited another 15 minutes, and then got up and slowly made her way out of the Gut.  She was still pretty jazzed, and as she walked home, she was already planning her next strike.

Chapter 11

“Saint Chuck’s ass,” Tamara said as they watched the news feed.  “Is that because of us?”

The feed showed riot-geared jacks rounding up people in the Gut.  As indentureds didn’t have the credits to play there, other than a few moonlighting on the service side of the equation, most of the people getting rounded up were free citizens.

“Do you know who I am?” screamed one florid-faced middle-aged man in the background behind the reporter.  “I’ll have your job,” he said before being dragged off in zipties, anything else he had to say lost to the feed.

Their jumping of the jack the night before had gone unreported on any news feed, but this was a new development.  Jacks tended to keep their hands off free citizens.  They had full enforcement rights over anyone on the planet, theoretically even to the company execs, but this type of round-up just wasn’t done.

“It has to be,” Michi answered.  “They’re telling us, you and me, I guess, that they are going to play rough.”

“I don’t think people are going to stand for it.  Don’t they need probable cause to arrest people like that?”

“I think so.  I’d have to take a look at the charter, though,” Michi said.  As a First Family, Michi had never much considered how the law was upheld on Kakurega.

“So maybe we need to lay low?  No more missions for awhile?” Tamara asked.

“Lay low?  How about lay off.  We hit them, but I think we’re done.  Let’s take this as a victory and leave it at that, OK?” Michi said as she watched the jacks haul off person after person.

“Quit?  Completely?  Some Highland Samurai you are?” Tamara grumbled, but without conviction.

Jumping a jack had seemed to be an adventure, a way to strike back.  But they should have known the security forces wouldn’t just meekly stand by while their own were targeted.  One could have been a freak occurrence.  Two, and two where Jamison’s were taken, were a pattern, one that the jacks had to address.  They had to know that they were arresting people who had nothing to do with the attack on the jack.  Oh, maybe they thought they could get lucky and find the culprit during interrogation, but this was a message, pure and simple.

You don’t mess with Propitious Interstellar’s security forces.

Chapter 12

Michi’s feet hurt as she made her way down Hallison Street.  She had spent two hours at the studio, the first time she’d danced since Franz was killed, and her feet had paid the price for her absence.  It was a good hurt, though, a familiar one.  And familiarity was what she sought.

She’d had enough of hanging out at Tamara’s condo and wanted to get a taste of her old life.  She’d stopped by her family’s house first, ostensibly to pick up some personal belongings, but in reality, it was just to see the place.  Her parents weren’t home, but as she sat in the kitchen munching on some of Talla’s raspberry-mint tarts, the family maid let her know that her parents talked about her, and that they would welcome her back.

She was tempted to just stay until her parents came home.  She wanted to turn back the clock, to go back three weeks when she had a fiancé, a life she loved, and no worries.  But Franz was gone, and nothing was going to bring him back.  She chatted with Talla, eating a few more tarts than she should have just to prolong the visit.  Finally, though, she left and went to the studio.

A few of the others welcomed her back, and Melinda expressed her condolences on Franz’ death, but most of the dancers there left her alone.  Most probably just didn’t know what to say, she knew, but still, Michi felt ignored.  Michi lost herself in her positions, dancing until her feet cried for relief.  She stopped and sat up against one of the mirrors, listening to the thuds and squeaks of the feet of the other dancers on the studio floor, smelling the familiar odor of human exertion.  The smell, more than anything else, resonated with her, reminding her of the life she wanted back.

She tended to her feet, put her cozy over her dance clothes, and left the studio to make her way back to Tamara’s.  She wished she still had her Sullivan.   A cold wind was picking up, and it would be a 45-minute walk on aching feet until she got there.

She tightened up the cozy hood around her face and neck, put her head down, and walked into the wind, lost in her thoughts.  It would be so much easier to just go home and apologize.  Unfortunately, she had a stubborn streak that wouldn’t let her forgive and forget that easily.  She had lost her love, and her family didn’t seem to care.

With her hood up and her mind wandering, she didn’t notice the growing crowd noise until she came around the corner and into Prosperity Square.  Surprised, she stopped to see what was happening.  There had been several protests about the wholesale arrests over the last few days, but this had a much more organized feel to it.  There had to be 400 people in the square, all protesting Propitious Interstellar.  Quite a few people had placards decrying security force heavy-handedness, and more than a few held aloft placards with Franz’ photo on it and the date of his death.

That hit Michi hard.  She felt his loss every day, but she had never come out in public forcing people to remember him.  Yet here, at least 20 people were carrying his image, not letting the jacks forget what had happened.

“Excuse me,” she said, approaching an elderly man who was carrying Franz’ photo.  “Where did you get that?”

“Up there,” he responded pointing to the right of the crowd and down 8th Street, one of the streets that radiated out from the square.  “It was a shame about the young man, so I chose this one.”

Michi looked to where he was pointing, but she couldn’t see anything.  She thanked the man, and then walked in that direction, leaving the square itself before spotting a van, the back doors open.  She shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was Cheri at the van, handing out ready-made placards. Michi made her way through the crowd and approached Cheri.

“Can I have one of those?” she asked.

“Sure, which one?” Cheri asked before looking up and seeing who was asking.  “Michi!  It’s good to see you again.  How are you holding up?”

Michi neglected to mention that they hadn’t seen each other at Cheri’s request, not hers.

“I’m fine,” she said instead.  “I’m surprised to see this going on, and I’m even more surprised to see Franz’ face being carried by so many people.  You could have told me.”

“Oh, Michi, dear.  We didn’t want to bother you.  Franz’ loss was shocking, and it hit so many of us.  And now, with the jacks abrogating the charter and arresting people without probable cause, well, more and more people are getting involved.  We need to show Propitious Interstellar that they can’t run roughshod over us.”

“No, it’s OK.  I just wish I’d known,” Michi said.  “Well, can I have one of those?”

“Oh, of course, dear.  Let me get you one.”

Cheri reached into the back of the van and brought one out, handing it to her.  Michi stared at it for a moment before recognizing the photo.  It was one she had taken herself at a picnic.  Franz was smiling at her, looking younger than his years.  Michi choked back any reaction as she took it, wondering where they had gotten the photo.

“Come on back when we break up, OK?  We can catch up on things,” Cheri said.

Michi took the sign and held it up, walking back to join the crowd.  She edged into the back, only then noticing the line of jacks arrayed in front of them.  This looked eerily like how they were positioned before Franz was killed, and she momentarily took a step back.

Hell!  They don’t scare me, she reminded herself.  I’ve taken a few of them down.

She pushed back up, picking up the “No Jack Authority!” chant being voiced by the crowd.

There was no stage this time, no set speakers. But someone out of Michi’s sight obviously had a bullhorn, and he was changing the chants every few minutes.  Michi spent the next 30 minutes chanting herself hoarse, yelling with every fiber of her body. She shook Franz’ picture as she chanted, using it as an exclamation mark.  Despite the chill, her energy and the close proximity of the crowd kept her warm.

She knew that the jacks’ crowd surveillance would have already identified her as a participant, and this was not what she should be doing if she wanted to go back home, but she didn’t care.

When the blast exploded, she felt the rush of heat go over her head.  It didn’t register for a moment, but the screams that started up did.  Ahead of her, a number of jacks were down hard while others struggled back to their feet.  Within moments, some of them opened fire on the protesters.  Michi saw a dozen or more protesters in the front ranks fall as they were hit.

People started to turn and run, a stampede to get away from the carnage.  The human current took Michi with it.  Not everyone ran, though.  A figure in a ski mask and dressed in black stepped forward against the crowd, people parting alongside of him as he raised some sort of weapon and fired back in the direction of the jacks.

Michi was almost pushed into his line of fire, but she was able to squirm back and to his side.  He pumped out three more shots, then pushed his way forward and out of sight.

Michi stumbled over a prone body.  She bent down to help the man up and was almost knocked down herself.  Another man stopped, and with both of them taking an arm, they picked the fallen man up and dragged him out of the way.

Shots continued to ring out, some close by, some from the jacks.  Michi risked a glance back as she helped drag the man to one of the side streets.  Twenty or thirty bodies littered the square, most looking like protesters.  The man in black, the one who was firing, continued to advance, now that he was not blocked by the mass of people.  He kept firing, but then he stumbled and went down.

Michi turned her attention to getting away and out of the line of fire.  She lost sight of the square as she helped pull the man out and onto one of the side streets.  People were rushing by when the man struggled to his feet, wheezing, but assuring them he was OK.  The other man that was helping looked at Michi and snapped his head indicating that they should get out of there.  Michi could hear the stomping of feet, feet moving in formation from the square.  She looked at the man she’d helped.

“I’m fine, thanks to you.  Get out of here,” he told her.

Michi took the hint.  She started sprinting, only then realizing she was still carrying Franz’ picture.  She knew she should drop it, but she couldn’t.  Holding it in her right hand, she took off, ignoring the pain that still radiated from her feet.  Behind her, she could hear the firing die off while a voice coming out of a speaker in the sky ordered everyone to stop and lie on the ground.

Hell with that!

She quickly passed others who were also fleeing and didn’t slow down until she reached Tamara’s building.  She ran up the stairwell instead of waiting for the elevator and made it inside the condo.

It was then that the trembling started, and didn’t stop until Tamara got home from work, unaware yet of what had just happened.

Chapter 13

With martial law declared, sporadic fighting broke out.  “Fighting” might not be the best description of it.  There was occasional sniping against company targets, and several mini-drone bombs were unleashed.  Surprisingly, for a company as large and rich as Propitious Interstellar, they didn’t have any defense for the mini-drones.  The jacks had to resort to firing their Jamisons or the few energy weapons they possessed to knock the drones down.  Even jamming the frequencies had little effect as whoever was flying them skipped frequencies all the way into the target.

The payloads on the 500-gram drones were not very powerful, so other than causing some minor damage, there was not much in the way of tangible effects.  Psychologically, though, PI knew that the people, at least some of the people, had finally had enough to warrant action against the company.

The news feeds, which were all controlled by PI, were the only sources of information that were available on the holos, and they didn’t show much.  The key clip seemed to be one where an indentured maintenance worker at Plant 5 had been burnt by a mini-drone strike.  The man was obviously in pain, and the holo camera lingered over him as he cried out in anguish while the reporter castigated the “terrorist” act that had caused the injuries.

The indentureds had been confined to their factories, and even the Class I employees were threatened with termination if they didn’t show up for work.  There was a curfew in effect from 8:00 PM until 6:00 AM for anyone not on company business.  This was not just for PI employees; it pertained to everyone on the planet.  Michi was out of the loop, but she knew the First Families would be up in arms.  They treasured their independence, and their rights were specified in the charter—a charter that Propitious Interstellar seemed to be ignoring.

Company jacks held several raids.  A news crew had been with them for one such raid on an indentured dormitory.  All it showed was the jacks man-handling the Class 4s while turning up no weapons.  The PR honchos must have stepped in after that as there was no more coverage of raids.  However, Michi was able to watch several vids of additional raids by going through her proxy and accessing off-world sites.  One of the most downloaded vids was one of a young boy, probably around 10 years old, sitting dazed in a dormitory ladderwell, his face bloody.

Without showing the vid, Propitious Interstellar denied that it was even taken on Kakurega, claiming it was a fake meant to discredit the company’s security forces.  Michi wouldn’t put it past someone like Tamberlain, or even Hokkam, to put out some faked footage, but some of the other vids and holos showed jacks in the company uniforms meting out some severe treatment to unresisting people.

All of this galvanized the population.  PI was making a big mistake, though, in Michi’s opinion, that is, if they really believed their news releases.  According to the company, the “unrest” was a result of off-world agitators rallying the indentureds using misinformation (not that they used the term “indentureds—with them, it was always “Class 4 employees”).  Michi didn’t think the company really thought it was off-worlders, but if they thought this was an indentured issue, Michi was sure they had misinterpreted the situation.  From the zips she was getting from friends, this “unrest” was far broader than that.

A low explosion sounded outside the window, and Michi got up off the couch where she had been watching holos and looked out.  A plume of black smoke was rising up several blocks to the west.  Tamara would be coming back home about now, and her route would be close to the smoke.  Michi contemplated going out to see if she could find her roommate, but decided it was better to stay in the condo and let Tamara come to her.

Still, it was a tense 45 minutes as she waited, changing her mind back and forth on leaving, until Tamara came in the door in an agitated state.

“Did they show any of it in the news feeds?” she asked breathlessly, looking over to where Michi had been watching them.

“Show what?”

“The fight!  The jacks were pulling another raid on the indentureds, but they should have shown up with more.  They were dragging three out of the dorm when at least 50 indentureds jumped them.  I saw it all from the walkway,” she said, referring to the elevated walkway on which employees who worked in Buildings Four, Five, and Six left the campus and which ran between some of the Class Four dormitories.

“They were beating the crap out of them.  I captured some of it on my phone, but I could see the cavalry arriving, so I got the heck out of there.  And then, right on the corner of Orville and Mendoza, the friggin’ building blew up, the one with the noodle shop.  I was only a block away!”

Michi took Tamara by the hand and sat her down on the couch.

“It blew up?”

“Yeah, kaboom!  It’s a fucking war out there, Michi.  A war!”

Chapter 14

Two days later, two days in which clashes had become more frequent, and as Michi and Tamara were sipping tea on their small balcony during a lull in the fighting, several dark shapes flew overhead towards the company campus.  Painted on the fuselage, Michi could clearly see the UFMC flash.

The Marines had landed.

Chapter 15

Michi and Tamara walked into a WRP office bustling with activity.  The arrival of the Marines had thrown the planet into a tizzy, as could be expected.  Not much of substance was being passed over the newsfeeds, only that the Marines were there to restore order and provide security for the “good citizens” of Kakurega.  Estranged from her family, Michi did not have any other information sources available to her, so she and Tamara decided to see what the WRP knew about what was going on.

Michi hadn’t even seen a Marine in person yet.  There were too few of them around to make much of a physical impact, but the psychological impact was something entirely different.  Michi could feel a sense of impending doom in the air, as if father was now home and ready to punish the offending children.

The fact that that Captain Ryck Lysander, the posterboy of the Marines, was one of the commanders of the battalion that landed only heightened the tension.  The newsfeeds almost crowed about his presence, going into detail about his history and his “hero” status.

“Look, there’s Cheri,” Tamara pointed out.  “Let’s go see what she knows.”

Cheri looked up from a conversation she was having with a young man as the two came up.  “Tamara, Michi, how are you?” she asked, leaning forward to kiss each one on the cheek.

“We’re holding out,” Tamara said.  “But we’re pretty much in the dark.  Anything you can tell us?”

“I, well . . . um . . . Danny, can you give me a moment here?” she asked the young man who nodded and walked off.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Michi, but you know, with all of this, it’s been a little hard.”

“About what?”

“Ah . . . maybe here’s not a good place, but I need to get this done.  Can I come by tonight before curfew?”

“Uh, sure,” Michi and Tamara said, almost in unison.

“OK, see you then,” she said, looking around as if trying to see who might be watching.  “Maybe you should go, and I’ve got a lot to do here before then.  See you later.”

She quickly walked off as the two women stared at each other.  Michi started to ask what that was all about, but Tamara held up a hand, stopping her.

“Well, it’s good to see everyone,” Tamara said to Michi, but loud enough for anyone trying to overhear to do so.  “But you promised me a bubble tea, so let’s boogie.”

She took Michi’s arm in hers and turned around, heading for the door.  They stopped only to greet two other people they knew and exchanged banal pleasantries, but within a minute, they were out the door and into the street.

“Bubble tea? You don’t even like it,” Michi said quietly as they walked.

“So, sue me.  It was all I could think of,” Tamara whispered.  “I should have said coffee, but we’d better stop for some tea.”

“Don’t you think all this cloak-and-dagger stuff is a little much?” Michi whispered back, wishing she had spoken aloud but spooked by Tamara’s actions.

“If it’s too much, no harm, no foul.  As it is, better safe than sorry.”

They made their way to the closest tea shop and sat outside in the spring sunshine, sipping their tea.  Tamara didn’t like bubble tea much, but Michi loved sucking up the little tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup.  Twice, she tried to ask Tamara what was going on, but both times, her roommate changed the subject.  Michi thought it was all too much, but she was willing to play along.

They left the tea shop to do some window shopping, ignoring the presence of large numbers of jacks.  Along Manteo Drive, with all the high-end shops, the jacks didn’t intrude, but even there, the two women felt eyes on them.  Michi found it surprisingly awkward to try and act innocent, as if they were doing nothing.

Eventually, with Tamara controlling the pace, they made it back to the condo.

“So, what’s going on?” Michi demanded as soon as the front door closed.

“You didn’t feel the vibe in there with Cheri?” Tamara asked.

“She was stressed, sure.  But wouldn’t you be?  What with the Marines tipping the Federation’s hand on where they stood?”

“I think it was more than that.  Just call it a gut feeling.  Anyway, she’ll be here in an hour.  Let’s get ready to dial up a dinner.  Maybe the bœuf bourguignon?” she asked, pulling out the keypad on the fabricator.  “Why don’t you get a bottle of shiraz and make up some sangria.  Cheri is rather partial to that, you know.”

Michi frowned.  She had known Cheri for over a year and had dined with her, yet she didn’t know Cheri drank sangria.  She wondered just how close Cheri and Tamara really were.

The pitcher of sangria was already down two glasses when the door chimed.  Tamara poured a fresh glass and went to let Cheri in.

“Oh, you know me, girl,” Cheri said, gratefully taking the drink.

She took a swallow, gave a happy sigh, then sank down on the overstuffed chair next to the couch.

“So what couldn’t you say at WRP?” Tamara bluntly asked without preamble.

“Getting right to it, huh?  You always were direct,” Cheri said.

She took another sip of her drink, and then turned to Michi.

“Michi dear, this is going to be hard, really hard.  But I want you to think back to when Franz was killed.  Tell me exactly what happened.”

Michi stared at Cheri.  Whatever she expected, this was not it.  And she had been trying over the last month-and-a-half to move beyond that day, to move beyond the point when her life changed.

“I know this is hard.  But please, tell me, what did you see?”

Michi tried to gather her thoughts. She took several deep breaths before starting.

“I was at the studio, practicing—”

“Skip ahead, dear, to when the trouble started.”

“Huh?  OK, well, the first two people spoke, and then it was Franz’ turn.  He said something funny, and the crowd laughed.  You know, like he always does.  Did,” she corrected herself, a lump forming in her throat.  “He said something about Henry Jugos coming, then started on about how PI needs their workers.  You know, like you told me Hokkam wanted.  Then the jacks started moving about, like they were nervous or something.”

“And?” Cheri prompted her.

“Franz tried to calm down the jacks.  He said we were doing nothing wrong.  But it seemed like they might want to arrest him, so I started forward.  I wanted to be there.  Franz told everyone not to resist, and he even held out his hands like he wanted to be cuffed.  Then one of the jacks fired, and Franz shouted out that he was surrendering.”

“Did you actually see a jack firing?” Cheri asked.

“Well, no.  But it had to be one of them, right?”

“OK, go on.”

“Well, then, Franz was screaming at the jacks, and, uh . . .”

“What happened next,” Cheri asked as both she and Tamara leaned in.

“You were there,” Michi said angrily, pissed that she had to relive it.  “His head exploded.  They murdered him!”

Cherie leaned forward, taking Michi’s hands in hers.  “Michi, dear, think carefully.  I know this is hard, but just how did he get hit?”

“They shot him in the forehead.  I saw it.  One moment he was shouting, the next his forehead was gone.”

“And which way was he facing?”

“I told you.  He was shouting at the jacks, and they shot him in the head.”

Michi gulped in the air, trying not to break down.  Cheri just looked at her in sympathy.

“You happy now?” Michi asked, pulling back from the woman.

“Michi, when a bullet hits, it makes a small entry wound.  When it exits the body, it makes a huge, catastrophic wound, just like what happened to Franz.”

Michi stared at Cheri, then simply asked “What?”

Tamara sucked in some air as she seemed to realize what Cheri was inferring.

“Michi, Franz was shot from behind the crowd.  He was not shot by the jacks.”

“Bullshit!  I was there!  I saw it.”

“Michi, dear, most of the jacks were armed with their Jamisons, not projectile weapons.  And none carried the caliber of weapon that probably took Franz’ life.  The PI report absolved the security forces, but we weren’t sure.”

“Of course, those bastards would absolve the jacks.”

“All of the security recordings are classified, and we have tried to hack them, but what you just said confirms what PI reported, and from what we are getting from our sources inside.  Franz was not killed by the jacks.”

“But . . . but maybe they sent one of them to the back of the crowd to kill him, to confuse people,” Michi said, not willing to let go of her convictions.

She had killed a jack because of what happened to Franz.  They had to be guilty.

“That could be.  It might even be probable.  But we don’t know.”

“Who else would want him dead?  No, it was the jacks, and if not them personally, it was Propitious Interstellar.”

“I agree with Michi,” Tamara offered.  “Who else had the motive?”

Cheri looked at the other two for a moment and seemed to come to a decision.  “We don’t know.  It probably is the company, but it also seems we have a traitor in WRP.”

The two roommates looked at Cheri in stunned silence.

“That’s why I wanted to come here and not talk at the office.  There have been too many coincidences, starting with that rally.  We changed the position of the stage from what we had been permitted due to the planting of the spring flowers. We never submitted that change.”

“Yet someone knew where to get into position to shoot down Franz,” Tamara said as understanding dawned on her.

“Exactly!  And there have been other things as well—too many to be purely bad luck.”

“Who is it?” Michi asked in a steely voice, her thoughts drifting back towards vengeance again.

“We don’t know.  I don’t know.  I am getting paranoid, suspecting everyone,” Cheri admitted.

“Someone inside the WRP had Franz murdered?” Michi asked, her voice rising, bordering on hysteria.

“I’m not saying that.  I still think it was the company, or even the Federation itself.  It’s just that they had help from inside,” Cheri said.

“If it goes as high as the Federation, that explains the Marines,” Tamara noted.  “They needed an excuse to send in their enforcers, and by us acting out, we handed it to them.  This could be another Ellison or Fu Sing.”

“What?  Ellison and Fu Sing?” Michi asked in a confused voice.

“Geez, Michi.  Don’t you follow anything?  Both planets had worker protests put down, and it was the Marines who did it.  On Fu Sing, the Navy even bombarded the refugee camps.  Maybe 50,000 were killed,” Tamara said.

“I think I remember that one, but wasn’t that a revolt?  Didn’t the Navy and the Marines have to rescue the people there?”

Tamara snorted as Cheri said, “Really, Michi, dear, do you even have to ask that?  You’ve seen the newsfeeds here.  Is that what’s really happening, or is that what the Federation propagandists want you to believe?  Do you think it was any different for those two planets?”

Michiko sat for a moment, digesting what she had just been told.

“So, killing Franz was just a set-up, to create a situation where the Marines could be called in?” she asked.

“We think so.  I think so, at least,” Cheri said.

“And I gave them that excuse,” Michi said, more to herself than to the other two.

“You gave them?  What do you mean?” Cheri asked.

“Michiko!” Tamara warned.

Michi held up a hand, palm outwards, stopping her roommate.  “No, she needs to know.”

“Know what?” Cheri asked, obviously confused.

“You know those two jacks? The one that got killed?  Gerile Fountainhead?  And there was another that got mugged, his Jamison stolen.  We did that, Tamara and me.  Or we did the second jack.  I killed the first one.”

Cheri slid back into her chair, looking at Michi in stunned silence.

Michi looked down at her hands, examining the fingernails as she waited for some sort of reaction.

“You what?”

“I killed the first guy.  Broke his neck.  I don’t think I planned that, but maybe I did.  We, Tamara and me, we jumped a second jack, right before they declared martial law.  We did that.  We gave them the excuse to come here with the Marines.”

“Why? I mean, I know why, but we figured that that Fountainhead lad wasn’t just some drug deal gone bad, but we thought it must have been the NIP who did it, deny it all they wanted.  But you?  You’re a—”

“I’m a First Family, from both sides, Clan and Kaitakusya, I know.  But they took my Franz, and that’s all that mattered.  I might as well have given the Marines an engraved invitation,” she said bitterly.

Cheri edged forward, putting a hand on Michi’s knee.  “It was coming anyway, dear.  You may have sped the process up, but you didn’t cause it.  If Franz was killed by them, and I completely believe that to be so, this was a long time planning.  If it wasn’t you, it would be something else.   Now, we just have to think of what to do with it.”

“It should be obvious,” Tamara, said.  “We have to nip this in the bud.  No freakin’ Marines are going to be allowed to run over us.  We’ve got our Highlander Samurai here, our Jeanne d’Arc.  She’s a marketing miracle, so use her.  Let’s push them back off Kakurega.”

Cheri listened to Tamara’s rant and seemed to consider it.  Michi could almost see Cheri’s thoughts war against each other across her face.

“Actually, that falls in line with what some of the WRP think, and certainly the NIP agrees with that.  We’ve been discussing it, to be honest.  The trick is to make it uncomfortable enough for them to leave, but not go over the line and invoke a severe retaliation,” Cheri said.  “Michi, I want you to tell me exactly what you did, every step along the way.  Don’t leave anything out.”  She looked at her watch.  “And it looks like you’ve got a guest tonight.  I won’t make curfew.”

For the next three hours, with Cheri being surprisingly thorough in her questioning, Michi and Tamara related everything they could remember.  Michi knew that Cheri was high up in the WRP, but she’d always been sort of a slightly eccentric aunt to her.  Only now, could Michi see the organized, driven leader Cheri really was.

“OK, I know that was tiring,” Cheri said as she had finally wrung all she could from the two roommates.  “The question is, what do we do next?”

“It’s obvious what we do next.  We jump a Marine,” Tamara declared.  “We don’t kill him, but we let them know that we aren’t going to meekly stand by and let the company throw the charter out the window.”

“You know, I think you’re right, and that surprises me.  I do think we need to make a statement,” Cheri said.  “Do you think you can do it?”

“No problem,” Michi said, determination in her voice.

“A couple of things different, though.  No more cozies for camouflage.  I’m going to send someone over, someone I trust.  He’ll have something a little better for you.  And I want backup.  No two lone rangers out there.  Let me work some things out, and do not, I repeat do not, attempt anything until I get back to you.  Agreed?”

“You can count on the Highlander Samurai and the Tattooed Avenger,” Tamara said in an excited voice.

“This isn’t fun and games, Tammy,” Cheri said.  “This is serious shit, so no grandstanding.  Am I clear?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Cheri turned to Michi and asked in the same serious tone, “Am I clear, Michiko MacCailín, blood of the First Families.”

Cheri, not being First Family herself, didn’t have the power to invoke a First Family honor-binding, but Michi didn’t care.  She didn’t need to be honor-bound to tell the truth.

“If you will give me the means to get revenge, then I am your woman.  I will do as you say.”

Chapter 16

“Oh, that’s pure dead belter,” Michiko said as she stared in the mirror, looking at the stranger’s face staring back at her.

The “stranger” had red hair and a pale, round face sprinkled with freckles across the nose.  Her body was essentially Michi’s, but the face was that of a 15th Century Scottish lass, not the darker First Family countenance that Michi had grown used to over her 19 years.  She reached up with a hand and touched the round, pug nose she saw, but felt her own smaller, familiar nose.

“OK, OK, I mean, this can’t be penetrated by anything in the electromagnetic spectrum, I promise you that,” Doug Taggart said excitedly.  “It can be jammed, of course, but that would take a directed beam transmitter, not the surveillance equipment we have here on Kakurega.”

“My turn, Michi.  I want to see who I’m going to be,” Tamara said.

Tamara pushed Michi away from the mirror, took a breath, then turned on the facial recognition spoofer attached to her collar.  Michi thought it was freaky to see Tamara’s short brown locks and round face immediately switch to an exotic, dark-skinned stranger with close-cropped corn-rowed hair.  Both girls had put on T’s for the test, and the top of Tamara’s jungle-scene tattoo disappeared, slightly coming back as her skin color faded lower into her chest.  From under her bikini panties, her normal tattooed palette ran down her legs to her pale ankles and feet.

Michi stepped to stand beside her, both taking in the sight of two strangers looking back at them.

“Dougie, my boy, you done good,” Tamara said, awestruck for once.

“This is a pretty new development,” Doug started.  “It was started as an application for psychoanalysis, of all things, but progression with TET-cells made miniaturization and more refined refractory lanes—”

Tamara cut him off.  “Slow down there, boy.  I don’t really care how it works, just that it does,” she said, before turning to the redhead Michi.  “Think of it, Michi, we can set our look in the recipe, then just turn it on in the morning.  No make-up, just instant glamorous me.”

“Well, I guess that would be possible,” Doug started.  “Let’s see, if we . . .”

Michi looked at her black roommate in the mirror, and both of them broke out laughing as Doug went on.  They had met Doug only two hours before.  If Hollywood had cast a resident geek, this is who they would have come up with.  Doug was earnest, gangly, and overwhelmingly devoted to technology.  He was like a puppy, eager to please.  He had almost started stammering when the two roommates had stripped to T’s and panties, but once he had attached the small spoofing units, he had forgotten the fact that the girls were only half-dressed as he became engrossed in his toys.

Doug worked for the company, probably as they were the only ones on Kakurega with a big enough lab to interest him.  Somehow, though, Cheri had recruited him.  Michi wished she knew how Cheri had done that.  Doug didn’t seem like the political sort.  But he had come through.  If the face-spoofers, for lack of a better term, could spoof the surveillance cams as well as they fooled the eyes, then no more pulled up cozies.  This was brills.

They had met at a local shawarma stand, and before anything was said, Doug had handed Tamara an envelope.  There was no subterfuge, no attempt at a covert hand-off.  He just said hi and passed the envelope.

The handwritten note told the two roommates that no one else at WRP knew about “anything,” and that Doug’s presence was also a secret, known only to Cheri.  Once they had finished reading, Doug opened his mouth to speak when Tamara hushed him.  Evidently, Doug was not a fan of spy flicks.  Neither woman was anything close to a real spy, but both knew you just didn’t openly discuss potential illegal actions at a café table on a public street.

They finished their shawarmas, then walked back to their condo, Tamara’s arm in Doug’s as if he were her boyfriend with Michi trailing behind.  Even in a make-believe world, Michi was a third wheel, she thought to herself ruefully.

Once back in the condo, Michi found herself liking the eccentric young man.  Actually, he was some seven years older than her, but something about him spoke little brother, rather than big.

Eccentric geek or not, his little toys, which he had modified to be portable and with a two-hour battery life, were invaluable.  They would make it that much easier for Michi to strike back at the Marines, and through them, the Federation.

Chapter 17

It was an unseasonably warm evening, and Michi and Tamara strolled through some of the small cafes around the Riverwalk.  They had contemplated going back to the Gut, but with their face-spoofers, they decided they didn’t need to search the Gut’s warrens for a victim.

Michi kept glancing at Tamara, trying to get used to her roommate’s appearance.  The face-spoofer only changed the area around the head (although Doug kept insisting he would get that range extended), so Tamara could not show as much skin as she might have wanted, but in her zebra-striped unitard, she combined the exotic look of old Africa with the lithe body of a sprite or elf.  Tamara had insisted that Michi was quite a looker as well, but perhaps conditioned by her time in the dance studio, she felt big and ungainly alongside her smaller friend.

She consciously worked to sway her hips as they walked, trying to give the picture of two young girls out for some fun.  So far, the two had received a few interested glances, but from locals.  No Marines were out and about, despite Cheri telling them that this was one area where a few Marines had been spotted while off-duty.

The day before, Michi had seen her first Marines.  Four of them had marched down Harrison in their combat suits, two-and-a-half meter tall monstrosities that moved with surprising grace.  That sobered Michi; there was no way she could do anything to one of them.  She just hoped the information she had been given was accurate.  She could deal with a Marine who had snuck out for a drink or two.  From what she had heard, it wasn’t as if the Marines in the city were restricted to the stadium where they had set up a base camp.  The newsfeeds had shown them playing with the kids at the company-run orphanage and playing basketball against the Lipper University team. Generally, though, the Marines seemed to stick to the stadium when not on duty.

Michi wiggled her shoulders, trying to loosen up.  She had to be ready when the opportunity presented itself.  She had to remember that they were the enemy.

“You look like you’re pissed off,” Tamara whispered to her.  “Smile, at least.  Act like you’re having fun.”

Michi tried to take off her war face and smile.  She probably had been scowling.

“Not much better, there.  Now it looks like you’ve got constipation.”

Michi broke out into a laugh.  Tamara had her way about her.

“Ah, there you go.  Now keep it up if we’re going to catch us a Marine.”

Two middle-aged men walked up to them, and Tamara flirted with them for a few minutes before promising to meet up with them later at the Belly Up, a well-known music venue.

“Done wasting time?” Michi grumbled.

“If we’re supposed to look like we are out on the town, we can’t very well ignore everyone, right?  ’Sides, the Belly Up?  Knossis is playing there tonight, and they suck.  You wouldn’t catch me dead listening to that crap.”

They slowly wandered through the small streets and alleys, stopping for coffee or tea.  They needed to keep alert, so no alcohol.  The coffee was getting to Michi, though, and she had to pee when she spotted a man sitting alone at an outside table, a burger and a stein of beer in front of him.  Something about him was different, and he just didn’t fit in.  It might have been the clothes:  they were decidedly out-of-date, and even if Michi was not a fashion zombie, she knew you didn’t wear socks and sandals with champs.  It might have been the close-cropped hair.  More than those, though, Michi thought it was the air about him.  He was only eating and drinking a beer, but he had a look of utmost confidence.

After a few minor clashes when they first arrived, ones in which no Marines were reportedly hurt, things had been fairly quiet.  Curfew had even been pushed back to 10:00 PM.  But still, this was “enemy territory” to the Marines, and Michi would have imagined that anyone sneaking off for a beer would be more obviously alert.  Seeing this man, though, changed Michi’s opinion.  He just seemed too confident, as if no one could offer him a credible threat.

Michi was convinced he was a Marine, and his arrogant attitude angered her.  She felt her fight come on.   The Marine looked tough, true, but Michi was confident of her abilities.  With the element of surprise, she didn’t think anyone, no matter how strong, could stand up to her roundhouse.

“Over there, sitting at the third table, I think that’s our man,” she whispered to Tamara.

Tamara didn’t stare but let her gaze cross over him.  “Could be, I guess.  What say we grab a table and see.”

They wandered over and took a seat.  “Order me an ale,” she told Tamara.  “I’ve got to pee.”

Tamara looked surprised, but the man still had half of his burger left, and if he was a Marine and their target for the night, Michi didn’t want to fight with a full bladder.

There was a drink waiting for her when she got back.  She brought it to her mouth and acted like she was taking a sip.  They were sitting two tables from the man, but he was more interested in his meal than in them.  He was dipping his fries in what looked to be mayo, then putting each one into his mouth, sucking off the mayo, then popping the fry into his mouth as well.

“That’s pretty disgusting,” Tamara whispered as she lifted her own glass.

Unless she was dumping some on the ground, it looked like she had taken a few swallows of her beer.  Well, it wasn’t as if she was going to be doing any fighting, so maybe it was OK.

Michi picked up her PA and dialed Doug.  Doug was their “back-up,” as Cheri had made them promise to have.  Michi wasn’t sure how much good having Doug around was, but with Cheri’s fear that there was a spy in the WRP, neither Michi nor Tamara wanted to bring anyone else in on their plan.

“Hey, Danielle.  We’re at Yancy’s Café, over on Calamus Two,” she told Doug over the PA.

“I’m on Calamus Four, so let me move over.  Do you have someone?” Doug asked.

“Maybe, but don’t you worry.  We’ll let you know if we leave here,” Michi said before cutting the connection.

“Duty done,” she whispered to Tamara, bringing up the glass to cover her mouth.

“Ah, yes, Danielle is such a sweetie,” Tamara said with a laugh.

The laugh sounded a little forced, so Michi knew Tamara was getting amped.  The girl had a mean streak in her, and Michi was glad they were friends.  She didn’t think Tamara would make a good enemy.

As the man finished his burger, he asked for his check, his off-world accent clearly reaching them.

“Bingo!” Tamara said.

Whether he heard her or not, he looked up, catching her eye.  Tamara smiled and lifted her glass up in a toast.  The man nodded and lifted his up in return before breaking the contact.

“I already paid,” Tamara told her.  “When he leaves, let’s follow him. If he starts to head towards the stadium, then he’s our man.”

The man sat at the table for another 20 minutes, seemingly happy to just relax while Michi got more and more tense.  She was ready, and she wanted to get at it.  When the man finally got up, Tamara had to put out a restraining arm to keep Michi from immediately jumping up to follow.

The man started to walk deeper down Calamus Two, which was a good sign.  The stadium was only five hundred meters or so through the winding small roads that made up this restaurant district.  At the point where the river bent around, there was a footbridge, and over that was the more open plaza where the stadium, museum, and opera house stood.  If they were going to jump him, it had to be before he got to the bridge.

The two roommates trailed the man, and when he stopped to ask directions on how to get out of the district, that cemented it.  This was their target.  They were getting close to the outer river walk and the bridge, so they had to move.

They picked up their pace.  They were still 10 meters in back of the man as he came within sight of the Riverwalk.

“Hey!” Tamara called out.

The man, the Marine, turned around.  “I was wondering when you two were going to say something,” he said in his off-world accent.

“What do you mean?” Tamara asked, using the time to close the distance.

“Well, you’ve been following me since the café.”

“Well, did you have to make it that difficult for a girl, then?” she asked, reaching out to take one of his hands in hers.

“Difficult is all relative, don’t you think?  Anyway, I’m afraid that as much as I find the both of you fine specimens of Kauregan womanhood, whatever you had planned won’t come to fruition.”

Specimens” Michi thought as she maneuvered in back of the man, just off his right shoulder.  I’ll show him “specimens.”

The man gently disengaged his hand from Tamara’s as she started to protest.  He cut her off.  “Look, I’m trying to be polite, but whether you’re looking for some fun or you’ve got some scam going, it isn’t happening tonight.  So why don’t you two—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost as Michi’s roundhouse kick connected solidly on the side of his head.  Michi could feel the force jolt up her leg, and she reveled in the power of it.

Only, the Marine didn’t go down.  He staggered a step into Tamara, then spun around.

This time, Michi was not going to be caught just looking.  She was surprised he was not down yet, but she launched into a back kick.  The Marine whipped up his arm and deflected it, knocking Michi off balance.

“So that’s your game, girlies.  Not a smart move.  I don’t have many credits on me, so even if you could get them, I don’t think it would be worth the effort, so what say you two just turn around and find someone else to rob.”

The way he just stood there, not even protecting himself, infuriated Michi, and she suddenly spun into a spinning back fist, anxious to smash his smug face.  Only his face wasn’t there as she came around.  His right fist was, however, swinging into a short uppercut to Michi’s chin, stunning her.  She went to one knee, fighting to get back up.

The Marine wasn’t following through.  He stood there, looking down at her with a look of, could it be pity?

“No one pities me!” she screamed as she struggled to her feet.

The Marine suddenly sprouted an extra pair of arms, it seemed to Michi’s still-fuzzy mind.  It took her a moment to realize that Tamara had launched herself into the fray, and just as quickly, the Marine had thrown her off to crumble into a heap against the wall of the building beside them.

“Have you had enough?” the Marine asked her.

With a wordless shout, Michi rushed the man, wanting to tear him apart.  Forget about Cheri telling them that this was to be a simple mugging—she was going to kill him.

His resigned look and the big fist coming at her face were the last things Michi remembered.

Chapter 18

Michi rang the buzzer, and a few moments later, the door opened.  She climbed the steps to the third floor and opened the door to Apartment G.  A small counter blocked her way, a 30-something man leaning over it, looking at her expectantly.

“You Seth MacPruitt?” she asked.

“Yeah, and who might you be, angry young woman?” he answered.

He was observant, at least.  Michi was angry.  More than that, she was humiliated.  It had been a day since they had tried to jump the Marine, and the bruise on her face still showed.  She hadn’t gone to a doctor, so she had to rely on NovaSkin, which was great for small cuts, but didn’t work as well with subcutaneous bleeding.

The bruised face meant nothing, though.  It was her pride that had been damaged.  She had been so sure of herself, and even with complete surprise, she had gotten her ass whipped.  Worse than that, she was still free.

Oh, she was glad she hadn’t woken up in jail.  But the fact that the Marine hadn’t even considered them enough of a threat to call the jacks was the utmost degree of disrespect.  No, not disrespect.  That, at least, required that the Marine thought something of them.  He just didn’t care.  They were nothing.

“My name really isn’t important right now.  I hear you still do MMA training.”

“Which would explain the mats and punchin’ bags behind me,” he said.

Seth MacPruitt was First Family, even if the MacPruitts were considered somewhat on the low end of the Clan totem pole.  But as a young man Seth had managed to win not one, but two Kakurega MMA championships and had even taken runner up at the sectional tournament.  The fact that he had then joined the Marines had given Michi pause, but the rumor was that he left the Marines on less-than-favorable terms.

“Well, given the fadin’ bruise on your face, I’d be sayin’ you’re here to get some revenge on a beatin’.  The thing is, I don’ take on no wannabes.”

“I can fight,” she protested.

“Not well enough, evidently.”

“Look, I can’t pay you much,” Michi started.

“You’re Clan, cousin, I can smell it on you.  And you can’t pay much?”

MacPruitt and Michi were not related, as far as she knew, but some Clan liked to call each other cousin as a sort of endearment.  MacPruitt, though, used it sarcastically, as if to emphasize their different positions in life.

“Uh, well, I’m sort of on my own now,” Michi admitted.

“Ah, you pissed off your family?  Interestin’.  Maybe you’ve got some balls, girl.  Tell you what.  Hop around the counter, and let’s roll around on the mat.  Let me see what you’ve got.”

Michi walked around the counter and started to step onto the mat when Seth stopped her.  “Take off those Clodders.  I don’t need you tearing up my mat.  There’s a locker room in the back.  Get dressed, then we’ll see.”

As Michi crossed the worn mat, she saw various photos on the wall, some of Seth in action, several at awards ceremonies, and one of him teaching what had to be Marines.  There was even his discharge certificate framed and on the wall.  Was she coming to the enemy for help?

She was changed and back in a few moments, standing in front of the relaxed Seth.  She came to the balls of her feet, ready for whatever he might have for her.

“Well, don’t waste my time, girl, show me you’re worth it.”

Michi immediately launched into a superman punch, knee up to change to a kick if the opportunity presented itself. She was taller than Seth, and the superman punch was a good way to close the distance.

In an instant, she brought her fist down towards his nose, and an instant later, she was on the mat, her right arm being extended and cranked back.

“Tap, tap!” she shouted, using her left hand to tap Seth’s back.

He let her up while she tried to shake out the strain on her arm.  “You done?” he asked her.

In response, she flicked out with a front kick, which barely touched his chest.  She hopped up to come down with an axe kick, which he easily batted away before dropping down and punching her between the legs.   The punch hit her squarely in the crotch, and pain flooded her senses.   With a shout, she dove at him, grabbing him and driving him back, striving to mount him so she could get to the ground and pound.  She felt a momentary thrill as she felt him go down, but somehow, he ended up on top, and within moments, she was in a crucifix, pinned.

He didn’t pummel at her, as she expected, but he thrust his pelvis into her face once before letting her go and looking at her expectantly.

She felt the radge start to rise, but she fought it down.  She knew his little balls-in-the-face was an attempt to get her to lose it.  It would take more than that to get to her, she promised herself.

She stood back up, brought her fists up, and started circling, leaving anger and emotion to focus on technique.  She thought she saw Seth slightly nod as he closed in.  They sparred for another 20 minutes, giving and taking, although Michi was taking much more.  She managed to reverse Seth once, and she caught him with an elbow, but that was about it.  If he’d wanted to, he could have destroyed her, she realized.

He called a halt, walked over to an old, beat-up fridge, and pulled out two waters, throwing her one.  She gratefully took it, trying to drink between heavy breaths.

“Well, you ain’t very good, are you?” he asked.

She started to protest, but he held up a hand and continued, “But you’re ungodly strong, and you’re aggressive.  You’ve got some potential.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but come around at 3:00 tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can do.  Pay me what you can, and if it ain’t enough, you can clean up the place after, give it a good scrubbin’.  Deal?”

Michi wasn’t a maid, and cleaning wasn’t her thing.  And she owed him for the crotch shot, which still hurt.  But she needed to get better, and this was her best shot.

“Deal,” she said as she shook his hand.

Chapter 19

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Michi said as she looked in the mirror.  She had on her own face, but she was very unsure of the outfit Tamara and Cheri had come up with.

“Look, this top is about five sizes too small,” she told them, trying to stretch it out to give it more coverage.

“We went over this, Michi, dear,” Cheri said.  “The Federation government and military are the last bastions of misogyny.  Women need to be protected, so they say, and that keeps us from all the opportunities offered men.  If you, as a woman, take down one of theirs, that should shame them.”

“I get all of that, and I agreed to this mission, but why do I have to look like an exotic dancer?  I’m not comfortable with that at all.”

“Suck it up, big girl.  ’Sides, we need there to be no doubt in anyone’s mind that it’s a sister doing the deed, and your twins there are going to take care of that,” Tamara said.

“Easy for you to say.  You’re not going,” Michi grumbled.

“First, I don’t have the assets you do, and second, I’ve got to be at work.  Someone’s got to pay the bills around here.”

“I . . . but what about the boots?  And the gloves?  How can I fight in these things?” she asked, pointing at the thigh-high faux-leather boots Cheri had brought.

“I told you, this time, you won’t be fighting.  I’ve got the three guys to meet you there, and they’ll do the restraining.  You’ve just got to look fierce and deliver the message,” Cheri started.

“But—”

“If you feel uncomfortable in them, we’ll fix them after.  But we’ve got to strike now before one of them gets tired of the other.”

“Them” was Marine Lance Corporal Thane Regent and Kelli Mae Osterson, a local girl hired as a food service contractor to help feed the Marines.  The two had managed to hook up, and they were meeting every Monday and Wednesday afternoon at her apartment for a discreet liaison; only it was not so discreet that Cheri and the WRP had not found out.

The decision had been made to break into their little tryst, capture the Marine, and record a message for distribution.  The decision had also been made that the person doing the recording was to be female, and Cheri had volunteered Michi without revealing her identity.

Cheri had come over to the condo the evening before to set it up, telling them that this was a better plan than trying to jump a Marine somewhere.  Michi and Tamara hadn’t batted an eye at that.  None of the three involved had told Cheri about their disaster the week before.

Tamara mentioned the need for a “look,” and with Cheri quickly on board, the two of them concocted this warped fantasy outfit.

Michi took a deep knee bend.  The boots restricted her flexibility.

“Uh, that might be a little revealing, I guess,” Tamara said, pointing to Michi’s ass as she squatted.

Michi jumped up, pulling up on the back of the low-riding pants.

“Don’t worry, we’ll fix that, too.  For a first try, though, you look pretty bitching, if I say so myself.”

“Michi, we’ve got to go.  Just follow the plan.  I’ve got the overalls over there on the table.  Be sure not to take them off until you are in the building, and don’t put them back on until you are on the roof.  Doug is sure he can control any overhead surveillance and inside the building, but not all the security cams in the area.”

Both Tamara and Cheri kissed her on the cheek.

“Kick some ass,” Tamara said as the two left for their jobs.

Michi sat down, feeling alone. She turned on the holo and tried to watch a show on how T-cells were replicated to fight the constantly evolving virus threats, but she couldn’t focus.  She got up and practiced some of her kicks with the boots on.  Her favorite roundhouse was doable, but some of the others would be difficult and less than effective.

At 10:00, she fixed some soup, but she could only finish half of it.  She threw the rest out, then called Seth to tell him she was not feeling well and would miss that afternoon’s session.

She regretted that.  In only a week, she felt that she had really progressed. She was earning the increased skill, though.  Seth was not holding back, and each lesson was a journey into pain.

The day crept on, but finally, it was time.  She slid on the blue company overalls worn by utility teams.  PI Services was not part of the company proper, but rather a purportedly independent spin-off that managed the water, sewage, and power for the planet.  The overalls looked like the real deal.  The boots sticking out from the bottom of her cuffs were not, though. She flipped on the face-spoofer, and her redhead alter ego appeared.  She put on the uniform cap and pulled it down low over her eyes.

No one seemed to notice anything as she walked outside and over to the tram line.  No one seemed to notice as she sat on the tram, going to the other side of town.  No one seemed to notice when she got out and made the ten-minute walk to Kelli Mae’s apartment building.

As she walked up, three men in the same blue overalls stepped out from the side alley.  One threw her a tool kit, which she caught and slung over her shoulder.  Another one of the men swiped an access card, and the apartment door opened.  Talking about the latest V-Game, they entered the building and went up three flights of stairs, ignoring the elevator.

“OK, you ready?” the first man asked her.

Michi didn’t know any of the men, and she hoped they didn’t know her.  She nodded, though, and slid off her overalls and stuffed them in her tool kit.  She thought she caught the briefest flicker of prurient interest from at least two of them as they slid out of their overalls, revealing black military-looking uniforms, but no one said a word.  Each of the men had a wicked looking handgun strapped to his thigh, and the shortest of the three handed Michi one in a belted holster.  She started to put it on backwards, and without a word, the short guy helped her get it attached.  Michi looked down at it.  She didn’t have a clue how to fire it if it came to that, but it did feel reassuring as it hung on her hip.  No one was supposed to get hurt, but they had come prepared.

They silently climbed up two more flights, then slipped into a utility closet.  Standing there, half-naked, at least in her mind, in close proximity to three men, Michi wondered how she got to this position.  Just two months ago, her main concerns were ballet and planning a wedding.  Now she was hiding in a closet, waiting to attack a Federation Marine.

One of the men, the swarthy-looking guy, Michi thought, had horrible breath.  Michi thought she was going to gag as it filled the closet.  Then, to make things worse, the short guy, the one who had handed her the handgun, let out a quiet fart.  That broke the tension.  No one laughed out loud, but there was a sense of normalcy about it.  Suddenly, Michi felt OK.

It was only five or so more minutes before they heard movement outside.  There was a quiet knock, then a whispered greeting.  The four of them waited another five minutes before creeping out and moving to Kelli Mae’s door.

The tallest of the three put his ear to the door and listened:  no high-tech gear, just an ear to the door.  He nodded and motioned to the stairwell, and the bad-breath guy left and disappeared down it.  He was their security.

The three left got into position.  Michi knew what she was supposed to do, but it would have been nice to rehearse it at least once.  She nervously waited behind the two men as the tall guy took out a small rectangular box that he held up to the lock.  Red lights blinked for a few seconds before turning green.

For a moment, Michi wondered what his name was.  It seemed impersonal to refer to him only as “the tall guy.”  Then there was no time to wonder.  He pushed open the door and the three of them barged in.

The Marine was at full throttle, pounding away at Kelli Mae, whose feet were up in the air straddling her thrusting paramour.  He had time to glance behind him and start to dive off of her before both of Michi’s companions were on him, dragging the young man to the floor.  Michi could see they needed no help, so she jumped on the bed, straddling the sweaty girl and placing a hand over her mouth.

“Shh,” she said, holding a finger over her own mouth.  “Stay quiet, and no one is going to get hurt.

The Marine was struggling, and he managed to get up to a sitting position.  Michi contemplated joining the fight when the tall guy managed to ziptie the Marine’s hands in back of him and slap a pressure gag over his mouth.  They hauled him up, avoiding his kicks.  The shorter guy stepped in back of the Marine, put him in a choke hold, and began to apply pressure before easing off.  The Marine got the message and stopped struggling.

He was glaring bloody murder, though, and Michi had no question on what he would do to them if he could.  He stood there, stark naked, being held, yet he was not cowed.  He was no longer rampant, and his dick still had Kelli Mae on it, but he stood as if he had on full battle gear.

Kelli Mae, on the other hand, squirmed under Michi, not to escape, but to pull up a sheet to try to cover herself.  She didn’t speak, but terror showed in her eyes.  Michi felt a moment of compassion for her, but they had a job to do, and she was going to get it done.

“Over here, with the bed in the background,” she said.  The shorter man nodded and brought the Marine over to the foot of the bed.

The other man reached in his tool kit and pulled out a small, high-def holocam.  He stood in front of Michi, ready to go.

“Look, lance corporal, you are going to be let free if you cooperate,” Michi said.  “I want you to stand beside me while we record something.  That’s it.  Then you and your girlfriend will be free to go.  If you make a move, if you try anything, not only will you fail, but Kelli Mae will pay the price.  Do you understand, and do you agree?”

Michi would not hurt the girl no matter what happened, but the Marine didn’t need to know that.

“Nod your head if you agree.”

“Thane!” Kelli Mae pleaded.

“Shut up!” Michi ordered, not turning around to look at the girl.

The Marine looked beyond Michi at Kelli Mae, and Michi could see the capitulation.  He nodded.

“Good.  Stand here,” she said, pulling him over as her short companion stepped just out of cam range, but close enough to move in if need be. He pulled out his handgun and kept it loosely aimed at the bed.

Michi looked back at Kelli Mae, who had managed to cover herself.  Michi knelt on the bed, then turned the girl slightly to the side, pulling back the sheet to reveal a long expanse of her side and legs.  She let the girl keep the sheet over her front, but Michi wanted there to be no question as to what had been happening.

“You can put your head down so no one can see your face,” she whispered to the girl before getting off the bed to stand next to the Marine.

She nodded at the tall guy, and when the record light came on, she started.

“I am a member of the Free Kakurega Militia.  We have been formed to protect our rights under our Federation Charter, rights that have been abrogated by Propitious Interstellar Fabrication, Inc.  Not only have they broken the charter, but they have brought in Federation Marines to crush our legal right to protest.

“Today, we have stopped one of their Marines, Lance Corporal Thane Regent, from abusing a free citizen of Kakurega.”

At Michi’s use of “abusing,” The Marine stirred, but Michi’s short companion raised his weapon and pointed it at Kelli Mae, who thankfully didn’t see it as her face was still buried.  The Marine saw it though, and he got the message and stood still.

“The Federation Marines have the power here.  They killed three of our citizens when they arrived.  They are enforcing martial law.  And now they take our citizens for their own perverted pleasure.

“It is up to you, people of Kakurega.  Will you stand for this?  From First Families and all Free Citizens, from employees and indentureds, this is our home, and Propitious Interstellar cannot break the charter as they deem fit.

“If you agree, on this Saturday, at 9:00 AM in the city, we urge all of you to take to the streets.  We are not advocating violence.  We leave that to the Marines and Propitious Interstellar security forces.  But let your voices be heard.  Let the Federation know we will not stand for this.”

With that, she swept one hand back to indicate Kelli Mae.  This was adlibbed, but the tall guy took the hint and zoomed in.  Kelli Mae’s sobs shook her body, and Michi knew this was good footage.  She made the cut motion, and the tall guy cut out.

“It’s OK, Kelli Mae.  It’s over.  You did fine,” she said, reaching over to put her hand on the girl’s shoulder.

The girl flinched and looked up.  “It’s not fine, you bitch.  We love each other.  It’s not like you said,” she spewed with anger.

The Marine, hands still bound behind him, climbed into bed and leaned up against his lover, who put her hands protectively around him.

Suddenly, Michi felt dirty.  Very dirty.

She wanted to say something about the greater good, but their security came running into the apartment.

“Trouble!  We’ve got jacks swarming.”

Michi’s heart fell.  How had they found out so quickly?

The tall guy pointed up, and all four of them sprinted out the door, leaving the two lovers, and over to the stairwell.  Taking the stairs three steps at a time, they climbed to the tenth floor and out onto the roof.  Michi automatically looked up, hoping that Doug had been able to gain control of any overhead surveillance in the area.

Each of the four had his or her own escape route, but both Michi and the tall guy had the same initial first step.  The tall guy stopped to wordlessly shake Michi’s hand before he took off.  Michi followed and was on his tail as they jumped the alley to the roof of the next building.  Michi barely made it, falling down and rolling on the other roof, cursing her ungainly boots.  The tall guy turned to the right and was gone while Michi scrambled up to keep going straight to the next building over.

Below her and back at Kelli Mae’s building, she heard shouting and sirens.  She didn’t have much time. She wondered if she had twisted an ankle, so despite the urgency, she approached the edge of the building cautiously.  The next building was a story shorter than this one, and she had to make sure of where she landed.

The helmeted jack who appeared in front of her, climbing the fire escape, took her by surprise.  Instinctively, she flowed into her favorite roundhouse kick.  The jack saw it coming and tried to duck, but hanging on the fire escape limited him, and she caught him up high, knocking him off the ladder.

Michi rushed forward and looked down.  Four or five meters below her, another jack was clinging with one hand to the ladder, the other holding the dangling jack Michi had just kicked.  The one still on the ladder looked up, hate in his eyes.  Michi knew he would shoot her if he could, but he needed both hands to hang on and keep his friend from plummeting to his death.  Michi briefly considered dropping something on them, but that would be a wasted gesture, and one that would cost her time.

She took a few steps back and launched herself over the alley.  Her ankle cried out, but she pushed beyond the pain and landed cleanly on the other side.  Maybe getting beat up by Seth was doing her some good.

She took a right and ran down the length of the building, dodging air conditioning units and running around a rooftop garden, then stepping up to the next building.  Somebody had already placed a rough steel grate between the two, so it was an easy transition.

These apartment buildings were part of Propitious Interstellar’s second expansion, constructed when they needed rooms for their workers.  The buildings were generally cheap and close together with fire codes only loosely followed.  Some buildings were connected to each other, others had ten-foot alleys between them. By jumping, Michi was able to quickly move five buildings over.  She risked a glance behind her.  If two jacks had been climbing, others would be, too, and face-spoofer or not, Doug could not hide her from direct human vision.  Just as she reached her stairway down, she saw the first jack making it to the top of Kelli Mae’s building. He was a good 70 meters away, but Michi was clearly visible if he turned around.

Praying that the door was open, she yanked herself off-balance and almost fell inside just as the jack started to turn.  She didn’t know if he saw her.  She was supposed to stay as her redhead alter-ego, but the two kids and at least one jack had seen her bright red hair, so she turned her face-spoofer off and pulled out her overalls, struggling to get them over her stupid costume.  The boots almost got her killed.  She considered leaving them there, but walking around barefoot while in overalls would draw attention, and despite them being sprayed with a derma-barrier, she wasn’t confident that a forensic lab could not find some of her DNA if she left it to be found.

Calm down, calm down.  You’re just a worker going about her business, she kept telling herself.

She casually made her way down the stairs, too scared to use the elevator despite being several buildings away.  She nodded to an old lady at the building’s front door, holding it open for her.  Then she was out in the sunshine.  There were sirens, and overhead, a chopper came screaming up.  Michi resisted the urge to watch it and instead kept walking, trying not to look suspicious.  People had come out of the buildings to warily watch the commotion.  They had to be curious, but this was still a martial law situation, and no one wanted to be caught in any crossfire that might erupt.

Michi didn’t start to relax until she was on the tram heading home.  She hoped her three unnamed companions had made it out safely.  It had been close, but she thought they had gotten out in time.

That left the question as to how the jacks had responded so quickly.  They could have been spotted inside the building, she acknowledged, but Doug had been confident on blocking off anything inside.  And if he hadn’t that was still a very quick reaction.

No, there was only one logical explanation.  Cheri had been right in her suspicions.  There was a traitor within the WRP.

Chapter 20

Michi and Tamara sat on the couch, focused on Michi’s manifesto.  The signal wavered once or twice as the broadcast company tried to regain control over the feed, but whoever was hacking it was able to keep the clip running.

Michi knew it was her on the holo, but with the different face and voice, it was easy to feel it was someone else, a stranger.  That somehow enabled her to really look at it, to analyze it.

The obvious, in-your-face aspect was that Tamara and Cheri had been right.  She, the redhead Michi, looked great.  Michi didn’t know if the holo had been brushed up or not, but the outfit, the face Doug had given her, even her earnest but intense voice created an image of a strong, capable woman, with the emphasis on woman.  When she had put on the top, in particular, she thought it too small, but on the holo, it emphasized her curves and femininity.  Michi rarely felt feminine anymore after she outgrew her dance partners, and she liked the feeling.

As the holo came on, Tamara had exclaimed, “Balls, girl, you look pure dead hot,” and for once, Michi accepted that.

The boots, the ones she hated, worked well, too.  They took away from the camouflage bammers that clung to her legs and ass and gave her a more military air.  With the handgun hanging from her waist, she looked decidedly warrior-like.  She decided she liked the look, even if she was going to have to work on the boots’ utility.

The Marine standing beside her looked deflated.  The small flinch he’d made when Michi had said “abusing” had been edited out. It was hard to look tough when naked, and with his head hanging down, he simply looked defeated.

Then there was Kelli Mae.  Michi knew that her family had been contacted and informed that it would be best for everyone if she did not volunteer that it was her in the holo.  Sitting on the bed in back of Michi, head down, she was the perfect picture of an abused woman. The sobs that wracked her body showed up perfectly on the holo, and even knowing the truth, Michi felt a twinge of pity for the poor, abused girl.

Of course, the abuse was at the hands of Michi and her three companions.  Kelli Mae had done nothing wrong other than fall in love, and what she had gone through was at the hands of Cheri and Michi.  Michi did feel guilty about that, but it was for the greater good, right?”

“Stars above, we’ve got to watch that again,” Tamara said as the holo faded it.  She hit the playback, and the two roommates re-watched it, pausing it a couple of times to point out details.

“Powerful stuff, that,” Tamara said, serious for once.  “I think it’s a glove to the face of the Federation.  I just hope it rallies, the people for Saturday.”

“Do you think it will?” Michi asked.

“Well, it will sure rally the male population and more than a few of the female, girl,” she said, the irreverent Tamara back as she punched Michi in the arm.  “They may not understand the cause, but they’ll follow you, looking like that.”

They watched the replay several times, and when they switched back to the live feed, a response was already being aired.  The company, of course, decried the act of “terrorism.”  A Marine spokesman issued a statement asserting that the so-called abuse was a case of consenting adults, and a chagrined-looking Thane Regent was trotted out where he insisted that he had been with his girlfriend.

When a reporter asked for the name of the girlfriend, the spokesman stepped back in and said for privacy reasons, they could not reveal that.  Michi had half-expected the Marines to release Kelli Mae’s name, but the organization’s arcane sense of honor evidently got in the way of that.  And by not releasing her name, it made their statement seem like a cover-up.  They were telling the truth, Michi knew, but they certainly seemed guilty.

Despite an almost disastrous conclusion, the mission looked to be a success.  The real test was on Saturday, though.  Would the people rally to the cause?  Without massive public support, anything they did was just pissing in the wind.

Chapter 21

“Feelin’ better?” Seth asked as Michi came through the door.

“Oh, yeah, much better,” she said, for a moment forgetting that she had called in sick the day before.

She was glad to get back.  With two more days before the planned rally, she had pent up nervous energy, and a session with Seth seemed like the perfect antidote.

She stripped to her unitard, left her Clodders and outerwear on the counter, and got on the mat where without warming up, Seth was on her.  Fifteen sweaty minutes later, Seth released his kimura lock and slid away to sit while Michi caught her breath.

“You seem fine, considerin’ your health.”

“Oh, like I said, I’m better, and it really wasn’t much.”

“Good to know.  Your health is number one, am I right?”

“Yeah, right,” Michi said, wondering at the direction Seth was taking.  He never seemed too concerned about her health before.

“What did you think about that holo yesterday, the one where that Marine was called out for abusing that poor lass?” he said, switching topics.

“Uh, it was disgusting,” she said, the response she had decided upon in case anyone asked her.

“Yeah, Marines are always chasin’ pussy, you know.  Gets them in more trouble.  But that woman in the holo, she was something else, am I right?”

“I . . . I guess so,” she got out.

“A redhead, too.  Not many around here, and I always was partial to redheads.  And she was a big girl.  I like that.  Nice big tits.”

Despite herself, Michi started to color.  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“Oh, of course not.  Excuse me if I was a little crude there.  Just statin’ facts,” Seth went on.  “’Sides, there are lots of big, strong women around.  Like you, for example.

“You know, I had a visit from the jacks about two months ago.  Remember the jack who got himself kilt in that drug deal?”

“I think so,” Michi said, trying not to let her rising apprehension show.

“Well, first, they wanted to know where I was when he got zeroed.  Seems, that as a discharged Marine and someone who knows his way in a fight, they thought I might be a suspect.  Luckily, I had an alibi, so then they asked me for my opinion.  I looked at the holos, and I told them it had to be a big, strong man who zeroed the guy.  His neck was broken, and from one hit.  No other damage.”

“Yeah, a strong guy, that makes sense.”

“But I been thinkin’, why only a guy?  A big strong girl could do it, too, like that girl on the holo, ’specially one who knew some fightin’ means, and ’specially if she was wearin’ heavy boots.  I don’t think she could do it with a punch, but maybe a kick, like the roundhouse you like to throw.  A good kick, with boots, iffen she got lucky, that could do it.”

Seth broke his gaze on her to stare at Michi’s Clodders where she had left them on the counter.

“You got sometin’ to tell me?” he asked.

Michi wanted to leave, but she tried to sound casual as she replied, “No.  You might be right, but I wouldn’t know.”

“Do you think I’m a huddy, girl?  ’Cause I’m a MacPruitt and not one of you high-side Clan families?  I may not be as good-speakin’ as you, I may not be as educated, but I can see what’s in front of my own eyes.”

Michi said nothing, staring down at her hands.

“I did some research.  Your fiancé was that indentured who was killed.  As they say, in the cop holos, you’ve got the motive.  You wear those Clodders, and I’m thinking that with your roundhouse and your strength, iffen you caught some jack unawares, you could possibly break his neck.  But most of all, I’ve been all over you on this mat.  I’ve had my hands on you.  I know your body.  I know that little dark spot on your hip.  When they changed your face in editin’, they forgot one thing.  That, good cousin, was you on the holo.  Deny it if you can.”

Michi wanted to deny it.  She wanted to jump up and run out.

Instead, she meekly asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Me?  What are you goin’ to do is the real question.  Are you here to get some revenge?  If you are, you’re wasting your time.”

For a moment, Michi had hoped she could enlist Seth as an ally.  But he was rejecting her.

“I’m sorry, I thought I could . . . I just don’t know.”

“Look, girl, I knew that was you on the holo, but I was guessing about the jack.  You got lucky, damn lucky with that.  You try that amateur shit with the Marines here, you’re going to get crushed.”

Michi shuddered, thinking of the ass-whipping she and Tamara had received.

“You are too, too, First Family, all right and proper, all by the rules.  You don’t have the killer instinct.”

“I do so,” she protested.

“No, you don’t.  What did I do when we first fought here?”

“You know what you did,” she bristled.  “You hit me, well, down there.”

“Damn, you can’t even say it, can you?  I hit your freakin’ fud, girl.  Smack in your pussy.  And what did you do about it?  Nothin’.  Then in the crucifix, what’d I do?”

Michi thought back, then remembered his driving his crotch in her face before letting her up.

“You pushed your . . . your . . . balls in my face,” she almost shouted.

“And what did you do about it?”

“Nothing!  What could I do about it?  You had me in a crucifix!”

“Bullshit!  You can always do something.  You could have bitten me, taken a chunk out of my knob!” he said, his voice rising in emphasis.

“You . . . you wanted me to bite your dick?”

“No, I wanted you to try.  I wanted to see where your spirit was.  You weren’t gonna succeed, but I wanted to see you resort to what you could.  But no, that would get you disqualified from an MMA match?  And you’d never do that, am I right?  Let me tell you, girl, that won’t cut it in a fight with a Marine.  He’ll do everythin’ he can to win, and there are no rules.  Even Saint Lysander, he’s resorted to some underhanded shit despite what the Marine propaganda machine would lead you to believe.”

“You mean that commander they talk about on the newsfeeds?”

“Yeah, that commander.  Captain Ryck Lysander, hero of the Corps.”

“You know him?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.  We went to boot together and served in the fleet.  I even broke his arm once.  He’s an arrogant bastard, I can tell you.”

“You broke his arm?  Why?” she asked, curiosity overtaking her anxiety for a moment.

“Call it payback.  But forget him.  Any Marine’s gonna fight dirty if that’s what it takes.  You can’t play by no fuckin’ rules if you want to survive.  And you, cousin dear, don’t have it in you.

“Look, I love MMA.  It pulled me up and gave me my shot at a better life.  It got me into the Marines, before I screwed that up.  It pays my bills now.  But it’s a freakin’ sport, not  battle.  And until you get that there are no rules in a fight, you are gonna get crushed.”

“What about you?” Michi asked excitedly.  “Why don’t you join us?”

“Join you?  Fat fuckin’ chance of that!” he said with a snort.

“Why not?  You don’t like the Marines, I can tell.  You can’t support the company.  Who do you support?”

“I support me.  I always have.  I’m Clan, but not Clan.  None of us MacPruitts matter squat to the rest of you.  I joined the Marines, but I never fit in.  The company doesn’t want much to do with me, neither.  I’ll just make my own way like I always do.”

“But this is your chance to hit back.  What about that commander?  Get back at him.  Get back at the Marines, at least,” she continued.

Seth leaned forward and grabbed her wrist, bending her arm back.

“The Marine Corps and me may have not parted on the best of terms, but that was my fault.  The day I pinned on my sergeant’s chevrons was the second-best day of my life.  I just couldn’t play by the rules until it was too late.  And Captain Lysander?  He’s an arrogant asshole, but he’s a good Marine, and I respect him.  I don’t like him, but I would follow him into combat.  No matter what, no matter what silly-arse games you play with the company, be sure of one thing—I will never lift my hand against another Marine.”

He let go of her arm, and she brought it back to her lap, rubbing it to restore the circulation he’d cut off.

“What about me?  What are you going to do?”

“I ain’t gonna do nothing.  I don’t care what you do, and I won’t stop you from getting yourself zeroed, ’cause that’s exactly what’s gonna happen iffen you try and play by the rules against the Marines.”

She sat there, looking at Seth.  She didn’t understand him, but she could sense his conviction.

“Can I at least keep coming to your dojo?” she quietly asked.

“I don’t think so, Michiko.  You need to forget about MMA as a sport.”

“But you can help me with that.”

“Yeah, I could.  But I won’t.  I won’t stand in your way, but I ain’t gonna help you, neither.  And when you fail, I don’t want them to trace you back to me.  I don’t got no dog in this fight.

“I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Michi sighed, then slowly stood up.  She picked up her outer clothes on the counter, and with one look back at Seth sitting on the mat, she turned and opened the door.

“Go with God, cousin,” she heard him say without his usual sarcasm as the door closed behind her.

Chapter 22

Seth had been right about one thing, Michi conceded.  Neither she nor anyone else was going to force the issue by getting into fistfights.  This was not a refereed fight in a ring going three five-minute rounds.  This was real life, and if Michi wanted to get the Marines off Kakurega, she had to use more than a roundhouse kick.

As she came home from Seth’s dojo, his words echoed in her mind.  Maybe she was biting off more than she could chew, but she had never actually analyzed that.  She had just acted willy-nilly on her emotions.

Despite the apparent success of their little mission to Kelli Mae’s home, Michi realized that they were amateurs, and that almost got the four of them arrested—or worse.  If she was going to continue opposing the company and the Federation occupation, that had to be addressed.  She decided to take the bull by the horns and called Doug, asking him to stop by on his way to work in the morning.

Tamara was still asleep when Doug showed up, eager to see what Michi wanted. Michi took Doug to the kitchen table, poured him a cup of coffee, and sat him down.

“What’s up,” he asked.

“Did you tell anyone you were coming?”

“No, I did as you asked.  What’s with all the secrecy?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.

“You know that our little mission the other day almost ended up as a disaster, right?”

“Yeah, I was monitoring it.  Close call, huh?”

“Did you wonder why, how the jacks knew to come?”

“I guess someone spotted you on the way in?” he offered.

“No one spotted us.  The jacks were tipped off by someone in the WRP.  And you are going to help me flush him or her out.”

“I, uh, what?  What am I going to do?”

“I figured it out last night.  There’s a traitor in the organization, and we’re going to find out who it is.  That’s why no one else can get wind of it.  Look, who’s the leader of the NIP?” she asked.

“The National Independence Party?  No one knows.  It’s a secret.  That’s how they keep going,” he said.

“Exactly, but with the big rally tomorrow, don’t you think they might want to have a hand in it?  And wouldn’t they maybe reach out to the WRP?”

“Yes, but so what?  How does that help you find this traitor you think is there?”

“I don’t think.  I know!” she said with conviction.  “Look, this is what I want you to do.  Can you send out, say, eight different messages, all saying that the leader of the NIP wants to meet, but he wants to meet only one person in absolute secrecy?”

“Sure, that’s easy.  But what will that get you?”

“I want each meeting place in a different spot, somewhere where we can monitor and see if the jacks show up,” she said.

“Ah, kilo-brills!  I get it.  So, if there really is a traitor, and if the jacks show up, that’s our man.  Or woman, I mean.”

“So, can you set that up?  I was thinking if we stagger the supposed meetings and put them close together, like at Morning Star, we could keep an eye on all of them,” Michi offered.

“Morning Star is compact, so if you wanted to physically stake out a place, sure, that apartment complex would work.  But get with the times, Michiko!  We don’t need to be there at all.  Tennyson I and II are easy hacks, and we can sit right here and watch each meeting spot.  There’s no way we can miss them,” Doug said with just a hint of condescension in his voice.

Michi let it slide.  This was Doug’s arena, and she let him take charge.  He muttered to himself for the next twenty minutes before asking Michi how many meeting sites she wanted.

“I’m not sure.  We need enough to cover anyone who might have the information that the company wants, but they would have to be high enough for the NIP leader to want to meet.”

“Well, I can think of a few.  Rosario, for sure.  He’s in charge of security, and he would a logical suspect.  I never did like him, anyway.  Gabriella, Su, and Rangle.  They’re all on the board, but Su hasn’t been active lately, so maybe not her.”

“No, keep Su on the list,” Michi told him.

“I guess you want Hokkam, too?”

“Yep.  He’s in position.”

“OK, that would be five so far,” Doug said.

“And Cheri,” Michi said with conviction.

“You think Cheri could be a traitor?” Doug asked surprised.  “She hooked the three of us up.”

“No, I don’t think she is, but we need to be sure,” Michi said, ashamed for even doubting her.

But Seth said you had to be ruthless to succeed, and she’d be damned if the person who either ordered or allowed Franz to be killed got away with it.

“OK, that’s six.  Any more?”

“Maybe Sven Tyler.  He seems to be in everyone’s hair.  Can you handle seven?”

“No problem.  I could handle more than that,” he said confidently.

“No, if we don’t get a bite on this attempt, we might go down the list and try again.  Let’s work on the wording of the message itself.”

They went back and forth on that for a good half an hour, trying to make it compelling, but not going overboard. They stressed that the meeting had to be extremely confidential, that the “leader” only wanted to meet one person.  Michi didn’t want anyone to start comparing notes about the liaison.  Finally, between the two of them, they had something they thought would work.  Michi thought someone might suspect a trap, but Doug pointed out that a real traitor would have communications with the company, and he or she would know it wasn’t some company trick.  If any of the others suspected something, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.

“OK, send it out,” she told him.

It only took a few minutes before he broke out into a broad smile and said, “Done and done!”

“Done and done what?” Tamara said, coming out of her bedroom and rubbing her eyes.  “What are you doing here so early, Dougie?”

“Ah, we’ve been—”

“We’ve been working on some new ideas for the face-spoofer, you know, so it can change more of the body, too,” Michi said, stepping firmly on Doug’s foot under the table.

“And this had to be done now?” she asked as she reached over for Doug’s coffee, took a sip, and made a face.

“You need to freshen that up,” she said, tossing the cold coffee in the sink and getting a refill from the brewmaster.  She took a sip.  “There, that’s better,” she said before giving the cup back to him.

“OK, you two have fun.  I need a shower,” she said with a yawn as she went to the bathroom.

“You think Tamara could be the traitor?” Doug asked incredulously.

“No, I don’t,” she said, even if she felt a touch of guilt because no, at the moment, she didn’t trust anyone 100%.  If she hadn’t needed him, she would have done this without Doug, too.  “But what she doesn’t know, she can’t be implicated in it.”

“I guess so, but it seems weird.  We’re like the Three Musketeers, aren’t we?”

He seemed so earnest that she had to assure him that yes, they were a team.  All three of them.

“OK, while she’s in the shower, give me a rundown on how to monitor these things,” she told him.

“No reason, to.  I’ll be doing it, so there’ll be no screw-up,” he told her.

“We set this up for this afternoon.  Don’t you have work?”

“Oh ye of little faith, my queen.  As I sit here, I am at work.  Little packets of information are going out:  key strokes, messages, some unauthorized surfing.  If anyone checks, I’m at my desk right now.”

“Really?  Well what happens if someone tries to find you to talk?”

“Like in person?  For real?  No one does that, and if they did and saw me missing from my cubbyhole, they’d think I was in the lab or in the field.  I do this all the time, and no one has ever caught on.”

“You do?  What do you do when you’re playing hooky?”

“Oh, you know.  All sorts of things.  Sleeping in.  Seeing a flick.  Going to a game.”

“A game?  What sports do you watch?” she said with a disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, I get it Miss MMA superfighter.  Just because I like tech means I can’t like sports, right?  For your information, I’m a Gryphons fan, always have been.  I’ve had season tickets since I was 18,” he told her, a hint of anger in his voice.

Michi felt bad about that.  There had been no reason for her attitude.

“Sorry,” she said, trying to fix things.  “Of course, you like sports.  It’s just you never talk about them, and most guys, you can’t shut them up about this team or that.”

“Umpf.  Maybe,” he said, only slightly mollified.

“The Gryphons suck, by the way,” she added.  “You need to root for a real team, like the Desecrators!”

“Desecrators?  Oh, let me tell you about the Desecrators . . .”

That started at least 20 minutes of smack talk.  Tamara came out, listened for a moment, then shook her head and left for work without a word.  They ended up agreeing to disagree, as most sports arguments ended, and turned on the holo.  They settled on watching an old Frank Garrison comedy, one both had seen before but still got them laughing.  Frank G was so stupid that he shouldn’t be funny to anyone with an IQ over 60, but still, they both enjoyed the flick.

When it was over, Michi looked at Tamara’s cuckoo clock.  The analog hands showed it was only 9:20.  Michi groaned.  They had almost five hours to go.

Time crawled while every possible thing that could go wrong was brought up and discussed.  Maybe two of their targets started talking.  Maybe they weren’t even checking their messages.  Three of them worked for the company, and if they did access their private zips, they might not be able to get away.  Michi and Doug realized that they should have made the meeting for the evening, instead.

Their brainstorming revealed one possible hole in their plan, though.  If the jacks did react, and then when there was no NIB leader there, they would certainly contact their spy.  They decided to block all messages to the traitor, then they ginned up a “success” message that Doug would send if the jacks did react.  That should calm the traitor and keep him or her from bolting.

They made noodles for lunch, but after one bite, Michi couldn’t eat any more.  She was too wound up. Finally, 2:30, the time of the first meeting was approaching.  Doug put his PA on an easel and turned on the seven surveillance cams into which he’d hacked.  Each one had the name of the target person to whom that apartment number had been given.  There was some movement, and Michi jumped from where she was standing looking over Doug’s shoulder.

It was a woman with a small child on her arm.  She made her way to the door, swiped it, then went inside.  If the jacks broke into her apartment, she would be terrified.

“Just whose apartments did you pick?” she asked.

“Don’t know.  I never looked at the occupant lists.  I just wanted apartments where I had good coverage.”

Michi was the one who was supposed to be hardened by necessity, but she worried about a woman and child while it was Doug who focused on the mission.  She shook her head and went back to watching the monitors.

Nothing was happening, and Michi thought that their traitor either wasn’t one of the seven or hadn’t taken the bait.  She was about to give up when three of the feeds flickered.

“We’ve got something here,” Doug said, checking a fast scrolling file that appeared at the corner of his PA screen.  “Someone else is onboard.  This is building 2002.”

“Do they know you’re there, too?” she asked him.

“No reason they would.  I’m passive here.”

They waited anxiously for several minutes, then just at the edge of cam range on one of the feeds, several sets of military-like boots could be seen.  Slowly, the riot-equipped jacks edged along the wall until they flanked the target door.  Another man in a StarEx uniform came up to the door, just a deliveryman making his rounds.  He even had a package under his arm.  He tried the bell first, and when there was no answer, knocked.

He finally stepped back and shook his head.  One of the jacks leaned forward, holding a master keypad to the door.  The lock light flashed green, and the jacks rushed in.

Doug needlessly pointed at the name at the top of the feed, but Michi was already aware of who was the traitor.

“Send the success message, then block anything else except from me.  I’ve got a few people I need to contact about this.  Good job, Doug, we won this fight.”

The only thing was that it didn’t feel like a win.

Chapter 23

Michi tried to calm her expression.  She was just there for a visit before the big rally, right?  She gave herself a body shake, then opened the door to the WRP office spaces.

It was almost 6:00 PM, and those who had been at work all day were straggling in.  There was an air of building excitement.  WRP’s official mission statement was to monitor the treatment of workers, particularly Class 3s and 4s, but over the last year, rallies had become a big part of what they did, and the members hoped that tomorrow’s rally would be their biggest yet.  It was reasonable that Michi, even if she was not officially a member of the organization, would stop by and see how things were going.

“Michiko, it’s good to see you,” Gabriella said, looking up.  She came around some desks and gave Michi a kiss on the cheek.

Gabriella was the chapter quartermaster, in charge of accounting.  That also placed her on the board.  Michi hugged her back, returned the kiss, and tried to show nothing on her face as she slipped a small, printed note into Gabriella’s side pocket.

“Just coming by to say hi and see how things are going for tomorrow,” she said.

“You can imagine,” Gabriella told her.  “Things are rather hectic.  Let’s catch up after this is over, OK?”

Michi had to hold back a smile.  Yes, they would be meeting sooner than perhaps Gabriella expected.

Michi made the rounds, stopping to chat with people she knew.  There were many people she didn’t recognize.  Evidently, the Federation’s latest actions had inspired a good number of people to join the cause.

As expected, Su was not there, but she exchanged pleasantries with both Rangle and Rosario, slipping each one his own note.  Neither noticed her doing it, which had been a concern.  She didn’t want any discussion in public.

She tracked down Sven in the computer room.  Passing his note was easy.  His nose was so buried in some messages that Michi didn’t think anything would register with him.

Michi didn’t want to seem too purposeful, so it was ten or fifteen minutes before she stuck her head in Hokkam’s office.  As expected, Cheri was also there along with two people Michi didn’t recognize.

“Michiko,” Hokkam said, rising to greet her.  “How are you?”

He was wearing his usual Dashi one-piece, with its sealed pockets.  Michi, expecting that, had his slip in her hand, and she passed it directly to his as he reached out to pull her in for a kiss.  He didn’t bat an eye as she turned around and gave Cheri a hug, slipping the last piece of paper into her back pocket.

“Good to see you, dear,” Cheri said.

“Greg, K’to, this is Michiko MacCailín, a friend of the chapter.  Michiko, Greg and K’to are from Earth Headquarters.”

Greg had started to greet Michi, but his face took a downturn as Hokkam told Michi who he was.

“Oh, don’t worry Greg.  Michiko can be trusted.  She was Franz Galipili’s fiancé,” Hokkam told him.

“Oh, sorry for your loss.  He was a valued member of the WRP family,” Greg said.

Michi thanked him and made nice for a minute before Hokkam said, “Michiko, it’s nice to see you again, but we’ve got quite a bit to do before tomorrow.  Will you be coming?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t miss it.  I’m sorry for disturbing you, and I’ll let you get back to work.”

She left Hokkam’s office, greeted a few more people, and left the outer office.  In the hallway outside, she started trembling and leaned back against the wall, taking some deep breaths.  That had been more difficult than she had expected.  Slipping the notes and leaving traces of her DNA had been the easiest part.  It was just being in there, knowing what she knew, and acting like a good and loyal friend that had taxed her emotions.

Ever-conscious of surveillance, Michi centered herself and walked out of the building.  Down the street was an upscale café owned by a cousin—an actual blood relative, not the casual use of the term.  She walked in, chatted with Bridgette, and had a cup of Lastermay tea.  Bridgette would have been well aware that Michi was not living at home—family matters were hard to keep private, and gossip was traded like gold amongst the First Families—but Bridgette never let on as they talked.  First Families like their profit even more than gossip, and even a simple cup of tea added to the day’s take.

Michi hung out, listening to what gossip Bridgette was dishing out—and getting interested despite herself—before finally making her goodbyes at about 7:15.  She stepped out into the dusk and made her way towards the Gut, stopping several blocks short.  Checking for any obvious surveillance cams, she flicked on her face-spoofer.

When she had asked Doug if there was another face she could use, he had eagerly shown her over a dozen he’d already prepared.  She selected one with Indian features.  Without a mirror to check, she hoped that was what she looked like.

Then she took a can of a derma-barrier and started to spray her hands and face.  Derma-barriers were used by medical personnel to keep them from contracting their patients’ diseases, but as a side-effect, they kept skin flakes and other bodily detritus from littering the area.  Hair could still fall, and that could be tested for DNA, but the spray lessened the amount of Michi that could be found by a forensic team. And if they did find anything, well, that is why she had gone to the office earlier and hugged everyone.  Finally, she took out a new silk scarf and wrapped it around her head.  If a hair would betray her and fall, it would have to work to make it to the ground.  Finally, she took a disposable rain poncho out of her pocket and put it on.

With a new face and as safe as she could make herself, she continued on into the Gut and to the statue.  Three jacks walked by on patrol, but they didn’t give her a second glance.  She felt a stirring of pride knowing that is was because of her actions that the jacks weren’t allowed to walk alone anymore.  Doug had assured her that the spot in back of the statue was clear of surveillance, so she switched off the face-spoofer and was Michi again.  Then she waited.  And waited.  She kept looking at her watch.  Curfew was approaching, and she wondered if the notes had been a good idea.  Her first inclination had been to send a regular message to everyone, but despite Doug’s assurances that they could not be traced, she figured if he could trace something like that, so could someone else.  So she switched to printed notes.

If no one found the notes, though then it had been a waste of time.

“Michiko, I assume this is as important as you indicated,” a voice said from in back of her. “And all this cloak and dagger was really necessary?”

Michi spun around to see Hokkam standing in back of her.  At least he’d read the note.  She looked around, but no one was with him.

“Yes, it’s very important, and I couldn’t say it at the office.  I’ve got something vital to tell you, and after that, it’s up to you on what you want to do.”

Hokkam gave her a condescending look and asked, “So what’s so important?  Curfew’s in 25 minutes, and we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Michi looked around as if to check for eavesdroppers.  “Not here.  Come,” she said, taking his arm and leading him to the small alley where the trash bins for Franny’s were lined up.

“Michiko, just tell me.  If you really know something important, then I can take care of whatever it is,” he protested as he resisted her pull.  “Stop pulling me.  I’m not taking another step until you tell me what it is!”

Michi spun him around, shoving him between two of the trash bins.  She jumped forward, putting her forearm under his throat, cutting off any potential cry for help.

“Cheri told me she thought there was a traitor in the chapter, and she was right,” she hissed as Hokkam’s eyes grew large with the onset of panic.  “But you knew that,” she said as she pulled Tamara’s 15cm chef’s knife from her belly pocket and thrust it into Hokkam’s belly.

He let out an “oof” sound that escaped past Michi’s arm, and he tried to struggle.  He was not a small man, but he couldn’t move his killer.

“I should have known it was you.  I saw you edging away from the rest back on the day Franz was murdered, but before any shots were fired.  You knew what was coming, didn’t you?  Because it was you who set it up.”

Hokkam tried to shake his head, probably to deny it.  But he couldn’t deny that it was to his supposed meeting place that the jacks had shown up that afternoon.

Michi rammed the knife in deeper, then twisted it and started slowly pulling it across and down Hokkam’s belly, only stopping when the knife hung up on his belt.

A sudden smell of blood, shit, and piss assaulted her nose.  This is what death smelled like up close and personal.  She stared into Hokkam’s eyes as they faded and went dull.

She wanted to feel something as she looked into his dead face.  She wanted triumph, revenge, anger—anything.  Instead, she felt nothing.  She stepped back and let the body slide to the ground.

Working quickly, she bent over and started sawing through his neck.  No one was going to get him into regen, she vowed.  It was much more difficult to separate his head using a kitchen knife, though, than she had expected.  It took partly cutting, partly sawing, and partly brute strength to yank the head free.

She had to work quickly.  She was basically out of sight from the road, but anyone—from the bar staff to a jack patrol—could happen by.

She looked down at her gore covered legs.  Hokkam had had a lot of blood in him. She quickly stripped off the rain poncho and dropped it to the ground.  Then off came her slacks.  She had liberally applied the derma-barrier to her legs earlier, and it seemed to have worked in keeping the gore in the fabric of the slacks and not sticking to her skin.  She pulled down the legs of the minishorts she had on underneath the slacks.

Her shoes, though!  She hadn’t thought that through.  They were covered.  Michi bent down, grabbed the slacks, and using the cleaner area around the butt, used them to clean off as much of Hokkam from her shoes as she could.  It wasn’t a great job, but it would have to do.

As she stood up, another problem made itself known.  Even in the darkness, a bloody footprint could be seen.

Reaching into her belly pocket, she took out the glass bottle that Doug had given her before she left.  Very carefully, she poured it on the pile with her slacks and poncho.  A vile-smelling smoke arose from the pile as the molecular-debonder reacted to break down the clothing.  She had to add a few drops here and there to keep the reaction going.  But within a minute, all that was left of the pile were some component chemicals.  A good forensic investigator could determine what had been broken down, but identifying DNA should be impossible.

After considering her shoes, she poured a few drops of the remaining reagent on the footprint she had left, then carefully stepped on the sizzling ground.  She hoped there wasn’t enough of it to eat all the way through the shoes and into her feet, but she really didn’t want to leave recognizable footprints.

To her relief, her feet weren’t eaten away.

Michi coughed as the fumes from the destruction of her clothes ate at the back of her throat.  She had to get out of there.  Without a look back at the decapitated Hokkam, she pulled down at the hem of her shorts once more, turned off her face-spoofer, and walked down the alley and out into the street by the statue.

Two men with bottles of beer in their hands spotted her, and one shouted “Hey, where’re you headed?” then “Don’t be like that,” as she ignored them and walked on.  Neither followed her, though.

It took almost 35 minutes on the convoluted route she took to get back to the condo, which was well past curfew, but no one stopped her.  Tamara wasn’t in.  She’d had a date, and Michi guessed it had gone well based on the short “I won’t be making it back” message on the house PA that was cut off with a laugh.

Michi took the knife from her belly pocket.  This was a high-end knife with a serial number.  She couldn’t leave it at the scene.  She shouldn’t even have used it, but this was a thrown-together plan, and she had run out of time.  The knife went into the dishwasher, and she started the clean cycle.

Then it was her turn.  She put some lilac bath salts in the tub and filled it, stripping out of her clothes and slipping in.  She let the salts soothe her, body and mind.  As the water began to cool, she got out and emptied the tub.  She took her shorts, shirt, underwear, and shoes and placed them in the tub, then poured the remainder of Doug’s solution over them.  Doug had assured her the reagent would not harm the tub’s surface, and with the toilet exhaust fan on, most of the fumes went up and out of the bathroom.

Not quite everything was eaten away, however.  Michi turned on the showerhead and thoroughly rinsed the tiny scraps left before picking them up and putting them in a trash bag.

She was done.

It was still early, but she went to her small bedroom and got into bed, pulling the sheet up to her chin.  She lay there, wide awake for almost 20 minutes before she started to cry.  Within moments, she was sobbing, and it was another five minutes before she stopped.

She wasn’t crying over Hokkam.  Hokkam meant nothing to her—and that was why she was crying.  The first jack had been an accident.  Michi had attacked him with violent intentions, but she hadn’t planned to kill him.  The thought really hadn’t crossed her mind.

But Hokkam was different.  She knew him, she planned out his death, and she had killed him in cold blood while watching his life fade as she stared into his eyes.  A normal person would feel something after taking a life in such an intimate manner.  It could be sorrow or regret.  It could be exultation or thrill.  It could be anger or bitterness.  But it should be something.

Michi felt nothing.

Michiko MacCailín had been a love-struck teenager, a ballet dancer, a First Family girl with whatever future she wanted.  That Michi would have been horror-struck at the idea of taking any life, much less a human life.

That Michi was gone, though, probably forever.  And the new Michi cried when she realized that.  She wanted the old Michi back, and she was sure she despised the new person she had become.

Chapter 24

Michi waited at Bridgette’s restaurant in a corner table, out of the way of the rest of the patrons, an untouched Danish in front of her.  She wondered if the rest of her notes had been read.  The rally was scheduled to start in an hour, and all the WRP staff would be there, but she hoped that she had convinced them to see her first.  If not, she would contact the council members after, but if Hokkam had any planned role in the rally, then Cheri and the rest should know that he would be a no-show.

At 8:35, just when she had about given up hope, Cheri, Rangle, Sven, and Gabriella came in together.  Gabriella spotted Michi first, and all four came over and sat down beside her.

“You wrote that this was vital,” Rangle said, sounding as if he was being put upon.  “We’re a mite busy today.”

“What is it, dear?” Cheri asked.  “Why didn’t you just tell us yesterday instead of all the mystery?  We compared notes, and you gave us all the same thing.  Rosario said he had more important things to do this morning, we couldn’t contact Su, and Hokkam’s probably already at the rally.”

“No, he isn’t,” Michi calmly told the three board members.  “And he won’t be coming.  I wanted to let you know before the rally started that you needed to elect a new chairman.”

“Why, has Hokkam resigned?” Gabriella asked.  “He never told me he was considering anything like that.”

Cheri stared into Michi’s eyes for a moment.  She saw something in the young woman that spoke more than mere words could.  “It was necessary?” she asked.

Michi nodded.

“What was necessary?  What are you talking about?” Gabriella asked, her irritation beginning to show.

“Rangle, you are the acting chairman for this.  If need be, you will talk.  You wrote the talking points for Hokkam, so you are the most familiar with them,” Cheri said, taking charge.

“But what about Hokkam?  Can somebody please tell me what is going on?” Gabriella persisted.

“There’s no time for that now, Gabby.  Hokkam’s gone, and we’ll leave it at that.  And no, you cannot call him.  We’ve got a rally going on, and I suggest we get there.

“Gabby, get a hold of Su. Tell her to get to the office for an emergency meeting at 6:00.”

She held up a hand when Gabriella started to protest.  “Not now, Gabby.  Let’s get to the square.  Michi, are you coming with us?”

“What the hell’s going on?” Rangle muttered as they left, but he followed Cheri’s commands.

The five made their way to the square, but even from two blocks away, people filled the street, making progress almost impossible.

“We cut that too close,” Cheri said, awe in her voice evidence that the numbers of people who showed up was a surprise to her.  “Rangle, try and worm your way up.  Tamberlane and Fort will already be there.”

“Fort” was Fortitude Fein-Simak, their rally master.  He was part stage director, part cheerleader, and he was nominally in charge of the rally.  However, this was not just a WRP event.  Other organizations had been approached, and several had already sent reps to the WRP office to help plan, and more than a few had probably just shown up to take part.

A person holding a placard turned back, and Michi saw the image printed on it.  It was her, in her red-headed glory, looking particularly fierce.  The words “Red Athena” were printed under her photograph.

“That’s pretty impressive.  Tamberlane’s doing?” Michi asked Cheri.

“No, ours says ‘The People’s Valkyrie,’” Cheri told her.  “And the photo is a little different.  That means your performance must have caught on.  That’s reassuring.”

The three women worked their way forward, keeping close to the buildings lining the street.  Up ahead, they could hear chanting, but it wasn’t until they managed to worm their way into the square itself that Michi could make out what the chant was.

“Red Athena!  Red Athena!” the crowd yelled out.

“Looks like Fort went with the other name,” Cheri said matter-of-factly.  “His call, and whatever catches on.  The ‘Valkyrie’ was my idea, though.  Oh, well.”

Michi felt uncomfortable seeing so many placards with her photo on it.  The overtly sexual flair to the WRP version bothered her.  At least it was that of her redhead alter-ego, and that put some psychological distance to it.  She was glad when the chant shifted to “Worker Justice Now!”

Crowd chanting was a science.  Fort might be leading the chants, but he had a team scattered around the rally, taking measurements of the volume and intensity of the crowd.  All of that was fed to an AI that calculated when to change chants and when to try new ones.  It might seem like mob rule, but it was a carefully choreographed and continually changing ballet.

At 8:15, Fort stopped the chanting, and through his bullhorn, told everyone that it was time for the Propitious Interstellar anthem.  The crowd booed him unmercifully, but as the recorded music played, most of the people joined in, singing as far out of key as possible and changing more than a few of the words.

After the anthem, Rangle took the bullhorn and welcomed the crowd in the name of the WRP.  He stressed that this was to be a peaceful rally, to which some people booed.  He spoke for a few minutes, seemingly as ease.  Michi wasn’t sure she could have pulled off speaking in front of so many people with so little advanced warning.

He turned the bullhorn over to representatives from some of the other organizations that had gone public in opposition to martial law and the presence of the Marines.  Michi listened to them with only half an ear.  She jumped up on a fire hydrant and looked at the line of jacks blocking B Street.  Unlike at the rally in which Franz had been killed, this time they were backed up by about 30 Marines in their armored combat suits, “PICS,” they called them.  The stood motionless behind the jacks, looking impressive, Michi had to admit.  Michi wondered what options they had if it came to an open confrontation with them.

A camcording of Henry Jugos, the same human rights champion whose arrival had been announced back when Franz had spoken, was replayed for the crowd.  In it he urged them not to back down and to demand their charter be honored.  When martial law had been declared, the PI lawyers argued that this allowed them to nullify Jugos’ visa, and so it was back to court.

Scotty MacScotty, an irreverent comedian whose real name was a loosely-held secret, was next, and he had the crowd roaring as he skewered the company.  Michi normally thought he was funny, if a little crude for her taste, but this time, she let the humor pass her by.  She was watching the jacks and the Marines for any sign of action.

“There’s trouble in Dundee,” Cheri relayed to them in a whisper, one hand over the ear into which her PA bud was inserted.   “The crowd tried to take over the company office, and the Marines pushed them back.  There are some dead, but I don’t know who or how many there are yet.”

Dundee was Kakurega’s second largest city, the planetary capital, and the site of PI’s Plant 4, where large items were fabricated.  There was a higher percentage of indentureds and fewer PI management at that factory than at perhaps any other company facility.

“We knew that was a possibility when we set this up,” Gabriella said quietly as she took a glance to see if anyone was listening in.  “Hokkam said that we might need a spark to get the fire going.”

“Hokkam is out of the equation now,” Cheri answered.  “So, it doesn’t matter what he said.  We might have that fire, but will it engulf us all?”

Behind the Marines, Michi saw movement.  It was one of the T2000 forklifts, the big ones used to move vats of base materials.  It stopped in back of the Marines, and someone climbed onto the forks.  The operator raised them, lifting the passenger above the Marines and jacks and in view of the crowd.

It was Dr. Keller, the deputy mayor.  The fact that a public official was sitting on a yellow forklift with “Propitious Interstellar” printed on the side of the cab was a telling connection that did not slip past Michi.

“People of Tay Station, this gathering is illegal and you are ordered to withdraw.  Despite no permits being issued, we have used patience as a show of good will.  That good will has been exhausted, so as law abiding citizens, you must go home.

“If you have reasonable grievances, you may come down to the city offices during normal working hours and file them.

“As a member of the city council, I am issuing the order to cease and desist as per City Proclamation 19.815.3062, the previously declared imposition of martial law.  Failure to do so can result in arrest and imprisonment for a period of no more than ten years.”

As if in a Hollywood flick, a round, red object sailed from the crowd and arched over to strike the mayor on his thigh.  The tomato had been ripe enough to splatter, covering him in juice and seeds.

The crowd roared with laughter and the deputy mayor hurriedly motioned for the forklift operator to lower him.  The laughter broke off and faded to nothing as the jacks, who had been lining B Street, split in the middle of the line and marched smartly to each side of the street, leaving the center open.  A few people moved forward as if to enter the opening the jacks had made.

“Get out of here,” Michi said to Cheri and Gabriella, pushing them back.

They didn’t argue, probably thinking of what had just transpired in Dundee.  A few other people started to edge back as well, but the bulk of the crowd just stared to see what would unfold.

Michi was not surprised when the Marines started moving in their huge combat suits.  For something so big and unwieldy-looking, each Marine smoothly stepped forward, each rank in unison as they passed through the jacks, then spread out, shoulder to shoulder, completely blocking B Street and extending along the entire west side of the square.

A voice came out of some unseen speaker, “This is your last warning.  Leave the square now and return to your homes or you will be forcibly evicted.”

Quite a few people turned to push their way out, but the sheer number in the square made that difficult.  A person holding one of the rally signs tried to push past Michi, dropping the placard.  Michi saw her own face as the sign fell, hitting her in the head before it fell between the people onto the ground.  Michi might have thought the irony of getting hit with her own photo was funny if the Marines hadn’t then started a slow march forward.

Screams erupted from the crowd as people tried to get out of the way.  The Marines did not fire any weapons, but merely walked forward in lockstep, using their combat suits as bulldozers.  A few young bloods tried to hit the Marines with rally signs, and one young man jumped up on top of a Marine only to be casually plucked off as if he was an errant kitten and tossed aside.

Behind the Marines, the jacks had formed back up.  Several of them pounced on the young man who’d just been tossed.  A few people lost their footing.  Michi became incensed when the Marines kept marching, stepping on those on the ground.  An older lady fell, and a Marine stepped squarely on her.  The woman went still.

“They’re not resisting!” she shouted, her voice lost in the bedlam.

She wanted to strike out at the Marines, and she had to fight the impulse to wade into them.  Her blood boiled, but the rational part of her mind argued that she couldn’t do any good in jail.  She wavered for a few moments as the Marine line moved inexorably forward, the eager jacks rushing to arrest anyone who was left as the Marines stomped over them.  Finally, the rational Michi gained control, and she turned to flee.

She would leave the square to the Marines and bring the fight to them another day and on her terms, not theirs.

Chapter 25

The three friends jumped at the chime.

“Check it, please, Doug,” Michi said, trying to sound calm.

They were in an apartment into which Doug had gotten access.  It was furnished, if somewhat tacky, and from hints Doug had made, it was used as a secret getaway for higher ups in the company technical division when they wanted discreet liaisons.  Doug guaranteed there was no surveillance leading to or inside the getaway.  Michi thought it ironic that they were using what PI management had set up for secrecy, be it for an amorous reason, to possibly plot against the company.

“It’s them,” Doug said, checking the wall screen.  “At least it’s Ms. Baliles and two men.”

“Am I OK?” Michi asked Tamara after switching on her face-spoofer.  When Tamara said yes, Michi nodded at her, and Tamara opened the door.

Michi had been standing regally in the front hallway, her back highlighted by the afternoon sun.  The effect, which the three of them had worked out, was spoiled by Rosario pushing her aside and quickly checking the apartment.  Cheri and their guest came in, but Rosario held up his hand to keep them from talking while he took a portable scanner out of his pocket and checked for whatever he suspected.

“OK, it looks clear,” he finally said with a scowl on his face.

Isn’t he ever happy? Michi wondered before turning to greet her guest.

The man standing in front of her looked to be in his mid-thirties, stood about two meters tall, and was a trim 85 kg.  He was supposedly an accountant for Jericho Trading, responsible for accounts payable to Propitious Interstellar.  Jericho Trading was a Brotherhood company, just one of the many, many companies who bought PI goods and kept an office in the city.  In reality, “Mr. Samuels” was a bishop in the Brotherhood military, if their information was right, and he wanted to meet the “Red Athena.”

The fact that he was in the military but undercover made Tamara declare that he was a bonafide spy.  Michi had to agree, but Tamara seemed too excited over the fact.  She had been in the condo when Doug had suggested the location for the meeting, and she was adamant that she was coming, too.

Michi was in full costume for the meeting, which had taken over a day to set up.  The location proved problematic, what with Mr. Samuels being unable to visit the WRP offices and Michi not willing to go out in public in persona.  It was Doug who came to the rescue with his division’s little sex hide-away.

Mr. Samuels had extremely white teeth, Michi noted as he held out a hand.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” he said, smile dazzling.  “Should I call you Athena?” he asked with just the right degree of lightheartedness.

“Valkyrie was better,” Cheri muttered under her breath.

Cheri was now the chairman of the WRP.  She had been the unanimous choice, and Tamberlane, who had always been in on most chapter decisions anyway, and been elevated to full board status.

“Sure,” Michi said.  “And should I just call you ‘Bishop?’”

“Touché, young lady, touché.   But I think Mr. Samuels will be fine,” he said with a chuckle.

“Ms. Baliles has been kind enough to show me some of your recent recordings.  I have to say you cut an impressive figure.”

Michi wondered if that had been a double entendre, but she simply asked, “So I can assume your interest in us means your, uh, company, might be willing to render assistance?”

“While my company appreciates your situation, and while we philosophically stand for human rights and freedom of speech and actions, sometimes our support is more of a moral type rather than the material.”

“So, you mean you will root for us, but in secret so as to not upset the Federation.”

“M—uh, Athena, it’s not that easy,” Cheri snapped, eyes blazing.

Michi didn’t care.  Cheri was her friend, but this pompous ass came to ogle her in her costume, see the “Red Athena,” and maybe ask for a photo with her, and he offers nothing?

“No, Ms. Baliles, she’s only saying what is evident,” he said to Cheri before turning back to Michi.  “No, we are not ready to offer overt aid.  However, we can offer some information when it is feasible, and we will be monitoring the situation.  If it escalates to a certain point,” he held up a hand as Michi was about to interrupt, “and what that point is, I frankly don’t know.  But if it reaches there, we would be forced, on humanitarian grounds, to assist.  Exactly how or in what form?  I don’t know.  My job now is to gather information so that we are able to react quickly if and when necessary.”

Michi started to protest again, but as she thought about it, what the bishop said made sense.  She could not expect the Brotherhood to risk war over worker conditions on a Federation planet.  They fact that they were even monitoring it was gratifying.

“And why did you want to meet me?  I’m not a decision maker,” she asked, slightly mollified.

“Because I wanted to see the face of the worker movement.  I wanted to get a feel for you.  And something tells me that you are not the mere figurehead you let yourself on to be.  There is more fire in you than that,” he said.

He’s a smooth talker, Michi admitted to herself, feeling herself calm down.

She had been frustrated over the last week.  She was the one who had eliminated the traitor, but she had no say now in what was happening.  The WRP was moving slowly while Michi knew in her heart that they had to push while the momentum was still there and before it dissipated.  There had been impromptu protests, but with 23 killed in Dundee and two in Tay Station, and with over 40 in varying degrees of regen, the protests had a tentative feel to them, and the numbers were not overly impressive.

All she had done in the meantime was record four short camcordings, all done to a script that was handed to her.  She had felt awkward and not vested in what was being said.  To have the bishop tell her she was more than that was a needed boost to her ego.

They spoke for only a few more minutes, the bishop asking, Michi responding.  She didn’t totally understand the point of each of his questions, but she tried to answer them in all candor.

“Well, Ms. Athena, I want to thank you for meeting with me, but I’ve got to get back,” he said, shaking her hand.  He didn’t let it go but stared at her face for a few moments before saying, “Not a bad job on your disguise.  I can barely tell where it leaves off and where you begin.  I can’t quite see what method you are using, but if you want a slight bit of advice, though, you might want to up your frequency.  Certain surveillance devices available to any military might be able to mesh with your transmitter and essential see what’s underneath.  A shifting frequency might even be safer.”

Michi heard an intake of breath from Doug.  She almost had to smile.  Doug had been so proud of his spoofer, but evidently it was not quite as unique as he had thought.

“Thank you,” Cheri whispered as she turned to leave, probably relieved that the meeting had not gone too poorly.

Rosario hung back, and as the other two stepped out the door, he grabbed Michi by the arm and pulled her in close to quietly snarl, “I know who you are now, and I know what you did to Hokkam.  Remember one thing.  I am in charge of security, and your amateur actions could have blown up in our faces, still might, and that puts all of us in danger.  If you find out anything else that affects us, you come to me and let me handle it.  Understood?”

Michi glared back and ripped her arm out of his grasp.  “Have a good day,” she said forcibly.

He looked at her for another moment before Cheri’s voice came in from the hall, “You coming?”

“Remember what I said,” he whispered as he turned and left.

Michi took a deep breath as the door closed and turned around to face her two friends. Doug was staring at her, either upset about the comment about his spoofer or because he heard part of what Rosario had said.  Tamara, on the other hand, had a goofy smile on her face.

“Did you see him?” she asked.  “That’s enough to make a girl weak at the knees.”

“What?” Michi asked, taken by surprise by the direction of her roommate’s comment.

“Oh, come on, Michi.  A handsome hunk like that?  Did you see his teeth?  And a spy?  Didn’t he make you,” she paused to dramatically put her hands over Doug’s ears, “make you just the teensiest bit wet?”

Doug winced and recoiled from what he’d heard, while Michi protested, “What?  No!”

“Oh, come on.  Have you gone all dried up and dusty inside?”

That innocent comment hit Michi hard.  She had felt dark and “dusty” inside, not in a sexual way, but in her heart.  Tamara was talking about sex, but it went much deeper than that to Michi.  She feared she was losing her humanity.

“You’re losing it, girlfriend, and you need to get it back.  You need to get laid and soon.  Tell you what, I’ll step back and leave Mr. Spy to you.”

“No!  I mean, I’m not interested!”

“OK, then anyone.  Hey Dougie, you got anyone for the ice princess here?  Someone who can give her a good fucking?” she asked, using her arm and fist to pump back and forth.

“Tamara!  Stop it!” Michi shouted.  “I’m serious!”

“OK, sorry.  I was just joking,” Tamara said, sounding miffed.

“You can be a real bitch,” Doug said quietly to her.

“What a bunch of limpies,” Tamara said in response, but more to herself than to anyone else.

Michi needed to move on, to get the subject off of her.  The bishop had said there was more to her, and Michi grasped at that like a life ring in a storm.

“Both of you, get serious and come sit down.  Doug, how long do we have this place?”

“Uh, I don’t know.  At least until evening, maybe longer.”

“OK, Tamara, put on some coffee, and let’s get to work.  We’ve got some planning to do.”

Chapter 26

“What do you mean you can’t get their schedules?  I thought you could hack into anything?” Michi asked in exasperation.

“I told you, I can get anywhere into the company or the government here because when we put in the security, I managed to insert a back door.  I’ve got the key, and I can get in anytime I want.  But you’re talking about the military.  They’ve got Gen 10 security, and there’s no way I can break in.”

“Just hack it,” Tamara said.

“You’re not getting me.  I couldn’t hack PI without the back door.  As far as military?  There’s just no way!”

two hours later . . .

“So that won’t work either,” Michi said with disappointment as she read the web article.  “The PICS are shielded against some pretty powerful energy weapons, so a simple electric current, no matter how powerful, won’t knock one out.”

“I thought it might work, but I guess that would be too easy,” Doug said with a sigh.  “Well, back to the drawing board.”

another hour . . .

“Yech!  The coffee’s cold!  Tamara, how about contributing and brewing up a fresh pot!” Mich said.

Two more . . .

“I already took care of that.  As far as anyone knows, you live in apartment 307 in Building 1002, Franklin Manor,” Doug said.

“And that will fly?”

“It should.  You’ve been burning power, watching the holo, going online.  I even had you download your speech about the Marine and his girlfriend.”

“Was that smart?  I mean, downloading it was illegal.  What if they come to check on me?” Michi asked.

“Sister, everyone downloaded that.” Tamara said.

“Tamara’s right.  Almost everyone undoubtedly did.  There are probably programs out there to see who didn’t.  Anyone too clean raises red flags,” Doug agreed.  “You even filed a report on noisy neighbors.”

“So as far as anyone knows, I don’t stay at Tamara’s?  And when did you do all of that?”

“When I first met you two.  It just seemed like appropriate precautions.”

Tamara gave him a hug and kissed his forehead.  “Oh, you care, Dougie!”

Doug shrugged off her arms and muttered, “Just being safe is all.”

But his face was turning red.

2:30 AM

“Well, theoretically, that might work.  My mind’s a bit fuzzy now, but let me go over the calculations,” Doug said as Tamara snored beside him.

“Even if it might work, the question is where?” Michi asked.

“That might take some more digging.  But let’s look at the numbers first.  No use getting excited about it.  Look at how much time we wasted on the electrical shock idea.”

5:09 AM

“Well?” Michi asked, waiting once again to hear why this one wouldn’t work, either.

“I . . . I think we have a plan!” Doug said.

Chapter 27

“Can you get it?” Michi asked while Doug grunted a few steps into the tunnel.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks!” he complained.

They had to cut open the lock, or their whole plan had to be scrapped.  The lock was to an old access tunnel to the power station, and that was their way out of the park.

Ledges Park was just to the east of the city along the River Tay.  Eons ago, there had been a waterfall at the park, but over the years, the river had eaten its way through, leaving a canyon and some rapids as it made its way to the lower plains.  The first Scottish settlers had selected the location for Tay Station because of the rapids.  They provided the power they needed to build and run their city.  After Propitious Interstellar arrived and built more modern, efficient, and reliable power plants, the old hydro-electric plant was shut down, and the canyon became a public park.  The old access tunnels, though, still existed, and they offered another way out of the park to those who knew the tunnels.

“Here, let me try,” Michi said, pushing past Doug and taking the bolt-cutters.

She got the jaws around a link in the chain, and with a shout, put all her strength in back of it.  It didn’t look like it would be enough, but then, with a snap, the chain parted.

Doug rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Let’s get back so you can do your thing,” Michi hastened to say.

Doug was not an “Ugh, me man, you woman”-type, but still, having Michi open what he couldn’t had to sting at least a little.

They strolled arm in arm back to the running path, two lovers out enjoying the sunny day.  The park was not in much use during the week, and with martial law, even the evening joggers were few and far between, but on the weekends, it would be packed with people.

They saw two Marines in their combat suits on patrol.  Michi laughed as if Doug had said something funny, then wanted to kick herself for looking too fake.  But the Marines continued on their way.  The best Doug had been able to find out was that there were four Marines in the park during the day, then eight at night.

Michi spread out a blanket on the grass where a finger of the cliff jutted out closer to the river.  From rock face to the river was less than ten meters, and that included the running trail.  Michi and Doug took off their shirts and lay back on the blanket.  On her bikini strap, Michi retained her spoofer, set on another of Doug’s faces for her, this one with close to her real skin color.  Doug had Tamara’s spoofer, this one set for a face not too different from his own.

“Wow, boy, you need to get out in the sun more,” she whispered to Doug, taking in his pale skin.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  You can dispense with the ghost jokes now.”

Michi wanted to get going, but if there were eyes on them, they had to act natural.  She lay in the sun, feeling the warmth seep into her.  It felt good, and it forced her to relax.  Without meaning to, she fell asleep.

“Hey, I need to go take a piss,” Doug said, waking her up with a start.  She sat up and yawned.

“Take your pack and use the cream,” she said as planned.

Michi didn’t know what cream she would have meant, but on the off-chance that they were being overheard, they had wanted a reason for him to take his pack.

“Don’t nag,” he said as he shouldered his backpack.

As he disappeared behind her, she adjusted her bikini top and looked out over the river.  She wondered if there was anyone out there observing them, and if so, were they watching Doug or her?  It seemed as if her contribution to the cause always had her half-naked, and that ate at her.  She was more than a dress-up doll. It had been Tamara’s idea for the sun-bathing; but then again, Tamara’s mind was always in the gutter.

Two Marines came down the running trail.  She couldn’t see them through their combat suits’ visors, but she nodded at them as they passed only a couple of meters from her.  She could actually feel the ground shake as they walked by.

It seemed to be forever, but finally, Doug reappeared.  He nodded to Michi as he sat down.  Now, they waited.

With two Marines just having passed, they knew it might be awhile.  The Marines didn’t seem to have a schedule, but still, it could take 30 minutes or more for the other team or the same team to come by again.  After 20 minutes, Doug put his arm around Michi’s shoulders and nuzzled her ear.

“Damn, Doug!  You need to learn how to do that better,” she said quietly while lifting her chin and smiling.  She turned, stood up, and reached down to take him by his hand, guiding him up to his feet.

She felt totally weird trying to act like a woman in lust when she felt nothing.  If they were under observation, she hoped it looked natural.

The two of them walked slowly back alongside the cliff finger to the denser foliage at the base of the farther-back cliff face, the same brush that hid the entrance to the access tunnel. She put her arms around Doug’s neck, then pulled him down to the ground.

Immediately the two parted and went to their bellies.  Doug reached out and parted the brush slightly so they could see out.  One moment, they were lovers ready for passion; the next they were soldiers in the ambush.

Michi reached into Doug’s pack.  It had carried the explosives, but it also carried her costume.  Off came the bikini top and on came the Red Athena’s top.  She peeled off her loose pants to reveal the camouflaged bammers she’d had on underneath.  Then came the boots and the pistol belt.  Finally, she pulled out the handgun and the rifle, and with three practiced pulls, snapped it to its full length.  The last two were risky.  These were the weapons with which she had been making her recordings, but by telling Cheri that she was going to work on more recordings, she had been allowed to keep them for the day.  If they had been stopped for any reason and the weapons had been found in Doug’s pack, there would have been no reasonable explanation.

All of this had been done lying in the dirt beside Doug.  He ignored her gymnastics and watched the running path.

“Here they come,” he whispered, excitement in his voice.

Two Marines were striding down the path, each stride seemingly gobbling up meters.  They looked powerful, and Michi had sudden misgivings.  What if things went wrong?

But it was too late.  As they strode into the kill zone, Doug pulled on the wire.

And nothing happened.

He pulled again, and the wire came to him easily.  There was no explosion.

“What the fuck?” he asked as the Marines passed on.

“You’ve got to check what happened,” Michi told him.  “I can’t go out like this.  Go to the picnic basket and act like you are getting something for us to drink, then take another pee.  And here,” she said, rubbing some dirt on his body.  “We’ve been rolling around back here, remember?”

Doug made his way out of the brush, stretched, and with a satisfied insolence, strolled back to the blanket and their food basket.  If Michi didn’t know better, she would have sworn the guy just got laid.  Who would’ve known he could act so well?

He picked up the blanket and two bottles of beer.  The blanket was a good touch.  It would have been reasonable to have taken it with them in the first place.  Then he wandered off to the bushes at the side of the cliff and disappeared.  A minute or two later, he came out zipping up his fly.  He sauntered over to Michi and got on his hands and knees to crawl in with her.

“The wire came undone.  I fastened it tighter this time,” he told her.

Doug had made the explosives with some common ingredients.  Sensors shouldn’t pick up anything unless they were looking specifically for that combination.  But any commercial fuze would be picked up by the Marine’s combat suits, so Doug had rigged up a simple mechanical fuze.  With one good tug, a spring-loaded hammer would fall, striking a small percussion cap and igniting the explosives.

“Let’s hope it works this time,” she said as they settled in to wait.

They lay in silence, watching for movement.  Finally, two Marines, either the same ones or two others, made their appearance.  Doug got ready.

“No, stop!” Michi hissed as the Marines approached the picnic basket and discarded shirts they had left as markers.

Two joggers were coming the other way, and they would be in the kill zone as well.  They had to wait again.

Just as the Marines passed the kill zone, one of them glanced to where Doug and Michi were hiding.  It was a quick look, but Michi knew then that their ruse had been necessary.  The Marine had been hoping to catch a glimpse of some action.

“Did you see that?” Doug asked.

“Sure did.  He must think you’re some sort of stud.  What’s it been?  Forty-five minutes now?”

“Yeah, that’s me.  Stud,” he said sarcastically.  “And now we wait yet again.”

They were running out of time.  They weren’t sure what time the other Marines would arrive, but they didn’t want to deal with them.  Four was too many as it was.

The two Marines had only been gone less than ten minutes when two more appeared.  That meant the other two were still close, and that increased the risk.

“Well?” Doug asked.

Michi ached to strike, but was the increased risk worth it?  She went back and forth in her mind.

“Now or never, Michi.”

She made up her mind.  “Do it!”

Doug pulled back on the wire, and the entire cliff face on the point seemed to erupt.  Rocks and clouds of dust plummeted to the ground, hiding the two Marines from view.  Doug and Michi burst from the brush and rushed forward, Michi with her rifle at the ready, not that it would do any good against a combat-armored Marine.

As the dust started to clear, they looked frantically for any sign of the Marines.  Doug pulled out a sensor and swept the area.

“I’ve got one!  He’s under there,” he said, pointing at a pile of rubble.  “He’s alive.”

“Can he get out?” Michi asked.

“Well, we’ll find out, won’t we, if he can,” Doug said logically.

Michi spotted a shape as the dust settled.  Her heart lurched, but the shape was still.

“Over there,” she shouted, sprinting to the edge of the river where a Marine was lying face up.

He wasn’t moving.  As Michi got closer, she could see that the lower half of his combat suit was crushed.  The Marine was dead.

How can he be dead when the one under all the rubble is still alive? she wondered.

“Quick, over there, from his head,” she told Doug.  “I want them to be able to see him.”

As Doug scrambled over the rocks that littered the river bank, Michi put her foot on the Marine’s head, then moved to beside the Marine, then finally decided on a foot on the chest.

“How do I look?” she asked Doug as he raised his recorder.

“Uh, your face!”

“No, this is what I want,” she said, not turning on the spoofer.

“You sure?”

“Yes!” she almost screamed.  “Hurry up!  We don’t have much time!”

The red light came on, and Michi calmed herself.  She turned to stare into the camera with her best warrior look.

“My name is Michiko MacCailín.  Some of you know me as The Red Athena.  I was born and raised here on Kakurega, and this is my home, a home under siege.  Propitious Interstellar has not only broken the charter, but they have murdered our citizens, not the least being my fiancé, Franz Galipoli.  When we resisted, they called in the Federation to rescue them with the Marines.  Make no doubt about it, we have been invaded, and we must fight back.  The Marines are not invincible, as you can see.  We can win.  All sons and daughters of Kakurega, rise up and throw the invaders off our home!”

“Michi, we need to go,” Doug said, pulling down the recorder.

There was a strange sound coming from the direction in which the other two Marines had marched.  It sounded like a cross between a cargo truck and a plane.

Doug was already scrambling up the bank.  Michi gave him a hand up, and both sprinted to the brush that hid the access door.  They were still 10 or 15 meters away when two shapes burst past the cliff point and into the rubble field.

“Go!” Doug shouted, pushing Michi forward into the bushes.  Michi saw the cliff face and thought they had made it when the bushes disintegrated and chips started flying from the rock face.  Several chips hit her as she fell more than dove into the entrance and scrambled on her hands and knees to the gate.  Her ears were ringing as she reached up to push the gate open.

She took a moment to look back for Doug when he plowed into her, knocking both of them past the gate and onto the dank floor.

Michi lay there, trying to catch her breath when Doug picked her up, shouting “Go, go!”  They stumbled forward, the only light coming from the entrance in back of them.

When the light behind them went dark, Michi thought they had gone far enough, but Doug pushed her down to the rock floor.  A moment later, all hell broke out over them.  A dip in the floor protected them, but chips of rock fell on top of them as rounds impacted, and then Michi felt the tingle of a side lobe of some sort of energy weapon.

“Keep low, but crawl,” Doug told her.

Both of them, Michi in the lead and Doug literally on her butt, managed to scoot farther down the passage.  When Michi felt the opening to the left, she knew they had reached their route out.  She pulled Doug in, and they both sat up, gasping for air.

“Why did you use your real face for the recording?” Doug asked in the darkness as a few rounds zipped past the opening and farther down the first tunnel.  “They’re going to know who you are as soon as we broadcast it.”

“Have you ever heard the word arinomamade?” she asked him as her heart started to slow down its frantic beating.

“No.  Is that Japanese?”

“Yeah.  My grandmother used to say it.  It means the way something is, or maybe ‘it is what it is.’  It’s kinda hard to put exactly in Standard.  But it fits why I did that.”

Some stone chips knocked free by the Marines firing managed to ricochet into their side tunnel, and both friends scooted in another three meters.

“It is what it is?” Doug prompted.

“Yeah.  I am not the Red Athena.  I’m me, a First Family citizen of Kakurega.  I’m me, Michiko MacCailín, whose fiancé was murdered by the company.  I’m me, a girl who won’t stand for that anymore.  That’s who I am, and I’m not going to hide behind a disguise.  If people are going to listen to me, they deserve it to be me, not some comic book construct.  Arinomamade!”

“I guess I understand, but your life just got levels more difficult.  I hope you realize that.  Think about it, OK?  I don’t have to release this if you change your mind,” he said, patting his recorder where he’d hooked it to his belt.

“I won’t.  I didn’t quite say what I had planned out there, but what I said was me, too.  I want you to run with it.”

“Your call, Michi.  I’ll ask you again before I do, though.”

The firing down the entry tunnel stopped.  The Marines must have given up, Michi figured.

“Good thing those guys are too big to get in here,” Doug said as what had happened sunk in.

“That saved us,” Michi said before another thought struck her.  “But the specs said they can molt out of their suits.  What if they come in after us on foot?”

“Shit.  I didn’t think of that.  Let’s get moving.”

He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket, and the two of them started off at a slow jog down the tunnel.  It would take awhile for the Marines to access the plans, as Doug had erased all copies on Kakurega.  They would have Federation copies, but it would take them some time to realize that.  Within 20 minutes, the two would be at their exit and changing into the clothes they had left there earlier.

Michiko had kept her promise.  She had taken it to the Marines on her own terms and won!

Chapter 28

How about Hanggaju Gozen?” Doug said, looking up from his PA.  “That’s in keeping with Tamara’s Highlander Samurai theme.  It says here she was an onna bugeisha, or female warrior.  Oh, not wait, she was captured and forced to marry the shogun.  We don’t want you and the CEO hooking up.”

The three were sitting in the condo, watching the net as Michi’s camcording was the subject of most social media.  The company blocked all official access, but the under-net could not be blocked without shutting down the entire planet, something the company could not do and maintain production.  They’d issued one statement, that there had been a “manufactured” camcording released, but that it was all CGI.

On GC109, a popular forum, one poster had written that given the latest recording, the name ‘The Red Athena” was somewhat inaccurate.  That was probably a little too far for even the normally light-handed moderators of the forum, but the three had read it before it was deleted and were lazily discussing a public name for Michi.

“I still think the Highlander Samurai is brills,” Tamara said, refusing to give up.

“Some people are calling you, the Kakurega Jeanne d’Arc, you know,” Doug went on.

“I saw that,” Michi said, “and my ancestors are probably rolling over in their graves.  A French heroine?  If anyone, it should at least be a good Celtic girl, like Boudicca.”

“Not everyone has your vaunted Scottish ancestry, and no one knows about her.  I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t pointed her out on the history holo,” Tamara said.

“Here’s another:  Tomoe Gozen. Seems she was a vaunted warrior and cut off the head of some enemy general,” Doug started.

Michi almost flinched at the “cutting off the head,” part.  Both Doug and Tamara knew that she had killed Hokkam, but the security report never mentioned her beheading him, and she had kept that to herself.

“She’s been popular over the ages in anime, so some people should know her.  Oh, wait, she was this other guy’s concubine.  What is it with these Japanese fighters?  Maybe those Celtic goddesses we found would be better,” Doug went on.

“I already told you I’ve already decided.  I made myself pretty clear.  I’m Michiko MacCailín.   I don’t need a Celtic goddess or Japanese samurai to give me credibility.”

“Oh, you’re no fun,” Tamara said sourly.  “If you’re going by your real name, how can I be ‘The Tattooed Avenger?’”

She got off the couch and stomped off to the bathroom.

“Do you think she likes that guy?” Doug asked.

“What guy?”

“You know, the Brotherhood spy,” Doug said.

“Him?  Tamara ‘likes’ almost everyone, and she has a pretty active appetite.  You know that.  Would she play hide-in-the-cupboard with him?  I don’t know.  Probably, if the opportunity presented itself,” Michi responded.  “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Is the boyfriend getting jealous?” Michi asked with a laugh.

With Doug constantly coming over, they had decided a little over a week ago that Doug and Tamara should become a “thing.”  They ate lunches together at work and came home together when their schedules coincided.  And Doug slept over more often than he went home. He slept on the couch, and inside the condo, it was the same as always, but they hoped to anyone on the outside that it would seem the two had a real relationship.

“No!” Doug protested.  “I, well, I just want to make sure everything looks right.  That’s all.”

His vehement denial gave Michi pause.  Did Doug really like her?

That line of thought disappeared as an undernet feed chimed on both of their PAs.  A vid of Marines moving through some buildings could be seen, and a voice said that there had been violence again in Dundee.  The vid was choppy and unsteady, but it zoomed in past the Marines to what were unmistakably bodies.  The voice reported that over 100 were killed as they assaulted a Marine unit.

“What’s up?” Tamara said as she came out of the bathroom.

“People are fighting the Marines,” Doug said soberly.  “I guess they listened.”

Michi stared at the dead bodies.  She knew, she hoped, it would come to this.  But seeing the bodies, well, that brought it into focus.   Those people were alive this morning, kissing lovers and playing with children.  Now, because of Michi, they were dead.

The price of war hit Michi hard.

Chapter 29

“OK, we’re running late.  Stand up and take off your shirt,” Doug said as he and Tamara came in the door.

“What?” she asked, standing up, but not taking off her T.

“Come on, girl.  Your shirt, take it off,” Tamara said, reaching over to help.

Michi didn’t resist, but she didn’t help much either as the shorter Tamara struggled to get the T over her head.

“Bra, too, girl.  Come on, off!” Tamara said impatiently.

Michi glanced at Doug.  Despite him now living on the couch, she had not paraded naked in the condo.  She had changed from the bikini to her Red Athena shirt in the park, but that had been a quick switch while Doug watched the kill zone.  Now, Doug was standing there, watching and waiting.  With a sigh, she shrugged and touched the two release buds, and her bra cups fell to the ground.

Doug handed Tamara what looked to be a large roll of gauze, like medics and nurses used.

“Hands up,” she told Michi.

Michi felt exposed like that, and she wished she knew what the two had prepared for her.  She knew she needed a disguise, but what that had to do with her standing exposed like that was beyond her.

Tamara put the leading edge of the gauze against Michi’s side.  “Doug, help me.  Hold this here.”

Michi stared over Doug’s bent head as he reached forward, pressing the leading edge against her.  Tamara started walking in back of Michi, unrolling the gauze.  She came to the front again, pulling the gauze tight against Michi’s breasts.  Then it became clear.  They were binding her!  OK, that made some sense.

It took a few minutes, but finally Tamara stepped back and looked at Michi’s chest.  “What do you think?” she asked Doug.

“She’s still not petite, but I think it’s enough,” Doug said.

Michi, hands still up, looked down.  Her chest was not small, but her breasts had been flattened pretty well.  She lowered her arms and then swung them around to see if the gauze would stay in place.

“That feel OK?” Tamara asked.

“Uh, yeah.  Weird, but OK.”

“Let me have the pad,” Tamara told Doug, who handed over what looked like a warped pillow.  “I don’t know.  The duct tape?”

“Yeah, I think the gauze might shift,” Doug said as they stared at her as if she was a mannequin.

“This might hurt a little when it comes off,” Tamara told her as she and Doug put the pad around her belly and over her hips and duct taped it into place.

It was tight, and it restricted Michi’s breathing just a bit, but it wasn’t too bad.

“Drop the shorts,” Tamara told her, but with the duct tape around her belly, Michi couldn’t bend over that well, and her shorts hung up on her knees.

Tamara had to reach over and knock them down so Michi could step out.  Doug and Tamara then proceeded to tape pads to her thighs and butt, leaving bulges where previously there had been none.  When they were finished, they both stepped back to check their work.

“I don’t know, it might be enough.  Let’s get her dressed,” Tamara said.

“Hey, ‘her’ is right here in front of you,” Michi grumbled, but without conviction.

Wrapped up, Michi couldn’t dress herself, so both of her roommates had to pull on the pants and shirt being careful to leave all the pads in place.  She sat down as Doug pulled a pair of Giraffes out of a bag.

Oh great, with me all bundled up, they want me to wear 12 cm platforms? She thought.

But when Doug slid on the shoes, she was surprised that her feet went in farther than she expected.  She stood up, and she felt like she was standing on the floor itself, not on the elevated soles.

“Hollowed out,” Doug said with a smile.  “Makes you look shorter than you really are to any surveillance.”

“Is all of this really necessary?” Michi asked.  “Isn’t this overkill?  You’ve got me a new face, after all.”

“I told you this would change your life.  They’ve got recordings of you, and your body, your posture, your gait, everything will have been entered into the system.  All the surveillance cameras will have been programmed to alert on anyone who fits those parameters.  So, it’s not just the face.  We have to change everything.”

He took the shoes back off, put something inside each one, then put them back on her.

“OK, walk,” he told her.

“Ow!” she exclaimed as something dug into her feet.  “What did you put in there?”

“Just an insert to make your gait different.”

“You mean that really works?” Michi asked.

“Yeah, why?”

Doug never knew about the two attacks on jacks, and Michi and Tamara had decided to keep that secret.

“I don’t know.  I guess I thought that was only in the spy flicks,” she said instead as Tamara silently mouthed “I told you” behind Doug’s head.

“OK, I think we’re ready.  Go take a look in the mirror,” Doug told her.

Michi walked into Tamara’s room and to the big, full-length mirror there.  In front of her was a slightly dumpy-looking girl, not really fat, but not slim either.  She turned on the new spoofer face, and the dumpy-looking girl turned into a dumpy-looking middle-aged woman.  The face was not too terribly different from hers, but it had lost the slightly Asian-cast her real face had.

“Yes, you’re beautiful.  But we’ve got to get going,” Tamara said, leaning against the doorframe.  “The NIP won’t wait.”

“You still think this is a good idea?” Michi asked her.

“No, I’m not sure.  But risk and rewards, like Doug said.  We’ve got to make a move sometime, and now, you’re hot,” Tamara responded.

“But you don’t have to go.  Why risk it?”

“I couldn’t get to your little ambush, so it’s my turn.  ’Sides, if this is a trap, then they’ll get my identity out of you.”

“I wouldn’t talk,” Michi said.

“Everyone talks.  Don’t let the flicks fool you,” Tamara said.

“You two done?  We’ve got to get moving,” Doug said, poking his head in the bedroom.

Michi and Tamara hugged, then Michi left the room and made her way to the street.  The other two would be following in a few minutes.  She slowly walked to the rendezvous point, just a woman on an afternoon stroll.  She would have felt better meeting at night, but the curfew made that impossible.

She stopped for a doughnut, and there, sipping some coffee, was an old lady wearing a green neck scarf.  Michi tried not to stare at her contact.  She nibbled at her doughnut, but when the old woman got up, Michi was only half-finished.  She slammed the rest down, and after a minute, left the shop.

The old lady was about 30 meters down the sidewalk and Michi slowly followed, looking in store windows, trying to seem inconspicuous.  The woman turned the corner, and when Michi reached it, she saw the woman stepping into an apartment building.  Michi hurried forward and stepped in as well.  The woman was gone, the access door closed.

Michi didn’t have a code, nor did she know an apartment number to ring to get buzzed up.  She tentatively reached out and pushed the door, and to her relief, it opened.  She stepped inside, and the old woman was waiting for an elevator.  Michi joined her, and they rode to the 32nd floor.  The woman got out without saying a word, and Michi, not knowing what else to do, followed her.  Halfway down the hall, a door opened and an arm reached out to pull Michi in.  Her heart pounded as a hooded man stood there.  He quickly ran a portable scanner over her and must have been satisfied because he motioned for Michi to enter the apartment.

“Michi, dear.  So glad to see you,” Cheri said, giving Michi a kiss on each cheek.

This was the first time they had seen each other in person since the broadcast.  Michi had made a recording, giving a full report, and that had been given to the chapter chairman, but they hadn’t had time to discuss things in more detail.

“I’m not sure if you’ve heard anything yet, but your parents have been arrested, and your home’s been razed,” she told Michi, her voice not quite indicating sympathy.

Michi thought it might have been somewhat of an “I told you so,” statement that Cheri should not have been kept out of the loop.

Michi was shocked at the revelation, though.  Her parents?  Her home?  She knew coming out would have ramifications, but she didn’t know her family would be affected like that.  What was the probable cause?  They were First Family, and the company could not run roughshod over any of them, at least according to the charter.  But then again, the company had shown before that it was willing to break the charter to suit its needs.

She had been essentially disowned by her family, but still, blood ran thick.  Their arrest was just one more thing on the list for which Michi planned on getting revenge.

“Michi, let me introduce you to Mike.”

Just “Mike?”  No last name? Michi wondered.

“Mike is an officer in the NIP, and he wanted to meet you.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for the other two?” Michi asked, speaking of Tamara and Doug.

“They won’t be coming,” Mike said.  “They’ve been taken somewhere else.”  He held up a hand as Michi started to protest.  “They will not be harmed.  We just wanted to meet you privately, and when you insisted on your friends coming too, this was just easier.”

Michi didn’t like that.  The other two were part of her conditions, and if this was the NIP, that didn’t bode well for potential cooperation.

That was the crux, though.  Were Mike and his unnamed companion really NIP?  Each of the old board members knew that Michi had used the NIP as bait to identify the traitor, and Hokkam had brought the company in on the supposed meeting, too, so it was not any secret.  They could have turned around and used the exact same tactic to capture Michi.  But Cheri had insisted this was the real deal, so Michi had agreed.

“Can we see the real you?” Mike asked, pointing to Michi’s face.

Michi had forgotten her spoofer.  With a flip of the switch, she was back to being Michiko.

“That’s better.  Ms. Baliles here has already explained your disguise generator.  It’s an interesting application, perhaps a little dated, but that might have been to your advantage given surveillance technology,” Mike went on.

Michi bristled at that.  “Dated?”  Who was he to criticize?  The NIP had been organized almost 20 years before, and what had they accomplished during that time?  Nothing!

“Ms. MacCailín, what now?” he asked.

What now?  What now what? she wondered, confused by the question.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You’ve killed a Federation Marine and essentially called out the planet to go to war.  So what are you going to do now?”

“Uh, well, I haven’t discussed that with Cheri and the board yet, so I don’t know of any concrete plans.”

“But you are not actually a member of the Workers’ Rights Party, if I understand correctly.  So why are you waiting for them?” he asked.

“No.  I mean yes.  I am not a member.  But we’ve been working together,” Michi said.

“Have you thought about coming to us?  We are the more, shall we say, active group in opposition to the company and Federation.  We’re not in it only for company employees—we are fighting for everyone on the planet, even including the First Families like your father and mother who are now in company holding cells.”

“And why do you want me?” she asked him.

“To be blunt, because you’ve managed to incite a spark in the people, something we haven’t been able to do.  We’ve got weapons.  We’ve got trained fighters.  We’ve got plans upon plans.  But we’ve not been able to draw the masses to the cause.  We think you can.”

Michi sat staring at him before looking to the other man.  “And does your quiet friend think that, too?”

The two men looked at each other, and with a shrug, the second man reached up and pulled on his chin.  A sheet of bioflesh lifted off, revealing the familiar face of the Right Reverend Duncan, the spiritual leader of The Kirk and the same man who had sat in her living room to grill her those months back.

“Yes, lass, I do,” he said.

Michi stared at the man in shock.  The NIP had a reputation of being obsessed crazies running around in the forest while playing militia.  How could the Right Reverend be involved?

“You’ve probably got many questions, and if you want, you and I can sit and talk, but the question now is if you want to help.”

“But you’re the—”

“I’m this year’s Right Reverend, aye.  But righteousness is righteousness, and the Kirk has always protected the oppressed.”

“But with guns?” she asked, still surprised.

“The sword of the Lord is wielded by mortal man, lass,” he said gently.

She looked from the Right Reverend to Mike to Cheri.

“What do you think?”  she asked Cheri.

“I wouldn’t have agreed to the meeting if I were against it.  Maybe, if the time is right, you can do more good with the NIP.”

“And is the time right, Mike?” she asked.

“Well, to be honest, we had planned on something later, but that was before you took it upon yourself to take out a Marine and issue a call to arms.  We have to be flexible if we are going to persevere, and you sort of kicked it all off.  We want to take advantage of that,” he said, all traces of self-importance gone from his voice.

Michi stood for a moment.  The thought of striking back, really striking back, excited her.  This was a moment where she could seize the momentum, seize the opportunity.

“And you are ready to strike?” she asked.

“Within a week, maybe two at the longest, yes,” Mike told her.

“I’m in, but under some conditions.”

“And what conditions,” Mike asked, his voice suddenly wary.

“First, I am not a figurehead.  When it comes to a fight, I will be at the forefront.”

“And second?”

“Second, I am not some comic book figure.  The costume goes.  No more bare midriff, no low cut bammers.  Whatever uniform you have, that’s what I’ll wear.”

She saw the Right Reverend smile at that.  No matter his willingness to fight, it seemed as if the First Family inherent cultural conservatism still held sway with him.

“Anything else?” Mike asked.

“Yes.  When we win, I want my parent’s house to be rebuilt.  That’s all.”

Mike held out his hand, which Michi took.  “Done and done,” he said, his face breaking out into a smile.

Michi was elated.  She was going to war!

Chapter 30

“We can fire 15 of these 25mm shells per minute, and they pack a pretty good punch,” the man said with evident pride in his voice.

Michi tried to look attentive as she listened to the man extol the virtues of their three Donaldson field guns, small mobile artillery that could be employed by a two-man team.  The NIP had three of them, and these were the heaviest guns in their inventory.  Or was it those rockets she’d seen only 20 minutes before?

Michi was having a hard time keeping everything straight.  She pulled down her fatigue blouse where it kept riding up under her pistol belt and over her butt.  The uniform was better than her super-hero costume, but despite her words, she was sure it had been tailored taking her figure into consideration.  There were other women in the NIP army, and their fatigues were the same shapeless ones given to the men.  Michi’s, however, gathered at the waist and had slightly tapered legs.  The difference was not so great, though, that Michi felt she had to protest.  She was pragmatic enough to realize that even if she insisted she was not a figurehead, still, as one of the leaders of the small army, appearances mattered.

Most of her first four days with the NIP army had been spent bending the flesh and getting her bearings on the underground complex that served as the NIP headquarters and training area.  It was located in an abandoned salt mine, and coupled with the best shielding they could buy, had been enough so far to keep the company, and now the Marines, off of them.

Michi would not turn 20 years old for another two weeks, but they had given her a general’s star to wear on her collar.   She wasn’t in command but had been given the title of Assault Leader.  Michi got the feeling that the position had been created just to appease her demand to be in on any coming action.

Michi thanked the ordinance technical two and tried to cubbyhole his position in the army.  A “two” was the same as a sergeant, right? All of the unique structures to the 2,000-man force were confusing her, but she had to just smile and radiate an aura of confidence.

At least the rank-and-file seemed to embrace her.  Even men and women in their 60’s and 70’s seemed to truly like her and expressed their willingness to follow her.  The fact that she had killed a Marine, and that is how the soldiers considered it, gave her immediate credibility and warrior status.

The leadership, on the other hand, seemed to merely tolerate her presence.  They were slightly condescending as if they found it amusing that the little girl wanted to play with the grown-ups.

Her “assistant” was Colonel Perseverance Hannrahan, but Michi had come to the conclusion that he was more of a baby-sitter than assistant.  When she asked about the coming battle, he told her not to worry, he was on top of it, and he would tell her when things firmed up.  Michi got the feeling that even if she were nominally in command of the assault, it would be Hannrahan giving the commands.

That pissed off Michi at first.  But she had to admit that she knew next to nothing about military tactics, so it was probably better that the colonel issue orders.  But Michi would observe and learn.  The next time, Michi would be better prepared to command in her own right.

“You’re supposed to go give a pep talk to the cooks,” the colonel told her, “but I’ve just been told that Jessep wants to see you.  Let’s head on back, OK?”

He phrased that as a suggestion, but Michi knew she really didn’t have much say in the matter.  Jessep was General Jessep Alvarez, the man in charge of the army and one of the highest-ranking members within the NIP.

At first, Michi had been surprised at the way people were addressed, usually by their first names.  She had envisioned people marching about, shouting “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!”  Instead, despite the rank insignia, things were rather casual.  Michi didn’t know if that disappointed or enthused her just yet.

Michi had to stop several times on the way to the conference room as people came up to welcome her or congratulate her on the attack on the Marines.  An older lady pulled Michi’s hand to her forehead, where she held it as she recited what sounded like a prayer in a language Michi didn’t recognize.  When she was finished, she lowered Michi’s hand to kiss it before letting her go, a beatific smile on her face. Michi knew the woman meant well, but that creeped her out.  Why would a woman, obviously in her 70’s or more, seem to almost worship a mere 19-year-old girl?  Michi tried not to let her unease show and instead reached out to hug the woman.

As with any group, crowd dynamics were such that when anything big was up, there was an undercurrent of intensity that could be sensed.  It could have been something as simple as the army leadership suddenly heading for the command center, or it could be some deep tribal perception that couldn’t be explained.  Whatever the reason, people started gathering close to the command center entrance.  The number of people surprised Michi.  She had been told that NIP had 2,000 soldiers, and they had been stepping up training since the Marines had landed.  Michi didn’t know if that meant actual combat soldiers or if that number included support personnel, leadership, or other members scattered across the planet.

As far as she knew, except for some of the leaders, and now Michi, most of the people who lived in the complex were indentureds who had run away.  The free citizens came and went as they pleased.  Michi had even recognized a few First Family members there, including one of her cousins.  Michi thought that the constant comings and goings would be a security risk, but Hannrahan had laughed when she brought that up saying they “had that covered.”

Several of the other leaders were already in the conference room, eating doughnuts and sipping coffee, when Michi and Hannrahan came in.  Jessep saw her and smiled, motioning her to come.

“Michiko!  I trust Perseverance has been getting you acclimated?” he asked, then going on before Michi could respond.  “Before we begin, I thought you might want to see this,” he said, holding out his PA.

It was a reward notice with a copy of her university id holo.  The Federation was offering a 300,000-credit reward for any information leading to her capture.

“300,000?  For ‘sedition?’” she asked, strangely disappointed.

She had known this was coming, but given the fact that she and Doug had taken out a Marine, she had expected something bigger, maybe even the max reward ever offered on Kakurega—a cool million.  Although 300, 000 was not chump change, still, other rewards often exceeded that.

“Yes, I thought you would find that funny.”

“But why sedition?” she asked, confused.

“Because officially, the dead Marine never happened.  Remember, they said the recording was fake.  So, they gave you a high-enough reward to interest the bounty hunters, but not enough to give credence that some uni girl managed to take out a Federation Marine.”

“But it’s not fake, and they know that,” Michi protested.

“They know that, and we know that, but they don’t want the public to know that.  And if a reporter had some balls, he or she would have tramped out to the Ledges and looked for the evidence like we did,” Jessep told her.

“You went out there?” Michi asked, surprised.

“Of course, we did, Michiko.  Due diligence.  We had to make sure before we approached you.  And now, almost everyone is here, so why don’t you take your seat.”

Michi went to her seat and sat down.  It was near the head of the table, but not at it.  Hannrahan sat immediately behind her and up against the wall.  Michi looked around at the other leaders of the NIP, nodding at both Mike and the Right Reverend.  She had met some of the others, but really was not yet on chatting terms with any of them.

Jessep called the meeting to order, then jumped right into the reason he had called them together.  “Friends, the time has come for us to finally level the first strike against those who oppress us.  We have planned, trained, and given our all for the last 20 years, and other than a few small actions, some small acts of sabotage, we have merely been a gadfly to the company.  That changes tomorrow.

“At 8:15 AM, we will launch a military attack on the Marines.  Our target?  None other than their hero, Captain Lysander, the scourge who attacked legal protestors on Soreau, the same Marine who tried to enforce illegal tariffs on Greater France, the same one who perpetuated the aggression on the trinoculars.”

A holo of the captain appeared in the center of the table.  He was standing in Prosperity Square, scowling at something out of holo range.

It was only a holo, and Michi had never met the man, but despite Seth’s half-defense of him, Michi felt the bile rise in her throat.  She would love to be part of the attack to take the man down.

“Captain Lysander’s company is located at the old refining complex, as many of you know.  He has 180 Marines with him, but we’ve got over 2,000 righteous soldiers who are anxious to defend our home.

“I’m going to turn this over to Dwantifor now for some of the details.  Get comfortable, because you know how he is once he gets started,” he said, just injecting the right amount of humor to break the tension, Michi thought.

The group chuckled, and then Jessep went on, “You can put away your PAs.  We are now officially in lock-down.  No one leaves and no communications.  Dwantifor, you’ve got it.”

There was a buzzing as the operations chief walked to the front.

“Pay attention,” Hannrahan whispered, leaning in to her shoulder.  “Not all of it will make sense to you, but pick up what you can.  We’re going to have a lot to go over tonight.”

Michi nodded, too excited to speak.  She watched the holo base, waiting for the holo itself to appear and eager to see what she would be doing.  At last, no more little ticky-tack efforts.  This was the real thing, and she was going to be part of it!

Chapter 31

Charlie Company, First Battalion, 11th Marines, commanded by Captain Ryck Lysander, was based at the old refinery where the first settlers cracked organics from oil and natural gas.  It was located downstream from the city at a bow in the River Tay, where pollutants would have less of an impact, but close enough for easy logistics.  With the arrival of Propitious Interstellar and their more advanced power generation emplaced, the old refinery grounds turned into an algae farm.  The company’s patented Blue-99 was their top organic base, used in everything from food products to plastics to cosmetics to liquid fuel for aircraft.

The Marine company’s location was probably more due to protecting the algae farm than anything else, but it also provided a good base of operations for actions in the southern part of the city.  Michi hadn’t realized it when she and Doug had taken out the Marine, but the Ledges was in the company’s “AO,” or area of operations, as she learned it was termed.

With the river on three sides, that left only the eastern approach accessible over land.  This was a concern, but both Generals Kyne Fuller and Loski Sonutta-Lyon, who had served with various mercenary companies in the past, seemed to think that with their huge advantage in manpower, and with the plan they had devised, the NIP could simply overwhelm the relatively small force inside the refinery.

The large force that would assault the entrance over the land, which Michi was nominally leading, was not the real breaching force, however.  The assault force would initiate an attack to pin down the Marines, and then the real breaching force would emerge from the River Tay itself to hit the Marines from the rear.  With that confusion, Michi’s assault force could charge the refinery and roll right in.

The river commando force was their surprise element, and Michi though the plan was brilliant.  No one would expect an underwater assault from a free-flowing river.  But what the Marines didn’t know was that the NIP had a number of commercial divers within its ranks, and with the heavy deep-sea suits they had been able to acquire and the firm bottom at the river’s bow, even non-divers could simply walk across the river.  The commando force would enter the river at a small lagoon that was out of sight to anyone at the refinery and would already be on its way, trudging the 500 meters to reach the first set of algae tubes at the leading edge of the river bank.

Michi looked around at those of her force who were in sight.  They had stopped in the trees stopped well short of the broad expanse leading up to the refinery’s front gate.  Two Marines in combat suits were manning it, according to the reports coming in.  Inside, there were probably 120-130 more Marines.  The night patrols had already returned and were probably sacked out, and the day patrols had left.  They would be non-factors in the coming assault.  The NIP outnumbered the Marines fifteen-to-one, and from what she had been told, an attacking force only needed a five-to-one advantage to succeed.

“You ready for this?” Hannrahan asked her.

“I was born for this,” Michi replied.

“Just remember, don’t go charging off.  We are here to attract their attention and fix the Marines in place so our commandos can breach the defenses.  Only then, will we actually go into the attack ourselves.”

“I understood that the last fifty times you told me” Michi muttered under her breath.

She glanced at her watch.  They had fewer than five minutes to go.  Her warrior spirit was clamoring for attention, and it was about time to let her out.  She realized that she was still somewhat of a figurehead, but if she was getting into the fight, she could accept that.

She checked her rifle.  It had still been packed when she got it, and she had felt like she was opening a Christmas present as she ripped away the plastic storage wrap.  It was beautiful, a two kilojoule Leung Min pulse rifle.  It didn’t have as much range as that of most of her soldier’s weapons, but it was simple to use, and within 15 meters, it was deadly.  Aiming was not vital—a simple point-and-shoot was all she would need to shut down any Marine in her path.  She had one extra powerpack, so she was good for about 100 shots, but the fight should be over before she could exhaust the rifle’s charges.

Hannrahan was absorbed with his watch.  He held up his other hand, then still looking at his watch, brought the free hand down in a chopping motion.

“OK, tell the arty to open up,” he told her.

She flipped on her throat mic, cleared her throat, and gave the command that committed the people of Kakurega to war.  “Donaldson team, commence fire.”

Behind her, the three Donaldsons opened up, the outgoing rounds a sharp report.  They were only 1,000 meters back, so within seconds, there were explosions to Michi’s front as the rounds hit the refinery.  The war was on!

She counted five outgoing volleys, and before Hannrahan could tell her, she shouted into her mic, “Assault force!  Up and at ’em.”

Michi had gone over in her mind what she might say when the time came, but in the end, decided that she didn’t want anything too flowery, just a simple command.

She jumped up, pulling down on the bottom of her body armor, getting the collar off of the base of her throat.  It was uncomfortable, didn’t fit right, and restricted her breathing, but the command staff had insisted on it.  Every piece of body armor they possessed had been passed out, with all of the first wave of the assault force getting it along with some of the second wave.

Hannrahan was speaking into his throat mic as he moved just to her front.  Anger flared in Michi as she realized that he was controlling at least part of the assault.  This was her command, not his!  She pushed her anger down for the moment—she would confront him on that after the refinery was taken.

There was an explosion just off to Michi’s left.  Michi felt the shock wave, but didn’t see anything through the trees.  She was momentarily startled, but then pushed forward.  Of course, the Marines wouldn’t just let them waltz in.  They were professionals, after all.  But if the Marines were firing at them, then her assault force was doing its job by fixing the Marines in place.  Within moments, the river commando breaching force would be hitting them through the algae farm.

Coming out of the trees, still some 300 meters from the front gate, the first rank ran up the slight bank of the roadbed for Highway 2.  This was the major highway that ran along the river to the south to Gaberson and points beyond.  Four lanes wide with a grassy median, it could be a kill zone if they let it.  That wasn’t going to happen.  They wouldn’t cross it in force until the Marines were focused on the breaching force.  But to give that force a chance, the assault force had to act the part, and that was going to result in casualties.

The open area from the T-intersection to the refinery’s gates was almost 400 meters wide and 300 meters long, with the river on the south side and trees on the north.  The refinery sat like an ancient fort on the west side of the open area.

As Michi crested the roadbed and sprinted across the highway, she only had a glimpse of the front gates before all hell broke loose.  Several explosions sounded just in front of her with plumes of smoke and dirt erupting into the air.  The sound of gnats zinged past her ear, and she saw one of her men stumble and fall.

“Now!” Hannrahan yelled from a few meters off her side.

“Fall back!” she screamed, turning and running back to the far side of the highway and diving for the ground where the roadbed offered her slightly less than two meters of protection from direct fire.

She got up on an elbow and looked up and down the edge of the road.  She had gone over the road with about 400 soldiers, and it looked like most of them had made it back.  A body hurtled down the depression fifteen meters away from her, the soldier’s neck half-torn open, blood spurting wildly several times before tapering off.

Michi stared at him.  She knew some people would be killed, but seeing a man who had followed her into battle, trusting her to lead him to victory, die right before her eyes brought the seriousness home to her.  This was not a lark.  This was life and death.

“Send up a count,” she heard someone call out.

“I’d hoped we could have gotten farther,” Hannrahan said beside her.

“Arinomamade,” she said quietly, looking up and down her line.

“What?” he started, but Michi waved him off, and he continued, “But I think this still might do the trick.”

“Are they going to mortar us?” Michi asked.

“We’ll find out pretty quickly, won’t we?”  Hannrahan said, sounding dismissive of her question.

One of the assumptions of the assault was that the Marines’ ROE would not let them damage Highway 2.  The company needed it to reach the cities and facilities to the south.  Her first rank relied on that fact.  The hope was that as the Marines knew they were there, and as they had acted like a disjointed force without the courage and fortitude to continue, the Marines would organize some sort of counter-attack.  If that happened, the rest of the 1,100-person assault force would pour from the forest into the attack.  If the timing was right, the breaching force would be hitting the Marines from the rear at the same time.  The Marines would be caught in a pincher and be destroyed.

Michi looked back to where the bulk of her force was hidden.  Direct fire rounds were flying over their heads, the occasional clods of dirt and grass raining down on them.  But something was missing, and it took Michi a moment to figure out what it was.

“Where’s our arty?” she asked Hannrahan.

“Good question,” he said, and without even pretending to go through her, he got on his throat mic.

The throat mics replied primarily on subvocalizations, so Michi couldn’t hear more than a murmur, but from lip-reading, she could see him trying to raise the gun teams.  He gave up and looked to Michi, shaking his head.

“Damn pieces of shit probably broke down,” he said.  “I told Jessep to get the KU-300’s from Gentry.  But he wanted to save a few credits, and look now.  Well, it is what it is, and we may not have any supporting arms.”

“Do we need them?” Michi asked.

She swore Hannrahan was about to roll his eyes, but he answered, “No, we don’t need them.  But casualties will be higher without them.

The head count came back to Michi then.  Only 348 men and women had made it back to the depression that protected them now.  Michi gulped.  That mean 59 people had not made it.  They were just over the lip of the road bed, wounded or dead.

A sudden thought hit her.  “Will they be shooting our wounded?  They’re still firing!”

“Wouldn’t put it past the bastards,” Hannrahan conceded.

“Well, shouldn’t we do something?” she asked with concern.

“Do what?  Get more people hit?  That’s a kill zone there, just like we knew it would be.  Let our river team get in before we sacrifice anyone else.”

Michi looked at her watch, then asked, “But shouldn’t they already be assaulting?”

Hannrahan looked at his.  “Yeah, they should.  But walking on a river bottom can be tricky.  You can’t see anything, so it’d be easy to get turned around,” he said.

He put his hand to his throat mic, though, and contacted someone.  Michi wasn’t even upset anymore about him bypassing her.  She just wanted answers.

“Uh, we’ve got some garbled messages from the breaching team.  Command is trying to find out what’s going on, and they’ll get back to us in a moment.”

“But they should have gotten in at least to the algae farm, right?  The Marines won’t attack in there.”

“No plan lasts beyond the first shot in a battle.  We have to be ready to improvise, and I’m guessing we’ll be pulling back about now,” he said.

“Pull back?  But what about the Marines?” she protested.

“The fucking Marines are why we might have to pull back.  If the breaching team failed, we can’t conduct a frontal attack.”

“Don’t give me can’t, colonel!” Michi screamed at him.   “We’ve got almost 2,000 soldiers who came here to win, not to slink away with their tails between their legs!  And if you don’t have the balls to take the Marines on, I sure do!”

She stood up, ignoring the round impacting on the edge of the roadbed and showering the two of them with dirt.

On the far south side of her line, firing broke out.  She slowly turned to look and saw a dozen or so combat-suited Marines emerge from the river, firing their weapons at her soldiers.  She could see some of her men and women firing back, but only those at the very end of the line could fire without fear of hitting the others.

“Well, colonel, do you have any balls?” she asked before turning and starting to run down the line towards the fight.

“Follow me!” she screamed, her anger mounting.  She would crush the Marines, then focus on the refinery.

Alongside her, soldiers were jumping up and running, a mass of unstoppable humanity.  More of her men and women started pouring out of the forest to join them.  There had to be 600 or more of them rushing down the 40-meter-wide open area between the road and the edge of the forest.

Something hit her in the arm, knocking the rifle out of her hand and almost spinning her around, but she regained her feet and continued to run.  Soldiers were falling around her, but she led the charge.  They would close with and destroy the enemy.  It was their destiny!

Suddenly, Michi was lifted into the air, heat and sound enveloping her.  The sky, her soldiers, and the road rotated several times in her vision before the ground filled it one last time as she slammed down, and all went dark.

Chapter 32

A burst of pain forced its way into Michi’s consciousness, pulling her from the depths to which she had descended.  She struggled to make sense of her world, and another blow almost knocked her back into nothingness.

“Hey, the bitch’s back with us,” a voice registered.

Michi opened her eyes.  A jack had her by the collar having pulled her to a sitting position.  His arm was cocked back to hit her across the face again.  She knew she wasn’t dead.  She hurt too much for that.  The smell of blood, sweat, and shit was too strong for that.  Michi might be in hell, but she wasn’t dead.

“She doesn’t look so tough now, does she?” another jack said as he came up to stare at her.

Michi focused on the second jack’s bulging belly, which pulled open his shirt, leaving gaps between the buttons.  She realized the guy’s clothing didn’t matter, but she needed an anchor on which to focus in an attempt to gather her thoughts.

“What . . . what happened?” she managed to get out.

“Ha!  What happened?  Derrick, she wants to know what happened!” the first jack said, the one who had slapped her face.

The second one stepped forward, and with a gloating smile creasing his face, said, “Well, Miss Red Athena, what happen was that you tugged on superman’s cape and got your asses handed to you.  The current count is that over 1,300 of you fucking rebels were killed, another 600 captured.

“What, you thought you might actually win?” he asked as he saw her jerk at the news.  “You never had no chance.  We had loyal people who infiltrated your vaunted NIP.  We knew everything you were going to do.  We wanted you to attack, in fact, once we had the Marines here.  That way we could get you out in the open and stomp on you like cockroaches.  Hell, with all those who got zeroed, you’re lucky to even be alive.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” the first jack said with an evil laugh.  “About being lucky and all.  Now that she’s awake, she’s got some ‘splaining to do, and I don’t think that’s going to be pleasant, no I don’t.  She’ll wish she had bought it with the rest before Fordyce and his team are done with her.”

“I think you’re right, there, Gunter, my man.  I think you’re right.  I’ll go tell Fordyce she’s ready for him.”

“Hey, ask him if we can watch!” the first jack asked his retreating friend.

He shifted his grip to Michi’s hair and pulled her head up until she was only centimeters from his face.

He looked deeply into her eyes for a moment before saying, “You fucked up, girl, and now you’re going to pay the price.”

He let go, and her head thudded back onto whatever she was lying on.  Sharp lances of pain radiated throughout her body as her head bounced.

She almost cried out, but she knew that was nothing.  Whatever awaited her would be much, much worse.

Chapter 33

Michi was trying not to cry.  Was he telling the truth?  Did 1,300 soldiers really die?  All of this had been her idea, all because the company murdered Franz.  But her anger had cost 1,300 more people, people who had loved ones, people who had their own lives.

When the man who had to be Fordyce finally came in the little cell in which she was held, she merely looked up at him in resignation.  Whatever his plans, she probably deserved them.

“Ah, you are awake, Miss MacCailín.  Good.  You and I are going to have a good time, together,” he said, actually rubbing his hands together in anticipation.  “I have some things to ask you, and you are going to give me the answers.  I won’t lie to you, though.  Whether you tell me easily or hard, it won’t make much difference to you because,” he leaned forward to whisper into her ear, “I just enjoy it too fucking much.”

The two previous jacks had evidently received permission to watch as they followed Fordyce in as did one other man.  The one called Derrick had the decency to look nervous and uncomfortable, but the other three looked at her with unbridled eagerness.

Michi was lying on a metal table.  Her right arm, the one that had been hit during the assault, was cuffed to one of the table supports.  She didn’t struggle as the four men surrounded her.

“Chen, you and you,” he said, pointing at the other jack, Gunter, “take off her clothes.”

Both men jumped forward, hands quickly stripping her down.  With her arm attached to the table leg, they jerked on her shirt a few times, eliciting a gasp from her as they jarred her injured arm, before grabbing a knife and cutting the shirt off.

She had expected something along these lines, and she tried to ignore the growing feeling of vulnerability as the men gawked at her body.  She tried to send her mind elsewhere.  That worked in books and flicks, but it wasn’t doing too much for her.  She was very much rooted in a small cell, naked on a cold metal table.

“OK, my dear.  My first question is where is the man you call Jessep?  He wasn’t captured, nor was he among the bodies.  The many, many bodies, I might add.  So where might he have gone?”

Michi couldn’t tell them even if she wanted to.  She didn’t know.  She suspected that Fordyce knew that she didn’t know, too.  But he smiled, took a short, wicked looking knife, and put the tip a centimeter from her left eye.  Lowering it to her cheek, he lightly traced a line down her face and neck, over her clavicle, across her breast, and down her belly.  He lingered with the knife tip alongside her inner thigh, and despite her resolve, Michi flinched.  He almost chuckled, and then started the knife moving again.  It went down her thigh.  Michi couldn’t tell if he was actually cutting her or not, but when he passed her knee, the pressure eased.

Michi let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.  She started to relax her muscles, which she had involuntarily tensed, when fire sunk into her calf as Fordyce plunged the small knife up to its hilt.  She let out a screech of pain.

“Oops!  Sorry about that,” he said with a laugh, a laugh echoed by at least two of the others.  “It must have slipped.

“So, where were we?” he asked, pulling the knife out of her leg.

He moved in front of Michi and slowly licked her blood off the blade.  If he was trying to unsettle her, it was working.

“Oh, I think I was asking you about Jessep.  But we can come back to that.  I see you have beautiful hands, and I want to play before we get to work.”

Michi raised her head as he pulled out a pair of pliers from the bag the fourth man, Chen, held out for him.  They were simple, ordinary household pliers.  Michi had used similar ones a thousand times, never thinking about how evil they could be.

“What say you, right or left?” he made a show of asking the other three.  “What, left you say?  I am at your command.”

Michi started breathing hard as Fordyce grabbed her free hand and held it up, admiring it as if it was a piece of art.  Michi twisted and brought her arm forward, breaking free of his grasp.  She punched out, but Fordyce ducked back out of the way.

“A fighter!  All the better.  Fighters last longer.  You two, grab her arm and hold it down,” he said.

Gunter and Chen stepped up to grab her arm.  Michi struggled, and she managed to land a punch to Chen’s nose, starting a flow of blood.  Within seconds, however, they had her arm pinned to the table.  Chen licked at the blood on his face, then with a smile, pushed his face onto her left breast, wiping some of his blood off.

“Ah, yes, now we have the hand trapped like a dove.  And look, no ring on the finger.  Wasn’t she supposed to be married?  What was his name?  Franz Galipili?  Did that man leave her at the altar?” he asked in mockery.

“Fuck you, you bastard,” Michi blurted out, knowing she was playing into his hands.

“That’s some mouth you have there, young lady.  I was going to offer you to Chen here as a wife since you seem to be missing a man, but I don’t know if he’s going to want you now.”

“Oh, I ken teach her manners, never you fear,” said the man holding her arm down.  He leaned forward and licked her face, from chin to eyebrow.

Michi tried to headbutt him, but he was too quick, and he jumped back out of the way.

“Temper, temper, Miss MacCailín.  That will get you in trouble sometime,” Fordyce said.

His play-acting was infuriating Michi, and she wanted to lash out.  Then, somehow, the absurdity of that hit her.  She’d been shot.  Her calf was on fire after being stabbed.  She was naked, and two men were holding her down while a third was threatening her hand, and she was worried about the personality game her torturer was playing?  She actually laughed.

“Oh, something funny?  I can assure you that nothing is,” Fordyce said, suddenly serious.

Have I hit a nerve?  she wondered.

She didn’t have time to wonder for long as Fordyce reached in and wrenched her ring finger up, grabbed it with the pliers, and twisted.  She let out a blood-curdling scream as her universe descended into a maelstrom of pain.

“Please . . . please,” she called out.  If she had known where Jessep was, she was afraid that she would tell them before enduring that again.

It took minutes for the intense agony to fade to an aching throbbing that kept time with her pulse.  She didn’t want to imagine what her hand looked like.  It wasn’t until she finally began to get control of her thoughts that she noticed the other jack, Derrick, had left.

“‘Please?’  You said ‘please.’  Please what?” Fordyce asked her.

“Just, please, what do you want?” she whispered, ashamed of herself.

“Oh, we’ll get to that later.  Now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay for your sins,” he told her.

He took the piers and put them against her lips.  She clenched them tight.

“No?  No teeth?  OK—I don’t want anyone to accuse me of being uncaring,” he said, back to his facetious attitude.

He brought the pliers lower off her face and started down to her belly when he stopped, then brought them up to her right nipple.  He closed the pliers, slightly squeezing the nipple, but not too hard—yet.

Michi tensed up.  She knew what was coming, and she tried to fortify her will.

“You seemed to be proud to flash these around for everyone to see in your oh-so-clever camcordings.  So how about it if I just yank this bad boy right off, huh?” he said, moving slightly to get a better angle.

“No!” shouted Gunter.

“Excuse me?” Fordyce said with mock incredulity.

“You said, for me helping you, I can, you know, have her.”

“And so you will, but later.”

“But if you take that nip off, well, I don’t like that none.  I want her whole when I do her,” he protested.

Michi took in a deep breath.  She had rather expected this as soon as she woke up in captivity.  She thought she had steeled herself to the inevitable, but when faced with it, she realized that she was not the strong one to just shrug something like that off.

“Well, never say I’m a man who doesn’t keep his word.  Please, my dear companion, take your prize.  I can always play later.”

“What, here?  With you looking?” Gunter asked.

“It’s up to you.  You can take her or not, but none of us are leaving,” Fordyce told him as Chen laughed.

Michi had a moment of hope while Gunter stared at the two other men first, then at her.

That hope was dashed when Gunter shrugged and said “Well, fuck it.  If you want to see me and her getting it on, be my guest.”

He pulled off his shirt first, bloody from either Chen’s nose or any one of her wounds.  Next came his boots, then his pants.  Last were his undertights.  He stood there, naked and rampant with excitement.  Not that there was much of a penis there.  He was decidedly under-sized.

He looked like a bull moose in rut, though, almost snorting in his eagerness.  Michi knew what was going to happen, and the act itself didn’t upset her as much as the helplessness, the knowledge that this piece of shit was going to do to her what he wanted without regard to her as a human being.

She still had her mouth free, and that was the only way at the moment that she could strike back.

She looked at him as he panted with lust.  With her best attempt at disdain, she said, “Oh come on.  If you are going to use rape to try and break me, you would do better to give me a man with a big enough tool to do some damage.”

“What?” he screeched!  “I’ll show you damage, you bitch!”

He started stepping forward, but Chen was laughing uproariously.  “She’s got you there.  My three-year-old’s got a bigger dick than that!”

Gunter stopped and glared at Chen.  “Shut the fuck up!  I’ll show you!  I’ll fuck her until she begs for more!”

“Uh, maybe not,” Fordyce said, pointing to Gunter’s penis which had started to go flaccid as he lost focus.

With an animal grunt, Gunter rushed Michi, threw her legs open, and pushed himself between them.  Except he had nothing left.  He had lost it.

“See, nothing there.  You might as well get back to your pliers because this little boy can’t perform,” she said to Fordyce, trying to inject as much of a dismissive tone as she could.

“You fucking bitch!” Gunter screamed.  He scrambled off her and pulled his fist back.

As Fordyce yelled “No!” that big fist came forward with the full weight and emotion of Gunter behind it, smashing into Michi’s nose and sending her mercifully into the darkness.

Chapter 34

Michi slowly came to.  While still in the murky state of semi-consciousness, she wondered if she’d been raped.  She tried to feel if she had what she imagined that trauma would be like, but with the rest of her pain, she couldn’t tell.

It was only then that she realized someone was there, someone touching her body.  With a start, she willed herself back into full consciousness.

She was still on the table, whether moments after Gunter had hit her or much later, she had no idea.  A man in black utilities stood over her, running his hand across her body, manipulating her.  Instinctively, Michi tried to scooch away from him, but without seeming to notice her attempts, the man kept a firm hold on her as he continued his groping.

“Add a broken clavicle,” he said to another black-clad man Michi just noticed standing behind him, PA in hand.

The man reached over to Michi’s right arm, which was still cuffed to the bed.  He ran his hand down her arm, probing at the wound.  Michi gasped at the pain, but it didn’t seem as if the man was intentionally trying to hurt her.

He picked up a scanner from beside her and ran it over her upper arm.  After glancing at the readout, he said, “Right arm, hypervelocity dart wound, through and through.  Hairline fracture of the humerus.”

“Who are you?” Michi croaked out.

The man ignored her, instead reaching out and taking the other man’s PA.  He read over it, then held the PA over his eye for a retinal scan, certifying whatever was there.  He handed it to yet a third black-clad man who had been standing by the door of her cell.  The third man took the PA, looked at it, then stepped forward to stand over Michi’s naked body.

“So, Doc, you’ve got the dart shot in the arm, and that nicked the humerus.  You’ve got one blown ear drum, a Class 2 concussion, a fractured and avulsed left ring finger from the middle phalanx distal, a puncture wound to the right calf, a broken nose, and assorted contusions,” he said, shifting his eyes to each spot on her body as he listed them.

Michi listened in as if he was describing someone else.  It didn’t quite seem real.  She noted that nothing was said about vaginal tearing, so she wondered if that meant that her getting Gunter to explode had stymied that.

“OK, I accept the survey,” the man said, holding the PA up to his eye for the scan.

He pulled out his own PA and tap-transferred the report from the doctor’s (for that is what he had to be) PA to his.  The doctor nodded, took his PA, and left, trailing his assistant.

Michi was confused.  The doctor had said she had a concussion, so maybe that was an excuse.  But what happened to Fordyce, and who were these people?  They were military, but their utilities were black.  She didn’t think they were Marines.  Was that what the FCDC wore?   The Federation Civil Development Corps had a bad reputation, worse than the Marines, but they tended to keep in the background and did not get the same press as the Navy or Marines.

If they were FCDC, then that was a relief.  Anyone was better than the jacks who had held her before.  At least these people seemed to care about her injuries.  Michi was under no impression that she was in a good place, though.  She knew she was in big trouble.  She was looking at a long-term imprisonment at best, at worse, well, she didn’t want to think about that.

“Henderson, get in here,” the man barked and another man came in the door.  “Get her cleaned up, especially that shit.  I hate a dirty work place.”

Michi tried to look down, mortified.  She hadn’t even noticed the smell, but now that the man had mentioned it, she could tell her bowels had let go at some time.  She looked back up as Henderson came to stand over her, the disgust obvious on his face.

“Uh, Chief, how do I, I mean, with what?” he asked.

“St. Charles’ ass, Henderson.  Get a bucket and a rag and just do it.  Do I have to take you by the hand?”

“OK, sure chief,” Henderson said and scurried out of the room.

Michi stared at the ceiling, refusing to meet the “chief’s” eyes, even if she felt them on her.  Within a few minutes, Henderson had returned, lugging a bucket of water.  He heaved it onto the table, and some of the water splashed out over her.  He dipped a rag or towel in the water, and then after pausing as if wondering where to start, he placed the wet rag on her shoulder and began to rub.  Michi just endured, not that she had much choice.  She endured as he rubbed her face.  She endured as he cleaned her breasts.  She endured as he cleaned off her arms and legs.  She endured as he got between her legs and tried to clean up her shit, sliding the rag under her butt until the chief, exasperation evident in his voice, told him to tilt her up on her side.

Utterly humiliated, she barely noticed the lances of pain that shot through her as Henderson struggled to keep her up, finally using his shoulder to hold her while he scrubbed the table and her ass.  Finally, he let her back down and looked expectantly up at his boss.

“Weak effort, Henderson.  But it will have to do for now.  Get rid of the filthy water and clean yourself up, then get back here.  We’ve got work to do.”

Henderson grabbed the bucket and hurried out as the chief walked back up and stood over her, looking down at her face.  He didn’t say a word, and Michi was feeling the stress rise.

What the hell does he want? she wondered.  Just get it over with!

Finally, Henderson came back into the room, and the chief leaned in to talk.

“Miss MacCailín, I am Chief Warrant Officer Three Virag Chopra of the United Federation Civil Development Corps.  You are now under custody of the same, initially charged with disorderly conduct, but I should tell you that you will most likely be charged with more crimes under the Federation Charter.  You will be questioned with regards to your participation in the attack of May 15, 335 SR, on the Marines at the refinery at coordinates 30.216355 degrees north, 52.207031 west on Kakurega.  Are you in fact Michiko MacCailín, Federation ID A4793677277GB, born on May 19, 315—hmm, today your 20th birthday?”

Michi nodded.

“Please speak your response.  Is this you?”

“Uh, yes, it is,” she meekly said.

“And do you understand what I just told you?” he asked her, all businesslike.

“Uh, yes.”

“Private First Class Antonio Henderson, United Federation Civil Development Corps, did you witness Miss MacCailín’s response?”

“I did,” Henderson said.

“Hold still,” Chopra told her, placing the PA in front of Michi’s face.

Michi didn’t resist, but kept her eye open for the scan.  The ready light flashed green, and Chopra took the PA over to Henderson and got his certification as well.  He checked the read out, then slipped the PA into his holster.

“Now that the formalities are out of the way,” he said, putting his PA back in its holster, “let me tell you what is happening.  First, Miss MacCailín, I am sure you realize that you are in a world of shit.  Attacking Federation Marines is bad enough, but being the person who instigated the attack will probably result in your execution.”

Michi knew that, but to hear it actually being vocalized gave it a much bigger impact.

“I don’t really care, though, what happens to you.  My job is simple.  I am here to extract information from you that can enable us to protect the Federation and Federation citizens.  It is really that simple.  And rest assured, Miss MacCailín, that I will get that information.  I am a professional and very good at what I do.

“And don’t think you will be able to withhold information from me.  I am not those clowns from Propitious Interstellar’s security.  Yes, I have seen the tapes,” he said as he saw her flinch.  “Not a bad move, getting your rapist angry enough to knock you out.  But nothing you say or do will change the outcome of what is about to happen to you.  And I am afraid to say that after this is over, you might wish those jimmyleg goons still had you.”

The very calm seriousness with which he spoke struck fear deep into Michi’s heart.  Her treatment at the hands of the jacks had been brutal.  What could be worse?  She didn’t want to find out.

“The jimmylegs might have succeeded over time; how quickly depending on how strong you were.  But their methods are brutal and inefficient.  You would end up telling them anything, whatever you thought they wanted to know, to stop them.  Most of all, though, they enjoy the process, without regards to the information.

“I, Miss MacCailín, on the other hand, do not enjoy inflicting pain.  I won’t hesitate to do what is necessary, but that is only a means to the end.  I want the information.”

He picked up Michi’s mangled hand, looked at it, then shook his head.  “See this, Henderson?  This is what I was talking about.  Torture for torture’s sake, the frigging amateurs.  And she didn’t talk, so it was all wasted effort.”

He dropped her hand and said, “Bring me the I88.”

Henderson pulled out a small rectangular instrument, then some wires.  It was an inanimate object, but Michi imagined she could sense the evil emanating from it.  Chopra took it from Henderson, connected the wires, attaching them to Michi.  One wire was placed on her right ear, the other on her left big toe.  Michi trembled.  The lack of knowledge of just what that thing was was tearing her apart.

“Miss MacCailín, this is an I88, which is an oldie but goodie, an intensifier.  It excites nerves more than any physical stimulus.  No one is actually hurting you, but you will believe they are.  Your body will believe they are.  I am not in love with intensifiers, but I want you to see what I have in my little toolbox.  I tried it once myself, and the experience still resonates with me when I am this close to the device.  And so . . .”

He reached and pressed a button, and immediately, Michi’s world exploded into the bright lights of utter agony.  Every nerve in her body was aflame and determined to burn up in an orgy of pain.  She didn’t know anything—her name, where she was, who she was—only the pain coursing through her.  It was the only thing that mattered, and nothing else existed.  This other dimension stretched on for days, years, maybe longer.

And then it was mercifully gone, completely gone.  She lifted her head, sure her body had been burnt to a crisp.  But she was untouched.  She was the same battered, hurting Michi that she had been before that devil device had been turned on.  Her body still hurt from her earlier abuse, but that didn’t seem so impactful now that she had something much more severe than physical pain to compare it to now.

She gasped for breath as she looked up into Chopra’s eyes, and he was just staring at her, expressionless.

“Fun little toy, huh?” he asked.  “And I could use it, again and again until you talked.  But you could tell me anything, and we could waste time finding out that you had lied to me.

“So that puts me in a quandary, right?  Luckily, I have a few more tools in my toolbox.  Lucky for me, that is.  Maybe not for you.  No, I’m being facetious.  Most certainly not for you.

“Henderson, the Propoxinal.”

Michi gulped.  She’d heard of it, of course.  It was a “truth serum” featured in some recent flicks.  In one of them, the chemical had turned people into zombies, their minds destroyed.  She realized that was fiction, but still, it was scary stuff.

“I see by your reaction that you recognize my little friend,” Chopra said as Henderson gave him his dosing unit.  “Don’t worry, it won’t turn you into a flesh-eating zombie.  Although, that might be a better fate, if you ask me.  A barely aware vegetable who just sits and soils herself seems a lot worse to me.”

“But that’s illegal, isn’t it?” she asked.

Chopra and Henderson broke out laughing at that.

“You are really in no position to protest, young lady.  And while Propoxinal is technically illegal, I can use whatever I want, based on my own judgment, with regards to security.  You are an enemy of the Federation, and I will do what I have to in order to ensure your threat is neutralized.”

“But you won!  You won the battle.  There is no more threat,” she cried, her voice getting more panicked.

“And that is what I intend to find out.  You see, Miss MacCailín, you are telling me that, but can I trust you?  Can I be assured that right now, more of your friends are not massing for an attack?”

“I’m telling you the truth!”

“PFC Henderson, do you believe Miss MacCailín?” he asked his assistant.

“Sure, sir.  She sounds like the honest sort,” he said with a smirk on his face.

“And I believe you, too,” Chopra said with mock sincerity.  “But I have been wrong before, and as they say, better safe than sorry.

“Henderson, give her the prep,” he said handing the man the dosing unit.

Henderson took it, entered a code, and then held the unit against Michi’s arm.

“No!” she shouted, more afraid of the serum than anything the jacks had done to her.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Chopra said.  “That’s not the Propoxinal.  That’s just a small depressant that I’ve found makes the Propoxinal more effective.  You’ve got another five minutes before you get that.”

Michi jerked on the cuff locking her to the bed, ignoring the pain each jerk shot through her.

“Look at her struggle,” Chopra told Henderson.  “The human condition is fascinating, and you need to understand it if you are going to do well in this job.  We have suicide bombers, willing to die for a cause, but when we threaten the mind, when we threaten to change the very core of a person, they all fight.  I would wager that Miss MacCailín there would have been willing to die for her cause.  But look at her struggle so frantically now.”

Just then, the door opened, and three Marines marched in.  One looked at his PA, then said, “Michiko MacCailín.  She’s a general in the NIP.”

“I’m aware of who she is, First Sergeant” the second Marine said.  “I saw the camcordings.”

“Can I ask you what you are doing here, sir?” Chopra said.

“Merely checking on our prisoners, Chief,” the first Marine said.

“Well, as you can see, I’m in the middle of an interrogation, so if you could come back later, I would appreciate it.”

“I can see what you are doing, and no, we’ll check now.  The captain is a little busy to arrange his schedule around yours.”

The captain came forward, and Michi could see the bars on his collar.  She looked lower, and she caught the nametag:  Lysander.  Was this the man she had been attacking?  He looked like the Marine she has seen on the holo.

He looked over her, then turned to Chopra and asked, “Why has she been abused?”

“Wasn’t me.  The jimmylegs got a little too enthusiastic.  Besides, that arm wound was your boys’ doing,” he said, pulling out his PA and handing it to the first Marine, the one the captain had called “first sergeant.”

The first sergeant looked it over, then nodded and handed it to the captain.

“He’s right,” he said.

Captain Lysander looked it over, then handed it back before asking, “So you didn’t do that, but why hasn’t she been given medical treatment?”

“There’s no requirement for me to do that, sir, as you know.  She’s an insurgent, and a free citizen.  If she was a Class Four, the company here would be required to provide the treatment, but as a Free Citizen, she needs to provide her own.”

“And did you offer it?  Did you contact her family?  It doesn’t matter.  As a prisoner of war,” the captain said, emphasizing the words, “we are required to provide full medical treatment.”

“She’s an insurgent, a common criminal, sir, not a prisoner of war,” Chopra protested.

The captain turned towards the chief warrant officer and snarled, “She was wearing a uniform, right?  She headed an army, right?  She’s a grubbing POW, and I really don’t think you want to fight me on that, Chief!

“First Sergeant Samuelson, get Doc Botivic over here to check her out.  I want the letter of the law followed here.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” the first sergeant said before speaking into a throat mic.

The drugs Henderson had given her were kicking in, and her mind was getting fuzzy.  She knew what was happening, but its import was somewhat lost on her.  Another doctor was coming?

“With all due respect, sir, this is an FCDC matter, not a Marine concern.  I’m in charge of interrogation, and you can’t be interfering in that.  If you have a complaint, you can register it with my major,” Chopra said.

“Do you know who I am, Chief?” the captain asked.

“Yes, of course, sir.  But—”

“But nothing.  I’ll have your ass if you fight me on this.  I’m going to get her treated, then you can interrogate her to your heart’s content.”

Michi’s heart fell.  She was not being saved, only given a short reprieve.  She shouldn’t have expected anything more from the infamous captain.

“Why the hell do you care?  She jumped two of your Marines, brought a whole cliff down on them.  She attacked your company?”

“I don’t care about her, Chief.  I care about us.  We’re on a dirty mission here, and I intend to keep us as clean as possible despite that.  And it didn’t do her a lot of good, did it.  Not one Marine killed.”

Despite the cotton closing in on her mind, that caught her attention.  No Marine killed?

“I killed one of your Marines,” she stammered out.

All five men in the room turned to look at her, the Marines with bemused smiles on their faces.

“I killed one of you bastards.  Me!” she asserted.

“I think she means Ling,” the first sergeant said.

“Oh, so you killed Sergeant Ling?” the captain asked, stepping up to stand over her.

“If that was his name,” she tried to say with a snarl. “I crushed him in the Ledges.”

“Yes, Sergeant Joab Ling.  He’s been with me quite awhile.  Well, after he gets out of regen, I’m sure he would like to meet you,” Captain Lysander said with a condescending laugh.  “Not everyone gets to meet his killer.”

She looked at him in confusion.  Regen?  But he was dead!  Or was he?  They hadn’t stuck around to make sure, but all his readings were off.

“Oh, you messed him up but good, girl,” the first sergeant said.  “And he’s going to have to live that down.  I think half of the Corps sent him stills of that camcording you made with your foot on him like some big-game trophy.  But no, he’s gonna be fine.  All you got was his pride.”

Michi felt deflated. She couldn’t believe the guy was still alive.  She had failed. With the effects of the drug given to her, she almost broke down into tears.

“Um, Captain?  Take a look at this,” the third Marine said, speaking for the first time.

He had picked up the doser, and now he held it out for the captain.  Captain Lysander looked at it, a look of anger coming over his face as he saw what the next dose was.

“Propoxinal, Chief?  You know that is proscribed!”

“Not for her, sir!  I can use whatever means I deem necessary.  Look the frigging regulations up, if you want,” Chopra said.

“For insurgents or terrorists in the course of an operation, yes.  For listed groups like the SOG.  But not for prisoners of war!  POWs can only voluntarily offer information, not be coerced, and certainly not by proscribed drugs!  You are breaking about a thousand treaties on this!” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth.

“I’m going right to my major on this!” Chopra yelled, not backing down.

“Tell your fucking major whatever you want!  I’m telling you now, Chief Warrant Officer, if you value your career and if you don’t want to spend time in the brig, you will cease and desist. You will not attempt to interrogate her.  I will be checking back, and if you fight me on this, your pathetic life, as you know it, is over.  Do you understand?”

Michi could see the anger warring on Chopra’s face, but he bit it back down and said, “I understand.”

“Len, I want you to stand here until Doc arrives.  Get her treated.  Then I want someone in here every day to check up on her.  Sams, come with me.  Let’s see who else in this hellhole thinks he’s above the law.”

He didn’t bother to look back at Michi as he and the first sergeant stormed out.  Michi tried to process what had just happened.  Henderson looked scared as he tried to remain unnoticed.  Chopra on the other hand, was a volcano about to explode.  He glared at Michi with pure hate.  If not for the other Marine standing in the room with the doser in his hand, she was sure he would take out his anger on her.

They all stood like that, without moving, for at least 20 minutes before a Navy doctor and two medics, nurses, or whatever they called a medical assistant came in and began to assess her.   They left her on the table, but cleaned and disinfected it before starting.   They cleaned and dressed her stab wound, then moved to the arm, cleaning it up before sliding it into a portable regen unit.  The doctor told her it should heal within a week.  The hand, though, was more serious, and they decided to put her under for prep surgery prior to regen. They put up a medical curtain to isolate her hand as they prepped it.  That gave Chopra a chance to step up and kneel, so his mouth was against her ear.

“Don’t get too comfortable, there, missy.  Word is that the Marines will be leaving soon, and then there won’t be any Captain Lysander to protect you.  Your ass will be all mine,” she heard before the anesthesia pulled her under.

Chapter 35

The next week went by in a blur, or was it dragging by slowly?  Michi couldn’t decide.  She was mostly left alone.  Each morning, Chopra came by and formally asked her if she had any information she wanted to share.  Each time, after Michi said no, he simply turned around and left.

A Marine came by once or twice a day, checking, but not speaking to her.  The doctor and his team came by twice to check on her progress.  Someone brought her meals and took away her empty plates and full honeypot.  The rest of the time, she was alone.

The regen chamber on her arm was removed, and except for a tiny scar that the doctor said would fade, she would never have known she’d been shot.  Her concussion would take a full regen, which was not available to her in her situation, but the effects faded, and the doctor pronounced her fully recovered.  Physically, the only thing that was still wrong was her finger.  Only a small portion of the finger had been lost, so after surgery, the regen should only take a little less than a month.

She’d been issued an orange jumpsuit, and she was no longer cuffed to the bed, but she still spent the hours lying on the table, albeit with a thin blanket between her and the surface of the metal.  Things were much better than her first conscious hours in the cell, but mentally, she felt worse.  With free time, her mind was on the 1,300 men and woman who had followed her to their deaths.  She thought back to all her actions since Franz had been murdered, wondering what she could have done differently.

She realized that she had fallen into depression.  It would seem natural, given her situation, but she was afraid that this was something deeper, something clinical.  She knew she could fight it.  In the flicks, prisoners spent solitary doing pushup or writing.  She did neither.  She just didn’t have the energy.  It was easier to lie in bed and stare at the lighting in the ceiling.

She was lying there when two Marines burst in.

“Get up,” one of the Marines said.

She stared at him stupidly.

“I said, get up!”

He came over as if to help her.

“Why?  What’s going on?” she asked, a trickle of fear awaking in her.

She’d contemplated suicide a few times over the last week, but when something actually threatened her existence, the survival gene kicked in.

“We’re moving you, so let’s go,” he told her.

Moving me?  What the hell for?

“Why?  What’s wrong with here?” she asked.

Images of her being taken out into the forest and shot in the head flooded her mind.  She resisted, pulling back from the Marine’s grasp.

“Look, I don’t give a flying fart if you come or go, rebel lady.  As far as I’m concerned, the fuckdicks can have you . . .”

It took a second for Michi to realize he was referring to the FCDC officers. “FCDC.”  “FuCkDiCks.”

“. . . but the captain says everyone in this building’s gotta go to the main jail.  So, it’s up to you.  We’re leaving this planet in two hours, so we don’t have time to sit here and convince you.”

“Come on, Tse Han, let’s just forget her,” the other Marine said.

“You’re leaving?” Michi asked.

“Yeah.  The rebellion is crushed here, and things are acting up in—” he started before the other Marine cut him off.

“Opsec!”

“Oh, yeah.  No matter, lady, we’re leaving, so it’s up to you.  I ain’t gonna be dragging you to the trucks.”

The image of Chopra leaning in, telling her after the Marines left, her ass was going to be his, invaded her mind.  She shuddered.  There was no real decision to make.  Even if it were a bullet to the head, that would be a better choice than letting that psychopath get his hands back on her.

“No, I’m coming with you,” she said, jumping off the table.

The two Marines led her out into the hallway.  Other Marines and prisoners milled about.  Michi recognized Max Vickery, the colonel who had led the river commandos in the attack, but she didn’t have time to talk to him.  Within minutes, they were pushed past several unresisting FCDC guards and out into a courtyard where a hover-truck waited.  It was nighttime, which surprised Michi as she could have sworn it was noon at the latest.  The Marines told them to get inside the truck, pushing those who were slow in climbing up.

A hand pushed her ass just as she was clambering over the tailgate, and she was sent sprawling into a body already in the truck.

“Sorry,” she said automatically.

“Michi!  It’s good to see you.  We thought you’d been killed,” Loski Sonutta-Lyon said.  He’d been one of the main planners for the attack.

“I think most of us did get killed,” she said bitterly.  “What the hell happened?”

“I . . . I don’t know.  I was back with the forward command, and without warning, we were surrounded by Marines.  We could hear the fighting up forward, but there was nothing we could do.”

The truck rose off the ground, and then pulled into a smooth forward motion.  There were a few exclamations of fear.  Evidently, Michi was not the only one who didn’t totally trust the Marines.

Michi wanted to shout at Loski.  She wanted to blame someone for the debacle, and it was his plan, his and Kyne’s, that they had tried to implement.  She didn’t want to blame herself for being the catalyst who got the whole thing rolling.

He looked horrible, though, and her anger faded.

“Was it bad for you?” she asked.

He shuddered.  “Yes.  It wasn’t good.  I see they got to you, too,” he said, pointing at the small regen chamber over her hand.

“I was this close to getting Propoxinal,” she said quietly.  “I would have if Captain Lysander hadn’t come in the cell.”

“You’re lucky.  Kyne got it.  They took me to see him, and his mind was gone.”

Kyne was the other planner for the attack.  If he was given the drug, they would have peeled back the layers, extracting all he knew.  In his position, he’d known a lot.

The two sat silently in the truck as it took them to who knows where?  Michi was just about to open her mouth to ask Loski a question when the truck came to a stop and lowered off hover.  The two Marines who had been sitting in the back jumped out first, then shouted for everyone else to get out, too.

Michi poked her head under the tarp and was relieved to see the city jail.  She would have never thought that seeing a jail and being about to be taken into it could ever be a relief, but it was much better than a ride out into the forest.

A Marine stepped out of the front entrance with another man and addressed the group.  “I am Gunnery Sergeant Franco Torioko, and this is Desk Sergeant Wisuski of the Tay Station city jail.  We are going to get you processed as quickly as possible.  The jail is extremely overcrowded, so there’ll be many of you to a cell.  But for you 34 people, I think this is a better alternative than had you stayed where you were.”

Michi looked around, wondering if she could slip away in the darkness.  A number of Marines were in back of them, though, looking alert.  She didn’t know what she would do if she got away, so it made more sense to get inside the jail where she would be relatively safe—she hoped.

Chapter 36

After two days, Michi was almost missing her solitary confinement—almost, but not quite.  She was crammed with 15 other women in a four-person cell.  The single toilet in the corner was continually plugged, and combined with 16 sweating bodies, the smell was pretty rank.

Tempers were testy as well.  When Michi stepped on one woman’s foot while trying to get to the toilet, that woman had jumped up, blaming Michi for getting them into this mess.  Normally, Michi might have faced down the smaller woman, but her guilt factor kicked in, and she just absorbed the abuse.

More than a couple of the women remarked on the regen chamber on her hand, saying it was proof of special treatment she was getting.  Several of them had been hurt and had received treatment, but not to the extent of regen.  The company was not going to fork out the cash for that for indentureds, particularly indentureds who had taken up the fight against them.

Two of the women incarcerated with her had also been in her assault force.  Both had been with about fifty who had surrendered to the Marines.  One of them, Tamika Dilliard-Smith, said she had seen Colonel Hannrahan go down, his head blown off of his shoulders.  Michi hadn’t really liked her so-called assistant, but she shed a few tears at the news.

At least the FCDC interrogators had left them alone so far.  Michi thought it was because of too many witnesses.  If she was taken, others would know it.  If she “disappeared” or came back a vegetable, others would know it.  She had no doubt that the fuckdicks—how she loved that term—would be trying to come up with a plan to isolate them, but for now, she was relatively safe.

So when the cell door clicked and swung open on the second night after her arrival, Michi looked upon that with extreme suspicion.  What better way to isolate their prize prisoners than to let them go and then capture them again?  If she was not taken back to their communal cell, the others could be told she had either escaped or had been killed in her recapture.

The other 15 women got up and approached the door, buzzing on what it could mean.  Two women frankly said it was a trap, and they sat on one of the bunks, refusing to get up.  Several other women cautiously stepped into the main corridor.

From down that corridor, Michi heard a voice call out, “Look at the guards!  They’re locked in!”

Despite her misgivings, Michi had to see.  She pushed past several of her cellmates and out into the corridor.  From each cell, both men and women were gathering outside.  At the end, where the guards controlled the cells, about 20 prisoners were gathered, several pointing and laughing.  Michi made her way down the corridor to see for herself.

The guard station occupied what would have been the first cell in line.  However, the wall was reinforced glass, and inside were chairs and the control panel.  Each cell was under 24-hour observation and could be controlled as far as locking the door, turning off the lights, and even administering knock-out gas.  Only now, none of that was happening.  Inside, three guards were standing, looking at the prisoners.  One was holding a handwritten note that said:

Get back to your cells now!

In back of them, their control panel was off.  None of the feeds worked.  To make things worse for them, the red light on the door leading out into the main corridor was flashing.  They were locked in.

Michi looked at the others.  Was this a trap?  Even if it was, she knew this could be her chance.  If she left, they would still have to capture her again, and she wasn’t going to let that happen.  One way or the other, she was not coming back alive.

Two of the men pushed open their wing door, and it opened into the main corridor.  In a rush, about forty of them poured into the main corridor.  Down on the far end, there was only a set of double gates before leading to the holding room and the outside.

From other wings, people started trickling out.  It looked like every cell in the place had been opened.  Starting slowly, then gathering momentum and people, the tide of prisoners rushed the double gates.  If they were locked, Michi figured people would get crushed in the press, but it was too late to worry about that.  The mob wouldn’t be stopped.

The gates were open, though, and within moments, the leading edge of the mob was out in the darkness.  Several people were out and about, and they ran when confronted with the mass escape.  Two jacks came around the corner, saw the mob, and turned and ran.  They would report what they had seen, however, so time was a-wasting.

Michi looked around her.  There had to be 200 prisoners outside the jail now, and more were still coming.  Michi knew she had to get out of there, so she started running.  She didn’t have a destination; she just needed to get as far away from the jail as she could.

She started running out of breath within five minutes.  The time she had spent as a prisoner, and her refusal to exercise, was taking its toll.  She recognized the Tennyson complex and turned into it.  Doug had been able to control it, so maybe others had as well, keeping surveillance out of it.  She was winded, anyway, so she had to stop.

Michi crept past one of the broken-down entrances and looked around.  She wasn’t sure of the time, but there were a number of people going about their business.  Her orange jumpsuit made her stand out, but so far, nobody seemed to take overt notice.  When the word was passed, however, and a reward offered, she was sure that some of the people would suddenly recall the orange-clad figure skulking around in the night.

She knew she had to get out of sight for awhile and plan out what she wanted to do.  Each complex had a small retail section, and she made her way in back of the line of stores.  She thought there might be something that had been discarded she could put on to get rid of the jumpsuit.

She cautiously approached the first dumpster, looking to see if anyone was watching her.  She grabbed the lid and lifted.

“Shut that thing!” an orange jumpsuited man yelled back up to her from where he was lying inside.

She dropped the lid, her heart pounding.  How had he gotten there so quickly?  She must have really gotten out of shape.  She moved down two more, then slowly lifted up the lid.  When no one yelled out, she slid inside.

There was restaurant refuse in the dumpster, so it stunk with rotten food.  She didn’t care much about that as she rooted around in the darkness, feeling for clothing.  To her surprise, she felt something right away.  Running her fingers over it, she could tell is was a shirt.  It was a little difficult to get it on with only one working hand, but she managed to pull it over her jumpsuit.  It had some slime on it, but it would do, she hoped.  Now she just needed something for her legs, and she could get out of there and move on.

She felt something and pulled it out of the garbage, but she thought it was another shirt and discarded it.  If she didn’t find anything soon, she would have to bail and just hope the shirt she’d found would be enough.

She was down in the far corner of the dumpster and had put her hand into something particularly disgusting when the lid of the dumpster opened.

She wheeled around ready to attack, one-handed or not, when a voice asked, “Michi?  That you?”

Doug and Tamara were standing there, concerned looks on their faces.

“Shit girl, get out of there.  We’ve got to get you out of here and hidden,” Tamara said, relief evident in her voice.

For Michi, she was not sure if she’d ever seen such a welcome sight in her life.

Chapter 37

“Get out of bed and do something,” Tamara said.

“Easy for you to say,” Michi grumbled.  “You’re not stuck in this cage.”

“Look, I know it’s tough, but hang in there.  We’ll figure out something.  Doug will come by at lunchtime, and maybe we can both be here for a nice dinner.  I’ve really got to go, though.”

She kissed Michi on the forehead and then left for work.

Michi turned over and pulled her lone sheet over her head.  She knew she shouldn’t take it out on Tamara.  She owed the two of them too much.  But she had no contact with anyone else, so that left only her two friends.

It had been the two of them who had sprung her from captivity.  They had scoured the lists for her name among the dead and captured.  Doug had finally found reference to her on some company docs and her transfer to FCDC custody, but he couldn’t pinpoint a location nor anything else.  The FCDC security was just too tough for him to hack.  They had been surprised and overjoyed, then when she turned up as a transfer to the city jail.  It hadn’t taken Doug long to pinpoint her, even hacking into the surveillance inside her cell.

Between the two of them, they had considered and rejected a number of plans, finally coming up with taking control of the jail, then locking in the guards while opening the prisoner cells.  The hope was that so many people would escape that it would overwhelm the jacks, giving them time to locate and isolate Michi.  Using the same technology as he had once described to Michi, he had programs scanning all surveillance cams looking for her body and gait.  Michi had changed through the course of her abuse, but after several false hits, the two friends saw Michi enter the complex and walk in back of the shops.  Surveillance was down in the back access, but Tamara had been sure that was her, so they had rushed to find her.

When they could not see her, they started opening dumpsters, first surprising the same other escapee, then finding her in the fourth dumpster they’d tried.  They had her throw on the clothes they’d brought, which added about twenty pounds with the padding, and gave her the old boots she’d worn with the gait-changing inserts.  One of Doug’s planned safe houses was inside Tennyson II, so within ten minutes, they had her inside and in a hot bath.  Tamara had stayed with her that night, holding Michi in bed until she fell asleep.

For the next week, both of her friends tried to see her as often as they could.  They brought food and more importantly, news.  Michi was cut off from the outside world:  no net, no vids, no holos.  Doug didn’t want there to be any trace of her in the city.

At first, Michi wanted to know about the attack.  Doug had access to the corporate records, and the intra-company memos reported that 622 “rebels” were killed, 813 captured.  Of the captured, five had died in captivity.  Details of the attack were sketchy, but it seemed that Derrick, one of the first two jacks who had first awaken her after her capture, had the basics correct (other than the number of casualties).  The Marines, with help from corporate security and spies within the NIP, were well aware of the coming attack.  The river commando force had been captured as they entered the water.  The day “patrols” that had gone out were actually assault forces, and they had quickly captured the forward command center and the gun position.  Finally, the Marine assault force and supporting arms had broken up the attack and killed, captured, or scattered her fighters.  Not one Marine had even been wounded.

In retrospect, to think they had a chance against prepared Marines was a ridiculous notion.  Michi had thought in her heart, they could win, and in defeating that one Marine company, that would force the Federation to leave the planet.

The results sickened her, especially the knowledge that they had essentially been doing the Federation’s bidding by attacking.  They had been drawn out, tricked into attacking a defensible position, and then broken.  With the main armed force gone, the Marines were no longer needed, and they were taken away for their next devil’s mission.

Michi wanted to know if there had been any reaction, any protesting the failed attack.  There had been almost nothing, Doug and Tamara told her.  If the company had expected a crushing defeat to also crush the population, then they had been correct.  The people had been cowed.  Even the WRP, while not disbanded, had closed shop until things had stabilized.

It looked like the company had won.

Oh, Michi and her two friends played scenarios in their minds, from simple things such as jumping another jack to fanciful plans such as enlisting the Brotherhood to invade and set thing right.  Nothing was either possible or would make an impact.

Their conversations shifted from striking back to smuggling Michi off the planet and to some non-Federation world.  That would be difficult, though.  The jail break had been big news, and Michi was prominently displayed and declared “high importance” and with a large reward, a target for anyone wanting to cash in.  Security had been tightened, and bounty hunters tracked down any trace of her.

One other aspect of the jailbreak was that the company now knew someone had a backdoor into their system.  It was only a matter of time until they tracked the breach down, and Doug was getting more and more nervous.  Ironically, it was Doug’s own division that was part of the team trying to find the breach.

Michi turned back over to her back, holding out her right arm.  Her hand itched horribly, and even though she knew that was a good sign, she was tempted to rip the chamber off and throw it away.  She resisted, though:  it would be hard for her to walk into a clinic for any treatment.

She finally got up out of bed and made herself some instant noodles

God, I’m getting sick of these, she thought.

She finished them, then crawled back into bed, where she still was four hours later when Doug came in the door.  She caught the slight frown of disapproval from him as he saw her, but at least he didn’t nag like Tamara did.

He handed her a hotpack.  It was Italian!  That was the best thing that had happened today.  She popped the activator, waited ten seconds, then unzipped the top, letting the aromas of amatriciana waft through the room.

She had never realized how dependent she had been on fabricators.  But with Doug vetoing any power usage in the room, fabricators were out, and she could only eat prepared food and takeout.   The pasta smelled wonderful and tasted even better.

In a better mood, she started chatting with Doug.  He’d been working on finding her a way off-planet, but with the heightened security, he couldn’t spend much time on it yet.  And that was also why he could only come over during his lunch break.  No more virtual work days.  He had to physically be there.

Michi peeled open the hotpack and licked the remaining sauce.  “This was great!  I’m getting so that I would even eat raw bases, and let my stomach fabricate them,” she said with a laugh.

“Oh, I’m sure Tammy could get you some Blue-99 if you really wanted,” Doug said with a laugh.

He had been calling her Tammy ever since Michi got out, but she couldn’t tell if their relationship had changed,

“I think I was close enough to the damn stuff on my own,” she said bitterly.  “You know, even with it being a trap, if we could have just made in into the algae banks, we might have been able to win.  The Marines might be the best around, but that can make people too confident.  By selecting that area for us to attack,” and she realized now that the company-slash-Federation had maneuvered things for just that end, “they left an Achilles heel.  The company couldn’t risk losing all that base, and they would have had to negotiate.  Maybe we should have forgotten the attack and just snuck in and planted explosives.  It couldn’t have been a worse outcome.”

“They’ve got pretty serious security around the farm.  That’s their most valuable base, and certainly their most vulnerable in those hydro-glass tubes,” Doug said.  “In order to affect them, you’d have to get them some other way.  Disease, maybe.  Or corruption.  But then the problem would be delivery.  They wouldn’t let someone in a white lab coat just walk in and inject the farm with a virus, you know.  A contagion is one thing, but without a vector, it would just be like all our other plans, stupid games of fantasy.”

Michi checked the pack for any last traces of sauce.  She was only half-listening to Doug, who, quite frankly, tended to go off on technological soliloquies that Michi had neither the background nor inclination to follow.  But then she stopped.  Something he had just said registered.

“We have a vector,” she said.

“What vector?” Doug asked, already getting up to go back to work.

“Tamara!”

Chapter 38

“No, that wouldn’t work,” Doug protested.

Michi took the last piece of pizza.  The three of them had been up for hours arguing, and the pizza was cold, but Italian twice in one day was a treat.

“Why not?” Tamara asked.

“The viral screens.  The company is not stupid, and even without the acts of man, nature can intject a virus as it so wills.  So, each bank of tubes has a virus screen at the CO2 generators.  Besides, what would you do?  Just show up and walk down the rows?  You think your little access badge is going to make them let you destroy the algae?  Anyway, even if you did, all that would be is revenge, like I said before.  We’d have no leverage.”

“And I told you, at this stage, revenge would be good enough for me,” Michi said before downing the last bit of crust.

“But that is why the programming would be a better option.  We can threaten to destroy their entire strain.  They would have to listen, then.  And best of all, it can be injected into the matrix at the organics lab.”

“I swear, I still don’t understand how it could work.  How can computer programming affect a growing organism?” Michi asked with Tamara nodding in agreement.

“I’ve tried to explain it.  Let me reword it.  Uh . . . OK, you know that Blue-99 is a genetically modified product, one owned by the company, right?”  When both girls nodded, he went on.  “So, in some ways, the algae is just a programmed matrix that sort of sits on top of the original DNA.  The matrix sends signals to the DNA to do what the company wants it to do.  As long as the programming functions correctly, the algae’s DNA follows the instructions, making Blue-99.  If that programming were modified to, let’s say, activate the cells suicide switch, then all the algae would die.  So, all we have to do is input a worm that will change the programming.”

“It sort of makes sense, but you said it might not work,” Tamara told him.

“In theory, it will work.  But in reality, we need the worm that will change the programming as we want it to.  That’s the hard part.”

“So, the simple question is, can you do it?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.  I might be able to, but we wouldn’t know until we try it.  And we might only have one shot at it,” he admitted.

“How long to know if you can pull this off?”

“Probably in a week or so.  I would know at least if I can’t do it.  I wouldn’t know for sure if I can until we send the worm on its way.  Then there is the timing.  Tammy would have to infect the programming while I still have my backdoor, and I don’t know how long that will be.  They are closing in, and all my evasion techniques are only delaying the inevitable.”

“A week?  Well, I don’t totally understand, but I’ve got to trust you, Doug.  Let’s do it.”

Chapter 39

Six days later, Doug and Michi were back at Tamara’s and his condo.  Michi had already taken off the regen chamber from her hand and put on her costumes.  Her finger was not totally healed, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that.  There was nothing for her to do yet, so she had to just sit with Doug and watch.

They waited nervously, watching the time.  Tamara would be at the lab at any minute, and they might have to act quickly.  Doug had four disposable PAs, and one was on now, a specified AI moving his backdoor around the system at inhuman speeds.  The problem was that the company AIs were rapidly closing off areas in the system, leaving fewer and fewer areas in which the backdoor could find refuge.  It was only a matter of time until it was surrounded with nowhere to go.  At that moment, Doug would be locked out of the system.

“Come on, Tamara, come on,” Michi implored.

She was more nervous now than before the attack on the Marines.  They were so close, and they might have the means to finally hit back at the company where it would hurt them.

Even if they destroyed Blue-99, however, the company would recover.  It could license out another algae from a competitor while trying to rush one of their own research strains to the market.  That would take time, though, and quite a bit of funds.  More importantly, it was sending a message that Propitious Interstellar could not be trusted to deliver.  In the galactic marketplace, that message could cost the company more than the mere destruction of the algae.

“Shit!” Doug said looking at the PA monitoring the backdoor.  “That was too close!”

Michi didn’t ask for an explanation.  “Too close” was not “it’s over,” so she let it be.

“She’s running out of time!” he said.

Tamara had been given the worm in a small optical drive, one like any other used throughout the planet.  The lab, like all others in the company, was shielded, against transmissions, so a wireless transfer was impossible.  There was no wireless inside.  It would have to be an old-fashion optical read.  She would have given up her PA as always, but with her clearance and position, they hoped she would not be searched.  If she was and they found the drive, she was to feign forgetfulness and just abort the mission, picking up the drive from security as she left.

Doug had given her the location of the three computers in the lab that would work for their purposes.  All she had to do was to hold the drive in front of a reader, even if for a split second.  Doug would have probably less than five seconds to send the worm to the three Blue-99 farms on the planet as well as the secured foundation library in the vaults.  If he were too slow, the worm would get booted by the lab security AIs.

Doug wasn’t sure the worm would even work.  He’s cobbled it together from a number of programs, even getting one of his co-workers to complete a tricky part of the programming.  He’d had to think about that, but the string was beyond him, and his co-worker didn’t seem to think about what that string could be used for.  He programmed the string in 30 minutes, and then was off on his next project, his curiosity un-piqued.

“I can’t take this!” Michi yelled, just as Doug shouted out, “She’s in!”

He pushed the “send” on his control PA just as the backdoor PA flashed red.  That was the signal that his backdoor had been finally been cornered and destroyed.

“What happened?” Michi shouted, pulling on Doug’s arm. “Did you get it out?”

“I don’t know!  I think so, but I can’t check now.  Look, it says here it went out,” he said, pointing to his PA.

“But did the worms get there, and are they working?”

“I don’t know, Michi, I just don’t know,” he said, slumping down in his chair.  “What do you want to do?”

Michi thought for a few moments.  She didn’t know if she could get off-planet, and she was not going to live the rest of her life hidden in an apartment.  She had to trust that the worm was delivered and that it worked.

“I’m going through with it,” she said with certainty.

“You sure?”

“Damn diddy well, I’m sure,” she said.

“OK, you’ve got the code?” he asked.

Michi pointed to the side of her head.  “Right here.”

“It won’t take long, so you’d better go.  I’ll leave right after you,” he said.

Michi didn’t know where Doug was going, nor did she ask.  What she didn’t know, she couldn’t give up.

He picked up the disposable PA that the code Michi had memorized would reach.  Depending on what message he received, he’d either have the worm extract itself or allow the suicide switches to be thrown.  The switches would already be cocked, so-to-speak, so if his PA was cut off, there would be no turning back.  Every Blue-99 algae cell on the planet would be destroyed and the matrix hopelessly corrupted.

Michi strapped on the pistol belt.  She didn’t have a weapon and wouldn’t be carrying one even if she had, but they had decided that the more she looked like the Michiko MacCailín of the camcording, the better.  She was not trying to hide, and she wanted attention.

Doug looked around the condo.  “I’m going to miss this place,” he said.

“Don’t worry.  You’ll be back.  We’ll be back.”

Michi leaned over and kissed Doug on the cheek before turning and walking to the door.

“Gokigenyou, Michiko, and God be with you,” Doug said after her.

Michi smiled for a moment.  Doug didn’t speak Japanese, but he’d searched for the right thing to say, a version of “good luck.”  She wiped the smile from her face, walked to the elevator, and pushed the button.  As the door opened, she saw one of the ladies from the 23rd floor was already on.  Michi didn’t know her name, but she’d seen her out and about.  The lady raised her eyebrows at Michi, but if she seemed surprised at seeing the Michiko MacCailín, in full regalia, she showed no sign of it.

They arrived at the lobby and walked to the front door.  Michi held it open for the lady, who calmly thanked her before heading off to the right, probably to the small tea shop on the corner.  Michi turned toward the left, toward the Propitious Interstellar headquarters, leaving the sidewalk and taking the middle of the street.  Within moments, people spotted her and stared.  A few paced her along the sidewalk, those few growing in a bigger group as more people joined.  Whether they were there as some sort of honor guard or to try and cash in on the reward, Michi didn’t know, nor did she care.  Either would serve her purpose.

She’d gone only three blocks before two jacks showed up, running toward her.

“Stop there!” one of them shouted.  “You’re coming with us!”

They grabbed her, pulling her arms in back of her.

Michi didn’t resist, but she shouted out, “I am giving myself up to Propitious Interstellar Fabrication.  I demand a meeting with the board. If my demands are not met, the entire stock of Blue-99 will be destroyed!”

“What?” asked the jack who was about to ziptie her hands. “What are you talking about?”

“Just as I said. You want to take me in.  Fine.  Get your reward.  But take me into company headquarters.  You will still be the heroes.  If you do not, and what I am saying is true, then you’ll wish you’d never been born,” she said quietly but with as much conviction as possible.

“Bullshit!” the jack said.  “Destroy Blue-99?  No blooming way.”

“If I’m lying, then what do you have to lose?  Present me as a prize to the CEO himself.  Get noticed.  If I am right,” and Michi desperately hoped she was right and the worm had gotten through, “then you are still heroes.  Either way you win.”

“What’s she saying about Blue-99?” a voice called out from the crowd.

Many, if not most of the people there probably worked for the company, and anything that damaged one of the main products would affect them all.  The two jacks paused to look at each other.

“It wouldn’t hurt now, would it?” one asked the other.

“I, uh, well I don’t see how it would.  Like she says, we still get the reward either way.  Let’s take her to headquarters and let them sort it all out.”  He turned to Michi and said, “You got your wish, but you better not try anything, you hear?”

“Lead on,” Michi said.

This had been a tricky point.  If they had insisted on taking her to jail, she would have had a much more difficult time, and the delay could interject more variables.  Simple and to the point was best.

Two more jacks came running up, but her two captors guarded her like dogs over a bone. They were not going to split the reward with anyone.

The crowd grew as they walked towards downtown.  A vehicle came to pick her up, but by that time, there were probably over a thousand people pacing them, a good portion camming the scene.  Overhead, a news drone appeared.

There were probably fifty jacks present, and after some discussion, the senior jack decided that walking was just as good.

As they entered Prosperity Square, where Michi’s journey really began, five black-uniformed fuckdicks in riot gear blocked their path and demanded that Michi be turned over to them.  The one on the end, not saying a word, was Chopra, and Michi thought she could feel his eyes burn into her.

The jacks were having none of it, though, and pushed past the federal officers, escorting Michi up B Street and into One Propitious Interstellar.  They moved around the Cornucopia Fountain and to the front doors where a flunky, a high-ranking flunky, but a flunky none-the-less, awaited her.

The jacks had taken an almost festive air as they brought Michi forward.

“And what is this all about?” the flunky asked.

“I need to see someone higher on the food chain,” Michi said with what she hoped was a tone of disdain.  “Like the CEO.”

The crowd, many who had their PA directional mics trained on her, hooted and hollered at her words.

“I’m afraid you don’t have much say here, Miss MacCailín, and you are going to enjoy being our guest once again,” he said, his voice dripping venom.

Oh, they picked a good one, Michi thought despite the intense situation.

“I think you had better contact your bosses.  Ask them about the Blue-99 in the vault.”

This was the key.  If the worm hadn’t made it, and if they even checked, the algae in the vault would be fine, and she would be back in the hands of the FCDC.  If they worm had arrived, but didn’t work, she’d be back in custody.  But if the worm had functioned as designed, then the algae in the vault, the foundation batch, would be destroyed.

The flunky hesitated, and Michi could see his emotions war with each other.  After several moments, he spoke into this throat mic, then came back to an easy stance, feet apart, hands clasped in front of him, the very picture of cool, collected control.

Do they have a school for that, she wondered as she tried to portray the same degree of control.

They waited, staring at each other, Michi matching the flunky’s easy smile.  Behind them, the crowd was getting restless.  It took almost ten minutes, but the flunky put his hand over his ear to cut out the crowd noise.  He nodded, said something, then looked up.

“If you will come this way, Miss MacCailín, the CEO will see you now.”

The crowd erupted behind them as the people shouted.  Michi couldn’t tell if they supported her or they thought she was going in to be given her just desserts.  She held out her bound hands to the jacks.  They looked to the flunky, who nodded.  Off came the zipties.  Two more jacks, but jacks on steroids and in designer uniforms appeared, and the street jacks muttered, but stepped back.  Michi hoped her two jacks would still get their reward.

The four of them walked to the elevator.  Before getting in, one of the jacks searched her for weapons.  Her bammers and top couldn’t hide much, but he was still thorough.  He pretty much checked everything, but with a manner that left Michi not feeling violated.

They rode up to the 50th floor, hallowed ground within the company.  A woman in another tailored suit awaited them, and without saying a word walked them to the right, down a corridor, and into a conference room with a glass wall, giving a beautiful view of the city.  Michi ignored it, instead, turning to the four men sitting at the end of the huge stone table.  She recognized David del Solar, the CEO of Propitious Interstellar.

“Just what the hell have you done, young lady?” the man sitting next to the CEO said.

“It’s not what I have done that’s important; it’s what you are going to do to save your precious company,” she said as she armed herself for battle.

Chapter 40

Michi got out of the company hover without a word and looked up to the condo where she knew Doug was waiting.  She was empty, an emotionless husk.  She—no, the people—had won.  They had gone up against the most powerful entity on the planet, they had challenged the very Federation, yet somehow, unlike as on Ellison or Fu Sing, they had won.  Part of Michi realized that and was amazed.  A bigger part of her felt like she had lost.

It hadn’t been easy, but as the three roommates had known, the company had no choice.  They had to give in if they wanted to survive without damage as a major Federation fabricator.  The trick was to make sure whatever the company agreed to would be upheld and there would be no adverse consequences once things settled down.

There had been screaming and threats in the conference rooms.  “Traitor” and “saboteur” might have been the least-inciteful names she had been called.  When Mallory Yamauguchi, the company CFO had accused her of trying to destroy the company, she had bristled and attacked back.

“It’s you who are trying to destroy the company, not me!  The company is the lifeblood of the planet, and we need the jobs.  My own family made their living servicing the company.  We need you, just like you need us.  We only want you to follow the charter and treat us, all of us, including Class Fours, as valued partners!” she had shouted, standing up, hands on the table as she leaned into the man, wanting to jump over the table and beat him senseless.

David del Solar had called a recess to let things calm down, telling the others to leave.  Alone with Michi, he had asked her just what they wanted.  Still fuming, Michi hadn’t trusted the CEO’s frank demeanor, but had given the brief outline that Doug, Tamara, and she had come up with.  It had been based on previous demands from various opposition groups, and it gave only the basics.

He had listened and then invited her into his office.  Sitting on his couch, the two of them had communicated, not merely talked.  David listened to the arguments she had prepared, but Michi had also listened to his concerns.  She was holding the company hostage, a knife at its throat, but the two of them were calmly, and rationally coming to some sort of middle ground.

Michi had wanted a number of things.  Strict adherence to the charter was non-negotiable.  She wanted some sort of independent oversight of charter and company policies and action, and that oversight entity had to have real power to enforce adherence.  She demanded that Class Four workers have the real ability to pay off their indenture.  The three of them had considered demanding an end to the indentured class of worker, but that was ingrained in the Federation, so they retreated back to what they thought they might actually achieve.

David had pointed out that the Class Four program enabled people mired in poverty and hopelessness to get a fresh start, and if the company couldn’t get their investment back, there would be no impetus for them to offer people that chance.  He hadn’t insulted her intelligence by pretending that the company didn’t use shady and even illegal methods to keep the indentureds in thrall.

With the jacks so involved with day-to-day living, something had to change.  Michi had demanded that the jacks be cut in strength and only have authority on company property.  To fill the void, city police forces would be beefed up where they would take care of civil protection.  With the company the ultimate power on the planet, Michi had known this would not make a huge difference.  The city governments, even the planetary government on Dundee, were all funded by the company, so any enlarged city police force would still be beholding to PI, but at least the symbology of such a change should be a significant step.  To her surprise, David hadn’t even argued the demand.

Despite their surprisingly civilized discussion, she had known the man wouldn’t hesitate to crush her as soon as the threat to Blue-99 was over.  She had to protect not only herself, but all the people who had risen in protest.  This was the tricky part.  He had been only talking to her then because with one push of a button, the rest of his precious algae would be gone.  If she and Doug followed through and incapacitated the worm, they would be vulnerable.

Michi had told David that she wanted full immunity for any person who had joined the protest as well as the survivors of the attack on the Marines.  She also wanted restitution for those killed and injured.  Specifically, she named Doug, Tamara and her.  David had raised his eyes when she mentioned Doug and Tamara, but said nothing.  On another personal matter, she had told him she wanted her family’s property restored.

One thing she didn’t request was immunity for common criminals.  Without it, she could be prosecuted for Gerile Fountainhead’s death.  As far as she knew, though, only Tamara and Cheri knew that she was his killer.

Restitution had been a sticking point.  People who were injured during a legal protest was one thing.  His security was responsible for protecting the people, after all, so that could work.  But attacking the Marines was a different matter, totally illegal, and not even something that the company could address.  That was a matter for the Federation, not Propitious Interstellar They had gone back and forth on this for almost 30 minutes before his logic made enough of an impact that Michi had withdrawn the demand.

On his side, David had demanded full cessation of any protests, a full return of the workforce, and most of all, the destruction of the worm.  Michi had readily agreed, adding the caveat of protests by people she could control.  She couldn’t be responsible for every person on the planet, but she had agreed to make another camcording asking for peace.  As far as the worm, she had reminded him that she didn’t want to destroy the algae, so when they were finished, she would give the order for its destruction.  She had also left him, though, with the inference, at least, that a new worm was waiting in the wings should the need arise.

Two hours after the two had started, they had a framework to end the conflict.  David had called in for some snacks and told her he would bring in his legal team to write up the agreement.

“We should get a Federation lawyer for that, don’t you think?” Michi had asked innocently.  “The FCDC would probably be willing to supply one.”

Michi had known that David would want his own team writing up an agreement if they got that far.  But it would be hard to argue against a Federation lawyer being brought in.  She waited for his response.  Getting an outside lawyer was probably vital to her survival.

She hadn’t had to wait long.  With barely a pause, David agreed, with a smile on his face that Michi had to admire as looking natural.  David had made a call to the FCDC chief of operations, and a legal team was dispatched.  While they waited, and with David’s permission, she had called Cheri, outlined the situation, and asked that she and Su come over.  To her credit, Cheri hadn’t demanded a full explanation but quickly agreed.

Forty-five minutes later, the nitty-gritty had begun.  David and Michi had recorded their conversation, outlining the agreement.  Michi had thought that pretty clear.  But with the company lawyers, Su, two other lawyers Cheri had brought along, and the city attorney there, it had been amazing how so many people could have so many different opinions on what had just been said on the recording.  The FCDC lawyer, as chief facilitator, had to make several decisions when the rest of the squabbling lawyers could not come to an agreement.

One key factor, at least for Michi, Doug, and Tamara’s safety, was the civil penalty should anything happen to them—and that meant anything.  The company lawyers and representatives had screamed that they could not be penalized if Michi had a massive coronary, for example.  But as “massive coronaries” could be easily induced by people wishing her harm, Michi was not going to back down.

“You are just going to have to hope that doesn’t happen!” she had shouted.  “Maybe you should put me on your health maintenance plan!”

It took David stepping in and telling his staff that he accepted the condition before they had been able to move forward.

The civil penalties had been a key to the entire agreement.  The law could sometimes be bent, as the company had shown over the years.  But a contract was a contract, and if there were a monetary penalty to be assessed if a specified event happened, then the contract would be honored.  Huge corporation or individual, the Federation would not take sides.

With that paragraph in place, if anything happened to Doug, Tamara, or Michi once the contract was signed, the company would be hit with huge payments.  That was the best Michi could do to protect the three of them.

At 4:10 in the morning, which was amazingly quick for the scope of the agreement, representatives of the union, the mayor, the senior NIP member in jail, and representatives of several other protest and civil groups, had been called in.  The Federation administrator had already caught a shuttle from Dundee, and had already arrived, so the Federation was represented as well.

David and Michi had stood together as the contract was read out loud.  Everyone present had a copy on their PAs, but the reading was a tradition.  After it was finished, Michi had stepped forward.

She had looked down at the paper copy.  It hadn’t seemed like much.  What had happened to her dreams of throwing the company, throwing the Federation off of Kakurega, of full independence?  Had she sold out?  All this really required was that Propitious Interstellar abide by the existing charter.  Everything else was window dressing.

Well, it’s the best that I can do, she thought as she signed her name and looked into the retinal scanning beam.

David hadn’t hesitated but signed as well. Then the long string of ancillary signatories came forward.  With David and Michi’s signatures, the contract was in effect.  However, as others outside of the company were affected, they had to sign as well to bind their organizations to the terms.  The union vice-chairman had balked, saying he wanted to bring the agreement back and study it, but after a quick conference with several other people there, he changed his mind and signed.

Michi and David had shaken hands for the camcorders, and it was done despite the huge odds against them.   Fu Sing, and even Ellison had been crushed, but somehow, they had averted that fate and gained some benefit, if not outright won.

Michi asked for a PA, and connecting to Doug’s disposable PA, and after only a slight hesitation, she had given the code words to stand down the worm.

“Our Blue-99 is safe now?” David had asked, trying to sound calm even if Michi could hear the stressors in his voice.

“Safe and sound,” she had assured him.

Michi had been rushed to a backdrop that had been erected, and with David, the mayor, and the Federation administrator standing behind her, had recorded her pleas for the protests to stop and for people to get on with their lives.  She never used the word “won,” but she assured people that the company had seen the righteousness of their concerns and had agreed to address them.

As soon as she was done and the recording stopped, David had actually shaken her hand.

“I can’t say I’m happy that this happened, but it is what it is,” he had said.

“Arinomamade,” Michi said quietly.

“Yes, arinomamade,” he had said, surprising Michi that he knew what the word meant.  “But now we have to move forward.  If I want to meet with you, I trust you would be willing?”

For maybe the first time during the night, Michi had been surprised.  He wanted to work with her?  He was the CEO of Propitious Interstellar, and she had just hurt them.  She was his enemy, right?  And now, he might want to work together?

What game is he playing now?  she had wondered.

She had cautiously agreed to meet if needed.  He had thanked her and told her he had a car for her to take her to where she wanted.  Once again, she had hesitated, unsure if she could trust him.  But the contract had been signed. She had agreed and was whisked to the condo.

She wasn’t sure how she was going to tell Doug.  She wanted to delay the inevitable, so she took the stairs instead of the elevator.  She started to, at least.  The emotional toll of the last day and night had affected her body, too.  Michi had to stop on the fifth floor and take the elevator the rest of the way up.

She hadn’t opened the door yet when Doug burst out and grabbed her in a bear hug.  She clung to him, mindless of his excitement.

“We did it, Michi!  I never actually thought we would win, but this is brills!  I’m, I’m, I don’t know what I am, but it’s pretty freaking great!” he shouted, pulling her around in a circle.

She just clung to him, her tears falling unnoticed onto his shoulder.

“Tamara’s going to be ready to party!” he said, drawing out the “paaarteee!”

“Doug, listen to me!”

“Michi-baby, I’ll listen to anything you’ve got.  Give me all the details!  Was del Solar crushed?”

She grabbed Doug and pushed him back to arms’ length.  He noted something in her eyes, and he stopped hopping up and down.

“Tamara’s not coming,” she said somberly.

“What do you mean?  She’d going to be late?” he asked uncertainly.

“She’s dead, Doug!  She was killed by the jacks trying to get away after infecting the system.”

Doug, with a look of shock on his face, slowly dropped to sit on the floor.  “No,” was all he said.

Just before Michi left the 5oth floor of One Propitious Interstellar, Virag Chopra had approached her, saying, “Sorry about your friend, Miss Veal,” his expression indicating anything other than sorrow.

“Sorry for what?” she’d asked, a feeling of dread coming over her.

“Oh, you hadn’t heard?  Maybe I ‘d better wait . . .”

She had grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward until their faces were centimeters apart.

“If you know something, tell me now,” she had hissed.

“Certainly, Miss MacCailín, if you insist.  It seems as if your friend was caught inserting something into the organics control system.  She tried to run, and, unfortunately, the company security shot and killed her,” he had said, a smile on his face.

Michi had let go of him in shock.  They had won and the company lost!  How had anything happened to Tamara!  As it begun to register, she had let out primal scream and run back to the conference room.

“You killed her!” she had shouted as she rushed David.

Two office jacks stepped up and stopped her.  She struggled to reach the CEO, but the two men, without hurting her, simply held her back.

“Tamara Veal is dead, and that bastard killed her!  I want Propitious Interstellar crushed!  I want them to pay their penalty!” she yelled at the FCDC lawyer who was still there but gathering up his belongings.

“And when did his happen, Miss?” he asked.

“At her lab.  When she infected the system.  They just shot her down!”

“So this was not within the last 45 minutes?” he asked without much emotion.

“I told you, it was yesterday afternoon!” Michi told him.

“Then, I’m afraid that Propitious Interstellar was not covered by the contract at the time, so there is nothing they are required to do.  If you believe the company is liable for her death above and beyond this contract, I suggest you contact the city attorney,” he said, picking up his briefcase and walking past her to leave.

“You knew,” she accused David.  “You knew the entire time we were negotiating.”

“We had guessed, but until you gave me her name, no, we weren’t sure. I doubt that you are going to believe me, but I am sorry about Miss Veal.  I couldn’t bring that up, though, while we were trying to come to a solution.  I was afraid you would blow up and order your friend to destroy the rest of the strain.”

Michi had glared at the man, vowing revenge.  But it wasn’t going to happen then and there.  With an utmost display of control, she had pulled herself together and without a word, turned and left the building and into the waiting hover.

Now, with Doug sitting in front of her, she sank to the floor as well.  Both friends reached for each other as the tears broke loose, and all the stress of the last few days and the grief of their loss took over.

Her PA started ringing, but she ignored it.  She had lost her fiancé, she had lost her best friend, and at the moment, she thought that cost was too high.  Michi had given her all, and that was too much.

The people of Kakurega—all of them, not just the employees of the company—had won.  Things would be better.  But to those left behind, to those who had lost loved ones in the attack, to those who had lost property, to the family of Gerile Fountainhead, that innocent jack she had killed in that dark alley, was it all worth it?

Michi just didn’t know.

Epilogue

Three years later . . .

“Congratualtions, Madame Mayor,” Doug said, handing her another glass of champagne.

“Not yet, Doug.  I won’t be sworn in for another month, but yeah, baby, this is some night, huh?   And without you managing my campaign, it never would have happened, so thanks!” she said, pulling him in for a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

“It wasn’t hard, Michi.  You’ve still got your hero status going strong, and with Lowery putting his foot up his ass so many times, it wasn’t hard.”

“Still, candidates just don’t get elected on corporate worlds when the company is against them,” she reminded him.  “Hey, enough of shop talk.  We’ve had enough of that for the last six months.  Missy is over there at the punch bowl waiting for you.  Go give your wife a kiss and take her home.  Give Tammy a kiss for me, too.”

Doug looked over to his wife who blew him a kiss.  “You know, she would have been proud of you today.”

“Yes, I think she would have, despite her lack of respect for authority,” she agreed, knowing he was speaking of their Tamara, not the daughter he named after her.

He stood there with her a moment, a sphere of silence amidst the cacophony of her campaign headquarters’ celebration.

“Arinomamade,” he said quietly, the word having become their private motto, something that bound them together.

“Arinomamade, Doug.  Not get out of here.  I don’t want to see you until Friday at the earliest.  Go be with your family.

Doug turned to give her a hug and kiss on the cheek.  He wandered over to his wife and bent her over backwards, giving her a much different sort of kiss, one that promised much more as soon as they got home.  Michi had to laugh.  Her Dougie had changed so much from the geeky guy who Cheri had sent over back before this journey began.  It may not have been so long on the calendar, but it was a lifetime ago.

Her PA buzzed, and Michi looked down at it curiously.  Not many people had the connect code, and all of them had already called to congratulate her.  She didn’t recognize the code and was about to cut the connection, but curiosity overcame her.  She slipped the bud in her ear and hit the connect.

“Madame Mayor-elect, I just wanted to offer you my congratulations,” the voice said, the screen blank.

Without a camvid, she had to place the voice, and it took a few moments. “David del Solar?” she asked.

“The one and only,” the Propitious Interstellar CEO said with a laugh.

“I didn’t expect your call,” Michi said with all candor.

Michi and David had met several times over the ensuing years, both in his office and at the anniversaries of the signing of the “People’s Compact,” as the contract had been named.

The company had twisted and turned the creation of the contract into something so far from the truth that is was awe-inspiring.  The contract itself was still inviolate, but the company PR division had created a version of what happened that beggared belief.  According to the new version of history, the company had instigated the reforms once their workers’ unhappiness had been brought to their attention.  It had been the company that had fought to get the Marines off their planet, and once that was done, they had addressed making life better for everyone, employee or not.  On each anniversary of the signing, there was a memorial service for those fallen (and those numbers had been adjusted quite a bit downwards) and the names of all Class Fours who had paid off their indenture that year were posted.  The company sponsored parties that were well-attended.

Michi had put aside her vow for revenge for Tamara.  David hadn’t had a direct hand in it.  All he had done was withhold that information during the negotiations, and that probably had been smart.  Michi didn’t know herself what she might have done if she had found out while Doug could still destroy the remaining Blue-99.

Still, even if they weren’t exactly enemies, she had just defeated the company-sponsored candidate.

“I didn’t want to intrude on your celebrations, but I thought a call would be appropriate.”

“A conciliatory call?  I didn’t know that was in you, David.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call this conciliatory,” he said.

“Uh, David, have you been watching the newsfeeds?  I just kicked your candidate’s ass.”

“I’m very aware of that.  And I congratulate you, even if we may not have put up the best candidate.”

“Oh, shite, David.  Don’t feed me that.  You contributed to his campaign.  You endorsed him.  What about all your dirty tricks?”

“Michi, you’re a smart woman.  Do you really think we would put up a pompous ass like Lowery if we wanted him to win?  If I wanted him to win?”

“What are you saying?”

“Put it together.  I couldn’t very well put the company’s support behind the woman who brought the company to its knees.  So, if I could put up someone unelectable, what would that do?  I could show that I tried to get someone else elected.  All the dirty tricks were not very effective, were they?  No, because you could address each one, and no matter what else, the Federation would make sure the actual votes made would be reflected.  There’s no tampering with the ballots allowed.”

“Nice story.  But why should I believe this fairy tale?” she asked, not buying it.

“Because Lowery was so bad.  Because we leaked the story about his past psychological treatments. And most of all because I want you to be mayor.”

“One again, why?”

“Since you force us into the contract, our business has never been better.  You’ve seen our stocks.  We’re up almost 180% since then.  Our “good for the people” persona is working.  That caught me by surprise, I will admit, but the numbers are there.  With increased sales and better worker relations, we’re on a role.  And with you as mayor of Tay Station, I think we can work together.”

“I’m only going to be the mayor.  I won’t hold sway anywhere else.”

“What about governor?” he asked.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.  Let me be sworn in, first.  Besides, I don’t work for you.”

“I didn’t say work ‘for’ me.  I said ‘with’ me.”

“OK, let me rephrase that.  I did not get elected to makes things easier for the company.  I will not do its bidding,” she told him.

“Will you work for what is good for the city?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Then that’s all I can ask for.  And if what’s good for the city is good for the company, then we all win.  Look, I didn’t plan on getting into it now.  I was going to invite you to the board dining room for a dinner next week.  I’m still going to do that so you can meet my team, but until then, just think about it, OK.”

“I’ll think about anything that will help me do my job.”

“That’s all I can ask for.  It’s a new galaxy, and I hope we can figure out how to make it work.  Take care, and one again, congratulations.”

He cut off his side, and Michi stared at the blank PA.

That was one weird call, she thought.

She looked up at the room, where the die-hard revelers were still partying.  They had worked hard for her.  Well maybe not so much for her as for what Michi stood for:  a new beginning.  She was not corporate.  She was an outsider.

Michi was also smart enough to know that if the company fought her, she would be stymied in whatever she tried to accomplish.  Maybe getting in bed with the devil would allow her to do some good.  She’d done some pretty nasty things in the past for that elusive “greater good,” so why not consider David’s offer?

“Madame Mayor!  Come here for a drink!” one of her young volunteers, one she was ashamed to admit she didn’t even recognize, called out from a group of about five very happy people.

She still had the champagne that Doug had given her, so she walked over to join them, a real smile, not a forced one on her face.

“Thank you for all your help,” she said to their cheers.  “It’s only just begun, though.  This was the easy part, and now comes the real job.  We were elected to make a change, and by St Chuck’s hairy butt, we’re going to do it!”

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by Jonathan Brazee?

The United Federation Marine Corps

Ryck’s story starts with Recruit.  The time line in this coincides with Captain Lysander in book four of the United Federation Marine Corps series in Captain.

Get the books in the series:

The United Federation Marine Corps

Recruit

Sergeant

Lieutenant

Captain

Major

Lieutenant Colonel

Colonel

Commandant

Behind Enemy Lines

(A UFMC Prequel)

Additional Series:

The United Federation Marine Corps’ Lysander Twins

Women of the United Federation Marine Corps

The United Federation Marine Corps’ Grub Wars

Ghost Marines

The Navy of Mankind:  Wasp Squadron

Call to Arms:  Capernica

The Return of the Marines Trilogy

The Al Anbar Chronicles:  First Marine Expeditionary Force--Iraq

Werewolf of Marines

About the Author

Jonathan P. Brazee is a retired Marine infantry colonel and now a full-time writer living in North Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife Kiwi and twin baby girls, Danika Dawn and Darika Marie. He is a two-time Nebula Award Finalist, a Dragon Award Finalist, and a USA Today Bestselling writer.

Jonathan published his first work back in 1978, a so-so short story titled "Secession." Since then, he has been published in newspapers, magazines, and in book format in fiction, political science, business, military, sports, race relations, and personal relations fields. He returned to writing fiction in 2009, and currently has over 75 titles published, 44 being novels. Jonathan’s novelette, "Weaponized Math," was a finalist for the 2017 Nebula Award, "Fire Ant" was a finalist for the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella, and "Integration" was a finalist for the 2018 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.

Jonathan’s undergraduate degree was earned at the U. S. Naval Academy (Class of 1979), and he attended graduate school at U. S. International University and the University of California, San Diego, earning a masters and doctorate. He is a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the US. Naval Academy Alumni Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America where I'm serving as the chairman of SFWA Ed, the organization’s professional education program.

Jonathan has eclectic tastes, having won awards in photography, cooking, writing, and several sports, earning national championships in rugby and equestrian events. When he’s not writing, he’s reading, cooking, going to the gym, or traveling. He attends quite a few cons over the course of a year, and loves meeting other people who love books.

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RESCUE TWO: A SEEDER’S UNIVERSE SHORT STORY
by Dean Wesley Smith

The impossible search was just the beginning.

Searching for a lost Seeder Mother Ship with over a million people on board might be an impossible task under normal circumstances, but the Mother Ship went missing over three million years earlier.

Finding the ship poses immense problems. And the problems only start once they find it.

An epic space opera tale on a gigantic scale. Another story in Dean Wesley Smith’s bestselling Seeders Universe.

Copyright © 2019 Dean Wesley Smith

Rescue Two (this story) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

All rights reserved.

One

Chairman Evan West stood beside his chair on the bridge of Seeder ship Rescue Two, letting the twenty-seven people on the three levels of stations in the command center work in silence around him. He knew that his crew of sixteen thousand were pretty much all as intensely focused as he was at this moment.

His wife, Tammy, her dark hair pulled back tight away from her face, frowned at her screen one level above where he stood. He knew that tiny frown was not from a problem, but of extreme concentration.

He and Tammy made a perfect couple, always had. At first, they had been on different ships, doing different missions for the Seeders. But after the mother ship she was on, Dreaming Large, had got trapped in a Void Space pocket and it had taken him over sixteen years to lead Rescue One to free the mother ship, they had decided to be on the same missions.

And he loved that. Their apartment was large and comfortable and they both had offices. And every day they made a point of eating dinner together to talk over their days. Twice a week they had movie night.

Those sixteen years she had been missing made him love her even more. Even though it had only been a few minutes for her, she seemed to understand and return the love and agree to the changes.

After the war with the aliens had been won, primarily by his knowledge of Void Space bubbles, Chairman Ray, the Seeder who seemed to guide all Seeders through thousand and thousands of galaxies, had given him an assignment.

Chairman West was to have his ship, Rescue One refurbished and expanded, with the fast speeds known to Seeders, and all modern equipment that had been developed during the war. He was to recruit a crew and then his mission was to find lost Seeder ships.

Especially two lost Seeder mother ships who had left the original Earth hundreds of thousands of years before and simply vanished.

Since Mother Ships could smash into a planet and come out the other side without damage, Ray and West both thought the ships had ran into Void Space bubbles, where time didn’t really exist. Those ships could be gone for a hundreds of thousands of years and only a few days would have passed inside the bubble.

Rescue Two’s job was to try, after all the millions of years, to track those ships and find them and rescue them, or find out what had happened to the millions of Seeders who had been on those two ships.

Ray had looked at West and said, “Some of my best friends were on those ships, Chairman. Find them. We need them more than ever right now.”

West had only nodded. It had taken three years to refurbish Rescue One into Rescue Two. And another two weeks to track where the first Mother Ship might have traveled in over eighty years of flight.

And Rescue Two had not been traveling at top speed, either, but instead going relatively slow to check out some Void Space bubbles along the way.

Tammy’s expertise was in space mapping through time, dealing with the galaxy shifts and drifts. Extremely high-level math that they had installed extreme levels of computers in Rescue Two just for her and her department.

“Dropping out of Trans-Warp,” James, his navigator said, “right on target.”

West trusted James with just about anything, even though he looked like he had barely left college with a baby face, blue eyes, and blonde hair. Actually James was almost four hundred years old and maybe the top navigator to come out of the war.

“Void Space bubble should be right ahead of us,” Tammy said.

“It is,” James said.

“Take us to within scanning distance slow and carefully,” West said.

Since the war, all Seeder ships could see clearly on their scans all areas of Void Space. But they were all still very careful around them, since one wrong move could cost them thousands of years lost until they either went through or got rescued.

This large bubble ahead of them had been on the assumed flight path of one of the ancient Seeder Mother ships named Dawn’s Light.

The Voice Space was as big around as about ten solar systems, one of the bigger ones West had dealt with.

It would have been on the edge of a galaxy at the time where the Dawn’s Light would have been heading to possibly seed. It now had shifted a great deal in space, but Tammy had tracked it through the five million years.

Actually, she had taken it’s position now and backtracked it to where it would have been at the time of the flight of the mother ship.

They all believed this one bubble was their best hope so far.

“Scanning distance,” James said. “All stop.”

Extreme silence.

Heavier than West could imagine being on this command center, which usually felt light and full of laughter and fun.

After a moment, Tammy looked up at him from her screen, a smile on her face. “Scans show a Seeder Mother ship.”

West broke into a large smile as around the command center applause and cheers filled the air.

“Any idea with this size bubble how much time has passed for them?”

“Six days and a few hours,” Tammy said.

West just shook his head. This massive ship with over a million souls on board had been missing for over five million years.

“Let’s set up to get them out of there,” West said, sending a thousand small probes launching to surround the huge bubble.

Then sat down in his command chair and asked to be put in contact with Chairman Ray.

Chairman Ray’s stern face appeared almost instantly. He had long, gray hair that hung down his back and always wore expensive silk shirts and slacks.

“We have a Seeder Mother ship in a bubble,” West said. “We think it is the Dawn’s Light. I thought you might want to be here to greet them and help start them through the transition.

“How long until you have the bubble destroyed?”

“Thirty minutes,” West said.

Ray nodded. “I will be right there in ten minutes.”

West nodded and clicked off. Then he turned to his command center crew. “Stay sharp people. Chairman Ray will be here shortly.”

Then he smiled at Tammy, who smiled back before going back to work.

A good day. At least so far.

Two

Chairman Ray appeared beside West’s command chair and a slight gasp went out through the command center. Chairman West understood that feeling. Ray was the unofficial leader of all the Seeders and was well over five million years old. Seeders lived a very long time, but only some of the ancients were older.

And Ray had a presence about him with the dark slacks, silk white shirt, long gray hair combed perfectly down his back, and ramrod-straight posture.

“Are you going to be all right?” West asked Ray, moving over closer to him so that his words would not be heard by any of his crew.

West nodded. “My brother is one of the chairman on this ship. For millions of years I have feared him lost forever, dealt with his death a long time ago. It was only with your discovery of Empty Space and the rescue of Dreaming Large that I had let myself hope again.”

West just nodded. Not a thing he could say to that. Not a thing. He was only about twenty thousand years old. He couldn’t imagine thinking that a loved relative had been lost for five million years and now had a chance to see them again.

Impossible to imagine.

“Chairman,” James said, “we are ready.”

West glanced over at Tammy who nodded her agreement. She was his technical expert in empty space bubbles.

“Are you ready, sir?” West asked, turning to Ray.

Ray nodded and said nothing.

“Get them out of there,” West said.

A moment later a few thousand small explosions showed the massive globe of the Void Space Bubble, then the next moment an ancient Seeder Mother Ship appeared.

In comparison to the modern, sleek Seeder ships, this one looked ancient in design, even though completely undamaged in any way.

“It is the Dawn’s Light,” Tammy said, smiling.

“Please hail their chairmen,” Ray said.

“Coming on screen,” James said.

On the big screen in front of them, a man who looked a great deal like Ray, only without the wear and the long gray hair, appeared standing next to a dark-skinned woman with a beaming smile.

“Hello, Cannon,” Ray said. “Hello, Anna. This is Chairman Evan West of the Rescue Two.”

“Wow, what are you doing here?” Cannon asked. “And Rescue Two? I don’t understand.”

Someone on the Dawn’s Light command center said something in the background. West had a hunch it was someone reporting that they were no longer anywhere where they were supposed to be. And that a lot of time had passed.

Cannon and Anna both turned to listen for a moment.

Cannon then turned back to Ray and his face suddenly had a look of panic on it. Anna looked the same. “What happened, brother?”

“You were trapped for over six of your days in what is called an Empty Space Bubble. “We found you and broke you out of that bubble.”

“But how?” Anna asked.

“We need to talk in private first,” Ray said. “Chairman West and his wife and I can meet you in your main meeting room?”

Cannon cut the connection and a moment later West found himself with Tammy standing beside Ray in a standard old-fashioned mother ship meeting room. A large wooden table ran down the middle, with ten comfortable cloth chairs around it.

Pictures of galaxies and plants covered the walls.

West and Tammy stood back as Cannon and Anna came into the room. All three embraced. For Cannon and Anna, it had been eighty-plus years since seeing Ray.

West had no idea how Ray was even holding it together for this meeting.

“How is Tacita?” Anna asked about Chairman Ray’s wife.

“She is fine,” Ray said, smiling. “She can join us later when you are ready.”

Then all five of them sat down after introductions had been made.

West found himself holding Tammy’s hand under the table and she held his back just as tightly.

“So tell us exactly what has happened,” Cannon said. “And how did you and your modern-looking ship get here, let alone know we needed to be rescued.”

Ray turned to West. “Chairman, would you like to tell my brother and his wife how you rescued your wife?”

He then turned back to his brother. “You will have questions, but hear him out completely first.”

West nodded and went over the story of the Dreaming Large vanishing. And all the years it took to understand Empty Space Bubbles and learn how to get ships out of them safely.

“So time does not work the same inside of these Empty Space bubbles as outside,” Anna asked after West was done. “Is that correct?”

All three of them nodded.

“So how much time passes inside versus in real space?” Cannon asked.

“That depends on a lot of factors,” Tammy said, “but mostly on the size of the empty space bubble.”

“Was the bubble we were in large or small?”

“Large,” Tammy said. “So the time difference was extreme.”

“How long have we been missing?” Cannon asked, looking directly at Ray.

Ray just frowned. “Just over five million years.”

Cannon sat back hard in his chair and Anna’s eyes looked distant.

“You thought we were dead for over five million years?” Cannon asked softly.

“I did,” Ray said.

Three

Silence, thick and very heavy filled the room.

West squeezed Tammy’s hand, very glad she was beside him for this.

Finally Ray asked if he may connect Cannon’s ship with West’s ship. “I have a presentation for you that I think will make you proud.”

“Go ahead,” Cannon said, looking at Anna who just was sitting shaking her head. West could not begin to understand what they were feeling right now.

“When you left on this mission eighty of your years ago,” Ray said as a map of galaxies came up on the screen on the wall at the end of the table. “This was the number of galaxies we had seeded.”

“Ten if memory serves,” Cannon said, looking at the green dots in a tiny area of the wall screen.

Ray nodded. “Yes, ten. This is how many human galaxies now exist.”

Ray changed the image of the map.

West was stunned at how massive the amount of green was, spreading like a plant over massive amounts of space. Every green dot an entire galaxy with billions of stars.

“Wow,” Tammy said softly beside him. This kind of perspective was not something they always saw or paid attention to.

“We have so many Mother Ships,” Ray said, “we are now seeding a new galaxy on the average of ever ten days. And a new Mother Ship is coming on line now almost every month.”

West shook his head in amazement. He didn’t even know that.

“What is the gray area?” Anna asked after a moment of everyone staring at the incredible image.

“Those are the home galaxies of the Gray. They also live on every human seeded world as well and help us in the seeding process in a behind-the-scenes way. We have had a treaty with them since right after you vanished.”

“And the black area,” Cannon asked.

West looked down. Not something he wanted to talk about much.

“We had a war with a Seeder-made culture. Those are all dead galaxies.”

“And the bright blue dot and line?” Anna asked.

“The Ancient’s home world and the area we think they disappeared into,” Ray said.

“Ancients?” Cannon asked.

West had no doubt this was going to take a lot of time to explain over many, many days.

“Yes, we were seeded as well,” Ray said. “We call our seeders the “Ancients.”

“Oh, shit,” Anna said.

“We can ask Daniels to join us later,” Ray said. “He can explain that part.”

“Daniels?” Cannon asked, looking puzzled as to why Ray would want their second in command to join them.

“He’s an ancient,” Ray said, “along with about eighty other crew members on this ship, riding along to help. I’m actually very interested in talking with them as well. Ancients are not enemies. They are Seeders as well. But all of them have just left their home worlds and no one knows exactly where they went.”

“I am so confused,” Anna said.

Tammy leaned forward. “Let me try to get you some grounding, since I was also trapped inside an Empty Space Bubble and suddenly had six hundred ships surround us.”

Anna nodded, as did Cannon.

“What happened is that without your knowing it, six days ago your time, you ran into an Empty Space Bubble. You engines shut down and nothing seemed to work as normal.”

They both nodded.

“You could also no longer see real space, but you could see the edge and were trying to get to it with just your forward real-space motion, correct?”

Again they both nodded.

“For every second you existed in that bubble,” Tammy said, “out here in standard time, years went past. And there was nothing at all you could do about it or change it. And there was nothing you did wrong at all. It has happened to many, many Seeder ships until my husband here and his team invented a way to scan for Empty Space bubbles and avoid them.”

“We will be looking for the Mother Ship Shadow Stars next,” West said. “It vanished about three hundred years after you did.”

“It was Chairman Ray’s desire to find you that got this mission going,” Tammy said. “Although he did not tell us why exactly.”

Cannon glanced at Anna, then back at Ray. “We need to tell our crew what happened. Can you give us some time?”

“Contact us when you need more answers,” Ray said. “I have a fleet of ships headed this way that should start arriving at any moment, with the majority of them arriving tomorrow to help you retrofit your ship and get you into a Seeder port for a complete overhaul to get you and your crew five million years into the future.”

“Any moment now?” Anna asked. “How fast are your ships?”

“We can make the journey it took you eighty years to make in a few hours at normal speeds. Faster if we had to.”

Anna just sort of shook her head.

Cannon nodded and stood. “Thank you, brother,” he said.

They hugged and then Ray nodded to Anna.

Then West, Tammy, and Ray were back in the Command Center of the Rescue Two.

West turned to his command crew and said simply, “Any question any of the crew of that ship have, no matter how stupid sounding, answer it carefully, fully, and with compassion.”

Around the command center his crew was nodding.

West then turned back to Ray. Tammy has his arm around him and seemed to almost be holding him up. Finally Ray seemed to gather himself and stand, his posture back completely.

“Thank you both for your amazing work on this,” Ray said. “I need to tell Tacita that her brother-in-law and sister-in-law are very much alive and well. She was refusing to believe this possible. She and Anna were very close.”

“We are here when you need us,” West said.

Ray nodded. “I know that. But now I need you and your wonderful crew to see if you can find Shadow Stars. We will have this situation covered completely tomorrow with enough counselors to help a lot of those having issues with the time loss deal with it.”

“We will start our search for Shadow Stars,” West said.

Ray nodded, but didn’t jump away. It seemed he had something left to say. Finally he looked at both of them. “My sister is on Shadow Stars. And Tacita’s father.”

West only said, “Understood.”

Tammy hugged the most powerful Chairman of all Seeders like he was a close friend, then she said simply, “We’ll find them.”

And with that Chairman Ray nodded his thanks, smiled, and without a word vanished.

“Open a ship-wide com link,” West said.

“Well done, everyone, on finding and rescuing the million souls on Dawn’s Light. We will be here for support duty for a very short time, more than likely not longer than a day, then we move on. So we celebrate tonight, then we start our search for Shadow Stars. There are millions on that ship that need our help. Well done, everyone.”

He clicked off the com link and smiled at Tammy.

“I suggest we have a nice dinner in our apartment, just the two of us,” Tammy said.

He smiled and hugged her. “You know we have no hope of making more than an hour or so without getting called back here?”

“Then we better get going,” she said, laughing. “You make the steaks, I’ll do the salad.”

“Deal,” he said, and with that they vanished from the Command Center.

They actually got one hour and fifteen minutes before they were again needed. A wonderful one hour and fifteen minutes as far as West was concerned, because to him, he was really starting to understand the importance of time.

Both on a large scale and on a minute-by-minute level.

THE END

—  —  —

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Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

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His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

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THE DEATH LEAGUE
by Michael Anderle & David John William

The Zoo is spreading. Humanity is at stake.

When alien DNA finds its way into the desert and starts spawning life, the world leaders dictate it must be contained.

Construction begins in earnest.

The rapidly enacted arena around the phenomenon becomes known as “the Zoo”.

Policed and protected by the world’s milita it becomes a jungle of impossible missions.

As a coping mechanism, the personel tasked with protecting the world from the Zoo set up the Death League on the wall of their bar. It provides a running tally of bets on who is most likely to die next.

Top of the Death League is Captain Jan T Shalwar – a well-respected commander on the base.

But it’s not until he’s joined by Dr. Laura Curie, a stow-away scientist, that the gallows humor and bravado is disrupted, and they realize the Zoo is changing in ways they could never have predicted.

Dangerous ways.

Rapid ways.

Laura and Jan have to overcome their immediate dislike for each other if they’re going to unravel the Zoo’s secrets, and stop it spreading before the danger reaches the only partially complete wall.

If they can’t, their lives, and the whole of humanity, are over.

The Death League (this book) is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Copyright © 2019 Michael Anderle

A Michael Anderle Production

LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

LMBPN Publishing

PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

Las Vegas, NV 89109

First US edition, 2019

The Zoo (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2019 by Michael T. Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

Prologue

Lieutenant Kerns crashed through thicket after thicket of dense foliage. Operating purely on instinct, he ducked under and sidestepped the interlocking branches of the seemingly endless rows of trees.

His breath grew ragged and his feet thudded softly and steadily on the jungle floor beneath him. He couldn’t shake the images from his head—the broken bodies of his troops, their mouths twisted in an agony beyond his imagining.

Although cloaked in shadow, he’d seen the events of their downfall in enough detail for his imagination to fill in the rest.

Those creatures—what on earth were they?

Certainly, nothing he’d been briefed on beforehand. They had attacked shortly before the team had set up camp and positioned the motion sensors, having crept up from all sides with soft steps that covered considerable ground while they remained damn near inaudible.

He guessed that even without the talking and chuckling of his troops at day’s end, their ears still would have been hard-pressed to provide them much warning. And had some of those things come out of the trees themselves?

At one point, amidst the sights of his crew being savaged and snatched away in the dark, he could have sworn he saw one of the creatures’ large, nimble forms pounce from above to violently end the efforts of Private Thompson and his shotgun.

Then, all had vanished in a chorus of blood-chilling howls.

The creatures were a hybrid—he felt safe assuming that much—but of what, he couldn’t be sure. Likely two species he would never have put together and which nothing outside the warped perimeter of this alien jungle could have put together. An improbable, uniquely terrifying coupling, exactly like almost everything else in this place.

The Zoo, as his superiors called it.

Kerns had managed to kill—or at least badly wound—a few of the creatures, but the pack had completed its devastating work with such efficiency that he had soon become the last man standing. He didn’t exactly think it wise to try his luck against those attackers who hadn’t already left, carting off the bodies—both dead or barely alive—of his troops. For all he knew, the creatures could still be following him. Or they could be moving parallel to him already, toying with him so he would think he was alone.

The thought triggered a ripple of fear and he stumbled on as quickly as he could.

He had no idea where he was at this point and had deviated from the planned route a long time before. The hyper-real and unnatural sounds of its plant-life confirmed that he was still in the Zoo’s clutches, although it was obvious anyway given that outside the jungle meant the barren sandy wastes of the Sahara. But he’d lost all sense of his relative position and had no way to know how far it was to the outer edges and to safety. Traversing the Zoo was intimidating enough with a platoon of trained soldiers and a sense of direction, but alone and lost in the dark, tired and growing exponentially weaker, he would consider himself lucky simply to survive the next hour.

Spent, he stopped to rest for a moment and panted hoarsely with his hands on his knees. Although he’d put a fair amount of distance between himself and the site of the ambush, if he wanted to have any chance to get out of there, he’d need to give his body at least a small respite. Passing out on the jungle floor would make him an easy meal for whatever lucky denizen of the Zoo happened to lurk nearby.

Kerns gulped the last of the water in his backpack hydration unit. If he’d had a bottle of water, he would have tossed the empty bottle without guilt and he laughed at the inanity of giving a shit about littering at a time like this. Besides, the Zoo had a way to twist everything to its advantage. It would probably turn an empty bottle into some kind of skin-sucking vine—half plant and half recycled plastic—in a matter of days. If anything, he would have done it a service.

After a deep breath, he surveyed his surroundings. It had been nothing but dense jungle for so long, but now, finally, he noticed a new addition to the landscape. He squinted in an effort to see more clearly.

Was it a building? It couldn’t be.

His superiors had made no mention of a station or outpost of any kind within the Zoo territory. But as he drew closer, the structure didn’t reveal itself to be an illusion or anything that would have made more sense—like a tangle of trees contorted into an odd, deceptive shape. It was a building, and in his position, he couldn’t pass up the chance to seek shelter. It might even offer a means of communication to base.

He took cautious steps toward it and scanned all around for any kind of trap but nothing launched from the shadows as he approached. It felt almost like he could actually sense the Zoo fading out as he approached the building as if its collective breath moved in the other direction. Kerns reached the door and found it was already ajar.

The last thing he wanted was for it to creak and alert whatever might be inside to his presence. He stepped sideways through the opening and tested the floorboards carefully before he applied too much weight to them. Once past the threshold, he found himself standing in what appeared to be an abandoned laboratory. Before him stood rows of worktables, dirty and crumbling with moss and weeds visible on their cracked surfaces. What the hell had gone on there? It looked like someone had tried to set up a kind of testing site at some point—probably before everyone became aware of exactly how dangerous the Zoo was. There was the original and now overrun lab that had spawned the place, obviously, but since then, no one had even attempted to maintain a structure within the jungle itself.

This place simply didn’t make sense. With its cobwebbed corners, rust-coated walls, and broken glass on the floor, it was the antithesis of the sprawling, vibrant life that crowded around it outside.

Kerns sighed. He could forget about contacting anyone from there. But at least he’d found shelter and somewhere to wait out the night. He stepped across puddles on the floor and made his way toward the back of the room. The structure was like the casket of some cheap high-school biology lab. There was another door at the far-right end, but this one was closed.

From behind it, he thought he could hear footsteps, a soft clanging, and a compression of fabric like someone flopped on a couch.

Were they actually signs of human life or was his mind playing tricks on him, interpreting the noises as pleasant and familiar and so give him what he wanted to hear? In the next moment, there came a clear and distinct sound of someone clearing their throat. His heart lurched and he beat his fist on the door.

“Hello?” he called. “Is someone there? My name is—”

Before he could introduce himself, the door opened and a man stepped out, gave him a nod, and shut the door quickly behind him. He wore a lab coat that only served to make the soldier more confused. The place didn’t exactly seem to be in use, after all. The man turned to him and gave him a plastic kind of smile. His eyes possessed a clinical detachment and he looked at Kerns as if to examine him and weigh his properties for potential scientific study.

“Well, this is strange,” the man said with a heavy French accent. “I was not expecting you, Mr…” He raised his eyebrows.

Despite feeling like he was under a microscope, Kerns stuck his hand out. “Lieutenant Kerns. My men and I came under attack and—”

The stranger raised a hand. “It is okay,” he interrupted. “I do not need to know the particulars of how doom is met.” He gestured vaguely toward the door. “So long as it is, in fact, being met.” He gave a small laugh that trailed off, then put his hands in his coat pockets and gave the soldier that same distant, creepy smile, this time with a trace of pity. Kerns lowered his eyebrows. He didn’t understand the man’s presence there, let alone the words he’d spoken. The interaction felt surreal as if all he had been through tonight had driven him off the edge of sanity and into some form of hallucination. He peered past the man at the closed door behind him.

“What are you doing out here alone?” he asked.

The man pointed at him. “I am not alone,” he stated matter-of-factly.

The truth of that became immediately apparent. He suddenly felt a hulking presence behind him and registered that he stood in its shadow. Panicked, he spun and his eyes confirmed what he’d already suspected. The blood drained from his face to pool in a mass of dread somewhere deep in his chest. He screamed.

Cool and unfazed, the scientist merely stood and watched. He continued to do so until the soldier had taken his very last breath.

Chapter One

“You’re fired.”

Dr. Laura Curie tensed, her mouth open in shock. An imposing man in a military uniform had departed her boss’s office before she’d gone in, but even that hadn’t quite prepared her for this.

She wasn’t sure why the words should hit her so hard—at this point, shouldn’t she be used to hearing them? It seemed like she should have developed some kind of emotional defense mechanism in response to being sent away in one form or another, but it never failed to land like a kick in the gut.

Her hand swept the room and she shook her head. “I don’t understand. I’m doing great work here.”

“You’ve left me no choice,” Director Jane Wixom replied. “You’ve crossed the line time and time again, and I can’t make an exception for you, no matter how skilled a scientist you may be. And I know that you are skilled, which is the only reason you’ve remained employed here this long. If it were anyone else, they would have been gone a long time ago.” She held the demeanor of someone who was far beyond the point of decision and would not be swayed in a million years’ worth of pleading. But she had to try. After all, she now had all the time in the world.

“I’m one of the hardest-working scientists here,” she protested. “You know that. You know how much I care.”

“The problem isn’t that you care. It’s that you care too much,” Jane declared. The director was a tall, severe-looking woman, and Laura instantly believed her. In her presence, it was impossible not to think of the quote—who was it by? Pournelle?—about how in every organization, the people who cared more about the rules and procedures than about the actual goals were the ones who ended up writing and enforcing those same rules and procedures.

“I never thought I’d be fired for caring too much.”

“Do you really think I’d believe you were the one who caused the explosion in the lab?”

She shrugged and decided it was safer not to respond to this. When her lab assistant, Victor Manis, accidentally added too much of a volatile reagent to a simple experiment, he caused a massive explosion that destroyed an entire lab. His daughter needed costly medication for a heart condition and he couldn’t afford to lose his job over a simple mistake and she couldn’t let that happen. So, she did the only thing she could think of and claimed responsibility for the disaster.

“I can’t prove it, as you well know. But I believe you were covering for one of your colleagues. Someone who had more at stake than you if he lost his job here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Laura declared innocently. The woman couldn’t possibly fire her based on a hunch.

“There’s also the issue of professional conduct. Several issues, in fact. First, there was the incident with the vice-chancellor.”

She scoffed. “Ah, yes, the man with the fancy title and wandering hands. If your arse had been there—quite literally—you would have punched him, too.”

Appeal to sisterhood. That usually works.

Wixom, unfortunately, remained unmoved. “Dr. Curie, you’re a brilliant mind but you still talk as if we operate inside a science fiction novel. We all have to play by the rules in order to make any progress in our field and benefit the advancement of humankind. You should know that by now.”

It was true, at least to some extent. She had received variations of this particular spiel for as long as she could remember but it had never sat well with her. It had never seemed to take up permanent residence within her psyche. Even now, while in the process of being terminated, she could identify nothing in Wixom’s speech that pertained to truth, to discovery, or to the hopes and promises of science—the things that had driven her throughout her life.

She scooted back in her chair and stood. “All right, so I’ve racked up a couple of minor infractions,” she admitted, “and this whole fake-firing pretense has really got the message across. So rest assured, it won’t happen again.” She paused. “Ma’am.” She nodded affirmatively and started to turn away.

“Laura,” Wixom snapped, her voice steeled with a hard dose of not-messing-around, “sit down.”

Laura sat and put on a hearty public-relations grin of false amusement. “Wow, your commitment here is truly impressive. But I promise, I—”

“Stop, please,” the director interrupted. “Beyond the other infractions we’ve discussed, Dr. Curie, I know about the hacking.”

The air seemed to drain out of her lungs. “Oh,” she muttered. The enervation of defeat spread through her body and her limbs went limp in the chair. This one might be a little harder to get out of.

For months, she’d stayed late at the university to study reports on the Zoo—the dangerous, alien-spawned jungle that had sprouted in the Sahara Desert.

The British government administered a sector of Wall Two, the name of which subtly hinted as its status as the second line of defense against the Zoo’s expansion. The first had failed. While working on this latter and more distant wall, the UK had established Fort Archway from which to conduct operations. Based on what she’d read in the classified reports, she did not have particularly high hopes for the base’s long-term success.

Her means of accessing the data weren’t exactly legal, but she didn’t regret having employed them. She had no choice, mainly because she had to get inside the Zoo. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to continue her biologist sister’s legacy.

Alicia had been working in the initial Sahara project when the Zoo materialized. No human in the area had survived when the jungle appeared—or if they had, they were far from human now. She’d been told to forget Alicia but she wasn’t about to do that.

It had taken months of after-hours research conducted only by the faint glow of a desk lamp, but she had finally found a trace of her sister. Using a facial recognition program to search images from the Zoo, she found a match, a photo of Alicia and her colleagues inside Ground Zero dated a week or so before the Zoo erupted and consumed everyone involved. The picture was blurry, but Laura was sure. Her sister had still been inside the biodome compound before she disappeared. While she wasn’t naïve enough to think Alicia had survived, she couldn’t face the idea of allowing her work to die as well.

She had often envied her beauty and the ease with which she socialized with people. Alicia had the best boyfriends, ran with the popular crowd and, Laura hated to admit, was probably her parents’ favorite. There were many things she had envied about her sister, but success in her career wasn’t one of them. From a young age, the two of them had loved science. They both wanted to be famous for making groundbreaking scientific discoveries when they grew up. They should have been able to study the Zoo together.

Apart from finding evidence of her sister’s demise, she had developed a hypothesis about the Zoo from the information in the reports. The positive side was that there was still time and the damage could still be reversed. The harmful course of action that the government had taken had not yet completely arse-fucked them. But she needed to test her hypothesis in the field.

For that, she needed to get to Fort Archway before it was too late.

“You’ve been tapping into information on the Zoo,” Wixom accused, her tone grating. “Classified information. For God’s sake, state secrets—do you have any idea how much risk we incur when you do something like that? You could have had this entire institution dismantled. This could put every university employee out of a job.”

She tried to gather herself before she responded. “Okay, yes, I understand that, and I’m sorry. Really, I am. But it makes no sense for them to lock us out. They’re closing the door on intelligence that could change their whole approach to the Zoo.”

The woman sighed in frustration. “I don’t want to hear it, Laura. We both know this isn’t about the Zoo or saving the human race. It’s about her, isn’t it?”

Laura looked at her hands. She couldn’t deny it.

“I’m not entirely heartless,” the director said and warmth seeped into her voice for the first time. “I know you lost your sister to the Zoo and I know you well enough by now to be sure that your interest in the Zoo has something to do with her dying there. However, you can’t do it from this position any longer.”

She leaned in. This argument wasn’t only important for her sake anymore. Steering away from the talk of her sister, she decided to appeal to the scientist in her boss. “Look, from what I’ve seen in the reports—”

“The classified reports.”

“From what I’ve seen in the reports,” she pressed, raised her voice slightly beyond what was appropriate, and probably turned a little red, “the people down there don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They’re looking at it in all the wrong ways, and if my research is correct, they could quickly find themselves in very real danger. I’ve developed a hypothesis that could help them and that could change their perspective.”

Jane’s resolve seemed to fade into fatigued irritation as if she was merely a speck of dirt in her eye that she couldn’t manage to wash out. “If you really cared about helping people, if you really wanted to follow in your sister’s footsteps,” the woman stated, “you’d do your job and follow the same rules that everyone else has to follow if they want to effect real change in our world. From where I’m sitting, Dr. Curie, you look like someone who’s willing to break all the rules to get what she wants, leaving behind a trail of unfortunate bystanders who have been forced to take the blow for your reckless behavior.”

Laura groaned and threw her hands up in exasperation. “Are you even listening to what I’m saying? They don’t understand what they’re dealing with down there. It’s vitally important that I keep working on this.”

Wixom stood from behind her desk and unofficially marked this conversation as finished. “I have a meeting with a member of Parliament, Dr. Curie. I’m sorry, and I’m afraid MI6 knows about your hacking. In fact, they’re the ones who informed us about it. It’s out of my hands. The officer you saw in here before you came in is waiting to take you away. Since you know so much about the Zoo already, they’ve decided to sentence you to three years in there as a research scientist. Some might say they’ve gone easy on you and given you the very thing you seek. I wonder, though, given everything we know about the Zoo, if you wouldn’t be better off in prison. I’ve told the officer to wait for you outside. Take a moment if you need to gather your thoughts.” With that, she walked past without deigning to look at her, but Laura sensed her pause. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said before the door closed gently behind her.

She sank into the chair and her mind replayed everything her boss had said. Of course, she was right. Going to the Zoo was precisely what she wanted but being there by force wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.

Her expression glum, she surveyed the arsenal of accolades spread across Director Wixom’s desk and the certificates laminated and framed on the office walls. What was this but the academic equivalent of a kid displaying their trophies for rec football on a dresser beside their bunkbed?

Wixom had spoken of their world being different from the sci-fi worlds of books and movies and television—worlds in which Laura had spent many hours immersed. But seated alone in this office, she felt, not for the first time, like there might have been some overlap. In both worlds, people like her were often asked repeatedly to keep their heads down, told to follow instructions and protocols, and to uphold the status quo. They were discouraged from floating ideas and opinions that contradicted those of the people in charge. She knew she was no heroine—hacking a secure government website had surely disqualified her from that category—but she was both excited and terrified by her research into the Zoo and the hypothesis she’d drawn from it.

She had to be heard. Laura realized being fired and even being detained might have been the best thing that ever happened to her. Now that she was assigned to the jungle, she could concentrate her efforts on what mattered.

It was time to get her hands dirty in the field.

Chapter Two

Soldat Gunter Grün had arrived at the Archway Research & Defense Facility at 0800 hours.

By 1300, he was already fatigued and irritable.

Today was his first day at the base and indeed, this was his first real assignment as a deployed soldier amongst the enlisted men of the German Bundeswehr. They had immediately given him a difficult and dangerous mission of the utmost importance, along with a small desk and ink pen with which to complete it.

The forms also contained innumerable helpful instructions.

“Oh, don’t even bother getting tea from the vending machines,” an obviously British fat guy in a white lab coat said as he strolled past. He and a very petite woman, also wearing a white coat, talked as they passed through the large lobby-office and ignored the mostly German soldiers and various minor bureaucrats who sat doing paperwork. “It’s not up to snuff at all. You’d be much better off simply petitioning a few family members at home to ship you some Tetley’s. We’re still trying to see if we can have the local Tuaregs smuggle proper tea down from Algeria…”

Gunter rolled his eyes. It was good to know the Brits had their priorities straight.

The Zoo was, from what he had heard so far, currently the most dangerous assignment available to the German Army. Casualty figures were mysteriously hard to come by, but any imbecile could tell that they were higher than one would expect for a single, contained location. And by now, the staggering losses the US had suffered were common knowledge. The Americans had tried to cover it up, of course, but they’d lost probably half as many people in the jungle as they had in the entirety of Turkmenistan some years previously.

Soldat Grün was fine with risk. He hadn’t joined up merely to sit on a base at home or to be sent on a routine deployment in a developing country where action might happen but probably wouldn’t, aside from the locals periodically slashing the tires of their trucks. He’d recently turned twenty and he was ready to kick some ass.

Someone wandered over. “Hah! Doing paperwork, are you?” they observed, a statement rather than a question.

Gunter looked up, but the individual had already strolled away. It appeared to be a British officer, perhaps one of those tasked with base security. Fort Archway was originally and primarily a research project of the United Kingdom with a task force deployed to secure the safety of both the wall and the civilians. Increasingly, however, the Germans shared the base and, from what he’d heard, seemed to mainly be used to protect the teams who ventured into the Zoo. Still, some of the Limey civilians were the type who might carry and even know how to fire guns as well. He couldn’t imagine that the Brits would be lackadaisical about their own protection.

He looked at the huge, bloated stack of papers on his tiny desk. They represented so much repetitive busywork. He couldn’t even remember, at this point, how many times he’d written his name and other obvious identifying information, over and over and over again. Couldn’t they find some way to automate this shit?

With a sigh, he laid his pen down and rubbed his eyes. He needed to get the hell up from this desk, stretch his legs, and find food and coffee. After all, he only had to complete the forms by the end of the night. And it was time, he decided, to visit the mess hall.

His mind made up, he stood, ignored the slight critical glance of the bespectacled lady behind the window at the desk, and made his way to the door. Beyond it lay a hallway, which at least was not so head-achingly bright as the lobby, although its white walls still reflected the overhead illumination so as to leave not even a trace of shadow in the corners.

“Which way…” he muttered to himself as he looked left and right. An officer had shown him when he’d first arrived, but he had already forgotten. The place was big and disorienting and it was easy to forget where things were in relation to other places one had already been.

Left, he was fairly sure. Yes, he decided, and acted on the choice. He passed men and women in suits and ties who looked at their phones, at clipboards, or at nothing at all. Some wore lab coats, and other German soldiers—easily identified by their uniforms that distinguished them from their British counterparts—looked at him and furrowed their brows as if to determine if he was new meat or if they’d simply forgotten who he was. It seemed like there were numerous people coming and going at any given time.

Soon enough, he heard noises that sounded like a mess hall and shortly thereafter, he saw a sign confirming this—in both English and German—with a nice, convenient arrow pointing to a large double-door. He pushed through with both relief and anticipation.

The room was maybe a third full or less. Most of the troops and other personnel who’d come in for lunch had already started to drift out. That was fine with him. It meant he could get something to eat without having to stand in line for forever and a day, sit somewhere without having to force his way onto the bench, and also escape having to listen to other people bullshit him.

Gunter located the actual counter, the stack of trays, and the slouching cook standing over stoves and pots with his back turned. He walked toward them all.

“Stop!” someone snapped. “Attention! Achtung!”

Instantly, he halted, stiffened, assumed the correct posture, and waited. He glanced around, moving his eyes but not his head. A man strode toward him at a brisk pace. He had no idea what the problem might be—or even if the problem involved him or someone else behind him—but he recognized the sound and the vibe of a pissed-off officer with a stick far up his ass. Better safe than sorry, he decided.

“Soldat!” the officer rasped as he came close enough for the young man to have a good look at him. In German, he went on, “You are not in uniform, and you are violating one of the rules of my base. Are you aware of this?”

“Sir, no, sir,” he replied.

The man who had approached him was, from what he could see of his rank insignia, a hauptmann—or what the British and Americans referred to as a captain—and obviously someone of real importance at this base. He was on the tall side of average, very lean, and in early middle-age and gave an immediate impression of self-discipline, decorum, and impeccable grooming. High cheekbones, a thin aquiline nose, and dark eyes cemented the impression. He had black hair and a somewhat tanned or olive complexion, which suggested a mixed heritage. Aside from this, however, he seemed in every way a walking stereotype of traditional German military hardassery.

“Do you know which part of your uniform you have forgotten, Soldat?” he asked in his clipped voice.

“Sir, no sir.”

“The most important part,” the hauptmann told him. “Rule Number Thirteen. Never go anywhere on base without a weapon. Did someone fail to issue you one?”

“Sir, no sir,” Gunter answered. He suddenly wanted to hang his head in slight shame and embarrassment but maintained his posture lest he incur even more disfavor. “I’m very sorry, sir. It will not happen again.”

“See to it that it does not,” the officer replied. With that, he spun on his heel, stormed away, and seemed to vanish as quickly as he’d appeared. A pistol hung in a holster at his hip so at least the man wasn’t a hypocrite.

Soldat Grün exhaled slowly and relaxed, but only slightly.

“You heard the man,” someone said in a loud voice. “You can’t be caught unarmed. The bugs here are huge.” He turned his head and saw a couple of other soldiers looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement as they departed the mess hall. It seemed prudent to ignore them and he headed toward the counter.

As he picked up a tray, he gritted his teeth despite himself. Where the hell had that hauptmann even come from?

Between the dispiriting experience of being dressed down like that and the even worse prospect of all the paperwork still waiting for him in the office, he began to wonder how wise it had actually been to volunteer for this place. There they were in the middle of the North African desert and trying to stave off an alien invasion, and the base was run by a group of martinets who insisted on enforcing every protocol and procedure, no matter how arbitrary. He wondered if Hauptmann Tight-Ass even forced the men to fold one corner of the toilet paper over in the lavatories.

The cook behind the lunch counter noticed him and turned. “What will it be, soldier?” he asked in cockney English, although he seemed to try to suppress his accent for the sake of being understood by all the Germans.

“Give me some of everything,” Gunter replied. His English was fairly good. In addition to school, his father had raised him on a steady diet of old British TV shows and American movies.

“Everything? Well, I think I can do that…he-he.” He chuckled and began ladling some beans. “You’re new here, aren’t you, soldier?”

“Yes. Soldat Gunter Grün. It is nice to meet you, uh, Mister…”

“You can simply call me Sonny,” the man said. He looked to be somewhere in his late thirties and was thick-set, stubbly, overweight, and somewhat sloppy-looking—to the extent that he could get away with sloppiness on a military base. A couple of faded tattoos were visible on his forearms and he was probably balding under his white hat and hairnet. Somehow, it occurred to Gunter that the man might have been in prison when he was younger. And interestingly, his eyes had a definite pinkish, bloodshot look to them. It probably meant he’d either been drinking or smoking cannabis. He wondered how Hauptmann Tight-Ass would feel about that.

“Sonny.” He nodded. As the cook added a biscuit and steamed vegetables to his tray, he decided to make conversation. “So, what would you say is the problem with that officer? I don’t understand why I have to wear a gun on the base here. It is not as though the things in the Zoo have bomber planes. We’re safe with the base inside the wall.”

Sonny looked at him and looked bewildered for a moment. Whatever substance he’d abused had slowed his cognition somewhat. “Oh, Jan?” he said. “Bloody hell, you don’t know anything yet, do you? Well, for starters, Wall Two isn’t finished yet. In theory, those things could stroll through parts of it. Until it’s done, no one is really all that safe anywhere.”

“I see,” he responded. It still irked him but he could grasp the logic in that, at least.

“And as for Jan—Captain Jan Shalwar, that is—give him a second chance, I’d say. The guy is a legend, honestly.” As he spoke, Sonny added a chicken breast to the tray. “He is a hard-ass, he is, yeah, what with all his rules he keeps stored someplace deep within his own skull, and he don’t tolerate people breaking them. But the guy would cut his arm off for you. He cares about the men and women here, he does. He’s willing to sacrifice everything for this place. Jan is not one of them types who would throw his own people under the bus if he thought it might advance his career a little.”

“I see,” he said again. “That is good, then.”

“And that’s why,” Sonny continued and pointed at him with a pair of tongs that still had biscuit crumbs clinging to them, “he’s always top of the charts in the Death League.”

The young soldier glanced around to make sure that neither Jan nor any other officers were watching, then picked up one of the biscuits and bit into it as he stood there at the counter. “And what the hell is the Death League?” he asked with his mouth half-full.

“Oh, it’s a chart in the pub,” the man said as if that explained everything.

He raised an eyebrow as he added beans to the remaining biscuit-mush in his mouth, impressed that the base had its own alcohol dispensary. He’d have to look into that later.

“It’s like a bet,” the cook went on. “Anytime someone goes into the Zoo, they are entered in the weekly pool, you see. Someone calculates all the statistics based on how likely each person is to die. Whoever’s at the top…well, most people place their bets that he’ll be the next one to shuffle off this mortal coil.” His jovial demeanor grew more somber. “Because, you know, people tend to die a lot here.”

“Oh,” the soldier replied. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and decided he should probably finish his meal without delay and get back to his all-important paperwork.

Chapter Three

Hauptmann Jan T Shalwar strode out of the mess hall and toward his small office, where he had to double-check a few things before he met with his team. The soldat he had reprimanded struck him as the cocky type who had barely suppressed an attitude, but he had not actually been insubordinate. He would learn, however. Everyone did. The people at home did not prepare these new recruits for what they would deal with in this place. He supposed he could simply get a particularly large piece of paper, print all his rules on it, and hang it somewhere. But then again, it was useful for the rookies to hear one rule and immediately grasp that there were others. Many, many others. It prepped them mentally to obey all of them, sooner or later.

Men and women nodded respectfully as he walked past. He returned the nods when he could. The CO had imposed a ban on saluting, essentially treating even the base itself as a combat zone.

There were so many personnel there and so many new arrivals all the time that it was virtually impossible to memorize every single person’s name. He made an effort, nonetheless, and was at least good with faces.

The door to his office was open and the light was on. That likely meant that The Bull was already there. He stepped in and confirmed the correctness of this assumption.

“Everyone is assembled in the bay, Hauptmann,” The Bull said, “and here are your notes.” She gestured to a supremely neat and orderly pile of small slips of paper.

“Thank you, Leutnant,” Jan replied. Most people took one look at Leutnant Agatha “The Bull” Ferris and knew they should not fuck around in her presence.

She was about the same age he was, short but thick-set, strong, and solid, and she could move with astonishing speed when needed. Her brown hair was pinned up tightly and her heavy, square face was almost never seen to smile in the presence of the enlisted men. He was privy to her nicer side, although at times, she even intimidated him a little.

“Playdate with the children, then?” Jan asked.

“Ja,” The Bull replied. “Another discovery field trip. I already distributed the diapers in case any of them ask if we can stop at the lavatory.”

“You are such an excellent officer,” he replied and gave her a small, wry smile as he picked up the notes from the corner of his desk. He had purchased a very large quantity of the kind of pocket-sized notepad paper which already had lines, numbers, and sub-headers printed on it. This saved him the trouble of having to find a ruler and draw the lines himself since it was difficult to keep them perfectly straight.

“Maybe this time, we will only have an injury or two or become totally exhausted,” Ferris went on, “instead of both.”

“For shame, Leutnant,” he said. “You must be losing your edge and growing soft. Have you spent time loitering around the director’s office and fraternizing with his coterie of Brits?”

“No, no,” she threw back with mock indignation. “I still have some standards to maintain.”

“Well, then, I suppose you’re qualified.” He folded his notes neatly after reviewing them and slipped them into a zippered pocket. Then, he triple-checked to ensure his sidearm was loaded, clean, and ready, and did a fast visual scan of the folders and envelopes on his desk. All represented bureaucratic matters that could wait until he returned. They had an extraction scheduled, and it needed to be undertaken very soon. It wasn’t quite a rescue mission as yet, but it sounded like it was on the verge of becoming one.

“March,” Jan said. The Bull nodded and strode out of the office before him, leaving him to close the door on his way out and follow her. She was wider than him, anyway, and so did a good job of plowing the way through the halls so he could walk unimpeded.

The two of them entered the bay where most of the menial activity had been pushed to the sides. The platoon waited for them in the center of the floor. Everyone stood at attention when they noticed the officers.

“Achtung!” The Bull shouted redundantly but did a fine job of making absolutely certain that they took things seriously. When she shouted, her deep, ragged voice did actually sound a little like a large, angry land mammal of some kind. She could have said anything—“ice cream,” or “pantyhose,” or “the,” and it would have conveyed the meaning of “attention” all the same.

Jan strode in, his arms folded behind his back as Ferris took her position a little to the side.

“I am Hauptmann Jan T Shalwar, your commanding officer,” he stated, “and we will depart immediately. But first, a very brief review.”

Everyone looked at him, wide-eyed. He had mostly rookies for this mission, it seemed. A full platoon was large enough that it could grow unwieldy in the Zoo’s dense jungle, but between himself, Ferris, and the base’s generally competent Feldwebel, they were able to run a tight ship and prevent the men from falling into disarray—usually.

More importantly, a full platoon would give them enough firepower to blast their way in and out without having to duck and hide overmuch. The unit in need of extraction didn’t have time for them to waste with all that.

“For all that the Zoo is dangerous,” he said, “men and women regularly go in, only to come out alive. The way to achieve this is to be like them. Which means being smart and following the rules.”

There wasn’t time to relay all the rules to them, but some deserved particular attention.

“You have already been drilled and trained and instructed in Zoo protocol and the basic standards of the Bundeswehr. You will also learn some of my rules. For example, Rule Number One. Never go on a mission without the right people. Your NCOs were hand-picked by me because they do an excellent job. Listen to them, and we will all emerge from this mission in one piece.”

He went on to regale them—briefly—with the parameters of the mission itself, which were very simple. Proceed into the jungle, head toward the coordinates of the team in distress, find them, and get the hell out before dark.

“Is this understood?” Jan asked as he finished, his face stern and impassive.

“Yes, sir,” they yelled in unison.

“Good.” He nodded. They seemed like a sharp group, all things considered. He had led successful missions with worse. The Zoo demanded respect. Never, ever could they wander into it operating at anything less than one hundred percent. Nor could they presume that it would welcome them and gently permit them to leave at their leisure, if at all.

The platoon departed. They marched out of the bay and across the open ground that separated the base proper of the British-German sector—housed in the wall complex itself between the outer and main walls—from the large, high-tech gate built into inner wall between the base and the Zoo.

This gate was already being designed when Wall One still stood and the second wall had its first foundations laid. At that time, the United Kingdom had a sector all to themselves before Germany as a country was allowed in on the action at the bases themselves.

Which also allowed them to make use of world-famous German engineering, of course. Indeed, the gate was so impressive that it almost made up for the fact that the wall complex, in general, was still incomplete. The ongoing construction meant that sections of the work in progress were still protected mainly by a jumbled maze of chain-like fence, sandbag barriers, barbed wire, and rudimentary guard towers rising incongruously from the sand. These makeshift defenses were effective enough—for now—at keeping unwanted visitors from the Zoo out of the base but they simply looked rather shabby.

This section was anything but. On either side of the gate were remote-controlled turrets outfitted with state-of-the-art heavy machine guns, and a narrow walkway between them allowed service personnel to access them for manual takeover or maintenance. The gate itself was three feet thick and made of materials even beyond Jan’s knowledge, powerfully reinforced and virtually indestructible except by heavy explosives or something along the lines of a meteor strike. The Zoo had yet to produce any creatures who’d be able to hammer or claw their way through. It opened at its center and each half receded horizontally into the wall to either side. When activated, it both opened and shut very quickly as the designers had understood that it might well have fleeing men passing through it who did not want anything else to get through it after them.

Attached to the inside of the wall was a small cubicle where the guard waited. Jan detached himself from the rest of the troop and made his way toward the cubicle in question. “Hello, Coop,” he said in English.

Sergeant Gerald Cooper was, strangely enough, almost the only person ever found manning the gate. He was relieved for a few scant hours a day but this did not seem to bother the man and the base’s authorities obviously trusted him. He was a tall, round-faced, pleasant-looking black man who had made innumerable friends and, to the hauptmann’s knowledge, zero enemies. Yet one always had the impression that the man’s vigilance never really wavered and his hand was never far from the gun at his side.

“Hello there, Jan,” he replied, pushed to his feet, and stepped out to examine the platoon. “A full platoon, all German, with yourself and Ferris in command. And with you in charge, it seems safe to say that all the T’s are crossed all the I’s are dotted, and every sentence ends with two spaces after a period. Although I never heard your opinion on the Oxford comma.”

He grinned despite himself. The man’s good nature was positively infectious.

“Of course,” Coop went on and there was a subtle shift in his tone and demeanor, “I’ll still need to know what the mission is and your expected time of return. At least a ballpark estimate. You know I cannot—and will not—allow anyone in or out if there is even the slightest security risk or chance of illicit activity.”

Jan nodded. In addition to the monstrosities created by the Zoo itself, human activity had repeatedly caused problems. In the older, more lenient days, corruption at the gates on Wall One had allowed plundering gangs of mercenaries to penetrate the jungle’s depths, many of whom almost managed to smuggle specimens out and generally caused all kinds of problems for the Americans in particular. No one wanted a repeat of those disasters. Coop, understanding his duty to prevent that type of thing, was not a man to be trifled with.

“We are tasked with the extraction of the two squads who went in at dawn,” the hauptmann stated. “They are not in very deep. We expect to be back by 1800 and will attempt to send word if for some reason we are not back before dark.”

“So be it,” the other man said. “Be careful in there, my friends. And try to keep The Bull from hurting any of those poor creatures that are merely minding their own business.”

He sighed to hide a possible crooked smile. “Even I can only do so much,” he replied.

Coop returned to his office and did something at his console. The gate hummed, opened, and seemed almost to suddenly disappear and reveal the expanse of empty desert that separated Wall Two from the Zoo. As Jan returned to the unit, a few of his men gasped. Beyond the aperture lay the undulating sea of sand dunes and bare rock, the lonely and wind-blasted wasteland of the Sahara where nothing separated the naked earth from the vast and cloudless blue sky.

In what might have been a shocked silence, they marched through. Once everyone was safely clear, Coop closed it behind them. It slammed shut and its blank metal face stared at them as it cut them off from the closest outpost of human civilization.

Their trucks waited for them beyond the wall. Jan watched and gave a few simple instructions to ensure they divided themselves evenly between the vehicles so men with the appropriate weapons rode in each in case they were attacked en route to the Zoo.

The trip didn’t take long, but the tension that emanated from the rookies was palpable. They knew they were driving into a war zone. Soon, the vehicles came to a stop and he ordered the men to dismount and assemble outside with their weapons prepped and eyes open. Following them out, he stood on the sand behind a few young troops and paused to clear his own head as the new soldiers stared in awe.

Before them, the desert simply ended and the jungle began. In nature, there was always some form of transitional zone between arid and humid biomes but the Zoo was not entirely natural. The grasslands of the Sahel, farther south, separated the Sahara from the rainforests of central Africa. Here, the alien jungle—which was capable of synthesizing its own water out of the atmosphere, changing the landscape, and even producing its own localized weather—sprouted directly in all its dark-emerald lushness from pale land which planet Earth had long ago written off as dead.

“Gott im Himmel,” someone muttered.

“Not heaven, I’m afraid,” Jan said as he passed the man to take his place near the front of the column. “But that is where we are going.”

It didn’t take long to clear the small strip of desert that remained between their trucks and their destination. The jungle, with all its hidden primeval dangers, loomed before them.

“Maintain trigger discipline. Do not fire at random,” he instructed the men. “However, make us aware of anything you see or hear moving around. There aren’t many species native to this habitat, to begin with, and regular unmutated life forms don’t last long here anyway, so it may be safely assumed that any leering vine or hulking animal is a Zoo creature preparing to kill us. Or at least considering it. Nonetheless, if we are vigilant and keep calm, we will all come out of this alive.”

“You heard him,” The Bull shouted. “Do not die.”

Two or three men chuckled but most did not, either because it hadn’t occurred to them that she was the joking type or because the Zoo itself had overwhelmed them with awe and terror.

There was a rough trail amidst the trees which the German and British personnel of Archway had used on past missions and routine patrols. The jungle was very good at adapting to whatever humanity threw at it and covering all traces of human incursions with its own flora. Nevertheless, the frequent tramp of boots had made the foliage a little thinner on the regular route.

Green fronds and greenish trunks and branches seemed to part as they moved through before they folded over and around them. The daytime heat of the desert was slightly less in the shade but the humidity increased with shocking rapidity. Faint clouds of steam seemed to rise between the stands and tangles of pseudo-familiar plant life.

“Remember to keep an eye on the information coming in on your HUD,” Jan ordered. “The technology is designed to keep you alive. Use it.” He knew that when confronted by the abominations in the Zoo, rookies all too often fell back to relying on their senses rather than their HUDs. More than one ran off in the wrong direction, ignored warnings from their HUD, forgot to access their map, and ran directly into danger and ultimately, an ugly death.

Soon, all of them had filed into the jungle. The memory of clear skies and daylight faded behind them.

“Watch out for those kinds of roots,” he said and pointed them out. The Bull and his Feldwebel immediately relayed the information to the soldats. “They’re often connected to man-eating vines that descend from the trees. Also, try to avoid stepping in deeper patches of mud. Be alert to any rustling sounds.”

Even with the team being largely inexperienced, they moved quickly. Their leader had done this many times now, and he was good at it. For all its seeming intelligence, the jungle simply was not as creative as a human adversary might have been so he mostly knew what to expect. At least until the Zoo’s next leap forward in evolution.

“Hauptmann,” Ferris said, and her bulk suddenly materialized at his side. Her speed still amazed him. “They should be only half a klick from us at that forked tree there.” She pointed.

“I had noticed it, but thank you, Leutnant.” They approached the tree in question and he fell back to inspect the men and keep them in formation as they veered to the side along a path less well-traveled. With his guidance, it did not slow them much. It seemed that the Heer had improved its overall training regimen as far as ensuring that soldiers knew how to move through dense jungle. Now that it was clear that the Zoo would be a permanent—or at least long-term—concern of the world’s major governments, they’d obviously seen the wisdom of it.

So far, things were going well.

The afternoon began to wane when a bedraggled man suddenly appeared between the twisted trunks and curtains of vines in front of them. “Are you the extraction force?” he asked.

“Of course,” Jan replied. “What are you doing away from your unit?”

“We heard something, and they sent me to scout,” he stammered.

The hauptmann frowned. “Take us there immediately,” he said. “One man can, you realize, unwittingly lead others directly into an—”

Something rustled and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a black flash. Other men around him gasped and raised their guns. The reality of their situation finished his sentence for him.

Ambush.

Chapter Four

“Lead the targets,” Jan shouted. He wasn’t overly agitated, all things considered. Still, even communicating directly with his men through their HUDs, he had to raise his voice to make himself heard over all the gunfire. “Aim about two to three meters off the ground.”

His men had formed a roughly oval perimeter around a semi-clear patch of the jungle floor and now stood packed as tightly as they could without interfering with one another’s aim. Seconds after the scout from the beleaguered party had found them, the jungle had come alive with the hideous creatures the Brits and Americans called devilcrows. They were mostly flightless birds the size of a tall man, covered with thick, black feathers, so named for their bizarre resemblance to both crows and Tasmanian devils. They had the wild, beady eyes and furry face of the devil, with a razor-sharp beak that could snap a man’s leg in half in one bite. Even the most fortified suit could do little against a biteforce like that.

Everyone loathed them but at least they couldn’t fly like crows.

Their usual modus operandi made them dangerous to the uninitiated. They were nimble with fast legs and their tiny wings helped them move laterally through the branches of trees at head-height or higher. They ranged in packs, which effectively disguised their numbers, and finally attacked once their prey grew sufficiently disoriented.

Jan and his NCOs had seen it all before.

“Fall back,” he said to two men near him. One glanced behind him toward the hauptmann but the other did not, and both obeyed without question. They backed away barely in time. Huge black claws emerged from between two interlocked leafy branches and lashed at them, cleaving air where they’d stood only a second before. Both men gasped in shock but quickly redirected their rifles to the new source of the threat. The guns blazed and shredded foliage and flesh. Blood and chunks of both pink flesh and white bone sprayed and mingled with the destroyed plant matter.

The devilcrow slumped dead to the ground.

“Good,” he said. He turned toward what had originally been the front of the column. The vanguard had tried to escape the skirmish and pressed onward while their teammates repelled the mutants’ attack. Now, the unit they’d come to rescue had heard and seen the firefight and pushed through the jungle to join them.

“This way,” Jan called and motioned them over. The group had consisted of two squads and it looked like their losses had been only slight. “They had some slight resistance,” the hauptmann observed. At least they had their guns out and ready.

Something plummeted through splintering wood and tearing vines above them and to his left. His hand holding the pistol raised at the same time the men he’d greeted aimed their weapons, and all fired on the devilcrow. Two well-placed rounds from his handgun plus bursts from multiple automatic rifles were enough to cut the creature almost in half to splatter rather than perforate it. Various pieces, tissue, and bodily fluids fell on and around them like crimson rain.

Fortunately, he was wearing a helmet.

His platoon, meanwhile, held its own against the remaining devilcrows. The men simply tracked the creatures’ movements through the trees and mowed down the jungle itself to slaughter the attackers in the process.

“Reinforce the platoon,” Jan said to the men he’d rescued and they scrambled to obey. He moved up behind them to watch and listen for any further attacks. It seemed they’d killed most of the devilcrows, but he knew better than to grow complacent.

No sooner had he thought this than one burst out of the trees behind him. He pivoted instinctively, his gun already raised. His pistol might not be enough, but judging by the sound, he had a second or two in which his soldiers might offer aid.

“Sir!” Leutnant Ferris cried and suddenly launched herself to his side to spray fire from her rifle. He finished his turn and the two of them delivered a joint barrage at the oh-so-clever devilcrow to punch holes in its body and slow its advance. It looked for a moment like it was about to slump and die like a good bird but then it hurled itself forward, its jaws open to snap over his head. He threw himself sideways and rolled. The devilcrow’s beak closed around air before it fell, bleeding and twitching. The Bull put two more rounds in the back of its neck to be safe.

“Thank you, Ferris,” Jan said as he stood and brushed himself off.

“My pleasure, sir,” she replied. “It’s too bad we can’t give it a proper Lutheran burial.” She turned to the rest of the platoon.

There was only one devilcrow left, and it had turned to flee. Three men took aim and unloaded bursts of lead into its back and haunches. It shrieked, sprayed blood, and fell down a slight ridge to roll into a tree’s base, where it stiffened and grew still.

“We got the bastards,” someone exclaimed, and half the men burst into laughter and cheers. For many of them, this was probably their first battle.

And they’d won.

“Such noisy, youthful exuberance,” Jan mused. He stepped among them and motioned for them to be quiet. It took a few seconds, but they finally stilled.

“You all did very well,” he announced, “but we have already burned up most of the afternoon and do not have time to loiter. Night will fall soon enough. Rule Number Five. Never stay out in the Zoo after dark unless absolutely necessary. The danger out here triples at night.”

He paused to allow this to sink in. Some of them looked slightly disgruntled by his stick-in-the-mud interruption of their victory celebration, but by and large, they nodded. Already, they took the experience they’d gone through and made it worse, picturing what it would be like in the dark. In short, they now thought two moves ahead. Strategizing, he thought approvingly. Clearly, he was doing something right.

“Move out,” he commanded, and they complied with alacrity.

As his platoon retraced their steps toward the faint trail they’d used to enter the Zoo, Jan took the report of the beleaguered unit’s CO, a tall, thin man named Leutnant Dreiser.

“We got lost, Hauptmann,” Dreiser explained. “Our HUD communications stopped working, and everyone agreed we were being hunted by…something. We don’t know what. It seemed to herd us and tried to force us deeper into the Zoo and off the trail. One man, Gefreiter Tanz, disappeared and left only a huge bloodstain behind. We had to presume him dead since those crow monsters attacked us next. We were finally able to get a message through to a team on their way out, who passed it on when they returned to base. You know how the Zoo messes with our transmissions, so we couldn’t reach the base, obviously. And it could have been worse. If you hadn’t arrived so promptly, we might have had to spend the night.”

“Yes, that is to be avoided,” he agreed. “Did you get a look at what kind of creatures were pursuing you at first? I would assume the devilcrows—”

“I don’t think it was them. This was something different. These were sleeker and definitely smarter.”

Jan frowned. There were other creatures that might meet that particular description, but in the absence of further data, there was no way to be sure. He said nothing, for now. The important thing was simply that they’d rescued the group and were now headed to base.

Their orderly retreat from the Zoo proceeded without incident. The jungle sometimes launched multiple attacks across short periods of time as though trying to deter any and all human trespassers or as though it—the jungle itself—was hungry.

But at other times, it offered only token resistance. Based on the reports he’d read from the other bases in the area, this sometimes seemed to signal that the Zoo was busy—that it was preparing for something. Of course, it might mean nothing at all. Humankind could not hope to fully understand its bizarre, primitive, and alien intelligence.

They emerged at the crack of dusk. The sky grew dark save for a line of purplish-red luminescence on the western horizon and the ambient light faded to a deep reddish-grey. It was with satisfaction that Jan stepped out onto the sand and led his men toward the trucks. Dreiser had lost a man but he had lost no one. If enough missions went this smoothly, humanity might actually win this war.

Their trucks had waited for them. It was customary for the drivers to remain, resting but alert, until midnight. Thereafter, they were to attempt emergency communication before they returned to base in case the team was close to the edge. Anyone deeper in would not have been reachable due to the fact that the Zoo blocked all efforts at communication beyond its borders. He had brought his team back well before the cutoff time.

Everyone ached from injuries and fatigue on the ride to the base but there was also a kind of triumphant joy. The rookies who had been so nervous on the trip in now traveled out, victorious and very much alive. Soon, they arrived at the wall and rose from their seats to gather again on the sand.

As they stopped before the massive gate that separated them from Archway, the cameras pivoted to examine them, and Coop’s voice spoke over the sound system. “Hello there,” he said. “Captain Shalwar, I see. Back so soon?”

“We are actually later than I would have hoped,” Jan said. “We were delayed by the unfortunate annoyance of having to actually fight and kill some of those disgusting devilcrows. By now, you’d think they would have learned their lesson.”

The Bull snorted from where she stood near him. “You give them too much credit,” she remarked. “Without a jungle for them to hide in, we could simply call an exterminator and be done with them.”

“Well, it’s good to see you made it back,” Coop went on. “Is anyone wounded? Infected? Are there any weird alien spores clinging to anyone’s back? Do you have any mysterious stowaways among your party there?”

“Negative,” he stated. He understood why the man had to ask all these questions, but the answer was almost always the same.

“You aced the pop quiz, then,” the guard replied in his deep, friendly voice and the gate slid open before them.

“Move along,” Jan said and waved the rest of the men through before he crossed the threshold himself. He spared a glance over his shoulder at the Zoo itself. This was an adversary he could handle and yet he knew better than to underestimate it. The loss of Gefreiter Tanz was itself a small win for the enemy. And the devilcrow that had burst out behind him had very, very nearly added a man called Hauptmann Shalwar to the toll.

He shook his head and followed his troops as they cleared the gate. Coop stood nearby and studied them carefully. Once their leader was through and gave the all-clear sign, he returned to his console and closed the gate behind them.

As they headed toward the bay from whence they’d departed a few hours earlier, Jan noticed a man storming toward them. He suspected he knew who it was, but the fading light made it difficult to be sure at this distance.

“Oh, no,” The Bull said in a gruffly sarcastic tone. “If you have ever seen one of those American sports movies, here comes the leader of the evil opposing team.”

“All by himself?” he marveled. “I thought his type never went anywhere without their crew or posse or whatever to stand menacingly behind them and make vague gestures like something out of a rap video.”

The individual in question drew closer and now, there was no mistaking his aggressive, determined gait or excessively large chest and shoulders.

“Hey!” he said. “Shalwar! How and why did you get this one?” He continued to swagger closer to the platoon.

“By standing near the communications equipment when the extraction request came through,” he said in as flat and bored a tone of voice as he could muster.

The hauptmann turned to The Bull. “Leutnant Ferris, get the men situated and hurry them along.” He glanced at the approaching figure. “They don’t need to see this. It’s not for children’s eyes.”

“But I would have thought they’d have so much in common…” The Bull grunted derisively. Nevertheless, she obeyed and turned on the men to yell at them and herd them into the bay while she reminded them of all the procedural details they still had to see to.

Jan turned to face his colleague and equal in rank, Hauptmann Klaus Grossman.

He waited patiently with his hands clasped behind his back, his face set in a pleasantly neutral expression that combined stoicism and innocence. It was virtually guaranteed to enrage the man.

That thought, of course, made it difficult for him to prevent the expression from transforming into a smirk of subtle glee.

“By rights, this mission was mine,” Klaus insisted, thumped himself on the chest, and came to a stop about three paces away. “By hogging all the best ones, you risk exhausting your men.”

“I rotated all my men from the previous exercise,” he stated. “This one was conducted largely with fresh meat. By an astonishing stroke of luck, we lost no one.”

Klaus glared at him and rolled his tongue around his teeth. “I have your measure, Jan. You pretend to be this consummate professional but you’re no different than me. You only do shit like this to keep your rank in the Death League. Don’t try to hide it.”

Jan sighed. “Hauptmann Grossman,” he said, “as I believe I have explained before, I do not give the slightest shit about the Death League.” Everyone on the base had a ranking in the Death League. The person considered most likely to die next held the number one position. Without even trying, he achieved the bizarrely coveted top place more often than anyone else.

“Well, then, you’d be the first and only one who doesn’t.” The man snorted his undisguised disbelief.

The hauptmann suddenly wondered if Klaus had ever participated in a football-oriented street brawl before the beginning of his military career. Or perhaps even after.

“Allow me to explain the philosophy of my command,” he said and kept his face impassive, although he relished the opportunity to use the word “philosophy” when discussing military matters with Klaus. “My sole purpose and only goal is to protect Archway until Wall Two is finally complete and we have achieved a measure of lasting security. In order to protect the base, it is sometimes necessary to send men into the jungle. However, every person who dies there gives the Zoo more biomass to work with—our casualties, in addition to being both tragic and wasteful, feed the place. By taking unnecessary risks, we deliver resources to the enemy. I will do whatever is necessary to stop that from happening. The survival of as many of our people as possible must be among our top priorities.”

The other man folded his arms over his chest, which emphasized how top-heavy his figure was. “That is a very noble speech,” he said. “I mean, yes, of course we want to preserve the lives of our men—anyone can agree with that—but I don’t fucking believe that you don’t care at all about the Death League. I can tell that you gloat about it in private when you think no one is paying attention.”

Klaus’ demeanor seemed to waver between outright aggression and good-natured, good-old-boy ribbing. Jan suspected that the man didn’t see much of a line between the two, anyway. He wasn’t too bad as a soldier but merely allowed other priorities to intrude.

“Tomorrow, I will earn a ton of points,” the beefy hauptmann went on. “The mission is already approved and scheduled. You’d have to pull strings far above your rank to get it changed at this point. The Americans reported that one of their teams went missing deep into the Zoo near our territory. We’re going in to investigate.”

“Oh,” Jan said. “Good luck. With the Death League points, I mean.”

Chapter Five

The helicopter landed and raised a wispy cyclone of sand around it, and Laura breathed a sigh of relief. She had made it to North Africa. Part of her was surprised that this had all worked out.

“Hi,” a man said as he approached her. He was tall and burly and she assumed he was some kind of military policeman, although she didn’t know enough about uniforms or insignias to be certain. “You must be Dr. Laura Curie, then?”

“Yes, I am,” she replied.

“Good. I’m Sergeant Wendell. I’ll be your escort around Fort Archway for now. You’ll have a tour of the base and then I’ll show you the lab and introduce you to Director Roden.”

“Brilliant,” she replied and hitched the straps of her backpack on her shoulders. She’d brought hardly anything, really, but that’s what they’d recommended. The base was apparently well-stocked enough that it made more sense to travel light. She also put on her hat for the trek across the desert. It was only a short distance but already, she’d realized that temperatures considered normal there were in the range considered non-survivable in England. She had an Australian friend who never tired of mocking the British for their dependence on mild, middling weather.

“It’s a little warm, isn’t it?” she ventured.

“That it is,” he agreed. “Although this is the relatively less-hellish part of the year. Don’t worry, though. You’ll get used to it in a month or so if you don’t perish of heat stroke first. This way, please.” He gestured for her to follow as he strode toward what she assumed was the front entrance.

Hot sand shifted under her feet as she trudged along and struggled to keep up with the sergeant. Why on earth had she worn heels? Of course, she’d simply assumed they would go straight into a building and that she could get herself outfitted with proper boots later.

For a brief moment, she wondered if most people learned to easily think of things like that in advance because their parents paid them enough attention to remind them, so it was inculcated at an early age. Her parents were both busy professionals who rarely seemed to have time for her—or, for that matter, each other. They’d divorced when she was six. It seemed to her now that she was an adult herself and had some measure of perspective, that they’d had children together almost as an afterthought. She tried not to think about that kind of nonsense, though. Much more interesting things were in progress.

Wendell spoke to a security guard and did something at a console before a large double door, then opened it and held it for her.

“Thank you,” she said.

The man caught up easily and walked beside her. “We’ll get you your own security clearance soon enough. Until then, show your ID badge to whoever’s working guard duty and they’ll look your name up.”

They proceeded down halls that were sparse but brightly lit. The ambiance was not quite as bad as a hospital but it was certainly less cozy than the university, barring the more antiseptic lab areas, anyway. Many people bustled around. Most were in military fatigues but some wore civilian dress and others sported white lab coats.

Laura turned her head at two young soldiers who stood in a slight corner near a recessed door. The men were speaking to one another, but not in English. It took a second for her brain to process what she’d heard as they passed out of earshot. It sounded like German. Not that she actually knew the language, but it did have a rather distinctive sound. She furrowed her brow. It struck her as odd that there would be foreigners present at a semi-secret UK military base. Wasn’t there a security risk?

Still, neither Sergeant Wendell nor anyone else seemed concerned, so she did not press the issue. Perhaps German Intelligence had a couple of liaisons there.

“May I ask how many people work in the research lab?” she asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” her guide responded. “Probably around thirty? You’d have to ask the director, or you’ll be able to find that all out yourself once you’re situated.”

As they continued down the hall, she heard a few more people speaking German. Now, she was really confused—not to mention concerned that someone had screwed up and taken her to the wrong base. “Pardon me,” she began and prepared to ask the sergeant about the matter.

Then, the lights went out. Her mouth dropped open and her question died on her lips. Almost immediately, the sudden blackness was replaced by the cold glare of emergency lighting combined with flashes of red, and a buzzing, abrasive siren activated. This seemed unlikely to be a good thing.

“Shit,” Wendell said. “Stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He ran off before she could think of a reply.

Laura watched him go, then watched the other people who all seemed to have places to hurry to now that there was some kind of emergency. She felt a little stupid, standing there doing nothing.

She looked both up and down the hallway and her eyebrow arched. Nothing caught her attention or suggested itself as an opportunity to make the best of her time.

“Hmm.” She pursed her lips and chewed gently on the inside of her mouth. It seemed dumb to linger alone in the hallway and Sergeant Wendell had shown no signs of returning. She decided moving was a much better alternative and wandered toward a large, open door.

The room beyond was some kind of vehicle bay or large garage. The sparse emergency lights and red flashers made it more difficult to see than she’d have been able to in normal lighting, but she could still make things out well enough.

“Well, don’t I feel like a schoolgirl again,” Laura said under her breath.

She had never seen vehicles like this before. Some of them were clearly tactical ground-based trucks or armored personnel carriers of some kind. Others looked more like motorbikes. A few looked like hovercraft or even…spacecraft? She stared, both fascinated and amused.

Intrigued, she wandered over toward one of those that looked vaguely like a Star Wars fighter or something, but smaller and shaped differently. Come to think of it, there was no way it could be a fighter. What was it? Part of it looked almost like it was made of some form of plastic, rather than metal. Curious, she reached out to touch its hull.

“Stop!” someone snapped. “Attention! Achtung!”

Laura looked up and glanced around, squinting in the weird lighting. From across the room, a man strode toward her at a brisk, purposeful pace. A stout-looking woman whom he’d obviously been with hung back and watched in silence.

“Hello,” Laura greeted the man and hoped he hadn’t mistaken her for someone who might be doing something wrong. “I’m new here. Could you please tell me what this is? Ridiculously enough, I thought it looked rather like a Star Wars fighter, but then I thought maybe it resembled—”

“You are violating one of the rules of my base,” the man interrupted in a clipped German accent. “Are you aware of this?” He was trim, dark, probably in his early forties or thereabouts, and rather handsome, she decided. When he looked at her, it was with a kind of low-level imperious disdain.

She merely stared at him in return and wondered why he’d asked her what seemed to be a dumb question. Besides, she had no idea why a German should act as though he were somehow in charge of a British base.

“Rule Number Forty-Two. No unauthorized personnel are to touch military equipment,” the man went on. “And that especially includes transportation. There is very delicate and important technology here and we cannot have either civilians or rookie soldiers interfering with—”

“Now w-w-wait a minute here,” Laura stated shakily and tried her best to put on an angry voice. She pivoted away from the vehicle to face him and attempted to act suddenly furious. Her voice rose in force and volume too fast for her to catch it and drag it under control. “You can’t go around arse-whipping people for breaking rules when the rules aren’t even posted somewhere. Who the hell do you think you are?” She took a deep breath to calm herself. For some reason, being angry at someone—even if it was only an act—was strangely satisfying.

The man paused as if about to explain to her who the hell he was, but his thoughts seemed, for the moment, to have become entangled on her statement about the rules being posted.

“I’ll have you know that I’ve worked extensively in administration,” she continued, determined not to give the man the opportunity to regain control of the pleasant discussion they’d begun having. “If there is some kind of numbered list of rules, all personnel should receive a copy of that list before they even arrive at the base. How in God’s name can they be expected to know what they are and follow them? Without that, people will be in violation of them all the time. And it will take forever for everyone to learn what they are since their only method of learning will be to systematically break each one without even realizing what they’re doing.”

She hoped she hadn’t gone too far, but she had learned the best way to work with people in authority was to stand up for herself from the outset.

The German blinked as though the mental script being used by the computer program in his brain had encountered a line of error code and needed to reboot. “Now, Miss…” he started to say and raised a hand with one finger extended, but that was as far as he got.

“Furthermore, what are your credentials? And if you’re in charge here, why didn’t you come to greet me at the front door? I would have thought that the arrival of an important new researcher would warrant some kind of proper welcome,” she said with a grin to try to lighten the mood. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Sighing huffily, she turned and walked away, her high heels clicking on the floor as she strode toward the large open door back to the hallway. The German officer, whoever he was, stared after her in slack-jawed silence.

Chapter Six

Jan watched her storm off and wondered who the hell she thought she was.

Behind him, a sudden snorting sound rapidly transformed itself into a peal of barking laughter, as though Leutnant Ferris had tried to hold it in but had, after a titanic struggle to which all her self-control had been committed, failed.

“With all due respect, Hauptmann,” she said between further barely suppressed snickers, “you were bitch-slapped by a civilian in heels.”

He turned to look at Ferris, puzzlement evident on his face as he pointed to the rapidly departing woman. “What type of imbecile wears heels to a military base in the desert?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question, of course. The answer was either self-evident or beyond the ken of mere mortal humanity.

Nonetheless, The Bull answered. “That type,” she offered and gestured sharply toward the door through which the ridiculous English woman had departed.

Self-evident it was, then.

“Well, she has worked extensively in administration,” he repeated in English, mimicking her tone before he lapsed back into German.

“Hah!” The Bull laughed. “Next time you run into her, you should say something in Urdu about how your father was a Muslim.”

“I might actually do that.” He sighed. “In any event, let the foolish scientist fumble about. We have to prepare. Once this lockdown is over—and it’s very likely another false alarm—we have yet another rescue mission to undertake.”

“Oh, is that the American team that got lost?” she asked.

“Oh, no, of course not,” he replied. “It’s the German team that went in after the American team that got lost.” That group had left a couple of days before and still weren’t back.

“Klaus’s team, then. Hah! That does not surprise me.”

“Does anything?” He waved a hand in disgust. “And don’t answer that,” he went on. “Now, gather the team—the same one as before, more or less, should suffice. Rotate a few men as needed, but I want all the same Feldwebel. Unless they’re already out with Klaus trying to stop him from getting killed, anyway. Those men know the Zoo and know my command.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferris responded.

“I have to make a phone call. I will join you in a few minutes.” He nodded and they parted ways for the moment. The Bull hurried away to assemble—or rather reassemble—his platoon.

Jan headed to his office as it was the best place to talk on the phone. Not only would the background noise provided by the lockdown alarms be less obnoxious and intrusive there, but it would also afford him privacy. It did not look professional for an officer to wander around chatting on the phone where the enlisted men might see him.

He arrived in his office and found it a much-welcomed oasis of relative peace and stability. Archway was—thanks largely to himself—a fairly well-run facility, but even he could only impose order to a certain extent. Chaos always found a way to slip between the cracks and gradually expand its influence.

Leutnant Ferris, excellent junior officer that she was, had once again organized his notes in a neat pile on the edge of his desk. He very quickly flipped through them. They were all reviews but still important. That done, he took his cell phone out and activated it.

After scrolling through the rather more professional contacts, not to mention the names of two of his three ex-wives, he stopped at a number next to the name “Michael.” Jan hesitated for a moment. He was fairly sure it was up to date since the boy’s mother had begrudgingly given it to him only five months before, but he had never actually called the number in question. For that matter, he hadn’t spoken to his son at all in a good two years.

He tried to remember what time it would be in Germany. Deciding that it didn’t really matter and that there was no point in any further hesitation, he tapped the number.

There was silence for a moment before the sound of ringing began. It continued while he drummed his fingers on his desk, tapped his foot, and stared vacantly at his medals. The phone rang persistently and finally, it cut to the automated voice messaging system. He pressed the End Call button, took a breath, and tried again.

While he listened to the phone ring uselessly and repetitively, he thought back to what had happened in the Zoo. At the time, the experience hadn’t disturbed him much, but the reality was that he had almost been killed. If that devilcrow had surged from its little ambush a second or less earlier, he might well now be dead. If Ferris hadn’t noticed the creature at the same time that he had and acted as quickly as she had, he might well now be dead. If he had grown complacent by the amount of damage the two of them had managed to inflict on the beast and had failed to realize that it was about to mount that final, jaw-snapping desperation attack and acted accordingly, he might well now be dead.

Death was always a possibility. He knew that. And despite his inner romantic streak, he was not, by nature, the sentimental type. Yet the thought of dying without having cleared the air between himself and Michael was…unpleasant. Unbecoming was the word that sprang to mind. It offended his sense of decorum or something, he reasoned.

“Pick up, Michael,” he muttered.

His son did not answer. The ringing ceased once again and directed him to the boy’s automated voice message system. This informed him helpfully that the person he was trying to reach was not available and asked him politely if he’d like to leave a message. He frowned and decided he probably should leave one.

The tone beeped. Jan opened his mouth but no words or even sounds were forthcoming. He tried frantically to think of what to say. Nothing in particular suggested itself and the best he might manage was to state who he was and point out that he had tried to call—all of which Michael was probably smart enough to figure out on his own.

Perhaps the boy would try to call back later.

He pressed the End Call button again and frowned. While he could simply send a text message, that seemed awkward. Instead, he sent one to Angela that requested politely that she have Michael call him when he had the chance as he needed to ask him something—what he’d like for his birthday, for instance. That sounded reasonable and legitimate.

A little disgruntled, he powered his phone down and put it away. He supposed he should have known that even trying would have been a waste of time, really. With his usual single-minded sense of purpose, he pushed this brief experience out of his head and tried to focus on all the other things he had to worry about right now.

The job came first. He needed and even wanted to focus on the job and the task at hand. It was simple, in a way. He understood it and recognized what he had to do. Not only that, he knew he could handle it, and as long as he stayed sharp, it was well within his capabilities to succeed once again.

Jan took his sidearm—a fairly standard black semiautomatic pistol—out of its holster and checked it to ensure that it was clean, loaded, and in sound working order. It was, although that wasn’t a surprise. Reflecting again on his near demise by devilcrow, he decided that this time, he would make sure to have extra rifles on hand to use in the event of an attack.

The German Bundeswehr continued to use the latest version of the Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle, as it had for many years.

Recent improvements had resolved most of the issues the older models had—the worst of which was a loss of accuracy at a longer range, which was, of course, exacerbated during overheating.

Then again, in the Zoo, the fighting was almost always in dense areas of the jungle.

Long-range accuracy wasn’t really needed. Most of the troops were trained to use burst fire in preference to full auto, which reduced the likelihood of overheating anyway. The Americans had recently switched to some newfangled weapon called the M-92, which held forty rounds rather than thirty and was somewhat larger-caliber than their older guns, in addition to being compatible with the ammunition the Russians used. It had performed well and there was talk of switching all Zoo forces, regardless of national affiliation, to using it as their standard-issue firearm. When and if that day came, he would adapt as he always did. But until then, the Heckler & Koch seemed perfectly acceptable.

He left the office and closed the door behind him, prepared once again to address the troops and lead them into hell’s arsehole. He merely hoped that Klaus hadn’t already taken his best Feldwebel and led them directly to their deaths.

Chapter Seven

Following the unpleasant exchange with the German officer, Laura continued down the hallway in the same direction that Sergeant Wendell had originally escorted her. There were other, perpendicular hallways that branched off to other parts of the base, but she decided she could wait to explore those. Keeping to a straight line made it less likely that she’d get lost in this massive place, anyway. She found herself wondering which cardinal direction it was she moved in. Finding that out would be useful later on.

They were still in emergency-lighting mode, complete with disorientating red flashers that lent an air of urgency to the situation and the maddening and insistent buzzing of the base-wide alarm.

What is going on?

When she paused and looked around, she saw a man standing in a small alcove near the doors to what she somehow assumed was the cafeteria or the mess hall or whatever it was they called it. The man was perhaps thirty-five or maybe closer to forty-five and carried a noticeable load of extra pounds, although he appeared built to support it well enough. He had not shaved in two or three days and an old, faded tattoo traced up his forearm. A white cook’s hat barely concealed a receding hairline. His pale, watery blue eyes were surrounded by rose-colored scleras. Despite his slightly disreputable appearance, an easy, congenial vibe emanated from the man. He seemed approachable, more or less the complete opposite of Captain Stick-Arse in the vehicles room.

Encouraged, she approached him. “Excuse me,” she called and stopped a few feet from him. She plugged the ear farthest from him as she leaned in to talk. “I’ve just arrived here. Could you tell me what’s going on?” She scrunched her face and looked around before she turned to him again. “Are we in some kind of danger? The alarms have gone on for so long, the base should’ve have gone up in a mushroom cloud by now.”

The man watched her speak with a kind of amused half-comprehension and she began to wonder if he was another mysterious German when he opened his mouth and laughed out loud.

“Mushroom cloud…now that’s a good one. Maybe one of these days, a bug attack during a power outage will have that effect. Right now, though, it seems we don’t even have the bug attack, so that’s only half the equation right there. I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, ma’am.”

She laughed, glad to hear a Cockney accent again. “Is it really only a power outage, then?”

“That it is,” said the man. “I’m Sonny, by the way. You’d never guess, but I’m a cook here.”

“Well, wearing a cook’s hat would seem to be an excellent way to ensure people never guess,” she replied. “I’m pleased to meet you, Sonny. I’m Laura—Laura Curie. Well, I am hungry, and you look like the kind of person who appreciates good food, especially after a…uh, smoke. However, I have to meet the director soon, I’m afraid.”

“That’s quite all right, Miss Laura. I can’t do much in the kitchen right now anyway. We’ve had these bloody awful power failures now and again lately, and every time we do, the whole base goes into lockdown mode until the regular lights are back on. Most of the crew go to their emergency stations, and no one comes in or goes out. One of Captain Jan’s rules, that is.”

“Captain Jan…” Laura mused, her lips pinched. “I strongly suspect I’ve already met him.”

The chuckle was mirrored in his eyes. “He caught you breaking one of his four thousand and one rules, did he?” the man asked.

“Something like that.” She nodded. “What is a German officer doing strutting around a British base, anyway?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to Mr. Roden about that. The director. You said you were going to see him anyway, didn’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right. Could you tell me where I might find him?” She shrugged. “I seem to have lost Sergeant Wendell, my escort.”

As she posed this question, the emergency lights, flashers, and alarms all ceased and left them in silence and darkness for a split-second. Then, the normal lights returned and restored the hallway’s illumination.

Laura breathed a sigh of relief. That alarm sound had driven her nuts.

“Oh, good,” Sonny said. “Anyway, yeah, you’re already on the right track here. Keep heading down this hall and turn to the left. You’ll find his office a short way down on the right there. A nice big black sign says ‘Director’ right next to his door. You can’t miss it.” He cleared his throat. “Even if you wanted to.”

She laughed again. “Very well and thank you so much. Sooner or later, I’ll have to stop by to sample some of your cooking.”

“My pleasure, miss,” he said and tipped his cook’s hat to her.

Before she left, she looked over the man’s shoulder and a piece of paper triggered her curiosity. DEATH LEAGUE POSTINGS was the heading and below this was only a list of ordered names. At the top, someone had written Jan H Shalwar followed redundantly by the word TOP.

“Death League?” she muttered quietly as she resumed her walk. She could only assume it was some type of contest the silly macho types played to see who could kill the most aliens or some such thing. Or perhaps it was a role-playing scenario like fantasy football only slightly more violent.

As she continued down the hall, she noticed that some of the people she’d seen earlier were returning as normal operations recommenced. As Sonny had instructed, she turned left at the T-intersection and then scanned the offices to her right. Sure enough, a Director sign manifested itself beside a door that was noticeably offset from any others nearby. It must have led to a particularly big office.

She knocked on the door. “Hello,” she said, “I’m new and I was told to speak to you.”

“Who is it?” a voice asked. The accent was English, at least, so that was good.

“Dr. Laura Curie,” she answered. “I…received an assignment here. They said my e-paperwork had already gone through.”

“Ah, yes,” the man’s voice said briskly. “Do come in, please.”

Without hesitation, she opened the door and stepped in. Beyond the door was a lobby, although it was empty. While there was a desk for a secretary or receptionist, no one was seated there. Behind it was an open door from which, presumably, the director’s voice had come.

“Back here. Come along, now,” he said as if to bring a small dog to heel.

Undeterred, she entered the office itself. Behind a large and expensive desk sat a wiry, unpleasant-looking man with side-parted hair of a nondescript grey-brown color and a facial expression somewhere between morose despondency and smirking glibness.

“Hello,” he began. “I’m Ernest Roden, Director of Fort Archway and its facilities and personnel. Formerly an administrator at MI6, if that kind of thing interests you.” His tone strongly implied that he felt it should interest her. “I’m terribly pleased to meet you, Miss Curie, despite the circumstances of your being here.”

Terribly? “Ah, yes, thank you,” she said and kept her tone polite and friendly. “It’s nice to meet you as well, sir. Mr. Roden. Please call me Doctor, though, if you would please.”

“Thank you. And yes, quite right, Doctor. Much like mine, I suspect your job entails a large proportion of administration?”

“Yes,” she replied, “but really, I’m more of a scientist than anything else. I had become quite bored with administration and look forward to plunging back into the field out here, doing real research again. However, I’m happy to help in any capacity, so whatever you might need me to do will be fine.”

She smiled, although not too obviously. Already, she did not particularly like this man, but she did not want to screw this up. She couldn’t afford to blow it now. After being fired and forcibly reassigned, the Zoo might be the only place that would have her. While she continued to work on scientific discoveries the way she and her sister had dreamed they would do, she might also redeem her career.

“Well, there’s certainly more than enough for you to do,” Roden continued as he glanced at a couple of things on his computer screen.

“May I ask,” she ventured, “why there are so many Germans here? I even bumped into one who seems to be one of the high-ranking commanders on base.” It occurred to her that as long as she’d hacked into government servers to read up on the Zoo, she should have read everything about the place—how it was run and by whom, for starters.

Instead, she had neglected all the boring political shite in favor of simply binge-reading about the research being done and the biological and ecological aspects. In particular, the original American researchers, the late Dr. Geraldine Marie and Dr. Christopher Lin, had produced a bevy of fascinating and provocative material.

“Ah, yes,” the director responded. “His Majesty’s Government has tried to keep quiet about it but at present, we have entered a mostly secret partnership with Germany and run this base as a joint operation. As director, I oversee the project as a whole. We appoint the civilian and military heads based on experience, expertise, and suitability. As it so happens, the current commanding officer is German, and although it’s still early days, it seems to be working out. It’s an opportunity to improve relations between our countries—following the slight unpleasantness surrounding our departure from the European Union—but mostly, it’s a matter of pragmatic convenience. Mutual symbiosis, as I believe scientists would put it.” He smiled at his own wit. “Unfortunately, however, our last chief scientist…uh, didn’t work out. Very few people actually want to come here, you see, so we needed a new head researcher.”

“Yes, that would be perfect.” Head researcher sounded dangerously close to administrative, but she felt confident she could finagle things to ensure she was able to do as much of the fun stuff as possible. “When do I start?”

“Why, right now,” he replied. He leaned back in his leather chair and grasped an ink pen between the fingers of both hands. “Normally, of course, a new arrival is supposed to go through a lengthy and tedious induction process—something the bureaucratic higher-ups have insisted upon.” He said that a little sarcastically as though he somehow did not consider himself a member of this category. “However, I’m quite certain we can delay that or even waive it altogether—scientists are in short supply at the moment.” He smiled.

“Of course,” Laura agreed. “I appreciate your trust in my abilities.”

“You’re quite welcome,” Roden said. “Oh, when I said you start right now, though, I didn’t mean in the lab. You’ll go into the Zoo.”

She stood in silence for a moment and simply stared at the man, not sure how she should react. “That’s…wonderful!” she said and her face broke into a grin that was, in fact, quite genuine. There had been a brief palpitation of fear and a moment of hesitation—but only a moment. She was excited at the prospect of going back into the field. Or, rather, the jungle.

“You’ll accompany a military team under Captain Shalwar. I must emphasize that the Zoo can be very dangerous. However, Shalwar is one of our best—he’s very capable and experienced so you should be all right provided you do exactly as he says and observe all safety protocols.”

“Yes, yes,” she said but barely paid attention. All she could think about at this moment was Alicia. She knew the chance to study the Zoo was a dream come true for her sister. In the end, that had killed her, but she would do everything she could to take advantage of the opportunity Alicia never lived to experience. At the same time, she could test her hypothesis which, with a little more observation and evidence, could blossom into a full-fledged theory. She kept the details of it to herself, for now—Roden didn’t seem like the type to appreciate them, anyway—but was already thinking of how best to summarize the whole thing when she had the opportunity to sit down and write.

Things were happening again.

“Well, then,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

Chapter Eight

Soldat Gunter Grün had thought himself lucky to be selected for a field mission so quickly. The ink had hardly had time to dry on the battery of forms he’d completed when a Feldwebel had come to inform him that he was to go in the next morning at 0800 sharp. He would serve under someone named Hauptmann Klaus Grossman. Gunter had barely managed to stop himself from pumping his fist in the air and shouting an obscene call of triumph. He had, after all, come because he wanted to kick some ass.

Now, however, he had begun to wonder whose ass was actually being kicked.

“Scheisse!” someone behind him cried. He pivoted and had already hefted and aimed his rifle in preparation for another attack when he stilled. The first of many more, his mind told him wearily. There had been so many already.

But it was not an attack. Rather, Obergefreiter Kirsch had collapsed into the mud at the side of the trail. The man had been wounded in the stomach earlier when he’d taken a full swipe of a giant locust’s knife-like claws. He’d groaned and spat up blood as they tried to patch the wound and since then, had been unable to walk by himself and hobbled along only with the help of another soldier who’d supported him with an arm over his shoulder. Now, Kirsch had finally lost consciousness.

“Halt!” the Hauptmann commanded. The column stopped moving.

The soldat who’d helped Kirsch knelt at his side and their medic ran up. Gunter stared at them and grimaced when he saw that the fall had broken the wound open and blood now leaked into the dirt. Kirsch didn’t move at all.

“He’s gone,” the medic said.

The other man cursed, and Grün swallowed. This was not what he had expected. He’d certainly had some notion of the fact that combat could be an ugly business, but this exceeded even his wildest imaginings.

The Hauptmann moved to the men to have a look. “We have to leave him,” Klaus said. “The Americans can’t be far now, though. We are almost there, and we will complete the mission.” He turned and strode toward the front of the column.

“You heard him,” said the grey-haired Feldwebel Schwartz. “Move out.”

They complied but no one spoke.

At first, Gunter had been inclined to like Hauptmann Klaus. The man was gung-ho, tough, and full of charisma and infectious enthusiasm. He seemed like one of the guys and like he wasn’t afraid to lead from the front and get his hands dirty. Certainly, he’d participated as much in the actual fighting as any of the others had.

And the mission wasn’t merely a routine patrol. It was real hero action. An American team had gone missing in this part of the Zoo, in the borderlands between the US and British-German spheres of influence. No word had been sent to their own or any other base. Someone had to search for them and learn what the hell had happened.

Unfortunately, it had not taken long at all to determine what the problem might be. They had wandered directly into something’s hunting grounds.

“Going into the Zoo is not a walk in the park,” Klaus had told them before they’d departed. “The Brits call this base ‘Archway.’ They do have troops at the base but are mostly here to run the research and development side of things. They look at the Zoo and mainly see its scientific potential, so they think this is a gateway to a bright future. Our German researchers share this sentiment to a large degree. We, however, are here as soldiers. The Zoo is our enemy, and we’re here to fight it. If any of you have been around here for any length of time, you’ve probably heard some of the smartasses calling the place ‘Arschweg’ on grounds that it is the gateway into hell’s asshole. That is not much of an exaggeration.”

Gunter and a few others had cracked up at that—really, how could they not laugh? Of course, Klaus had noticed and had immediately marched over to give him the standardized, “Oh, you think this is funny?” speech, which he had pretended to agree with and understand.

Now, though, he did understand.

“Can’t we try our phones again?” one of the younger guys asked. He clearly tried not to sound whiny but mostly failed. The impression wasn’t helped by the fact that he had pestered Feldwebel Schwartz on this matter for the last two hours, approximately once every fifteen minutes.

“Be quiet, Soldat,” Schwartz snapped. “You know it won’t work. The Zoo plants give off some kind of electromagnetic field that blocks the reception.”

He understood the soldat’s concerns. All the men felt antsy. Over the course of two days, something had picked them off one by one and had now claimed eight victims. Plus, of course, Kirsch, who’d been the only one seriously injured in the brief locust attack.

But whatever hunted them at present wasn’t a locust.

To make matters worse, there had been a sudden and bizarre downpour immediately after the fight with the insects. Gunter and several of the other rookies had been stunned to see so much water fall from the sky in the middle of the bone-dry Sahara and with almost no warning. One of the more experienced soldiers had explained that the Zoo was able to produce its own weather systems, independent of the surrounding climate. No one had any idea of how that was even possible, but there it was, very evident and undeniable. At least the rain had washed most of the blood off them, but it had also turned the jungle’s floor into a quagmire.

Hauptmann Klaus refused to turn back. He seemed grimly determined and almost obsessed with completing the mission and bringing back either the American survivors—if there were any—or proof of their death if not.

And so, they had continued, deeper and deeper into the dark jungle. Gunter had lost track of the distance but he knew they were many klicks in. They’d barely slept during the night. There seemed no place that was even remotely comfortable, and the Zoo constantly made faint breathing noises. Worse, it seemed something always scuttered through the trees whenever they thought they might actually doze off. No one had bothered to use a shaving mirror to check, but they all knew they looked hollow-eyed and ragged like men who’d been away from civilization for a long time.

“Why does he want to find the Americans so badly?” Gunter asked the man next to him, a soldat named Darsky.

“He’d say it’s only because those were the orders,” Darsky answered in a very low, very soft voice, “but it’s really because he wants to upstage Jan—also known as Hauptmann Shalwar. That guy with the endless list of rules.”

“Oh, him,” Gunter recalled. “I broke…I forget which number. The one about always carrying a gun on base.” He recalled initially liking Klaus far more than Jan but then again, he also recalled what Sonny the cook had said about Jan being willing to sacrifice himself for the safety of his men.

“Yeah, there’s like three hundred of those stupid rules or something. I forget exactly how many. Anyway, he and Klaus have a rivalry going. Supposedly it’s a friendly rivalry—supposedly.”

“The Death League,” said the guy behind them. “Someone always comes out on top. Not that it’s a good thing. But it’s usually not—”

“Hey!” Schwartz snapped at them. “Be quiet. Those things out there can hear us, you know. We don’t want to attract any more attention than necessary.”

Gunter nodded. Now there was an order he could agree with.

He was about to ask for more details about the missing American team when something whisked almost imperceptibly through the air near Feldwebel Schwartz and the top and side of the man’s head came off. That portion of his skull and helmet slid down and blood leaked from the hole in his head.

“Gott im Himmel!” Darksy exclaimed. In the next moment, something seized the old NCO’s feet and hauled him into the foliage so fast he might as well have been teleported.

Gunter brought his rifle up. He knew his eyes bulged and his pulse rocketed upward to the point where he could hear his own heart beating in his throat. Shrieks and gunfire erupted all around him.

Chapter Nine

“I am Hauptmann Jan T Shalwar, your commanding officer, and we will depart immediately. But first, a very brief review.” This was his standard opening to any pep talk he gave to a team preparing to enter the Zoo, and those who had been with him on the last occasion did seem to scrunch their faces as they tried to remember why it sounded mysteriously familiar.

“For all that the Zoo is dangerous,” he said, “men and women regularly go in, only to come out alive. The way to achieve this is to be like them. Which means being smart and following the—”

“Hauptmann,” The Bull interrupted. She generally did not interfere with his briefings, so it must have been something of actual import. He turned and looked in the direction from which her voice had come.

Leutnant Ferris stood at attention with her hands behind her back, but she gestured with her chin toward the door, which had opened to reveal Fort Archway’s beloved civilian director, Ernest Roden.

Jan instantly felt his bowels tighten slightly even as his spirits, such as they were, sank. The man’s approach was always much like a large, dark cloud drifting over the sun. Actual dark clouds, at least, were not as smarmy. They didn’t have the power to wrap people in endless tangles of red tape while explaining in impenetrable management-jargon that it was for their own good, all while assuming that everyone loved them for their fearless leadership and personal charm. Given the choice, he would much prefer to simply be rained on.

“Hello!” the director said with a limp, redundant wave as he minced his way into the bay. “I have a lovely surprise for you all…” He paused, looked around for a second, and smiled an awkward, artificial smile. “Does everyone here speak English?”

“Ja,” The Bull answered.

The team began to make subtle jeering noises, not loud enough for Roden to hear yet—or, at least, Jan didn’t think so—but loud enough for their officers to grasp what was going on. He ignored it, for now. In all honesty, he didn’t exactly blame them and would turn a blind eye as long as they didn’t get too obnoxious or obvious about it. Soldiers would be soldiers.

Of course, there was the necessity to maintain discipline and professional decorum. Besides, he was fairly sure that no one liked Roden. The poor, poor man.

“I heard he’s coming to introduce our new scientist,” one of the men said.

“Another escort mission with a civilian passenger. Why do scientists keep trying to kill themselves by stumbling into the worst of the shit? It’s like they intend to poke their heads into a devilcrow’s beak because they want to examine its fucking uvula or something.”

“Come now, guys,” someone else interjected in a sarcastically chipper tone of voice, “We serve Germany. Aren’t you honored?”

Their volume had increased. “Quiet,” Jan snapped and glared at the worst offenders. They swallowed what remained of their words and turned into statues, albeit statues that looked halfway between sheepish and mischievous. Once he indicated that he would take no further shit, however, the troops usually behaved.

Quietly, The Bull spoke her own opinion. “I wonder what kind of pasty-assed old man the British are sending in with us this time,” she mused. “That guy from a few months ago who wore the adult diapers into the jungle probably has a place in the records of military history by now.”

“Thank you, Leutnant, for reminding me of that,” he replied. Behind him, one of his hands inadvertently grasped the other more tightly than was comfortable. “I was concerned I might forget it and never have to summon the mental image again.”

“What would you do without me?” she asked.

Behind Director Roden, the door opened and in walked the new scientist. It was not, in point of fact, a pasty-assed old man.

“Um…uh, hello there,” she said and smiled and waved even more awkwardly than the director had. She at least seemed genuine, though.

“Oh, no.” Jan sighed.

The scientist was none other than the woman in heels with the wandering hands and the severe lack of respect for authority whom he had earlier taken to task for her violation of Rule Number Forty-Two. At least now, she wore something more appropriate for the conditions. She looked the part in a scientist’s suit, and she held her helmet in her hand. They’d doubtless have to waste time teaching her how to use the HUD, he realized irritably. She was relatively young. He could not quite pinpoint her age, but it was probably somewhere in the vague territory between twenty-nine and thirty-nine. She had dark hair and an open, curious, bright-eyed expression that was pleasant to some degree but also bespoke a certain foolishness. Not stupidity, of course—she was a scientist, after all—but more in the sense of…well, maybe a lack of common sense was appropriate.

“This is Dr. Laura Curie,” Roden said with a flourish of his hand. “She will replace our previous head researcher, whom I’m sure you’ll appreciate my not mentioning by name. Actually, she only arrived today. She’s highly qualified, so have no fear that she might botch things up during an experiment and subject us all to some kind of zombie gas or other nightmare.” He chuckled.

“I…ah, will certainly try my best to avoid zombification,” the woman said quickly. “One can hardly get quality experiments done when one has to keep tripping and pushing down one’s slower co-workers to distract attention away from oneself.”

The troops all stared. A few smiled weirdly when they realized it was a joke. Others merely looked confused or tried to evaluate her with little apparent success.

“Most excellent.” Roden, speaking to the Germans again, continued his spiel. “She is a molecular biologist. Frankly, we’re amazed that someone of her experience has actually volunteered to join us in this magnificent locale.”

Jan allowed one eyebrow—the right—to rise a fraction in what he assumed qualified as a gesture of appreciation. The woman’s curriculum vitae was indeed rather impressive in a civilian, intellectual kind of way.

However, they had a mission to undertake.

“That is very good to hear. I am sure she will make an excellent researcher. We must, however, prepare to leave as soon as possible as there is a team out there that needs to be found and brought back,” he said to Roden and this Laura person as he turned toward his men.

“Mm, yes, quite,” the director conceded as he put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels.

“Settle in, everyone, and be prepared to stay sharp and follow the rules,” the hauptmann continued. “Our mission is to locate and extract a team that previously went into the Zoo on a deep recovery mission. They missed their return time and are presumed to be in distress.”

As he said this, he took note of The Bull’s appropriately grim expression from the corner of his eye. In his periphery, he could see Roden and the lady scientist, whose brows furrowed with vague concern but otherwise looked as though someone had asked what had happened to the rest of a jar of peanut butter.

None of this surprised him. He had important and serious work to do and bureaucrats and civilians invariably found ways to interfere. They barely even understood but still, they meddled. At least they often provided some unintentional comedic value.

He wondered if the woman would actually accompany his team. Roden hadn’t bothered to mention that rather important fact yet.

Focused on the task at hand, Jan pushed these thoughts from his mind and continued his pleasant chat with the troops.

“Everyone is to expect the worst. All of you have been drilled and trained and instructed in Zoo protocol and the Bundeswehr’s standards. Those of you who are new to my command will also learn some of my rules. For example, Rule Number One. Never go on a mission without the right people. I personally selected most of your NCOs because they do an excellent job. Listen to them, and we will all emerge from this mission in one piece—along with the men and women we are tasked with rescuing.”

“Isn’t it Klaus’s group?” someone asked and his voice contained a subtle jeering tone and the suggestion that he might be on the verge of cracking up with laughter.

His gaze snapped toward the voice but he couldn’t tell exactly who had spoken. “You are to refer to your superior officer as Hauptmann Grossman,” he said. “But yes, it is.”

A few people chuckled. As they did so, Dr. Curie walked closer to Jan and The Bull and now showed signs of slight consternation. Her schoolgirl-like enthusiasm for studying the Zoo had begun to give way to a realistic assessment of the risks they all faced.

Someone else among the team said in German, “Well, that explains a lot,” he said. “We all know what kinds of missions Klaus—I mean, Hauptmann Grossman—runs. They’re probably all sitting around in the jungle having a nice circle jerk.”

Chapter Ten

Soldat Gunter Grün fired another short burst into the trees. The knuckles of his hands were white and sweat rolled down his brow in fat, salty beads. His eyes bulged and his teeth ground together, while his hands, along with his entire body, shook constantly. All he had seen was a flash of color. That was all anyone had seen, even right up to the moment when they were snatched away. He was terribly certain, at that moment, that he would die and wished he was somewhere else—anywhere else.

If this was a battle, it was a ridiculously lopsided one. Most of the men who’d survived until this point fired desperate volleys into the jungle. They pivoted toward ghosts of sounds and shadows of movement and tried in desperation to shoot anything that wasn’t obviously human, even trees and grasses, simply to stop the jungle from killing them all. Already, a couple more troops were gone.

In the next moment, it seemed to be over. He continued to fire, unable to believe they were safe yet.

“Hey. Hey! Stop wasting ammo,” Klaus commanded.

Gunter eased his finger off the trigger. “But sir, I saw it,” he protested. “It dashed through the trees right there.” He gestured toward the place with his rifle.

“We all saw them. But we’ve driven them off for now. Do not fire unless you know you have a clean shot or I give the order to lay down suppressing fire. Is that clear?” The hauptmann’s voice was ragged with the demands of hunger and fatigue, not to mention the ravages of fear and stress.

“Yes, sir,” he replied, his voice softer now. The last of the monsters, whatever they were, had vanished into the jungle for the moment. He tried to tell himself to relax, to breathe a sigh of relief, and to focus on the main objective of their mission rather than dwelling on morbid thoughts of what might happen to him and the remainder of the team.

Then, he saw it again.

Instantly, he tensed. “Over there!” he shouted. It was on the other side of their column now, which meant either that the creature had gone around them to scout from the right rather than the left or there were more than one.

“I saw it too,” someone agreed. “Hauptmann, they’re getting ready to attack us again. Can we—”

“Not yet,” Klaus snapped in response. “We need to push farther ahead. We’ll never find the American team if we stop to fight every few minutes.”

“It’s not as if the bastards have given us much choice,” someone ahead of Gunter muttered. “We should shred this whole section of the goddamn jungle.”

It was true. They’d already seen their share of combat during the first two days and now, they had been beset more or less continuously by these strange new creatures. No one had a good look at them and had seen only flashes of color. It almost looked like brightly-hued fur, mostly in oranges, reds, and purples. Yet something about the way they moved and the faint hissing sounds they seemed to make, along with the subtle smell they gave off, suggested reptiles rather than mammals.

There was no way to be sure, though. Most of the Zoo’s creatures either surged in for the kill or used stealth, strategy, and deception only briefly to disorient their prey before the assault. Gunter had heard most of this from the veterans. The devilcrows liked to encircle their victims before they struck and snakecats, in particular, could be dangerously subtle. But all those same veterans seemed to agree that these current beasts were neither of the above.

“If the Americans wandered into the territory of these monsters,” someone else commented, “they’re already dead.”

“Hey!” Klaus shouted belligerently. “Be quiet. We are not certain of that yet. These beasts might have moved into this area only an hour ago, for all we know.”

Whenever it was that they had arrived, it hadn’t taken very long to inflict a shitload of damage. The first indication of their presence had been the death of eight men followed by old Feldwebel Schwartz. Multiple creatures had shrieked around them and they’d all opened fire, but the mutants had faded into the jungle after they’d claimed each victim.

The second indication a little later had simply been a streak of reddish-orange that Gunter had seen for only a fraction of a second and out of the corner of his eye. He’d barely registered the movement when a big, tough-looking guy named Schlicker had uttered a short, sharp, choking sound, one which was cut off as quickly as it had begun. By the time everyone looked toward him, he was gone. Gunter and the others had run into the jungle to look for him but found only a small splash of blood on the big leaf of a fern. Something moved away from them at high speed with an odd rustle behind it—as if it dragged a burden—and all they caught was a crest of purplish fur.

Klaus had told them to move on and stay sharp. More of the creatures had appeared, if only briefly and barely long enough for them to be seen in ominous flashes of color. It seemed almost as if they ventured out only long enough to plan their attack. Gunter wondered why, if they attempted to be so sneaky, they weren’t camouflaged. Then it had occurred to him—with the kind of horror that made the acid in his stomach seem to rise and fester—that maybe the mutants wanted to be seen. As if, he realized, they deliberately tried to terrorize and intimidate their prey.

Without warning, they’d struck again. Two more men were dragged off into the dark-green depths of the jungle during the first real skirmish, one man near the front right of the column and another from near the rear on the left. Schwartz’s and Schlickers deaths had already spooked the men and this time, the screams of the two newest victims were quickly drowned out by the roar of gunfire. In sudden panic, the troops had begun to spray lead in the general direction of the attacks in the hope that they could eliminate their assailants through the brute-force application of superior firepower.

They’d mowed down trees, leaves, and branches while Klaus had gone ballistic in his effort to get them to stop. He’d said they might hit their own men who’d been snatched or that it wasn’t the time to use so much ammunition.

They found no further trace of the men who’d been taken, nor did there ever come a time when the predators, whatever they were, revealed themselves openly or provided clear targets. Instead, three more men had been snatched. The soldiers grew increasingly desperate in their attempts to fight back without simply strafing the entire jungle with every last round they possessed or burning it down around themselves.

They were now at the mercy of a species that seemingly existed only to hunt. Worse, they also had apparently been bred specifically to hunt humans.

“What if they’re trying to weaken us?” Gunter asked now in a hushed tone. They’d glimpsed the monsters again in brief flashes of color, which indicated that they must be preparing to attack once more. “We have less firepower now. What if they are preparing for a full-scale assault?”

“Shut up, man,” someone snapped. “That’s the last thing we need to hear right now.”

He gritted his teeth. Shouldn’t that be the first thing they ought to think of? How to prevent losses and how to fight back? In his opinion, they ought to go on the offensive against these monsters to stop them from gradually bleeding the whole unit dry. Converting his fear into anger made him feel better but only slightly.

There was no time to dwell on it, though, as all around them, the vegetation came alive with scattered impressions of red-orange, purple, and blue.

“Oh, shit!” someone screamed.

“Fire!” Klaus barked.

A fusillade erupted in response and the troops aimed at the vivid hues of the creatures surrounding them. Unfortunately, they rarely hit much of anything although the foliage quivered with violent motion. They backed toward one another in an attempt to gradually form a tight ring with their guns aimed outward to shoot in any direction as needed. Some of the colored streaks they glimpsed seemed to be low and near the ground. Others seemed far too high in the understory, almost into the trees. Hissing and trilling sounds crept into the sonic atmosphere between the roar and crack of their automatic rifles and shotguns.

Gunter tried to lead the target on one of them as it streaked past him, ahead and to his left, only for it to vanish into the underbrush. The monsters were so fast and moved so erratically that he could not even plot an approximate course of where they were headed. His rifle clicked. He could actually feel himself breathe—pant, really—and he moved as if in an agonizingly intense slow-motion state. Grimly, he forced himself to think of what he had to do, to focus and perform. He systematically ejected the empty magazine, retrieved a fresh new one, and slid it into the gun. Yes, he’d done everything right. His rifle was loaded again. He wasn’t dead yet and was able to fight again. The process of reloading took seconds but felt as though it had unfolded over the space of five minutes or more.

He raised his weapon. Something brown and red-orange streaked past his shoulder and through the ranks. Behind him, someone screamed.

The young soldat spun toward the attacker that had darted past him but didn’t dare to shoot yet for fear of hitting his comrades. The guy who’d been next to him was gone. All that remained was a bloodstain, a torn strip of uniform, and the man’s rifle, which had clattered to the jungle floor. Beyond lay the Zoo that shuddered with movement as both beast and man disappeared into its depths. All around him, more gunfire and more screams filled his world.

A sound came from behind him and Gunter jerked in that direction and fired. This time, he caught another flash of something brownish with bright, seemingly multi-colored fur and when he fired, his bullets struck true. The wounded creature retreated hastily behind a sheet of overlapping leaves and left a squirt of blackish blood behind it. It thrashed wildly as it fled and uttered an abrasive and horrible squawk, a sound that seemed equal parts avian and reptilian.

“Ha!” He gasped and his blood warmed with the sudden rush of victory. It was only a small and temporary one, but at least it fixed the fact that they could fight back in his mind. These mutants were not invulnerable.

There were more of them, however.

Multiple forms became fast blurs of color that lunged with violence. All burst out of the jungle at once—four or five at least. He pivoted toward them. Already, he could hear the others yell and curse between the near-deafening report of their guns. Another of the mysterious creatures rushed half-toward and half-past him. It might have tried to attack, although he didn’t register it. Still, something in his deep and primitive instincts that still held control of his reflexes forced him to throw himself aside. He fell, rolled, and felt a rush of air as though it had taken a swipe at him and barely missed.

As he came out of his roll, he rose to his knees, then his feet in one semi-smooth motion, strode ahead two paces, and put his back against a tree. In what felt like a more secure position, he raised his weapon and turned in the direction he’d retreated from. He couldn’t see much of anything, though, as the foliage was too dense.

“Hey!” he shouted, suddenly paralyzed by the thought that he might be doing something wrong. He wished Klaus would hear him and give him clear orders. “Fuck…” he muttered and began to push his way toward the relatively clear area where the rest of the team continued to fight. Guns still blazed while monsters from the leafy shadows hissed and squawked.

He took a deep breath and prepared to burst through the leaves and rejoin them. The idea in his mind was to assess the situation, whatever it might be, and deal with it to the best of his ability as a soldier, even though he was a rookie. Before he could move, the creatures launched their assault.

A claw or hand or talon shoved through the greenery. Gunter stumbled back and his rifle raised to spit bursts of lead but already, the creature that owned the claw seemed to have retreated and now circled him. He tried to follow its trajectory but another one burst through the curtain of plant life.

Without hesitation, he turned and ran. First, he raced straight back—away from the monsters—but then bore left and tried to angle back in the direction he’d come. He had to rejoin his comrades and help them. No matter what, he would not become a deserter. Besides, if he tried to flee, these monstrosities would simply cut him off, isolate him, and hunt him anyway.

As he ran, however, it became difficult to discern exactly where the hell his comrades were. The sounds of the fight were explosively loud and yet distant. They seemed to be in the direction in which he was headed. But the noises also diffused outward and spread themselves around as if the column were moving again—pressing on without him—even as they fought. Or worse, as if they’d been divided and scattered by the attackers.

“Keep moving, Gunter,” he said to himself through his ragged breaths. He would find them momentarily. He merely had to keep going and not panic. Behind and to the side of him, he thought he could hear things moving lightly between the trees and amidst the underbrush. But there was at least a chance that he’d shaken the creatures following him. Maybe they had given up the chase and were heading back to where a larger group of more obvious prey awaited. If that were the case, then once he rejoined his team, all of them could annihilate these sons of bitches together.

As he stepped over a large curling root and ducked under a slimy, low-hanging branch, he saw, not far ahead, a patch of blue-violet fur. It stood perfectly still. He drew his breath in sharply and held it. He had come across one of the creatures at rest and perhaps even snuck up behind it.

Slowly, making as little noise as he could, he stepped forward and raised his gun. He could shoot it from where he was, probably, but it wasn’t a very clear shot and he’d have to expend a significant amount of ammo to ensure he killed it. More to the point, he wanted to see what it actually looked like. He drew a shallow breath and stepped forward once more, then again. The sounds of battle seemed even more distant now.

The outline of the creature began to come into view. He could not make out any real details, but it seemed to be about two and a half meters tall—larger than most men but not huge. Beneath and around the indigo-hued fur was scaly skin of a deep yellowish-brown. He aimed his rifle.

Something rustled to the right. His head snapped in that direction.

The other one had apparently remained hidden and waited to strike, while the first stood in plain sight to act as a decoy. Gunter swung his rifle and cursed himself for having fallen for the ruse and not opened fire immediately. He prepared himself mentally for the possibility of death even as his finger squeezed the trigger.

He wasn’t fast enough. A short, strangled cry cut off and the last thing he saw was the creature’s jaws closing around him.

Chapter Eleven

Laura constantly tapped her fingers on her side or ran them through her hair as she walked. They were old nervous gestures of hers that came back occasionally when she was either very excited about something or borderline terrified. At that moment, she experienced both of those emotions in fluctuating proportions, although excitement seemed to be the stronger.

“So, will this be your first time?” one of the soldiers asked in a thick German accent. She hadn’t really paid attention to anyone but she looked at him now. He was a young man in his early twenties, wolfish-looking and olive-complexioned, and wore a sly smirk on his lean face.

“Oh, yes, I’m afraid it will,” she replied. “I’ve just arrived in Africa, actually.”

“Well then,” the man returned, “we will tell Africa to be gentle with you.” He turned his face away from her and a couple of his friends chuckled around him.

Her mouth tightened in irritation, but she ignored the stupid comment for now. She was distracted. They’d crossed the grounds of the base and arrived at the huge, high-tech gate that separated Fort Archway from the open desert and beyond that, the Zoo itself. She could hardly wait to see it.

Hauptmann Shalwar was out in front and veered to the left toward a cubicle attached to the gate, where he met a tall, friendly-looking black man with a gun at his hip. The two spoke like old friends, but she noticed that the guard seemed alert and even cautious as he scanned the troops. His eyes focused briefly on her before they moved on.

“Another rescue mission, Coop,” Jan said in English. “This time, we go to rescue the rescuers. Klaus has gotten himself lost.”

The other man laughed quietly. “Well, I hope you find them and bring them all back.” His accent sounded Midlands-ish, probably Birmingham, but he spoke in an oddly formal way that made it difficult for her to be sure. He looked at her. “And who is this young lady? Civilian oversight?”

She waved, about to introduce herself, but Jan spoke first. “Our new scientific observer, Dr. Laura Curie,” he stated. “Director Roden personally introduced her to us so presumably, she knows what she’s doing.”

“Ah, good,” the man replied.

Laura took a few steps forward and extended her hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said. “Pardon the redundancy, but I’m Dr. Laura Curie.”

“Pleased to meet you, Laura. I’m Sergeant Gerald Cooper, but everyone calls me Coop. There are fewer syllables to deal with that way.”

“Ha, yes, true,” she agreed. “You military men and your efficiency. We wouldn’t want to waste excess syllables.”

He laughed but then his demeanor turned subtly and undeniably more serious. “Make sure you behave yourself in there and that all your credentials are up to date. The Zoo used to have some rather serious problems with bad people going in to do bad things. My duty is to make sure that none of those kinds of people get past this gate—from either side—or that any of the creatures out there get in.”

“Yes, very good, and I understand,” she agreed but her excitement now took another shift toward nervousness.

“We can’t delay,” Jan said and rescued her from the potential interrogation. “Everything else should be in order. As usual, Ferris and I have seen to it personally.”

“But of course,” Coop replied. He returned to his cubicle and operated the controls within. Laura looked at the gate and marveled at the thickness of the wall into which it was set.

The metal barrier appeared to be strong and it was large enough to drive a truck through. Turrets with unmanned machine guns were set to its right and left above the towering wall itself—she estimated about thirty meters, give or take—that spanned the full width overhead and continued on either side. The gate opened as a split down the middle, and each half disappeared with almost shocking speed into the structure to either side. Beyond lay a stretch of pale yellowish-brown sand beneath the bright blue sky and nothing else.

They filed into a small convoy of military trucks and she was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder between a couple of young men who had a fairly animated conversation in German, laughing as they completely ignored her. The ride was over soon enough, fortunately, and she took a deep breath. Nothing else really mattered because she was almost there.

She climbed down from the truck beside the others, looked around, and gasped. Beyond the last narrow strip of the desert lay a brooding mass of dark yet vivid greens. The Zoo. This was it, she realized. They had arrived.

While she had read about it and so had some idea of what to expect, actually seeing it in person was different. A moist jungle that teemed with alien life, full of mutated or unfamiliar plants, sprang abruptly from one of the most barren landscapes on the planet.

“Brilliant,” she said softly and shook her head in something close to awe. “Absolutely brilliant.”

“Ja, welcome to Fort Arschweg,” someone nearby mocked in a sarcastic tone.

Laura thought this was an odd way of pronouncing “Archway,” even for a German, but she paid it no heed. Instead, she secured the helmet on her head, thankful that they’d geared her up once it became clear that yes, she would go with them into the Zoo. The day had grown even hotter, and there was a fair amount of desert to march across before they reached the shade of the jungle.

As they set out across the Saharan waste, some of the other soldiers nearby conferred or joked together, mostly in German. Occasionally, one or other of their sergeants seemed to tell them to shut up. Jan and his right-hand woman, Ferris, also repeated various basic and obvious instructions about staying together, being careful, paying attention, and so forth. Now and then, these instructions were even issued in English, quite possibly for her benefit. She tried to internalize it all. Studying the most incredible environment on the planet would be more difficult if she constantly did stupid things and made these hard-assed soldiers angry at her.

Soon, the leafy entrance of the jungle—wide open but not exactly welcoming—stood before them, and the column of troops began to file in. Jan was near the front and Ferris a little farther back. Laura was more or less in the exact center to keep her protected and also ensure that she was penned in and unable to poke around in the jungle except when the Hauptmann determined it was safe to do so.

She stared forward, up, and to both sides, her jaw hanging open. It wasn’t only the Zoo’s improbable lushness that stunned her but the fact that the plant life was such a deep, dark, concentrated shade of green. Many of the trees and other vegetation gave the simultaneous impression of both alien strangeness and uncanny familiarity. These were mutated specimens of Earth species, she knew. The notes and reports compiled by Dr. Marie and Dr. Lin had waxed considerably on this subject.

“In we go,” a voice said. She recognized it as belonging to the wolfish fellow who’d spoken to her earlier. “Hard and deep.”

“Lovely,” she replied, too busy staring at her surroundings to pay him much heed.

Things were quiet as they traipsed in and walked perhaps half a kilometer into the humid and shadowy emerald gloom before Jan called a halt to examine the trail. Apparently, this was the point at which Klaus’s team had deviated from the usual path taken by German forces as part of their bid to rescue the missing Americans.

Things were quiet aside from the faint sound, almost like breathing, which seemed to collectively arise from the interaction of all the Zoo’s plants and still-hidden creatures.

“Chris Lin theorized that this whole place might, to some extent, be a single organism,” she mumbled as she looked around. “I can almost see how that might be the case.”

“Ja, well, still different plants that do different things,” said Wolf-Face as he sidled closer to her. The group had formed a rough circle when it stopped and Jan and a few others conferred near the front on which way to go.

“Well, of course,” Laura replied.

“Like that one,” the young man went on and pointed to a leafy plant that looked rather familiar. “That is powerful aphrodisiac. It would be almost unfair if I were to take it.”

A few other soldiers laughed—or tried not to laugh—and it seemed half the troop now watched the two of them.

She stared at him in surprise, then squinted at the plant. “No, it isn’t,” she retorted in a voice loud enough for the entire team to hear. “That’s licorice. Well, slightly mutated, perhaps, but definitely a licorice plant. It’s not native to Africa and is mostly found in southern Europe and India, so either the original American experiment included it, or some idiot littered a candy wrapper in here and the Zoo assimilated it. It’s actually been linked to erectile dysfunction when consumed in significant quantities as candy, so I’m sure the pure, undiluted variety from the original plant would only be that much more potent—or impotent—if you were to chew a leaf.”

Almost everyone dissolved into laughter. Snorts transformed into outright laughs. Wolf-Face half-smiled, half-grimaced, and seemed to fade imperceptibly into the pseudo-anonymity of the crowd.

Laura looked toward the front of the column. Jan, the commander, was watching her. She was entirely unsurprised to see that he was not laughing.

“Very humorous,” he said in an utterly flat tone of voice, his facial expression deadpan. “Gefreiter Schultz, do not harass or flirt with our guest scientist as I will be unable to protect you if you do. That goes for everyone else as well. And Dr. Curie, please do not undermine the morale of my troops even if they technically deserve it. We have a task at hand which we must accomplish. Now, let us focus on it, please.” He turned away.

She fumed internally. While she was glad he’d told the men not to pester her, between his condescending and humorless attitude now and his unwarranted bollocking of her earlier over the nonsense with the vehicles, she felt fully justified for the fact that she mostly hated this guy.

On the other hand, she felt as though the attitude of the troops had shifted regarding her. Their opinion of her had improved, at least a little, and on some level, she suspected that they resented Jan’s shutting down of their brief foray into actual fun. Even if they respected his abilities as an officer, they were still normal human beings with a sense of humor.

“What an arsehole,” she muttered under her breath as they began to move again. “Then again, he’s likely clenched his sphincter muscle so tight that ‘hole’ might not be an accurate summation. More like an arse-slit.”

“Kinky,” someone said behind her. “I think she’ll fit in just fine.”

Chapter Twelve

Jan examined the ground and the lower foliage in search of the trail. With him was Unteroffizier Albert Wenzel, their best tracker. He was a small, wiry man, quite young but very skilled, disciplined, and focused. His father had evidently been an avid hunter, and it showed.

“They very likely went that way, Hauptmann,” he said and gestured in the appropriate direction. “The Zoo seems to cover tracks much more quickly than a natural jungle would. Bent plants straighten themselves, footprints find the ground rises up to engulf them, and trampled grasses regrow in only a short time. Still, there are subtle signs of disturbance. Furthermore, the foliage is thinner here. Hautpmann Klaus always struck me as the type to take the route that is easiest to barge through quickly and with brute force.”

“Indeed,” the leader agreed. “Of course, you are never to speak ill of a superior officer where anyone else above your rank might hear or in front of the men.”

“Sorry, Hauptmann,” he apologized. “I had overhead you and Leutnant Ferris joking about—”

“This is the Bundeswehr.” He cut him off. “We as officers may say, ‘Do as we say, not as we do,’ and it is not hypocrisy because we are of higher rank. As far as you are concerned, that is all that matters.”

“Yes, Hauptmann,” the Unteroffizier said and his shoulders slumped a little.

“Of course, you are an excellent soldier and tracker, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself promoted again fairly soon. It may not be long until you are a commissioned officer yourself, at which point you too may be able to sample the fruits of rank privilege.”

“Yes, Hauptmann.”

“Good.” Jan turned to the column. “This way,” he said and waved his hand. The Bull and the various Feldwebels nodded and moved the men along. They trudged through the mud and undergrowth and brushed aside or broke branches in their progress down the path the young scout had indicated.

As they marched, Jan reflected on the Zoo’s relative quiet and peacefulness thus far. This meant nothing. They simply could not trust the jungle or anticipate what it would or wouldn’t do, at least in terms of how much resistance could be expected. Once the Zoo showed its hand, though, he would know how to react. That was all a person could do in a place of pure chaos.

Of course, it made the job of dealing with chaos much easier when he had a firm grasp on all the variables he was dealing with. Prior to the introduction of the ridiculous British woman, his grasp had been firm. She complicated matters. Already, she’d clearly demonstrated that she was prone to shouting in return at anyone who gave her offense.

On the other hand, if Roden were to be believed, her credentials were sterling. If she could learn to follow his rules and manage not to get herself or anyone else killed, her scientific acuity and intelligence might actually end up as a boon to their overall operation. She could be of great benefit to Fort Archway in general and to all the human beings involved in containing the dangers of the Zoo.

During a rescue mission, however, in which she seemed to do little more than tag along… He wasn’t so sure about the wisdom of that.

Within a minute—perhaps as long as two minutes—of this thought entering his mind, Dr. Laura Currie herself proceeded to walk up to him. Which meant she had disregarded his earlier instructions that she should stay near the middle of the column for safety unless he had specifically given her permission to wander around.

“Mr…uh, Scheussen-something,” she said.

“Hauptmann Shalwar,” he corrected her. “Or, if that is difficult to remember, you may address me as Captain Shalwar.”

“Oh, Captain, yes,” she said and seemed to marvel at the notion that rank terminology would translate across languages. “And Shalwar. I shall try to remember that. It almost doesn’t sound German, though.”

“My father was from Pakistan,” he replied. “May I help you with something, Dr. Curie? You should stay in the center of the formation—”

“Pakistan. It makes sense now. Well, in any event, yes, I wondered…”

Jan frowned. If she merely wondered about something, it was unlikely to be anything remotely like an emergency. He had a missing team to track.

“Well, I wondered if you or any of your troops had ever collected samples of some of these plants on your various expeditions? Your team left so soon after I arrived that I didn’t have time to discuss the matter with Director Roden, I’m afraid, or speak to anyone in the research department.”

“Collecting samples is not my responsibility,” he said. “Some of our past scientists did if I am not mistaken. You will have to check the base’s archives or speak to someone in Research after we return. They would know better than I. My responsibility is to protect the base and anyone who goes into the Zoo. If I do not focus entirely on that, it becomes difficult for any research whatsoever to take place.”

The woman seemed to bite her tongue. Clearly, she registered his attempt to get rid of her and that he hoped she’d take the hint and simply remove herself into the fold with no further resistance. He should have known better than to assume she would make it that easy on him.

“Research,” she began and stated the word emphatically, “is what allows you and your troops to have better intelligence as to what is going on with this place, not to mention to develop better weapons, armor, antivenoms, and other kinds of countermeasures. Would you agree with this?”

“Of course,” he replied, and followed up too fast for her to sneak a smartass comment in edgewise. “I agree that each of us has a specialized function within the overall structure of the base, the military, and the German-British alliance that helps to contain this phenomenon. You have your role to play and I have mine. Please allow me to do my part.”

The woman sighed in what sounded like a mixture of anger and resignation. Something about the way she did it was almost cute, he thought, although he nevertheless hoped this would successfully banish her back to the soft, comfy middle of the column where she belonged.

“I am sorry for touching your vehicle and for my outburst. I suppose it was rather inappropriate to speak to an officer like that when I’d only just arrived. I must have simply been a little flummoxed to find all these people around speaking German since no one had even told me about the alliance between our countries.”

Jan allowed one eyebrow to rise slightly in mild surprise, as this was not what he had expected her to say. “‘Flummoxed?’ English is truly a fascinating language.”

Dr. Curie snickered at that. “Yes, well. It means…ah, caught unawares, or surprised or being put in a situation where you’re not quite sure what to—”

“I know what it means,” he replied. “I simply had not heard it in a very long time.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “In any event, despite my apology, what I had to say during that outburst still stands. You really should actually post all your rules somewhere or distribute them as a document or something if you expect people to follow every last one of them.”

Jan frowned and did not look at her as he continued through the jungle. She spoke softly enough, at least, that most of the other troops wouldn’t hear. Plus, the speed at which she talked meant that some of those who weren’t particularly fluent in English might have difficulty understanding her anyway. Meanwhile, Wenzel did a fine job of focusing on the trail that would lead them to Klaus’s team.

“And if I recall correctly,” Curie went on, “you accused me of having broken Rule Number Forty-Two. Are there really that many? How many are there in total?”

“There are as many as there need to be,” he replied in a lower voice but with a sharper edge than he had used earlier. “My philosophy of leadership is to maintain whatever rules are necessary for the general benefit of this base and its personnel and the objectives of whatever mission we are on. Each of my rules helps to ensure our success, and in a place like the Zoo, success means survival. Everything I do is to keep people safe—including tourists who come to a dangerous place in the distant wilderness wearing high heels.”

They passed under and through an overhanging mass of flowering vines rather like the ridiculous curtains of beads found in some nightclubs. A little farther ahead of them and to the right, he noticed a sharp ravine. They had moved gradually but steadily uphill. He did not recall a ravine in this area, but the Zoo changed its own interior topography seemingly at will.

“You really ought to lighten up, you know,” the woman said and pointed a finger at him. The expression on her face suggested that she somehow found this half-funny. “And furthermore, I’ll have you know that when you had me gear up for this expedition, I took care of that particular matter. I’m wearing a full expedition suit. Look, no more high heels.” She held up her booted foot as proof.

He glanced toward her feet. Wenzel seemed to try to catch his attention to inform him of something up ahead, though, so he didn’t see much and decided he would simply take her word for it.

Curie, however, would not be brushed off. She apparently insisted that he confirm that yes, she wore boots. Women truly needed so much attention. That was a lesson he’d tried to learn but, over the course of his three marriages, had apparently failed.

“See?” she said and raised the other leg to show off her booted foot. “Perfectly acceptable footwear for—whoa!”

She toppled toward the ravine and Jan’s reflexes kicked in. He was beside her in an instant. His arms darted out, his hands seized hers, and his feet dug into the dirt to brace himself against whatever solid outcropping he could find.

“Oh, shit,” the researcher said. Like a ballerina in mid-pose, she hung poised over the precipice with both hands clenched in his.

His pulse had increased but now that he’d stopped her from falling, he relaxed slightly. Still, this particular little ordeal wasn’t quite over yet. “When I pull back,” he said, “throw yourself forward.”

“What? Throw?” she protested.

“Do as I say,” he snapped.

“Oh, very well.” She sighed.

He pulled back and she lurched forth—or flopped, really. Most of her collapsed forward into him, aside from the dangling leg which continued to wriggle freely as they drew safely away from the ravine.

“Good catch, Hauptmann,” someone said.

Jan ignored the man as he stood the slightly dazed Dr. Curie on her feet and brushed himself off. “Pay attention to your surroundings,” he said. “That is not on my list of rules because it is so obvious that it would have to be Number Zero if anything.”

“Well, you were the one who distracted me by calling attention to my footwear, of all ridiculous things,” she retorted. “Shit, I have mud all over my…everything, really.”

“We cannot afford to delay for the sake of mud on someone’s suit,” he said. Wenzel still seemed to have something to say to him. “I have done my duty for now, which is to protect you, even if it means riding your ass.”

“That is what she said,” someone remarked.

His head snapped toward the direction of the comment and he glared at the nearest men. Beside him, Dr. Curie snorted and burst out laughing. The joke was an old and stupid one the Americans had come up with, but perhaps the British woman simply found it funny when attempted in a German accent.

Jan gritted his teeth and tried not to blush, left the scientist and his loudmouthed men behind for the moment, and trudged ahead to speak to his scout. Thank God Wenzel probably had something actually important to share.

Chapter Thirteen

Laura felt better now, although she was still rather irritated with Hauptmann Shalwar and his anal-retentive attitude problem. The improvement in her overall mood was a little surprising, given that she probably looked terrible half-covered with mud. Still, this was a jungle safari of sorts so a little mud and grime were to be expected.

“You know,” she said out loud but mostly to herself, “this place really is like somewhere the doctor might visit on one of his adventures.” She’d fallen back toward the middle of the formation as Jan had suggested. He’d gone ahead to confer with his scout or tracker-person so it was pointless even trying to continue the conversation.

“Oh, you like Doctor Who also?” said a young, round-faced German soldier who marched alongside her. “I have seen every single episode except the newest ones.”

She laughed. “Yes. However did you guess that was what I meant? I could have been talking about any number of doctors.”

“No, I knew,” the man insisted, smiled, and seeming to drift to some distant and pleasant location deep within his own head. “I have toy sonic screwdriver at home.”

“Brilliant. I wanted one when I was a little girl, but I was constantly distracted by science kits and documentaries and things. To be honest, I’ve only seen perhaps three-quarters or so of the entire run of the program. There are so many episodes.”

“Ja,” the young soldier agreed. “My favorite is the one with the aliens.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I…oh, I know exactly which one you’re referring to. Yes.”

Several men behind them laughed loudly, and two of them yammered away in German and poked the round-faced fellow in the back, making fun of him, she assumed. He argued in return and looked slightly embarrassed but also amused by whatever the hell they were discussing. She told herself it was good that she’d given them something to joke around about. At least she was talking to people and by this point, they didn’t seem to dislike her.

As the conversation amongst the men proceeded, she looked around at the Zoo’s fantastical menagerie of flora. Some of the vines were the size of Burmese pythons and flowers dotted through the foliage had petals as big as race car pennants. Most of the trees were both tall and thick enough that they might as well have been centuries old, although she knew the Zoo had only existed for a year if that. It was truly incredible, and she hoped that the Hauptmann would allow her to gather samples when it was safe.

“Alarm!” someone cried.

Laura continued to walk for a second but stopped when she saw that everyone else had halted. She froze and attempted to snap out of her scientific reverie as all around her, soldiers tensed, raised their guns, and assumed combat positions. This was not good.

Creatures with what looked like leathery brown scales and three canine heads approached them head-on through the part of the jungle into which they’d pressed. Above and to the sides, she could hear what, at first, sounded like the wind rustling the leaves of the trees but soon seemed more like a mass of large objects—or living beings—moving through them. Alongside that sound was a growing, unpleasant buzzing.

“Heuschrecken!” someone else said. Their sergeants were everywhere at once to shout orders and shove men into position.

As the troops all bustled into their places to prepare for battle, she decided that the best thing for her to do was nothing. She would stand perfectly still at the approximate center of the entire troop and allow the professionals to do their jobs. If she tried to interfere with the fight, she’d very likely screw something up or get in someone’s way.

The soldiers seemed to form into something like a triangle, and it did not take long for her to see the reasoning behind this. From the front came the onslaught of the three-headed monsters that howled and advanced with surprising speed on their stumpy reptilian legs. From above and to the sides came two separate flocks of what could only be giant flying insects. Her mouth dropped open and her jaw hung like a rusty old mailbox lid.

Then, the guns opened fire.

“Oh, Jesus!” she exclaimed, almost fell, and lurched downward. Even with the noise reduction of the suits, she had not expected it to be so loud. It was as if the entire world had exploded all around her and dozens of bombs detonated in their tight little metal echo chambers.

The mutant creatures were upon them, and things lashed and clawed and bit at the men in front. Others swooped overhead, landed on trees nearby, or plummeted amidst the humans to lash out with knife-like claws. The guns continued to blaze. Their muzzles made bright flashes of fire and tracer rounds accompanied the bullets that cut through wood, exoskeleton, and flesh to fill the air with splintered wood and misting blood.

A huge locust landed almost in front of her, and she stared at it in disbelief, painfully conscious of the fact that she was unarmed. Her brief career as a hacker of state secrets had made her aware that these existed. They were the first monsters the Zoo had produced and there had been many different varieties recorded. These were the size of large dogs or small men, dark-green in color, horned, and fanged, with powerful wings and sharp claws. And one stood mere paces away and looked at her.

A rifle much closer roared amidst all the other gunfire and the locust reared and flailed as the bullets punctured its husk and shredded its eyes and limbs.

Laura looked up. A large man—she was fairly sure he was one of Jan’s sergeants—had saved her. Smoke rose from the barrel of his automatic rifle.

“You!” he grunted. “Hide!” He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her toward a thick growth of small, bowed trees whose trunks intertwined. As she stumbled toward them, she saw him hurry toward where most of the other men on this side of the formation had assembled to drive the locusts into the jungle.

She dropped to her knees and crawled backward into the small space formed beneath the intersection-point of the trees. Unfortunately, she wasn’t entirely hidden and anything could have seen her there from most angles. She was, however, sheltered for the most part. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing at a time like this.

From her position of pseudo-safety, she watched the battle unfold with a mixture of awe and nauseated fear. She had never seen actual combat before but Jan’s men seemed damn good at it.

The two lines closest to her that formed the sides of the triangle drew closer to one another to give themselves more room to hold back the insects, and they seemed to be succeeding. At least one or two of the hideous bugs dropped each second or so, and none of the men had fallen although one screamed and staggered between the lines, clutching his bleeding arm.

The other line at the front that created the base of the triangle had a slightly easier task, it seemed, since the cerberuscrocs— that had to be what they were—were not airborne and instead, had simply charged blindly at the human intruders. The creatures were as vicious as they were hideous and seemed in no way hampered by their short legs. The three canine heads each had a long neck that enabled them to move with lethal speed despite their low, crocodilian body. Their assault had been ferocious, but the team’s rapid response had already broken it. Now, a dozen of the creatures lay dead or dying. From what she’d read of them, she was glad none got close enough to sink their teeth in.

Cerberuscrocs had a venomous bite that rendered their victims instantly paralyzed. Eventually, the venom’s effects spread to the organs, stopped the heart, and death was inevitable. If caught in time, the progress could be slowed with antivenom, but this generally had to be injected soon after the bite. Even though the suits should protect them from this potentially lethal attack, no one wanted to test it. She could see why the men fought so hard to keep the venomous maws at bay. A man with a shotgun aimed at one that came too close, despite the fact that it had already lost two of its heads. He fired and the monster did an impromptu backflip while its one remaining head disintegrated into a cloud of chunky, dripping fragments.

“Well,” Laura whispered to herself, although she could not even hear the sound of her own voice under the guns’ reports and the Zoo creatures’ screams. “It seems they know what they’re doing and have this under control. Yes. It’s all going perfectly well, really.” Her heart thumped against her ribs as if to contradict her.

Only ten feet ahead of her, a man fell and she crawled back in alarm. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to be fatally wounded and had been bumped from the side by a locust that had also put a few long but shallow scratches across his chest. He was, however, helpless for the moment, having stumbled and rolled head over heels and even dropped his gun. His attacker watched his somersault and seemed to hesitate between delivering a killing strike or attacking the other soldiers.

Laura drew in a sharp breath. “Ohhh, shit,” she said and cursed herself mentally with everything that came to mind for what she was about to do.

She scuttled forward, darted up, and emerged from her hiding place to grasp the fallen man’s hands and wrists. They clamped around hers, hot and sweaty, and she pulled him back toward the three bent trees in time to avoid another swipe from the mutant’s claws. Panting slightly, she deposited him where she herself had crouched.

“Ha! I actually saved someone,” she said.

Unfortunately, the locust she had saved him from now looked at her. It hopped closer.

Laura reached down and hurriedly snatched up the rifle the man had dropped. It occurred to her that she had almost no idea how to fire one of them, at least not in terms of the specifics. Everyone knew the basics, though. Aim the little pointy thing on top of the barrel at the target and pull the trigger. How hard could it be? Although the gun seemed awfully heavy.

She aimed tentatively and suddenly, the locust pounced. A cry of alarm died in her throat. Although she hadn’t quite managed to squeeze the trigger yet, to her shock, she registered a powerful cracking sound and one of the creature’s eyes exploded into a mass of blackish goo. A few more reports followed, closer to her throbbing ears, and the locust collapsed, its head mostly destroyed.

With a sharp intake of breath, she looked over her shoulder. Jan stood there, aiming his handgun, from which a trace of blue-gray smoke rose. He spared her one quick glance before he ran ahead to reinforce those of his men who finished the business of driving off the rest of the locusts. The cerberuscrocs seemed to have all been slaughtered.

“Thanks, but I had that covered,” she shouted after him but her attempt at humor fell flat. In truth, she felt rather pleased to see he had stepped in to save her. Next time, she might not be so lucky.

With a shrug, she returned to the trees and lent an arm to the soldier she’d rescued, helped him stand, and gave him his rifle. He didn’t seem too badly off, all things considered.

“Danke,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she replied. “Maybe you can return the favor one day.” Now that she’d seen these creatures first-hand, she had the feeling she would need all the help she could get.

Chapter Fourteen

Jan took a deep breath and composed himself. All things considered, that had gone well.

“How many wounded?” he asked The Bull.

“Only four,” she said. “Soldat Mann will probably not be able to shoot since his right arm is fucked up, but everyone can walk and no one is in any immediate danger of death, I’d say.”

He nodded. Zero wounded would, of course, have been far better. But given the size and strength of that particular attack, he was thankful simply to have zero dead. He’d lost people in smaller skirmishes than that before. Either they had been very lucky or this particular group of men was very good. Or he and Ferris and the Feldwebels had commanded them particularly well. It was most likely a combination of all three.

For a moment, once again, it had occurred to him during the battle that he might actually die. He wondered when his son would call him back.

That thought had no place in combat, however, so he pushed it aside and looked around while he reloaded his pistol. Large swathes of the jungle surrounding them had been decimated by the amount of lead they’d blazed through it, and the ruins of the flora were appropriately decorated with the ruins of the fauna. Dead, mangled, blasted, and eviscerated cerberuscrocs and locusts lay everywhere, their futile effort to halt his expedition a mute, gruesome testimony to humanity’s skill in matters of organization and discipline, technology, and innovation. And, of course, toughness and courage. He was proud of his troops.

Of course, the silly English woman had found a way to stumble directly into the heat of battle and needed saving. She had even picked a rifle up, despite the chances of her actually knowing how to use it being virtually nil. Had she managed to fire it, the recoil would probably have knocked her on her ass. Worse, she might even have kept her finger on the trigger during the collision between her ass and the earth and so sprayed bullets at random into empty air or human flesh.

“Stop,” he told himself. There was no point in dwelling on what might have gone wrong. The important thing was, in fact, that it hadn’t. Nevertheless, that he’d needed to babysit Dr. Curie increased the likelihood of further near-misses and near-disasters as they continued with their mission.

He looked toward her. She was crouched next to Obergefreiter Herzog—the man she’d apparently pulled to safety after a locust had bowled him over—and helped one of the medics bandage the lacerations on his chest. She said something to him and he smiled and laughed gently.

Jan frowned—at himself, for once. He suddenly felt ashamed of his own nasty and cynical train of thought. The woman was doing her best, and she had at least demonstrated some courage and initiative in attempting to fight that locust. He ought to give her the benefit of the doubt, despite her ridiculous behavior earlier at the base. Combat sometimes brought out the best in people.

And when he had been younger, the best in people was what he had seen more of when he looked at them. Advancing age had begun to take that away from him. He ought not to be the type of person who assumed most women—or most humans in general, for that matter—to be useless fools. His mother would have considered that a weakness of character and even now, it offended the romantic streak within him he had inherited from his father. Of course, most people did have a disturbingly large foolish streak.

He walked toward her, having made the decision to do what was fair.

“Thank you for pulling Obergefreiter Herzog out of the way,” he said with his hands behind his back, “and for helping to treat him now.”

Dr. Curie looked up and her face revealed a shadow of surprise. “You’re quite welcome,” she responded. “Isn’t that what everyone is supposed to do?”

“More or less, yes.” He almost smiled but stopped himself. It would be unwise to be too lenient with her. “However, please try to stay out of combat until you receive proper firearms instruction. I say this only for your own good since you could very easily be harmed. Your bravery is appreciated, but it takes bravery and knowledge to deal with such things.”

“I have a great deal of knowledge,” she retorted with a grin, “although admittedly not much of guns. Perhaps someone could show me?”

“We do not have the time now, but perhaps later, yes.”

“Good. Oh, and I couldn’t help but notice,” Dr. Curie said, “that your person who sounded the alarm did so in English. I’m sorry to require special treatment as I simply didn’t have the time to learn German with all my scientific studies. But I want to say how much I appreciate their having done that for my benefit so that even the rookie civilian among the group can react accordingly in…uh, an emergency situation.”

Jan could not help staring at her for a brief moment, during which he dug his teeth into his tongue to stop himself from uttering a barking peal of laughter. “The German word for ‘alarm’ is alarm,” he stated, his expression as deadpan as he could manage.

“Oh!” the woman replied cheerfully. “Well, isn’t that convenient? Never mind, then. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I had an American friend tell me once about a trip she took to Tijuana in Mexico, and after she got alcohol poisoning she was pleasantly surprised to discover that the English and Spanish word for ‘doctor’ is exactly the same.” She frowned. “Although they pronounce it differently if I recall.”

“I am sure they do,” he said.

Leutnant Ferris came up. “We are ready to go,” she stated, although she glanced at Herzog to make sure he was well enough for this to be true. “What now, Hauptmann?”

“I am not sure,” he replied in English so that he would not have to repeat anything to Curie. “Intel on the missing Americans that Klaus was ordered to investigate indicated that they probably disappeared somewhere in this vicinity, although it might have been deeper in. The chances are they were attacked by these very cerberuscrocs.” He gestured to the mound of scaled corpses. “But there is no way to tell if these attacked them or not.”

“Wait—wait,” Dr. Curie interjected and pushed quickly to her feet. “I have an idea, actually.” She raised her hand as she spoke like a schoolchild asking to be allowed to comment on something.

“Really?” The Bull replied, her hands on her hips. “You are a Zoo virgin. Maybe you have ideas that will be useful in the lab, but not so much out here. Please do not interfere with our judgment when we are trying to make a decision.” The woman adopted the tone she usually employed when someone needed to be told to shut up but, by her standards, relatively gently.

The Englishwoman wrinkled her brow in confusion. Again, she seemed anxious with the need to say something. Jan had to admit he was curious and at the moment, he did not have any ingenious ideas of his own.

“Let us hear her out, Ferris,” he said. “Sometimes, the outside observer sees things that are useful to the person who is inside. They see it from a different perspective. She may have something to offer us since we are stuck right now anyway.”

The Bull responded with a sour grimace and a nod, turned toward the researcher, and waited to hear her theory. Behind them, the troops fell into formation once more.

“Well, then,” Curie said and looked pleased to at least be heard if not necessarily appreciated. “I…ah, was able to study the files discussing most of the prior research on and observation of the Zoo,” she began. “It included summaries of the most frequently-sighted creatures and their observed behaviors, and this was then weighed against what we already know about the Earth animals they seem to be patterned after.”

“Yes, yes, we do not need to know all the background information,” The Bull chided impatiently.

The woman flushed slightly but tightened the muscles along her jaw and continued. “Anyway…all the intel that has been aggregated so far suggests that these monsters have a fairly small hunting radius. Packs of them seem to choose a location, claim it as their territory, defend it, and content themselves to hunt only within that area. If the other German unit—or the American unit before them—were attacked by these creatures, we must be close.”

Jan sighed. “Yes, but how will we know? We cannot check the pockets of the cerberuscrocs to see if they have stolen Klaus’s credit card, can we?”

Ferris chuckled at that. He hadn’t specifically meant to be funny, but he would take what he could get.

Dr. Curie simply shrugged. “Well, they eat people, don’t they? We can simply check their stomachs.”

He raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “Yes, Dr. Curie, it would seem you have proven useful after all.” She had probably done enough dissections that such a thing would occur to her. He typically only opened one of these creatures’ stomachs when he used a gun.

Without further comment, he turned to his troops. “Search the bodies of the cerberuscrocs. Look for any who look fat or full as if they’ve had a meal recently.” The men responded with an appreciable lack of curious expressions.

Leutnant Ferris moved closer to Jan. In German, she said to him: “Of course, you would not have thought of that. You don’t eat enough.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Look at this big, fat-ass bastard,” Unteroffizier Wenzel said in English and prodded the gut of a dead cerberuscroc with the tip of his boot.

“Yes, he looks perfect,” Laura agreed. “And his abdomen wasn’t even damaged during the firefight, so that should eliminate any complicating factors.” Indeed, it would make the coming necropsy much more difficult if they had to try to separate bullets, buckshot, shrapnel, or pieces of the cerberuscrocs’s own body from whatever it had willingly put into its stomach. This particular fat-ass bastard had fortunately had his head blown off instead. She wondered idly why the soldiers hadn’t aimed for his torso since it made such a large and obvious target, but that was beside the point. His heads must have simply been in the wrong place—say, right in front of a shotgun—at the wrong time.

Wenzel and another man, whom Laura recognized as the round-faced young Doctor Who fan, took hold of the gruesomely decapitated monster and heaved it up between them while they wrinkled their noses at the stench of its spilled blood. The creature probably hadn’t smelled very pleasant even before they’d killed it. The two of them placed it on a mostly-horizontal fallen log. It lay splayed out with its clawed limbs dangling to the sides and its pale downy abdomen facing upward.

Hauptmann Shalwar and Leutnant Ferris came closer to stand, watch, and listen.

“Right, then,” Laura said and took a deep breath to steel herself. She had performed quite a few dissections in her time but never on something so big or so recently deceased. Not only that, she’d never had to look for chewed-up pieces of people before. “Ahh…” she said awkwardly and looked around, “I don’t seem to have a knife. Could one of you…”

“Of course,” Jan said, although he sounded annoyed. He looked at her with his usual stern, calm, even-tempered expression and reached to his side. “Rule Number Seventy-One. Always carry a knife.” He drew a medium-length, well-polished blade with a simple black grip and extended it handle-first toward her.

“Thank you, sir,” she responded and took it quickly. “How on Earth did you manage to get all the way up to seventy-one rules, though? That makes me curious as to what is between that one and Number Forty-Two.”

“Perhaps you will have the opportunity to learn every last one of them,” he remarked and the corner of his mouth tweaked a little in a wry but infuriating fashion. “I have great faith in your need to be reminded of them all. Now, if you please, begin your examination.”

“Yes,” she replied. To her pleasant surprise, Ferris suddenly handed her a plastic sample bag. The German military must have realized early on that they might need to take samples in the jungle. She thanked the woman and turned to the corpse.

Since this creature was, after all, an alien mutant from hell, there was no way to guarantee its anatomy would be identical to that of any particular Earth creature, but the files she’d read had suggested that most of the Zoo’s beasts were fairly similar. It looked similar, anyway. There was no reason to suspect the stomach was inside its leg or some such nonsense. She chose a spot and plunged the blade into it.

Gas escaped around the puncture and made a long, wet farting sound. Most of the troops laughed and a couple made comments to each other in German. Laura would probably have laughed herself had she been among them but where she stood now, the close-up view of the creature’s steaming innards assaulted her and seemed to temporarily paralyze her sense of humor. She was simply glad her helmet meant she couldn’t smell anything.

“Oh, dear,” she said softly as she cut down and to the side. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it…” At least the knife was extremely sharp. Jan struck her as the type who probably tended to the edge on a daily basis. Once finished with her incisions, she reached into the cut itself and folded back a large flap of skin and muscle to expose the mess within.

A soldier behind her said something and among the foreign words, she recognized “goulash.” It was a fairly accurate comparison, she had to admit.

“Right, well,” she began, “this does appear to be the stomach, and it’s far from empty. It looks like the digestion process has already begun, but some creatures digest things more slowly than others, so I can’t be certain how long since it ate last. Let me see if any of…this…ah, looks familiar.” She began to poke around in the slop.

“I will help,” Hauptmann Shalwar said, pulled a pair of gloves onto his hands, and knelt beside her. “I have some experience in identifying human remains.”

“I suppose you do, yes,” she replied, and suddenly felt cold when she considered the implications of that. Still, it would be helpful under their current circumstances.

As he dug through the lower part of the stomach, she searched the upper and her fingers closed around something hard. “Shit,” she muttered. “This feels like…teeth? Part of a jaw, maybe. Ugh.” She dragged the piece forward and up. It was definitely the side portion of a bloody human jawbone with molars still in place.

Jan stopped and looked at it. “We cannot do dental identification ourselves but at least we can take it back.” He took the jawbone from her and placed it into another plastic bag that Ferris had opened for him. “Leutnant, please photograph the teeth. We will take the sample itself with us when we return.”

“Yes, Hauptmann,” she replied.

Laura felt something else and paused. “Yes, I’ve found another…ah, something. It might be tough bodily tissue of some kind, but it almost feels like cloth.” She dragged it free from the rest of the stomach’s contents. To her surprise, it was indeed exactly that. In fact, it looked like part of someone’s uniform. She tried to wipe the blood off it to see if they could identify anything.

The hauptmann glanced at it, said something over his shoulder, and a moment later, accepted a paper tissue from someone behind him. She held the scrap of cloth as he rubbed it.

“American,” he observed after a moment. “Most of the flag decal is even still intact. Yes, this must be from the US team that went missing, to begin with. We are in the correct area.” He took his knife, wiped it on a clean part of the same tissue, and returned it to its sheath at his side.

“Good,” Laura said, suddenly glad that her idea had borne productive fruit. “Does that mean that this other commander…ahh, Klaus I think his name was, ought to be around also?” She supposed it was a stupid, obvious question, but hearing the answer would help clarify exactly what they were looking for in her own mind.

“Yes, it is very likely,” answered Jan. “Klaus is not a complete imbecile. Whatever might have happened to him or whatever mistakes he might have made, he would have at least managed to find the correct coordinates and keep his search in that area. He and his men should not be far if they are still alive.”

He stood and turned toward Ferris and his troops. “Hauptmann Grossman’s unit would have been in this area. We must find out which way they went.” He followed this basic statement with more detailed instructions in German.

Laura stood as well. She wasn’t sure if the hauptmann wanted her to continue the necropsy for further clues, but she guessed probably not. It seemed more likely that they wanted to move out as quickly as possible. Plus, he’d taken his knife. Fairly sure that she’d made the right guess, she removed her gloves and dropped them onto the bloody remains of the cerberuscroc.

A couple of the soldiers conversed with their leader via a private communication channel in their HUDs. They seemed to be trying to decide on a course of action. After a moment, Jan paused, closed his eyes for a second, and nodded slowly. He must have made a difficult decision. A slight fluttering stirred in her stomach as she thought of what it might be and hoped it was nothing too terrible. She was not as scared as she probably should be, but the recent battle had impressed upon her that this was more than a simple nature walk.

“Yes, very well,” the hauptmann said through an open communication channel. “We will split up to search the immediate area. It is normally not good policy to divide a force. If the enemy is present, each smaller group is weakened and may be attacked one by one by a stronger opposing force, which may also cut them off from rejoining the others. But we have very little time and we must cover a large amount of possible ground quickly.

“There will be ten groups of four that will go no more than one hundred meters from our current position. Each one will try to stay within sight and hearing range of the two other groups closest to it so that they can easily aid one another in the event of an attack. The goal is to look for any sign that troops might have marched through your sector. We will spend only ten minutes on this. Do it.”

Ferris and the Feldwebels began to divide the men and repeated the orders in German and clarified them for the benefit of those soldiers who had difficulty understanding English.

“Excuse me,” Laura said to Jan, “are we quite done with our necropsy, then? And will I join this search?”

“We need everyone available,” he explained, “so yes. We could not leave you behind by yourself and unprotected, in any event. And we have found what we need from the dead cerberuscroc. I take it you do not want to continue probing around in its bowels?” He raised an eyebrow and looked evenly at her.

“Oh, hmm,” she said and folded her arms over her chest. “Not particularly. But I will most assuredly let you know if I have a change of heart.”

Chapter Sixteen

“We four will go,” Leutnant Ferris said. She pointed to herself, Soldat Mann, another fellow, and the researcher. “You heard the hauptmann’s orders. Come!” She gestured sharply with one of her thick, strong hands.

“Very well,” Laura said. She thought it odd that she, the civilian, was put on the same team as Mann, whose left arm had been badly injured by a locust and could now only wield a pistol in his right hand. Not to mention that they’d given him painkillers and told him that he would only fight as a last resort. That meant half of their little team consisted of noncombatants.

Of course, the logic could have been that Ferris being in the group made up for the apparent weakness. Laura was fairly sure that even some of the Zoo beasties might have been afraid of her.

The leutnant led the way and moved with almost shocking speed despite her relative shortness and bulk, followed by Laura and Mann, with the other soldier to guard the rear. The area of the jungle they were given to explore lay immediately beyond the log where Laura had dissected the dead cerberuscroc. The other teams were already fanning out in nine other directions.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” she asked in a soft voice. Before Ferris had chosen her team, Jan had instructed them all to avoid excessive noise. Granted, they’d blasted their guns enough for half the Sahara to hear. But, as he’d explained, individual creatures or small packs might flee from that kind of racket, only to then be attracted to smaller noises that suggested easier prey.

“Anything,” Ferris replied. Now that they’d pushed a short way into the jungle, she slowed to allow them to search more thoroughly. “Anything that looks important.”

“Well, that’s not terribly specific,” Laura muttered. “This whole place looks important to me.”

The woman merely grunted and ignored the comment. She studied the area in front of her for signs of movement or other obvious threats and then likely re-analyzed what she saw for any evidence of Klaus’s team or the Americans. Soldat Mann, to Laura’s left, did likewise, and she supposed their fourth member copied them in the rear. She looked to the right.

There were trees and plants, of course. What else did she expect to see? All of them looked fascinating in their own way, but she saw no obvious signs of recent disturbances, no discarded guns or bloodstains, no bodies, no burn marks, and no trash—nothing, in fact, that might indicate the previous passage of the other teams.

“Are we still actually within sight and earshot of the other teams?” she asked as they pressed on. She knew she shouldn’t annoy the others but when it came to the Zoo, she preferred safety in numbers. “I’m not sure how we’re supposed to manage that in a place like this. The jungle is so dense and confusing that I don’t even know where we are. Have we gone in a straight line?”

“Hey!” Ferris spun to face her. “You—shut up.” The woman had planted one fist on her hip, and her other hand was raised to point its index finger at her. She glared, and her mouth was drawn tightly into a kind of puckered scowl. If someone else had done it, it might have looked ridiculous, but Leutnant Ferris made it look appropriately intimidating. In fact, she looked like a bull about to charge.

“Hauptmann Shalwar knows what he is doing,” she went on. “He has saved us all many times and he saved you today. Be quiet and do as you are told.”

“Sorry,” Laura replied. Her voice drooped in inflection a little and sounded sheepish. Ferris was right about Jan having saved her earlier, at least. She couldn’t know the truth of what he might have done in the past, but nothing suggested that the woman was lying to inflate the man’s image. It struck her that the leutnant greatly respected her superior officer, perhaps even loved him in a familial kind of way. Despite her irritation with the man, she knew there must be a good reason for his men’s high opinion of him.

They pressed on a little farther. Laura thought she could hear the shuffles of the other two teams somewhere to each side, but it still seemed that their group had become isolated in the jungle. If their leader did not seem so confident of where she was going, she would have assumed they were lost.

She looked up and a little ahead. To her surprise, she did, finally, notice something worth taking note of. A tree—which looked like a mutated date palm of considerable thickness and maturity—had odd marks scratched into its trunk.

“Huh,” she mumbled. “I’ll…ah, investigate a mark on this tree.” She pushed through a patch of hard, clinging bushes on her way toward it. None of the soldiers responded, but she assumed they must have heard her. The jungle was quiet.

As she drew closer, she realized that the marks were definitely not the result of simple weather cracking or anything of that kind. Each was a cut or gouge, most likely fresh and recent, made with something like a knife or an ax …or a claw, perhaps. She stepped out of the mass of bushes and weeds and now stood only a few feet from the base of the tree. The light was dim but she could see the mark well enough from there.

It resembled a very crude X shape. Someone or something had made two diagonal slashes across the bark, one more or less on top of the other. She squinted. A knife, hatchet, or machete would have been cleaner, she assumed. The gashes were not very deep, and they were ragged as though something had torn through and pulled little pieces of bark as it went. That suggested something hook-shaped. A claw, then.

“How odd…” For a moment, she was lost in thought as something came to her—a memory or rather a fragment of one like an indistinct impression from a dream. She had seen something like this before or heard about it. At some point in her career as a researcher, she was quite certain, she had encountered a theory or hypothesis about creatures that engaged in this behavior or something very similar.

But what? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

It wasn’t anything she’d read about the Zoo. Of that much, at least, she was certain. There had been no reference in any of the files to Zoo creatures marking their territory by scratching Xs into trees. She would have remembered that. This meant that either the mark was made by human hands, after all—unlikely though that seemed—or that they might be dealing with the emergence of an entirely new species.

Suddenly, she was excited. A feeling of tension rose from her gut to spread throughout her body, but it was a pleasant kind. This was a real scientific discovery, a secret waiting to be uncovered.

Soldat Mann wandered up behind her. He looked slightly dazed and the bandage around his left arm was dark with dried blood. “What have you found?” he asked.

“Ah, well, I’m not sure,” Laura replied. “A marking of some sort, I think made by a species we haven’t seen yet. It could be something important. Where are the others?” When she looked around, she realized they were out of sight. They seemed to have wandered into the densest, darkest part of the entire Zoo that she’d seen thus far.

Mann, with his good arm, gestured vaguely behind them.

“Well, let’s find them then. Or you could bring them here while I take a picture of this. I only hope you’ll be able to find me again. I can’t see a thing in any direction from here.”

“You come with me,” Mann said. He apparently did not want to leave her alone.

“Very well. Oh! There they—” Her eye had caught a flash of motion in the bushes a little behind where Mann now stood. She did not, however, recall any of the German soldiers wearing murky-brown uniforms.

Her eyes bulged with horror. “Get out of the—”

The cerberuscroc burst out of its hiding place with a loud growl. Before Laura could even react, the creature had head-butted the soldat in the midst of its pounce. He gasped and fell forward, fast and hard, rolled, and pounded into the base of the nearest tree. His expression dazed, he groaned, and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. More seeped from his arm where the fall had broken his wound open again. The pistol was still held tightly in his right hand.

“Help!” Laura shouted. “Ferris! Anyone?” She glanced frantically around her for a weapon of some kind.

The cerberuscroc looked at her with three sets of shiny eyes and the three heads worked in bizarre unison as if controlled by a single will. She froze for barely an instant before she and the creature moved at the same time.

It lunged forward and attempted to bite her with one of its venom-dripping fangs as she threw herself to the side. The result was that she glanced off the beast’s shoulder and was thrown aside in an ungainly roll, while the creature was pushed slightly off-course toward the fallen Soldat Mann.

She scrambled up as quickly as she could and snatched up a reasonably sturdy-looking stick. It made for a poor weapon but it was the best she could find. “Over here,” she called, and rustlings suggested that someone approached. She could see parts of suits through the foliage and turned and ran toward Mann, which also meant she ran directly toward the ass-end of the cerberuscroc.

The creature had either decided he was the easier prey or had been attracted to the smell of his spilled blood—or both. It reared and lunged toward him.

“Get away from him,” Laura cried and thwacked its rear as hard as she could. Unfortunately, the stick broke against its haunch and it simply ignored her.

He screamed in the same moment that Leutnant Ferris erupted out of the bushes with her rifle up. She fired almost instantly. The gun crackled explosively in her hands and the cerberuscroc shrieked and toppled. It took at least three rounds in the chest and shoulder and another three in the neck, and although it continued to thrash, it was bleeding heavily. Already, its movements had weakened. It would not get up. The woman shot it once more under the jaw to scatter blood, brains, and bone-fragments onto the vegetation behind.

Laura looked at Mann. They’d been too late. The mutant had already gouged his upper abdomen open with one or more of its heads, most likely destroying his stomach and perhaps his heart as well. His head lolled, his eyes had turned glassy, and as paralysis had already taken over, only one of his feet still twitched.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Shit. Shit. I tried to save him…”

Ferris strode to the fallen soldier’s side as the other man, who’d brought up their rear, emerged behind her. It sounded like troops from the adjacent teams also rushed to their position.

Totally stunned, she barely registered the soldiers. Everything had happened so quickly that even now, her brain seemed to have placed her on hold while it reviewed the recent events and tried to determine what in God’s name had occurred. Ferris examined Mann, checked his pulse, and stood. “He is dead,” she said.

“Scheisse,” the fourth man muttered.

She studied the leutnant and realized that the woman was upset, deep down, but that she had tremendous control and kept herself on emotional lockdown until further notice. That brought home the fact that she had probably seen this kind of thing happen before, as awful as that was to contemplate.

“Our ten minutes are up,” Ferris said, her jaw set and eyes narrowed. “It is time to meet up with the rest of the team.”

Chapter Seventeen

Jan allowed himself to frown but not too much. He should not appear callous in front of the troops, but neither should he seem too emotional or unstable. He hated losing men and he cared about every one of them. At the same time, they looked up to him as their rock, their firmly fixed point where things did not waver or weaken.

“What are your next orders, sir?” The Bull asked. The others watched and waited in silence.

The effort to divide the troops in search of clues had been a failure. Not only had they found nothing of definite value, but Soldat Mann had been killed. This was unfortunate enough on its own, but it also reduced the effectiveness of their unit. With every soldier lost, the mathematical odds of the rest of the group’s success decreased. Each death made them that much weaker and by default, the Zoo that much stronger. He always had to calculate this relentless logic of survival.

“We will move on according to our prior course,” he said. “The coordinates we operated on previously were close enough to point us in the right direction. Also, Dr. Curie’s examination of the cerberuscroc’s meal suggests that we are close.”

He paused and looked upward. The sky had begun to darken and the quality of the light shifted. They had been out for too long. The battle with the locusts and cerberuscrocs, the medical attention to the troops in its aftermath, and this search had all delayed them in their quest to reach Klaus’s position. Besides, the missing hauptmann had obviously been too deep into the jungle for a quick in and out extraction, anyway.

He recalled Rule Number Five. Never stay in the Zoo after dark unless absolutely necessary. He wanted to turn back. They could still be beyond the borders of the jungle by nightfall if they retreated immediately. But no, the soldier in him insisted. In this case, staying out there as long as it took to complete the mission was absolutely necessary.

This was not a routine patrol nor a scouting expedition. Klaus and the men and women who had accompanied him might need aid as soon as possible—if any of them had survived. He and his team had a duty to find them and bring them back, no matter what.

“They cannot be far,” he went on. “We will continue the search past nightfall if we must. I will give the order to activate our lights when and if necessary. Until then, do not activate any of them. The Zoo creatures can hunt in the dark, and if we must do the same, we will.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferris said, and she and the Feldwebels resumed their usual duty of getting the men back into formation as they all prepared to continue the hunt. The job would get done. They were still a good group and a strong force. Their odds of success were still reasonable.

As the column began to move out toward the coordinates they’d postulated and according to the rough trail Wenzel had identified, Jan noticed the British woman fall out of formation again and work her way toward him. He steeled himself in preparation for whatever it was she had to say or ask—probably something inane, although she had, on the whole, exceeded his expectations thus far.

“Excuse me, Hauptmann, ah, Shalwar,” she said.

“Yes, Doctor?” he replied.

“I’m terribly sorry, but I actually did find something. That horrid three-headed, crocodile-dog attacking and poor Soldat Mann passing away, was…difficult…and I temporarily forgot.”

He felt a slight inner stab of annoyance. It would have been better if she’d suddenly remembered this five minutes ago. However, he recalled his vague personal pledge to be patient with her. She had very likely never seen a person die before, especially not by violence.

“Yes, what is it you found?” he asked and kept his tone gentle but tried to imply that he did not wish to spend much time conversing.

“Well, it was a marking of sorts in the trunk of a tree,” she explained. “Something clawed an X symbol into it—two diagonal scratches, like so.” She pantomimed two slashing motions that crossed over each other and answered his next question even before he could ask it. “And no, I don’t think it was made by a human being. Somehow, it didn’t look like it had been done with a tool or weapon. More like a claw, I’d say. I haven’t read or heard anything about any of the Zoo’s creatures doing that in the past.”

“That is interesting,” he admitted, “but what does it mean and how might it help us in our present mission?”

“I don’t quite know.” She shrugged. “My best guess is that it means a new species has emerged here—perhaps one intelligent enough to use visual indicators to mark its territory.” She paused and seemed to consider something for a moment. “And obviously, it would have claws. Although bloody near all of them seem to have those.”

“This is true,” he quipped. “And that might be of some use to us. If there is yet another deadly creature roaming about here, we will be aware of it and must learn how to fight it.” He glanced around into the darkening jungle, still empty of signs of their quarry. “But it does not do us any good in our main business of finding Klaus and his team. We do not have time for a nature scavenger hunt. Until we have located them, we cannot deviate for other purposes.”

“But it might actually provide some clues as to what’s happened to them,” Curie persisted. “Whatever has happened, it’s very likely that the Zoo’s creatures were involved in it in one way or another—perhaps driving them in a particular direction, even if they weren’t badly attacked.”

“That is possible, yes,” he agreed. “But understand that this is a rescue mission and only a rescue mission. We are here to find them and leave with them. Studying new species or learning to fight them is something we can focus on later.”

“Very good, yes,” she agreed, “but I have a hypothesis—or a theory as most people say, although that’s not really correct in this case—that suggests that there may not be much of a later in which to learn and adapt to what is coming.”

That was a disturbing notion. Even before she began to prattle away as to the nature of this theory—as he had no doubt she would begin to do at any moment—he hoped she was wrong. The Zoo had unleashed more than its share of unpleasant surprises over the past year, though, so hope was really all it was.

Curie proved instantly that his suspicion was correct. She began to talk without being asked or otherwise given permission. He rolled his eyes internally. She was nearly as bad as an American.

“I’ve studied the natural history of the Zoo in some detail,” she began. “From its beginnings at what is now known as Wall Zero deep in the heart of the jungle, through its initial expansion to the edge of Wall One, and into its current phase after the Surge toward Wall Two. Throughout the past and through all these stages of its development, it seems to be the case that it has always behaved strangely right before a massive change occurs.

“Over and over again, it settles into a set of habits, you might say, and we adapt to them, but then it begins to slow, back off, and settle into a lull where the soldiers report that things almost seem too easy. Or if not that, in some way or another it seems to operate below its full potential. And then…bang.” She clapped her hands for emphasis. Fortunately, she wasn’t too loud about it. “Something changes and always for the worse, at least from humanity’s perspective.”

“And you believe,” Jan surmised, “that we are about to see another of these changes?”

“According to the latest reports—which I reviewed quite recently, I might add—the Zoo has expanded very slowly of late. Much too slowly for the amount of biomass it’s taken in. It’s been…aggressive and hostile, yes. We have, sadly enough, just witnessed that. But its rate of growth has been almost at the point of stagnation—about the same as it would be if it weren’t consuming anything at all, or at least very little. If there is a new creature that’s recently been spawned that appears to be extraordinarily powerful in some way, its presence might be tied into whatever the Zoo is planning for the next phase of its development.”

He noticed that half the platoon seemed to be listening to her now. In German, he told them, “Keep your eyes on the jungle around us. The first priority is to locate any sign of Klaus’s team.” Most of them nodded and turned their attention to the surrounding vegetation. He was glad he didn’t have to tell them twice.

“Oh, I’m sorry if I distracted them,” Curie said, having discerned what had happened despite her ignorance of the language. “I suppose I’m merely terribly interesting.” She laughed at herself and a few soldiers smiled slightly.

The hauptmann merely said, “Continue, Doctor. How so? And by that, I mean how might this creature be involved in the next phase, not how is it possible that you think of yourself as interesting.”

“Well, aren’t you clever at finding ways to kill the mood,” she quipped.

“I do my best.”

“Well, anyway…what was I saying? Yes—this new creature might have been produced specifically to push the process forward. For that reason, learning more about it might be tremendously important. For example, we have no way of knowing if specific creatures were mutated to prepare for the Surge.  Sadly, that knowledge was lost when those in the Zoo at the time perished. The overwhelming impetus of it, however, suggests that this is very possible. Therefore—”

“I see your point, Doctor,” Jan interrupted. “You are very observant and what you say might be relevant. When we return, I feel you should speak to Director Roden and the people in Research about these matters and urge them to give priority to them. However”—he paused and fixed her with a firm look—“you will now once again have the privilege of learning another of my rules—specifically, Rule Number Twenty-Eight. Stay on mission. We are here to rescue Hauptmann Grossman’s unit. That is all. Until we have fulfilled that duty, we must give lower priority to any other matter.”

Dr. Curie nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“And I realize the importance of understanding our enemy,” he said. “I will take into consideration everything you have said, and I mean it when I say that you should make the base aware of your ideas. I only emphasize the importance of Rule Twenty-Eight to remind you not to do anything stupid that will distract us from our primary objective.”

“Me? Do something stupid?” she marveled.

“You would not be the first scientist who tried to collect a live sample of a creature that can very easily kill a human being. Usually alone and without proper equipment, I might add. I am amazed by scientists. Their courage in the face of certain death and their eagerness to get themselves killed is sometimes beyond that of even the youngest and stupidest military recruit.”

“Ohh,” she said, nodded in an exaggerated and dramatic fashion, and folded her arms over her chest. “So what you are saying is that you’re concerned about me.”

Someone behind them laughed. Before he could decide whether to find the man who’d laughed and tell him to be quiet or to respond to the woman in an appropriately withering fashion, Wenzel, farther ahead, waved and shouted.

“Hauptmann,” he yelled, his voice charged with the electricity of triumph and excitement, “we’ve found them.”

“Well, then,” Dr. Curie remarked, “I suppose we’re free to distract ourselves now by doing something stupid.”

“Don’t push your luck,” he said and actually considered the possibility that he might have to make that his newest rule.

Chapter Eighteen

Laura had been about to attempt a witty comeback, but she quickly forgot the temptation once the men they’d found came into clear sight.

“Oh, bloody hell…” she muttered.

The spectacle was not as horrible as she’d feared it might be—Unteroffizier Wenzel’s demeanor had seemed more positive than negative, she reminded herself, which suggested that they hadn’t stumbled onto a massacre. Rather, the scene before them was downright fucking bizarre.

Soldiers of the German Heer were arranged on and around a huge, fat tree in a fashion that almost suggested flies stuck to flypaper or human-shaped cookies arranged randomly on a countertop. Some men were affixed mostly to the ground or to the roots of the giant tree. Others assumed seated positions near the base while a few of their comrades stood upright. Still others adhered to the trunk in any number of crazy and uncomfortable-looking positions, as if whatever had put them there had simply run out of room and had placed them wherever they could fit them. At first, their being attached made no sense, but as the rescuers moved closer, the explanation revealed itself.

All the men and one or two women were covered, to a greater or lesser extent, with a thick, revolting substance that was obviously adhesive and clearly very strong. It almost looked like industrial-strength putty. In places, however, it had dried and hardened, and its texture had grown crusty, rather like human phlegm. The color was an odd brownish-orange that did nothing for its visual appeal.

“How many are there?” Hauptmann Shalwar asked as his men advanced ahead of him to examine the captives, “and how many are still alive?”

Laura followed the men toward the big tree. She didn’t want to get in the way but did want to help.

“Zwölf,” someone shouted. She made a quick count of her own and decided it was safe to assume that that meant twelve.

Their medics pushed through the ranks and quickly assessed the condition of the prisoners. From what she could see, most of them were alive but unconscious, semi-conscious, or otherwise in rather poor condition. Klaus’s team had been gone for several days now. At least some of these unfortunate people might have been there almost for that entire period of time.

Someone turned toward the hauptmann and said something and his voice sounded low and grim.

Wenzel, who stood nearby, turned to Laura and said, “One man is dead. The rest are alive,” before he strode forward to help the others.

“Cut them down if you can do so without injuring them,” Jan ordered. He moved forward to assist.

“They’re suspended by a bizarre sticky substance,” she told him. “Like something wove a very thick web around them or spat something onto them that then hardened.”

He nodded. She followed him and they approached the huge tree. Most of the troops in Jan’s platoon now aided in the attempt to free the captives. Knives had been drawn and the wielders tried to saw through the heavy brownish goop. Other soldiers, particularly some of the stronger-looking ones, simply pulled at it with their bare hands. She noticed that even the portions that had developed a fully rigid crust still seemed to contain a core of viscous, stretchy, glue-like material. Seeing it broken reminded her of seeing the cheese stretch within the bread-crumb exterior of a mozzarella stick.

“Twelve,” Shalwar observed. “This is only a small number of those who went in. Still, it is far better than nothing and we will know more when some of them are able to talk. Get them all water and any medical attention we can provide. We have eight portable stretchers and can make more if we must.”

Laura wanted to examine the sticky webbing or phlegm-crust or whatever it was but had to concede that helping the soldiers who’d been imprisoned by it took priority. She stepped to the edge of the crowd as Herzog and Schultz cut the bindings of a young man who’d been propped in a standing position. The newly released captive stumbled as he came loose and mostly regained consciousness, and she hastily positioned herself so one of his arms came down over her shoulder.

“There you go,” she said, “nice and easy. Let me help you…” He was heavy but supported enough of his own weight that she could do the rest. She walked him over to a gentle, grassy slope where one of the medics had opened a first-aid kit. He muttered half-articulated gibberish through badly cracked lips as she laid him down. The man would need time to recover, but at least he didn’t seem to be severely hurt.

She stood and returned to the tree. Someone handed another man down, a young fellow perhaps twenty years old who was already almost fully conscious. He had a few nasty bruises and lacerations but nothing too threatening to life or limb. She had the impression that he hadn’t been there very long when they found him. He was shaking and looked around constantly in a state of hypervigilant agitation.

“There, there, you’re safe,” she told him and supported him on her shoulder as she had with the previous soldier. “Do you understand English? In any event, we’re from Fort Archway and we’ve rescued you. We’ll have a look at you and make you more comfortable.” She helped him over to the slope and laid him on a comfortable-looking patch of grass.

“Thank you,” the man responded.

Laura opened the top of his suit and examined his injuries. It appeared that something had bitten into him around the shoulder but not very deeply—only enough, she assumed, to take hold and drag him to this tree. Still, the wounds looked like they might be in danger of infection. She was about to ask for disinfectant when one of the medics came over and handed her a tube of antibiotic cream and a roll of gauze.

“Well, then,” she said and went to work.

“Where are they?” the young man asked in his thick accent.

“Your comrades are safe,” Laura answered. “We’re getting them all taken care of right now, don’t you worry.”

He shook his head. “The…monsters.”

“Well,” she replied calmly, “there aren’t any around right now. We seem to be safe.”

“Good,” he said, closed his eyes, and seemed to relax somewhat.

She glanced at the patch on the side of his torn suit. The rank insignia was one of the lower ones, so Soldat or Gefreiter, she assumed—either seemed about equivalent to Private, as far as she could tell—and the name read, Grün.

“Hauptmann Shalwar is here, ah, Soldat Grün, or Gefreiter Grün, whichever. When you feel better, he’ll want to ask you a few questions.”

The man made a soft grunting sound, which she took as an acknowledgment. Finishing her basic but serviceable job of disinfecting and wrapping his wounds, she stood and looked around.

By now, all the soldiers had been freed from their bondage to the large tree. She wondered what purpose the Zoo creatures could possibly have had in bringing them and leaving them there alive. From what she’d read, the beasts typically either simply ate people outright or dragged them underground to process their biomass into more raw material that the Zoo would use to expand. These people had not been fed upon at all. Had some predator merely stashed them as a snack for later? There were certainly animals that did that, but she hadn’t heard of such a thing happening in the Zoo.

Jan’s platoon had now mostly turned their attention to setting up the portable stretchers. They were simple but ingenious devices made of thin but tough poly fibers that unfolded from something like a notebook into a serviceable sling on which a full-grown man might be carried. She helped unfold one of them and assisted one of the medics to move a couple of the less-healthy men onto them, slowly and carefully. At least a few of the prisoners they’d saved had begun to look like they’d be able to walk, so it didn’t seem like they’d need to make extra stretchers from roots and vines. She’d never attempted that. These soldiers probably knew how, but it still seemed like it would be a severe hassle.

And it was definitely darker than before.

“We will depart in five minutes,” the Hauptmann announced. “Those of you with the wounded will be in the center. Our goal is speed. We may still be out of the Zoo by a little past nightfall.”

By now, it seemed his men had things well under control and Laura was glad to have made some small contribution. She stood off to the side and examined the small glade near the massive tree, and something caught her eye. She leaned forward and squinted. Gouged into the wood of a smaller tree at the glade’s edge was a rough, crude X.

“So it wasn’t a fluke,” she said under her breath. She approached quickly and confirmed that it was very similar to the one she’d encountered earlier. Once again, it appeared to have been made with two quick, powerful slashes of a hook-like claw. She tapped a finger on her lips as she scanned the remainder of the area.

There—another one stood out clearly a little deeper into the surrounding jungle.

“It’s as though they’re marking some kind of path or trail,” she mused. She retrieved her phone and took a quick photo of the first one, then put it in her pocket and made her way toward the second, deeper one. The sounds of the platoon and the remainder of Klaus’s men seemed to grow faint. She probably shouldn’t wander off like this, but it could be something important. Besides, it would only take a moment.

A few yards of struggling through tall, thick, crooked weeds and gnarled branches hung with shivering vines brought her face-to-face with the next marking. It was almost exactly like the first two. She was fairly sure she had read somewhere that three instances of the same thing were enough to rule out the possibility of coincidence. Excited, she spun toward the glade of the huge tree, looking forward to informing the hauptmann of her discovery.

Staring her in the face was what could only be the creature responsible for that discovery.

“Oh, sh—” she started to say but clamped her mouth shut. The mutant, however, opened its own slowly.

It was taller than a man, lean and muscular, and clearly a monstrous hybrid. Its head was lizardlike and definitely reptilian, resembling the skull of a snake, with a hairy crest at the crown and cold round yellow eyes. The body structure was also that of some kind of bipedal lizard. Clashing with these features, however, were its almost simian hands with fingers and thumbs and its thick coating of fur. In the second she had to examine the beast, the fur changed color. It had been a deep green, no doubt aiding it to sneak up on her, but it quickly changed first to yellow and then to orange. Within its mouth were lines of short but jagged teeth, and the long tongue was almost like a snake’s.

A sound almost like the metal component of a machine snapping into place made her gaze flick downward instinctively. On the creature’s two lizard-like and hairless feet, a pair of large, hook-shaped claws had sprung up.

It looked at her and hissed.

“Laura—move!” she whisper-yelled to herself and threw her body into a blind sprint. The creature lunged and its jaws opened and clicked together behind her. As she crashed through branches, one of them came loose in her hand and she kept hold of it, although it wouldn’t be much of a weapon. She bore left, back toward the glade.

The furry lizard-mutant burst out of the foliage in front of her. She screamed and swatted at its face with the branch. It seemed to stop and rear its head and in the ensuing pause, she bolted past it. She dropped the stick so it wouldn’t hinder her plunge through the dense vegetation and glanced over her shoulder. The predatory abomination simply stood there and watched her flight.

She emerged into the glade. Five or six people looked up at once, including Jan Shalwar, who did not appear pleased that she’d gone exploring.

As she sucked in the oxygen she’d need to warn them, it occurred to her that her escape had been far too easy. It could have killed her when it first confronted her or it could have run her down after she’d hit it in the face. It had chosen not to.

The reason for this instantly became clear. All around the platoon, the jungle came alive with streaking forms, flashes of brightly colored fur, and reptilian hissing sounds. The men and women around her gaped in sudden terror. This had been a trap and she had led these monsters right back to them.

Chapter Nineteen

In the brief second before the slaughter began, Jan saw everything at once. It seemed his mind was overloaded with too many important pieces of information and too many things that all required immediate consideration. He tried to process them all.

The British lady, Dr. Curie, returned from her absence and looked startled, as though she’d been pursued. That was bad.

The plants and branches swayed and shifted around him, the obvious signs of animal life moving there. This being the Zoo, the animal life was not benign. That was also bad.

His mind quickly registered the fact that the glimpses of fur he saw were in a multitude of bright colors, none of them the familiar black of devilcrows—the only furry creatures he’d seen so far. That, added to the unfamiliar hissing sound these creatures, whatever they might be, made definitely qualified as worse.

And there were other details that merited consideration, such as the position and arrangement of their new visitors and the relative position of his troop—he had four men stationed around the perimeter of the group as sentries but suddenly, that seemed like far too few—and the fact that there many wounded and half-conscious individuals among them. Those would make easy pickings. He wondered if they had perhaps been left there originally for that exact purpose.

It all clicked into place in the same moment that their adversaries attacked.

They surged forward with shocking speed, only to retreat almost instantly and leave only the barest impression that they’d been there, an afterimage of claws and fur and snapping jaws. Men screamed and two of the sentries simply vanished into the jungle.

“Pull in! Form a perimeter!” Jan shouted. He was already running toward the gear at the center—not to evade danger, but to snatch up one of the extra rifles. “Pull in!”

This had begun far too quickly but it would not be over at the same speed. They had a fighting chance yet and were only doomed if they lost control. Jan T Shalwar was not a man who panicked easily.

He found a rifle amidst the gear and was relieved that he’d instructed they should be left in places where they could be retrieved at an instant’s notice, loaded and ready to go. With practiced calm, he swung it up as his hands clicked the safety off. With the butt secure against his shoulder, his eyes scanned hastily to take in as much as he could in the shortest possible time.

Other guns were already firing—good. Someone wailed horribly to his left. In the panorama before him, muzzles flared and foliage shredded. He caught flashes of the creatures seemingly driven back in some places, but a man directly in front of him stumbled with blood welling from a slash wound in his shoulder.

Dr. Curie raced toward the center near where he stood and the remnants of Klaus’s team lay on their stretchers. All but a couple of them were dragged to consciousness now by the blasting of guns, the eerie shrieks of their attackers, and the swearing and groaning of men in combat.

Jan fired slightly ahead of a flash of orange that darted between the branches slightly to his left. The rifles and shotguns were too loud to hear if the creature made any sound, but it seemed to jerk and vanish deeper into the jungle.

One of his men—the wolf-faced Gefreiter Schultz who had mistaken a licorice plant for an aphrodisiac—slipped into a battle-rage and stormed toward the edge of the jungle as he fired into it, his rifle on full auto.

“Schultz! Pull back!” Jan barked.

The man didn’t seem to hear. A claw whisked out of the foliage and slit his throat. His eyes bulged and he stumbled as blood spilled down the front of his uniform. In an instant, his attacker seized him and jerked him out of sight.

The hauptmann clenched his jaw in barely suppressed fury. These things were even worse than devilcrows or snakecats because they would never come out and fight in the open. He could already see the essence of their strategy—keep moving, strike at random from oblique angles, and use feints and false attacks. Worse, they were incredibly fast.

“Everyone pull together at the center! Fall back from the trees!” he shouted. Another man screamed behind him and leaves swished to indicate he’d been dragged through as well. “Stay out in the open!” At least they’d been attacked in a glade near the huge tree rather than in a denser area where there was no open space.

Dr. Curie ran closer to him as his troops moved to obey his orders, and it seemed the creatures’ attacks and movements slowed or stopped. The men continued to fire but by now, half had run out of ammo and were reloading.

“Flame unit!” Jan ordered during a pause amidst the din and gestured with his hand to indicate where they should focus. The only man with a flamethrower stepped forward and swept the part of the jungle that lay opposite the path they’d come from. A few hisses issued from behind the vegetation and enough of it blazed to give pause to any of the creatures who might consider bursting through.

The flamer fell back and turned his weapon off —it was potentially as dangerous to them as it was to their enemies—while a few others covered him with scattered gunfire.

“That way! Fighting retreat, back down the path!” the hauptmann ordered. The flamethrower had at least covered their rear, for now. They would only have to fend off potential attacks from the sides. Unless, of course, they could simply kill all the mutants and be done with it.

A lull gave them a moment’s respite and he saw the colored fur of one of the creatures across from him, mostly concealed behind two trees. It remained motionless and to his surprise, it seemed that the fur changed its hue from red-orange to yellow-green to make it almost imperceptible amidst the leaves. He glimpsed this for only an instant as his men began their retreat.

Their harried march was accompanied by scuttling as if the creatures ran or scrabbled through vines and branches, but oddly, the sounds did not seem to grow fainter. To discourage them from another attempt to attack, a few of his men took scattered shots with isolated bursts or single rounds. It seemed to work, and he thought they might actually get out of this.

Aside, that is, from the six or seven of his people who’d already been killed.

“Now move!” he ordered. They had already made their way beyond the edge of the glade and onto the beginning of the path that would lead them in the direction they’d first come from. The pace would be slower than he’d like, though, due to the necessity of transporting the wounded. Fortunately, only five of Klaus’s team still needed to be dragged on stretchers. The others had regained enough of their faculties to walk.

He’d almost allowed himself real hope when the second wave of the attack came from above.

“Hauptmann!” the man next to him screamed as a brownish-red form plummeted directly onto him. Jan spun and to his horror, numerous forms leapt out of the trees while the soldier beside him seemed to almost shatter into pieces amidst a burbling fountain of his own blood. In an instant, the creature bounded into the air, taking one of the larger pieces with it, before he could fire a single shot.

Even he was on the verge of panicking now, but he would not. He refused to succumb to such weakness.

“Aim upward. They’re in the trees,” he said unnecessarily as his troops had already adjusted their aim to deliver a fusillade of lead at about a forty-five-degree angle up into the understory of the jungle. One of the mutants fell next to him, dead or dying, and sprawled in an ungainly heap.

There was no time to examine what it looked like. He took Dr. Curie by the arm and pulled her back toward the center of the formation. “I need a gun!” she said.

She probably did, actually. Two or three more of his soldiers were already dead. Before he could respond, however, another of the creatures—this one very much alive—crashed on top of the dead one.

He pivoted barely in time and scrambled backward as he fired. The monster tried to lunge but thrust into a wall of bullets. They struck its limbs, chest, and open mouth, and bleeding and screeching, it fell back. The corpse collapsed behind that of its fellow.

The brief impression of the beast was something like a giant, vicious ape or monkey but more like a lizard. And he could have sworn the color of its fur became darker and duller as it succumbed to death.

Once again, there was no time to assimilate the perception as two more of them appeared. One plunged down from the high branches and the other pushed out horizontally to leave him time for only the reflex of survival. He held Dr. Curie tightly and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the glade. Something in his gut sank. Even in that split second of dodging certain death, he knew in the back of his mind that he was being separated from his troop.

Jan fired two bursts at the creatures. One seemed to take enough lead to the face to flail back, wounded, and the other darted into the jungle.

He drew his pistol, clicked the safety off, and slapped it into the researcher’s hand. “Hold it with both hands, aim straight, squeeze the trigger, and—”

She was already in the process of obeying his instructions and turned to fire at the creature he had wounded. The first shot pulled the gun far too high and she gave a squeak of surprise, but she seemed to gain control of it in time to fire three more rounds into the mutant’s head. It writhed in pain and slumped.

He attempted to track the other one. It seemed to have vanished, but the bright fur of two others appeared on either side of where he and Curie stood back to back. The sounds of his platoon grew fainter behind the increasing sounds of more and more of these monstrosities being driven down the path.

One of the two he’d identified made a feint out of the vegetation. He stopped himself from firing immediately and instead, fired where he assumed it would retreat to before it launched its real attack. His assumption was correct. It uttered a half-screech, half-hiss and stumbled away to safety.

The other targeted Curie. She blazed away at it and while she didn’t place her shots with much care, she handled the gun better than he would have thought. Thankfully, the abomination slowed. He pivoted toward it and fired a low burst toward its groin and belly. Its abdomen burst, wet and steaming, and its legs kicked out from under it to sprawl it into the mud to die.

One more colored patch in the jungle watched them. Jan switched to single shot and fired at it twice. To his relief, it ran off.

The two of them stood in the uncanny peace and quiet. They were safe for the moment.

Unfortunately, they were also alone. He could no longer see the rest of the troops.

He turned toward the British scientist and suddenly remembered why these creatures had been led to them. Anger surged through him but when he saw her face as she turned toward him, he decided that she must be thinking something very similar to his reluctant realization that overrode everything else.

They weren’t done fighting yet.

Chapter Twenty

“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Laura demanded, suddenly furious. She’d been shaking with the fear and intensity of battle. It had subsided for a moment once they’d driven the monsters off but now, the trembling was even worse but for a different reason.

“What?” Hauptmann Shalwar responded and his lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. “Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you not to wander off. You could’ve been killed!

“Every minute I’m in this place is almost getting myself killed!” she answered. “That was obviously all a trap, to begin with. They were waiting for us and even marked the route they’d take to that tree.”

“I fulfilled my duty by trying to complete the mission. I was sent here to rescue those men, no matter what the danger involved, so that is what—”

“Now do you believe me that there is some new species here?” she asked. “If they are smart enough to scratch markings into trees, they’re smart enough to set a trap. Those men were stuck to that tree so we would find them and they could all pounce on us like that.”

The truth of that seemed indisputable. As soon as they’d arrived at the tree, the trap had been set and ready to spring at any moment. Obviously, it had succeeded.

Jan gritted his teeth and shook with rage over what had happened to his men, but something shifted behind his eyes and it took him a second to respond. “You could have endangered yourself,” he said and motioned to her with a chopping motion of his hand. “I am responsible for your protection—”

“We were all in danger. You agree we walked right into an ambush,” Laura surmised. “If you want to protect me, you need to change how you view these creatures…” She had sidestepped away from him as they spoke, trying to move in the same direction everyone else had already gone.

“Do I now?” He followed her and glanced periodically at the jungle but mostly kept his attention on her. “I wasn’t sure about your theory at first, but now—”

“Good,” she shouted. “So why are we still arguing? We should go toward—whoa!” She had looked at him as she took a step and hadn’t noticed a thick vine or root on the ground. The heel of her boot caught it and she stumbled, her arms flailing in an attempt not to fall.

He muttered what sounded like a curse in German and came toward her with his hand extended.

Laura was certain she would fall on her face and was genuinely surprised when she didn’t. That was mainly because the vine had looped around both her ankles and now pulled against her.

“Oh, shit.” She gasped in something close to panic.

When she looked at her own unsteady legs, she grimaced at a thick length of brownish-green plant fiber covered with nasty little thorns that wound around her from the ankles up and which had now reached her calves. She aimed the pistol at a section that still attempted to pull her back, but it jerked hard and without warning, threw her off balance. With a muttered oath, she dropped the gun.

Jan renewed his attempt to help. “Now what, for God’s sake…” He grunted, stooped in mid-stride to snatch up the handgun, and used his free hand to grasp hers while he aimed the weapon at the vine.

To her alarm, it gave another and even sharper tug, and she toppled. The plant seemed to catch her in midair and now pulled her slowly upward as she lay suspended more or less horizontally. “Shit, shit, shit,” she cursed. “Hauptmann, can you kill this thing at its source? That would work better than yanking on my arm, I should think—ugh.” By now, the creeper had entwined itself all the way up around her waist.

Jan put an arm under her shoulder and held firm to slow the plant’s drag while his other hand held the pistol and tried to find the right target. “Of course I am trying to kill it,” he said. “These things need to be—scheisse!”

He fell away from her and she uttered another curse when she realized that he ascended slowly into the trees alongside her with another vine wound around his hips and midsection.

“Our situation has not—ugh—improved much,” she observed while her gaze searched for a sturdy branch to hang onto. She was now mostly upside down and it was difficult to talk. The thick branch of a tree came into view and she clutched it with both arms. The vine pulled harder now, but she’d slowed it. Its thorns dug into her and probably drew blood. She looked up.

Hidden between the boughs of two trees that grew closely together was the mouth of the plant that now held them with its greenish tentacles. The monstrosity was like a slime mold in the shape of a giant wasps’ nest. It pulsed and throbbed within its perch of latticed branches and vine-arms dangled from multiple places. At the bottom was a broad opening like a shark’s maw without teeth. She could, however, see a little piece of something—some creature’s flesh—stuck at the corner of the mouth that seemed to almost sizzle or dissolve—from acid, she deduced, or perhaps flesh-eating bacteria.

“Hauptmann,” Laura said and struggled not to panic outright, “we really need to—”

“You have a gift for stating the obvious,” he quipped and fired his handgun.

Jan was twisted in the rising vines in such a way that he could only aim upward toward the monster itself, and his arm was partially entwined, which made it difficult for him to adjust his trajectory. He fired two, then three rounds. They sank into the mold-plant like toothpicks into bread pudding and with no apparent effect.

She looked around. One of the branches supporting the carnivorous plant was really quite thin. Above it, another branch was thick and heavy and looked dead and half-rotten. Her companion, in the position the vines held him, would not be able to see it. His gun hand was within reach of her arm, though.

“Give me the gun,” she requested. They were only about five meters below the mouth now.

“What? I’m not sure—”

“Oh, shush,” she said. “Trust me. You can’t see up there properly and I already proved I can shoot.”

Although his grimace spoke uncertainty, he loosened his hold on the pistol and swung himself sideways as best he could toward her. She snatched it from his hand and aimed it upward, between and beyond her own legs. It wasn’t the easiest maneuver. She was dizzy and had an awful headache from being held upside down but they were now only about three meters from the hideous maw.

“Both hands, aim straight, and beware of the recoil,” Laura whispered quietly. The sighting notch steadied over the rotten branch above. She squeezed the trigger twice.

The gun exploded in her hands and its chaotic report masked any immediate view of her success or failure, but wood cracked and the dead, decayed branch broke from its trunk. It fell directly onto the slime creature, crushed its upper body, and impacted with the small branch beneath it. The second limb broke beneath the weight and pressure.

The vines around them alternately tightened and loosened before they released them entirely.

“Fuuuuuck,” Laura cried as she plummeted. She felt as though her internal organs had remained above while the rest of her fell, and she bounced and thrashed through leafy branches that slowed her at least a little before she met the jungle floor with a breath-stealing thump. Jan tumbled a few feet to her left. Ahead and between them, the mold-monster plunged to earth, already half-crushed by falling debris. What remained flattened into a loathsome mass of slimy chunks as it landed. Its vine appendages twitched, then went limp.

With a pained groan, Laura struggled to her feet. The fall had knocked the wind out of her lungs and her left knee and calf felt tingly and somehow not as they should be. She hoped she hadn’t broken or sprained anything. If she had, the pain would inform her soon enough. Fortunately, she hadn’t lost hold of the gun. She remembered the safety and clicked it on.

Jan had fallen more slowly than she had, as the vines hadn’t entirely released him until he’d already reached the ground. He stood as though merely rising from a nap on a couch and brushed himself off. Then, he extended a hand toward her.

“Here you go.” She placed the pistol back in his open palm. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track of how many rounds are left by now.”

He nodded and looked for his rifle, which he had previously slung over his shoulder on its strap. It had fallen when the vines had lifted them but it took him less than a minute to locate it.

“Let’s get away from that…abomination,” she suggested. It smelled like a loaf of bread that had been left in a drainage ditch for two or three weeks. “I think it’s dead but it looks like it might have had a carnivorous bacteria culture living in its mouth.”

His face ashen with horror, he literally ran backward to put a good six meters between himself and the plant remains. “I hate germs,” he explained in strangled tones.

“Well, no one particularly likes them,” Laura observed. She walked toward him and limped a little with her left leg.

A little calmer now that he was a safe distance from any hostile microbes, he noticed this and asked, “Are you hurt?”

“My left leg seems a little off, but I don’t think it’s anything serious. We will find out soon, I suppose.” The prospect of being injured in the jungle filled her with dread, but she suspected it was the kind of minor bump or twist whose effects would go away within the hour.

“Good,” he replied. He paused for a moment and regarded her with a calm expression, but his eyes smiled—slightly, anyway. “That was…well done. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied and matched his neutral tone but inwardly, she was quite happy to hear something nice from him for a change. “Although it’s not as if I did you a special favor by saving both of us from being eaten.”

“Fair enough. And you handled a gun better than I would have expected,” he admitted. He took a moment to eject the magazine from his pistol and load spare bullets into it, then handed it back to her. “Keep it for now. I have a rifle. Leave the safety on unless I say to switch it off. And whatever you do, do not shoot me while tracking some other creature.”

“Well, of course not,” she retorted.

Jan nodded. “We actually might survive this. Come. We have to find the others and get back to the wall.”

He turned and strode off down the path the rest of the team had taken in their flight from the ambush.

She followed him, half-irritated and half-jubilant over the fact of their survival, and replied, “What was that you said about how I have a gift for stating the obvious?”

Chapter Twenty-One

As badly as things had gone, Jan could give thanks that at least he and Dr. Curie were not attacked again. The two of them made a less obvious target than the larger group of soldiers.

They spent ten minutes or so following the trail left by his unit, which was not terribly difficult even though full night had now fallen. He clicked the light on his rifle on occasionally and only for a few seconds to study one clue or another before he turned it off again and proceeded in the dark. He did not want his night vision impaired.

“Can’t we turn a light on?” Curie asked.

“Follow me,” he answered. “We see in the dark better this way, and a light can be easily seen by anything that might hunt us.”

“I suppose that’s true.” She sighed.

Less than a minute after this brief exchange, he heard the sounds of several forms moving through the jungle and what were almost certainly human voices conversing in low, hushed tones. Behind him, Laura had stopped and fallen silent. She must have heard them as well.

“Wait,” he said. “We will get a little closer before we hail them in case anything is waiting between us and them.” He kept his rifle poised against his shoulder as he said this, ready to fire should the Zoo’s denizens attack once more.

Fortunately, they did not. The two crept through a comparatively open space and made little sound. Still, it seemed that someone heard them disturbing the plants with their movement.

“Did you hear that?” a young man’s voice asked in German.

Now was the time, then. “Hauptmann Shalwar, and Dr. Curie,” he announced.

“Hauptmann!” Leutnant Ferris responded immediately. He had to admit he was happy to hear that she had survived the earlier assault.

Jan motioned the researcher forward and the two of them moved rapidly toward what remained of the troop. Soon, The Bull’s stout silhouette came into view.

“Are you injured?” she asked.

“No,” Jan replied. “How is your leg, Dr. Curie?”

“Better, actually,” she confirmed. “I don’t think it was anything serious.”

That was a relief. The Bull led them the short distance to where the rest of their team waited. It was difficult to make an exact headcount in the darkness, but his exultation at being reunited with them quickly turned grim. Only about half of those who had prepared to depart the giant tree were still alive.

“They pursued us down our own path,” Ferris explained. “There were too many of them at our rear to break through and return to you. We tried to go faster but another group attacked us from the front. Finally, we killed enough to drive the rest of them away. Our losses were…heavy.”

“You did well,” he said to the Leutnant, although his heart sank. “They laid traps within traps and are smarter than any creatures we have faced before.” He focused his attention on the men and women present. “You all fought well. And those of us who remain can still make it to the wall.”

Heads nodded in the shadows and they moved out. So far, it was quiet—for now, at least, they had purchased a measure of peace. Hopefully, those who remained might still escape with their lives.

Nonetheless, Jan was in low spirits. The mission might be considered half-successful at best. Many of his troops had been killed or snatched away, likely to be webbed and trapped and eaten later. They had only rescued a portion of Klaus’s team, definitely less than half. The rest were still missing. Now, night had fallen, and they were reduced to a fraction of their original strength, unable to continue the search without risking the loss of the entire platoon.

“I’m so sorry about all of this,” Dr. Curie said softly.

“It was not your fault,” he replied. “From now on, though, please don’t wander without permission—for your own safety if nothing else.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she acknowledged. “There might be more of those loathsome vine-creatures, besides the other dangers. I hadn’t heard of those before, either. That’s two new species here.”

That reminded him to warn his team to watch for thorny vines tangled near the ground or large masses of what looked like slime or fungus squatting amidst the branches of the understory. He did so, and a few men muttered or cursed. The Zoo had come up with yet another way to kill them that they would now have to avoid or fight against.

“What I don’t understand, though,” she went on, “is that the vine-mutant seemed like a blend of plant and fungus. That’s two completely different kingdoms. It’s comparable to an animal crossed with a bacteria.”

“Fascinating,” Jan said. He had intended to be sarcastic, but his tone of voice did not entirely cooperate with this goal since admittedly, that was rather interesting. And the woman was knowledgeable.

“Do you actually mean that or are you trying to outdo me in the dry wit department out of some misplaced sense of national rivalry? I had heard the Germans were sardonic but ultimately, you have no chance against the British. We have entire genres of comedy devoted to this kind of thing, you know.”

“Hah!” He scoffed, although he smiled despite himself. Obviously, some of the sarcasm had still come through in his comment. “The British may have wit but they shy away from the darkest types of comedy. We Germans are still your superiors in that regard. Although even we cannot match the Russians. They are able to find anything funny.”

“They would have to,” Curie responded cheerfully, “or they’d all be insane by now, I imagine. All of Europe is really rather grim in a way. Did you know we get less sunlight than any other continent?”

“I did not,” he replied, “but that does not surprise me. You seem to know many interesting facts.”

“Sarcasm again? Or do I fail to grasp the nuances that your accent disguises? German enunciation seems better suited to giving military orders than to those kinds of subtleties. So I’m afraid you’ll have to admit defeat and tell me outright if something I say actually does interest you.”

“Very well then. Some of what you say does interest me.” Inwardly, he had to admit defeat in another way. He no longer disliked the woman.

While he was unsure of exactly how he felt about her, his opinion had evolved beyond regarding her as merely a burden to be dragged along. He had at first assumed her to be naive and foolish and in some ways, perhaps she still was, but she was also quite brilliant. Her ideas on the Zoo’s evolutionary processes might be a legitimate help to their war effort.

And she was more capable than he’d expected and even fierce, in her own way. For a whitecoat with no military experience, she had done a respectable job of handling a firearm and had shown courage and initiative when put to the test. There might be hope for her yet.

At the same time, her independent streak and lack of training made her a wild card, a chaos element introduced into his carefully maintained plan to assert order. The Zoo itself already threw too many chaos elements at him. To the extent that she was another, she was still something of a liability.

But he had begun to warm up to her.

“Hauptmann, does this mean you are also a fan of Doctor Who?” someone asked from a little farther up the column.

“Nein, he is more like a Dalek in human form,” said another guy.

“Hey! Shut up!” The Bull snapped.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Curie. “If Hauptmann Shalwar were a Dalek, instead of ‘Exterminate!’ he would say something like ‘Rule Number Eleven Thousand, Four Hundred and Seventy-Two. Corners of the toilet paper are to be folded over when one is done using the loo.’”

A few of the men chuckled and Jan frowned. “I do not have that many rules.”

They were able to cover distance surprisingly quickly, even with the necessity to drag the stretchers holding the wounded. It had been a long day, arduous, terrifying, and full of peril, but they were almost done. The prospect of escaping the Zoo in one piece had instilled in them all a driving excitement that overcame their near exhaustion.

Not long after Jan and Curie rejoined the main group, however, they heard a few ominous rustlings from the surrounding jungle.

“Halt,” he called, and the soldiers immediately complied. “Everyone, switch to single-shot and form a tight circle. Each man is to fire one or two rounds in a different direction. That way, we will spread noise all around us and make us seem like a larger and stronger force but without wasting much ammo.”

Obviously, this would alert the Zoo’s creatures to their presence, but any group of more than three or four stealthy soldiers wouldn’t remain undetected for very long, anyway. And as Ferris had reported, they’d killed many of the hideous lizard-simians who’d attacked them. A large and powerful group of creatures might launch a massive assault, but smaller groups or individual stragglers were more likely to be scared off, at this point, by a loud show of force.

The troops obeyed, and various gunshots shattered the deceptive peace of the night and hopefully convinced any nearby predators that they were not desperate and easy prey.

As the echoes faded, only relative silence replaced them.

“Good. Move out,” Jan commanded.

Even in the darkness, some of the territory they moved through began to look familiar. They were back on the main trail and close to freedom.

“Hauptmann,” someone called, “I can see the edge of the jungle up ahead.”

The clear dark-blue sky peeked through the black silhouettes of the jungle here and there up ahead. Several men and women laughed softly or sighed with relief.

“We are not out yet,” he reminded them. “Continue to watch and listen and keep your guard up.”

They reached the edge of the Zoo without incident and soon, the entire team emerged into the drier air of the desert night. Their wet boots turned the sand to sludge where they trudged through it.

Their trucks were still waiting for them. Jan allowed himself a brief second in which he closed his eyes and gave thanks. The drivers were good men and had waited diligently for them all this time.

One of the men got out to greet them. “Thank God you made it,” he said. “We would have reported your team missing in another hour or two.”

“Losses were heavy,” he responded with a grimace, “but we located some of Hauptmann Grossman’s team, and our scientist has some insight into new threats we are facing.”

The driver nodded. “Come aboard and we will get you to safety.”

They loaded up the wounded in the truck with a small mobile infirmary first, then the others distributed themselves between the vehicles. Jan ended up seated beside Dr. Curie near the front of the lead truck.

He noticed that she had fallen mostly silent in contrast to her usual talkative state. She was probably merely tired, but it occurred to him that something might be bothering her—besides the obvious fact of the horrors they’d survived, that is. As they drove across the desert toward Wall Two, she remained silent and he did not prod her.

The gate came into view and when the trucks stopped and their roaring engines cut off, he allowed himself to relax for the first time. There was still much to do and he stood quickly, ready to manage the wounded. Those of his men who were relatively unscathed hurried to help with their injured comrades. Even Curie surprised him by lending a helping hand.

Maybe the woman would be a good addition to the base, after all.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Given the circumstances surrounding her transfer to the Zoo, Laura hadn’t expected plush quarters, but the room she was given to sleep in was not particularly spacious. She reminded herself that her presence there was punishment and that the allotted space was surely better than an actual cell in a real prison. She had the small space to herself, at least.

“Someone will bring your dinner soon,” an officer said and shut the door behind her. No footsteps moved away from her location, which meant the man had remained there and kept watch as if she were some dangerous criminal. It seemed that while she was free to move around the base, they would keep a close eye on her.

She stood motionless, facing the wall of this glorified closet, and ground her teeth together. The anger in her had increased, now, and even threatened to overtake the fear and shame she had felt when she’d first been caught in her clandestine activities.

“Laura, why did you let this happen?” she asked herself and clenched her hands into trembling fists. “You could have applied for a job as a scientist in the Zoo easily enough. Oh, for God’s sake, why am I only thinking of this now?” She thought about that for a moment and realized that she hadn’t actually considered the fact that scientists wouldn’t line up for a position in the most dangerous place on Earth.

At least she was there. She could remain and focus on work that would contribute to the greater good of their threatened planet.

Dwelling on the what-if scenarios was useless. What was done was done. Now, she would have to deal with things as they were.

Footsteps approached her room and she heard someone speak to the guard outside before the door clicked and opened. Director Roden walked in, accompanied by Sergeant Wendell, the military policeman who’d first greeted her when she’d arrived.

“So, then,” he began. He put his hands in his pockets. “Jan tells me you contributed good insight into the behavior of a new Zoo hybrid and that your observations helped him to rescue our lost men. Maybe you will prove to be useful despite your regretful history.”

“I am sorry for what I did,” she replied and rolled her eyes. “I can explain why I hacked—”

“As long as you do nothing to jeopardize security, I’m willing to overlook past indiscretions,” the man stated.

“I hacked into the system because I am driven to continue my sister’s work. She died in the Zoo.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You can check. Her name is—was—Alicia Curie and she was a research scientist. I want to honor her memory by advancing science. All I wanted was access to the Zoo. I can’t wait to get back out there.”

“In case you forgot, your stay here in the Zoo is meant to be a punishment. As such, I think it might be best for you to be confined to laboratory work. We don’t want you to enjoy yourself too much.”

“What? No way. I haven’t come all this way to be stuck in a lab. I must be permitted into the jungle where I can be of most use.”

“You must be? Is that so? I don’t think so, Miss Curie. If anything, your attitude has convinced me you belong in a lab until further notice. In the meantime, be sure to keep out of trouble,” he said. “And I’ve come to tell you that your supper will arrive shortly. Now, do enjoy the rest of your night.”

He nodded, smiled thinly, and turned to leave. Sergeant Wendell glared at her as if he suspected she might try to force her way out of the room before he closed the door.

“Damn,” Laura muttered. She looked around. The room might actually have been a closet that was converted into a simple bedroom-cell. The bed almost looked like a shelf that had been cleared, braced with empty crates beneath it, and had a foam pad, sheet, and pillow tossed on top. There was a small window but when she tried it, she found it locked—of course.

She should never have protested the director’s statement. He was the type of man who liked to deny people in order to make himself feel bigger. She should have pandered to his ego rather than tell him how it would be.

Thoroughly dispirited, she sat on the edge of the makeshift bed and put her face in her hands. A yawning gulf seemed to open within her stomach. Months or years of being stuck in a lab stretched before her, all while the Zoo grew more dangerous.

Some moments later, another person approached the door. This one was polite enough to knock, and a Cockney-accented voice said, “I brought your food, miss.”

“Oh, come in,” she replied.

The door clicked again and opened. Sonny, the cook she’d spoken to previously, held a tray piled with biscuits, sausage, beans, and fruit. “I decided you needed a proper supper,” he said. “You were out in the Zoo too long and probably had nothing to eat but those bloody MRE things washed down with filtered water.”

“Thank you, Sonny,” she said and smiled. “That looks splendid. I’m tempted to ask for coffee as well, but I probably ought to get some sleep at this point.”

He closed the door behind him and set the tray on a smaller shelf on the side wall, perpendicular to the larger shelf that served as her cot. “Coffee or tea might be possible as well if you’d like.”

“I’ll be sure to keep you informed.” Laura took the tray, set it in her lap, and immediately chose one of the biscuits. She took a bite and mopped the beans with the remainder. Until now, she hadn’t even realized how hungry she was.

“I’m sorry you’re stuck in this tiny room,” Sonny said, leaned against the wall, and patted his pockets. He was probably tempted to smoke a joint but thought better of it and put his arms behind his back instead. “You seemed like a nice lady and all.”

“Thanks,” she replied after she’d swallowed the food in her mouth. “I came here to carry on my sister’s legacy. She was a scientist like me and died when the Zoo appeared. I also wanted to finally accomplish something noteworthy that would be beneficial to the whole world while I was at it.” Alicia would’ve loved this opportunity as much as she did. The thought made her depressed. “I shouldn’t have hacked into the system in the name of science but quite honestly, it was for all the right reasons.” She assumed that on a base like this, word would get around about why she was there and decided to face it head-on.

“I’m sorry about your sister.” The man shrugged. “Anyway, I hope you manage to honor her memory here.”

“Thanks, Sonny.” Speaking to this man was something of a relief after having to deal with Roden.

“Really, once they get used to you and how good you are at your job, they’ll let up on you. I hear you did really well in there. They won’t treat you like a criminal forever.”

Laura nodded. She hoped he was right.

“May I ask,” she ventured, “if your employment here has anything to do with that kind of thing? I don’t mean to be rude, I’m only curious. It’s a trait we scientists tend to have.”

“No offense taken, miss. And aye, you’re right. I’m not a rapist or a cold-blooded murderer, I’ll say that much, but I’ve done bad things. I volunteered to cook here to get a reduced sentence. It won’t be much longer before I’ll be free to get back to enjoying life and not thinking no more on all the terrible things going on in this pit.” His gaze grew distant and he was clearly homesick for England.

She had now finished one of her biscuits and a couple of pieces of apple. With a grim smile, she noticed that the only utensil on the tray was one of the awful plastic sporks.

“Well, try to stay out of trouble when you do make it home, I suppose,” she said.

“That’s the plan, it is.” He shook his head. “You seem like a nice enough sort, but I don’t understand why you’d want to risk your life out there with all the monsters running around when there’s better and more fun things to do with our time on Earth. I’d rather be at a pub than in some death-trap in the middle of this wilderness. There’s nothing out there worth dying for, ma’am. Don’t you go getting yourself killed.”

“Well, you seem pleasant enough yourself,” she responded, “but I’m afraid I can’t fully agree. Some things are worth risking your life for.”

She looked at her tray, then at Sonny. “Also, I’m sorry, but is there any chance you could bring me real silverware? Don’t worry. I won’t commit suicide with it or any such nonsense. I merely hate these bloody spork things and I’m a little upset at the moment. A real fork would be a comfort, if only a small one.” She looked at him with wide, imploring eyes. “Oh, and coffee. I plan to stay up a while yet and think a few things over.”

He laughed. “Aye, I don’t much care for sporks myself either. That’s mostly what I have to work with, though. They said to only use the metal for special guests. In a manner of speaking, I’d say you’d qualify as one of those. Don’t go nowhere. I’ll be right back with a proper fork and a hot cup of java.” He turned and left. The door shut behind him, and the guard locked it.

Laura took a deep breath. While he was a nice man and good to talk to, he wasn’t the most ambitious or visionary of persons. He didn’t quite get it, and he was wrong. There were things out there worth dying for.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jan was in the foulest mood he’d been in for a long, long time. Of course, this was only fitting since it had been one of the worst days he’d had in years.

The mission was a failure. Not an outright catastrophe—he would likely be dead if that were the case—but he had returned from a rescue mission with fewer people than he had gone in with. Again, they grew weaker and the Zoo grew stronger.

And the woman was suspected of being a spy or terrorist at worst, a dishonest hacker at best. He wondered why he had to find out the truth about her after the mission. She hadn’t had much chance to hack into computers in the Zoo, he guessed belligerently. And this unwelcome news had come when he’d started to like her—at least slightly—and when he’d begun to appreciate how much help she might be to their cause.

When he’d started to trust her.

His inner romantic had begun to emerge from dormancy and its long-enforced hermitage, only to be smacked, scolded, and told to go back to its room. He felt like a fool. She was not as innocent as she made out, exactly like all the other women in his life.

He thought about his list of rules. It was long enough that he tried not to add more items to it unless they were necessary, but perhaps it was necessary to add a new one. Never trust women.

An exception might be made for The Bull, of course, but otherwise, it would probably be a useful addition. Dr. Laura Curie wasn’t there to help at all. There couldn’t be a good reason to hack into top-secret government files. For whatever reason, she had put the base at risk.

In so doing, she had caused him to inadvertently break Rule Number One. He had committed the cardinal sin and had gone on a mission without the right people.

In an effort to take his mind off this bubbling witches’ brew of illogical emotions, he pulled his phone out. It had nothing for him—no text messages and no missed calls. His eldest son had not even tried to contact him.

“Michael is a young man now, more or less,” he told himself. “He has things to do. He might be busy and might not have even seen that I tried to call him.” Jan had himself failed to see a missed call on one or two occasions, although he tried to avoid such things happening and was generally good at it.

He thought back to the terrible ambush at the tree where Klaus’s men and women had been affixed with that strange organic adhesive. It was miraculous that he’d made it. Once again, death had come far too close for comfort. He was adept at dodging the Reaper’s scythe, but no one could dodge it forever.

And in his line of work, one needed to dodge it with great frequency.

“He will call back tomorrow,” he told himself, sent his phone to sleep, and put it away for now. For a moment he stood there in total silence, doing nothing and not really even thinking of anything in particular.

His work, as always, pulled him from his slump. There was still more for him to do. He had his duty and it was important, and he had his rules, which enabled him to fulfill his duty. That was all but it was enough. He focused on it to push back all the errant and somewhat dispiriting thoughts.

They faced a new threat and as dangerous as it seemed to be, there were some who had survived it and even seen more of it than he had. The remnants of Klaus’s unit were now safely ensconced in the base’s medical wing, recovering from their ordeal. Some of them might have useful information to add to the Bundeswehr’s limited pool of Zoo-knowledge.

Jan turned and left his office and carelessly allowed the door to fall shut behind him instead of closing it carefully. He strode across the floor at maximum walking speed and decided he needed a little air and perhaps to move around and enjoy a change of scenery. The few base personnel who were still up at this hour nodded to him and he returned the gesture.

But more than the need to get out of his office, he needed to know more about what he’d have to face the next time he went into the Zoo. The lizard-monkey things—almost like something from the old dinosaur movies—were now his newest and perhaps greatest enemies. With more information, he might know how to classify them better—and then how to kill them.

Soon, he arrived at the medical wing. The troops he’d brought back who were seriously injured were in intensive care, separate from the other patients. The others lay on cots in the general area. Most of the men from Klaus’s unit were unconscious, either from sleep or drugs or perhaps even illness.

The hauptmann frowned and looked around hopefully. One man was awake and even appeared to be in decent condition. He walked to his cot and glanced at the sign at its foot. It said Soldat Gunter Grün.

“Hauptmann,” the young man said and nodded his acknowledgment of the officer’s presence. Despite the bite on his shoulder, he seemed barely the worse for wear.

“At ease, Soldat,” he told him. “I recognize you now. I reminded you several days ago of the importance of always carrying a weapon. Rule Number Thirteen.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied and coughed. “Unfortunately, they won’t let me keep one at my cot right now…” He shrugged and looked almost bashful.

“You may return to obeying that rule again when you recover,” he said. “For now, I have only come to talk to you about what you saw in the Zoo when you were with Hauptmann Grossman. I’m sure the memories are not pleasant ones, but we are dealing with a new creature and anything I can find out about it will help all of us survive and fight back next time. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Hauptmann,” the soldier answered. “It doesn’t bother me to talk about it. Especially knowing that we’ll have our revenge on those things soon.” His eyes blazed, full of righteous youthful wrath.

Jan nodded. “Tell me everything about them and everything you saw them do. Including why they stuck you all to that tree.”

Grün cleared his throat and began. “We had not been in there long when it started, although we did not realize it at first. But soon, it became clear that something was hunting us…”

Much of what the young soldier said consisted of things Jan already knew. He had seen how the creatures stalked humans, how they used speed, stealth, and deception to attack, and even what they looked like. He hurried the patient along in his narrative during these parts.

“I became separated from the platoon during an attack,” Grün went on. “I saw one of them hiding in the jungle with its back to me—I only saw some of its fur. While I crept up on it, another attacked me from the side. I think the first one used itself as bait while the second one struck.”

The hauptmann nodded. The mutants were diabolically clever and somehow, that even sounded familiar to him.

“I thought I was dead. It bit into my shoulder, slung me around, and banged me against a tree, but it did not kill me. Instead, it dragged me—and some of the others—to that huge tree. There were already four or five other men there, and the creatures brought more after me. They…spat or vomited something on us, which hardened and stuck us to the tree like that.”

Jan stared, a little startled. That was somewhat surprising. He’d have to keep it in mind as the beasts might use that ability as an attack to slow or disorient their prey.

“There was at least one man whom they took somewhere else after we got to the tree,” the soldier continued. “Somehow, it seemed like they might take all of us to a different place later as if that tree was only a temporary resting place. I don’t know why they kept us waiting there like that. I thought they might come back to eat us later, but…”

“I see,” the hauptmann commented. “Our scientist seems to think it was a trap—that they left you there as bait so they could attack us when we found you. I am inclined to agree with her.”

“They’re smarter than we thought,” Grün agreed, hung his head, and glared darkly into space for a moment. “They kept taking more and more people away, though.”

Why, he wondered, would they do that? It went beyond the need for food. They could have eaten far more of their human victims than they had and still had leftovers. It seemed that they had a further purpose for their prey.

“Honestly,” Grün resumed in a low voice, “it seemed to me like the creatures were waiting for something. As if something big is coming and they were saving us for it.”

“We will find out,” he told the soldier, “and whatever it is they are planning, we will stop it. This is our world, not theirs, and we will win this war. Thank you, Soldat.” He placed a hand on the young man’s good shoulder for a moment before he turned and walked away.

Raptors, yes—that is what they remind me of, the velociraptor creatures from the movies. The thought had slid into his mind, seemingly from nowhere, but it gave him confidence to be able to assign an identity to the threat. As bizarre as it sounded, velociraptor certainly seemed appropriate. But those had been extinct for millions of years. How had the Zoo even accessed their DNA, to begin with? Was there still a primitive dinosaur strain in the genes of modern-day reptiles? He didn’t know. An evolutionary biologist might, however.

That led him to think of the British woman, Dr. Curie. As he walked down the halls, he thought of what she’d said to him before the big attack. She had found a marking on a tree. It hadn’t seemed very significant to him at the time but she mentioned something about it being a sign of changes on the horizon. She had predicted that the Zoo was preparing for something new, for another leap forward in its already rapid evolution.

Suddenly, Jan was almost overwhelmed by fear and dread and perhaps even terror. Most of the time, he experienced only the normal baseline of fear that any human being felt in a dangerous situation.  The only people who didn’t feel that way were sociopaths and the suicidal. He, however, had learned to control his fear.

But this was something different—a dread that went beyond the possibility that his own life might come to an end as he knew it must, sooner or later. It was terror at the thought that the Zoo might soon evolve in ways that were entirely impossible for mere humans to adapt to and fight against.

It was the fear, he now knew, that they might not be able to win this war.

He tried to ignore the cold sweat and the hollow feeling in his gut as he walked past his office and toward the closet room, farther along toward the south side of the base, where Dr. Curie was held. Despite his anger at her dishonesty, he did hope she was all right and wanted to check on her.

More importantly, he wanted to ask her more about this theory of hers. Nothing frightened a man more than the unknown, and the cure for that was knowledge.

The sentry who’d guarded Laura’s makeshift cell seemed to have gone to bed or taken a break and his duty was now undertaken by the cook.

“Hello, Sonny,” he greeted the man. “Shouldn’t you be preparing breakfast?”

“The biscuits need to rise a little more yet, sir,” he replied as he stood and stretched. “Come to see Dr. Laura, have you?” His eyes were noticeably bloodshot. The hauptmann ignored this as he always did. Such minor issues as marijuana use among the civilian personnel were the things Roden could deal with if he were not too stupid to notice them.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “She had some ideas about what is going on in the Zoo that might be helpful to us.”

“Very well, then,” the man said. He produced the key and opened the door.

Jan almost stepped in immediately but out of habit, he scanned interior before he entered. His eyes widened.

In the center of the floor was a fork that had been badly bent out of shape as though someone had used it as a tool. The window was open, its latches sprung, and the desert breeze wafted in. Laura Curie was nowhere to be seen.

“She escaped.” He gasped with both outrage and astonishment. “Goddammit, the woman actually escaped.” Why would she do that? She was a scientist and would get to study the Zoo, which seemed to be what she wanted. It could only have something to do with the monkey reptiles. Could she really be stupid enough to go in alone?

In the next moment, the power went out.

Chapter Twenty-Four

There weren’t too many people around the base in the wee hours of the morning, but Laura still had to do an awful amount of sneaking and hiding, combined with the occasional mad dash before someone saw her. It made far too much work out of the simple business of simply getting from one side of Forth Archway to the other.

Then again, if she was caught, she supposed the worst that would happen would be her thrown into a different room without a window and specifically forbidden from eating with anything other than plastic sporks.

Footsteps alerted her that someone was coming, and she froze. She was, at that moment, a short way inside the second section slightly farther down from the main one, and as far as she knew, no one had seen her yet. When she had seen a camera, she had tried to walk casually. She still wore the jungle fatigues she’d had under her suit in the Zoo so would probably resemble any other female soldier from a distance. As far as she knew, no one was aware she’d escaped yet.

Whoever approached certainly had heavy footsteps and spoke German in a low, phlegmy voice. She couldn’t tell if it was one man speaking to himself or two people, one speaking to the other. The voice came from around a corner a way ahead down the hall. Laura looked around. She might be able to simply walk past them without incident, but it would be better to not be seen at all.

On the right was a small, one-person, unisex bathroom, perfect for her predicament. She took a couple more steps and opened the door, stepped in, and pulled it shut behind her. Once she’d locked it, she breathed a sigh of relief. The footsteps came closer and moved past without slowing or stopping.

“Well, haven’t I been lucky?” she remarked. She used the facilities as she was a good hour overdue for a toilet break anyway, then washed her hands and face and looked at herself in the mirror.

Somehow, she looked different. There hadn’t really been time for her to lose weight or anything like that. It was something subtler in the set of her mouth or the expression in her eyes. No doubt it had something to do with what she’d been through—a genuine life-or-death situation. That must be it.

“Oh, Laura, what are you doing? And why?” she mused.

She had answers to both those questions. Having asked them of herself and now having to answer them bolstered her confidence. It reminded her of how important all this truly was.

Roden’s declaration that she would never go into the jungle again didn’t dissuade her. It made her even more determined. There was a great scientific discovery to be made and something told her the monkey-reptile mutants were the key to that discovery. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the creatures were up to something important.

Was it reckless to go into the jungle in search of scientific breakthroughs? Most people would say yes, but her sister would’ve understood. She had to take this opportunity for Alicia. There were also lives at stake. She might be able to save some of them if she could shed light on exactly what it was the Zoo was doing. Hauptmann Shalwar was obviously an intelligent man and so were many of the others, but by and large, soldiers were not scientists. They specialized in dealing with problems in the here and now.

Discovering the causes of problems and proposing new ways forward—those were the things scientists were trained for.

And weren’t they missing a head researcher at the moment? It might take days or weeks for someone else to arrive and they were on the brink of a dangerous new development. Something terrible might erupt from the Zoo at any moment and they wouldn’t have people on hand who were qualified to explain it.

She could not allow that to happen if it was in her power to prevent it. And if she was forced to spend who knew how long stuck in the lab, she might as well do as much work in the Zoo as she could now.

“No,” she said to the mirror. “I must accomplish something, and I have to help save the people here before it’s too late.”

That meant going back into the Zoo. She would proceed with her plan, hasty and daft though it was, to retrace their steps to where she had found the trapped men. Now, she merely had to get there.

Remembering that she’d have to cross miles of desert on foot before she reached the jungle, she bent over the sink and drank as much as she could from the faucet. Hopefully, she’d be able to get her hands on a suit, but in case that wasn’t possible, she thought it best to hydrate as much as she could. Finally, she turned and opened the door.

When she emerged from the bathroom, she glanced both ways. The hallway was empty. She turned right and proceeded in the direction in which she’d headed previously. This section seemed to house most of the base’s maintenance and infrastructure-type stuff.

In order to reach the Zoo, she would have to get through the gate—or at least a nearby section of the wall. Hence, she needed to find the base’s generator.

As a teenager, she’d once had to operate her mother’s generator during a blackout. With Mum gone as she frequently was, she’d had no one to help her. But still, she had managed. The newer models used in Europe these last couple of decades were not actually that difficult to operate.

Conveniently enough, a sign at the end of the hall pointed to the right and read, Generator. It might be another word that was identical in both English and German. She headed that way and located a small room housing the large apparatus.

“Well, this is much bigger than what I’m used to,” she sighed, “but it’s basically the same.”

It took a few moments but she found an emergency shutoff switch. Once she flipped it, the base would, of course, go into lockdown. That was both good and bad. It would heighten everyone’s alertness but it would also buy her a few minutes of chaos in which she might slip away. She would have to reach the gate quickly. Fortunately, she had managed to orient herself while she was outside and knew where to go.

She turned the power off and plunged everything into blackness. In moments, the cold backup lights, the red emergency lights, and the loud, obnoxious, buzzing alarm activated. She moved to a couple of random wires and pulled on them until they snapped and came loose. While she felt bad causing damage to the generator, she knew merely turning it off might not buy her enough time. She felt sure a few broken wires wouldn’t be too hard to fix.

Satisfied that she’d done what she could, she left the generator room behind her and retraced her route down the hallway. She moved at a light jog and decided to trust that anyone who saw her would assume she was merely rushing to her emergency post or something.

As she neared the doors leading out of the building, two men burst in. They flicked their gazes toward her but did not seem about to stop and question her, so she simply waved over her shoulder. They passed by.

“Shit,” she muttered as she pushed through the doors and made a sharp left turn. It wouldn’t take them long to determine that the power had been shut off manually. However, they’d then try to turn it on and it might take a while for them to notice the damaged wires and decide how to repair or replace them.

It was still dark outside. She’d lost track of the exact time but it probably wasn’t that long after midnight, with dawn still some hours away. The peace and quiet she usually associated with the graveyard-shift hours were nowhere to be found, though. People ran around, orders were shouted and questions asked, and a couple of automated searchlights swept the grounds. The alarm still blared like an obnoxious backing-track.

Laura headed toward the gate. She would try to approach it from an oblique angle to do some hasty surveillance and determine if she could get past Coop, the sharp-eyed guard. If not, she’d have to find some other way through the wall.

A low palette of what she assumed was building materials stood partway between the generator section doors and the gate. She ran up to it and hid behind it for the moment as she squinted toward the huge metal portal.

“Hey—hey! Get all these people back,” a deep voice yelled in a British accent. It was Coop. He had emerged from his cubicle built into the wall to stop a small team of soldiers presided over by a couple of civilian bureaucrats. The man now blocked the path and waved his hands to emphasize his words. “No one leaves the base during lockdown. Hauptmann Shalwar’s rules.” His voice calmed a little. “Sit tight, my friends. These outages never last long.”

The gate, unfortunately, was closed.

“Damn,” she said. A quick scan did not reveal any other way through the wall anywhere nearby. She could run along it until she found one of the incomplete portions but by then, they might realize she was free and have people looking for her.

She had to sneak into Coop’s little office behind him and try to open the gate, then.

“You know this will never work, Laura,” she chided herself under her breath. Still, she had to try. She moved as quietly as she could and kept to the deep shadows as she bolted to the cubicle.

As she entered, a quick glance reassured her that Coop and the people he was speaking to were distracted and had not seen her. The team he’d stopped began to drift toward the main personnel doors. Another man had arrived and conferred with the guard in a low voice. She wondered idly if it might be a guard reporting that their criminal scientist was on the loose before she turned her attention to the gatekeeper’s control panel.

Unlike the generator, this was not simple at all. It looked like the command console of a goddamned spaceship. She had no way to quickly tell which of the switches, buttons, or touchscreens controlled the gate versus which controlled the cameras, gun turrets, microphones, or anything else.

Trying not to panic, she glanced around the office to gather her thoughts.

There was a door on the far side of the cubicle.

“Huh.” She breathed deeply and raised an eyebrow before she took two hasty steps over to it and tried the handle. It clicked downward and the door popped opened gently. Beyond it lay a long hallway the width of the cubicle. It stretched a good ten or twelve meters ahead of her and she stared around her for a moment. “Well, then,” she said, stepped through, and pulled the door shut behind her.

A narrow door to her right—secured with an electronic panel on the wall beside it—stirred her curiosity. After a little puzzled consideration, she realized that beyond it would most likely be the space for the gate to retract into and probably also the mechanism that controlled it. Logic suggested that they’d want to keep that safely secured where the average Joe couldn’t enter.

Hastily, she reminded herself that she needed to get out of there before Coop discovered her. She crept down the corridor to the door at the far end. It opened easily into what appeared to be cramped living quarters in which a single lamp burned. She was about to leave when she saw a suit on some kind of metal frame beside the door. Quickly, she stepped closer and examined it, hoping that she’d maybe struck gold. It looked a little heavy and definitely too large, and she had no idea how to adjust it—if that was even possible. Regretfully, she stepped out and pulled the door closed behind her.

Another door, this one a little wider than what she imagined was a standard size, was on her left as she faced toward the cubicle again. She’d not seen it before, obviously focused on the more obvious one directly ahead. With a deep breath, she tried the handle and surprisingly, it opened. She entered another hallway that ran toward the Zoo and a second door. Quickly, she darted down its length and stifled a curse when she found the exit—unsurprisingly—locked.

Obviously, this was the backup entry-exit for emergencies when the gate was on lockdown. It was appropriate, really. This definitely qualified as an emergency in her book. A little desperate now, she glanced around the shadowed space and noticed the outline of what looked like a small wall-mounted cubbyhole with a door. This, thankfully, stood slightly ajar, and she suppressed a crow of triumph when she saw the innocuous looking key hung on a single hook within. She snatched it hastily, almost dropped it and fumbled to retain hold of it, and scooted to the door again. In seconds, she’d inserted it, turned it, and pushed through the exit.

It occurred to her that under normal circumstances, simply opening the door might have tripped an alarm. But, she reasoned, the alarms were already activated anyway, so that worked out nicely.

She turned and confirmed that she’d successfully escaped the base. Up ahead was a tall dune. In only a moment, she could be over it and out of sight of the wall and its cameras. She started uphill through the sand.

“Now then, Laura,” she said softly. “We’ll find out if this was actually a good idea.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Jan froze in thought for only a few seconds when a sheet of blackness fell over him and his surroundings, only to be dispelled by the white backup lights and red emergency flashers.

“What’s that, sir?” the cook asked and stepped up behind him, entirely unfazed by the power outage and the sudden blaring of the alarm.

“She’s escaped!” he snapped.

Sonny eased toward the doorway as though he felt the need to confirm what he had said with his own eyes.

The hauptmann spun on his heel while he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, then headed down the hall at a jog. He knew where to go because he knew where she would go.

“Miss Laura? Why—how could she have escaped? I wouldn’t have expected that, sir. And where on bleeding Earth would she…” his voice trailed off as the officer left him behind. Jan could already imagine the man’s shrug as he returned to the kitchen to start heating his beans.

Dr. Curie would, he felt quite sure, head to the gate. In the interest of considering all possibilities, he ran some of the other things she might attempt through his mind, although those already seemed less likely.

As she was there as a punishment, it might be conceivable that she was trying to escape to return to civilization. That made no sense, however. She seemed to want to be there. In fact, being inside the Zoo seemed to delight her despite the danger.

No, the most likely scenario was that she would attempt what might be the stupidest thing of them all. She would set off into the Zoo alone and without adequate equipment to look for something that might be of scientific interest. Something they’d seen in the jungle had caught her attention.

Within his mind, a thousand curses for her madness and irresponsibility battled it out with a sickening worry that she might well get herself killed. He did not want that to happen.

Of course, he didn’t know why he should particularly care what happened to her at this point. There might be some vague reason, but it was far too ridiculous to devote any serious thought to it.

As he continued to run toward the exit without slowing or stopping, he tried to tell himself that if foolish civilians insisted on suicidal courses of action, it was not his responsibility. There was nothing he could really do. He should simply focus on the base, on its security, and on the bigger picture of things that were directly relevant to his own duties.

The rest of him ignored the one small part of him that continually reminded him of this. Instead of heeding the voice of reason, he ran.

Before he headed outside, he stopped at the armory and quickly snatched up a nice Heckler & Koch G36 and a few spare magazines as well as extra magazines to supplement his pistol. He had a disturbing suspicion that he might end up needing them. He also snagged a spare suit for Dr. Curie in case she hadn’t had time to procure one. For a moment, he considered taking a pistol and spare magazines for her, but there weren’t any suitable weapons nearby and he didn’t have time to go through the rigmarole of signing more out at the armory admin desk. The guard looked curiously at him but he ignored the man, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and continued toward the exit.

He emerged through the main doors into the predictably deep darkness of 0200 hours. A squad of troops returned to the structure. As they passed him, he overheard some of their chatter and surmised that they’d been preparing to go through the gate but had been rebuffed by Coop. His frown deepened.

Jan cleared the open space and came within speaking distance of Sergeant Cooper as another man walked away from him toward the section that housed the generator and most of the maintenance equipment.

“Hauptmann Shalwar,” Coop said and nodded. “It’s good to see you. You will be pleased to know that I’ve enforced our lockdown. No one has come in or gone out.” Behind him, the gate was very much closed.

“Yes, I see,” he replied. “Coop, listen to me. We have an emergency situation.”

“I noticed.” The man smiled.

“No. Not the power outage. We have those all the time. The woman has escaped—Dr. Curie. She’s headed to the Zoo, I am sure of it. I need to get through.”

“Escaped? Well, no one has been through the gate,” the guard observed. “She must either still be on base or if by some chance she’s gotten past the inner wall, she probably went through one of the gaps farther along. You’d have to review the security camera footage to determine if she went left or right, though.”

“We do not have time for all that,” Jan snapped. “She might already be halfway across the desert and by herself, she will not last long in there. I do not want her death on your conscience or mine. And she…ah, might be useful to the scientific part of our efforts here.”

“The gate is closed,” Coop repeated. “You know well that it shuts itself automatically during an outage and remains shut until things are back to normal.” His friendliness had begun to give way—as it always did whenever the issue of the gate’s security arose—to a hard, aloof, and indifferent professionalism. Although it also looked like something amused him slightly and Jan assumed he was speculating about the woman. That only annoyed him more.

“I know, and I also know you have an override switch. Use it. Open the gate for me so I can catch her quickly and bring her back without incident. That way, she will be safe and we will not need to involve the entire base in a huge operation to track one idiot civilian.”

The man looked at him with a cool, even expression. “No,” he said.

He bristled and was about to protest, but Coop cut him off.

“I can’t do that,” he explained, “because, Hauptmann, it’s one of your own rules. Number Eleven. No one leaves the base during lockdown.”

“Yes, well—”

The guard interrupted him again. “Not to mention that it’s still dark. It’ll be dawn in a few hours but it takes an extra hour for the sun to really make a difference in that dense jungle, doesn’t it? Going in now would violate Rule Number Five. Never operate in the Zoo when it’s dark.” The man was all business and yet the faint suggestion of a small smile was visible near the corners of his mouth.

The hauptmann’s face scrunched in what he supposed was a mixture of frustration, annoyance, and embarrassment. “The full wording states, ‘Never unless necess—’”

“And that’s not to mention,” the guard went on in a slightly louder voice now, “that you don’t have the right people with you. Or any people at all, for that matter. That’s Rule Number One. There’s no way I can allow you to break all three of those. You know how Hauptmann Shalwar is with his rules.”

Jan decided that later, when he had time and wasn’t furious, he might have to laugh at this. Maybe. For now, though, he took a step back, hung his head, slumped his shoulders, and allowed his face to fall in an expression of defeat and resignation.

“Yes,” he sighed, “you’re right once again, Coop. Pardon my insolence in questioning the rules.” He turned as if to return to the base.

Without warning, he pivoted and converted the momentum of his turn into a punch that connected firmly with the guard’s head. The man staggered, shuddered, and his eyes rolled before he dropped to the sand like a sack of potatoes that had fallen off a supply truck.

“Sorry, Coop,” he said. The sergeant was bigger than he was, but he knew how to strike a man with both force and accuracy. He knelt and retrieved the man’s handgun. It wouldn’t hurt for him to have an extra one and it wouldn’t do for the sergeant to be able to threaten him with one if he regained consciousness before he could get clear of the wall.

“Scheisse.” Someone gasped behind him.

This was not good. Jan turned to face his new visitor, thankful that it at least could not possibly be the monolingual Director Roden.

It was none other than Soldat Gunter Grün, his shoulder still patched. He was mostly dressed, although his uniform had been improperly secured to accommodate his wound. He stared at the scene before him—Jan standing over the slumped body of the gatekeeper, tucking a pistol into his belt—as though he’d walked in on his parents having sex.

“This is not what it looks like,” the hauptmann said. “And furthermore, you should not be out of the medical bay yet. Go back and finish your recovery. That’s an order.”

“I’m fine,” the young man said. “And, well, ah… I don’t understand. To be honest, this looks like something I should report. I will obey that order if you insist, but I have to mention to someone that—”

“Fine,” he interrupted irritably. He paused and thought for a moment. “Actually, stay where you are. I know that what I am doing is against the rules but I must do it.” He straightened. “I cannot explain right now. There is a situation that I, and only I, must deal with.”

Soldat Grün stared, curious but not hostile.

“Stand here, Soldat, and guard the gate. Someone will have to do so while Sergeant Cooper is…ah, incapacitated.”

Grün snapped to attention. “Yes, sir,” he replied.

“I will be back.” With that, Jan turned and strode into Coop’s small office. Like any good officer, he had made sure to familiarize himself with every facet of the base’s construction, security, and entry and exit points. He was therefore able, without even the slightest hesitation, to ignore the broad, multifaceted console and the override switch and simply strode to the small door at the far end.

It really didn’t come as much of a surprise when he discovered the small key cupboard open and its contents missing. He had to give her at least a little credit for ingenuity, even though the entire situation could only be described as utter stupidity.

Thankfully, the key was in the keyhole and not her pocket, and at least the door was closed even though it was unlocked. Of course, to lock it, she’d have had to take the key. He decided to be grateful for small mercies.

“Well, then,” he said, opened it, and stepped through into the open desert. Before him, a line of tracks ascended the high dune directly ahead.

“Hah!” He laughed. “Oh, she thought she was so clever.” He would have her again in a manner of minutes and her foolish notion to single-handedly raid the Zoo for whatever purpose a whitecoat might have would fail before she even set foot in the jungle.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Laura estimated that she had entered the jungle almost an hour before. In that time—if not even sooner—she had gradually reached the conclusion that this was not, after all, such a good idea.

She took a step, pushed through a sagging latticework of thin, leafy vines, and gasped when the earth failed to meet her foot at the point she’d expected. The misstep pivoted her forward and downward while her arms snatched at the vines to support herself. Finally, she turned the fall into a roll once it became clear that she would not be able to keep her balance. She turned sideways and landed in softer, muddy ground a good half a meter below where she’d previously stood. The momentum tumbled her over her own shoulder, which allowed the rolling motion to dissipate the kinetic energy of her blunder, and she came to a stop quickly enough— fortunately before a nasty collision with a tree.

“Well,” she said, stood, and brushed herself off, glad she wasn’t dizzy, “at least I know how to roll.” A friend of hers at university who was a Judo enthusiast had taught her that. She’d always known it would come in handy someday.

Once she’d surveyed her surroundings, she decided that the sloping ridge she’d come to was as good a place as any other to resume her search for one of the monkey-lizards’ stashes. Or better yet, one of their nests. She was in too deep to turn back now, anyway.

Despite the lingering whispers of sheer stupidity, she was actually quite proud of herself for having made it this far without anyone’s aid. Still, the future looked less bright and less certain the longer she stayed out there.

She’d hoped to be a little farther along in her quest, though, and she thought back on the time she considered wasted with no small regret. It had taken longer than she’d expected to cross the several kilometers of dunes between the wall and the jungle and been more than a little taxing. Sand was not easy to walk across. However, the big hearty meal Sonny had brought her and the large amount of water she’d drunk in the bathroom immediately before her departure had definitely helped. She’d felt full of energy, in fact, and had made good progress at first.

During the last few kilometers, though, the wind had picked up very noticeably. Perhaps it was a sign of dawn approaching? The sun’s heat was a major driver of the planet’s air currents. Whatever the reason for this particular mini gale, it rapidly made her life far more difficult.

At first, it merely worked directly against her, howling in from the west but often changing directions to slow her pace to a plodding trudge while it swept sand into her face. After a while, the sand whipped into a stinging airborne assault, and she lost sight of exactly where the hell she was going. She had to proceed from that point mostly by guesswork.

How odd, she’d thought, that people thought of the desert as having no real weather besides its daytime heat. Sandstorms and dust storms were as bothersome as any blizzard. She covered her mouth and nose with the corner of her fatigues when she breathed but still, when she tried to swallow saliva, she felt particles of grit stuck between her teeth. Such a lovely and charming side-effect of mass erosion, she’d thought and desperately wished she’d managed to get her hands on a suit.

This had reminded her of something she’d read in the Zoo’s science files. Dr. Chris Lin, during his relatively brief stint at the American base in the early days, had mentioned that the alien substance that had spawned the jungle was originally being studied for its agricultural properties.

Desertification had increased in recent times as overdevelopment and excessive farming by the burgeoning human population had consumed the jungles. Without plant life to anchor the soil, the winds could attack it unopposed. The fertile topsoil was stripped away to rob the land of its ability to support the life it once had, and the barren wastes spread.

Dr. Lin, and some others before him, had believed that the Zoo’s Alien Goop—as one geek or another had named it—if tamed, distilled, and properly employed, could be used to rejuvenate dead soil far more quickly than would otherwise be the case. It was an enthralling idea, she had to admit.

Of course, she’d now seen firsthand how lethal the Zoo could be in its untamed state. Simply allowing it to proliferate unchecked would be as bad—at least for humankind and other preexisting species—as killing every last tree on the planet.

She had struggled through the sandstorm and escaped the proverbial frying pan to land firmly in the proverbial fire. Cool, moist vegetation suddenly closed around her. It sheltered her from the stinging, dusty wind but she knew it provided shelter for many other things—those that did not particularly want her there, except perhaps as an early breakfast.

That was something she could not allow herself to forget.

“Well, this has certainly been an adventure, at least,” she said to herself in a barely audible voice as she pulled herself from her mental distraction and continued down the slight ridge where she’d rolled. “It really is almost like visiting another planet.”

Thinking of it that way excited her and made her almost happy in a childish kind of way. If she survived this, she would have—and cherish forever—the memory of having walked inside the most extraordinary place in the world, surrounded by life-forms most people could scarcely have imagined encountering on Earth only ten years before.

It would have been better if she’d also had some kind of futuristic weapon, though. That would have made her feel much more confident.

During her first half-hour, she’d had to stop and hide twice. The first had been when unidentified creatures ran past and jostled the vegetation aside in their pursuit of another hapless, hunted animal—devilcrows or snakecats, probably. The more insectoid and arachnoid denizens tended to only appear under fairly specific circumstances.

On the second occasion, maybe ten or fifteen minutes after the first, she had neither seen nor heard anything but had simply felt that something was watching her. This malign indication, which she only half-perceived through what people sometimes called their sixth sense, seemed to come from somewhere either behind or to the right of her, or perhaps slightly above.

Her heart thudding, she had quietly and carefully stepped around the base of a large tree to her left. The skin-tingling sensation lessened and finally faded. She had hidden from sight and removed herself from the creature’s consideration.

Shortly after that, she’d heard something swoop through the trees overhead and it seemed that a dark shadow fell over part of the jungle. In two or three seconds, it was gone. She’d reminded herself to breathe and pressed on.

Her caution and determination had brought her to where she was now, descending a slope toward God knew what. Water, perhaps? Sources of water were always a good place to look for signs of animal life.

“Now if only those bloody lizards would provide another tree-marking that would lead me to one of their caches.” She sighed when she recalled that she had hoped to retrace her steps to where they’d found the last one. The idea was good, but she’d turned herself around while trying to survive the jungle.

The odd swooping sound came again. She stopped, drew in her breath, and held it. It was definitely the same weird noise she’d heard not long before made by a creature moving quickly and smoothly through the jungle’s understory. It didn’t suggest that it was actually climbing or otherwise causing much disturbance, though. It almost sounded more like flying.

Without doing anything too visibly conspicuous, Laura craned her head and looked around her for any sign of what might be responsible for what she’d heard. Nothing stood out beyond the usual labyrinth of lush alien greenery.

What she did notice once again was the sense that something was staring at her, tracking her, and evaluating her. The skin on the back of her neck felt like it was crawling with refrigerated maggots.

She’d barely registered these sensations when the hunter swooped on its prey.

“Oh shiiiiit,” Laura shrieked and broke into a run as a dark shape appeared above and behind her. It spread its wings and descended.

Her senses sharpened and her terror converted itself into a kind of hyper-lucid focus, an understanding that she was potentially about to die and would need to do everything correctly if she wanted to avoid that outcome. A root appeared almost directly under her feet and without missing a beat, she hurdled it and continued to run.

“Good, Laura,” she mumbled.

She reached a narrow opening between two large and twisted trees, ahead and to the left. Almost instinctively, she measured her stride so she could adjust her course to pass through this gap without slowing or tripping on any of the jungle debris that littered the ground. This, too, she accomplished without a hitch.

“I’m on a roll,” she encouraged herself.

The creature behind her—she still hadn’t really seen it—swooped past beside her, around the two trees, and thrust through branches to perch itself on another a little behind her. Almost immediately, it took to the air again and glided down, right on top of her.

She could feel it about to land on her goddamn shoulders. While she had done everything right thus far, it wasn’t enough. The creature was too fearsome a predator.

Instead of freezing, she rolled again, this time intentionally and to the right toward another tree that might obstruct the beast and higher ground where she might attempt to fight it off if she could find a makeshift weapon. The earth spun as she somersaulted, came out of it, and heaved herself up behind the tree and looked for a big stick, a rock, or anything that might serve her purpose.

The creature neither leapt nor glided. Instead, it ran directly toward her. By the sound of its heavy movements and the tingling sensation of its approach, she knew it moved at considerable speed.

She grabbed a stick that was barely large enough to use against an angry dachshund and spun to face her pursuer. At least she would go out fighting, and if anyone came to look for her, she hoped they found something useful while they were at it.

“Oh, my God,” she said as her gaze finally settled on the monster.

What hunted her now was one of the Hounds of Hell. A gaping-mouthed bat’s head with grotesquely large ears was affixed to the body of a huge, monstrous wolf. But where were its wings?

She braced herself and held the stick in a position that might allow her to spear it. Her question, unfortunately, was answered. The bat-wolf lunged toward her and raised its forelegs to reveal membranes of skin between its limbs like those of a flying squirrel. Its eyes stared blankly ahead. The eerie sensation of it watching her was due to the creature being blind and pointing its face directly toward her so it could listen to her.

Its last leap placed it almost on top of her now.

“Hör zu!” someone exclaimed.

Both Laura and the bat-wolf glanced to the side. The muzzle of a rifle sprouted a yellow blossom of fire accompanied by the cacophonous racket of automatic gunfire. Howling in pain and fear, the mutant fell back, its ears and nose shredded, and bloody holes opened in its neck, shoulder, and side. It staggered, fell, and rolled, much like she had done a few minutes before but with less dignity.

She gaped, shook her head, and managed to reactivate the part of her brain responsible for automatic respiration. Next, she would have to find the part responsible for speech, but that might take a moment.

Hauptmann Jan T Shalwar stepped forward and a faint trace of smoke curled from the barrel of his gun. He glanced around to ensure there were no other hostiles before he fixed her with a stern gaze.

“Ah, hello,” she said. For once, she was almost happy to see him.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jan took a deep breath and filed the experience in the cabinets of his brain. This was yet another monster he had to learn to overcome, another species the Zoo had produced to kill human beings and expand itself across the desert and eventually, the whole world. He thought he’d heard something about these particular creatures but he himself had not encountered one before. When he had a moment, he would parse through the information the battle had provided and transform it into plans and strategies.

Any creature he encountered that failed to kill him could expect to see its own habits turned against it. He could promise that much. It was his duty to his own species, and these bastards would have to kill him if they expected otherwise.

But first, he had another more pressing matter to deal with.

“What in the name of Almighty God in heaven above were you thinking?” he snapped as he fixed Dr. Laura Curie with a look that usually quashed any and all opposition. When he radiated anger like ultraviolet rays from the sun, people rarely argued with him.

Her mouth tightened as she returned his stare defiantly, and she planted her fists on her hips. “I was thinking about the same things I told you about yesterday,” she stated in a firm tone, “which are the same things I’ve thought about ever since I arrived. How to save you and your people from the disaster you’re in the process of stumbling into.”

He clenched his jaw. “And in so doing, you have stumbled into one of the most dangerous places on Earth alone and unarmed.”

“Well, one person can slip through the jungle, unseen and unmolested, much more easily than a big, bloated, slow-moving mass of men and machines, can’t they? The teams you take in have considerable firepower, but they make themselves seen and heard quickly enough that they need all the guns simply to break even. That bat…mutant…was the first creature to have so much as noticed me. By the way, I’m fairly sure it hunts by sound, so try not to speak so loudly.”

The hauptmann sighed in frustrated exasperation. “You do not have the training to go on any kind of stealth mission by yourself. Are you an experienced wilderness survival expert now?”

“No,” she retorted, “but I’ve done well enough so far, all things considered. In any event, why have you come after me all on your own? Well, unless you have a team waiting half a kilometer back or something, but that doesn’t seem much like your style.”

“Do not question me,” he warned and waved his hand in an imperious gesture of dismissal. “There was no time to observe all the usual procedures. I tried to stop you before you even reached the Zoo. If it had not been for the wind picking up and turning into a sandstorm, I would have done so. It erased your tracks and I had to waste precious time regaining my sense of direction and estimating where you had gone.”

“Oh, suuuure,” she replied. “Blame the sandstorm. You simply can’t admit that I did a rather good job of crossing the desert and getting this far by myself.” She paused and her expression softened a little. “Although I certainly do appreciate the rescue. I suppose it’s…ah, debatable if I would have been able to get away from that monster.”

“Yes, yes,” said Jan. “And keep your voice down as well.”

“You were the one who raised your voice in the first place, I’m quite certain,” she pointed out. “Not to mention that you fired a gun a moment ago.”

He had to turn away from her for a moment as he tried to control both his trembling and his sudden urge to kick the nearest tree.

And yet, he was happy to have caught up to her and found her in time. He was glad she was all right.

Having calmed himself again in the space of two seconds, he turned toward her and assumed the proper posture and the demeanor of command. “Here—put this suit on. We should leave immediately,” he stated, his voice now little over a whisper as he handed it to her and turned his back to let her change. “It is not safe here at all. Killing one creature only draws the attention of ten more.”

“Leave?” Laura replied. “If we leave now, all this trouble we’ve both already gone to will be for nothing. Besides, killing that bat-wolf will only draw attention to this particular place, won’t it? If we slip away quietly, we’ll be gone when they arrive.” At least she had now matched his softer tone of voice.

“I completely agree with the second part of what you have said,” Jan replied. “Provided that we slip away quietly in the direction of the wall. As for the first part, escaping with our lives is good enough. Further looking around for whatever it is you’re searching for is out of the question.”

“Hah!” She laughed, although it wasn’t entirely mean-spirited. She seemed to have actually thought of something funny.

“What?” he asked.

“You’ve already broken one of your own rules simply by being here now and having come after me the way you did,” she explained and pointed at him. “You might as well break them all while you’re at it. You can’t give unfair preference to some while breaking one of them whenever you feel like it.”

He rolled his tongue around his teeth but focused on nothing in particular as he recalled his dilemma. “I have technically broken four of my rules already,” he mumbled and half-hoped that she wouldn’t hear him say as much.

“Well, the base was in lockdown when I left,” Laura went on. “It’s already in effect and will probably continue unless they’ve worked out how to repair the generator by now. Then, of course, they might still assume that someone tried to sabotage the base or something and treat it as a security risk until further notice.”

“You destroyed the generator?” he burst out, aghast that she’d dared to go that far.

“Only a few wires,” she replied with a shrug. “Nothing too severe. In any event, assuming the lockdown is still in effect, by going back and trying to force your way in, you’d break another rule from the opposite direction. The one about how no one leaves or enters during lockdown. I can’t remember what number that was, but I certainly recall the rule itself.”

“Number Eleven.” He sighed. Attempting to argue or reason with this woman was about as much fun as banging one’s head against a brick wall and about as effective as trying to destroy the wall by so doing. He supposed he could simply order her to return with him by the threat of force but wasn’t entirely sure it would have the desired outcome.

“So, with both of us essentially already being rule-breaking, anarchistic misfits,” she continued, “we might as well take this opportunity to complete the task we both agreed has to be done. Which is learning more about what it is the Zoo is planning and how these…iguana-monkey creatures tie into the bigger picture. Clearly, they play some role in whatever the Zoo is about to unleash on us.”

“Soldat Gunter Grün, one of the men we rescued,” Jan responded, “described them and it made me think of raptors—well, of velociraptors, actually. I think it’s a fairly accurate description.” Saying this was, essentially, a way to buy himself time while he contemplated what she was saying and thought of how to answer it. He took a quick look and when he confirmed that she was fully suited up, he turned to face her again.

“Why, yes, they do resemble velociraptors, now that you mention it. Albeit with technicolor fur, for some reason, and their hands looked like they belonged on a primate of some kind.”

As she acknowledged this fact, he looked around for possible threats as well as paths they might take regardless of which direction they ended up choosing. He also ejected the magazine from his rifle and loaded a fresh one before he slid the half-depleted one in behind the others as a last-ditch spare.

“In fact,” Laura continued, “that—the thing about velociraptors—reminds me of something, although I can’t think of what.”

“Jurassic Park?” he suggested.

“No, no,” she said and waved her hand. “Well, yes, but I mean from my studies or my prior scientific career—something I heard someone say or something I read. It will probably come back to me a week from now while I’m in the shower.”

“Of course,” he agreed. She seemed like the type who had this particular experience rather often but even he had been there, so to speak.

“Anyway, as long as we’re out here, we might as well learn what we can about these beasts and what purpose they serve. Your job is to protect and save people, is it not? Well, then, what better way to do that than by learning about your enemy? And,” she pressed on before he could get a word in edgewise, “they already got the better of at least three teams that we know of. I have the impression that they’re among the most dangerous creatures the Zoo has produced thus far. Investigating them and their habits is a slight risk that we take right now for the sake of averting some major disaster in the very near future.”

“More than a slight risk,” he pointed out gruffly, “but you make a good point. Do not assume that I have reached any particular conclusion yet. Give me a moment to think.” He stopped and reflected on all she’d said.

“Oh,” she added and perked up, “and if you plan to simply point a gun at me and try to force me out, I will resist and you’ll have to beat me over the head or something. You strike me as too much the gentleman to want to do that.”

Jan’s jaw muscles tightened. It was almost impossible for him to make up his mind, a phenomenon that was quite unusual for him. This ridiculous—but rather smart and bold—woman demonstrated a perfectly respectable understanding of the bigger picture, combined with an astoundingly careless and reckless lack of understanding of the smaller. Could they, perhaps, manage an overall good outcome if he simply agreed to take charge of those smaller details? Such as keeping both of them alive, for example.

Laura stood in silence, her arms folded over her chest as she waited for him to respond. Her expression remained mostly neutral but also seemed slightly cocky if he looked closely.

He sighed again. “Very well,” he said. “We will remain in the Zoo for now and see what we can find. However, I only agree to this if you do as I say in matters of survival. And we cannot stay for long—only enough time to find something useful, then we must go straight out.”

“That’s fair enough, I’d say.” She nodded. “That would seem a small price to pay for being able to say that I’ve won.”

“You have only won this battle,” he muttered. “Not the whole war.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Laura had to admit that Jan T Shalwar was a reasonably charming man when he loosened up a little and proved to be a good conversationalist too. He also proved useful by bringing along a suit for her. The extra protection might not guarantee survival, but it certainly raised the odds and would make things more comfortable.

“I guess you want to know about my family background, then,” Jan said after they’d walked and talked for a while.

“Of course,” she confirmed. She had commented on his interesting appearance and last name, having remembered that he’d earlier mentioned his father being from Pakistan.

“My mother was a policewoman—” he began.

“That doesn’t greatly surprise me,” she interrupted. Before he could snap at her, she added, “But yes, go on.”

“Thank you,” he whispered and cleared his throat. “She was Catholic, a native-born German, and a very disciplined woman who also tried to instill discipline in others around her. Including me, of course.”

“That surprises me even less,” she quipped.

“Let us assume that nothing surprises you unless you specifically say so,” he said and his eyes narrowed slightly, “so I may speak without interruptions.”

She laughed softly. “Fair enough since once you’re done speaking I will, of course, have a fair amount to say myself.”

“That does not surprise me,” he commented. “Now, then. My mother was a very principled and regimented woman and committed to order, which she saw as the best way to ensure things did not fall apart. However, she had a…I believe the term is ‘soft spot’ for people who were unlike her, provided they were not too irresponsible.”

Laura nodded. The man had paused but since they’d agreed for her to shut up while he talked, she had no intention to say anything by way of acknowledgment yet. It was more fun that way because it might annoy him.

“My father,” he went on, “was such a man. He came to Germany as a child and became a very talented artisan—a woodworker. It was not very steady work, but his pieces were beautiful enough to command good prices when he found a buyer. He was a lover of art and beauty in general. While he was very proud of the heritage of his homeland in such matters, he was also fascinated with the art and culture of the West.

“According to both him and my mother, the two of them fell in love at first sight. I like to think that this was true and that it is not simply something they told their son to make him believe in romantic fantasies.”

“Pardon my one interruption,” she interjected, “but you said ‘son.’ Does that mean you are an only child? No siblings?”

Jan frowned in a way that was downright unpleasant but not, it seemed, at her having broken her word regarding the whole interruption business. “I have a brother,” he stated. “I do not wish to talk about him. We…do not get along.”

“Very well, then.”

“Now,” he continued, “my parents were married only a few months after they first met. Both families were unhappy with the decision, unfortunately. My mother’s family worried that he would never make enough money at his trade and that he was too impractical. And my father’s family disliked the thought of him marrying a woman who was not a Muslim, although he was not very religious himself except in a general way. Soon, both families had to acknowledge that it was a happy marriage.”

“Well, that’s lovely to hear, actually,” she said. “It seems like everyone is always talking about how their parents fought all the time, or how their parents split up when they were young, or how their parents ignored them because they were too busy. All of which was the case with mine, as it so happens.”

“Was that another interruption,” he asked and raised an eyebrow, “or did you assume that I was done and it was now your turn?”

“What—am I now required to raise my hand for permission to speak like a schoolchild?” she asked. Part of her was still irked by his uptightness, but at least now it almost seemed like he was teasing her with it. He was not entirely humorless.

“Such a policy would simplify our relationship immensely,” he observed. “But I digress. I have spoken about my parents, now tell me about yours.”

“Well, I did, somewhat,” she pointed out. “But to go into more detail… My mother was an optometrist, and my father was a copyright attorney. So yes, they made rather good money, at least during the period when both of them were together. Which they weren’t for very long. Both were more interested in their careers than in each other, I suppose. Or their daughter. Sometimes, I suspect my mother only had me because she felt like she was supposed to. Parenthood didn’t really suit her much.”

“What about you—do you have siblings?” Jan asked.

“A sister—” Laura faltered. “She is the reason I hacked into secret Zoo information. Alicia was a researcher at the biodomes and died there on the Day of the Locust. As children, she and I both dreamed of becoming famous scientists and making amazing discoveries. Our scientific passions followed us both into adulthood. I no longer dream of fame but I would like to continue my sister’s legacy. So I hacked the system to see if I could learn more about the science of the Zoo.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. I didn’t realize. I can see why you would want to fulfill your sister’s dream.”

“Yes, she would have relished the discoveries to be found in the Zoo.” she said. “Especially now that I’ve found evidence that might save lives. But I can’t test my theories at the base. Roden has decided I’m to spend my time in a lab. Before he imposed that, I had to try to find something in the Zoo. I don’t think Alicia would ever forgive me if I didn’t at least try.”

Jan nodded to show that he was listening, even though he constantly looked around and studied the jungle for any signs of an emerging threat. She had to admit that he was a damn good soldier—to the extent that she was qualified to be a judge of military matters. “Were you close?” he asked.

“Yes, especially when we were young. We spent much of our childhood in…well, all kinds of different ridiculous places. After the divorce, my mum moved us constantly and all over Britain—every year or two, it seemed. My sister and I went to a variety of boarding schools and I hated them all, frankly, aside from the science classes. I suppose I became too curious and kept trying experiments of the kind that usually resulted in me getting kicked out of school.”

“That, also, does not surprise me,” remarked the hauptmann.

“Oh, of course it doesn’t,” Laura retorted. “Do be quiet. What was I saying? Yes—it’s nice to hear that your parents got along so well but sometimes, I wonder if happy marriages are merely a stroke of luck like a friendship more than anything. This whole idea of serious romantic relationships and ‘true love’ seems quite silly to me. Especially since it mainly seems to exist to encourage humans to breed. Aren’t we overpopulated enough as it is?”

A strange look had come over his face now. “You did not strike me, at first, as being such a cynic,” he mused.

“It’s not cynical, it’s sensible,” she protested. “It’s like how we don’t still go around casting handfuls of bones on the ground to read the signs the spirits send us about our futures or something like that.”

He made a small snorting sound that might even have been a laugh.

“And furthermore,” she went on, “you don’t have much business accusing me of not being sensitive enough when you might be the most stoic, robotic individual I’ve ever encountered. I don’t mean that entirely as an insult since I’m sure it helps with being a practical-minded warrior type, but…well, I can tell that the Jan Shalwar who obsesses over rules and regulations is not the real you.”

“It does not matter who or what the ‘real’ me is,” he responded. “What is important now is my work. And right now, my work is our survival.”

She shrugged. “Well, we’ve survived this far. I simply mean that—”

Her statement cut off abruptly when something rustled the bushes on either side of them.

Jan held a hand up, not that it was necessary. She had already frozen in place, utterly silent. Their conversation had been in tones barely more than a whisper. Still, she now wondered if even that had been a mistake. They probably should not have spoken at all.

They both caught a brief flash of dull black fur to their left. She flung herself aside as he stepped forward, and he fired a three-round burst at the emerging form. Something gasped and wailed horribly.

Laura stumbled to her feet and looked toward where Jan stood and a large, furry devilcrow slumped on the ground before him. It was badly wounded with chunks of its head and shoulder missing but wasn’t quite dead. It crawled stupidly toward the man. He stood unflinchingly, clicked something on his rifle, and delivered a single shot through the creature’s eye. It sagged immediately and released a rattling sigh, then stiffened.

He looked at her. “Move,” he said. “They almost always hunt in packs. We cannot fight more than one or two.”

It was a course of action she agreed with wholeheartedly. She turned and jogged toward what looked like a sparser, more open section of jungle a short distance ahead. Her companion moved close behind her.

As they ran forward, she was conscious of two curious sounds. One was a fast, harsh scrabbling—the sound, she realized, of more devilcrows clinging to trunks and branches with their talons in pursuit of human flesh.

The other sound did not register its identity in her mind at first. It was a vague rushing sound, one which grew louder and stronger as they fled.

“What is that?” she asked. “Wait—it’s not a river, is it?”

“It may be.” Jan grunted. He was back in warrior mode, ready to do whatever it took to protect them both.

Behind them, the devilcrows were gaining. Their ability to leap laterally through the trees several meters above their prey and swoop to the ground gave them an edge in dense jungle.

The two humans burst through a curtain of leaves and into a semi-clear area that sloped downward. Most of the larger trees now towered behind them. Her heart leapt in jubilation. The loathsome vermin would have to chase them on the ground now, which gave them a fighting chance.

On the downside, the rushing sound was indeed a river.

“Oh fuck, oh shit,” she cursed. “Do you have an extra gun?”

He ran alongside and handed her a pistol, probably the same one she’d used before. She clicked the safety off and glanced back.

A veritable army of devilcrows had dropped out of the trees and now ran toward them, their snarling, wolf-like maws somehow even worse when seen from a low angle. There had to be twenty of them—enough to give even a fully-armed platoon a difficult time, let alone two people with one rifle between them. Her gut tightened, then sank. This might be the end.

They sprinted toward the riverbank. It was almost a small cliff, a sheer drop of two or three meters, and the churning brown waters looked fast and treacherous.

“Stand behind me,” Jan said in a cold, even tone of voice. “Fire to the sides, but do not engage them until after I have fallen.”

“What?” Laura marveled. “Are you preparing for some kind of macho, idiotic last stand? You said there was no way we could fight them.”

“Do you have a better idea, Miss Curie?” he asked without looking back at her, focused almost totally on the approaching enemy.

“That’s Doctor Curie, and as a matter of fact, I do.” She examined Hauptmann Shalwar briefly. He was taller than her but looked like he had about three percent body fat while not being overly muscular, either. Seventy-two, maybe seventy-three kilograms, tops.

She grasped him by the belt and grunted with effort to heave him back, around her, and toward the river.

“What are you—”

Then, to ensure that he did not foolishly attempt to fight back, she tripped him. Sensibly, she did not let go of his belt.

Her last glimpse before the two of them plunged directly into the rushing waters below was the advancing horde of marsupial rodents that glared at them and gnashed their teeth with the pathetic rage that only a dumb, hungry animal could produce.

Now, all they had to do was survive the river itself.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Leutnant Agatha “The Bull” Ferris was not a woman who was easy to intimidate, nor was she one to shy away from unpleasant tasks that had to be done. She knew this. Nonetheless, this particular unpleasant task required her to stand a moment in the hallway before the director’s office with her hands on her hips before she took a deep breath and assumed her professional, business-like stoicism. She took two quick steps forward and pounded on the door.

“Yes?” Ernest Roden’s unctuous voice responded.

“Leutnant Ferris,” she said in a gruff, sharp tone. “I must speak to you.”

“Very well, I suppose.” The man sighed. “Come in.”

The Bull opened the door and strode along what might have been a line across the floor toward the office proper. She spared a glance at the lobby and the reception desk. Since he had answered her himself, she was unsurprised to see that his receptionist and/or secretary was not present. In fact, she could not specifically recall if she had ever seen his secretary. He might have simply occupied an office with a reception desk because that seemed more important.

The door to the actual office was slightly ajar. She crossed purposely to it and pushed it open almost hard enough to bang it against the opposite wall. While she stood on the threshold, Roden looked at her with a half-sleepy, half-irritable expression as though he had just woken up at home and had to let a yapping little dog out to shit in the back garden before he could make tea.

“Sir,” she said and deliberately didn’t bother with any preface since they did not have unlimited time, “we must mount a rescue mission for Hauptmann Shalwar.”

The director simply stared at her. He had looked small behind his large desk, but it seemed he grew a little now that his authority was acknowledged.

“Mm…no,” he stated. He looked at some paperwork he’d been scribbling on.

“We must,” she retorted. She had clasped her hands behind her back, where they now clenched into fists. “He went after that stupid scientist woman and has not returned yet. Something must have gone wrong. The sandstorm could have prevented them from turning back. They might be alone in the Zoo as we speak. This base cannot afford to lose Hauptmann Shalwar.”

Ernest sighed again and set his pen down next to his pile of forms. He seemed to look off into space for a second before he looked at The Bull.

“As I’ve already said, no. A mission of that kind, at this point, would be far too expensive in terms of both supply costs, obviously, and potentially also in men. Furthermore,” he went on and the volume of his voice rose slightly, “retrieving that woman, who is untrustworthy anyway, is not exactly a high priority. We can’t shed a great many tears if she gets herself killed through her own stupidity.”

Ferris pressed her lips tightly together and then spoke. “But the Hauptmann—”

“Shalwar made his own decision,” interrupted Roden. “I’m surprised that he did such a thing since he usually seems to be a fairly intelligent and well-behaved officer, but at the end of the day, the rest of this base cannot be expected to bear the burden of his foolish choices. I will not mount a hasty, potentially hazardous rescue mission in the wee hours of the morning—with it still dark out, no less—for the sake of one man and that scientist.”

The Bull did not particularly care about the woman in question. But Jan was an entirely different story.

“Hauptmann Shalwar is the best officer we have,” she reminded him. “His leadership is responsible for many of the victories our forces have won as well as the fact that we have kept this base secure. He understands the Zoo better than any other senior officer, and the enlisted men respect him and all he does to keep them alive. He cannot be replaced. Without him, our military forces will be at a tremendous disadvantage.”

She struggled to remain professional and convince the director that it was in his own best interest to stop Jan from dying out there. Of course, her real desire was to grab him, shake him, and shout in his face, but that would only alarm him and probably lead to him calling security. Perhaps it would even lead to her enduring a court-martial for assaulting a civilian superior.

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” Roden responded sharply and waved his hand limply. “He does have a rather impressive track record. Yet the mere fact that he’s done something as stupid as chasing after that woman suggests that his judgment has finally been compromised and he may no longer be as fit for duty as he once was. Perhaps the strain has finally gotten to him. Or perhaps he’s merely looking to lift her skirt. Have you considered that? Hmm?” He looked directly at her, now faintly amused beneath his exasperation.

Ferris stared at him in silence.

“That kind of behavior appears in even the most seemingly well-disciplined men from time to time. And after all, Shalwar has been married three times, has he not? That would suggest that there’s a side to him we don’t usually see. Even I have only been married once, for God’s sake.”

The Bull, by now, had enormous difficulty controlling her anger. The director did not actually seem to pay her much attention, but he could have seen her trembling if he had looked closely enough.

“We can question his motives after we have saved his life,” she snapped. “Now is not the time to gossip about his love life. Even one squad to search the desert between Fort Archway and the Zoo would be better than nothing. We have to assume that he simply tried to stop the woman from escaping and that both of them became lost in the storm. And”—she brought her right hand forward, its index finger extended—“your superiors will want to know how and why it is that we managed to lose both an officer and a criminal at the same time. That could lead to an investigation of how this base is run.”

Roden’s small mouth puckered and his watery eyes narrowed. “I will take care of such matters. Do not presume to advise me on them,” he retorted and clearly grew angry now. “I am the director of this facility, which means that all decision-making power is in my hands and only mine. And if you had paid attention, you would have heard that I have already given you my decision. No, we will not mount a rescue mission, come what may. Now, please leave my office and stop being unruly or I shall have to call someone to escort you out.” He looked at his paperwork, the gesture one of dismissal.

It was useless. She said no more but simply turned and left, strode out through the lobby and into the hall faster than even she usually walked, and slammed the door behind her.

By this point in her military career, she was used to having to take orders from pompous fools, but she was fairly certain that Ernest Roden represented some kind of new low. He had probably wanted to lift the British woman’s proverbial skirt himself and would now sacrifice Jan T Shalwar, the base’s finest soldier, simply to have this Dr. Curie killed out of spite. Sooner or later, Ferris would find a way to pay this imbecile back for his pettiness and incompetence.

But for now, she had to think of a way to save Jan. He was not only her boss, but he was also her friend.

She stormed down the hallway and decided she could spare five minutes to get something nice and strong to drink while she thought of a plan. The expression on her face and the way she moved must have been interesting since soldiers who saw her widened their eyes and stepped aside to let her pass.

As she stepped into the mess hall and adjusted her determined trajectory toward the coffee dispenser, it occurred to her that she could try simply going out after him herself. That would be stupid but it would not be impossible.

“Nein, nein…” She sighed as she snatched a styrofoam cup and filled it to the brim with black coffee. “Jan would hate that.”

He would view it, she was quite certain, as unnecessarily risking the lives of three people when two was already bad enough. On some level, he might appreciate her loyalty and her aid, of course, but the part of him that was all business and military efficiency would be the part that dominated the ensuing discussion.

She knew with absolute certainty that he would criticize her for potentially losing another of the base’s competent officers. He would say that despite what he had done, she should have gone through the proper channels and acted professionally or not at all. Finally, he would point out that she had broken his rules.

Number One, certainly. He strongly disagreed with any mission into the Zoo that included less than two full squads at a minimum, with half of the force ideally being Zoo veterans who had demonstrated their competence, or at least a coterie of tough and competent non-commissioned officers to keep the enlisted men in line. Going in alone was about as big a violation of that foremost rule as possible.

There was also a gray area where Rules Number Five and Eleven were concerned. It wouldn’t be too much longer until the sun came up but it was still dark now, which might be enough to violate Five. And they’d restored power and thereby ended the lockdown, but he did not know that and so might take her to task for also infringing upon Eleven.

“Scheisse,” she muttered and sipped the coffee. It felt like utter failure to stand and enjoy a drink while he was out there in God knew what kind of a mess. But until a brilliant plan occurred to her, she was helpless to intervene in his fate.

She might perhaps have tried to undercut Roden by speaking to the actual commanding officer of the base, Major Reisenegger, but that was unlikely to succeed either. The major technically answered to Roden and besides, he was not there right now. He’d been recalled to Berlin to give a briefing to the generals and politicians and would not return for at least another week.

There was nothing she could do.

Her hands were tied not only by Director Roden’s idiotic proclamation that there would be no rescue but the Hauptmann’s own rules. Jan was now completely on his own.

“Nein,” she said under her breath when she realized this was incorrect. She narrowed her eyes. He was not alone. It was even worse than that.

He was out there with her.

Chapter Thirty

In the brief instant he had to think as he fell and before matters of survival again took over his consciousness, Jan reflected that he would probably be better off out there alone than he was with a woman who thought tossing him into a dangerous river was a brilliant idea.

The world spun and faltered as he thrust into and through the surface of the churning water. Although not cold, exactly, it was still cooler than the jungle air and it shocked him—and not only the temperature. There was also the current.

He was pulled away and under almost immediately. A dim awareness suggested that something else had plummeted into the river directly after him. Dr. Curie had caught hold of his belt and allowed his fall to drag her in as well. Beyond that, there was only near panic as he struggled to orient himself and fight his way to the surface, even as the deluge flung him one way, then the other like two children playing with a ball.

His head pushed above the water and he gasped. While his body was still swept along, tossed about, and yanked through intricate networks of sub-currents, at least he now floated properly. He could see and breathe. Already, they were at least half a kilometer from the steep shoreline where the devilcrows had been ready for their final onslaught. A swirling shape that could only be Laura was about two meters behind him but drifting toward the center of the river.

“This way!” he shouted, his voice harsh from exertion.

She had managed to surface and now swam toward him, grunting as she fought through the currents.

The hauptmann looked around and saw a low-hanging branch extending over the surface from the shore. He struggled to push himself as high as he could, stretched his arm, and caught the limb. It bent instantly under the power of the water pushing against his body, but it held.

“Here!” he yelled.

“Yes, I know,” she called in response. She splashed toward him and he realized that she must actually be a rather good swimmer. Nonetheless, the river was treacherous enough that her progress took a few moments. He gritted his teeth and held himself against the current while he took the full force of its spray, barely able to see or hear most of the time.

Finally, her arm was visible, stretched toward him. Maintaining his hold on the badly strained branch with his left hand, he extended his right and caught her forearm in his grip.

“Now try to stay—” he gasped.

Inevitably, the wood snapped. They both tumbled through powerfully churning water, but he did not lose his hold on her arm. He tried to bear them closer to shore and fought his way through nature’s fury for every centimeter he moved against the river’s will.

He was a thin, almost gangly man, and people were sometimes surprised at how strong he was. What he lacked in bulk, he made up for in hard, lean muscle but already, his whole body ached. To her credit, she managed to keep up with him.

Up ahead was a large, heavy, floating log caught up in the current but moving more slowly than they were. It was big enough to obstruct the water it traveled in and forced it to go around. Jan moved toward it and tried to lead the two of them into the eddy that swirled around the log to the left. Hopefully, that would push them close enough to the shoreline that they might find solid ground or another branch.

His hand still gripped Laura’s arm. They more or less collided with the log but the water, with a little urging from his own efforts, swept them to the left. As they passed it to the side, he felt the tip of his foot brush against mud and pebbles beneath them.

“Find the ground,” he instructed hoarsely.

She struggled alongside him as he pushed closer to the shore. One of his feet briefly touched solid earth, although the current was too strong for him to stand against it yet. He lost his balance and they were swept downstream while they fought their way diagonally toward the bank.

A low branch suddenly appeared. He was focused on trying to gain a footing and missed it, but she managed to catch hold of it. A hard jerk almost pulled her loose as the current struggled against her grasp but to his surprise, she didn’t let go and the wood didn’t break, although he heard her grunt loudly with immense strain.

He attacked the water with new determination, finally gained a foothold, and forced himself to stand. To his shock, the depth was only up to his stomach and he pulled Laura forward and up to relieve the force of the river on her beleaguered arm.

“Let go of the branch,” he told her. She obeyed and he used all his strength to drag her through the water, past and ahead of him, where it was shallower and she might be able to stand at a similar level as he could.

She did. Both teetered and heaved with labored breaths, already on the point of exhaustion, but realized they were almost at the shore.

“Only a few more steps,” he said. They clutched one another’s hand tightly as they thrust through the last of the river and finally reached the mild shallows at the muddy bank.

Before and above them lay the dark, tangled labyrinth of the jungle. Fortunately, the devilcrow rampage was far away from them now.

Panting, Jan turned to Laura and growled his annoyance. “You could have warned me before you threw me in.”

“Well, it looked like you were on the verge of going into some crazy berserker state or something, so I didn’t think you’d listen,” she retorted. “In any event, I’m sorry, but it seems we had a better chance with the river than we would have had against far too many of those beasts to actually fight.”

“I will allow that perhaps you are right about that,” he said in a glum tone.

After they had caught their breath, they took stock of their possessions. Miraculously, he had retained his rifle and most of his other gear. However, he could not find his extra magazines for said rifle and he’d lost his handgun. Jan gave her his knife. She might even find a use for it given her propensity to attract trouble.

“Rule Number Seventy-one. Always carry a knife,” he reminded her.

“Well, thank you,” she responded and tucked it into her belt, “but since we only seem to have the one between us, that means that you’re breaking the rule yourself by giving it to me.”

He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. “I am reminding you to always carry one of your own in the future. Aside from that, I have a backup. For now,” he grumbled, “please do not use it on me next time you have a bright idea of what to do in an impossible situation.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she replied sweetly.

Chapter Thirty-One

Despite the fact that dawn could not be too far off now, the nighttime temperature had dropped even further, and Laura shivered. The air seemed downright chilly, especially in contrast to the sweltering heat of the day. It was, of course, exacerbated by the fact that they were both soaking wet.

“Can we make a fire?” she asked. “Or would that draw unwanted attention?”

Jan shuddered and flexed his limbs, trying to keep warm as he rubbed his hands together.

“That would almost certainly draw unwanted attention,” he said in a hoarse voice and coughed, “but we may have to, regardless of the risks. We could very easily become sick, which would make us easier prey for anything that might see us. I must think it over.”

“Well,” she replied, “that’s a relief, at least. I was half-afraid you might have a Rule Two Hundred and Eighty about ‘no fires, ever’ or whatever.”

It occurred to her that the fact she’d even thought of this meant she had at least begun to consider some of the potential dangers. With no prompting from him, she had taken into account the possibility that a fire would produce light, heat, and smoke, all things that the Zoo’s hungry and hostile denizens might well take notice of.

He paused and seemed to reflect for a second, as though the same thought had occurred to him.

“Perhaps I can add a rule,” he began, “that there is to be no fire unless necessary to avoid hypothermia. Although that is really more like a subsidiary condition of Rule Number Five since hypothermia is only likely here at night and being here at night is to be avoided, anyway.”

“We’ve done an astonishingly good job at failing to avoid some things, I suppose,” she pointed out but tried to make it clear she was only joking. Despite the cold, she was in good spirits since they had, after all, survived. They had escaped the rampaging horde of devilcrows, braved the river, and lived to tell the tail. The biggest failure belonged to the Zoo—it had failed to kill them.

“You speak the truth,” he said and sighed. “We are both exhausted and cold. I am afraid a fire will be necessary but only a small one, and we must extinguish it if I say to do so. Ten raptors will kill us much more efficiently than hypothermia or the common cold will.”

“You also speak the truth, it would seem,” she observed. She had never actually built a fire before but she would have been shocked if he hadn’t. Besides, it couldn’t be that difficult. “How can I help?”

Jan gave curt instructions and the two of them searched for small tinder, broke or cut larger branches, and dug out a shallow pit in which to build the fire itself. The jungle was almost too moist to provide much wood or other plant matter that would burn easily, but he seemed confident they could manage.

As they worked, she felt the chill increase despite the slight elevation in body temperature caused by their manual labor. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long.

Soon, they had a nice bed of reasonably dry leaves and small twigs, with a few larger pieces of wood crossed above it within their little pit. He retrieved a small, waterproof lighter from a pocket in his suit.

“Well, thank goodness you have that. I was afraid we’d have to resort to what they do in the movies when they rub two sharpened sticks together, or whatever the hell it is.”

“So was I,” he muttered as he clicked the lighter open and ignited a small flame.

It took several attempts but finally, the hauptmann managed to set the tinder aflame enough that it continued to burn. Slowly and lazily, the flame spread outward and up to transform the leaves and twigs into a solid bed of smoldering coals, which then allowed the bigger pieces of kindling to burn. She watched with excitement as the warm glow spread and promised comfort and light. Unfortunately, the wood was sufficiently damp or green that it gave off a fair amount of smoke.

“This might have been a bad idea,” Jan said and frowned at the smoke column, “but we can only delay our detection for so long, anyway.” He looked around, walked to a nearby tree, and came back with two large pieces of fruit. “This is edible. As long as we have a fire, we might as well cook something.”

“Roasted fruit? That’s interesting,” she mused.

“It tastes similar to barbecued pork,” he replied, skewered each piece with a long, sharp stick, and handed one to her.

Laura sat without protest and allowed the fire’s heat to warm and dry her while her fruit was gradually flame-broiled. She reflected on the fact that she had never been camping or otherwise had the opportunity to do this kind of thing when she was younger. Her American friends had told her stories about cooking around campfires in the outdoors with their families.

The fire was small enough that it could not provide quite as much heat as she’d like, so she scootched closer to Jan and reclined right next to him. He tensed slightly.

“It’s only for warmth,” she chided. “The fire isn’t that large, is it?”

He made a throaty, grunting sound to acknowledge her legitimate point and sneezed for good measure.

“Aw, I hope you haven’t caught cold already,” she said.

“Thank you for your concern, Doctor,” he replied.

They retracted their impaled fruit-roasts to check them and he recommended cooking them for a while longer. She could not help thinking that this meant he wanted to prolong their rest. Otherwise, she would sure that he’d prefer they simply ate as soon as possible to take in the necessary sustenance before they were interrupted by the next attack.

“So…earlier, you said something interesting,” she began. She kept her tone bright and curious as she suspected that he would shut down if she came across as outright prying.

“Did I?” He once again tried to seem standoffish, but she sensed the underlying warmth and humor that crept through despite his best efforts.

“Yes, when you talked about your parents and their happy marriage and how you seemed to approve of that kind of thing. And then you seemed to imply that you disapproved of my view of romance as inherently nonsensical, even though I’m entirely correct. Anyway, it occurred to me that you don’t seem to be married.”

“I am not,” Jan replied after a moment’s hesitation, “at the moment.”

“Ohhh,” she replied and again, kept her tone as innocent as possible, “so you do have an ex-wife, at least. That’s unfortunate, although I suppose it’s…instructive, anyway.”

“Most people, from what I hear,” he said, “marry for reasons other than to be instructed.”

“Of course, of course.” She made quotation-mark gestures with her two forefingers. “‘Love,’ yes. Was it at first sight in your case, as it was with your parents?”

“No,” he answered. “My parents were unusual and very lucky. Love is something that people build together over time. It is a commitment.”

“Well, that does make slightly more sense than treating it as a magical force that simply arises out of nowhere,” she acknowledged. “Although it still seems to me that what you describe is more like a cross between a good friendship and a business partnership combined with sexual attraction.”

“It does not matter if that is what it is at the foundation,” he explained. “In each case, I meant it. I was committed.”

“Each case? How many ‘commitments’ have you been through, then?”

He frowned. “Three,” he said after another pause.

“Well, that’s quite a few and you’re not even very old. I’m sorry to hear they didn’t work out, though. And I do mean that. I’m not being sarcastic.” Over the years, she had found that it was sometimes best to be clear with people on this particular matter.

Jan said nothing at first and seemed to have drifted off into a thought that had slightly depressed him. He pulled his fruit from the fire, examined it, and nodded. “They should be ready to eat. Give it a moment to cool.”

Laura followed his example and rested her fruit-spear over her knees for now, famished though she was.

Unexpectedly, he began to talk again. “I was serious about my commitment to my wives, but I was also serious about my work and my duty as a soldier,” he blurted. “They knew this beforehand and I tried to make time for them when I had it and to keep the romance alive to the best of my ability. But they all seem to…change their minds.”

She decided to wait a while to see what else he might say after this and merely sniffed her fruit. It actually did smell like barbecued pork.

“Rule Number Three. Never abandon your team,” he went on. “I would never have even thought of abandoning a woman I had married. If there were some…difficulty, I would have tried to make it better. The women I married were not serious. They did not even seem to realize or care that they had betrayed me by seeking to end the marriage. In fact, they did not realize that they had lied in their vows. How can a person lie to someone like that?”

He suddenly took a large, almost ferocious bite of his fruit and a trickle of the juice ran down his chin as he chewed.

Laura was about to follow suit when it occurred to her that she was one of the women who hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with him when she failed to tell him sooner about the reason she why she was there. She was glad it was dark as the truth made her blush, and for a moment, she wished she wasn’t seated beside him. The awkwardness was thick enough, anyway, like an electric current in the air, that they both would probably have felt it even seated six meters apart.

To give herself a moment to think before she spoke again, she bit into her own fruit. It was surprisingly good with a slight, strange under-taste—almost like an underripe mango—but otherwise, the flavor was excellent. She demolished half in the space of only a minute or two.

“That was good. At least you can cook,” she commented.

“Why, thank you.”

“Anyway…” she continued after a deep breath, “I suppose I owe you an apology for my…well, not telling you about my hacking. I should not have done that, and not only because it landed me in trouble. It wasn’t…fair, to you or anyone else. I did have my reasons, though.”

Jan nodded. “I know. I can only imagine how it would feel to have your sister lost forever somewhere in the Zoo. Roden mentioned you also had difficulties with your career.”

“Yes, that’s a mild way to put it,” she conceded. “I have a way to land myself in trouble even when I try to do good.”

He had turned to look at her and even leaned closer.

“Well, it seems you understand, then,” she said softly and looked into his dark eyes.

At the suddenly eye-contact, he tensed and stood. “We…ah, should rest before we turn back. And…ah, mein gott, your breath. Roden did not give you the opportunity to brush your teeth after he had you detained.”

“What?” Laura retorted. “Well, it’s not as if your breath is the most pleasant at this point, either. We’re in the bloody jungle here.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “and I am sorry. But I will lie down for a short while. I awaken very easily if there are any suspicious sounds, so do not worry about that.”

“Fine.” She sighed and rolled her eyes—and made sure to be obvious about it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Now is the time to head back to base,” Jan said firmly. “They will have fixed the power outage by now—unless something very unusual has happened—and lockdown will be over. And it is now morning.”

“I wish we could stay a little longer.”

“I’m sorry. I know you wish to test your theories in the Zoo, but I must put my foot down. It’s too dangerous on our own.”

He was afraid she might protest and ask for another chance to search the jungle but instead, she climbed first to her knees, then to her feet without complaint. “Yes, I think you’re right,” she agreed.

She rubbed her eyes, shook her head, and ran her fingers through her hair. “I would have much preferred to keep trying on my own, but I think we’ve spent enough time in this place by now. I can’t exactly help humanity if I’m dead, can I? So it’s back to my semi-comfortable, makeshift prison cell, I suppose.”

He grimaced and felt morose at that but did not say anything. He hoped, with time, that the director might come to realize she wasn’t a threat and allow her complete freedom around the base. Although after this episode, that might be wishful thinking.

While he couldn’t do much about that he could, however, see to it that at least she arrived alive.

Pink and gold sunlight began to filter through the trees through the gaps in the otherwise dense canopy of the jungle. They had lain down near dawn and probably only slept about four hours, but four were better than zero. Nothing seemed to have bothered them overnight, although as they started in the general direction of Fort Archway, he noticed a few disturbing tracks in the mud. At least a few creatures had passed close to them.

For perhaps half an hour, they hiked without incident. Much of their course was uphill, either very gradually so or in short, sudden inclines followed by relatively flat spaces of land. He did not recognize the specifics of the scenery but something about this area felt familiar.

“Wait—stop.” Laura gasped suddenly.

Jan tensed and pivoted in the direction she was now looking, already prepared to fire if needed, but she seemed excited rather than scared. He did not notice any sign of Zoo creatures preparing to attack. So far, anyway.

“Look there,” she said. “It’s another of those X markings in that tree. In fact, I think we might be close to the place where we were all attacked yesterday.”

Jan narrowed his eyes and squinted into the foliage. His eyesight was still fairly good, but it had degraded a tad in the last few years. He could indeed make out, but barely, the X pattern she had indicated.

“Yes, I see it,” he said. “And I believe you are right. We are near that location.”

“Right. I found two more of these markings on trees deeper into the jungle from that massive tree where Klaus’s men were trapped,” she went on. “This must be one of those two or another beyond them, at least, since I can’t quite recall exactly what they looked like. Let’s have a closer look.”

She began to drift toward the marked tree and his jaw muscles tightened.

“Stop!” he snapped.

Laura did stop, seemingly surprised at the shift in his tone of voice.

“Rule Number Fifteen. Stay on mission,” he said. “Right now, our mission is to return to the wall without losing our lives.”

When she turned and looked at him, her face had hardened. “Now wait a moment here,” she began.

Jan groaned inwardly. Even the looming threat of violent death did not seem to deter her from trying to start arguments with him over his rules.

“Going by some arbitrary list of ironclad rules is not the only way to deal with a place like this, you know,” she said. Before he could interrupt, she rushed on to add, “And yes, I know you’re a trained soldier with experience and that is undoubtedly helpful. But there have been other people who’ve been in and out of the Zoo who were quite successful, even while taking a different approach. I’ve read all about them, in fact.”

“What?” he asked, annoyed. “Very likely they used rules similar to my own, even if it was not obvious. To survive in a place that tries to descend into chaos, one must have a way to maintain order.”

“Not necessarily. For such an intelligent man, that’s really a very simplistic philosophy. In fact, I think you’re approaching this whole business all wrong.”

As she spoke, she backed up or edged sideways, away from him and closer to the marked tree. He thought about pouncing to grab her when he recalled how she’d sidestepped into the awful vine trap but decided against it. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the ground near her feet as she pretended to avoid him during her spiel.

“For example, I can see the wisdom of coming into the Zoo in force with large numbers of people who all have guns so you can fight off attacks and so forth. But that also means you’re easier to see and make more noise. I read about several instances where very small groups—or even single individuals—were able to quietly slip through the jungle alone without coming to harm. That American, Wallace, seems to have done it several times.”

“Yes,” Jan replied, moved toward her, and looked around, “but what does that have to do with—”

“Now, now, I’m coming to that,” she answered. “You can’t treat the Zoo as if it were a monster. It’s not like a wild beast. It’s like a woman. And if you think of it that way, then really, you’re making the same kinds of mistakes with it that you made with your ex-wives.”

He groaned and momentarily raised his eyes to roll them heavenward. “I should have known better than to actually talk about my love life. Of course it would be used against me.”

“I’m not using it against you. I’m using it as an example to try to help you,” she insisted. “You cannot control a woman with a rigid set of rules, and you can’t control the Zoo that way, either. You seem to think that if you can simply box something in, you’ll be able to predict and prescribe all its actions and it will never surprise you or catch you off-guard.”

Jan did not reply. What she’d said was true yet strangely, she seemed to think this was somehow a bad thing.

“But the Zoo will always be full of new surprises. That is its essential nature,” Laura continued. “It was designed to be that way by whoever created the goop, to begin with. They wanted it to be able to adapt and re-adapt as quickly as possible to keep us off-balance and will always try something new if the last thing didn’t work. You can’t box it in. If you want to be able to deal with it and fight it effectively, you will have to be willing to move outside your box.”

His sigh was indisputably one of long-suffering. “I will give you five minutes to look at this tree marking, then,” he said. They had almost reached it now, anyway. “But only five. Then, we move out.”

Laura put her hands on her hips and nodded. “Well, that’s a start, at least.” With that, she turned and took a couple more steps toward the tree and leaned closer to study the two diagonal slashes.

As she examined the mark, seemingly deep in contemplation, he thought about what she’d said. She was no survival expert, but she did have a point. The chaos of the Zoo was really an order unto itself. And the only way to stay ahead of it was to accept its ever-changing nature.

The simple fact was that his list of rules existed precisely because of how well they had served him, of course. But perhaps it would be beneficial to become more flexible. To adapt, he told himself, as the Zoo adapted.

His thoughts were cut short when she drew in a short, sharp breath and said, “Velociraptors. Yes, yes. I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before. I know what these are now.”

Jan took a step closer. He had to admit he was curious. “What are they, then?”

She tapped a finger on her lips as she stared at the crude X. Her eyes practically glowed from the exultation of whatever eureka moment she’d had. “You suggested that these reminded you of velociraptors. Now, I’m quite certain that it’s because they are velociraptors, at least in part. Somehow, the memory didn’t come to me until now.”

“Memory? You remember the Jurassic Period?”

“Ha-ha, such wit. Besides, they were from the Cretaceous Period. But no, I mean during my earlier days as a researcher. I saw those creatures’ hind legs earlier and it should have clicked then and there. If you had a good look at them, you probably saw that they have a long, massive, sickle-like claw on their feet.”

He nodded. “Yes. A very deadly weapon, it would seem.”

“But not only that,” she went on. “An old mentor of mine—this nutter of an older scientist I used to study under—had an interesting notion that velociraptors would have used their hind claws to mark out their territory. I’d bet anything that this is what these scratches are. And if that’s the case, we have a lead on how to study what kind of behavior they engage in.”

“Hmm,” he murmured, his face scrunched in thought, “you may be right. But they are not only velociraptors. They also have fur—”

“Yes, they seem to be cross-bred with primates of some kind like chimps or gibbons or mandrills or some such. Primate raptors…primaraptors, maybe? It works about as well as devilcrow, if you ask me.”

“Raptor has the advantage of simplicity,” he pointed out, “although primaraptor is more accurate.”

Laura ignored him for now. Again, she was focused on a problem that churned within her own head. “It doesn’t make any sense, though,” she mused. “How on earth would the Zoo acquire DNA from a species that’s been extinct for tens of millions of years? Could they have acquired it from lingering biomatter in a fossil buried under the desert? Really, the only other possibility would be if a person had—”

Something hissed and both of them looked up, their veins running with ice. Jan’s rifle was already poised and ready to fire

Unfortunately, she was directly between him and the creature. Despite how fast his reflexes were, they were not fast enough. Before he could adjust his position, the primaraptor struck.

In a frightening blur of motion, it shoved her aside with its shoulder and toppled her against the X-marked tree. Without pause, it bowled into him and one of its clawed forelimbs raked at his gun. He tried to throw himself to the side, but it seemed to have anticipated this and held him in place. The powerful swipe of its arm sent his rifle to the ground with a clatter and he stumbled back, lost his balance, and barely managed to duck his head and twist it aside as the vicious jaws snapped at him. Its teeth brushed the right side of his helmet.

Then, it shrieked and flung its head around like a mace-wielding soldier in a medieval battle and pounded it into Jan while it moved forward against him.

He fell, his back landed on a root, and he cried out in pain. Even with the protection of his suit, the breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he forced himself to roll back and away as the creature lashed at him with its huge foot-talon. The sickle-like claw left a gouge a good four centimeters deep in the root where he’d been scant seconds before.

Jan wheeled around a tree and used it both for momentary cover and as an axis on which to pivot himself in the direction he’d fled from and toward Laura. By the time he’d fully regained his footing and his bearings, the mutant had already grabbed her and began to drag her away.

“Laura!” he yelled. She had tried to fight and escape, but the beast was simply too fast and strong for either of them. As he stumbled forward and tried to find his fallen rifle, the creature and the woman vanished into the jungle.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Laura saw Jan hurl himself back to tumble away from her and then downward. He darted behind a tree to escape the primaraptor and it turned toward her.

She tried to hide behind the nearest tree—the one with the clawed markings—while she scanned the jungle floor for the gun. She couldn’t see it and the mutant surged toward her, already almost on top of her. All she had was the knife. Her hand slid to locate it.

The mutant’s jaws snapped over her left shoulder and bore her down while one of its forelimbs wrapped around her to immobilize her arms. She screamed when the points of its teeth broke the skin, but they did not dig deep and simply held her securely. Before she knew what was happening, it pulled her off balance, pushed her forward first, then dragged her back.

Utterly helpless, she more or less fell in the direction it indicated and in the way it seemed to be urging. The creature behaved as if this were a practiced routine, an exercise it had done many times before and could carry out flawlessly without having to think or try very hard.

“Jan!” Laura cried as she struggled against its grasp and tried to find some way to twist away from it.

It responded with a low, menacing sound, half-growl and half-hiss, and squeezed its jaws a little tighter around her shoulder. Blinding pain seared down her arm and through her chest and neck and she went limp and simply allowed it to pull her along for now. It also brought up one of its feet so she could see the claw glinting in the dim sunlight like some cruel, curved knife.

Direct resistance was useless, obviously. Instead, she focused her efforts to resist her own fear rather than her captor. Panic would not improve her situation in the slightest. There had to be something else she could do in the meantime—something constructive.

Clearly, the mutant had no intention to kill her outright. It was taking her somewhere and saving her for some other purpose.

“Think, Laura,” she muttered under her breath.

It would probably stash her somewhere—stuck to a tree, perhaps, like the remaining men and women of Klaus’s ill-fated platoon. That was not exactly a good thing, but it did mean she would be more or less okay for a short while, at least. It also meant she would still have a chance to escape or perhaps Jan might be able to find her. One way or another, she might survive this.

As the primaraptor hauled her through the jungle, she tried—without actually thrashing around enough to anger the beast—to crush weeds, snap twigs that passed her hands, or do anything else she could easily accomplish that would leave a trail. She’d seen that in a movie or something once. Who would have thought that she’d actually need to use it?

She also attempted to observe and examine the creature, to focus on its appearance and behavior. Anything she could learn would help.

Her earlier assessment of its physiognomy was still accurate, she decided. It was very much like a velociraptor and it did have distinctly simian qualities. Its forelimbs and hands were like those of a monkey or chimpanzee, with fingers and opposable thumbs. She also noticed, for the first time, that its tail was also monkey-like. It bore only the slightest resemblance to that of a raptor or other reptile and was mostly of uniform thickness, long, furry, and curling.

The fur, too, seemed to change color. She was fairly sure she had noticed this phenomenon earlier but now, there was no mistaking it. From the reddish-orange shade it had been when it had attacked, it had turned yellowish-chartreuse and then full green, which allowed it to blend in with the surrounding vegetation.

Did the change in hue have something to do with its mood or intentions? Was it some kind of signal it sent out to other creatures—perhaps other members of its pack? She would need to observe more before she could answer these questions.

It occurred to her, oddly enough, that she should be more scared than she was, but pure scientific curiosity was one hell of a powerful force.

Another part of her brain had, partially for ideas and partially as a way to keep herself calm, begun scanning for Doctor Who episodes that might be of use. There were many with monsters of some kind but unfortunately, the only one she could recall offhand that involved dinosaurs was the one with the beasts on a spaceship, rather than in a jungle. Not only that, she had read something about how they couldn’t afford computer-generated velociraptors, anyway, as that would have been too expensive, so they substituted a baby Tyrannosaurus rex.

That episode also had involved the original Queen Nefertiti and the guy who played Argus Filch in the Harry Potter films, but neither of those pieces of information was of the slightest relevance to her current situation. Still, she did feel a little calmer, thinking about all that.

They reached a slight shelf of earth where the ground rose vertically by about half a meter. The primaraptor simply leapt up and hauled her along with it.

“Fuck!” she exclaimed as pain seared through her body again when the creature’s movement tore and twisted at her shoulder. It hissed threateningly once more to warn her to be quiet.

“Well, I wouldn’t scream like that if you were gentler, you stupid, hairy bastard,” she said quietly from between gritted teeth. Fortunately, it did not bite down again now that they had scaled the miniature ridge.

They wove between trunks in a dense area of jungle where, she noticed, the trees were bigger and thicker. Twisting and turning around them, she saw her captor from a couple of slightly different angles and gasped.

Until now, an odd protuberance had been hidden from her sight and it was only when the creature pivoted that she saw it at last. A weird bulbous growth emerged from the back of the raptor’s hip or haunch area. It was located in such a position, she surmised, that it would be out of the way for most activities the beast might need to undertake but would still be within reach of its jaws.

She squinted and tried to analyze her glimpse of this before it left her sight, which it did once the primaraptor straightened once again. Then, the truth dawned on her. It wasn’t a growth but an egg sac attached to the creature’s body with a patch of the same tough, sticky substance that had bound Klaus’s captive soldiers.

They reached another tree, not quite a giant but definitely the biggest one she’d seen in this part of the Zoo so far. Around it was a comparatively clear area with only scant vegetation. They moved to the far side of it and without warning, the mutant tossed Laura roughly against the broad, rough-barked trunk.

She grunted as the teeth-wounds in her shoulder struck the hard surface and her bones and teeth rattled from the impact. When she looked up, the creature stood in front of her and leered at her with a menacing expression. Its eyes stared and gave off a strange sense of advanced intelligence mixed with its primitive reptilian essence.

It occurred to her that it might be hungry, after all. It might simply have brought her there to devour her in peace and without having Jan around to threaten it or interfere.

“Oh, shit,” she mumbled and lowered her hand again to Jan’s knife, which was still tucked into her belt.

The mutant reared on its hind legs and raised its head as though it were about to utter a loud roar. Summoning its friends to dinner, she wondered? Something sank within her at the thought of that. Fighting off one with only a knife would already be virtually impossible. Against multiple beasts, she had no chance whatsoever.

But no—the expected screech or roar did not materialize and instead, it seemed to cough or choke something up. A bulge formed low in its throat and worked its way upward, a little higher with each undulating movement and the repulsive hacking sound it made. Then, she understood.

A dark, brownish sludge appeared in its mouth and leaked from the corners. Before she could do anything, it pounced on her and held her shoulders against the tree while it vomited the sludge all over her feet. She shuddered at the awful smell and grimaced when she realized it had already begun to stick to her feet and ankles, the ground, and the tree’s base like the powerful organic glue it was.

After a moment, her captor took a step back and faced her as it had done a moment before. Once again, it threw its head back and began to cough up another wad of adhesive phlegm.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she muttered and closed her hand around the knife’s hilt at her belt. She drew it, moved quickly while the creature was distracted, and bent forward to slash through the already hardening brown goop first on the left side, then the right, and finally between her ankles. The blade was sharp enough that it cut through even the thick, viscous material with relative ease, and the crusty chunks fell away to leave only a cursory coating of residue on her feet.

The primaraptor didn’t seem to have noticed but it was almost done regurgitating its loathsome payload. This was her only chance.

She turned, grasped the large trunk, swung around it to put the tree between her and the mutant, and ran. As she raced across the scant, weedy undergrowth of the small clearing and into the denser foliage beyond, she slowed only briefly to snatch up an object she saw half-buried in the earth. She heard the creature behind her make a choking, spitting sound before something plopped on the ground.

Silence followed as though the raptor were frozen in confusion. Then, it shrieked with rage.

“This isn’t going to work, Laura,” she told herself as she slipped the object she’d taken into her side-satchel. She noticed some of the disturbances in the plant matter that she’d left behind and tried to stay near them, bearing generally in the direction she’d been taken from but also trying to bob and weave in the slim hope that she might confuse the mutant.

The primaraptor had already begun to pursue her. She could hear its footfalls and the rustling as it forced its way through the trees and bushes. It was not stalking carefully through the jungle but trampling toward her in a near-blind rush of fury.

Laura reached the small shelf-ridge and had to slow for a second to jump down without losing her balance or crashing into a tree. She landed with both feet solidly in the dirt, already prepared to bolt forward into the jungle and freedom.

But in that split-second delay, the sounds behind her ceased. The monster leapt over the ridge, above and then ahead of her, and suddenly, it stood between her and escape.

“Shit!” she exclaimed. Now, she was well and truly screwed.

It opened its jaws again. This time, she was somehow sure, it would not bother to simply clamp down in order to drag her back. Now, it would strike to kill.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Jan moved through the jungle at a steady trot. While he needed to cover the distance as quickly as possible, he knew he must not exhaust himself by running. Laura probably had at least a small margin of safety—the primaraptor had taken her alive when it could simply have killed her immediately. That notwithstanding, he was not about to leave her survival to mere chance and had to hurry.

He weighed all the factors involved, both those aiding him and those against him.

There were definitely some that would work to his benefit and advantage. The creature and its human prisoner had left a very obvious trail. The mutant was sleek and stealthy but large enough that it could not move through the jungle without causing noticeable disturbances. And in this case, it dragged a captive—an adult human not much smaller than itself and one who actively resisted. This left a very clear trail of bent branches, trampled weeds, broken leaves, and even footprints in the muddy ground.

Furthermore, having to force Laura along would undoubtedly slow the creature. On its own, it could move with great speed, but he doubted there was any way for the two of them to move, at the maximum, any faster than the pace at which he now tracked them. Unless they were somehow able to give him the slip altogether, he would catch up, and probably sooner rather than later.

But there were other, disadvantageous factors as well that he could not ignore.

They had a head start on him, for one. It had cost him precious moments to regain his balance, find his fallen rifle amidst the vegetation and detritus of the jungle floor, and orient himself toward the point where they’d disappeared into the foliage, find the trail, and begin to follow it. Sometimes, a head start was all it took for a hunter’s quarry to escape.

There was also the possibility that the primaraptor might lead him into a trap. The bastards had done so before and might well do so again. They were certainly intelligent enough to carry it out. He might find the woman and her captor, only to be ambushed by six others. He tried, therefore, to scan around him while as he focused on the trail and to listen for telltale signs of other beasts lurking about without slowing his pace.

Finally, and most strangely, he could not see the creature at all, even when he thought he caught a brief glimpse of Laura. If she were free, she would have tried to run toward him or run in another direction and would certainly make a great deal of noise. But she did not, so she must still be in the mutant’s grasp.

The oddness of the color-changing fur finally resolved into clarity. The creature used this to camouflage itself against the jungle’s greenery.

For a brief instant, he found himself almost overwhelmed with something like awe or admiration, stunned that nature—even guided in this case by some extraterrestrial imperative—could have produced such a fearsome predator.

His contemplation of this was rudely interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a body crashing loudly and haphazardly through branches and brush. It was followed—without any significant pause—by a horrible, piercing, wrathful shriek.

By God, he thought, the woman had escaped again. She seemed to be rather good at that. He pinpointed the location of the rustling sounds and brute-forced his way through the jungle toward them.

He only hoped he had enough ammo. Mentally reviewing the events of the previous night, he recalled that the first devilcrow from the horde that had pursued them had required a three-round burst to neutralize it, followed by one extra bullet to finish it off. That meant he still had most of a magazine but no spares beyond that. He considered switching to single-shot, but that might not give him enough power, especially considering how fast the monsters were. He left the rifle in burst-fire mode instead.

A short way ahead, the terrain seemed to rise slightly. Due to the density of foliage, though, it was difficult to determine if this indicated a gradual incline or a sudden small escarpment.

The sounds of flight and pursuit came to a crescendo and suddenly stopped. He pinpointed them to his left and realized this was it. Somehow, he knew he had only seconds to get there, and he threw himself in that direction.

Jan all but exploded out of the thick mass of plant matter as Laura, her shoulder bloodied, backed against a tree growing from a small vertical shelf of earth. She seemed momentarily frozen before a looming, green-brownish figure of death.

Without hesitation, he fired. There was barely time to aim, only to project noise and force toward the creature—anything that would prevent its strike. A yellow starburst appeared at the end of his now-shuddering rifle and the passage of its three bullets shredded the expectant silence that had settled briefly before the mutant attacked.

The primaraptor paused and its head jerked toward him. It thrashed suddenly with an impact and something squirted near the shoulder-joint of its right front forearm.

“This way!” Jan yelled at Laura as he began to stalk toward her attacker.

She seemed to hesitate but only for a split second. Her brain obviously needed that tiny span of time to register what had happened, but it caught up quickly enough. With a kind of energetic abandon, she threw herself toward him, her arms out, and tucked as she came down, rolled out of the way, and uttered a short, sharp cry of pain when her shoulder twisted against the earth.

The monster had already begun its counterattack. Fortunately, the suddenness of his intrusion had surprised it as much as it had surprised its captive. Its reflexes were briefly paralyzed by both indecision and the bullet it had taken, but it recovered and tried to lash out toward her with one of its legs at the same time it pivoted toward him. It missed the woman and was not yet able to overwhelm the man.

The hauptmann drew his lips back from his teeth as battle-rage set in. He took another heavy, trampling step toward the creature and fired again. This time, it was ready and dodged to the side, which meant he’d missed it.

He could already sense its game plan and pivoted in the same direction it did, led the target, and fired ahead into the concealing foliage toward which it fled. It shrieked again and he saw another small squirt of blood amidst the greenery.

Laura, by now, had tumbled to a stop at his feet and already struggled to stand. Her quick reaction had saved her life but also made it harder for her to do what came next. He took another step toward the primaraptor and put her safely behind him.

Grimly, he fired once more at the vague, dark mass amidst the leaves. If the creature made a sound, it was inaudible under the roar of the gun, but suddenly, a shifting movement was followed by a thrashing sound that rapidly grew fainter. He had driven the beast off and it had turned and fled.

“Gott sei Dank.” Jan gasped and released his breath out in a long sigh. He turned to Laura, who still struggled to stand fully, put his hand under her arm, and helped her the rest of the way to her feet.

They had been separated for only a short while, but she already looked the worse for wear. While the mutant’s teeth didn’t seem to have done any serious damage to her shoulder, even minor wounds had a tendency to become worse without treatment, and she was badly frazzled.

She looked at him with wide eyes, then burst out laughing.

Jan, despite his residual tension, grinned. It was a natural reaction humans had when they’d survived a situation that, by rights, probably should have killed them.

“It…ha, it’s almost unseemly,” she burst out, “how often you keep saving me. And embarrassing, at least a little. But thank you. I almost escaped myself, but…well, your help seems to…ah, you know, help.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that and was glad he’d arrived in time.

But they still had to get out of this place. He returned his focus to business, stopped laughing, and imposed discipline not only on his thoughts but on his facial expression.

“You are welcome,” he said, serious again, “but I would not need to keep saving you if you would simply follow my rules. Flexibility is one thing, but at least appreciate that they are designed to keep us alive. Now, no more wandering around.”

Laura calmed herself and took a deep breath. Her demeanor suggested a degree of resignation on her part. “Yes, that’s a very good idea, I’d say. Let’s get back to the wall.”

“Finally,” he replied, “something we can both agree on.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

It occurred to Laura that her shoulder was getting worse and that they had no medical equipment with them, not even a basic disinfectant. It didn’t seem to be a problem, however, unless she actually had to do something strenuous with her left arm. They managed to move quickly and made good progress, so she somehow felt confident that they’d be out of the Zoo in no time and she’d have access to the medical care she needed.

“Do you have any idea how close we are to the edge?” she asked Jan. “It seems like we can’t be that far.”

“We are getting closer,” was all he said for now.

She sensed that the man was tired and simply tried to focus on helping them to finally escape via the most direct route and without any further misadventures. She was relieved about that and she left him alone to keep doing his job.

Idly, her hand drifted into her satchel and touched the smooth surface of the object she’d snatched while she attempted to escape the primaraptor. She had, she now realized, seen it while the creature had dragged her toward the tree intended to be her prison. It hadn’t really registered at the time since she had been focused on what her captor might do with and to her. But as she’d raced to freedom, the object had clicked into place in her mind so she’d been able to see it again and had spared a split-second, even with the risk of death at her back, to retrieve it.

“Stop,” Jan said from a few paces ahead of her. He came to a halt and was silent. She obeyed, stopped behind him, and made no sounds. He craned his neck and scanned the surrounding jungle while they both listened intently.

A rushing susurration approached. While only faint, it reminded her of a breeze moving through the leaves in the jungle—a normal jungle, of course.

“Locusts!” the hauptmann hissed. “Come.” He gestured sharply, and they hurried away from their current location and tried to cover ground as rapidly as possible without making much noise. She didn’t know how much ammo he still had, but it could not have been much. And with only the two of them, flight would be a much better survival option than fight if they actually had a choice.

They reached a new area and he paused for a couple of seconds. To their right was a clearer space between a few trees on either side. To their left was a far denser patch, although with a low, open path-like a tunnel leading under interlocking shrub-growth. After a moment’s consideration, he gestured to the left. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel.

Laura bit her tongue to keep from speaking. Of course he’d choose the more difficult option. But he probably had his reasons—they would be less visible there, for starters.

She knelt and crawled forward. Her left shoulder hurt, but by favoring her right arm and mostly using her knees to push herself onward, she was able to keep pace behind the hauptmann.

The rushing sound grew louder, and she strained to look over her shoulder. Although she could barely see through the dense screen around them, three or four locusts fluttered out of the understory and landed in the open space to their right—exactly where they would have been if they’d taken that path.

Jan stopped and held a hand up for her to do likewise. She did and tried to not even breathe as she peered through a small gap in the encircling plant-tunnel.

The locusts—four, she saw now—had arranged themselves in a ring facing inward and toward one another, and they made low, soft, chittering noises. They were, it seemed, conferring or otherwise trading information. A couple of them paused to rub their clawed forelimbs together in front of them. Most also twitched their horned heads from side to side. She stared, rapt with fascination and curiosity, and wondered what subtle, sophisticated messages these otherwise primitive beings might convey to each other.

Three of the four took flight, their wings flapping fast enough to become only a blackish-green blur, and their sleek, hideous forms vanished into the jungle. One of them flew almost directly overhead, and the humans forced themselves not to react when the plant life around them trembled with the creature’s passage.

That left only one. This last, solitary mutant hopped a couple of meters ahead and simply waited. It seemed almost to stand guard near the point where their tunnel would end.

Jan motioned for them to crawl forward. He advanced more slowly now and tried to be as quiet as possible, and she followed his lead. As they approached the end of their leafy refuge, he unslung his rifle.

Would he, she marveled, actually try to shoot the creature? He must have thought it would be easier to kill it and hurry past than to try another much longer and more difficult means to circumvent it. She merely hoped he knew what he was doing.

Her heart thudding, she looked past him over his shoulder. The locust was only fifteen or twenty meters ahead now. It looked like a clear shot to her. He aimed his weapon carefully and seemed to choose the rear of the creature’s abdomen, which faced them.

The man squeezed the trigger at the same time that the locust hopped first sideways, then straight toward them. The near-deafening report of the weapon’s three-round burst faded and left only the sound of the enraged insect on a direct trajectory to their hiding place.

“Scheisse!” he snapped. “Give me the knife.”

“Knife? You plan to fight that monster with a knife while we’re trapped in here?”

“Give it to me,” he ordered.

She pulled the blade free and passed it to him. He snatched it from her and put it on the ground before him, then aimed his rifle again and fired once more. This time, his bullet struck home and blew one of its forelegs off in a spray of black blood and green armor fragments. It hissed, leapt aside, and now approached them from the opposite side of the bush-tunnel.

“Verdammt nochmal,” he cursed. Laura could barely see the advancing mutant now that it was on the other side of the shrubs, but he tried to aim and fired again, this time on full auto. His rifle clicked empty as parts of the plant-wall fell away to expose the creature, which was wounded but still very much alive.

It thrust its remaining foreclaw into the hole and swiped clumsily at them and she shrank back. Jan caught the creature’s limb and suddenly lunged toward it, the knife in his hand, and drove the blade into the center of the mutant’s head. Its high-pitched hisses faded in volume and then ceased as it slumped in place, dead. He withdrew the blade and wiped it clean.

“Now, forward,” he said. “Hurry.”

This, Laura thought, hardly needed to be said. The creature’s comrades were probably still close enough to have heard the gunfire. The man pushed himself along with surprising speed and she tried to keep up as best she could. In seconds, they emerged from the natural tunnel and were back in the jungle proper.

Jan glanced over his shoulder once to make sure she was still right behind him, then set off, obviously to hurry away from this location before any visitors could arrive.

They had barely moved beyond the small clearing where the locusts had landed when the relative stillness was rent asunder by a loud, ragged, high-pitched roar. She froze in place and chills rippled down her spine. He had also stopped in his tracks. For an animal sound, the roar was filled with all kinds of emotions, none of them pleasant.

“That sounded horrible,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on him. “Was that normal?”

The hauptmann shook his head. “Nothing in this place is normal,” he responded, “but I have never heard that sound before. Come, we should be close to the desert. Hurry.”

He plunged into the jungle again, and she tried once more to stay close behind him.

Again, she slipped her hand into her satchel, a little worried, now. There was something she was hiding from him and that perhaps she should tell him about. But if she did, she was afraid he’d tell her to relinquish it and leave it on the ground, and she simply couldn’t do that.

Her hand felt the smooth, hard surface. The object she’d snatched from the clearing where the primaraptor had taken her was a large egg. Undoubtedly, Jan was now held captive by a rage-filled female that was now minus an egg. She honestly didn’t want to imagine what that might mean for his chances of survival.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Jan increasingly felt that, against all odds, they would make it. They were almost there and so far, there was no immediate sign that they would be attacked again. Given that he was entirely out of ammo, this was encouraging indeed. The incident with the locust in the brush-corridor had been his first experience of killing one of these creatures with a knife. In all honesty, he was amazed that he’d succeeded.

He was fairly sure that he could see the jungle begin to thin up ahead. The desert was not far off. He felt on the verge of exhaustion but hadn’t yet gotten his second wind. If he had to push himself still harder and farther, he could.

It was the same with Dr. Curie, he suspected—she did not have his training or experience, but he knew well that any human being could display reserves of strength, speed, focus, and energy that seemed to go beyond their normal capabilities. If they were properly motivated, anyway. And being pursued almost nonstop by slavering monstrosities from the bowels of this green hell provided fairly strong motivation.

“We’ve almost made it, haven’t we?” she said behind him. She had continued to impress him in some regards, but she still had a gift for stating the obvious.

“Yes, we have,” he confirmed. “But we are not quite there yet. Do not relax too much or lose focus. The last part of the journey is, in many ways, the most important.”

“Quite right,” she quipped. “I’ll relax once we’re safely out of this bloody jungle. Or better yet, back at Fort Archway.”

The hauptmann nodded and continued to blaze a trail through the increasingly sparser vegetation. While he took his own advice and kept an eye on the jungle for further dangers, he nevertheless found himself half-lost in thought.

They might be almost out of the Zoo, but the ordeal was far from over for either of them. First of all, there was the matter of the twenty or so kilometers of desert they’d have to cross to reach the wall. By now, everyone at the base likely knew where he and Laura had gone, so perhaps they’d have posted trucks. There was a good probability of this.

But he knew better than to trust to chance to deliver the best outcome. They would have to consider the possibility of a long, hot, dry trek on foot. Already, he felt drained from the day’s heat, which in turn made him angry at himself for rushing after the woman so hastily. He could have spared five minutes to load a vehicle and perhaps even driven it through the gate after he’d sent Coop into his unscheduled sleep-break.

Thinking of his own rare stupidity in pursuing this little adventure, he then thought ahead in time—to what would happen when they returned to base.

Laura would be, as the Americans might say, in deep shit, but that was her own doing. He didn’t like the thought of what might happen to her, but at least her physical safety would be seen to. After she had served her time and swallowed whatever bitter pill they forced on her, she might have the opportunity to resume her career or make some kind of productive life for herself.

And what about himself? He was scarcely less guilty than she was, at this point. He had broken even his own rules, to say nothing of the rules of Director Roden or their absentee CO, Major Reisenegger. He had assaulted a fellow soldier—albeit a Brit—and run off on an impromptu mission without authorization.

He shook his head. Ultimately, he did not care much about the consequences. He was too valuable to this base’s operations for them to court-martial him out of the Bundeswehr. Even Roden was not that stupid. He would be reprimanded and a couple of new policies might be implemented, but that was all.

Besides, he had done his job for now. Dr. Laura Curie was safe. He had, with a little help from her here and there, seen to it that they had both survived. Now, some semblance of normalcy would return.

Ahead, he glimpsed sand dunes between the trees. “Aha,” he said.

“Brilliant! I knew we’d make it,” Laura added. “Well, there were a couple of times I wasn’t so sure, but only a couple.”

“But do not break out of your cell again,” Jan suggested.

She sighed. “Well, I suppose I could try to heed that advice.”

Finally, they emerged from the Zoo into the Sahara. It was late afternoon, and bronze-golden sunlight glimmered over the wastes and the clear sky took on a burnished quality. The humidity lifted almost instantly.

Jan looked from side to side. He did not recognize exactly where they’d come out, but about three-quarters of a kilometer to their left, he saw, to his immense relief, a truck. To the right was another about two kilometers down. The vehicles must have been arranged in a line along this entire portion of the jungle’s edge, waiting for any sign of escaping humans.

“This way, then,” he ordered and motioned her to follow him to the left. “I had feared we would have to cross the desert on foot.”

“I could definitely use the chance to take the weight off my feet.”

“That,” he agreed, “is an excellent idea.”

They had taken only a single step when the primaraptor that had trailed them all the way from its territory burst out of the jungle directly in front of them.

“Oh, bloody hell.” Laura gasped.

He had already tensed, assumed a combat stance, and drawn his knife. They were so close to rescue, and this brute had finally chosen its time to strike when he was completely out of ammunition. Their only hope was to hold it off long enough for one of the truck drivers to notice and come to their aid.

In the split-second before the creature attacked, he noticed two distinctive things about it. First, as he had somehow immediately suspected, it was the same mutant he had wounded and driven off in the jungle. It had two wounds, one in the shoulder and another near the base of its tail. He might be able to exploit those in the confrontation.

The other detail was the color of its fur. These creatures seemed to flush a bright reddish-orange when they fought, but this one had now turned a dark, angry, blood-red. He had never seen this color on one of the beasts before now.

Nor could he ever have imagined that one would venture past the edge of the jungle itself. The entire situation seemed strange and out of even the Zoo’s unnatural order.

The primaraptor lunged and snapped its jaws. It was slower and clumsier than was usual for them, perhaps due to tiredness and its injured shoulder, and Jan was able to dodge to the side. Even so, it retreated too quickly for him to strike at its throat or eyes with his knife.

“Signal the truck!” he yelled over his shoulder. “We need their help.”

Laura did as he said without hesitation. She jumped up and down, waved her hands over her head, and shouted at the top of her lungs in the direction of the closer vehicle. Its engine fired only a second or two later and it swerved toward them and approached as rapidly as could be expected in the deep, shifting sand.

The mutant prepared for another attack, but it seemed to stumble. This was apparently not ground with which it was familiar. He saw his opportunity and surged forward to lash out toward the creature’s left eye with the blade.

Rather than recoiling as he had hoped, it simply closed its eyes and swung its scaly head toward his knife-hand to knock the blade from his grasp. Before he could react, it barreled into him as it had done before it captured Laura, and his brief attempt to wrestle away from it failed. Its jaws closed around his shoulder.

He cried out in pain as the monster’s forelimbs wound tightly around him to prevent him from using even his bare hands to fight. In the next moment, it began to drag him into the jungle.

The truck had cleared half the distance between them, but it was too late. Perhaps the driver had other men with him and they would come after him, but there was no way to know that for sure.

He looked at Laura, who seemed frozen in place and stared at him with a strange expression on her face. It looked like a mixture of fear and concern but oddly combined with indecision, guilt, and some kind of childlike curiosity.

She was momentarily frozen in terror, he told himself. That was all. Any moment now, she’d find a way to distract his captor so he could try again to fight it.

Suddenly, she picked up a branch and raced toward the creature with her pathetic weapon raised.

“Laura, no!’ he shouted. “Save yourself.” There was no way the small woman and a flimsy branch were a match for the primaraptor. At least if she ran and survived, she might be able to return for him with help.

As usual, she ignored him and continued her pointless charge. When she was close enough, the mutant simply raised its muscular limb and batted her aside. She careened away like a rag doll and landed heavily against a tree. Her head smacked against the wood with a sickening thump and she collapsed, unconscious—or dead, quite possibly, given the force of the impact.

“Women. why do they never listen?” he muttered as the monster’s drool flowed over the puncture wounds in his shoulder. As the dark-green shadows engulfed him again, everything went black.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

When Jan woke, he was tired, sore, and badly dehydrated. His mouth felt the way it would on a night after a couple too many vodka screwdrivers—as though someone had stuffed it full of cotton balls soaked in salty glue.

“Ugghhhh.” He moaned and tried not to make noise but found it impossible. His head and shoulder hurt too much.

His shoulder, yes…he remembered now. The primaraptor had burst out of the jungle, disarmed him, and dragged him in, at which point he had passed out. The woman had blindly tried to save him and knocked herself out in the process. Hopefully, when she woke—if she woke—she made it to safety. If so, this at least meant that the rescue mission had not been a total failure. Fifty percent of the personnel involved had reached safety.

His dark, clouded vision slowly returned, although it didn’t exactly grow much brighter. He was in some kind of interior space. Not a building, unless the Zoo intended to shock him beyond even its substantial capabilities, but quite possibly a cave or burrow. There was a definite sense of wide, open space before him, however. He shook his head and looked around.

He was wrong. This was a building of sorts, but not one that had been made by humans.

It was, roughly, a very, very large dome. A circle of tall trees seemed to have been chosen as the site, and the tops of these trees had all been bent and pulled inward to form the foundation of the primitive structure. Between the trees was a chaotic mass of sticks, branches, and copious amounts of a dark-brown pasty substance.

Jan blinked and forced his brain to work, despite its overwhelming demands that he do nothing more than go to sleep.

The gunge that held the dome together and filled the gaps in its surface was the same viscous, adhesive crap that had been used to affix Klaus’s men to the giant tree they’d found on the previous mission. Soldat Grün, he recalled, had said that the primaraptors vomited the goo to imprison their prey. This was the first sign he had seen, though, that it could also be used as a building material.

The hauptmann looked down at himself and tried to move. He failed in the latter objective.

He was splayed in a roughly seated position, his back against what seemed to be the broken stump of a fallen tree, and his arms were stretched back behind his hips with his hands gripping the stump. Some of the sticky substance encircled his waist and one of his wrists. He could not move his lower torso, hips, or right arm. The left seemed to have some of the adhesive substance on it but it was free. His captor had perhaps rushed the job of securing him to the tree stump. With the use of one hand, he might be able to free himself, but even that might not be enough.

None of the many, many other humans there seemed to have found a way out.

There had to be at least two dozen men and women, possibly more, strewn around the interior periphery of what he now thought of as a nest. It was dark enough that he could not count them precisely, at least not the ones on the farther side of the structure. But after careful examination of those closest to him, he decided that this was a fairly accurate estimate.

The soldiers nearby were all among those who had gone missing in recent times. Some, he recognized as belonging to Klaus’s unit—this, then, was the remainder of that platoon. The primaraptors had killed a few outright and taken others to the tree to set their devious trap. The rest had all been brought there.

But, he wondered, why?

Squinting, he saw that one of the men closest to him was none other than Hauptmann Klaus Grossman himself. He was unconscious—probably, although he might be dead. In the gloom, however, he was fairly sure he could see the man breathing faintly. The soles of Klaus’s feet lay within reach of his own. He moved his left leg in that direction and tapped the toe of his boot against one of his compatriot’s feet.

A low, breathy sound, half-sigh and half-groan, rose from the slumped body, and the man began to stir. A shudder went through him and his eyes opened. For a moment, he stared and seemed to look at nothing before he shook his head and his gaze darted around. He was on his back, his arms up over his head and his hands buried in a mass of dried brown goop affixed to a half-buried boulder.

“Klaus,” Jan whispered.

The two officers locked gazes. Klaus’s brows rose in surprise. “Jan Shalwar,” he whispered. “Now we are both equally fucked, it seems.”

“Not yet,” he said. “We are both still alive.”

“That will not matter for much longer,” the man mumbled. “I’m barely holding on as it is. I have not had food for two days. Last time I lost consciousness, I assumed I would not wake up. You had to come along and disturb my rest.”

He frowned. This kind of despondency was not like the man at all. If anything, he would have expected him to try to start some kind of stupid competition to see which of them could escape first. Clearly, he was in very bad shape.

“Klaus,” he said, “we still have a chance and they might even try to rescue us. I need you to tell me everything about your experience so far. Anything that might be of use to determine what we are dealing with here. My left hand is free, and I may be able to cut myself loose.”

“Well,” his fellow-prisoner began, “they only killed a few of us right away. Everyone else, they either brought here or took someplace else.”

“I rescued most of your other men,” he said.

“Ha! Well, good for you. And them,” the man replied.

“Yes, yes. Now go on.”

Klaus tried to swallow, but his throat must have been too dry. “The adult ones don’t seem to eat very much,” he said. “Or they eat other Zoo creatures, I don’t know. But they are saving the rest of us.”

“Why? What purpose do they have in putting so many humans in this place?”

Rather than reply with words, the soldier simply looked toward the center of the chamber and nodded.

Jan followed the man’s gaze. The ground sloped gently downward toward the center of the covered area and seemed to reach its lowest point under the peak of the tree-supported, phlegm-covered dome. There were no humans in this central space that he could see but it was far from empty. He squinted harder and willed his eyes to adjust to the dark-brown shadows.

At first, they’d been almost invisible due to their earthy coloration combined with the general dimness, but he could now make out the indisputable and horrifying reality.

They were eggs—tens, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of them, so many packed so tightly together that they’d at first been easy to mistake for the texture of the ground itself.

He swallowed when the truth registered. They were in the middle of the primaraptors’ main nest.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Remember, you aren’t free to enter the Zoo whenever you want,” the driver said to Laura in his heavy German accent. He looked into his rearview mirror to watch her while he half-focused on the tracks through the desert in front of him. “Civilians need to have clearance for that kind of thing.”

“It won’t happen again, don’t you worry,” she replied and honestly didn’t care if she sounded irritable. Once again, things of real importance were in progress, but everyone seemed to care more about making sure all the rules and regulations were followed to a T. “For now, I’m merely happy I got out of that place alive.”

Jan, however, had not made it out at all. He was probably still alive, though. In fact, if they were quick, they might be able to save him. “Hauptmann Shalwar is still in there,” she told the young man. “Please, we have to go back. One of those awful new creatures captured him and took him away somewhere. They have not killed people right away. Usually, they imprison them for a while. But if we hurry, we might be able to intercept them.”

The driver concentrated on her words and probably needed a moment to parse them and mentally translate them into German. Finally, he nodded, his face grim but set with a kind of satisfaction, nonetheless.

“I can’t believe you managed to get out,” he said with astonishment.

“The creature flung me against a tree and I hit my head, which knocked me unconscious. When I awoke, you were there,” she recalled rapidly, aware that every second they spent talking was less time to rescue Jan.

“We’ll go back to base first, then we can mount a rescue,” he said.

“Can’t we go back—”

“Getting ourselves killed won’t save him. We go back.” Although his demeanor remained authoritative, he appeared to regard her with something like respect.

Clearly, it had been wise to indicate that she cared about the hauptmann’s fate.

Which, in fact, she did.

She found a medical kit, sifted through it as they drove, and applied antibiotic cream and bandages to the shallow teeth-wounds in her shoulder. They might need more attention, but even minimal care was better than none.

The afternoon had faded to early evening and the sun took on a coppery tint as they plowed through the sand and the long, ragged expanse of Wall Two came into sight. The driver brought the truck to a halt closer to the gate than she recalled him doing last time she’d been driven back. She decided it was so there was less room for her to try to escape.

“You go first, please,” he said.

“Yes, fine.” She stood, walked to the door, and scrambled out. The driver emerged behind her and kept his eyes on her back, just to be safe.

She looked toward Fort Archway and the wall. The gate was open. Sergeant Cooper stood there and another soldier—a German—stood behind him. At least the lockdown appeared to be over.

“What in the goddamned bloody hell do you think you were doing, miss?” Coop asked as she approached. He looked tired, haggard, and downright angry. There was also a noticeable bruise on his face, as though someone had punched him or he’d fallen into a table or something.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have time to argue. Jan has been captured by a new kind of predator,” she began. “And the Zoo is about to go through some very important—”

“Stop,” the man snapped and held a hand up, palm out. “I won’t hear it. You have had enough chances already and can try to explain why you ran off into the jungle on your own to Roden if you like. Hauptmann Shalwar being in the claws of a monster means he’s probably dead.”

“No, he’s still alive in there,” she protested, “and in fact, we might be able to rescue him if—”

“Again, stop,” he interrupted. “We will relay the information and see what we can do for him. But not until we can rest easy knowing that you will no longer be free to keep making this kind of trouble.”

He turned to the young soldier behind him, whom Laura suddenly recognized as Soldat Gunter Grün. He was the man stuck to the tree whom she’d helped treat and whose shoulder wound was much the same as her own.

“You there,” the guard said to him. “Since you’ve simply stood there all day to guard the gate even after I regained consciousness, make yourself useful. Escort Dr. Curie back to her quarters and inform the director that we’ve recovered her.”

“Yes, sir,” he replied.

Laura took a deep breath. So far, this was not going terribly well.

The soldat approached her with his rifle held in front of his chest and gestured toward the main entrance with a sideways nod of his head. She decided not to resist or argue for the moment. With Coop furious at her, that would be unlikely to yield much benefit. Once they were farther away, however, she could make another attempt.

“Hauptmann Shalwar is in considerable danger, you know,” she said to Grün when they were safely out of Coop’s hearing.

“It is your fault,” he responded almost immediately. His tone was mostly neutral and professional, but there was a noticeable undercurrent of bitterness to it. “You should have stayed where you were supposed to be. He only went out there because of you.”

She frowned and her shoulders slumped a little at that. He might be omitting some rather important details but the main thrust of what he’d said was true.

Of course, that made her think of the egg in her satchel. The primaraptor’s fur had turned dark red with total rage and hate and it had pursued them all the way to the edge of the Zoo itself because it was trying to recover its young. If it had not been for her theft of the egg, the creature might have simply let them go once it became clear they’d be too much work to simply treat as prey. If that were the case, they might both have emerged from the jungle, which meant he might have been safe right now.

It was, therefore, doubly her fault that Jan was still a prisoner within the Zoo.

“I do not understand,” Soldat Grün continued after a short pause. “I do not understand why you had to go back in there.”

Laura realized in that moment that she had the very evidence of why she’d had to go back in her satchel. She slid her hand into it and cupped it around the egg’s smooth surface. When they came to a shadowed area not far from the main personnel door, she checked hastily to confirm that no one was really watching them and pulled it out.

“Because of this,” she stated. She stopped, which forced him to stop and look at what she now held out for his inspection.

He gaped dumbly at it before he drew a sharp breath. “Is that…one of their eggs?” He looked almost afraid.

“It most certainly is,” she answered. “We have to understand how important this is.”

Grün glanced around in an almost nervous fashion. “Let’s keep moving,” he urged her.

She obliged and walked slowly toward the doors, but she also continued to talk.

“Having an actual egg of one of these creatures will be a tremendous help to our research efforts at this base,” she went on. “In the past, the Americans were able to capture some of the Zoo’s creatures but attempts to study them never got very far. As soon as they were put in captivity, they turned radically violent and things quickly became messy. Their wild nature combined, it would seem, with some directive from the alien intelligence that guides them all, would not allow them to simply languish as prisoners.

“They went crazy and ended up killing themselves in their efforts to escape. They would throw themselves against their cages as hard as possible until they were badly injured. Or they would attack the personnel with such force that they had to be put down for the safety of the researchers. Dr. Kessler at the American base and some of the others were still able to gather data, but it made it impossible to observe their natural behavior patterns.”

As she relayed all this, he listened intently. He might not have grasped all of it, whether due to a limited understanding of the underlying science or the partial language barrier, but she could tell that he was interested. What she was saying, really, affected them all.

“But now, we have the opportunity to study one of these creatures from birth without any training or modeling from its peers getting in the way of things,” she pointed out. They would be at the doors momentarily. Once she was inside the base, things would be more difficult. She stopped again and pretended to massage her shoulder in pain. He’d been injured in the same fashion, so she imagined he would be empathetic to that.

He stopped also and frowned in a concerned way as he watched her.

She went on quickly. “By studying this egg as it incubates, and then if we can get it to hatch, we could potentially learn so much about the species that have developed here. How it is that they seem to spawn so quickly. How they mature, how they think, why they behave as they do. You men—the soldiers of the fort—would have all kinds of new insights into how to fight them and what to expect and avoid. And since I know a thing or two about how to study such matters, it might be enough to save me from being…sent back. This could be my big break. And it will help immensely in our overall research efforts.”

“Ja, I see,” Grün replied, “that is good for you. But what about Hauptmann Shalwar?” His young face was furrowed with worry.

“Yes, that’s part of it,” Laura assured him. “I know for certain that he’s still alive. Those creatures have taken him as their prisoner, exactly like they did with you and some of the others in your unit. But that still means he’s in terrible danger.”

She paused and studied their surroundings with a critical eye. Then, she stepped to the right toward the transportation depot and away from the doors as though he’d ordered her that way anyway. He followed her, about to protest.

“Look, I’m already inside the base. There are men everywhere here who can keep an eye on me and keep me out of trouble,” she said before he could speak. “Right now, the most important thing is the Hauptmann’s safety. Go find his right-hand officer—Lieutenant Ferris, I believe—or Leutnant, pardon—that Bull woman. Tell her everything I told you. She’s clearly good at her job and I can tell that she loves Hauptmann Shalwar almost like a brother. Please, find her and tell her. We don’t have much time.” She looked at him, her expression imploring.

Grün met her gaze and his seemed to drift off for a moment. He was clearly deep in thought and she curbed her impatience. After a few seconds, he said, “Yes. You are right. I will find her immediately. Stay here, please.” He turned briefly to another soldier and ordered him to watch her.

With that, he spun and ran toward the main entrance, obviously in a hurry but not to the point of carelessness.

“Well, then,” she said quietly. She had to find some way to get rid of this soldier. “Excuse me. Would you mind escorting me to the vehicles area?”

He looked unsure. “I do not think that is a good idea. Soldat Grün said only to watch you.”

“Oh, please,” she said and gave him what she hoped was a look of wide-eyed innocence. “You would still be watching me. He will bring Leutnant Ferris so I’d have to go there with them anyway.  I’ve come from the Zoo and could really use a moment to sit and rest so might as well do it while I wait. Unless you’d like to ask your commanding officer?” Hopefully, male pride would get in the way of that, she thought, knowing full well the CO was in the hands of the primaraptors and wouldn’t be available.

“No, that won’t be necessary. Go ahead,” he said and she heaved an internal sigh of relief. “I’ll wait there with you.”

They walked along in silence and she was pleased to see that her presence elicited very little notice. Roden must have simply assumed that Coop would handle her—if she even returned in one piece, to begin with—and neglected to put up Wanted: Dr. Laura Curie posters or whatever. It was certainly easier than having an entire base filled with eager soldiers all ready to pounce and take her into custody.

Her gaze drifted toward the transportation depot now only a few yards away and filled with formidable vehicles that could cover large amounts of distance in short amounts of time and take a person far away from this base.

In her satchel, she had one of the great scientific finds of the century. Even beyond Fort Archway, innumerable people would be very, very interested in it. What, she wondered, would she do now?

It took her a moment to decide and she smiled.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Resolute as always, Jan clenched his jaw. He didn’t know exactly what it portended—their having been dragged into this massive nest—but it surely wasn’t good. Nonetheless, as long as he was alive, he still had a fighting chance. The primaraptors would have to come and personally bite his head off before he gave up. He would free first himself, then those men who still lived, and get them to the safety of the base. Only death was a guarantor of failure.

Still, their situation was assuredly dire. Most of the other soldiers there looked like they would, after all they’d been through, barely be able to walk. Klaus was normally very vigorous, but even he looked and sounded like he might expire on his own in a few more hours or perhaps another day at most.

And he had no idea exactly where in the Zoo they were. It didn’t seem feasible that the creature could have dragged him for too great a distance, but there was no way to be sure. For all he knew, this dome might have been constructed on the ruins of the original American research base at the jungle’s center, kilometers and kilometers away from familiar territory, let alone the edge of the desert.

Plus, when he looked around, he saw sentries. The faint light that came through cracks in the dome’s rough materials was blocked here and there by tall shapes that had the posture of birds or lizards. There seemed to be no mutants inside the dome, but even one or two posted outside would make escape extremely difficult. They needed heavy weaponry. Or better yet, an armored vehicle with heavy weaponry.

“Klaus,” he said to his comrade, “do you know how many of these men are still alive?” Most of them were not moving but he didn’t think all of them were dead.

“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice weak, pained, and tired. “Some certainly are. But I think some have died and some of them were wounded, to begin with.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head. While he still refused to give up, the situation was not to his advantage.

Something rustled and he looked up as a primaraptor pushed its way through a narrow, almost door-like screen made of hanging leaves and sticks that had been stuck across a gap in the wood and dried phlegm. He went still, kept silent, and tried to observe the creature out of the corner of his eye. While he wanted to study it, he definitely did not want to draw its attention. Outside, he could still see silhouettes of at least two other mutants.

The monster approached a soldier whom he did not recognize, a man who looked like he’d once been on the plump side but was now half-withered in his current condition of near death. The prisoner’s eyes drifted open and he moaned very softly but otherwise, he did not react.

With a kind of careless interest, the mutant grasped the man around the arms and shoulders and pulled him upward while it used its teeth to cut and break through the hardened brown goop. Jan watched it with a kind of sick, horrified fascination and noted how sophisticated its ape-like grip was. Truly, the creature had hands rather than merely claws.

Soon, the adhesive was mostly severed, and it dragged the man free and carried him toward the center of the dome. What was it doing? Jan bit his tongue to stop himself voicing the thought and suppressed the urge to try to break free and put a stop to it. That would only result in him being bound again with even more of the phlegmy substance, if not killed outright.

The primaraptor dropped the man on the ground and his body fell amidst a group of eggs that seemed to bulge and already blossomed with cracks.

“Oh, God,” Klaus said under his breath.

The two men could only stare as the adult retreated before the birth of its species’ next generation. The soldier, still barely conscious and possibly delirious, squirmed but did not try to escape. Eggs cracked around him. As the pieces of shell fell away, what emerged were, unsurprisingly, tiny, slimy, bald replicas of the parents.

The baby creatures had not yet sprouted fur. They did not look helpless in the least, though. Already, their eyes were bright and their claws and teeth looked sharp. They opened their mouths and made high-pitched, mewling sounds. In seconds, all of them focused on the man sprawled among them.

“No,” Jan protested hoarsely.

All the infant primaraptors, perhaps seven or eight, pounced on the man and sank their teeth into his flesh. He stirred and finally attained awareness of what was happening as the small mutants ripped out chunks of skin, muscle, and fat. Blood welled around him to form a spreading pool. He wailed horribly and both the pitch and volume rose to fill the gloomy, open space above them.

“We are fucked.” Klaus gasped. “The rest will be hatching soon. God, no.”

The two men gaped in horror as the soldier was eaten alive. He began to thrash and writhe and tried in vain to sit and flee, but by the time he had enough presence of mind to attempt this, his legs were already savaged and the voracious little reptiles had eaten enough of him that he had to be in the early stages of death from blood loss.

This soldier, then, was beyond all help. Jan shook his head as the man expired, and his tiny executioners rested around his corpse and looked very satisfied with their first-ever meal.

Klaus uttered a sobbing moan. Again, he was not his usual self in the slightest, and something about that fact disturbed the hauptmann almost more than anything else he’d seen.

“Stop it,” he snapped. “Keep your shit together and remember that you are a soldier of Germany, Gott verdammt. The others have not hatched yet, and the adults have made no move to feed the rest of us to them.”

“They will, soon,” he responded. His cracked lips moved to open and close even when he did not speak, and his eyes constantly rolled back in their sockets. His normally impressive musculature had already begun to look wasted.

“Help will come,” Jan returned sharply. “The British woman knows we are alive in here, and she was rescued when I was taken. She will tell someone what has happened. The Bull will hear. We can depend on her, at least, if no one else. Do not despair yet.”

Klaus laughed, a weak coughing sound. “No one will come, Jan,” he said. “They won’t charge in to their own certain death when we are probably already written off as dead. I bet they’ve already commissioned the plaques to send to our families. The only person who would have had the balls to come after us is you, and here you are, in the same situation. It’s over, Hauptmann.”

Jan saw Laura again in his mind’s eye, staring at him like a frightened deer on a nighttime road. If she did manage to get back and tell the base that he was still alive, Roden might shut down any attempt at rescue as too risky, too expensive, or too much of a bother.

There was no guarantee that anyone else would follow Rule Number Three. Other people abandoned their teams all the time.

His heart sank and for the first time, he considered that Klaus might be right—that they were doomed. A trembling tension that he recognized as fear radiated through his body at the thought of it. As it had been earlier when he’d spoken to young Soldat Grün back at the base, though, it was not really fear of his own death, exactly. He’d always known there was a good chance he might die in the line of duty. This was the fear of defeat.

No—someone else would still be left out there on planet Earth to continue the fight on behalf of the human species. The aliens and their pets would never prevail. But he, Jan T Shalwar, might well be finished, unable to contribute to the war effort ever again. He might end up as nothing more than food for these creatures which he had sworn to overcome and destroy. And he would never speak to Michael.

And, of course, it was all because he had broken his own fucking rules.

Chapter Forty

Laura sauntered into the transportation depot with the soldier beside her. She had half-expected him to be a little surly at having been dumped with her but he made no effort to talk and seemed to simply take his duty seriously in a quiet and unobtrusive way. Now, all kinds of opportunities were arrayed before her.

At first, after Soldat Grün had taken his leave of her to find Leutnant Ferris and she had persuaded his replacement to agree to her suggestion, she wondered if she’d encounter any further obstacles. Thankfully, no sentries had been posted inside, although there might still be someone standing guard beyond the door that led deeper into the base’s main section.

This was, of course, the same area she had wandered into during the power outage and lockdown that happened after she’d first arrived and where she’d met Jan. That had been under less than ideal circumstances, it was true, but still, she could not help thinking of him.

He was still out there somewhere, a prisoner of the Zoo and its vicious denizens.

She shook her head to clear it of unpleasant thoughts and focused, instead, on the task at hand. That’s what Jan would have done, would he not? And in this particular case, the task at hand was selecting a vehicle. Even though she did not recognize any of them as something she definitely knew how to drive. She set her satchel down carefully, conscious of the prize tucked away in it, and turned her attention to business.

Again, most the vehicles looked similar to pictures or videos she’d seen of armored trucks and military personnel carriers, although they might be newer models the Germans had introduced that the British didn’t know much about yet. Advanced motorbikes of some kind also lined the far wall and there were the weird hovercraft-type contraptions that almost looked like spaceships.

Those were tempting, but she decided against them. Learning how to drive—or fly?—them would be too difficult. She could probably manage something like a truck. Besides, she wanted the biggest, most well-defended and well-reinforced set of wheels she could find. She extended a hand toward the nearest large APC.

“Hey!” a loud, vaguely female voice bellowed.

Her head snapped up. A short, stout shape with brown hair pinned up stood before her. One hand was balled into a fist and set at the hip and the other was raised with the index finger extended toward her face.

“Leutnant Ferris,” she said and breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad it’s—”

“Rule Number Forty-two. No unauthorized personnel touching the transportation equipment,” The Bull replied. Both her tone of voice and her facial expression suggested something like total, unhinged fury.

Laura was confused. Why, she wondered, would merely touching a vehicle anger her that much?

Before she could say more or explain herself, the woman charged. She moved so fast that she seemed to almost teleport over the two meters that separated them and bowled into her. A solid shoulder pounded into her midsection and she catapulted back as though she’d been struck by a battering ram.

“Ugh!” She gasped as the breath was knocked out of her. She pinwheeled her arms as she tried to keep her balance and in alarm, she wracked her brain as to what the hell she ought to do in this situation. What, exactly, had Grün told her? Had the language barrier created a terrible misunderstanding?

“You’ve done too many reckless things in the short time you’ve been here,” The Bull went on with less volume but even more grating wrath. She took two steps forward and shoved her again.

She staggered back and ironically, collided with the nearest vehicle—a large armored truck—which was her first experience in actually touching the transportation equipment.

“You compromised base security,” Ferris said. She lunged from the side and seemed to twist an arm around her, shove her laterally, and trip her all at the same time. Laura lost her balance this time, fell to her knees, and struggled to stand as quickly as she could. She was on the verge of panic now and not only alarmed, but deeply confused.

The Bull moved toward her once more. “You broke every rule of the Hauptmann’s that you could and basic safety rules of the base, as well,” she accused. She thrust forward with what could only be called a slamming motion, grasped her jacket at the front as her hands came down, and jerked her forward before she threw her back to crash into a motorbike. It tumbled with a loud clatter while she struggled to stay upright.

“Wait, let me explain!” she cried. “I’m trying to tell you, I—”

“You are trying to escape now after you have done the worst thing of all,” the woman shouted. Her eyes blazed and she actually trembled with wrath. “You left Jan out there alone after he went in to save you. You abandoned him!”

With dawning horror, it occurred to Laura that Ferris might actually intend to kill her. She really, truly was that enraged. This was different, somehow, from being attacked by the Zoo monsters. They were merely animals. Now, she was assaulted not only with physical force but with another human being’s raw, unhinged emotions. She tried to speak, but in her sudden terror, no sound emerged.

Her adversary attacked again. This time, she grasped her arm and threw her over her shoulder to land on her ass on the dusty floor. Her tailbone and injured shoulder screamed in pain and she found her voice again.

“I’m not trying to escape. I’m trying to fucking save him,” Laura yelled. “I tried to tell you that. It’s why I sent Grün to find you—I need your help so that we can help him!”

The Bull had moved closer after the last onslaught and now almost looked like she intended to stamp on her head with her boot heel. Thankfully, she stopped. The twisted expression of cold fury on her face softened, at least a little, and she drew back a step and assumed a more relaxed posture.

Laura clambered slowly her feet. Her tailbone still smarted badly and while she didn’t think it was broken, it would be difficult to walk for at least a few more minutes, maybe even an hour. Her shoulder was bleeding again under the bandages, but she ignored it and dusted herself off.

“I’m sorry,” she said and realized in her gut how truly she meant that. “I really am very, very sorry. I never meant for Jan to come in after me and now, I want to help him before it’s too late. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him. He’s already saved me several times and he’s really a gentleman now that I’ve gotten to know him better. He’s still alive. I was…I was going to try to take one of these vehicles into the Zoo so I could get him out quickly. I suppose I don’t know exactly how to operate them, but—”

She shrugged. Now that she’d come out and stated her plan, it sounded rather stupid. But at least Ferris had stopped attacking her. And she was reasonably sure she had conveyed her sincerity on the subject of Jan—there was no deception whatsoever about that. She didn’t want him to die.

Slowly, The Bull’s face returned to a calm, albeit grim and determined look, and she grimaced while she pursed her lips. She placed her fists on her hips.

“Very well, I believe you,” she said, and Laura breathed a small sigh of relief. “But,” Ferris went on, “that plan is stupid.”

At least they were both in agreement on something.

“You may not understand why Jan has so many rules,” the woman continued, “but the reason is that they work. He has tested them all against experience many times. His very first rule is to take the right people with you. If you go in all alone, there is a greater possibility that you will fail to save him and also get yourself killed. That is two people dead instead of one—or better yet, none.”

Laura sighed. “Yes, I’ve heard all this bef—”

“You need a full team to succeed in a rescue mission like this,” the woman said firmly. “At least a squad. Someone to drive, a few men to shoot and fight, and one or two people to save the hauptmann and treat any injuries he might have.”

“Well, then,” she replied, “can you get us a team? If so, let’s definitely do so. I’m sure Jan is still alive, but I doubt he has much time left.”

The leutnant frowned again but this time, it was different—a softer, more human frown. It revealed how sad the woman actually was, and between this and her almost homicidal anger mere moments before, Laura realized how correct her intuition that Agatha Ferris cared about Jan Shalwar as though he were a member of her family actually was.

“I have already tried,” Ferris began in a lower tone, “to mount a rescue mission into the Zoo. The idiot Director, Roden, will never agree to it. He thinks Jan has made his decision and now must suffer the consequences because saving him would be too expensive.” She gritted her teeth visibly. “Losing him would cost this base much more.”

“Yes, I agree with that,” she remarked. “And…thank you for having already tried to rescue us.”

The woman grunted, gave a curt nod, and seemed to wait for her to say more.

She needed to pause and think for the moment before she spoke again. “Well, we must do something. And…”

An idea had begun to form and with it, a choice. Her companion watched her with a mixture of skepticism and hesitant sympathy. She made her decision that she would do whatever it took. Inarguably, she was already in trouble so might as well, therefore, bend a couple more rules for the sake of doing what was right.

“I have an idea,” she said.

The Bull spread her hands. “Yes?”

She nodded. “I know how to convince Roden to help us. Come with me.”

Chapter Forty-One

The horrifying spectacle they had so recently witnessed helped Jan to make his mind up. He would not give in, not yet. Even though, if all hope were lost, he would probably be better off killing himself. That way, he would spare himself the awful fate of the man who’d been eaten alive by the newly hatched primaraptors. And if he was particularly lucky, his body might putrefy beyond their ability to safely eat it before more of them could hatch and reach him.

He frowned and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nein,” he said in a barely audible voice and pushed the morbid thoughts from his mind. There had to still be a way to survive and prevail.

He would need Klaus’s help, though, and his fellow hauptmann did not seem to be in much condition to be helpful.

“Klaus,” he whispered and kicked the man’s foot again. Then, in a sharper tone, he snapped, “Hauptmann.”

“Uhhh…” Klaus moaned and roused from the mostly unconscious state of delirium he’d languished in. It was a real point of concern that he might not even be able to stand or fight, given how badly he had been ravaged by thirst and exposure.

“We must speak again,” he whispered. “Can you hear me? Can you talk?”

“Yes,” the weak voice responded as Klaus stirred. “Although there is not much to talk about, is there?”

“There is,” he retorted. “My left hand is free. It is possible for me to cut myself loose and then for us to escape. I know it sounds very unlikely, but it can be done. I will need you to help me.”

“What,” his comrade asked with a faint, gasping laugh, “would you need me for?”

Something clicked into place in his mind then—the reason why Klaus was so despondent was not only due to his wretched physical state. Nor was it only due to their dire situation and the fact that they would probably die soon.

Klaus Grossman was a proud, competitive man. That had always been obvious, really. He did not hate Jan Shalwar, but in his opinion, the two of them were rivals and always had been, ever since they’d first arrived at Fort Archway and assumed their positions at the right and left hands of Major Reisenegger. And their positions under Director Roden, obviously, but he didn’t really count.

Whenever Klaus encountered a difficulty or a setback, his ego was wounded and demanded retribution. This meant that he tended to act with ill-planned haste. In his mind, it seemed, quickly and forcefully tackling the problem, even if one did not have the proper preparation, was better than waiting and doing nothing at all. Taking action was how he kept his mind healthy.

Now, he could do nothing. He was helpless. The mission he had undertaken to rescue the Americans had failed, some of his men had been killed, and he now lay with his hands bound, barely able to even move or speak after the ordeal he’d been through. This was utterly humiliating for him.

Jan took a deep breath. In order to get the man to help him, then, he needed to get his mental state up to par.

“After I am loose, I will free you next,” he said. “Even if they attack us, I will cut your hands from there before I try to run. I swear it, Klaus. And even though you have seen better days, right now, with you helping me, our chances will be twice—even three times—better. I cannot do it without you. You are the man to go to for help when there’s a daring action that needs to be taken.”

His comrade again responded with his weak, gasping chuckle, but it seemed that his eyes did brighten a little. In some small way, he seemed to have perked up, straightened, and taken notice of what was happening again.

Both men froze at a sudden commotion from outside. Jan’s gaze darted toward the source of the disturbance and he noticed that the somewhat rejuvenated Klaus seemed to look that way as well.

A large, sleek four-legged silhouette appeared beyond the dome. A snakecat, he realized. The beasts were arguably the most fearsome predators the Zoo had produced until the introduction of the primaraptors. The creature could dislocate its limbs and even displace internal organs in order to maneuver. It was believed to have mutated from the catshark and still resembled a cat with a feline face but no fur and had the same intelligent, sinister eyes of its predecessor. It was known to slither up trees like a snake, hence the name.

The predator must have leapt down from somewhere nearby and made a rapid approach to the dome.

Now, it contorted its body to flatten itself and slip through a gap at the bottom and under the crude structure. Its feline head with its evil, intelligent eyes appeared near the ground, and its powerful front claws came up beside its face. Most likely, its purpose was to break in and rob the dome of its food supplies—whether immobilized humans or unhatched eggs.

The sentries had not been caught unawares, however. Two primaraptor silhouettes from farther along the dome’s base in either direction moved toward the intruder at speed while they hissed and shrieked with rage to sound the alarm.

The snakecat suddenly withdrew its head and forepaws. It knew it had been discovered and that it would never be able to squeeze through the narrow gap in time. With a hissing sound of its own combined with something between the yowl of a stray housecat and the roar of a tiger, it fled rather than fight two or more of the guardians at once.

While the two closest sentries were distracted, Jan stretched his left hand toward a sharp fragment of rock he’d seen. It was out of easy reach and he had to strain, grunting as he did so, and was glad the snakecat’s attempted burglary had provided a distraction from the noise he made.

The two primaraptors turned once they’d driven off the other monster. They would be back at their posts in seconds and might hear him. He took a deep breath and lunged toward the stone fragment in a fast yet smooth motion, kept his body limber, and extended his left arm as far as he could.

His fingers brushed the edge. They hooked around it enough to pull it a few centimeters toward him, then slipped. He ground his teeth in frustration but tried again. This time, he was able to make no sound. The fragment was finally close enough to grasp without extra effort. He pulled and rolled it over dirt and mud and soon, it was in his hold and hidden beneath his left hand.

As soon as he could, he would use it to cut his right hand free and then the rest of him.

“I remember, Klaus, that time we were both out here and six of those snakecats attacked us,” he said. “You grabbed a railgun and drove off two of them on your own. Everyone else handled the other four. That is why I need you more than anyone else to help me.”

“Ha.” The man exhaled. “You have finally admitted it, then.” He turned his head to look at him. “We still will need to have words, though, about this matter of the Death League rankings. I ought to be guaranteed top position after this.”

“Somehow I knew,” he replied, “that even now, you would not be able to shut up about that.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Ernest Roden had pulled a few minor strings and acquired a very nice full-length mirror for his personal quarters at Fort Archway. He already had one at home in Finchley, of course. But he liked the thought of having a second mirror—a professional one—purchased and transported specifically as one of the few perks of being director of this awful, ridiculous place.

“Ohhh, that is impressive, isn’t it?” he said in a low, breathy voice as he curled first his left arm, then his right, and flexed the small but slightly-growing biceps while he admired them in the polished glass surface. “Yes, Lord Ernest, you’ve grown so strong, haven’t you? This dangerous mission into the desert has made you into a hard man and won’t the ladies at home be interested to hear all about that?”

It was true too. He had worked out and he often wondered how long it would be before people began to notice and comment on swelling, hardening ripples of his body. He had brought a four-kilogram dumbbell and was now able to do twenty curls with it per arm. This was, in fact, a new record.

He saw it as fittingly symbolic of the heavy burden of leadership he had to carry in administering this stupid fort. When he’d been tapped for the position of director, his superiors had tried to pass it off as some kind of promotion—a great honor to serve His Majesty’s Government in such an exalted capacity. And technically, it did represent the largest amount of authority—and responsibility—he’d ever been given.

Most of his adult life had been spent doing low-to-middling-level managerial work for the British Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6. This had sounded quite exciting when he’d first been offered a career there and mentioning that he worked for such a notorious organization had impressed no small number of people over the years, but it was mostly boring office bureaucracy, paper-pushing, paper-shuffling, and measuring red tape out and cutting it.

Roden had longed to advance his career to the point where he was finally in charge of something. He’d made his supervisors aware of this fact—in the appropriately polite and indirect fashion—and finally, they’d approached him with an advancement opportunity. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been one of the several he had hoped for.

“You’ll go on a great adventure, Roden,” his boss had told him, sent him the information files, and pushed a large pile of forms toward him. “In a lovely exotic locale, where we have great need of competent, budget-conscious administrators with extensive experience in such things.”

But he knew the truth. No one—at least, no one intelligent or important—wanted to deal with the Zoo. No sane person wanted to go all the way to the middle of the North African hell-waste and sit on a military base, vast distances from any kind of civilized amenity, where the risk of being suddenly killed by alien bugs was so great. Not to mention having to deal with all the bloody Germans.

“Oh, but you tower above them all, Lord Ernest,” he went on to his appreciative reflection. He had stripped down to nothing save a bright blue Speedo, which he’d also had shipped in at considerable expense and in discreet packaging. “You are the boss, the chief, and the king. The director. Everyone looks up to you and admires you and your strength.”

He twisted to the side, raised both arms, and straightened his shoulders as he strutted before the shining glass like an old-time American beach muscleman preening in front of a group of sunbathing, bikini-clad coeds.

Behind him and off to the right, he heard what sounded like a very soft squeak, but he ignored it. These were his personal quarters and everyone on the base knew they were out of bounds.

“Oh, please, Lord Ernest,” he said in a high-pitched voice as he pumped his fists against each other in front of him, “have mercy on me. Don’t send me back to England like I deserve for having lied to you. I’ll do anything. I’ll even be your slave. If only you…”

He trailed off as he realized the room was somewhat drafty. Another small sound—this one very much like a quiet footfall—could not be ignored.

A little disconcerted, he looked over his shoulder.

The director screamed, stumbled back, and tripped over his bed to land in a sprawled pile of limbs beside his large, expensive mirror. He sputtered half-formed fragments of obscene words between vague squawking noises.

“Ja, now that is impressive,” said The Bull, who stood with her hands on her hips in the open doorway. She glanced at someone behind her. “I was right about him forgetting to lock his door half of the time. You were right about…the rest, Doctor.”

“Ha! I knew it,” said another voice, softer and British-accented. “I knew he’d be doing something ridiculous in here. And now, I have it all on camera.”

“Camera?” Ernest sputtered, suddenly almost overwhelmed with horror at the implications of this one word. He untangled himself from the floor and put a hand on the corner of his bed to help him to rise slowly to his feet. “And what in God’s name are you doing here, to begin with? Is that Dr. Curie? I’ll have you know—”

“Yes, on camera.” Laura cut him off. “We caught most of that fine performance you gave there and truly look forward to showing it to the men on this base. I’m sure they’ll greatly enjoy it.”

She looked rather pleased with herself. Leutnant Ferris, on the other hand, merely stood in silence with a vague look of distaste on her face.

“No.” He gasped and tried but mostly failed to keep the shudder out of his voice. “You can’t. How could you even consider doing such a thing?” He glanced around the room and noted with dismay that his clothes were on the other side of the bed. If he had to face an awful situation like this, he might at least have been wearing a tie.

“Oh? And why mustn’t we?” the researcher asked. She looked at her phone and plinked away at something—Ernest prayed to whatever deity might hear that she was not already sending the video to someone. “How would we benefit by not showing it to all the numerous interested parties?” She looked at him and raised her eyebrows as she waited for his response.

He stared at her and stammered a few fragments of words around a slight mist of spittle before he was able to respond properly. “You would benefit by preserving the men’s trust in my leadership,” he said. Contrary to his intention, it emerged as something of a whine.

“They look up to me, don’t you see?” he went on. “We all know how much everyone at this base respects me. And we know that troops need strong, decisive leadership, both to hold them together and inspire them. I have done everything within my power to achieve both those aims.” He reached a hand out in a grasping gesture as he spoke, imploring her to understand. She only stared at him, so he continued.

“Sometimes, I think the whole base’s future dangles by a thread and that I am the only thing holding it together.” He shook his head from side to side, his lips puckered and eyes half-closed—although he couldn’t quite manage to produce a single tear that might run dramatically down his cheek.

“If you were to show that video to the men, they might…think less of me. They would be left with no one to look up to in this awful place. We must not allow their belief in the respectability of their superiors to decay. We must have proper leadership.”

Surely these women could understand. He felt confident, somehow, that he’d gotten through to them when they both nodded.

“Ja, I can agree with that,” Ferris responded in a flat, dour tone. “But I had someone different in mind. And we need to rescue him.”

Laura looked at The Bull, then at Ernest. To his mild surprise, she said, “We need your help.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Having to actually implore Ernest Roden for help was a distasteful business, but Laura had made up her mind that it was a fair price to pay to save Jan. Plus, at least she had the video footage. She did hope, though, that sending it to everyone on the base wouldn’t be necessary since that might require her to actually watch it. She’d seen quite enough already.

“So you need my help,” the man began. Some of his customary smugness had begun to return and he put a hand to his chin. “Well, explain what it is you need my help with, exactly—and allow me to get dressed while you’re at it if you would.”

“By all means, please get dressed,” said Laura and looked intently at the floor. She tried not to shudder.

He took a few steps around the end of his bed and retrieved his clothes. For some reason, he put his socks first on, unfortunately, but then proceeded to his pants and shirt without delay. And his tie, of course.

As he re-garbed himself, she explained their proposal to him.

“We need to mount a rescue mission to save Hauptmann Shalwar,” she stated. “I know he’s still alive out there. One of those primaraptors dragged him away. That means he was taken somewhere to be stored as a spare food source or something. They tried to do it with me, and they already did it with several other troops who disappeared in the jungle.”

“Mm, yes, I seem to have heard something about that,” Roden replied as he smoothed and straightened his checker-patterned tie.

“This means,” she continued, hoping he paid full attention to her words, “that if we located Jan, we might find Klaus and some of the others while we’re at it. Those creatures seem to be fond of storing large numbers of captives in the same place, after all.”

Ernest nodded without looking at her. The set of his mouth and eyes suggested growing irritation. He had turned back toward his full-length mirror and now licked a comb to coat it with saliva, the better to return his hair to a respectable state. Having to pull his shirt on so quickly had mussed it somewhat.

“You must help us with this,” she insisted. “Leutnant Ferris here has said we ought to take a minimum of two squads and an armored vehicle of some kind—or better yet, two armored vehicles. That will enable us to get out there as quickly as possible and with proper protection and sufficient firepower. It’s the only way to ensure we can rescue both senior officers still serving this base. You must understand that—”

“Must? Why must I understand anything?” he snapped and spun toward her as he pocketed his spit-lathered comb. He glared at her. “I understand that you are trying to blackmail me into authorizing a very risky, expensive, and ill-advised venture. And this when you, madam, are not exactly in much of a position to make demands.”

The Bull took a single fast, heavy step forward, looked directly at Roden, and folded her arms over her chest. He recoiled. The threat he had tried to make trailed off and died in his throat, and he swallowed.

“Ahh, mm, yes…” he stammered and adjusted his tie again. “So, aside from the fact that you are blackmailing me—and indeed, the whole base, with the potential undermining of my leadership—why should I help you? I ask that as an honest question.”

Ferris looked at Laura as if unsure if he was allowed to make this query.

“Because,” Laura said, “you have something I want.”

He fluttered his eyes, obviously confused now. “Oh? What?”

“My freedom,” she stated. “The power to keep me here at this base and let me do the research I was always meant to do. And, really, this is an opportunity to improve your track record as director, also.”

Ernest raised an eyebrow. By suggesting that he might benefit himself, she had caught his interest. Now it was the stalwart German who looked at her with befuddled incomprehension.

“Think about it. If anyone finds out about a civilian getting past security to enter the Zoo, there could be questions about how this place is run. I won’t say anything, especially if I am permitted to continue my work unhindered.”

She said all of this in a neutral tone in an effort to convince him of her point through force of logic, rather than trying to insult or accuse him specifically. Both of them were still well aware that she had the video. Thus, at this point, she wanted to make sure he sided with her willingly.

“But why risk having to deal with all that and possibly emerge looking bad,” she continued in response to his frown, “when instead, you can come out looking like a hero?”

The director leaned forward a little now and she knew he was hooked. The Bull, for her part, rolled her eyes but tried not to be too obvious about it. She must have guessed the gist of what she was about to propose.

“And how exactly will we accomplish that?” Roden asked. “Are you only talking about this rescue mission, or…”

Laura moved her hand toward her side, into her satchel, and withdrew a large brownish egg. She held it in front of her face, balanced on the flat of her palm.

“What on Earth is that thing? Some kind of…egg, or something?” he inquired.

“Quite right, congratulations,” she quipped. “It is. More specifically, it’s a primaraptor egg laid by one of those awful new creatures—the monkey-velociraptor hybrid mutants. Possessing this, we could be on the verge of a major breakthrough in Zoo research. Previous attempts to study captured adult creatures never got very far. They always killed themselves too quickly. But this is an infant waiting to hatch. By studying it from birth, we can learn so much more than we have in the past.”

“And what, pray tell, does this have to do with me looking like a hero?” he asked. His tone was shrewdly skeptical, but his eyes already glimmered in a way that suggested he had ideas of his own.

She took a deep breath. “You can take credit for the discovery,” she said. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you would at least mention me, but you can tell everyone that it was collected because you gave instructions to look for something of the sort, and you can be the one to give all the interviews and bask in the glory. Rather like Thomas Edison, who only invented some of the things ascribed to him. The rest were developed by a team in his name. Anyway, it would be a tremendous boon to your later career.” She tried to smile, if only a little.

Roden rocked on his heels, his gaze distant. He was having an internal debate, she surmised, thinking it over and trying to tease out any extra pros and cons. “How do I know this isn’t some kind of trick?” he asked.

“No trick,” Laura replied. “There would be no point to that. I want to be allowed to continue with my work and I want to save Jan Shalwar. That, sir, is all.”

“Why do you want to save him?” He pretended to turn half away from her as though bored.

“Rule Number Three,” she replied briskly. “Never abandon your team.”

The Bull, watching the two of them haggle, smiled with understated satisfaction.

Ernest sighed. “Now he even has you doing it. How many rules does he have, anyway? No matter. I will allow this rescue mission. Of course, I may have to explain myself for budgetary reasons, but you’ve already given me several of those. However…”

She braced herself.

“There is one condition.”  He smiled and, for the third time, straightened his tie.

Chapter Forty-Four

Jan settled the sharp rock firmly in his left hand. It would be nowhere near as good as a proper knife, but it would do the job.

It was oblong and the portion he’d fitted into his palm and clasped his fingers around was the duller portion. The protruding section included an edge that was moderately sharp, having probably broken off its parent rock along a natural fault line. And it felt strong, which was encouraging. The primaraptors’ glue-like phlegm was thick and tough, so any tool used against it would suffer at least some risk of breaking.

“All right, Klaus…be ready,” he whispered.

The man acknowledged him with a low, breathy grunt and a barely perceptible nod.

After a deep breath, he stabbed the point of the makeshift knife into the top edge of the hardened substance that trapped his right hand. It penetrated the stiff surface and began to separate the layers of softer, more viscous material beneath. He sawed and jabbed but took care not to overdo it so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Nonetheless, he worked with haste. Once the rock had split one side of the binding from top to bottom, he simply flexed his right hand and broke through the rest. It came free, coated with only a slight brownish residue.

He then switched the rock to his right hand and began to cut through the adhesive that bound his midsection to the tree stump. This took longer as there was far more of it, but the impromptu blade did its work with surprising efficiency. In another minute or two, he was free.

Chunks of the brown, cheese-like material fell away from him and he ripped the remainder free with his hands. Once he was clear, he resisted the urge to stand immediately. First, he had to determine how closely the primaraptor sentries might be watching.

Warily, he looked around. Their silhouettes were still visible beyond the dome, but they seemed relaxed and not focused on him or his activities. They paid hardly any attention to the interior of their lair, perhaps still focused on threats from the outside after they’d repelled the egg-snatching foray by the snakecat a few moments before.

Jan turned to the left and rolled onto his hands and knees. His legs and feet flared with pinpricks of tingling pain as the blood began to circulate to them again. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious while attached to the stump, but it must have been a while.

Cautiously, he made another quick visual scan to ensure he was not being watched. The mutants standing guard had still not noticed him. He gave silent thanks for that as well as the rock and crawled over to his fellow hauptmann.

“Klaus,” he said softly, “I will give you my back-up knife after I free you. I will use this rock since you are weaker right now.”

The man tensed and his eyes narrowed.

“Weaker from exposure, I mean.” He sighed in exasperation. “Now is not the time to interpret the basic facts of our situation as insults.”

As he said this, he drew the real knife at his hip which had been inaccessible before, covered as it was with the brown phlegm. With it, he was able to slash and saw through the adhesive that bound the other man’s hands much more quickly than he would have with the rock.

The brown paste fell away and Klaus’s arms slumped to the ground. He groaned in a weak voice and struggled to his knees.

“You can do this, Klaus,” he encouraged him. “Take this and start to free the other men who look like they might still be able to move and fight.” He pressed his weapon into his palm.

“Is that an order, Hauptmann?” he gasped and turned it into a laugh, but he crawled over to the nearest captive soldier regardless.

Jan scuttled past him at a faster pace toward the next man down from the one Klaus had chosen. He had thought about moving in the opposite direction, but that would essentially divide their force, and splitting up was rarely a good idea.

The first man he encountered was half-conscious but otherwise, looked like he might be capable once freed. He stabbed and ripped at his bonds to free first his hands and then his feet.

“What is…are we…” He groaned and blinked himself awake.

“We are still in the Zoo,” he told him. “Take your knife and cut that man over there free. I will work on another. We need to get everyone up and moving again so that we can all get out of here alive.”

The man nodded and shuffled in the direction he had indicated.

Jan glanced at Klaus. The other hauptmann was functioning, albeit slowly. If anything, he did better than he would have expected. Being released had inspired him to draw upon all that remained of his strength. And stroking his ego had probably helped, as well.

Satisfied that his comrade was doing his part, he crawled over to the next man in line. Once he was cut loose, the numbers of those liberated would increase to five, since Klaus had released his first. It wasn’t a bad start for what was, essentially, a prison break.

The soldier in front of him now lay more or less flat on his back beside a long, thick root rising from the earth. He was a young man, perhaps twenty-five at most, with the rank insignia of a hauptgefreiter and looked fairly healthy despite probably having been there as long as Klaus had. His blue eyes were open and stared upward. He had been secured to the root with an extended band of phlegm across his wrists and hips, plus another gob of it to attach his left ankle.

“Stay calm, hauptgefreiter,” he whispered to the man. “I will cut you loose. Then, you have to stay quiet and help me free everyone else. Can you do that?”

He did not respond. Jan frowned but went to work cutting and gouging at the phlegm near the man’s wrists. It took a while to free the man’s hands since the tool he had for the job was not optimal. He glanced at the name badge—Linzer.

“Hauptgefreiter Linzer, answer me,” he snapped in a soft but sharp tone. “Raise your hands to your face.”

The soldier jerked but did as he was instructed very slowly. His hands trembled so much that he was suddenly afraid the man was sick. He looked at his palms and began to make an odd sound that seemed to be a mixture of both laughter and crying, and his eyes grew shiny and wet.

“Get a hold on yourself, Linzer,” he said as he hacked at the brown phlegm that bound the man’s waist. “You will be free in a moment and I need your help, dammit.”

Linzer’s gaze snapped toward him and his eyes widened. Then, he looked up, to the sides, and all around. His face fell in an expression of abject horror and lengthened as his mouth started to open.

“Oh, scheisse…” Jan murmured as a sinking sensation roiled within him. The soldier must have been delirious and now felt as though he were waking from a dream, only to find that his actual situation resembled a nightmare.

He was about to scream.

The hauptmann pushed himself forward and over the younger man with the intention to cover his mouth, but he wasn’t fast enough. His high-pitched wail broke the relative silence of the domed nest and rose in volume and power as he found his breath. Jan knelt directly over him and clamped a hand hard over his mouth as he looked him straight in the eye.

“Be quiet!” he ordered.

A screeching hiss uttered behind them. His gut and spirit sank together even further and into the morass of near despair. This was not going well.

He turned slowly. The nearest primaraptor had leaped into action and the silhouette grew larger as it approached the edge of the dome. It moved directly to the flap-covered “door” and pushed its way in.

Jan realized his error at once —the badly-weakened Klaus was now closest to the entrance while he had moved farther away. Now, they had no choice but to fight and he might be the only one still both strong enough and with enough presence of mind to do so.

Without hesitation, he snatched up another, bigger, rounder stone, bolted to his feet, and charged the creature. Its focus had been on Klaus but now, it turned to look at this new threat, slight indecision visible in the cold gaze of its fiendishly intelligent eyes.

He hurled the big rock. The mutant sidestepped it deftly, but the brief moment it took to do this gave him an opening. He lunged toward it, thrust his makeshift stone knife viciously toward its eye, and jumped back almost immediately when it lashed out with its foot-claw. It swung its arms toward him and he ducked under them and stabbed the creature’s stomach. The jagged rock pierced the skin, but barely.

Before he could dart away, one of the monster’s hands descended on his head to both smack and shove him. The blow contained sufficient force to tumble him, but it at least allowed him to roll away from the beast. Within a second, it covered the short distance and launched another assault.

“Klaus! Linzer!” Jan grunted as he raised his arms in front of his face and tried desperately to protect himself. He fully expected the primaraptor to either bite his arms off or simply disembowel him with its foot claw but instead, the creature grasped his arms with its nimble hands and pried them apart. He and his attacker stared at each other, face to face.

Klaus threw a rock—seemingly the same one his comrade had thrown a moment before—and it struck the mutant’s shoulder but glanced off. It opened its mouth and its jaws clamped over Jan’s head.

He screamed but the sound was mostly muffled by the raptor’s gullet. Thick, hot, stinking wetness engulfed him, and the jaws and teeth dug into his chin and the back of his neck as the creature swung him to the side. The motion was so sharp, so fast, and so powerful, that his right leg was twisted out of place as he fell in its grasp, and he shrieked in pain. There was no doubt that the muscle was torn and possibly the tendon sprained. He was fucked.

His captor released his head from its mouth and simply dragged him with its hands. He gasped, barely able to see or breathe through the coating of saliva and brownish phlegm-residue that covered his face. His right calf throbbed with agony and he was unable to move, think, or fight in the slightest.

The primaraptor hauled him toward the center of the nest. As the slime fell away from his face, he saw that two more of the creatures had entered the dome and subdued Klaus, Linzer, and the other two men. They threw them around, bit, and clawed them without killing them, and hacked up more wads of disgusting organic glue to return them to their imprisonment. Hauptgefreiter Linzer continued to scream in terror.

Jan screamed too from the unendurable pain as he was dragged over rows upon rows of eggs. Finally, the mutant found a suitable place and simply dropped him on a bare patch of ground. His leg blazed horribly, and he felt like he might vomit. The creature hissed at him, turned, and left.

“Uhhh.” He moaned and tried to orient himself. He had at least landed in a natural position, rather than twisted in some awful way that would require him to try to move his leg. His face contorted in a grimace, he raised a hand to his face and wiped away the rest of the raptor’s repulsive mouth-gunk to smear it instead on the dirt at his side.

From the center, the vast nest somehow looked even bigger. He had, at first, judged it to be smaller. This was practically a fortress and he sensed that they were at least partially underground—perhaps in a sinkhole or ravine or something.

Not that it mattered much, relative to his current situation. He might be able to drag himself toward the edge of the dome, slowly and torturously—perhaps.

“What a fine test of German stoicism this will be,” he muttered and thought of how his Saxon and Prussian ancestors on his mother’s side might even have found humor in the situation. His father’s ancestors would probably have preferred to turn to God for comfort. He could not yet decide which was the wiser option.

For now, he allowed his head to fall to the side so he now stared directly at a cluster of three eggs. One of them began to twitch.

Chapter Forty-Five

Laura closed the door to Ernest’s bedroom-cum-beauty-chamber behind her. Now that he could no longer see how she’d react, she allowed her face to fall and her shoulders to slump. Everything had worked out perfectly until he had given his one condition for allowing the mission.

“Most of the men will be in the mess hall or the pub at this hour,” Leutnant Ferris said, back to her usual brusque and businesslike self. There was no trace of gloom in her demeanor but then again, her military training might simply mean she was better at hiding it. “We should go there and talk to them.”

“I suppose it’s worth a try.” She sighed.

The Bull led the way down the halls. She strode with astonishing speed for such a short, bulky woman, and the researcher struggled to keep up. It didn’t help that she did not feel like hurrying at all.

She supposed she ought to wait and see how things would go but she could not shake the oppressive miasma of intense despondency that had settled over her like a thick, black cloud. The task that awaited them would not be an easy one, and she felt as though she had already failed in advance. The idiot director had found a way to sabotage her even when she thought she’d had him over the ropes.

His bedroom lay at the far corner of the base’s main section and was therefore much farther from the cafeteria than his office, which lay approximately in the center. They had a little time, then, to talk.

“Do you really think this will work?” she asked and tried to sound as though she were merely curious and asking the woman’s professional opinion. The despair probably came out in her voice, though.

“Oh, it may,” Ferris replied. She did not venture any further commentary.

“Well, I suppose we might at least manage a single squad. That would be slightly better than nothing.”

“Ja,” agreed The Bull. “But I think it will be more than that.”

Laura sighed again. “If you say so, Leutnant Ferris. I do hope you’re not simply trying to cheer me up, though.”

Roden’s condition was that he would only permit this rescue mission if the task force was composed entirely of volunteers. He refused to order anyone to die for this. The mission was too risky and was mounted to save men who were probably already dead. It would have been the kind of order that was bad for morale and therefore bad for publicity.

Laura wanted to hope that, on some level, this meant the director cared at least slightly about his troops’ lives. But then again, the lives of Jan, Klaus, and any others who might be with them would all be forfeit if they did not try.

“There is no way this will ever possibly work,” she remarked and shook her head as they approached the cafeteria. Ernest had at least agreed to her condition that she not be sent back to the UK unless specifically ordered otherwise. But right now, she had other concerns.

“Shut up,” The Bull retorted without turning or stopping. She didn’t sound angry, merely annoyed. “You do not know these things the way I do.”

“Perhaps you’re right. But from what I do know about Ernest, I can’t help but wonder if he set this condition of his to spite us because he knew it would fail.”

“He does not know these things the way I do either.” Ferris grunted scornfully.

They reached the mess hall and pushed through the doors. Perhaps thirty men and women were scattered about within, eating and drinking alone, in some cases, but more often separated into clusters that sat and talked or seemed to play card or dice games. Dull murmurs mixed with the sound of the overhead TV and food smells wafted on the thick air.

“Hello there, Miss Laura,” Sonny the cook said when he appeared behind the counter. “Can I get you and Miss Ferris there something to eat?”

“I’m sorry, Sonny, but not now,” she replied. “We have some rather important business.”

“As you say. There’s always food for later if you want it.” He drifted into the kitchen again.

She marveled at the man. He was so pleasant and yet seemed unable to grasp the seriousness of anything. Perhaps those two factors were related, she thought. He was very nearly the opposite of Jan.

But this was not the time to contemplate Sonny’s character. She cast a hasty glance at her companion and drew her focus back to the task at hand. So far, the woman did nothing and said nothing. It seemed she would have to take matters into her own hands. She turned toward the throng of soldiers before her.

“Excuse me,” she said, in a moderately loud voice. It was swallowed and muffled by the general clamor. She cleared her throat and tried again with more volume, almost shouting this time. “Excuse me! I have something important to ask you all.”

Two or three of the troops glanced at her and returned to whatever they were doing.

“Well,” she said to Ferris, “this doesn’t seem to be working at all so far.”

The Bull cleared her throat. “Achtung!” she bellowed. The walls virtually shook.

The entire cafeteria instantly went dead silent, save for the stream of German voices that issued from the television, and all eyes—now wide and alert—looked toward where the two women stood.

The leutnant, with a satisfied expression, nodded and gestured toward Laura, then fell back a step.

“Right, well then,” she began. “Listen, all of you, I have something very important to say. Several people from this base—officers and regular soldiers alike—are trapped in the Zoo as we speak. Those new primaraptor monsters captured several of them on the last couple of excursions and have them imprisoned there. We have reason to believe that most of them are still alive, although they’re in terrible danger and may not be alive for much longer.”

Half of the soldiers nodded but they seemed to wait for her to get to the point as though they already knew—or at least suspected—everything she’d already said. Some of them might not understand English, either, although it seemed the majority at this base had at least a working knowledge of the language.

She took a breath and pressed on. “We are trying to organize a rescue mission, which will depart immediately. However, because it’s likely to be very dangerous, Director Roden has refused to outright order anyone to go. Instead, it’s to be a volunteer mission. So, I have to ask, would anyone be willing to come with us into the Zoo for this? It’s hazardous but it’s for a good cause.”

Some of the soldiers stared blankly at her. Others frowned or narrowed their eyes while they seemed to debate what she’d said. All of them likely knew how easily the Zoo could kill them and were probably aware that people who’d been captured by those beasts had very low life expectancies. A few mumbled to one another and some shook their heads.

No one, however, leapt to their feet with fists pumping in the air. Laura felt the black cloud descend on her again.

She looked a little desperately at The Bull. Oddly enough, the woman was smiling in a strange, grim way.

“Tell them the rest,” Ferris suggested.

Laura turned to the group of reluctant rescuers. “Please,” she said, “it’s to save Jan. Hauptmann Shalwar. He was taken too earlier today.”

The eyes staring at her widened again, and several of the soldiers looked startled. It was as though the air in the mess hall were water and she’d run a massive jolt of electricity through it.

Eleven or twelve soldiers stood at once. A few more quickly joined them and pushed to their feet with a kind of proud determination. Shortly after, the rest also stood. Soldat Gunter Grün was among them.

“Ja,” half of them said at once.

She was too stunned to react at once. After a moment, though, the black cloud rose, dissolved, and vanished. She smiled. “Well, then, that’s good to hear. Let’s find a ton of guns and a few of those big armored trucks, shall we?”

Chapter Forty-Six

After being dumped onto his back—and his injured leg—Jan had felt that he really needed a moment to rest before he attempted to crawl out of the egg-pit and initiate another half-baked escape from this nest. However, the sight of the eggs near him beginning to twitch and shudder changed his mind. In fact, it motivated him very effectively.

He groaned and turned over, starting from his left side so he could at least leave his right leg on the ground. Still, it tormented him with searing waves of agony for having to move at all and having pressure applied to it. He lay on his stomach and his teeth bit into the dirt as his hands clenched into fists and tears ran down his face.

Quite simply, he couldn’t do this. He could not crawl all the way out of this nest in time to escape the hatching baby primaraptors that would almost certainly look for their first breakfast. It was over.

His mind, however, reminded him that it would be better to make the attempt anyway. It insisted that he force himself to crawl through the sea of eggs, regardless of the horrible anguish it would cause his leg, and then try once more to free his comrades. But it would be almost impossible not to scream in pain as he did so, which would attract the sentries once more and put an end to the futile endeavor very quickly.

It would also be better to go out fighting. He knew that but could barely move, and he had no weapons. Making the useless effort to resist, at this point, would only prolong his suffering.

Jan tried to console himself with the fact that he had at least tried to fight the mutant that had come into the dome after Hauptgefreiter Linzer had wailed in terror. And all things considered, as a mere man armed with a small piece of rock against such a fearsome predator, he had given a decent account of himself.

But he had lost and died. It was purely semantics. He was already dead as of several minutes before when the creature had disarmed him and twisted his leg. The time had now come to start thinking of himself in the past tense.

No one would come to rescue him, he realized. His fellow soldiers within this dome were all physically and mentally wasted by their long imprisonment, and the handful he had freed were imprisoned once again.

The people at the base would not risk a rescue mission. Klaus and the remainder of his team had likely already been written off as dead and now, he was merely one more casualty to add to that list. Director Roden would send word to Berlin, and Major Reisenegger would return from Germany with one or two new hauptmanns to replace him and Klaus, perhaps along with another slew of rookies to be fed into the panting, drooling emerald meat-grinder that was the Zoo.

Disheartened, he stared into the dim brown light and felt the damp, lukewarm earth beneath his hands. No one, he thought, would really even remember him. A few troops might say he had been a good officer and the German government might mention as much. But that would be about it. He hadn’t achieved anything sufficiently spectacular or important to make it into the military history books.

And he essentially had no family. His parents were dead. He was not on speaking terms with their extended families, his brother, his ex-wives, or even his children.

Michael. He still hadn’t tried to call.

The hauptmann glanced at the eggs again. All three in the cluster beside him shuddered in place now, and the one that had begun to do so first sprouted cracks. Two or three others nearby seemed to stir and prepare to hatch as well.

The primaraptors, he thought, were doing everything they could to protect and provide for their children. They were wise creatures in that regard. They safeguarded their legacy.

Jan T Shalwar did not have a legacy beyond the simple biological fact of his offspring’s existence. Michael did not care about him.

“And most of that is my own fault,” he concluded, speaking in a voice so soft the breath barely escaped his lips. He had been too guarded, too distant, and too beholden to his own rules and too focused on his work rather than the people he loved. That was why all three of the women he had committed to had decided to break said commitments, and the children they had raised all believed him to be a shithead who was irrelevant to their lives.

He sighed and shook his head gently against the mud beneath it.

As the first of the eggs began to fragment into random pieces and the small lizard head and monkey fingers protruded from the gaps, he felt around for a weapon with which to make his pitiful last stand—even though he was not exactly standing at the moment, he thought with grim humor. His left hand closed on a rock about the size of a golf ball. That was better than nothing, he supposed. Both Wotan and Allah would see that he had died clutching an armament, having not entirely given up.

His hand tightened around his paltry weapon and he looked at the creatures that were about to end his existence. The first of the newly hatched primaraptors—tiny, bald, and slime-covered—blinked and flexed its small limbs, opened and closed its mouth, and adjusted to its first few moments of life outside the eggshell. The two other eggs beside had also cracked sufficiently for their inhabitants to push the shell-pieces aside and poke their heads and tails out. It would not take long at all for them to realize they were hungry.

Jan’s left hand clutched the rock with calm deliberation. He had a few seconds yet. There was, technically, a very, very slim chance that Michael might call, but he chuckled to himself when he contemplated the actual odds of this—a one placed next to an extremely large number with an arseload of zeroes. Besides, he wouldn’t receive it in the Zoo anyway, so it was a moot but somehow inspiring thought. Hope in the face of one’s imminent demise was a strange thing.

The first baby raptor noticed him now and hissed.

He dragged in a breath and prepared himself for his final skirmish but someone shouted and heavy footfalls thumped from somewhere beyond and above where he lay. The sound, impossible to mistake, was of men in boots who jogged purposefully toward a goal.

“What?” He gasped and wondered if he was delirious. “How?” This could not be. The odds of rescue, at this nadir of his hopes, was beyond calculation.

The silence erupted into the unmistakable cracks and booms of guns blasting away, and fiery orange light illuminated the lower reaches of the dome-nest. He heard isolated fragments of human voices speaking in both German and English.

He craned his neck to look up. Near the rim of the broad and shallow depression that contained the myriad eggs, one of the adult primaraptors raced forward to join the battle as tracer rounds streaked around it. It was furious, almost crazed, perhaps driven to a frenzy of bloodlust by the fact that this violence took place near the sanctuary of its young. Its fur had turned a deep, bloody red.

A soldier came into sight holding a blazing rifle, his mouth open both to equalize the sonic pressure in his skull and to issue a battle cry. Under the onslaught of his fire, the mutant was driven back and blood spurted from half a dozen wounds. It stumbled out of sight, quite possibly dead or at the very least, badly wounded.

The man who had shot it was young and his uniform was improperly secured in a slightly ridiculous fashion to accommodate the medical padding on his shoulder. He was, Jan realized, none other than Soldat Grün.

The hauptmann laughed. Against his better judgment and professional discipline, something like joy swelled within him. It was too soon to be certain that he would make it, but also too late to presume himself dead. “Maybe, then. Just maybe…”

The first of the baby raptors squealed at him and attacked.

Even in his current, ravaged state, his reflexes were still quite sharp, and his left hand with the rock-chunk came up as the little brownish creature pounced. Its small jaws and sharp teeth sank into the muscle of his left forearm but before it could rip the flesh away, he simply pounded the arm against the ground and the mutant with it. The creature released him and lay stunned.

He stretched across with his right arm and seized its neck to hold it in place as his left hand brought the small rock down on its skull once, twice, and three times. The creature whined and writhed as its skull fractured and caved in, then stopped moving. He gritted his teeth and allowed a bellow of pain as he rolled onto his back again.

There were more, however. The two whose eggs had been closest to the first were free now. When he glanced to his other side, Jan saw two more, newly hatched and getting their bearings. He had successfully vanquished a single creature the size of a kitten but being virtually crippled, he had almost no chance against four of them at once. He looked at the ridge where he’d seen Grün.

“Ich bin hier unten!” he shouted. “Down here!” No one seemed to have noticed him yet, but the sounds of humans and human weaponry had grown louder.

One of the small primaraptors to his left pounced toward his side. His hand holding the stone intercepted it, but he only struck a glancing blow that simply knocked it off course. It stumbled farther down the length of his body and sank its teeth into his thigh instead. He gritted his teeth and growled in pain. For its small size and virtual infancy, the little bastard’s biting power was immense.

He dropped the rock—he would not have been able to hit the creature with enough force with it at the very end of his reach like this—and instead, forced himself to lean upward and forward enough to grab the raptor by the neck and squeeze. Its jaws loosened and left a bloody strip of flesh hanging, and it thrashed in an effort to lacerate his wrist with its feet.

As he tried to strangle this one, however, the others lunged toward him. He broke the neck of the one in his grasp as the others snapped at his arms and head.

With his right arm, he elbowed one that had aimed for his right cheek and it sprawled with a squawk. The other two closed in. All it would take was for one of them to get past his arms and attack his belly or his throat, and he was done.

“Hey!” someone shouted.

Jan’s gaze rolled toward the voice as he struggled to fend the two creatures off. As he had done with the first one, he pounded the one to his right into the ground when it bit into his right arm. This time, his diminutive attacker retreated to plan a new line of attack.

Then three single-shots, definitely from a pistol, rang out and the baby primaraptor’s head and neck exploded in a shower of bone, muscle, brain matter, and blood. One of the bullets kicked up a spray of mud only a few centimeters from his side but none of them struck him.

A form rushed down through the eggs toward him. It lashed out with a booted foot and kicked the last of the four hungry mutants hard enough to careen it out of sight. The one he had elbowed a moment before simply stood and stared dumbly at this intruder. The pistol blazed twice more, and blood spurted as the creature fell dead.

He dragged in a rasping breath and looked up.

Dr. Laura Curie smiled at him in an almost goofy, ecstatic way, as though she were as pleasantly surprised with the situation as he was.

“You know,” she said, “it’s almost unseemly how often I keep saving you.”

The hauptmann allowed himself a dry chuckle, even amidst the pain from his multiple wounds and the noise and chaos around them. “Thank you,” he replied. “Your help seems to…help.”

“Well,” she retorted smartly, “I wouldn’t have to save you like this if you simply followed the damn rules.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Laura stretched her hand out, intending to help Jan stand. Her elation at seeing him alive—and having even managed to rescue him herself at the last moment—faded somewhat when she saw how badly injured he was.

“Wait,” he began and made no effort to take her hand. “I injured my right leg. The calf muscle is badly strained and perhaps worse. I can barely move and may not be able to stand.”

“Well, shit,” she replied. That did complicate things, but she was sure they could manage somehow. “I can help you up the slope, but you’ll need to work with me. Let me see if someone else can…” She looked around. “Gunter!” she yelled.

Soldat Grün walked on the rim of the depression directly above them. He stopped and looked at her.

“I’ve found Hauptmann Shalwar. His leg is badly injured, though. Help me get him up.”

“Ja,” the young man agreed and rushed down toward them. He glanced at the thousands upon thousands of eggs as he wove his way between them, clearly uneasy at the prospect of their hatching. She felt much the same way. At any moment, they might crack open and disclose a small army of miniature assassins that could easily overwhelm them. But right now, she was focused on Jan.

“I should be able to brace myself with my left leg,” he said, “if you two can lift me from either side and keep my right leg from moving too much. Do you have medical supplies?”

“In the trucks, yes, and our medic might have some basic mobile things, but we don’t have crutches with us at the moment,” she informed him with a frown. “We couldn’t bring the vehicles all the way down into the nest and had to come in on foot. I would have liked to simply drive through the wall, but this place is mostly underground, actually, so that wasn’t feasible.”

He grunted, his mind already focused on the struggle ahead.

As Grün came up beside them, she noticed that the sounds of gunfire above and around them had grown more sporadic and the voices of the team sounded more relaxed. There were also sounds of men pulling their knives and working to free the other prisoners, some of whom moaned or wailed, given the pitiable state they were in.

Still, for the time being, they had won. But they had to hurry.

“Gunter, you’re stronger than I am,” she pointed out, “so I’ll pick Jan up on his left side so he can use that leg to partially support himself. You pick him up from the right and be careful not to disturb his right leg any more than necessary.”

Jan repeated and probably clarified these instructions to the young man in German before they set to work.

Laura knelt, wrapped one arm under his left shoulder, and put another hand under his waist. Across the hauptmann’s supine form, she saw Gunter kneel as well and put his hands beneath him. He propped the injured right leg up at an angle and bent the knee, and Jan uttered a sharp, ragged cry of pain. She was alarmed, but she realized that he had probably told Gunter to do this simply to get his leg into the proper position to be lifted and then to avoid touching it thereafter.

“All right, heave,” she said. They both rose and took his weight—which wasn’t actually all that much—between them while he clenched his jaw and beads of sweat ran down his reddening face. His left hand clutched her jacket, but it trembled noticeably. She tried to be gentle as he got his left leg under him and they eased him slowly into a standing position with his right leg still bent to keep it off the ground the way one would carry a leg if it were in a cast.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she remarked.

“My opinion may be different than yours,” Jan responded and panted with exertion and pain. “But thank you. Now, help me up the slope. I will have to hop on one leg. Soldat Grün should be able to mostly support me on the right but having you on my left will improve my balance.”

They did as he instructed and worked their way up, weaving through the masses of eggs. Slowly, the rest of the dome came into view.

The interior of the nest was enormous. It had looked big enough from above-ground as they’d started down into the natural pit into which it had been built, but Laura was fairly sure she’d underestimated its size even then. Furthermore, it seemed to have other, extra chambers that branched off into the depths of the earth.

And that, more than anything, was what worried her.

“How did you find us?” Jan asked.

“Well, part of it was pure dumb luck, to be honest,” she admitted. “But part of it was also me being a brilliant scientist, of course, and your men being good trackers.”

“That sounds…accurate,” said the hauptmann.

“I remembered almost exactly where that the creature dragged you in at the edge of the Zoo,” she explained. “I thought it would be better to come back for you with proper backup.”

“Yes.” He breathed raggedly, still struggling as he supported himself between the shoulders of his rescuers. “Now go on.”

“We drove the armored trucks straight into the jungle at that point, moved slowly enough that the men could keep an eye out for any disturbances that a dinosaur dragging a grown man might make, and mostly went in a straight line. We did come to an area where they weren’t quite certain which way to go, but as it so happens, X marks the spot.”

“Another marking,” he surmised.

“Yes. Everyone wisely heeded my suggestion that we go that way and soon, we almost literally stumbled onto this…place. It’s really quite extraordinary. The primaraptors found what is essentially a large pit and built this dome from their own phlegm as well as a few trees growing at the bottom, although the top protrudes slightly above the ground. Unfortunately, there was no way in from up above with the vehicles, so we had to dismount and take a ravine that turned into a tunnel. We might also have climbed down the slopes on either side and ended up at the base of the dome, which would have avoided the tunnel. There is a relatively level area at the base and it seems the creatures use at least one entrance there. But it is very steep and treacherous, and we knew we couldn’t carry wounded soldiers up it so had to find an alternative.”

Jan nodded. “That snakecat must have climbed down thinking its agility would give it the advantage. Anyway, good,” he said, “but a tunnel is dangerous. It can become a trap very quickly like that passage through the bushes we crawled through earlier when the locust attacked us. We must be careful.”

“True,” she replied. “At least we haven’t run into any locusts yet.”

They crested the slope and found themselves among the rest of the team, who were regrouping near the edge of the nest not far from where they’d come in.

“Hauptmann Shalwar!” someone exclaimed.

Soldat Grün replied to this in German, his tone amiable and excited, and a few others discussed their rescue of the man in similar tones. Their eyes shone. They had succeeded at what they’d set out to do—so far.

“Hey!” a voice bellowed, and everyone immediately fell silent. A few soldiers parted to make way for the stout form that almost charged out from between them.

“Good to see you, Leutnant Ferris,” Jan said.

The Bull looked at him, her hands on her wide hips. Then, she extended one hand and began counting on her fingers, starting with her thumb in the odd German way.

“Rule Number One… Five… Eleven… Twenty-Eight… and perhaps a few more,” she snapped.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he retorted but grinned despite his harsh tone. “Be silent, woman.”

A few soldiers laughed and The Bull smiled. She seemed about to pounce and crush him in a giant bear hug and Laura started to raise a hand to discourage this, but Ferris noticed the hauptmann’s injuries at the last moment and settled for a gentle embrace.

“Do not get out of line again,” she said.

“Do not forget your rank,” he chided as he caught his breath.

Laura realized that she had a certain duty to disrupt this pleasant moment. “All right, we need to get moving as quickly as possible,” she said. “It’s not safe to stay here. And I don’t mean for the usual reasons that nowhere in the Zoo is ever safe.”

Jan looked at her with a frown. “Why? What do you mean?”

She was pleased that he considered her opinion worthy of important attention but wished it could be a little more optimistic.

Before she answered, she took about two seconds to scan the scene around them to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important and to form a quick mental summary of their overall situation and the positions of their team.

First and most importantly, they had won their brief battle against the primaraptors that guarded the nest. There had only been five of them versus thirty-odd humans, and although still fast, strong, and deadly, the creatures were not as effective in the open without the jungle’s foliage to mask their tactics. Two men had been wounded but none killed. All five of the mutants now lay dead.

They had also located and freed all the other troops which included Hauptmann Grossman and the remainder of his team, plus a couple of men snatched on previous missions. There were twenty-five of them in all. According to what Ferris had told her during their drive, there should have been slightly more, which meant that the soldiers not accounted for were almost certainly dead, having already been eaten somewhere else.

Furthermore, four of the twenty-five had also died of natural causes over the course of their long captivity and half of the surviving twenty-one barely held on, certainly in no condition to fight. The rescuers had moved the casualties to the center of the formation. There were enough of them that she almost wished they’d brought four vehicles instead of three. It might be a tight fit.

Laura looked at the German soldiers gathered before and around her. “The danger is that we haven’t seen the entire inside of this place,” she began, “and I’ve noticed that the creatures we’ve fought here are all males. Pardon me, but it seems they have mammalian anatomy in addition to fur. I saw that before but it didn’t quite register until now. I’m not sure that any of those we’ve encountered thus far have been female, although I have seen one female—the one who pursued us through the Zoo.”

“Yes, so?” someone asked.

“That suggests,” she continued, “that instead of a usual half-and-half gender ratio, they might have a…queen or something—like bees or ants. Something that’s laid all these eggs. For all we know they might have other nests too—young females could go out and start their own colonies elsewhere as a way to expand their numbers.”

There was silence for a brief instant and then, from the middle of the troop where the wounded were being tended to, someone said: “I saw something.”

A few people parted to let the man speak. Laura saw that it was a fellow slightly younger than Jan, very muscular but who looked severely weakened by his imprisonment.

“What, Klaus?” Jan asked.

“Soon after they brought us here…” The man exhaled and seemed to gather his thoughts. “I saw something move around in the shadows. I thought maybe I was dreaming. It was”—he spread his hands expansively before him—“big.”

“Let us get out of here,” Jan ordered. “Move the wounded first. We—”

“That!” Klaus snapped, his voice pitched higher now. He stared, wide-eyed, and pointed somewhere beyond them. “Exactly like that.”

Everyone turned and looked.

At first, Laura noticed nothing. The man had indicated a distant point far toward the other side of the egg-pit and shrouded in deep brown gloom. She squinted and finally saw it, and her heart suddenly felt like it had dropped into her stomach and knocked both organs out her ass to leave a drafty hollow within her.

Within the shadows was another shadow—a silhouette even darker than the ones around it. The creature was enormous, much like a primaraptor but taller and thicker, gross and bulbous. It now moved toward them and increased speed.

“Scheisse…” someone gasped.

“Gehen! Move!” Jan ordered.

Four soldiers ran ahead toward the mouth of the tunnel they’d used to penetrate the dome to clear the way and make sure it was safe. The others helped the injured and unconscious in the same direction, hurrying as best they could without doing further harm. Another four remained near the rear to cover their retreat.

Laura focused on helping Jan limp toward their only route of escape. As she did so, she glanced back.

The huge dark shadow was closer now and followed the outside of the nest to avoid the eggs. Other, smaller silhouettes materialized around it. These approached far more rapidly.

“There are more of them,” she announced and raised her voice. “Coming from that direction.”

“Rear guard—full auto, suppressing fire,” Jan commanded. “No grenades. The dome could collapse on us.”

The three men and one woman who guarded the rear of their formation did as ordered. In unison, their rifles roared to life and illuminated the dark nest with flashes of yellow and orange luminescence as they sprayed their entire magazines in the general direction of the advancing mass.

One of the smaller shadows—undoubtedly another of the male guardian primaraptors—fell and stiffened, and the others in front slowed, possibly wounded. The distance was too great and visibility too low for them to have killed any others, Laura realized. Unfortunately, the massive shadow behind them still pressed forward and picked up momentum as it urged its great bulk forward.

The four rear guards quickly reloaded and hurried to keep up with those in the center. Speed was probably their only chance now. The ground, Laura realized, was echoing with the pounding footsteps.

The first of the troops helped the wounded file into the tunnel. It was only wide enough for them to stand about two abreast, so the formation hit a bottleneck and slowed as they tried to help the worst injured in first but without delaying the egress of everyone else. Ferris and a couple of the sergeants issued orders loudly and provided guidance while they also took a hands-on approach to move the process forward.

Soon, the only people left outside the tunnel were Laura, Jan, Gunter, Klaus, and the four rear guards.

“Slow them again. Burst fire,” Jan said to the four.

She glanced back. There had to be at least eight or nine more mutants rushing toward them, their shrieking hisses now audible, and behind them, coming into focus now in the dim light, was their queen.

“Gott in himmel!” one of the rear guards exclaimed.

The primaraptor queen was much like her servants in basic physiognomy but at least twice their size in build and morbidly, hideously obese. Such was the bulk of her bloated, corpulent form that she almost resembled a gigantic toad-creature more than a lizard. She had large, sagging, swaying breasts and long pointed nails at the ends of her monkey-like hands. Her huge mouth gaped to reveal razor-sharp teeth and a long purplish tongue, and her eyes rolled crazily in her skull. The fur atop her head resembled a tattered mohawk, and both it and the fur on her body were bright red with killing intent.

“Oh, dear,” Laura muttered.

The queen roared. Somehow, it was both horribly deep and gravel-edged and high-pitched to make it distinctly feminine. It reminded her of what one might expect of a female opera singer who had destroyed her own voice by excessive smoking and drinking. A tremor shuddered through the earth.

“We might need explosives to kill that,” someone exclaimed.

“Just get us out of here,” Jan snapped.

They stumbled into the tunnel. No sooner had they passed the threshold and stepped into the almost total blackness of the subterranean passage than someone toward the front shouted something in German. Whatever it was the man said, he was clearly not happy, and she almost froze in sudden terror.

“The tunnel is blocked,” the hauptmann translated. The bottom seemed to drop out of his voice and he hung his head. “Damn.”

“How could it be blocked? It was perfectly clear only a few minutes ago!” Laura raged. “Either some of those things snuck around and collapsed on us deliberately, or else—”

The tunnel shook. A few particles of earth dislodged themselves from the ceiling and fell onto her head. “Bloody hell,” she said. “That disgusting creature is a hazard to the integrity of its own lair, for God’s sake. Although she probably doesn’t move around very much most of the time.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Jan seemed to pause and think. “Get everyone in. We must try to dig ourselves out and if that does not work, we stand and fight. Troops farther back can pass extra rifle magazines to our rear guards.”

His orders were relayed down the line in German. She heard but could not see the soldiers who had led the way into the tunnel attempt to dig through the cave-in. The worst part was that she had no idea how bad the blockage was or how long it might take to clear it.

The four rear guards positioned themselves such that all four could shoot at once, two low in front and two high behind.

They did not have long to wait. Four primaraptor warrior males appeared in the circle of dim light at the bottom of the tunnel. They shrieked and hissed in rage but before they could advance, the troops opened fire.

Laura reeled and opened her mouth. The cacophony of the rifles was even worse in this small space and downright painful. Furthermore, it seemed to hasten the dislodging of dirt from above them.

All the mutants that had tried to rush them fell dead in oozing piles. Two more appeared and the soldiers cut them down as well. They now fired sequentially so the first two could reload while the next two covered them. She noticed that the gunfire had partially damaged the walls of the tunnel near its lower mouth.

The earth-shaking footsteps grew louder and a huge, ugly form covered the whole of the opening. The rear guards were about to fire when the tunnel collapsed again, this time at its other end. Black dirt, rocks, and mud avalanched to leave only a strip of visible space.

The queen put her hand through this and began to dig her way in.

“Well, now we’re entirely trapped,” she observed. “I don’t suppose we could get a report as to how things have progressed at the top end?”

A few people shouted to one another.

“It is useless,” Jan said. “They might need an hour to dig through, at this rate. And we cannot move at speed with all these wounded, including me.” He grimaced, and Laura, still supporting him on her aching shoulder, actually felt him fume with helpless anger.

“What do we do, Hauptmann?” Gunter asked. “They say you always come up with the best plans.”

“We can try to keep shooting at that monster until it dies, of course,” he grumbled, “but even the whole team may not have enough ammunition.”

To Laura’s surprise, he looked at her. “Dr. Curie,” he said. “You are the closest thing we have to an expert on these creatures and I do not have any brilliant solution. What would you suggest we do?”

She took a deep breath and thought of all those eggs and on the apparent fragility of the earthen ceiling above them.

“Actually,” she responded with a grin, “I have an idea.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Jan took a deep breath. They would take a major risk but Laura’s plan, as it so happened, was based on fairly sound military strategy. It might even work.

First, it would involve a diversion—a rather basic, obvious, and run-of-the-mill tactic, but one with an impressive pedigree of effectiveness. And animals such as their current enemies, intelligent though they were, were not exactly likely to have read Clausewitz or Sun Tzu or Lind.

Second, it would harken to the old precept of knowing thine enemy. He knew a fair amount about the way these things seemed to operate but Laura, despite her shorter period of experience, seemed to know more. There were advantages to being a scientist, he acknowledged. And when all parties involved in a conflict worked together and positioned themselves where they were strongest, all advantages were maximized.

But it would be dangerous, and they did not have much time.

“All right,” he said to Grün, who now supported him on his right side, as well as Laura and the four rear guards. “Is everyone ready?”

“Yes, sir,” they replied.

“Good. Laura, be careful. And that includes the rest of you. If we pull this off, no one has to die—all of us can make it out of here with our lives.”

The tunnel now trembled steadily as the bloated primaraptor queen heaved herself against the passage’s mouth. Her huge hands tore away chunks of fallen earth and widened the opening even more. She would not be able to fit into the tunnel herself as it was, but in her fury, she seemed ready to dig through the entire span of earth that separated her from her human enemies. The reality was that it would not take her long.

There was also the matter of her remaining warriors. From what Laura and the rear guards had reported, a few still lived. They had killed only six before the queen had blocked the passage.

The seven humans advanced toward the grotesque monstrosity that wanted desperately to tear them apart. He would have liked to order Ferris to aid him, but in the event of his death, the team would need a competent officer to lead the escape. Klaus barely remained conscious and was therefore unfit for command until he received proper medical attention.

The queen uttered another of her awful, hoarse, high-pitched roars as they approached, and his bowels clenched.

“Ready,” he said and raised his hand.

The four rear guards fell into position, two of them in the center prepared to fire high and low and the other two ready to either relieve them when they ran out of ammo or race beside Laura if they had to. She stood flat against the wall beside them. He and Soldat Grün would provide support and direction as needed.

He lowered his hand in a chopping motion. “Now.”

The two guards opened fire. Their rifles were set to three-round bursts and they squeezed off a couple, enough to stun the monstrosity and get her attention. Her massive reptilian eyes glared at them.

Laura ran. It was only a couple paces to the mouth of the tunnel and by now, the queen had dug away almost all the fallen debris. The researcher leapt over the rest of it and slipped past the obese creature’s side before she even realized what had happened. As soon as she was safely through, the soldiers fired again and drew a couple of trickles of blood this time.

“Three! Trei!” Laura cried.

“Dammit,” Jan cursed. “We go down.”

The soldiers advanced, taking single or triple-burst potshots at the massive primaraptor as they went. Ahead of them, Laura fired her pistol. At that, the queen turned and began to waddle away from them and the tunnel’s mouth toward the eggs.

“Go!” Jan ordered. Dr. Curie’s assumption had been correct.

The three riflemen and one riflewoman sprinted to get past the mutant to aid Laura and engage any other male raptors that might still be roving around. He knew he ought to stay back but he couldn’t. Instead, he ordered Gunter to help him to the passage’s mouth, where at least he could see what was going on and he and Grün would be able to provide minor covering fire.

He limped downward, braced against the soldat, and hefted his pistol. Of course, he would have to shoot it left-handed since his helper supported him by his right arm, but he could manage.

They stopped about two meters short of the opening. Rifle fire crackled and he took in the whole scene at once.

The rear guards had shot one of the three primaraptor males and engaged the other two. They had been forced to split up, partially because the mutants were on either side of the dome’s egg-pit and two of them needed to engage each one and partially to make way for the queen, who heaved herself toward the nursery of her many young.

Laura stood a short distance below the rim of the dip in the earth and had picked up one of the eggs. She raised it over her head in an aggressive posture and could easily smash it against the ground at any moment. The monster howled as she surged toward her and ignored everything else in her monomaniacal rage. Her fur had turned such a deep, dark shade of red that it was almost black.

“Come on, you big, fat-arsed old public-school, headmistress-type bitch,” the researcher shouted. “I can do more damage than this with ease.” She switched the egg to her left hand, drew her pistol, and fired it once toward the dome’s ceiling. A few fragments of wood and brown phlegm-crust twinkled down.

The queen howled again and continued her advance. The bulging rolls of her scaly flesh slipped over the edge of the decline and the sinking elevation aided her speed as she lumbered toward the woman who threatened her children.

Rifles continued to fire as the four troops battled the last two primaraptors. To the left, both the man and the woman had trapped the creature and fired into its head and torso to leave it ravaged and twitching while it was still a couple of meters away from them.

To his right, things had gone less well. The creature had advanced within a meter of them and one of the men tried to reload. Jan raised his pistol, but he could not get a clear shot without risking hitting the men. The one who was reloading stumbled in the mud, and the mutant lashed at him with its foot-claw to savage a long, bloody gash through his collarbone and throat. He fell back, choking on his own blood.

“Nein! Gott verdammt…” Jan snarled his fury. The other man raised his rifle and released a volley at point-blank range. A stream of lead cut through its neck and its head toppled a second or two ahead of its body.

The hauptmann shouted over his shoulder for someone else to come down and help them.

Ahead of them, near the middle of the great structure, the queen had almost reached Laura. She rolled the egg beside her, spun it down between others toward the deepest portion of the depression, and sprinted in the opposite direction, around the monster, and to the side.

The enormous monarch squirmed in place for an instant, not sure what to do. Then, she turned toward her quarry.

Someone from the tunnel ran down to help them as Jan had requested. As this soldier approached, the three remaining rear guards converged toward the position where he still leaned on Soldat Grün.

Laura had evaded the queen, crested the slope, and made her way toward them. The bloated monstrosity was right behind her. If this didn’t work, they might all be dead.

“Shoot at the ceiling!” he ordered.

All five soldiers with rifles, including Grün, opened fire, their guns upward at sharp angles and aimed toward the bent trees which supported the entire dome. Muzzles flared and the reports echoed in the vast space. Detritus fell from above.

Jan motioned to Laura to weave to the side. She saw him but seemed momentarily confused by what he meant before it dawned on her.

“Yes, I want to shoot the fucking monster behind you,” he snapped, although she probably couldn’t hear him over the noise of the guns.

She swerved aside to approach them at an angle, and the space between him and the queen was now clear. He raised his pistol in his left hand, exhaled, and aimed.

This would not be easy. The target was moving, he was using his non-dominant hand, and even if any stray bullets hit her, they wouldn’t do much damage. Still, it had to be done.

Again, and again, and again, he fired.

Sparks glinted off the big, scythe-like claw that grew from the mutant’s broad foot. Blood joined the sparks and two of her toes exploded at the same moment that his handgun clicked empty. The creature howled in pain and stopped her advance. He ejected his magazine and slapped in another.

Laura dashed up to them and ducked around and under the gunmen as they continued their barrage at the ceiling. A loud creaking sound was audible even with the rifles firing and immediately intensified to an earsplitting crack.

The queen, already halted in her implacable onslaught by the injury to her foot, now looked up.

The dome collapsed. Dozens if not hundreds of kilograms of wood, phlegm-crust, stray rocks, mud, and clay caved inward and down to form something like a brown waterfall that fell almost directly on the mutant creature. She screamed, an awful sound like that of half a dozen women in terrible rage and pain and was lost to sight when she was buried within the ruins of her own nest.

“Ha!” Laura laughed. “See, I told you it would work.”

“Yes, yes,” Jan replied, “but…” He gestured upward.

They had started a chain reaction of destruction. Not only the central part of the dome had collapsed. Now, the entire nest began to fall apart.

“Back into the tunnel!” he yelled.

Laura and two riflemen rushed ahead, and the others hung back to cover the rear while Grün and Jan struggled through the entrance. Once everyone was within the tunnel, the hauptmann immediately questioned the wisdom of his order.

“Scheisse,” he muttered. The walls and ceiling shook, and there was a continuous rain of dirt on their heads. They might still be entombed alive, even outside the dome itself.

“How has the digging up there progressed?” he asked, his voice even hoarser than it had been. He snatched the tube from Grün’s hydration pack and sipped from it. If he had to die, it might as well not be while he was thirsty.

“Twenty minutes,” someone shouted back.

Two minutes, he thought, would be far better. And they might not even have that long.

His stomach tightened with fear as this prediction seemed, for an instant, to come true. The earth beside them groaned in a frightening fashion, and the wall to his left began to disintegrate and spill dirt and mud around their feet. Undulating wood moved through the flowing earth. Then, the wall itself detached, ripped away by the massive tree which had freed it with the violence of its roots as it fell toward the center of the ruined nest.

Open air and clear skies were above them.

“Hahaha!” Someone laughed and a few people whooped with joy.

Jan breathed deep. “Yes, very good, wonderful,” he grumbled. “Now where are these trucks you brought?”

“Over there, sir,” said Grün and gestured over the chaotic jumble of earth and wood where the tunnel wall had been.

He squinted and could barely make them out. It was nighttime—he reflected idly on the fact that they were all breaking Rule Number Five again—but the moon was almost full. The contrast between the bright silver light and the deep blue-black shadows of the jungle made it hard to see after the deep brownish gloom of the raptors’ domed lair.

They climbed over the remains of the structure. Laura came to help Grün and they managed, but Jan still had to go slowly and exert what seemed like far too much effort. His leg still howled in anguish at being even slightly jostled. Part of it felt like it was growing numb and stiff by now, though.

The first few troops to reach flat land ran to their vehicles to get them started. He noted with approval that they had brought three of the new, heavily-armored personnel carriers, which could double as supply trucks—and even somewhat resembled them—but were effectively combat vehicles. The Zoo would not be able to do much to stop them from leaving once everyone was loaded into them.

Of course, loading in the wounded and unconscious men would take a few minutes and they had made considerable noise.

Jan and Klaus were the last of the ex-captives remaining outside, along with Laura, Grün, and three other soldiers, when someone shouted, “Mehr von ihnen kommen!”

Jan looked up. The APCs had bludgeoned through the jungle on their way there and left a large open area around the dome’s wreckage. Half a dozen primaraptors now streaked toward them, their fur bright red under the moonlight, and clearly weren’t concerned with stealth in their enthusiasm to avenge the destruction of their nest.

Troops fired, and the first couple of mutants fell. Those remaining began to weave from side to side to make difficult targets. They raced into the foliage nearby and emerged again and generally returned to their usual tricks. A few even jumped up and down as they advanced, which looked entirely odd but did make them harder to shoot.

“Get those guns ready!” he ordered. The APCs were equipped with heavy machine guns and even flamethrowers, but the crews might not be able to bring them to bear in time. The attackers would be upon them in seconds.

Suddenly, and seemingly from out of nowhere, a primaraptor swooped down, bowled into Grün, and knocked him onto his back. He dropped his rifle.

Jan also fell, as alarmed by what was about to happen to his leg as he was by the fact that a creature had snuck up on them so effectively. Some of his weight came down on his injured right calf and the pain was so intense that his vision clouded. He blacked out.

It seemed only an instant later, though, that he came to. He lay on his back in the grass, his pistol half a meter from his hand, and terror surged through him at the sight before him.

The monster had cornered Laura, pinned her to the side of the APC with its hands, and opened its fanged jaws in her face. There was no way he could act in time to save her.

“Beißen Sie dies,” said Klaus. The raptor turned its head to look at him.

An automatic shotgun boomed. The barrels rotated in his hands and the primaraptor catapulted away into a midair backflip as its head shattered and a giant blood-spewing crater opened between its blasted ribs.

Jan stared in amazement. He hadn’t thought the man would be capable of handling a rifle right now, much less a shotgun.

“Guten tag,” he said to Laura in a weak, ragged voice. “I am Hauptmann Klaus Grossman. Someone may have told you that I am an arschloch.” He extended a big, powerful hand.

Laura took the hand in her own. “No, and I wouldn’t have guessed. Not that I know what ‘arschloch’ means, but I have a fairly good idea. Thank you, and nice to meet you, Klaus. I’m Dr. Laura Curie.”

Jan took a deep breath as Soldat Grün came to help him to his feet. Or foot, rather. Around them, fires burned and gunfire faltered. The troops must have activated the flamethrowers and neutralized the remainder of the primaraptors.

He looked at Laura and Klaus. “It’s so nice to see the two of you finally acquainted,” he remarked.

Chapter Forty-Nine

“You took three armored personnel vehicles?” Ernest said in disbelief, quite obviously aghast with horror.

Laura shrugged, spread her hands, and allowed her face to fall into an expression that was both innocent and pouty. “Well, we anticipated having to bring several captured soldiers back with us, so we had to account for them as well as the initial team. But then too many men volunteered once I informed them we’d go to rescue Hauptmann Shalwar, anyway,” she explained. “We couldn’t fit them all into only one.”

He pressed his lips together and looked aside. “Well, you might have told some of them to stay behind. Do you have any idea how much fuel those things burn?”

“None whatsoever,” she replied. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“Well, the brass has other things to distract them right now—good things, too.” The director chuckled. In his bony hand, he hefted the egg that “he” had discovered. He turned away from her and walked over toward the base’s researchers assembled in one corner of the cafeteria, along with a man whom she was fairly sure was from the Associated Press.

“As you can see,” he told them, “I have finally gathered an unhatched specimen from the depths of the Zoo itself. Under my directorship, this base has finally prioritized important scientific study over wasteful expenditures aimed purely at pacification. With this egg, we will finally be able to witness how newborn Zoo creatures develop without pressures from their parents molding their behavior and making them impossible to study, as was the case in the past.”

“That’s truly impressive, sir,” said a young female scientist.

“People are hungry for news about the Zoo,” the journalist added. “Especially good news. Or useful news, anyway. It’s encouraging to see that someone around here has a few good ideas.”

Ernest chuckled and thanked them for their kind words, an expression on his thin face that was halfway between gloating smugness and subdued ecstasy.

Laura sighed. She did not regret her bargain with Roden but it disturbed her to think that her coworkers-to-be in the lab would practically be the man’s groupies. Some of them, anyway.

“Ehh, don’t worry about that. Most people see through his type dead easy as though they was invisible,” Sonny said as he set an enormous plate of delicious-smelling food in front of her. “I even brought you a proper fork on the condition you don’t ruin it like the last one.” He momentarily gave her a sharp glare before his face returned to its usual lazy friendliness. “Every real fork we lose is one more special guest condemned to eat with a bloody plastic spork.”

“Thank you, Sonny,” she replied. “I shall return this one to you in pristine condition, I swear it.”

“That’s good to hear, miss, good to hear. Don’t you eat too fast, now.” He wandered off.

Laura dug in. Misadventures in the Zoo seemed to stimulate her appetite in a way few other endeavors ever had.

After she had demolished the top half of Sonny’s edible mountain, she slowed a little and looked around the mess hall. It seemed most of the base was present, British and German personnel alike, and it pleased her that she was starting to recognize so many of the faces.

Gunter Grün and the other fellow, the Doctor Who fan who especially liked the one episode with the aliens, were talking nearby. Laura wouldn’t mind chatting to both of them if she could. She might seek them out after she had finished her meal.

Or she might pass out directly. In another half-hour or so, she would undoubtedly find out.

Two people walked up to the end of the table where she sat and now ate at a more dignified pace. She glanced at them. One was tall and dark and the other short, pale, and stout.

“I won’t say that I owe you an apology,” said Sergeant Cooper, “since I was only doing my duty and frankly, you were breaking a great many rules. And not only Hauptmann Shalwar’s, but regular, base-wide rules as well. But for what it’s worth, I’m glad you rescued Jan, Klaus, and everyone else.” He nodded toward her.

“Thank you, and you’re welcome,” she replied with a smile. “I do believe this is the first time I’ve seen you away from the gate, though.”

“I am occasionally relieved by someone else.” The man chuckled. “Although I then find myself growing anxious with the prospect that they might let a stampede of locusts through. If you want something done right…” He trailed off and shrugged.

“Anyway, ja, thank you,” interrupted Leutnant Ferris. “Next time you need to borrow the transportation equipment to save Jan, you come and see me first instead of sneaking around and putting your hands on things.”

“I shall try to keep that in mind,” Laura responded between bites of biscuits and gravy. “And thank you for helping me to convince our fearless leader there to allow us to do the right thing.”

“Bitte,” said The Bull. “You eat up now. Do not be like Jan and become so skinny that two days without food would kill you of starvation. He should know better and put on some fat as emergency energy storage.”

She bit her tongue to hold back the laughter—which would inevitably have spewed half-chewed morsels all over the table. Before she could answer, however, they both took their leave.

A few peaceful moments passed before she had one more visitor. To her surprise, Jan set a mug of beer down in front of her.

“Drinks are on me,” he said. “Now stay here. I will be back with my own.” He walked with a crutch, which made it rather difficult to carry two mugs at once. She would have offered to help him but she suspected he was the type who, when injured or sick, preferred to retain as much of his independence as he could.

A moment later, he returned with a second foaming cup. He set it down opposite her at the table, maneuvered himself slowly into a seated position on the bench, and rested his crutch against the table beside him.

“Thank you,” he began without preamble, “for saving my life. Unfortunately, we lost that one man, Soldat Schmier, in the rescue operation, but we saved more than twenty others at the same time. This time, I think, we won and the Zoo lost.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she replied. She took the mug of beer and downed a good quarter of it in one long draw. “That’s actually very refreshing, although it will be hard to sleep well if I constantly have to pee.”

He waved his hand. “Somehow, it looks like something is bothering you,” he remarked, “other than that issue.” He took a long draft of his own fermented hops.

Laura sighed. “I agreed that Director Roden could take credit for the discovery of the primaraptor egg I found,” she explained, “as a condition of his permission for us to rescue you. Since, of course, he didn’t want to be responsible for the wasting of lives, let alone funds. That,” she gestured toward Roden and his entourage and by implication, the egg, “was my discovery and I hate the thought that such an imbecile takes credit for it.” She knew she was moping like an angsty teenager, but she couldn’t help it.

“Well,” he responded, “cheer up. You are still at the top of a particular list right now, you know.”

Laura raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” she mused.

“Yes.” Jan took another drink and waved toward the large board in the pub with the words DEATH LEAGUE printed at the top. “Every week, each person serving at this base has their actions and fortunes calculated according to a risk algorithm. Whoever tops the list is the one considered most statistically likely to die next. It is considered a great honor here to be recognized for displays of suicidal stupidity.”

She stared, not immediately sure how to react.

“I am very often at the top of the Death League,” he went on, “due to my willingness to command dangerous missions, although sometimes, I feel I should be lower since I at least make adequate preparations—unlike Klaus, half the time. In any event, this week, you going into the Zoo repeatedly, alone without training or equipment and in direct violation of rules and orders, and finally mounting an extremely hazardous rescue mission on short notice…”

Laura bit her tongue again but could not quite contain the ghost of a smile.

“All of these factors combined to make you our current champion,” he stated. “You have pushed me into second place. The entire base recognizes your achievement.”

Surprised, she looked past him. It was true. Below the words DEATH LEAGUE someone had written Dr. Laura Curie above H Jan Shalwar.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose that’s…actually kind of cool, when you put it like that. I mean, it’s not the history books, is it? But it’s something. I have my name prominently featured on an…er, official document of sorts.”

“It’s better than a news story about your hacking, anyway.” Jan smiled at her—one of his infrequent, warm, generous smiles—retrieved his crutch, and pushed awkwardly to a standing position. He had somehow already managed to drain his entire mug. Germans and their beer.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To call my son,” he answered. “It will be about as difficult as anything else I have done lately, but I should keep trying. And so, I will.”

“I see. Well, good luck, and I truly mean that.”

“I almost forgot, I have some news for you. Not long after the Zoo appeared, some articles were recovered in the area you mentioned. Do you recognize this?” He held up a plain silver necklace with a simple heart-shaped pendant.

“It can’t be…” She took it from him, opened the pendant, and immediately recognized a photograph of her and her sister as children inside. “Where did you find this?”

“It was found in the remains of a bounty hunters’ camp,” he said. “Someone recovered it not long after the Zoo started to expand. It has been in storage ever since.”

“Oh.” She guessed it was lucky someone found her necklace before that too was transformed.

“I hope it will bring you some comfort,” he said with unexpected gentleness. “At least now that you have something to remember your sister by, you will be able to put the Zoo behind you.”

“Well…I’m still quite worried about what we saw out there, to be honest. Of course, you and the other troops have likely seen even worse than what I have, but I mean with regard to the nature of those primaraptor creatures. Again, the Zoo can only produce its mutants with infusions of DNA from Earth animals. I had wondered if maybe they obtained velociraptor DNA from a fossil, but then I remembered that raptor fossils have only ever been found in Asia. It simply doesn’t make any sense. Something strange is going on here.”

“Do not worry,” Jan reassured her. “They are nasty, yes, but we know how to fight them and we destroyed their nest. Even if the entire host had hatched, the wall is probably strong enough to have repelled them. A large-scale attack like that against our fortifications would have been dangerous, but it might also have convinced our superiors that our fight against the Zoo is an actual war and not merely a minor peacekeeping exercise.”

Laura sighed. Hauptmann Shalwar was thinking in strictly military terms again. She reminded herself that someone had to.

“I understand, but that is part of what worries me,” she went on. “It makes me wonder if this is all a prelude of some kind…if again, the Zoo is preparing for something bigger. Even bigger than a million primaraptors hatching at once, I mean, as ridiculous as that might sound. It’s happened before. The Surge was almost unprecedented in its ferocity. We can never underestimate this place.”

“You are right,” he replied, “but again, do not worry. We can handle whatever it throws at us.” He nodded, turned, and with his crutch, hobbled away.

She watched him go and allowed herself to admire how he carried himself so well even with a bum leg. “He’s a better man than I thought,” she said softly, “but he’s really quite a bad liar.”

Epilogue

The scientist sat among the broken tables, rusty equipment, and moss and slime of his laboratory. He was calm and happy. Things had not gone exactly according to plan, but they had nevertheless gone well.

“Those idiotic interlopers,” he said in French, his native tongue. “They think they have won. They always seem to think they win simply because they come into the Zoo and kill a few creatures with their guns and bombs. They know nothing and they accomplish nothing. It is the same as always in that regard, isn’t it?”

He recorded a few notes in his journal with a sharp charcoal pencil. He had a good supply of those, fortunately. It might be a while before he could stock up on more. The journals themselves had to be stored wrapped in plastic, though, given the heat and dampness of the Zoo.

“Yes, they thought they achieved some great and mighty victory,” the man went on. “They have not. In fact, all they have done is proven that I am on the right track. They have, in essence, conducted an experiment that I myself could not as I lack the equipment, the manpower, or the funding. And now, after their efforts, I will be the one to harvest the data. They have served the greater will of science despite their ignorance.”

He chuckled, stood, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his filthy lab coat before he turned.

Of course, he had not been talking to himself. He had spoken to one of his new friends.

The raptor-apes, as impressive as they’d been, still did not demonstrate the Zoo’s full potential. There was so much more yet that could be done, and he had achieved some of it now. He had held the hand of evolution itself and aided it in its first steps in this, the new phase of planet Earth’s development.

This particular new friend differed from the raptors-apes in several notable and interesting ways. He imagined how the various fools around there would react when they saw it for the first time. Whether Americans, British, Germans, or anyone else, most humans tended to be fairly stupid. They could not appreciate things.

The creature was eating. An expired soldier, apparently a German, lay on the floor—or, at least, what remained of him did. The scientist’s companion continued its meal. It tore great strips of the dead flesh and chewed them, making wet slurping and smacking sounds as it did so. Something about the way it ate reminded him of a kitten trying to work its way through a lovely can of tuna. He admired the motions it made and the efficiency and economy of its biological processes.

“So nice, so nice,” the scientist said. He smiled what he supposed was a warm, paternal kind of smile.

His friend unfurled its wings and roared.

THE END

—  —  —

Want to read more by Michael Anderle?

The Kurtherian Gambit

Read the story that started it all, DEATH BECOMES HER

There is more in our world than you know.

Deep in the darkness of a government building, one man needs to find the perfect solution to a vampire’s request that the government satisfy the debt of honor owed him.

If he falls short, the failure will be paid in the blood of the military.

He needs three uniquely qualified individuals.

He can find only one.

One woman, dying, might be the ace-in-the-hole he needs to appease the Vampire.

But then, she might also be the one person needed to save humanity.

If she is accepted, will she willingly change?

If she is willing to change, will she pass the turning?

If she survives the turning, will she be powerful?

If she is powerful, what will she do to those who will now want her dead?

The universe might forever be changed in her wake.

What you thought you knew about Vampires and Werewolves is wrong...so very, very, wrong.

Available now:  https://books2read.com/DeathBecomesHerBook01

About the Author

Michael Anderle (ok, weird talking about myself in the 3rd person) (1967-Hopefully a long time from NOW) was born in Houston, Tx. A very curious child, he got into trouble — a lot. What to do with an inquisitive mind when he was grounded? Read!

Ok, done with all of that 3rd person stuff.

In the first 20 years, I mostly read Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the last 10 years I have enjoyed Urban Fantasy and Military Fiction. With this background, I've been blessed with creating The Kurtherian Gambit series, a well-selling, and fan loved, collection of stories.

The fans have propelled these stories beyond my wildest imagination and they should get all of the credit for sharing with friends, family and occasionally the random person on the street. They are fantastic!

David John Williams is a bunch of stuff all thrown together in a wonderful package for your reading pleasure.

He's one part Pepperoni, one part cheese only and enjoys both a good sci-fi book as well as a good science textbook. (Seriously, don't hate on DJW for learning, it's not polite.)

With friends like Ell Leigh Clarke and Michael Anderle in the background, he's going to screw up.  When he does, the two of them will point at each other and politely say 'he/ she said to do that.'

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Thank you for reading

GALAXIA!

If you enjoyed this collection, please consider writing a review on Amazon.

Until next time, happy reading!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THEIR SOLITARY WAY

To The High Council Of Fiore

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

TROUBLED SPACE: BREWING TROUBLE

CHAPTER 1: Shot in the Foot

CHAPTER 2: A Terrible Plan

CHAPTER 3: Popular with the Ladies

CHAPTER 4: The Misadventure Begins

CHAPTER 5: A Stroke of Luck

CHAPTER 6: When a Plan Comes Together

CHAPTER 7: Jailbreak

CHAPTER 8: Adventures in Food Service

CHAPTER 9: Petty Theft… And Felonies

CHAPTER 10: The Best Laid Plans

CHAPTER 11: Positively Glowing

CHAPTER 12: A Tasty Detour

CHAPTER 13: Hidden Past

CHAPTER 14: Team Bonding

CHAPTER 15: Hazy Recollections

CHAPTER 16: Heist

CHAPTER 17: The Great Escape

CHAPTER 18: Nowhere to Run

CHAPTER 19: Trapped

CHAPTER 20: New Horizons

XENOVIRUS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

WHEN THE STRONG FALL: A SHORT STORY

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

LOOPING

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

TO FLY SABRINA: AN AEON 14 SHORT STORY

Killian’s

Genni & Chur

New Boss, Meet Old Boss

MAKING OF A RENEGADE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE: A SHORT STORY

Grace Under Pressure

REBEL

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Epilogue

RESCUE TWO: A SEEDER’S UNIVERSE SHORT STORY

One

Two

Three

THE DEATH LEAGUE

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Epilogue