Sunkiller
Author: J.N. Chaney
Date: 2022-01-09 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fiction; Military Fiction; Science Fiction Fantasy
Description: What would you do if you found the secret of a lifetime? What if you could change the universe? Chase Weston never would have thought being the bodyguard for an archaeologist would be so dangerous…even an archaeologist digging for the remains of an alien civilization on another planet. But everyone wants what Dr. Angel Cortez has found... no matter the human cost. Because beneath the dirt and stone lies an ancient mystery, a secret history, and a warning of an implacable alien enemy. And if the warnings are true, then corporate mercenaries and Sea Dragon commandoes are the least of Chase’s wor

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BOOK DESCRIPTION

What would you do if you found the secret of a lifetime? What if you could change the universe?

Chase Weston never would have thought being the bodyguard for an archaeologist would be so dangerous…even an archaeologist digging for the remains of an alien civilization on another planet.

But everyone wants what Dr. Angel Cortez has found... no matter the human cost.

Because beneath the dirt and stone lies an ancient mystery, a secret history, and a warning of an implacable alien enemy. And if the warnings are true, then corporate mercenaries and Sea Dragon commandoes are the least of Chase’s worries.

Can Sgt. Chase Weston and Dr. Evangeline Cortez uncover the mystery of the Sunkillers? Or will they just be the latest to die trying?

Experience this riveting science fiction epic from Dragon Award nominees and USA Today Bestselling Authors J.N. Chaney and Rick Partlow. Uncover the secret of an alien race and change humanity (and the universe) forever.

Copyrighted Material

Sunkiller Copyright © 2021 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2021 by JN Chaney

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.

1st Edition

CONTENTS

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

Epilogue

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About the Authors

1

The starship’s bulkhead shuddered under Chase Weston’s palm, a warhorse chafing at the bit, ready to charge into battle. Power coursed through the metal, nuclear fire slaved to the arcane inner workings of the Soong-Tierney drive, shredding the fabric of space like a boat propeller churning just beneath the surface. He couldn’t hope to understand it, had long ago ceased trying. If the best minds of the Twenty-First Century hadn’t been able to explain the S-T effect, then a beat-up former Army Ranger didn’t have a chance in hell. But he felt its power through the hull, just as surely as all of human civilization had felt it these last thirty years.

“You’d better get your ass strapped in, Weston,” Priyanka told him, not bothering to look away from the controls of the Tamar. “If the Alliance has Surface-to-Air Missiles, you’re going to wind up a wet spot on the bulkhead when I start evasive maneuvers.”

Chase grinned, throwing an off-handed salute at Priyanka Ambedkar’s back as he retreated down the steps from the cockpit.

“I’m heading to the drop bay,” he told her. “Gotta get the team ready to go.” He caught himself against the railing, stealing one last look at the main screen, which showed the view of the planet’s dark side. “You know, Pri, I’m old enough to remember before all this shit. Before the S-T drive, I mean. Back then, everyone was convinced the world could end any day, from nukes or some plague, or an asteroid hitting us. Just wipe us all out in one fell swoop.”

“Yeah, great, Chase,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. “Now all we have to worry about are pirates and revolutionaries or interstellar war.”

“But thanks for reminding us what an old fart you are,” Hill put in, turning around in the copilot’s seat to offer a twisted smile through a pockmarked, scarred face. “Tell me ‘bout the old days, Daddy.”

“I am not your daddy, Adrian,” Chase said, stabbing a finger toward Hill. “You ain’t blaming that face on me.”

“Get going, Chase!” Priyanka snapped. “Or your HALO drop is going to turn into a LALO!”

The Tamar was already bobbing like a boat in the surf as the atmosphere grabbed at its lifting surfaces, and Chase had to brace himself against the safety railing in the passage to make it back to the hold. The railing was hollow plastic, painted a bright red that contrasted with the faded eggshell of the bulkhead, and he was sure Priyanka had scrounged it from an old hotel. It jiggled against its metal fasteners, and Chase felt a familiar conviction that it was going to separate from its moorings at any moment and send him tumbling down the passage like an idiot.

But it held, just as it had on dozens of drops over the last five years, and he kept a death grip on it down the ramp all the way through the hatch to the drop bay. The others didn’t even look up at his arrival, all seven of them absorbed in the task of gearing up.

Chase threw open his locker and yanked out his tactical load and jump gear. “Are all of you trained killers ready to jump out of this perfectly good spaceship and kick some Alliance ass?”

“Hoo-ah, Master Sergeant,” Zack Wilson drawled, zipping up the front of his flying-squirrel suit. It was the largest one they’d been able to find, and it still barely fit the man. “Them Chinese and Russian spooks won’t know what hit ’em.”

“Let’s not be bigoted, Sgt. Wilson,” Lucia Perez cautioned, elbowing the big man in the leg as she pulled back the bolt of her rifle to check the chamber before she slapped the magazine home. “I hear there are Ukrainians and Georgians and Vietnamese and Cambodians and all sorts of other foreign nationals in the Alliance military.”

“Yeah, right.” Tommy McGovern snorted a laugh from the weapons cabinet behind her. He was still chuckling as he shoved spare magazines into pouches of the tactical vest beneath his unzipped wingsuit. “I bet you could count the number of officers and NCOs in the Alliance military who aren’t either Russian or Chinese without running out of fingers. And there ain’t a single admiral in their Space Navy that ain’t from mainland China. Diversity just ain’t an Alliance thing.”

“Why is it,” Chase asked, sliding his own M27 out of its slot in the rack, “that both of you knuckleheads only try to sound like redneck hicks when we’re heading out on a mission? Wilson, you’re from Indiana, and McGovern is from fucking Boston. And both of you have Bachelor’s degrees!”

“It’s for the same reason neither of them ever let the brass put them up for officer’s training,” John Ragland commented, taking his spot in one of the drop seats and strapping in. He, at least, didn’t try to affect a redneck drawl. “They figure if you think they’re stupid, you won’t force them to be in charge of anything complicated.”

“Well, there’s nothing complicated about this op,” Chase told them. “It’s your standard Alliance listening post. They put it on a habitable, deep inside untracked wilderness because it’s harder for Union patrols to spot them from orbit and unlikely for the settlers to stumble across them.”

“Then how did we get lucky enough to come across the sneaky bastards?” Shonda Simms wondered. She’d been the only one of the squad to have already strapped in when he’d arrived, but then she was always first to get ready, first to arrive at team briefings, and first back for dust-off after R&R. Chase had always thought she looked more like an elementary school teacher than a soldier, but she more than pulled her weight.

“Money talks,” Chase explained. “And in this case, it’s our money, so let’s make sure we pull this off clean, right, ladies and gentlemen?”

“What’s the name of this shithole again?” Harris Townsend murmured, tightening the chinstrap of his helmet.

“Something like Huginn? Munin? Munin, I think. One of Odin’s ravens.”

The Tamar swayed and shook, and Chase had to catch himself against the weapons cabinet.

“Two minutes to drop,” Chief Aguilar announced on the overhead speakers. The ship’s crew chief sounded annoyed at the team for existing, as if the ship would have had a much smoother flight if they weren’t along.

Which is true, but then the Tamar wouldn’t have any reason to be in the damned system, and none of them would be getting paid.

“Everyone, get into position,” Chase ordered, all business now. He pulled his helmet visor into place and sealed it, then touched a control on his wrist to start the oxygen flow. “Ranger One, radio check. Alpha, bravo, Charlie, delta…”

The drop harness was a complicated device, but a familiar one, and Chase strapped into it by rote, at the head of the line.

“Read you five by five, Ranger One,” Zack Wilson replied. “Positive oxygen flow.”

The report went down through the squad and by the time the last of them had echoed the positive flow from their air tanks, Aguilar was back on the speakers.

“Nine thousand meters,” he announced. “Drop in ten.”

The drop bay was a tapered cylinder at the rear of the teardrop shape that was the Tamar, nestled between the twin Soong-Tierney drive nacelles and covered by an armored sleeve until Aguilar’s count reached zero. The sleeve retracted with a grinding of overtaxed motors in dire need of maintenance and air rushed out into the bitter cold of the high-altitude darkness outside, the roar of the equalizing pressure settling into the howling wail of the ship’s passage.

No whine of jets, though. That still seemed strange to him, even after all these years. When he’d gone through Airborne School at Ft. Benning, Georgia twenty years ago as an impressionable teenager, the Soong-Tierney drive had been new and the military, conservative as ever, had been slower to adapt it to mundane uses like transport airplanes than private industry had been. The first airplanes Chase had jumped out of were jets, and there was still something comforting about the plaintive scream of a turbine, something more tangible than the faint, crackling hum of the S-T drive.

Then the bottom fell out of his stomach as his straps released and he slid into nothingness. Jumping at night always screwed with his head. The helmet visor was equipped with the latest in thermal, infrared, and light-intensifying optics, but they didn’t do a damned thing with nothing for thirty-thousand feet down but… nothing. Grey clouds swallowed him up, only the artificial horizon in his visor’s heads-up display keeping him aligned with the ground as he spread his body into a V, inflating the webbing stretching from ankle to wrist, popping him upward and propelling him forward.

The wingsuit was as close as Chase had ever come to flying like a superhero. He’d read articles about the S-T drive being miniaturized enough to fit into a personal flight pack, but even if the R&D types managed it, he wouldn’t have been able to afford it. The wingsuits were cheap, and they worked well enough to let the squad glide in from ten miles out, which was hopefully far enough away to keep the Alliance outpost from detecting the Tamar.

The cloud layer melted away but revealed nothing in its absence, the ground below dark and featureless.

“I can’t see a damned thing.” Zack Wilson’s voice crackled in his headphones, and Chase winced at the volume. On an intellectual level, he knew that the laser line-of-sight transceiver couldn’t be detected from the ground, but instincts born from training based on decades-old gear rebelled at what he still thought of as a violation of communications security. “Are you sure we’re still on course?”

“I’m not sure of anything,” Chase admitted. “The only available maps of this planet were on the Colonial Authority’s free public servers.”

“Well, that’s a comfort. Bunch of public servants using gear bought from the lowest bidder.”

“You should be used to it by now. Shut up, I’m trying to fly.”

And trying to watch the altimeter, and the speedometer, and the map. Chase couldn’t see the mountains, but the map said he was flying between them, and the tug of an updraft confirmed their presence. His chest and shoulders ached from steering the suit and with every foot he dropped, his gut twisted with certainty that he’d read the map wrong and was about to smash into the face of a cliff. And he was cold as shit. It was starting to penetrate past the adrenaline rush, past the insulation inside the wingsuit, deep into his core.

Hold it together, Weston. You’ll be on the ground in a minute.

The helmet’s HUD gave him two seconds’ warning that the chute was deploying, barely enough time for the thought to bounce from one side of his head to another before the expanse of nylon jerked him upward, pulling at shoulders and chest and groin. The snap swung his legs below him, and for the first time he was aware that there were trees below. He could make that much out through the enhanced optics, a picket of them, jutting upward, anxious to spit him like a wild hog, and the clearing…Where’s the damned clearing?

It was on the map, in the satellite images, but everything below him was trees.

No. There.

“I have eyes on the LZ,” he snapped, hoping the others could hear him. “Follow me in.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when the ground rushed up to meet him, and he yanked down on the control handles of the chute, flaring it just in time to turn a painful crash into a gentle tap of dirt against the soles of his boots. He ran forward a few steps to steady himself, then a few more to make room on the LZ, knowing the others would be right on his heels. The chute collapsed and he gathered it up quickly, then he wrapped it into a bundle suitable for disposal, working by feel. He crouched to scan the forest around them.

There was motion everywhere, but the Identification-Friend-or-Foe transponders told him it was all from his people. They didn’t register on thermal or infrared as a human shape, thanks to the electrically active graphene lining of their combat uniforms, but there was no fooling motion detectors, and he was able to put names to the blurs of activity from the IFF signals. Wilson was doing his job, directing people to set up a perimeter just as soon as they stowed their gear in a burn bag.

Chase winced when he dumped the chute and the wingsuit into the burn bag. True, there was no practical way to take the gear with them, but setting the thermite charge to consume all that sunk cost in a few seconds was an affront to an innate frugality instilled by his parents on their ranch. His father’s words nagged at him, making him hesitate before he yanked the cord to activate the charge.

Waste not, want not. Every penny we throw away is a penny less we eat, boy.

He shook off the memory and pulled hard on the igniter before tossing the bag aside. White smoke was already pouring out of the vents in the disposal units as the rest of the squad did their duty.

I wonder what Dad would think of me now.

Chase unstrapped his helmet and pulled it off, just crouching at the center of the clearing for a long moment, listening. The hiss of the thermite charges was fading as the fire did its job, erasing the evidence of their existence and their provenance. And the rest of the squad was still, ready at their positions, rifles trained outward. The wind whispered in the treetops, and for all that he was twenty-some light-years from Earth, Chase could have believed he was twelve years old again, camping in the Bitterroot National Forest with Dad.

The stars spread above them, more than he could have seen even from the Montana wilderness, and different. The wind was the same, smelled the same. And the trees were the same. How that was possible, neither he nor the best evolutionary biologists on Earth could say, but it was comforting. No matter how far he was from home, some things didn’t change.

Like what they were about to do. It was the same thing soldiers had done for ten thousand years. He slipped his helmet on and checked the link between its ocular and the electronic sight atop his M27 carbine.

“All right, Rangers,” he murmured into his throat mic. “Follow me.”

2

The damp of the early morning soaked through the grass and through Chase Weston’s battle utilities. They were, theoretically, waterproof, but theory had a way of giving way to reality out in the field.

At least it’s better than baking my brains in Syria or sweating my ass off in the Venezuelan jungle.

Those were the bad old days. Before the S-T drive had opened up space and all the resources it had to offer, which suddenly made oil only useful as a lubricant and an ingredient in plastics rather than the number one energy source for the entire planet. Before someone had discovered through the old-fashioned expedient of just going out and doing it that if you fed an S-T drive enough power, it would take you hyper-light, into another dimension where distances were shortened and faster-than-light travel was possible. Before all these habitable worlds had been found, with their own ecologies and life, so very hauntingly similar to Earth, and with their own supply of oil to replace the politically unstable sources back home. And no pesky intelligent life to worry about.

And all that oil, all that breathable air, all those huntable animals meant that planets like Munin wouldn’t stay uninhabited for long.

Chase didn’t try to ignore the wetness soaking through his pants. That never worked. You had to welcome it, to embrace the suck as the saying went in the Army. He embraced the dampness, the cold. It meant he was alive. It kept him alert, kept his eyes open, his attention on the almost-imperceptible movement of the dark mound in front of him. Its edges were indistinct, hard to define, and it inched forward, the motion only distinguishable if he compared its position to the trunk of a nearby tree.

The Alliance soldier patrolling the perimeter fence line wasn’t quite as observant as Chase. The man looked young, at least from what Chase could make out of his face beneath the night-vision goggles and broad-brimmed boonie cap. Chinese, from his features, though the uniform markings would be the same no matter which of the Alliance nations he hailed from. The subdued flag on his sleeve would have been red if it had been in color, with a cluster of blue and white stars at the center. An amalgamation of the Chinese and Russian flags…with a bit more emphasis given to the Chinese, since they were the money men of the operation.

The weapon was as universal as the flag among Alliance troops, and just as recognizable. The QBZ-103 was technically a Chinese design, but the bullpup was based on the venerable Kalashnikov action invented just after World War Two. Oh, the materials were new, fashioned in orbital factories, and the ammunition was high-tech, caseless, and loaded with guided bullets that could be programmed to hit targets automatically once fired. But deep down, it was an AK-47. It was ironic how conservative a Communist government could be.

The young Chinese soldier paced back and forth in front of the gate in the fence, shifting his weapon on its sling so he could pull up his collar against the early morning chill. He turned away, back toward the dark mass of the intelligence outpost, and Zack Wilson moved. Wilson was six-foot-three and 230 pounds of solid muscle, but he moved with the grace of a dancer and the economy of motion of a martial artist.

And, of course, he’s both. Though he didn’t spread the dancer part around except with his close friends.

The ghillie suit Wilson had fashioned by hand out of thermal dampening material fluttered like the feathers of a giant bird for the briefest of moments, one arm snaking around the neck of the Chinese soldier, the other flashing downward with the matte black blade of a combat knife. The blood was black in the predawn dark, blending in with the soldier’s camouflage fatigues, invisible and only detectable through the effect it had on the young Chinese trooper. His struggles against Wilson’s grasp faded and ceased, and he slumped, supported only by the taller man’s hand over his mouth.

Wilson let the young soldier fall to the dirt, then rolled his body aside into the brush. The whole thing had taken mere seconds, and if anyone was watching through a video monitor, they would have had to be watching the same display unceasingly to notice. Wilson doffed the ghillie suit and pulled off his helmet, then replaced it with the dead man’s boonie cap, facing out away from the fence. He was nearly six inches taller than the man he’d killed, but with nothing to compare his height to, no one would notice.

Lucia Perez had been invisible in the tall grass, but now she moved, high-crawling forward in a direct line with Wilson, using his intermittent pacing as a cover for her motion. When she reached the gate, the woman rolled onto her back and fished a twisted mass of wires out of a pouch at her side. She worked at it with patience that reminded Chase of his mother trying to untangle the Christmas lights, finally spreading it out into the shape of a net a couple feet square, with alligator clips at each corner.

The clips went onto the wires of the fence and then to the gate. Chase held his breath. If the electronic spoof didn’t work, if the Alliance tech heads were one step ahead of the black-market tech heads who’d sold them the net, then the Russians and Chinese would be waiting for them when they opened the gate.

Perez flashed a thumbs-up, and Chase sighed.

He didn’t have to tell the others to follow this time. They knew what it meant when he slammed the butt of his carbine into the dirt and used the length of the weapon for leverage to spring to his feet. It felt to Chase as if he were moving in slow motion, as if the enemy had forever to notice him rushing the gate. And maybe he was a second or two slower than he would have been ten years ago, but old age and treachery beat youth and speed every time.

Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.

The gate had a magnetic lock, which seemed fancy for an outpost this far into the boondocks, on a planet most people had never heard of, but it was convenient. Chase didn’t even slow down when he hit the gate, just smacked it open with his shoulder. The fence was more to keep out wildlife than people, since the Alliance hadn’t anticipated any of the locals finding the place, and it wasn’t nearly fortified enough to survive an all-out military assault. There was still something viscerally satisfying about ramming through it.

The gate swung inward and rebounded off the inside of the fence, but Wilson caught it before it had the chance to close again, then he passed by Chase on the way to the side entrance of the outpost building. It wasn’t much, basically a Quonset hut covered in turf to reduce its thermal signature from orbit, squatting next to a trio of massive satellite dishes partially camouflaged with netting. The dishes were the purpose of the place, the uplink to relay satellites tucked into a Lagrangian orbit between the planet and its lone moon.

And why have the troops on the ground when they had the satellites in orbit? Because the information wasn’t safe sitting on those satellites. If the Union stumbled across them, the data would be gone, and worse, the American and British and Australian spooks would know exactly what intelligence the Chinese and Russians were trying to gather.

And of course, that meant that the Americans and the British and the Australians would be willing to pay for access to that Chinese and Russian intelligence.

Probably the French and Germans, too, but to hell with them. They never did a damned thing for us in Venezuela.

There was no one outside other than the dead guard, and Chase hadn’t expected there to be at two hours before local dawn. No exterior lights, either, and he could barely make out the doorway, had to feel around for the knob. It wasn’t locked, probably didn’t even have a lock, because what use would it be?

“Concussion grenade on three,” he told Wilson, risking being overheard by sonic detectors rather than busting inside without coordinating it. The big man acknowledged by pulling the fat cylinder of the stun grenade off his vest and pulling the pin, then holding the spoon tight, the grenade poised in front of the closed door. “One, two… three!”

The knob resisted, and Chase smashed a heel backward to kick the door open. There was a light on inside—dim and covered but a veritable supernova against the utter darkness outside—and Chase had a split-second glimpse of a cluster of folding cots shoved up against the far wall and a single figure throwing off a sheet before the stun grenade flew and he ducked back outside.

The detonation was a sunburst, a thunderclap, and the echoes hadn’t faded when Zack Wilson barged through ahead of him, and Chase swore under his breath. He wouldn’t even bother trying to yell at the big man later because Wilson always pulled out the trump card—Chase was technically the officer in charge, even though he’d never worn a rank higher than E-7, and the OIC didn’t walk point.

An M27 snapped hoarsely, the integral suppressor restraining the fury of the 6.8mm to something less like a roar and more akin to a hammer striking a two-by-four. Wilson’s bulk shielded Chase from the action, and by the time he’d squeezed around the big man, he’d counted three short bursts. One for each of the enemy soldiers who’d been sleeping in those cots. The one who’d tried to get up was slumped on the floor beside his bed, his blood staining the bare concrete, while the others hadn’t even had the chance to wake up before they died.

Probably how I’d rather go out. Who wants to get woken up from a sound sleep just so some asshole can put a bullet in you?

Chase would rather not have looked at the bodies, but he had to make sure none were faking it, ready to rise from the dead and take a shot at them. He didn’t have time to check their pulses, but a single round through the head was quicker and just as comprehensive. Chase tried to feel something when the bodies jerked with a flash of dying nerves, but he couldn’t. It worried him. Not that he would have rather gone catatonic at the thought of killing an Alliance soldier, but there’d been a time when he’d felt a twinge after he pulled the trigger.

“Go!” he snapped at Townsend and Ragland, the next pair in line, waving through the doorway to the monitoring station.

Another crash of thunder, another flare of light, but this time, no stutter of suppressed gunfire when the two men breached the room.

“Clear!” Townsend reported, his Liverpool accent turning one syllable into two.

Chase frowned as he followed them inside. The control room was just as he’d pictured it, packed with monitors, maps, storage cabinets, and the grand prize, squatting amidst a trio of nitrogen cooling tanks, a cylinder half a meter high and just as thick—the quantum-core computer, the reason they’d come. But no Alliance techs monitoring the equipment.

“Wilson,” he called, “take Townsend and Ragland and make sure we didn’t miss a concealed bunker!”

“Got it, Sarge.”

The three men ducked back out the door, and Chase dearly hoped he was sending them on a wild goose chase.

“Perez,” he said, finding the woman amidst the sea of camouflage armor by her height, or the lack of it. “Get to work on the quantum core. I need it bagged up and ready for transport in five minutes.”

“Copy that, Sergeant,” she said. “Shonda, help me with this thing. And mind the nitrogen tanks when we disconnect the hoses, unless you want your damned fingers frozen off.”

Something was wrong. Chase didn’t know what, but he could sense it. Four soldiers… it wasn’t impossible. This wasn’t a combat outpost, and how many techs did it take to download data from a satellite? Four would work fine. One on patrol and three sleeping. Nothing odd about that.

“Sarge,” Wilson said, slamming through the door. Chase’s trigger finger straightened only through an act of will, and he pulled his muzzle upward, away from the center of Wilson’s chest. The big man didn’t seem to notice. “There’s nothing out there. No buildings, no barracks, nothing.”

Chase shook his head. He should have felt relieved.

“Right. Get with Perez and get the quantum core loaded into your pack.”

“Why do I always have to be the one to carry the payload?”

“Because you’re big and you pretend to be stupid,” Chase shot back. “And you won’t let me go through the door first, so you can damned well carry the quantum core.”

Wilson scowled but didn’t argue, just pulled off his backpack and carried it over to where Perez and Simms were dismounting the computer core from its cooling station. Chase stepped back outside, pulling up his visor and letting in the cool, morning air. It felt like home.

“Predator One, this is Ranger One,” he radioed. It was a gamble, transmitting in the open, but the threat was neutralized. “Do you copy? Over.”

Nothing for a long moment, and Chase thought perhaps the Tamar was over the horizon or still tucked into some hollow, waiting for the agreed pickup time.

“Copy you five by five, Ranger One,” Priyanka’s voice buzzed in his headphones. “You done already? I don’t remember you being this fast when you and I were a thing. Or maybe I do and that’s why we broke up. Over.”

“Opposition was minimal. We have the package, and we’re ready for pickup. Over.”

“All right, on our way. Out.”

Technically, Chase should have been the one to end the transmission since he’d started it, but Pri was his ride and he didn’t want to annoy her.

“Okay, we’re all packed up, boss,” Perez told him, emerging from the Quonset hut. She jerked a thumb at Wilson. “The big dummy has the package and we’ve got all the useful information we’re gonna get unless you want the shoe sizes on the mooks in there.”

“The Tamar is inbound.” Chase pulled down his visor and hit the control on his wrist to bring up the map. “LZ is due east, one and a half klicks. You want to take point, Wilson?”

“Not carrying this shit,” the big man said, yanking at the shoulder straps of his backpack. “This thing weighs like twenty kilos, Sarge!”

Chase rolled his eyes.

“All right, you big wussy. Townsend, lead us to the promised land.”

The Liverpudlian set off, mumbling something half to himself that sounded to Chase like “meff whopper,” whatever that meant. The rest of the squad fell into a staggered column formation on the narrow trail, since the trees were too thick for a squad wedge. Chase jumped in near the tail, turning back every few steps to check their rear, unable to shake the itch between his shoulder blades.

But the forest swallowed them up and the Alliance outpost faded from view.

It’s fine. Stop being so damned paranoid. Things do go right every once in a while.

“Hey,” Townsend said, raising a fist in the air to halt the formation. “I think I saw some…”

The forest exploded. Light and heat and sound filled Chase’s world, and he was flying backward, the concussion smacking into his chest like a baseball bat. Breath escaped in a whoosh, and his chest hurt so bad that the impact of the tree between his shoulder blades barely registered. He slid down, unable to move, unable to think, a spiderweb of cracks obscuring his view through his helmet’s visor. The night vision was dead, the mapping software was dead, the link to his rifle’s electronic sight was dead…

And I’m dead. No, I’m not dead. If I was dead, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

But it wasn’t the thought that got him moving, it was the gunfire. The stutter penetrated the fog over his thoughts and kicked ingrained habits back into motion, and him along with it. He rolled onto his side, then grabbed at his visor and pushed it up and out of the way, expecting nothing but darkness. But the forest was bathed in the grey of pre-dawn, the dim light having snuck up on him unawares, hidden by the enhanced optics of his visor.

Chase had been thrown ten feet off the trail into the woods by whatever had hit him. Grenade, maybe. Or a mine. His body armor had stopped most of the fragments, but not all. Warm wetness was spreading out on his side, his left arm, his right hip. Nothing gushing, nothing debilitating, nothing broken, but as the shock of the explosion faded, the pain from the frag wounds pushed through it, and Chase gasped and staggered, then steadied himself against a tree.

His teeth clenched so hard Chase could taste bits of enamel and his fingers wrapped around the pistol grip of his carbine. He didn’t remember picking it up, wasn’t sure how he’d held onto it, but it was in his hands and he swiped off the safety, as if firing the weapon would take away the pain and confusion. Bursts of gunfire called to him, leading him back to the trail, to his people. The suppressed M27s were a familiar throat-clearing cough, but they were only half the story. Just as familiar was the return fire, the whip-crack of the 5.8mm used by the Alliance. Lots of them.

He wondered how far the gunfight had moved since the explosion, and had the question answered when Zack Wilson nearly shot him in the face. Chase caught the stock of the carbine as it swung toward him, and he saw Wilson’s eyes widen through his visor as the two of them stumbled out from the cover of a coniferous tree trunk six feet in diameter.

“Where are the others?” he yelled, pulling the big man back to shelter just ahead of a hail of enemy fire. Bullets smacked into the other side of the tree, and Wilson popped out from behind cover just long enough to fire a grenade from the launcher mated to the underside of his M27. The hollow thump of the grenade launching was still echoing when the detonation drowned it out, resonating chest-deep.

“Townsend and Ragland are gone,” Wilson yelled over the din of the gunfire and explosions. “Type 66, I think.”

It was an old design, but a venerable one, patterned on the American Claymore mine, and it had never gone out of service. Easy to plant, easy to detonate, great for setting off an ambush, among other things.

“Perez and Simms are pinned down on the other side of the trail. I ain’t seen McGovern or Clement, but I think they assaulted through the ambush.”

Which meant they could have made it out the other side, or they could be dead. Assaulting through an ambush worked better when everyone did it.

“Predator One”—Chase tried his radio, not even sure if it was still working after the beating his helmet had taken—“this is Ranger One. Do you read? We have been engaged by enemy elements, at least platoon strength.” That was a guess, but there was no use underselling it. “We need immediate air support at my position. Over.”

When the answer came, it wasn’t from Pri. It was Aguilar, his deep, gravelly voice taut with strain.

“No joy on the air support, Ranger One. We’re spiked and running hot. They got an interceptor up here. We’ll get you as soon as we can shake him.” A hesitation. “This was a Goddamned trap.”

And I stepped right into it.

3

At least Wilson let him go first this time.

The big man’s covering fire was a staccato rhythm in the night, and for once, Chase wished the weapons weren’t suppressed. The purpose of covering fire was to attract attention, and sprinting from one side of the trail to the other through six feet of open ground, Chase would really have liked a bit more attention turned Wilson’s way. Bullets passed by so close he could feel the wind on his face through his helmet’s open visor, missing him only because the Alliance soldiers hadn’t had time for a target lock to guide their homing ammo.

Chase dove headfirst into the trees on the opposite side of the path, tucking his legs beneath him just ahead of a burst that chopped into the dirt behind him. He hit on his shoulder, and the impact reignited the pain in his chest. Cracked ribs, he thought. Not displaced, but they hurt enough that he wasn’t offering any prayers of thanksgiving for small favors. His breath came short, and he tried to control it as he darted out of cover long enough to lay down suppressive fire of his own.

“Covering!” he announced, yelling loud enough that Wilson could have heard him even if his radio wasn’t working.

“Moving!”

Chase couldn’t see the enemy. That was always the way. They were there, probably thirty or forty yards away, but he didn’t have night vision or thermal sights, and the flash suppressors on their rifles were working as well as designed. He guessed at the trajectory of the rounds hitting all around him and sprayed a long burst in their direction, probably hitting nothing but giving Wilson time to get across the trail and behind one of the tree trunks just a few yards away.

“Perez!” Chase shouted, swapping out a fresh magazine and stowing the spent one in the cargo pocket over his thigh. “Simms!”

“Here.” The reply was barely audible over the gunfire, so faint he couldn’t tell which of them had called.

“Wait here,” Chase told Wilson. “Keep them off of us.”

Grey dawn was shut out by the overhang of the trees, but Chase had a pretty good sense of direction, and he was able to follow the faint voice back into the forest another thirty yards. The voice and the trail of bullet impacts in the trees. A couple had half their trunks ripped away by grenade blasts, but the Alliance wasn’t wasting any more heavy ordnance against targets they couldn’t see.

Perez was the one who’d called him. He knew it because Shonda Simms was very dead, only a flap of skin holding her head to her body. Perez lay beside her, unmoving, her entire left side soaked with blood, her helmet off, the visor splintered and useless. Chase slid down beside her, his own pain suddenly forgotten.

“Lucia,” he said, stripping off a glove and checking her pulse, “I’m here. Take it easy. You’re going to be okay. I’ll get you out of here.”

The beat against his fingers was weak and thready, and he cursed, yanking open a pocket on his sleeve to retrieve a field dressing and clotting powder. The wound on the side of her neck wasn’t spouting blood, but it was the most serious of the ones he could see.

“Hold on,” he said, sprinkling the clotting powder onto her neck. “This is gonna hurt a little.”

“S’okay,” she assured him, her words slurred as if she were drunk. “I don’t feel a thing.”

“That’s good, that’s good.” He said the words almost like a chant. “You’re gonna be okay, Lucia.” He taped the bandage in place, then patted at her left arm trying to find her own field dressing and clotting pack. He came away with a hand covered in blood and a feeling of shredded material. “Goddammit.”

He had another dressing tucked under his chest plate, though he’d been saving that one for himself. He yanked it out, but before he could rip it open, Perez let out one last rattling gasp and went still. He stared at her unseeing eyes, the dressing still held in front of him like a talisman from some ancient religion. If this had been back during the war, with backup and dustoff and all those other luxuries he didn’t have at the moment, he would have begun CPR and tried to keep Perez’s blood circulating until he could get her to a fully equipped medical bay. But none of them were going to be carried out of this.

Chase tucked the dressing into his sleeve pocket and grabbed a magazine from Perez’s chest pouch, then paused and thumbed her eyes closed before he went back to locate Wilson. He wasn’t hard to find—the Alliance pointed the way with a hellstorm of gunfire. Zack Wilson had retreated back further into the trees, flat on his belly, rising only to launch another grenade. The explosion gave them only a few seconds of respite, and Chase used it to low-crawl up beside the big man.

“Come on!” he yelled, leaning close to Wilson’s helmet. “We have to fall back!”

“What about Simms and Perez?” the big man demanded, twisting around to look back at Chase.

“They’re dead, and we will be, too, if we stay here.” Chase pointed back into the woods. “We’ll lose them in here, then circle around and try to make it to the LZ.”

“Fuck that!” Wilson said, ducking as another burst cut into the trees just over their heads. “We’ll never find our way through there. You saw the map…there’s a shitload of deadfall just up the hill. And for all we know, they’ve already circled around us. I say we just charge right into them, try to break through.”

“That’s suicide,” Chase told him, eyes narrowing in disbelief.

“Sarge,” Wilson said, sounding preternaturally calm, “we get captured by the Alliance, we’re gonna wish suicide was an option.”

Chase stared at the man for a second, getting ready to object, to parrot the words his company commander would have told him ten years ago, but instead he found himself nodding. It wasn’t a bad way to go. He’d imagined dying this way for the last decade.

“All right, then.” Chase loaded a frag grenade into his launcher. “On three, we both pop a frag, then make a run for it.”

“Copy that, Sarge.”

“Zack,” Chase sighed, his head sagging as if under a heavy weight, “if I have told you once, I’ve told you a hundred freaking times. Don’t call me Sarge.”

Wilson grinned, white teeth shining even in the low light.

“Copy that, Sarge.”

Chase laughed. He couldn’t help it.

“One.” He held up a finger. Wood splinters showered down on his helmet from a hail of bullets just a few feet above him. “Two….”

“Hey, get ready!” The voice over his headphones nearly made Chase jump straight up into the stream of Alliance gunfire. It was Pri. “Coming in hot! Keep your heads down!”

Like they weren’t already. But he didn’t talk back to her, just listened for the distinct whoosh, the static hum of the drive… and the sonic boom. It hit first, louder than the grenade blasts, shaking the upper limbs of the trees as the Tamar came to an abrupt halt only a few hundred feet overhead, a dark, looming mass against the lightening sky, a hundred yards long, balanced on invisible beams of force. A MANPAD launched a streak of white smoke, the heat-seeking missile arcing up toward the starship.

Chase’s guts twisted with the image of Pri and her ship tumbling out of the sky, then crashing in a ball of fire…but the missile corkscrewed off sideways, deflected by the static charge of the drive field, the same charge that shielded starships from interstellar dust when they accelerated to near lightspeed, just before the jump to hyper-light. He’d known about the effect, but knowing in his head and believing in his gut were two different things.

Pri believed, though, because the Tamar didn’t even try to evade, just hovered above the treetops and turned broadside down toward the Alliance positions as gunports slid open along her hull. The guns were ancient, designed over a century ago as anti-aircraft weapons and later adapted as air-to-ground artillery, long since retired from military use but easy to find on the black market since they could be printed in any industrial fabricator. AB Bofors was the name of the Swedish weapons manufacturer that had manufactured them before World War Two, and ever since, they’d been called simply Bofors guns.

And old or not, they just worked. 40mm shells rained down with a chorus of dull thunks and a scattering of brass cases, and where the rounds touched, the forest erupted in fire. The guns were old, but the rounds were new, something called Ultra-High Energy Explosives, or UltrEx for short, designed in orbital labs for the US government, promptly stolen by the Chinese, and then available everywhere within five years of its introduction. Returning the formula to the Chinese was only polite.

“Get to the dustoff!” Pri yelled in his ear before the echoes had faded. “I didn’t get them all, but you’ve got a clear shot right up the trail. We’ve got the Alliance ship tied up dodging our drone fighters, but it won’t take them long to blast them out of the sky!”

Chase hurt everywhere. He was still bleeding from half a dozen frag wounds, probably had cracked ribs and certainly had a slight concussion, and it would have been so damned easy to just sit down and rest. But he ran. He ran faster than he had since New Macau, when the odds had been stacked much higher against him, and would have run even faster than that if he hadn’t had to slow down to let Wilson keep up. He wanted to rag the big man out for letting fifty pounds of computer core hold him back, but he didn’t have the breath for it.

He finally got to see the Alliance troops, though. Bits of them were scattered across the trail fifty yards up, their combat utilities camouflaged in black and grey and stained in red. He couldn’t count how many bodies there were because the pieces didn’t add up. One of them crawled away toward the trees, then pulled himself with his hands because his legs were gone, and Chase paused a step to put a round into the base of his skull, just under the helmet, telling himself he was doing the man a favor. The Alliance didn’t waste money on regeneration treatments for line soldiers.

The trail widened past the Alliance positions, climbing the hill. On the other side was the river valley, where the trees parted into open fields and their LZ waited. Sprawled in the dirt just before the crest of the hill was a man’s body, dressed in the woodland camo of Chase’s team, the M27 still clutched in his hands. Chase turned him over, and Kevin Clement’s face stared up at him, drained of color from the wound through his throat, dark eyes seeing nothing.

“Oh, damn it.” He’d hoped Clement and McGovern had gotten away.

He grabbed Clement’s body and worked it up over his shoulder, squatting down to take the weight while Wilson frowned at him.

“We left the others,” the big man pointed out.

“We had to. We can take him.”

Maybe. Just stopping to check the body seemed to have sucked all the desperate, adrenaline-fueled energy out of Chase, and he staggered under Clement’s weight, though the former Australian soldier hadn’t been a heavy man.

Just one more hill. Then it’s easy.

His quadriceps were on fire, but he tromped hard into the dirt and crested the rise. Below him, the river valley spread out like a landscape painting from a bygone age, the golden glow of the rising sun kissing the mountains, setting the winding blue of the river afire. It seemed so foreign to the blood and death behind him. He dug in his heels and skidded down the path, steeper and steeper, the dead weight that had used to be Kevin Clement threatening to throw him head over heels.

“What about McGovern?” Wilson gasped, sounding as gassed as he was.

“He knows where the dustoff point is,” Chase wheezed. “He should be down here. If he’s not… maybe Pri can spot his transponder from the air.”

Which sounded better than admitting that they had no chance of finding the man if he’d decided to hide in the woods somewhere too sheltered for the signal to reach. If Wilson intuited his real meaning, he gave no sign of it, falling silent except for labored breathing until they reached the bottom of the hill and the clearing they’d designated as the primary LZ on the map before the drop.

“Where the hell is she?” Wilson demanded, turning 360 degrees, eyes on the sky.

“She’ll be here,” Chase assured him. He tried to come up with a reason but just wound up repeating himself. “She’ll be here.”

“McGovern!” Wilson yelled. The big man’s voice echoed in Chase’s headphones, subdued by the audio dampeners built into the radio. “McGovern, where the hell are you?”

“How the hell did they know we were coming?” Chase asked, and Wilson turned sharply to look at him. “This was a trap. They didn’t know exactly when we were coming, but they knew we’d be here eventually. Us. Maybe even me.”

“But we got the quantum core,” Wilson reminded him, gesturing toward his backpack.

“How much you want to bet there’s nothing on it?”

The strength went out of Chase’s legs, and he collapsed on the soft dirt and grass. Wilson crouched down beside him, eyes narrowing as if he was only now seeing the man.

“You’re banged up pretty good, Sarge.” He pulled out a field dressing and started working at Chase’s left arm. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Not as much as Perez.” The words might have come from someone else. Chase wasn’t conscious of speaking them. He felt as if he was watching from somewhere outside his body.

“Oh, fuck,” Wilson muttered.

Something about the tone or the man’s body language stirred Chase from his fugue, and he followed Wilson’s stare back into the tree line. Dark figures were trickling out of the forest, haphazardly at first but then forming into a wedge. Alliance troops. A platoon of them. And just ahead of them, maybe fifty or sixty yards, running breakneck, was Tommy McGovern.

Chase forced himself up to one knee and brought his carbine to his shoulder. Wilson was already shooting, the tok-tok-tok of his rifle distant and remote, drowned out by the auditory exclusion of combat. The range was over three hundred yards, closer to four hundred for the bulk of the enemy platoon, and Chase had to use the backup sights on the upper receiver of his rifle, since his visor was gone. He’d learned basic rifle marksmanship on iron sights, qualified with the electronic sights mounted on the rail, and only used the helmet HUD link once he’d been assigned to a Ranger battalion, but the HUD had spoiled him and his first burst of 6.8mm was low, sending puffs of dirt up twenty or thirty yards ahead of the front line of Alliance soldiers.

Wilson had been working his way from the edge of the woods down, and two of the black-clad troops there had stumbled but not fallen, the range too great for even the armor-piercing rounds from their M27s to penetrate the Alliance body armor. But the Chinese and Russian soldiers were plenty close to Tommy McGovern. He stiffened, his carbine slipping out of his hands, swinging free on its sling. One more step. Two. Then he was down, unmoving.

“Oh, Tommy,” Wilson hissed. Chase could only watch the man die. He’d gone to Ranger School with McGovern when they were both nineteen.

“How many rounds you got left, Zack?” Chase asked him, feeling at the mag pouches across his own tactical vest. There was one still full, plus however many rounds he had left in the mag loaded into his weapon. Call it forty, forty-five rounds, plus another frag grenade and his SIG 9mm, which would be just about useless against the Alliance armor.

“Not enough,” Wilson rumbled. “I think we’d better run.”

Chase chuckled without humor, barely able to keep his eyes open, his legs about to give out again.

“I think you’d better run, buddy.”

The wind was whipping through the river valley, a constant background noise, so loud that Chase didn’t hear the static hum until the shadow of the Tamar was right over them, blocking out the sun. Chase’s eyes took a moment to adjust, but by the time they did, the belly ramp of the ship was already yawning open, hanging just over their heads, teasing them with shelter and safety.

“Get your asses on board!” Chief Aguilar yelled over the radio. “We got maybe ten seconds until that Chinese gunboat’s on top of us!”

The ship slewed away from them, angling downward, lowering the ramp to waist-level, and Wilson threw himself aboard, then grabbed at a handhold on the side and swung his legs into the ship. Chase tried to jump for the edge of the ramp, but his legs wouldn’t work and he barely reached his tiptoes, his fingers sliding off the smooth metal edge of the ramp. He paused and tried to gather his energy for one more try when Wilson stretched a hand down and grabbed him by the casualty handle on the back of his tactical vest and yanked upward.

Chase’s back hit metal, and the ramp lifted him up as it closed like the very hand of God.

“Thanks, Pri,” he whispered just before darkness occluded the edges of his vision and he passed out.

* * *

Chase winced at the light shining into his eyes, then squeezed them shut again for a moment before he realized he was awake… and alive. He tried to call out, but his throat felt like he’d swallowed ten pounds of sand and all that came out was a rasping whisper.

A gentle hand raised his head up and pressed a cup of water to his mouth, and he gulped it down greedily, then sighed with relief.

“Thanks.”

“I thought we’d lost you for a few minutes there,” Priyanka said. Her face didn’t come into focus until he heard her voice, and with it came the rest of his surroundings. The faded eggshell bulkhead could have been from anywhere on the ship, but the coffin-shaped chamber in the corner of the compartment meant he was in the medical bay. He made a face at the thing, then looked back up at Pri.

“You didn’t put me in the box, did you?” he asked her.

She rolled her eyes and smacked him on the shoulder. It didn’t hurt, so he knew he was either pumped up with local anesthetic or he’d been out a while.

“No, but it was a near thing. If Hill hadn’t been able to pull out the fragment in your leg, we were going to have to let the computer have a crack at you.”

She offered a fresh cup of water, and he scooted up in the bed to take it. Everything moved, and the only pain was from his ribs. They were bound tightly with a bandage, but he was sure now someone had put a neural block on him because there was no way he’d been out long enough for cracked ribs to heal. He was also stripped down to his undershorts beneath the threadbare white sheet, and it was cold in the medical bay.

“I don’t know which I like less,” Chase admitted, sipping at the cup this time, “letting the auto-doc probe me or owing Adrian a thank-you.”

Pri didn’t laugh. She looked at the deck for a moment before putting a hand over his and meeting his eyes.

“I’m sorry about your people. For what it’s worth, I really liked…” She shrugged. “…some of them.”

Chase didn’t answer, just let his head fall back to the pillow, resting the half-full cup of water against his chest. The light panels in the overhead were still painful to look at, which gave him an excuse to close his eyes and avoid her gaze.

“This is the last time. I’ve been doing this too long. I started out trying to make the Alliance pay, but the thing is, they can afford to pay and I can’t.”

Pri didn’t argue, even though his pronouncement would mean she was out a steady job, which told him he was coming to a conclusion she’d reached long ago.

“What are you going to do?”

Chase had to consider the question for a second. He’d been a soldier for ten years, a mercenary privateer for five more. It didn’t leave him with much in the way of marketable skills.

“Personal protection,” he suggested. “There’s a market for it. Maybe it doesn’t pay as well, but… at least I can do it alone.”

Chase didn’t know when Pri left, didn’t remember her taking the cup or turning off the lights. He didn’t know when he’d begun to cry, either, but it was the last thing he remembered before he sank back into an anesthetic haze of sleep.

4

“Angel, you have to be reasonable,” Devlin insisted, raising his hands like a supplicant in church. “There’s no way we can authorize you to travel to Vishnu.” He shook his head, his long gray hair whipping side to side with the motion. “It’s just not safe.”

“Don’t Angel me, Peter,” Evangeline Cortez warned the older man, leaning across his desk, putting her nose only inches from his. “And don’t tell me to be reasonable. This is my project! I need to be at the damned dig to supervise!”

“Dr. Stephenson is more than competent,” Peter Devlin assured her, pushing his desk chair back slightly, one hand going behind him and touching the polished oak of the display case as if he was worried about backing into it and sending the shelves of artifacts crashing down. They were, Angel knew, officially on loan from Cal Berkeley rather than being looted from ancient tombs for Devlin’s personal collection, but she still didn’t like the optics of it.

“Dan is a wonderful man,” she agreed, palms flat on the top of his desk, covering half of the scrolling video and photo display built into the furniture. Her thumb was planted directly in the eye of Devlin’s wife. “He’s a competent archaeologist and an experienced digger. But this isn’t just archaeology, Peter, and you damned well know it. This is xenoarchaeology, and Vishnu is the most extensive Arborist ruins we’ve found so far on two dozen worlds. I need to be there.”

“Vishnu is a shithole,” Devlin said with unusual honesty for a college dean.

He touched a control on his desk, and the mirror hanging on the wall beside the display case turned into a three-dimensional screen. An image of the planet in question was already pulled up, which meant Devlin had been very prepared for this argument. The thought annoyed Angel, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she’d expected him to see the wisdom of her proposal without having to argue it.

Vishnu was a green and blue world, a hair closer to its star than Earth was to the Sun, on average a bit hotter and wetter, though the water was more spread out into dozens of smaller inland seas instead of a few huge oceans. She’d read the files. The dig was in the interior of what the locals called the Bengal Peninsula, which was humid, miserable, and awash with mosquitoes and carnivorous land animals, plenty of ammunition for Devlin to use against her.

“Leaving aside the possibility of you picking up some alien variation of a parasite or virus from the mosquitos, not mentioning the danger of you being eaten by one of the local predators, neither of which would, I am sure, deter you from going, we are left with the main problem.” He traced a line on the control panel, and the image of the planet faded, replaced by a stream of images of what looked to Angel like commercial starships. They passed by too quickly for her to read the names, but there were at least a dozen.

“That is a partial list of the ships either hijacked or destroyed by pirates in the BZ Ceti system in just the last three years. It is number four of the top ten most dangerous colonized systems, and the only sure way to be safe is to have a military escort… which we do not have and aren’t going to get. And once you get to the damned planet, it doesn’t get much better!”

Another flick of his finger on the touch screen, and the ship photos changed to the low, flattened lines of a city, the buildings squared off and jammed together, their original color lost in the green stains of moss and algae. And the people were just as thick as the buildings, more than she’d seen on any of the independent colonies, here and there a pedicab making its way through the mass.

“Vishnu was settled way back in the beginning, you see. The whole thing was financed by Lakshmi Nadar.” He cocked his eyebrow as if she should know who he was talking about, but she shook her head.

“The name sounds vaguely familiar….”

“Indian billionaire. Made his fortune in software, then diversified into space industry, trying to be the Asian Elon Musk. He was one of Dr. Soong-Tierney’s initial investors in the S-T drive, so he wound up richer than God, just like everyone involved with the drive. Unlike Soong-Tierney, he didn’t vanish into an orbital city never to be seen in public again. Mr. Nadar was something of a philanthropist and was deeply concerned with overpopulation in Asia and the damage it was doing to the local environment. So, he offered free transport and a grubstake to any Indian citizen willing to leave Earth for Vishnu.”

“And that worked?” Angel asked, eyes going wide. Devlin shot her a look of mixed pity and disdain.

“I know your attention has been focused a few thousand years in the past, but yes, things were pretty bad for a lot of the Indian population after the war with Pakistan, and they only got worse after the formation of the Alliance. China and Russia were putting the squeeze on India economically, trying to get them to join the Alliance. The Union wound up bailing them out, but there were people starving for a while. Millions signed up to leave, and Nadar sank hundreds of millions into sending them. People, genetically engineered seeds, construction equipment… with the idea being that Vishnu would wind up being a cultural, industrial, and agricultural center for this whole section of space someday, with Nadar as its economic kingpin.”

Devlin was in teaching mode now. Angel recognized it from the days she’d had him as a doctoral advisor, not so terribly long ago, but he was a good teacher, and whenever he went off on a rant, she found that she actually learned something.

“And what happened? Because it obviously wasn’t that.”

“He had food, people, supplies, but he didn’t have a military. Not even much of a police force. And when he and Dr. Soong-Tierney decided that everyone should have access to their drive, not just national governments, that meant that anyone who could scrape together enough money to buy, rent, or steal a ship could take whatever they wanted into space. Including guns. Vishnu became a major target for pirates, raiders, protection rackets, organized crime, and would-be revolutionaries. And Nadar was one of the first casualties.” Devlin shrugged. “Without his money backing the colony, it fell into squalor and crime, and the only industries other than subsistence farming are the old basics—carpentry, handicrafts, prostitution, and drugs. The drugs are the growth industry. They trade crystal meth, opium, and cocaine on the black market for iron and steel and lithium and everything else they need to have a more or less modern society.”

“Shit.” She hadn’t heard that about Vishnu. But Angel shook it off and met Devlin’s gaze with a harsh glare. “I understand it’s dangerous, but I’m going anyway. That dig is not about to move itself to a safer planet, and it is our best chance to get any kind of real understanding of Gardiner society!”

“Angel…” he tried again, fingers massaging his temples as if she was giving him a headache.

“They’re an alien intelligence,” she insisted, fingers curled like she was clutching at the truth of it. “The only one we know for sure ever existed. And somehow, they killed themselves off. We need to find out why, or the same thing could happen to us. And all we know about them is that they liked to bring their native trees with them wherever they went. That’s it, Peter. We don’t even know what they called themselves… our name for them is basically a joke.” Devlin opened his mouth again, but Angel pressed on before he could interrupt her. “If it’s dangerous, then by God, hire me a bodyguard. I know there’s money for it in the budget. I’ve seen the printouts. Personal protection is an authorized expense.”

That stopped Devlin in his tracks, and he appeared to be actually thinking about it.

“But it has to be someone who can keep up,” she went on, smacking the desk. “I don’t want some overweight retiree who’s waddling around in the biggest military fatigues they sell at the surplus store, just as likely to have a heart attack as stop a bullet for me. I want someone who’s worth a shit. Someone with actual combat experience.” A thought struck her and she stuck a finger toward him. “Your brother-in-law is a colonel or something in the Army, right?”

“75th Ranger Regiment,” he confirmed, nodding. The corner of his mouth turned up. “And you know something, Angel? I might have just the guy for you.”

* * *

“You got any change, mister?” the ancient, purple-haired woman croaked through a lifetime of cigarette smoke. She raised her cell phone, one of the cheap models that the city of Berkeley gave away to the homeless. “I accept Venmo.”

Victor Lee ignored her and twisted the accelerator on his scooter as the light changed. Homeless people in Berkeley were like pigeons in New York City. You pretended to not notice them unless you’d brought along a few crumbs to throw their way for entertainment.

Does that make me a bad person? Victor shrugged the question away and turned down the street toward his apartment. He’d consider his morality and compassion some other night, when he felt less like smashing his head against a wall.

The scooter went into a utility closet that the building custodian had given him the key to, and if the flimsy wooden door with a cheap padlock wasn’t much protection, it was certainly more deterrence than the bike rack and cable he’d used for his last scooter, the one that had been stolen after a week. Victor kept the key ring in his hand, trudging up the step without looking up, even though he knew it wasn’t smart. Someone could be hiding at the next landing. He’d been mugged that way once, a year ago. No one had tried it since, though. Probably because the first guy had spread the word that he didn’t have anything worth taking.

Sure enough, the landing was empty and no shadowy criminals tried to stop him from unlocking the apartment door. He winced at the bright lights in the living room, both because it was two in the morning and he wanted to be asleep and because they were a sign that his roommate was still awake and would definitely want to talk.

“Hey!” Lexie said as he pushed the door shut behind him. She was dressed in antique footie pajamas she’d bought at an online auction and stretched out on the ancient battered sofa the two of them had carried here from the dumpster where someone had left it two years ago. “How was your date?”

Victor took a moment to fasten the chain and throw the security bolt before he answered, using the pause to decide how much he wanted to tell the young woman. Lexie meant well, but as much as she dressed and talked like a hip relationship advice guru streaming live for donations, the fact was, she was a bigger nag than his mother. On the other hand, he needed to vent, despite the fact he knew exactly what she’d say.

“I hate this city,” he declared as he hung his keys on the hook beside the door, then stripped out of his windbreaker and draped it over one arm of the couch. It was too warm for it, even in spring, but he didn’t like riding the scooter without something to prevent road rash.

“You always say that.” Lexie shook her head, clucking in disappointment, looking away from him and back to the book she was reading on her tablet. It was a textbook, he knew, because Lexie didn’t read anything else on her tablet, still preferring physical copies, an affectation Victor would have found more endearing if the apartment hadn’t been so small and her book collection so large. “If you hate it so much here, why not emigrate?” She waved a hand upward demonstratively. “Cash in your college fund and buy passage somewhere they don’t have crime, or homeless people, or muggers?”

“And do what?” Victor snorted a laugh as he moved past her to the tiny kitchen, dodging a pile of paperbacks. “Become a farmer? Work in a mine? You may not have noticed, but I’m working on my doctorate.”

“For how long now? Is the thesis that hard to finish… or are you still hung up on that woman, your advisor?” Lexie raised her head to catch his eye, the corner of her mouth turning up. “What’s her name? Angela?”

“Dr. Evangeline Cortez,” he corrected her, retrieving a beer from the fridge. “You want one?” he asked, holding it up so she could see it through the bar opening.

“No, I’m good.” She pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You are still hung up on her, aren’t you? That’s why you keep sabotaging yourself every time you go out with someone new, like this Debbie girl from tonight.”

“It’s not my fault Debbie is an airhead,” he insisted. Victor took a swig of the beer and made a face. It was cheap and alcoholic, and those were the only good things he could say about it. He sat down beside Lexie on the couch, and she scooted over to make room. “All she wanted to talk about the whole night was whether I’d watched the latest upload from Melanie Gerardo and how could I not watch Melanie’s videos and didn’t I know that Melanie was the most talented person in the world?” He let his head fall back against the cushion, resting the bottom of the beer bottle against his blue jeans. “Talented, she said. As if going online and leaving videos about how shitty her ex-boyfriends are and how much she loves the same bands and movies that everyone else loves makes someone talented.” He turned and fixed Lexie with a glare. “Please tell me you don’t watch that shit.”

“Who has time?” Lexie asked, holding up the tablet. “Some of us are actually working on their doctoral thesis. I don’t want to be scraping by on what a graduate assistant makes for the next three years like you have.”

“You just don’t understand.” Another longer drink of the beer. The more he drank of it, the better it tasted. “If I try to write my thesis on some cookie-cutter subject like everyone else, Dr. Cortez will chew me up and spit me out. I’ve got to come up with just the right subject, or she’ll shoot it down immediately.”

“You both spend all your time studying those aliens… the Gardeners?”

“Arborists,” he corrected automatically.

“Yeah, those. Why not write your thesis on them?”

“And write what?” A long, last chug. Maybe, he thought, he should get another. “That they came from somewhere we haven’t found yet, spread throughout this whole section of our spiral arm, colonized a dozen different worlds, and brought with them trees and plants from their homeworld? Because that’s about all we know. I couldn’t fill a pamphlet with that, much less a doctoral dissertation.” He frowned, thoughts wandering. “You know I saw a doctoral thesis once with almost two hundred citations? And it was only like thirty pages long. There was an endnote almost every sentence. Right now, the best books on the Arborists were all written by Dr. Cortez, and you need more than one primary source to write a thesis.”

“Cry me a river, Mr. Lee,” Lexie said, miming playing a violin. “You’ve gotten to go to other planets, dude. If I’m lucky, the department will let me visit DC someday to go to the national archives.” Her matronly face brightened with a broad smile. “Hey, that reminds me, you wanna go see the new Red Raptor movie?”

Victor groaned, making a face.

“Lexie, you know I’m not into superhero movies.”

“It’s in HoloSenSurround,” she teased, poking him in the ribs.

He flinched but couldn’t stop the smile breaking out across his face, banishing the unpleasant memory of his date.

“Oh, damn it, you know I can’t turn down HoloSenSurround. I assume it’s not playing at two in the morning, so when did you want to go?”

“Tomorrow night.” She frowned in confusion. “Wait, I guess that’s tonight.” She waved it off. “You know what I mean. I think it’s got showings at seven, nine, and eleven.”

“We should do seven,” Victor decided, “then eat afterward and…”

He was on a roll, beginning to get excited about the plan, when his phone chirped for attention. Victor glanced down at his jacket. He’d left the phone in the windbreaker’s pocket and hadn’t thought he’d need it again except as an alarm clock to wake him up in time for his ten o’clock class. He had an ear bud for it, but that was in the other pocket.

“That can’t be Debbie,” he said, digging into the pocket. “She can’t be calling me already.”

“Ooh, someone has a crush on Mr. Lee,” Lexie teased.

He found the device and read the number on the screen… and frowned even more deeply.

“Dr. Cortez?” he said, holding the phone to his ear, not bothering to try to reach the ear bud. “Is something wrong?”

Lexie had begun making an obscene gesture once she heard who it was, and Victor waved at her to cut it out.

“On the contrary, Victor,” Angel Cortez replied, not sounding at all like it was two a.m. and they all should have been asleep. “Things are just about perfect. Remember when I spoke to you about the dig on Vishnu?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said automatically, though the truth was, he had only a vague recollection of the conversation and mostly that it was a death trap and Dean Devlin would never let her go there.

“I talked the stiff-necked old bastard into letting me go. Get packed and make sure your vaccinations are up to date. We leave from the LAX spaceport on a shuttle to Gateway Station in thirty-six hours.”

“But, ma’am…” Whatever objection he’d been about to bring was lost on Angel Cortez. She’d hung up with the last pronouncement.

Bitch. Just assumes I can drop everything, give up my classes, my job, my friends and run off to some shithole colony for God knows how many weeks or months, living in a tent, eating the local swill, and swatting at bugs that shouldn’t even like human blood but somehow always do.

And, of course, she assumed right.

“I don’t think,” he told Lexie, tossing his phone back on the couch, “that I’m going to be able to catch that movie.”

5

Evangeline Cortez didn’t care much for free fall.

She’d gotten used to it over the last few years, hopping back and forth from one off-world dig site to another, but even with the anti-nausea medication, it tortured her inner ear and made her believe with every fiber of her being that she was plunging into nothingness.

But she’d be damned before she’d let Victor Lee or anyone else know.

“Why the heck don’t they have some kind of gravity generator yet?” Victor whined, one hand clutching at his duffle bag, the other affixed to the railing like he believed letting go would send him drifting out into the airless death of empty space instead of just turning him into a nuisance to the rest of the passengers getting off the shuttles at Gateway.

Instead of just a nuisance to me.

“I mean, there’s artificial gravity on the Soong-Tierney ships. Why can’t they put it on space stations so we wouldn’t have to spin them? That way, we wouldn’t have to go through this”—he indicated what this was with a nod toward the transport hub leading from the docking ports to the lifts, and through them outward to the rotating sections of the enormous tin can that was Gateway Station—“every time we wanted to catch a ship outbound.”

“Haven’t you ever taken a physics class, Victor?” she wondered, struggling with the straps of her luggage. It had no weight in the free fall of the docking bay, but it did still have mass and momentum and went twisting and tumbling with every jolt of her hand against the railing.

“Just the ones I needed to graduate high school,” the graduate student admitted.

“The Soong-Tierney drive can only generate artificial gravity when the drive nacelles are active. Which means they’re generating thrust. Which means that the only way for this station to have artificial gravity would be if it was accelerating. Which, besides requiring a nuclear reactor the size of a freaking city, would sort of negate the whole purpose of it being a station.”

“Oh,” Victor said, and if he didn’t actually turn red, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

“Besides, it’s only till we get to the lifts.”

Not that getting there and finding a car wasn’t going to take some time. Gateway was as packed as the Atlanta airport at Christmas, jammed with a quixotic mixture of entrepreneurs, adventurers, would-be explorers and hopeless romantics and a more pragmatic assemblage of hard-headed business types intent on selling the proverbial picks and shovels to the gold-miners or, more directly, robbing them blind.

And Gateway didn’t have much in the way of law-enforcement to prevent it. Security, yes. The owners of the privately funded station snuggled into the fifth Lagrangian point between the Earth and Luna didn’t want some whacko to blow a hole in the side and kill all their customers, nor did they want people too scared to use their station to do business. But they also didn’t want people too scared of being arrested to use their station to do business some governments might consider illegal. Gateway was neutral, extranational territory.

“Why did we have to meet them here?” Victor wondered, as if he were reading her mind.

They’d finally made it down to the lift banks, using the handrails to hold themselves in place in the line rather than to propel themselves down the passageway. Angel often wondered if it was courtesy, lack of three-dimensional thinking, or the uniformed security guards carrying sawed-off shotguns that kept people from trying to float high and cut the line from above.

“I mean,” the grad student went on, as if oblivious to her lack of interest in listening to him complain, “wouldn’t it have been just as easy for this bodyguard dude to meet us at LAX?” Victor glanced around them, holding his bags close as if he expected one of the rough-looking, wild-eyed types surrounding them to steal them right off his body. “Couldn’t he have landed this ship we’re chartering there? It’s not like the university wouldn’t have paid their landing fees and gotten them clearance.”

“I don’t know these people,” Angel admitted, “but from what Peter told me, I get the impression they aren’t too keen on the idea of landing anywhere with government jurisdiction. US or Union.” She shrugged, but in the free fall, that was more a matter of her whole body pulling downward with the railing as an anchor rather than her shoulders rising. “Not to mention, one of the main reasons we need this crew is that their ship is armed, and no way would LAX let an armed spaceship land, no matter how much Berkeley paid them.” She scowled at Victor. “Is that it, or do you want to whine some more? I swear, if I knew what a baby you were going to be about all this, I would have brought along someone else.”

Who that might have been, she wasn’t sure. If she was being honest with herself, not only was Victor the only one of her graduate assistants she would have trusted on a trip like this, but he was also the only one who she believed would come.

It took nearly a half hour waiting in line before they finally caught a lift car, and even then, the thing filled far beyond the listed capacity before the doors slid shut. Angel was pushed into a corner with Victor against her shoulder, her bags held out in front of her to ward off the shaggy-haired man in a long trench coat who seemed to be trying to put an arm around her. He smelled like sweat and used beer, and the rest of the occupants of the elevator weren’t much better.

“Make sure your feet are flat on the floor,” she warned Victor as the car sped off for the rim of the spinning tin can.

He didn’t ask why, either because despite his lack of physics training, he realized what angular momentum was, or maybe because he was too embarrassed to admit he didn’t know. If it was the latter, then he got a sudden visceral education when spin gravity made the floor “down.” Someone on the other side of the car yelped, probably turning an ankle because they’d been floating too far above what had become the floor.

The car arrived at their level and Angel elbowed her way out, intent on not spending a second longer than she had to in the humid, fetid swamp of body odor that was the elevator. She worried Victor might get stuck inside, swarmed over by the influx of boarding passengers, but the tug on one of her bags was his desperate grasp, and he pulled himself out behind her, gasping for air.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked, looking around.

The outer rim levels of Gateway reminded her of the food court at LAX, just lines of businesses with not enough seating and corridors packed with people who wanted like hell to be anywhere else. Under a roof. Yet somehow, this place raked in billions of dollars a year, enough to make its upkeep worthwhile to the consortium of private investors who subsidized it.

She had to admit, the place was useful. People needed to meet to do business somewhere without the territorial fingers of Earth governments encroaching, and if none of those nations really approved of Gateway, well, they all needed it just as much as the criminals and the entrepreneurs.

“I shouldn’t have brought this much luggage,” Victor lamented, struggling beneath the load of an overstuffed duffle, a backpack that pulled against the shoulder straps like it was full of bricks, and a roller bag that clicked and clacked behind him. It was motorized, but Victor didn’t seem to trust it not to wind up being hijacked by some sharpie in the crowd. “I didn’t know we were coming this deep into the station. I thought we’d just transfer from one ship to the other.”

“There’s the small matter of agreeing to a contract first,” she said, the pull of her own bags against her shoulders painfully apparent. She was determined to ignore it, though. “Also, I don’t intend on stepping into some low-life mercenary’s ship without at least getting to meet him first.”

“Low-life mercenary?” Victor repeated, eyes going wide as he stopped in the middle of the concourse. An older woman dressed in flowing purple robes cursed as she nearly ran into him and dodged to the side. “You didn’t say anything about these guys being mercenaries.”

Angel rolled her eyes and tugged at his arm to get him back into motion.

“Who the hell else do you think is going to be running armed escorts into periphery systems, Victor? The Humane Society? The Peace Corps?”

“Aren’t there, like, high-end firms out there who do this kind of thing with government approval?” Which was, at least, a reasonable question, so she answered it.

“There are. They are also incredibly expensive and most of their jobs come from corporations who can afford to throw that kind of money around. We’re working from the discretionary funding of a public university. We’re lucky they didn’t just stick us on a communal transport and wish us the best.”

Victor seemed to accept that, though she thought it probably came reluctantly. At least, he stopped talking, which was a definite improvement. She concentrated on the map in her head, memorized on the shuttle up. She’d been told her memory was nearly eidetic, though she’d never noticed it, except to be amused that other people had to make notes for themselves on their phones and annoyed when they forgot something she needed them to remember. Her mental image of the map was as clear as when she’d been looking the place up on her console on the shuttle and she led Victor around a labyrinthine series of turns and curves and cut throughs.

With each turn, it seemed to her that the light grew dimmer, though that might have been a psychological reaction to the changing nature of the people and businesses around them. As they wound deeper into the maze, the slicked-back corporate types and the wide-eyed dreamers had filtered off to the sides, leaving them with a core of unsavory characters, their gaze narrow, their hands stuffed into pockets, probably keeping whatever weapons they’d been able to bring with them in reach. The businesses had changed as well. No more gift shops and fast-food stands, replaced now by bars, casinos, strip joints and, as they walked further toward the center, brothels… the high-tech kind with sex robots, though she was sure the old-fashioned variety could be found somewhere on the station.

“Where the hell are we meeting this guy, anyway?” Victor asked, staring at the passersby just as they stared at him, except his was the wide-eyed look of prey and theirs the risk-benefit analysis of predators.

“There,” Angel told him, pointing at the angular, ominous lines of a bar, its name advertised in purple neon along the external wall.

Little Sammy’s, it said, accompanied by an illustration of a rabbit with the attributes of a nubile human female. Angel sneered, but proceeded inside, dragging her baggage along… and Victor, if there was a difference.

If there’d been sidelong glances before, there were open stares now. For all that Angel had told Victor to dress in unassuming work clothes and had taken her own advice, wearing the roughest, cheapest shirt and jeans she owned along with a pair of boots she’d worn to digs since she was a grad student, the two of them still stood out somehow, babes in the woods. It wasn’t a feeling she cared for, and she turned more than one set of eyes away simply by the ferocity of her glare.

The interior of the bar was darker than the corridors outside, most of the light coming from a display screen running 360 degrees around the junction of the walls with the high roof. It showed clips from old movies—some she recognized, some she didn’t—but what they had in common was the depiction of women in skimpy clothing. The waitresses circulating amid the high-top tables and booths reinforced that atmosphere, wearing bunny costumes that echoed the image on the wall outside, and Angel looked away, embarrassed for them.

Victor did not, though to be fair, she wasn’t sure if his gaze was lascivious or horrified. He did live in Berkley, so horrified was a better guess. She found an unoccupied booth and pushed Victor into it, not noticing any signage indicating they should wait for a seat.

One of the waitresses found them almost immediately, and Angel was impressed with the customer service, if not the scruples of the place. The woman was young, in her early twenties if that, and Angel wondered how she’d wound up on this place. She wanted to grab her and make her sit beside them, ask her whether she’d been forced into this job by blackmail or extortion or just plain desperation.

Unfortunately, that was just begging for more attention that they didn’t need, so she just smiled politely at the girl.

“Can I get you something to drink?” the young blond asked. “There’s a two-drink minimum,” she added, her friendly, open gaze turning briefly cold, as if she’d encountered tourists in the past who’d tried to freeload.

“I’ll have a boilermaker,” she said, getting both drinks out of the way at once. The waitress turned her attention to Victor, and it was mutual. Angel rolled her eyes and nudged the younger man.

“I… uh,” he stammered. “I guess I’ll have two frozen strawberry margaritas?”

Angel wouldn’t have thought it likely for a girl this young to be able to make that disdainful a face, but the waitress proved her wrong.

“We don’t have a blender,” the woman informed him, somehow turning the announcement into the basest of insults, leaving unsaid what was obvious in her eyes. And if we did, I still wouldn’t serve you that wussy drink.

“Just two regular margaritas on the rocks, then.”

The girl nodded and walked away on the highest heels Angel had ever seen. Victor’s gaze followed her.

“I didn’t think places like this even existed,” he blurted to Angel, shaking his head. “I mean, I’ve seen videos from like sixty or seventy years ago that showed them, but…”

“This is Gateway,” she said. “Besides being untouchable by any national government, it’s quite insulated from shame or societal pressure. Anything you want, you can find here. No matter how degrading it is, if you pay someone well enough, you can get it here.”

She was trying to sound damning, but the assessment came out almost admiring. And she supposed it was. This particular perversion offended her sensibilities as a woman and a human being, but there was something about the sheer chutzpah of the whole station that appealed to her. Society was made up of people, and they shouldn’t need to pretend to be perfect any more than a person should.

She was so introspective, and Victor was apparently so enamored of the waitresses that neither of them noticed the two scruffy, ragged-around-the-edges men approaching their table until they’d slid into the seats opposite them in the booth. They looked enough alike to be related, cousins or brothers, with the same cut to their close-trimmed beards, their dreadlocks dyed in the colors of the rainbow to match the patterns of their identical dusters.

“Good morning, you lovely people,” the one on the left said, his smile revealing a row of alternating silver and gold teeth. “Welcome to our wonderful home here on Gateway, and we sincerely hope you enjoy your stay.”

“Yes, we sincerely hope,” the one on the right took up the patter. He was slightly thicker in the jaw than his relative, but the only stylistic difference between the two were the tiny cuts through his eyebrows that his friend lacked. “Allow me to introduce my partner and myself to you lovely people. I,” he said with flourish, fingers pressed against his chest, “am Burton Spencer, and this”—he pointed to his companion—“is my beloved cousin, Sean Guster.”

“Are these the people we’re supposed to be meeting?” Victor hissed into Angel’s ear, clutching at her arm.

She pried his fingers off her bicep and rewarded him with a glare. “No.” Then she shared that glare with their visitors. “What do you two… gentlemen want?”

“Not the type for pleasantries, are you?” Guster observed, cocking an eyebrow at her. “All right, then. We have a business opportunity to offer you.” He spread his fingers as if offering up a gift. “Something that will be profitable for both of us. You see, we’re always on the lookout for someone with the intelligence and ambition to make some money, and you seem like just the right kind of people for that.”

Angel was opening her mouth to tell him to go piss up a rope when Spencer took up the thread, nearly stepping on the last words of his cousin, Guster.

“You see, my lovelies, we find ourselves in the unenviable—but not unheard of—position of not being able to set foot on any civilized nation on Earth without a severe misunderstanding resulting from our prior visits. Not that we’re incredibly attached to any place on Earth, you see, so it’s no great loss for either of us. But it does limit certain business possibilities that would otherwise be very desirable.”

“Which is where you two come in,” Guster took back over. “We have some goods we need delivered to LAX, nothing deadly or that would get you in too much trouble… hell, I’m not even sure if it’s illegal in California.”

“It’s just illegal for us to be in California,” Spencer cut in.

“It’s small, so small you’d never even notice it, just a few kilograms of Orion Blue, the latest and greatest designer opiate on the market. You get it to our friend at the airport and your cut would be $10,000 paid in DigCoin on delivery.”

Angel stared at him through narrowed eyes, irritation warring with amusement.

“Let’s take this seriatim, shall we?” she said, leaning across the table at the men. “First of all, competence. You researched us adequately enough to discover we flew out of LAX, but you couldn’t deduce we weren’t going back there? News flash, we’re outbound. We won’t be coming back to LAX for months. Did your informers not tell you that?”

She nearly laughed in their faces. They both looked as if someone had smacked them with a baseball bat.

“Secondly, let’s talk about what we’re supposed to deliver. Orion Blue sells for $100,000 a kilo on the street, and that’s after it’s cut. How would two low-level lowlifes like you ever get your hands on that much designer drugs? And more importantly, why the hell would you ever trust a couple of tourists you just met to deliver it for you?”

She counted the points off on her hand since she doubted these idiots could follow her without a visual cue. If they’d seemed gobsmacked before, they were wide-eyed and disbelieving now.

“Third, how likely would you be to tell two complete strangers they were carrying Orion Blue? Why the hell would you assume that they would be stupid enough to not know how valuable it is and trust them not to just go sell it themselves and pocket the money?” She smiled thinly. “And last, of course, do you really think I would agree to traffic drugs for you without being paid ahead of time? Ten thousand on delivery?”

She barked a laugh, then raised an accusatory finger.

“You want to know what I think? I think you two owe somebody money down in LA, and you don’t have it because you’re both quite obviously a pair of chronic losers. I think you told them you’d send down some product as payment, but you won’t do it yourselves because you know the second they see you, they’ll pop you. So, you keep trying to find some marks here on Gateway to take some worthless, cheap, toilet-lab drugs with them and then catch a bullet for their trouble. And you hope that will be the end of it, but of course it won’t, since the people who loaned you money will still want their money back.” She shrugged. “The fact that they loaned you two money in the first place means their judgment isn’t that good, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t greedy enough to come after you.” Her pointing finger turned upward. “You know what I would do if I were you? I’d get the hell out of this system. Grab work on an outbound freighter, even a smuggler, just anywhere out of here. You’ll thank me later.”

“How did you know how much Orion Blue sells for?” Victor asked her, looking as impressed as Sean and Burton.

“There’s a wonderful streaming series about the new designer drugs from the BBC,” she told him. “You should look it up… perhaps download it to watch during the trip.”

“Yo, bitch!” Spencer—or is it Guster?—leaned across the table and grabbed her by the arm and yanked her toward him. “You think some snooty bint fresh off the fucking boat is going to come in here and insult us?”

Angel didn’t panic because she never did. Instead, she ran responses to the attack through her eidetic memory until she settled on one from a Krav Maga class three years ago. She twisted her arm, gaining leverage on Spencer’s with her elbow against his forearm, then grabbed his wrist with her other hand and pushed downward, using the leverage to accomplish what her weight and strength alone would not have. Spencer’s face slammed into the table, then rebounded as she let go of his arm and stepped out of the booth.

“If you won’t take my advice about leaving the system,” she said, “then I suggest you at least take this advice and get the hell out of this bar before my friend and I are forced to hurt you.”

That last was a bluff. Victor hadn’t moved from his chair and likely wouldn’t unless someone chased him out of it. His jaw had dropped open at the grab and remained there at the slam.

Spencer was rubbing at his cheek where it had smacked into the table, but both men had exited the booth, and Guster had a hand in the side pocket of his rainbow-colored duster.

“You just made a big mistake,” Guster told her, pulling a knife out of its sheath in his pocket. The blade was matte-black and six inches long, the handle a dull-green fiberglass laminate, and he held it between thumb and forefinger like someone who’d actually been trained on how to use it.

Oh, that’s so very unfortunate…

6

Angel backed a step away from them, but she had another problem. They weren’t alone in the bar, and the commotion was drawing attention. So far, the looks were curious rather than aggressive, but this wasn’t the kind of place where she could count on even neutrality, much less good intentions. A tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in a leather vest and silk jodhpurs was inching forward, licking his lips between a shaggy grey beard, and she didn’t trust the nature of his interest, but she couldn’t keep him and the two idiots in her focus at once.

“When are you two shitheads going to stop messing with every new face that comes in here?”

The words came out rough and hoarse, the voice of a man who’d spent years of his life yelling at people. The man behind it wasn’t particularly tall, not quite six feet, nor did he have the build of a weightlifter. Instead, he reminded her of the butterfly specialists she knew from her college swim team, muscular but lean, almost lanky. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just threadbare blue jeans and a flannel shirt, and the close-cropped blond beard wouldn’t have been regulation if he had, but there was a military air to the way he carried himself. She’d known soldiers, and this man was a soldier.

The reaction from Spencer and Guster was as dramatic as the man’s appearance. They spun at his voice, and Spencer held his knife up in a defensive gesture, but his hands were shaking.

“Weston!” Guster exclaimed, still trying to work the cramp out of his arm. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Business,” the soldier informed them. “Business with these two, in point of fact. Go cause trouble somewhere else.” He raised an eyebrow at Spencer. “And if you don’t stop waving that knife around, I’m going to stick it up your ass.”

Spencer scowled at the man, but the knife disappeared into his coat.

“You better keep your eyes open, Weston. You gotta sleep, too.”

The soldier laughed, a harsh sound.

“You can be pretty freaking sure that when I do sleep, it won’t be anywhere near you two. Get the hell out of here.”

The two men grumbled but they moved, shuffling out the front entrance to a few subdued chuckles and a general air of disappointment that someone hadn’t been stabbed. Angel shot a look behind her at the big, bearded bruiser. He was still leering at her but had moved back to the bar and retrieved his drink. She watched him until she was sure he wasn’t going to jump her, then turned back to the soldier.

“You’re Dr. Cortez?” he asked, extending a hand. She shook it and found it dry and rough, with the strength of a man used to hard work. “I’m Chase Weston. Nice to meet you.”

“Hey, Chase!” It was their waitress, returning now that the excitement was over, all smiles for the soldier. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon!” She rubbed her hip up against him in a very familiar way, leaning in to embrace the man. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Two beers, and let’s get it over with, Holly,” Chase told her, offering a warm smile in return for the hug. “Whatever you got on tap. I’m not picky.”

“Obviously not,” Angel observed, sitting back down in the booth. Victor still hadn’t moved, and she was beginning to wonder if he was in shock. “This is my graduate assistant, Victor Lee. He’s excellent at administrative work and digging, though I am beginning to question his skill at responding to emergencies.”

“Oh, uh, sorry, Dr. Cortez,” Victor said, stumbling over the words as if he was having to relearn how to speak after a stroke. “I just… I’ve been mugged before.”

“And I don’t have to ask how that went for you,” she cut him off.

Holly came back by with a tray loaded down with six drinks and carefully unloaded them in front of their proper owners, showing both an attention to detail and an alacrity Angel wouldn’t have suspected. Perhaps she hadn’t been forced into this job, after all. She certainly didn’t have any qualms about waiting around for her customers to pay. Angel offered her phone, tapping it against the tablet at the waitress’s hip, though how it stayed there she wasn’t sure since the woman wore nothing except the two-piece bikini with fake rabbit fur that was the uniform of the place.

Chase Weston, Angel noted, paid in cash, then pushed both the beers aside as if he had no intention of touching them again. Victor sipped tentatively at one of his margaritas, making a face at the first taste, as if the drink was too strong. Chase eyed her shot and beer with what seemed to be amusement.

“You actually going to drink that?” he wondered. “I mean, I’ve heard of boilermakers, but I never met anyone who liked them.”

She smirked at him as she dropped the shot glass into the mug of whatever shitty beer they had on tap at this place, then downed the concoction in one long pull. It was horrible, of course. She’d known that when she ordered it, and no, she hadn’t actually planned on drinking it, but once challenged, there hadn’t been any choice. She didn’t let her opinion of the drink show through on her face, just wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stared back at the man.

If he was impressed, he hid it as well as she had her disgust with the drink.

“At least it was quick,” he commiserated, then slipped into business mode so smoothly she wondered if he’d ever been in sales. “You know the rate. Colonel Devlin gave it to his brother, and he gave it to you. And you know I expect a deposit up front.” He put a hand against his chest. “Not for me. It’s for Pri. Priyanka Ambedkar, the pilot, captain, and majority owner of the Tamar. She doesn’t fly unless someone pays for her fuel, ammo and maintenance in advance. That’s non-refundable by the way. Whether you get there or the locals tell you to bugger off and don’t come back, the fuel gets burned in her reactor, the food gets eaten and the wear and tear gets put on her ship.”

“I understand,” Angel acknowledged. “The money will be deposited in her account before we leave.” She regarded him with narrow eyes. “Peter’s brother seems to think you won’t toss us out of an airlock and keep the money. I wish I had that sort of faith, but I’m a bit more skeptical than my colleague.”

“I have a reputation,” Chase told her. “It’s worth its weight in uranium in this business, and I didn’t get it by double-crossing my clients for a few thousand in DigCoin.”

He seemed sincere, but there was something abrasive about the cocksure set of his eyes, something that made her want to distrust him, dislike him even, though liking or disliking the man had little to do with how suitable he would be as a bodyguard.

“Peter’s brother also seems to think,” she went on, almost mocking in her tone, though she wasn’t sure why, “that you’re competent as a bodyguard.”

“Personal protection specialist,” he corrected her. His face was deadly serious, but there might have been a reflection of her own teasing mockery in his eyes.

“I want to know,” she pressed on, “what makes you qualified to guard my body.”

And now there was something else in his eyes, just a flicker of interest as he looked her up and down. Angel knew she was attractive. She had the dark, smoldering eyes of her mother, the strong chin of her father, and she indulged in long-distance running as a means of clearing her head. She weighed the same today as she had when she’d graduated high school. It was excellent camouflage to catch her male rivals unsuspecting and trip them up in front of grant boards. And it was also wonderful as a test of character. If a man judged her by her looks, either negatively, deciding that an attractive woman couldn’t be that intelligent, or positively, attributing moral superiority to her just because of her looks, he was deposited into her mental discard pile.

Had Chase Weston told her to go to hell, that he didn’t have to share his credentials with her, she would have respected it. Well, she would have been incensed, of course. But given time to think about it, she would have been impressed by his conviction. He went the other way, giving in.

“I enlisted in the United States Army at seventeen. Airborne school, RASP—Ranger Assessment and Selection Program—and then Ranger school. Assigned to a Ranger battalion by the time I was nineteen, just in time for the war. Saw action in Taiwan and then in the Ukraine.”

“Why’d you get out?” she asked, having already passed judgment on him as a human being but still reserving it with respect to his competence. “You’re what? Thirty-eight? Thirty-nine? You could be a sergeant-major by now with that kind of combat experience.” At his raised eyebrow, she sniffed disdain. “My adopted father was a career soldier.”

“Let’s just say that I enlisted in the United States Army. Not the Union ground elements. I don’t like taking orders from officers in the militaries of other countries who don’t know how Rangers do things. And I don’t like wearing anyone else’s flag on my arm.”

“The Union was necessary,” she said, surprised at the vehemence of his opinion. “With Russia and China united in the Alliance, the rest of the world had to come together to oppose them.”

“That’s the theory, anyway.” He scowled. “You know there’s corruption in the Army. In any service. There’re people who steal and cheat and betray, but they’re the minority and they get turned in because the US military is full of men and women who joined up because they’re devoted to their country. Well, when you take that away, when you’re serving for the idea of checking aggression, then the only thing stopping the stealing and the cheating and the treason is a fear of getting caught. That wasn’t the kind of Army I wanted to serve in.”

Angel didn’t respond because it wasn’t important except as an explanation of who he was and why he’d done what he’d done. She just nodded, satisfied that he wasn’t an addict who’d been kicked out of the service.

“I assume you’ll provide your own supplies,” she said, the words spoken with the finality of a contract agreed upon. “Weapons, food, equipment?”

“Of course. And there’ll be food and drink for both of you on the Tamar, though if you have any dietary restrictions or preferences, you’ll need to bring any special food items yourself.” A dry chuckle. “And cook it yourselves unless you want it burned or microwaved.”

“And it’s just you?” Victor asked, skepticism replacing shock in his tone now that he was over the confrontation. “No team? No crew, just you?”

“The Tamar has a crew. But I’ll be your entire personal protection detail, yes.” Chase shrugged. “If it was a bigger party, I would have brought on extra help, but if it’s just the two of you and you don’t plan on wandering off away from each other, I think we should be fine.”

“All right.” Angel tapped at the screen of her phone, bringing up the contract, then signed it with a scrawl of her fingernail across the display. Another tap sent it to the address she’d been given by Peter Devlin.

Chase pulled out his own device, which looked at least five years older than hers, and smiled at the screen.

“If you’re finished with your drinks,” he said, eyeing Victor’s nearly untouched margaritas, “I can take you down to the Tamar now.”

“Yeah, I think I’ve had better margaritas before,” Victor admitted. “These taste like they were recycled directly from the urinal.”

Chase grabbed the untouched margarita and downed the drink in one long chug, throat bobbing. He sighed and set it down, the ice tinkling against the glass.

“It’s not that bad,” he allowed.

* * *

“Aren’t we going to the lifts?” Victor asked, eyes darting around the dim reaches of the passage, a hamster in a tunnel.

Victor Lee was a squirrelly, nervous type with the sort of twitchy, narrow features that reminded Chase of a private he’d trained in RASP at Benning just before he left the Army. The kid had washed out after four days, and not just the normal way, asking to quit. They’d found him naked and smeared with his own feces in the latrine. Everyone else had thought he was faking it, but Chase knew different. Some people, when reality smacked them in the face, they shook it off and kept going. Others, they refused to accept it, denied it, living in their own version of things where they were the hero of the story and everyone else was wrong.

And then there was Private Gutterson. The kind of soldier who reacted to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune by giving into fear, letting it overcome them. Not that he expected Victor Lee to lock himself in the head on the Tamar and do a shitty impression of Jackson Pollock, but he’d have to watch the kid. This Dr. Cortez, she had the feel of someone who could take care of herself, who would do the smart thing when the shit hit the fan, maybe even listen to him, though he could tell she wasn’t too fond of him. But Victor Lee would freeze. He’d frozen just at those two assholes Guster and Spencer, and they’d barely even threatened violence. Not much violence.

“We are,” Chase said, answering the student’s question. “But the Tamar’s on the opposite polar docking hub, and if we get on the lifts at this end of the drum, we’re going to be riding it for over an hour while we get squashed into a corner by packs of the worst-smelling assholes you’ll ever have the pleasure to meet. I figured you’d rather walk out in the open air… comparatively open, I guess.” He waved at the overhanging roof, a few dozen meters overhead. “This place isn’t bad for a space station. I mean, if you’re claustrophobic, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

“There’s not much to see down here,” Angel Cortez observed.

He nodded, trying to look at the place through a stranger’s eyes instead of ignoring it out of habit as he had the last few years. The shops and restaurants and bars had faded behind them, giving way to the low-rent housing, metal caves inside a larger metal cave.

“Not everyone can afford the fancy condos on the upper levels with all the mirrors bringing light in from the outside,” he told her. “Takes people to run this thing… for now. I hear they’re making progress with AI robots to do a lot of the scut work, but until they’re cheaper than just feeding and housing a bunch of half-trained workers, I don’t think much will come of it. Easier just to skip all the hassle and offer people a job that sounds good-paying until you realize that you have to buy all your food and clothes and entertainment from the same people who pay you, and the company store jacks up the prices.”

They were walking by, some of them on their way to their jobs, some of them heading off shift back to their one-room hovels. Their clothes were bright, multi-colored, the most expensive their paychecks could buy off the company 3-D printers, as if they were trying to escape the doldrums of their workaday lives by fancy dress. They were mostly young, mostly from areas hit the worst by the war, and their faces showed a uniform hopelessness, similar to the refugees he’d encountered coming up across the border after the Chinese commando teams had set off the nuke in Mexico City.

“A regular Oliver Twist London down here,” Angel murmured, watching them pass by.

“Oh, it’s not quite as bad as it seems,” Chase told her, shrugging. “Eventually, they can save up enough for transport to one of the colonies. And if working a peasant farm on Charybdis isn’t everyone’s idea of paradise, it’s probably a better life than any of them had on Earth.” He winked at Angel. “Besides, they have killer parties down here every weekend, and there’s never been a better place to hook up for some short-term relationshipping.”

Her stare could have frozen nitrogen, but he pretended to ignore it.

“Is it dangerous down here?” Victor whispered, waiting for an attractive girl in a short, faux leather skirt and high-heeled boots to move out of earshot before he went on. “I mean, is there a lot of crime here?”

“It’s a low-income area full of displaced people living hand-to-mouth, Victor,” Angel ground out, impatience dripping off every word. “Of course, there’s crime down here.”

“Some,” Chase agreed. “Not as much as you might think. Not much physical cash, and everything they have, anyone can buy from the stores here, so not much robbery or theft. Mostly people getting drunk or high and getting into fights. Some sexual assaults, but mostly the people here don’t put up with that kind of thing.” He sniffed, nodding at the rowhouses, the people sitting on the steps, some drinking out of plastic bottles, some smoking water pipes or vaping. “They may not seem like much, but they police themselves… mostly because there’s no one else around to do it. Anyway, we’re almost through. We don’t have to walk all the way across the drum just to the lift banks on the other side of the pressure seal.”

“The what?” Victor asked, frowning at him in confusion.

“This.” Chase motioned ahead, where the rowhouses ended abruptly in what he’d always thought of as the giant O-ring.

That was what it looked like, a metal washer the size of a suspension bridge, running all along the interior of the metal drum that was Gateway station. The walkway ended at the edge of it, an escalator running up the fifty yards to the top and then back over the inside, with a break in the middle where pedestrians could step over the camera-lens iris sunken into the twenty-foot gap between sections of the seal.

“That’s the emergency pressure seal,” Chase explained. “It divides Gateway in half, so if one end or the other is hit by a big meteor or something, they can seal it off and keep the whole station from depressurizing.” He laughed softly. “Not that it would be much comfort to the people in the other half, but there are shelters in each section, too. Some of them would make it. Just another reason I don’t like space stations.”

The steady stream of pedestrians had tailed off as they left the residential areas, and the walls around them seemed far away to Chase, but he could still picture a rock the size of a house punching right through, killing them all instantly.

“Mr. Weston,” Angel Cortez said quietly, drawing even with him, her eyes flickering backward. “I would be the first to admit I’m a stranger here and may not be the best one to make these judgments, but I think we’re being followed.”

Chase resisted an urge to stop in the middle of the walkway and turn around, because that would give away any surprise they had. Unfortunately, Victor Lee had heard Angel as well and he did just that.

“Followed?” the grad student repeated, far too loudly, gawking like the tourist he was.

Angel had been right.

There were four of them, and somehow he’d let them get within twenty-five yards. He cursed himself for worrying about meteors instead of doing his job, even though he hadn’t known his job had already started. They were all young men, all self-consciously trying to be tough. Their clothing was different from that of the workers. They were less concerned with being flashy and fun and more with wearing a sort of uniform, their jackets red with blue flashes, their pants matching. On top of that, each had a blue flash dyed through the center of their identical Mohawk haircuts. They looked ridiculous, Chase thought, but the wickedly curved knives they pulled out of sheaths beneath their waist-length jackets did not.

“You made a big mistake, asshole,” one of them said, stepping forward, turning their formation into a lopsided V, which demonstrated far too much tactical awareness for his taste. “You don’t fuck with Los Gatos.”

Chase blew out a breath, steadying himself, not wanting to let them see fear in his eyes. The sheath worn in the small of his back, beneath his untucked shirt, pressed hard against him, begging to be used. He didn’t disappoint. The smooth, worn handle of the knife was familiar in his hand, and he fell into an escrima stance, side-on to the four gangbangers, fist held up defensively, knife clenched in it, blade pointed outward.

“Dump your bags,” Chase told Victor and Angel, and to their credit, both obeyed without question, dropping their luggage to the ground.

“Do we run?” Victor asked, his voice tremulous, as if his whole body was shaking.

Chase considered it, but Angel made the decision for him. She unzipped one of her cases and pulled out a matte-black fixed-bladed knife with a sharkskin handle and a tanto point.

“I am not,” she declared, not showing the slightest bit of fear, “wearing the same damned clothes for three months on Kali.” She sneered at the four men. “Come and get it.”

Oh, shit.

7

Victor Lee was convinced that he was still sleeping on the couch back in Berkley and that the whole day had been an extended nightmare. He’d had the thought back in the bar, and now he was sure of it. Nothing like this could ever happen to him in real life. It had to be a dream, or maybe he’d splurged for a multi-hour session at the ViR gaming studio and taken a few hits of acid and this was all just a bad trip combined with the latest MMORPG adventure game.

Mom told me I shouldn’t use acid. I should have listened to her.

But the story was hard to follow. Who were these guys again? They were dressed like the villains in the latest superhero movie. Had they said Los Gatos? The cats?

“Is this because we wouldn’t smuggle those drugs?” he asked out loud, which probably would have been inappropriate and inadvisable if this were actually real. “I mean, come on, we’re not even going back to LAX!”

“Shut up, Victor,” Angel snapped at him, her eyes fixed on the gangbangers.

Wait, that seemed real. Angel Cortez barking at him was an everyday thing, which made him very afraid that this wasn’t a dream or a ViR trip augmented by illicit drugs. And that would be very, very bad. He needed to run, but he’d neglected to drop his bags. He swung them downward, but the gangbangers seemed to take the motion as a cue to attack and they were charging across the twenty yards before his duffle had hit the walkway.

Victor tried to remember what he’d done the last time he’d been mugged so he could avoid doing it this time, but all he could remember was being coldcocked and then kicked while he was down, and the lesson didn’t seem applicable. He tried to imitate the wide stance that Chase Weston had fallen into, putting his hands up like the soldier’s, although without a knife.

It didn’t seem fair that he was the only one without a knife.

Chase was up front, and the first two came after him with much more enthusiasm than Victor thought was wise, given the man’s experience. Maybe they didn’t know who he was, or maybe they had too much of their ego invested in being the biggest badasses around. They came in a line, one behind the other, though Victor didn’t know if that was an intentional strategy or just how they happened to be standing when they made the decision to go for it.

It worked out well for Chase Weston because he was able to sidestep both of them in one long, sliding motion that put him just outside the reach of the lead man’s knife when he slashed at him as he passed.

That was all the attention Victor gave to the soldier, because the other two had gone after Angel Cortez. These two were smarter, trying to come at her from both sides instead of lining themselves up for a convenient dodge, and Victor just knew there was no way she could avoid them both. Angel ducked and spun, her own knife extended, and one of the Los Gatos gangbangers yelped and cursed, pulling away with one sleeve of his gaudy jacket sliced open, though Victor didn’t see any blood.

But the other one was closing in on her and Victor moved without intention, without a plan, just trying to put himself between her and the knife-wielding goon. Maybe Lexie was right and he did love her, because he sure as hell wouldn’t have done that for anyone else, and he was one hundred percent convinced the next thing he would feel would be a blade sliding between his ribs.

How he wound up catching the other man’s arm before it reached him was a mystery to both of them, but once he had hold of it, he clutched it as tight as he could, fingernails digging into the tough leather, the arm beneath it hard and muscular and much, much stronger than his own. Victor yelled incoherently, beyond thought, desperate and acting on instinct. He pulled at the arm and backed away, afraid to get too close and wind up with that curved length of steel in his gut, but afraid to let go as well.

It was the right thing to do, though he wasn’t aware of it until the gangbanger stumbled trying to keep up with his frantic retreat and the knife flew from his fingers, clanking across the ground some ten feet away. Then Victor did let go and ran to the side, panting hard, close to hyperventilating, and trying to figure out where everyone else was lest he wind up wandering into the business end of a blade.

Angel was handling herself better than he could have imagined, keeping the red-and-blue clad gang member off of her with controlled slashes, jumping back with agility he hadn’t known she possessed to avoid his blade. Sweat beaded on her forehead, but she showed no sign of panic.

As for Chase, watching the man fight was like watching a chess game being played. He was a move ahead of the two criminals and while it was clear that they had experience fighting, they’d fought other criminals, not someone trained by the military to kill. And like a chess master playing two games against two separate amateurs, it was only a matter of time. One of them stepped too close, and that was the last mistake he ever made.

Chase’s knife was shorter than the gangbanger’s, less flashy, but when it sliced across his wrist, blood fountained out like a surgical scalpel had cut him open. The wrist wound was ugly but probably survivable, only it had opened him up to a blow that wasn’t, and the matte-black blade disappeared into his right eye for a split-second before Chase ripped it back out again. The younger man collapsed forward like a marionette with its strings cut and hit the ground with a wet splash.

If the other one had been smart, he would have run. Victor would have run, after watching a man get his brain pithed like a frog in a high school biology class. He wanted to run now, wanted to puke, though he was too utterly frozen with horror to do either. But the second of Chase’s opponents neither ran nor puked nor gave up. He lunged forward, attempting a low slash that, had it connected, would have disemboweled the soldier.

Chase avoided the cut with a single step, just a few inches to one side, and his opponent was off balance, all of his weight on his front leg when the soldier’s hiking boot came down on the support knee. There was a crack like a green stick breaking, and Chase’s opponent dropped his knife and forgot all about the fight, his shattered knee bending in a direction no leg should have gone.

The one assaulting Angel didn’t run, but he was distracted, just for a second. Long enough for her to stab her knife through his right bicep. The man dropped his own weapon and pushed her away, then he screamed and held his arm as he finally gave up on the whole thing and ran, blood drops leaving a trail behind him like bread crumbs.

Victor realized he’d forgotten about the last of them, the one he’d tussled with, and he turned just in time to see that the man had retrieved his knife from the ground and was making a final, spiteful lunge toward Angel. Victor yelled an incoherent warning and jumped on the attacker’s back, arm wrapped around the man’s throat, then screamed as the knife scored across his wrist. The grad student let go, clutching at his wrist, falling backward with the sickening realization that he’d failed, that there was nothing standing between the armed thug and Angel Cortez.

Nothing except Chase. The soldier was standing in his way, black-bladed knife dripping blood.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said, “and I won’t have to hurt you.”

It was a good offer, but the response was a wild slash at Chase’s throat. The soldier blocked the cut with the point of his knife, the blade driving into the criminal’s forearm from the force of the blow. Chase didn’t try to pull it out, just let the man stumble back, the curved knife falling from his nerveless fingers. Victor thought the soldier was going to let the criminal run, but Chase smashed the gangbanger in the temple with a forearm, collapsing him like a felled tree.

The soldier stepped on the impaled arm and reclaimed his knife from the stunned, lolling criminal, then wiped the blade on the red and blue jacket and stowed it in a sheath at the small of his back.

“Grab your shit,” he told Victor and Angel. “This may not be the last of them.”

The one with the wounded forearm tried to get up, supporting himself with his good hand. Chase sighed and stomped on the other arm, breaking the forearm and sending the man slumping back to the ground, gasping, too shocked to scream. Victor had never heard one bone break before today, and now he’d heard that sickening noise twice in less than a minute. The bile was rising in his throat, and he couldn’t hold it back any longer. He twisted away from the others and deposited his lunch against the wall, spasms racking his stomach as it emptied itself.

Victor wiped his mouth with his sleeve and turned back around to find Chase watching him impassively while Angel retrieved her luggage. Chase leaned over, grabbed Victor’s duffle, and slung it over his own shoulder.

“Get the rest of your bags,” he told the grad student. “We have to get to the docks.”

* * *

Angel Cortez wished there was gravity in the docking bays.

Not just because she wasn’t used to maneuvering in free fall, and not just because Chase Weston obviously was from the pace he was setting, weaving around and between the throng of human traffic at the south polar dock. No, she wished there was gravity because anger was raging inside her chest like a bonfire, and she liked to pace and stalk and stamp when she was mad. You couldn’t use body language in microgravity or you’d just wind up looking stupid.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she insisted, speaking to Chase’s back as she attempted to keep up with him. “Why would those goons try to kill us just because we embarrassed two low-level con artists? Isn’t that an overreaction?”

“You expect logic and reason from a bunch of losers who dye their hair to match their gang colors?” Chase threw over his shoulder, not slowing his flight down the row of docking ports.

The shuttles and starships and transports were visible through a barrier of transparent aluminum, tucked into a covered niche in the docking hub to keep them and the see-through port safe from micrometeors. The shuttles were all a familiar design, cylindrical, with stubby control surfaces. Back in the beginning, there’d been all sorts of designs, and all of them worked because you could fly a brick into orbit with enough thrust, and the S-T drive gave you reaction-mass-independent thrust based on power. But eventually, the cylindrical shape had won out because it was easier to dock.

The starships, not so much. They were all different shapes and sizes, the only limit being they had to fit into the docking niche, which kept them no more than fifty feet across and a couple hundred long. The Tamar strained the edges of that limit, barely inches to spare on either side of her. She knew it was their ship because the name was stenciled across the side near the utility airlock, the paint a jaunty red that stood out against her matte grey. Or mostly matte grey. She was patched like an old hand-me-down sweater, here bright silver, there solid brown, the welds as solid as they were ugly. She had the look of what her nerdier friends from college would have called a “kit bash,” like someone had taken bits of three or four different vessels and crammed them together. Only this kit bash wasn’t just intended to look new and different on a display shelf… it was supposed to fly them a hundred light-years.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she blurted, coming to a halt a few yards from the airlock. “That is your ship? That is what we’re supposed to be paying all this money for? That thing looks like it’ll be lucky to make it out of the docking bay!”

“What you know about spaceships, lady?”

The voice was full of scorn and tinged with a British accent. It took Angel a moment to pin down where it had come from. The woman walked out of the airlock, which seemed impossible until Angel noticed the magnetic boots click-clacking against the metal deck plating. The boots were ugly and utilitarian, like the old Space Force fatigues the woman was wearing, stained with grease and patched at the knees. The name on the chest tape read Ambedkar, which was the last name Chase had given to the pilot.

“Priyanka,” Chase introduced, “this is Dr. Evangeline Cortez and her graduate assistant, Victor Lee.”

Priyanka Ambedkar had one of those faces, the kind that would still be striking and attractive at eighteen or eighty, whether she was wearing a ball cap and grease stains or makeup and a formal evening dress. Her dark eyes were inquisitive and challenging and totally lacking in fear. Those eyes flickered toward Chase’s shirt and the blood stains on the sleeves.

“What the hell happened to you, Weston?”

The soldier shrugged, shoving the sleeves up to his biceps to try to hide the blood spatter. The skin beneath was tanned by a dozen different suns, marked with three scars that she could see and the hint of a single tattoo peeking out under his left sleeve.

“Los Gatos. Four of them.” The corner of his mouth turned up just slightly. “Three now.”

“Again? Sweet Jesus, will those assholes ever learn to take a joke?”

“Wait a second,” Angel said, floating between the two, catching the lip of the airlock with her left hand to hold herself in place. “What do you mean, ‘again?’ I thought this was all connected to Spencer and Guster.” Angel shifted her bags, trying to keep the straps from strangling her as they twisted in the microgravity.

“It is, sort of,” Chase explained. “But we need to get in the ship and get the hell out of here.”

“I’m not getting in that piece of shit,” she snapped back at him, “until I’m sure it won’t blow up the first time it tries to go hyper-light!”

“And I repeat,” Pri snarled, getting in her face, close enough that Angel could smell the grease from her clothes and something vaguely fruity from her shampoo, “what the hell do you know about spaceships?”

“This isn’t my first trip to the colonies, Ms. Ambedkar,” Angel informed the pilot. “And none of the vessels I traveled on looked as if they were held together with spit and good wishes.”

“It’s Captain Ambedkar to you, and just because the Tamar isn’t as smooth and refined as some civilian passenger boat doesn’t mean she isn’t spaceworthy. They don’t sell combat patrol boats surplus to civvies with all the armor and weapons still on them.” She pointed at the welds and the patchwork look. “That’s armor. You’d like to have a ship with armor when you sail into Vishnu, wouldn’t you? Or do you think you can stop enemy bullets with your snooty attitude?”

“I thought the drive field acted like a shield?” Victor said, raising a hand like a schoolchild asking to go to the toilet.

Pri winced, fingers clenching like she wanted to strangle someone.

“Have you ever taken a physics class?” she demanded, and Angel laughed softly, remembering when she’d asked the grad student the same question. “The S-T drive acts as a shield in hyper-light because it carries a piece of our own spacetime with it into the Rift, kind of a wave-front. But that only works once we build up relativistic speeds. Before that, we’re counting on metal and honeycomb boron composite just like everyone else.” Pri speared Angel with a glare. “You gettin’ in or what, lady?”

Angel wanted to tell the rude, pushy starship captain to stuff it, wanted to cancel the contract and go hire a passenger transport behind Peter’s back. But she knew how likely that was to work, besides which it would have been irresponsible and, more importantly, taken too long to arrange.

“We’re coming,” she said, then she shot a look at Chase. “But we’re going to have a conversation about what happened.”

She brushed past Pri, not looking back to see whether Victor followed. The starship captain called after her, insisting on having the last word.

“And a pleasure to meet you, too.”

8

“She’s a real winner, isn’t she?” Pri murmured, fingers dancing along the control panel at the pilot’s station as she powered up the reactor and slowly trickled that energy to the drive.

“She’s not that bad,” Chase insisted, strapping into the seat behind the flight stations. “The fight was pretty rough, and she took one of them down. Had her own knife and put it right through his arm. I wouldn’t mess with her too much if I were you.”

“Chase is in looooove,” Adrian Hill cooed, his mouth twisted into half a grin, all he could manage with the scarring on the other side of his face. His eyes were fixed on a stream of data coming across his screen, incomprehensible to Chase, though he knew that it represented the confirmation that whatever Pri was doing with the controls was working.

“Shut up, Adrian,” he told the copilot. “Where’s Aguilar?”

“Showing our clients to their accommodations,” Pri told him, turning her working-class Londoner accent into something a good deal more upscale. “And I trust her ladyship will find the Admiral’s Stateroom to her liking.”

“Did you clean the puke out of it from the last guy?” Hill wondered.

“Damn, I thought you did.”

“You’re both a damned riot,” Chase said, arms crossed. “But you know we need the money, right? Or do you plan on running this thing on snark instead of uranium?”

“Snark has driven people a lot farther away than uranium,” Hill opined. “But I would like to eat. Eating is one of life’s little pleasures. That and sex ’bots.”

“Gateway Station,” Pri said in her professional, I’m-trying-to-sound-like-a-captain voice, “this is the privateer Tamar requesting clearance for departure.”

“Roger, Tamar,” a pleasant, well-modulated male voice responded. “You are currently third in line for departure. Please follow traffic pattern Alpha until you’re clear of the restricted flight area.”

“Copy that, Gateway. Have a good one.”

Pri switched off the mic and gave Hill a stink-eye.

“The only reason you like sex bots is you don’t have to talk to them.”

“And they’re not picky,” Chase added.

“Are we leaving?”

Chase twisted around in his chair in time to see Angel Cortez pull herself into the cockpit, find one of the fold-down seats along the bulkhead, and belt herself into it.

“I thought you were getting settled in your cabin, ma’am,” Pri said, and Chase thought she was actually trying to be polite, unless it was sarcasm. He’d never had much luck separating the two when it came to Pri.

“Settled?” Angel repeated, arching an eyebrow. “I put my luggage in the locker and when we’re underway and have gravity, I’ll check for bedbugs. Until then, this is as settled as I intend to get.”

“I’ll have you know,” Hill said, with outrage Chase could tell was affected, “that we’ve decontaminated the ship twice since the last case of bedbugs.”

“Shut up, Adrian,” Pri told him. “The rooms are clean.” Now she wasn’t even pretending to be polite. “It’s standard procedure to evacuate the ship during refueling.”

“That means they leave the interior in a vacuum,” Chief Aguilar supplied, as condescending as possible. Chase could tell his time guiding the two to their compartments hadn’t gone well. Aguilar didn’t even look back at Angel as he belted into his seat between the pilot and copilot. “Ship’s secured and ready for departure, ma’am. Airlock is closed and ready to disengage.”

“And there we are,” Pri said, nodding toward the green indicator on the comm screen, coming from Gateway Control.

“I know what evacuated means,” Angel told Aguilar, and Chase sighed. The woman wasn’t stupid, but she lacked the sense God gave most fish and kept snapping at the bait.

“Good for you,” Aguilar enthused as only a senior CWO could. Stefano Aguilar might have been thirty-five or might have been eighty, and there’d probably be little change in that craggy, weather-beaten face in the interim between one and the other, particularly since he shaved his hair down to peach fuzz in a rebellion against a widow’s peak. There surely wouldn’t be any change in attitude, since Chief Warrant Officers were blessed by the creator with an inability to give a fuck.

“Airlock is closed,” Pri confirmed, finger hovering over a control. “Disengaging docking umbilical.” She tapped the control twice and a metallic thump echoed through the hull of the ship. “We’re pulling out.”

Chase couldn’t help it… he always listened when the ship pulled away from the dock or took off from the ground. The Soong-Tierney drive had a distinctive sound, nothing obtrusive, a sort of background hum most people didn’t even notice, but it was unlike anything else he’d ever heard. The CCMHD reactor had its own noises, but those were more normal. There was something about the S-T drive that seemed unnatural, that made his hackles rise.

“How long have you worked together?” Angel asked, breaking the silence with a question that was surprisingly civil.

“Five years,” Chase told her. “Longer if you count the times she and her crew flew my platoon around during the war.” Memories flickered behind his eyes, the first time he’d met Priyanka, of her crooked smile from the cockpit. The smoldering look in her eyes the first time she’d taken him to bed. “Once we all got out, Pri got together with Hill and the Chief and me, and we all pooled our separation bonuses and put the down payment on the Tamar, and I recruited a squad…” He trailed off, frowning. That was a memory he didn’t want to relive.

“Mercenaries?” Angel prompted.

“Private military contractors.” The response was automatic. “There’s a lot of work to be had out in the colonies.”

“What happened to them?”

It was the question he didn’t want to answer, and Pri must have known it because she rescued him.

“Okay, we’re clearing the docking cylinder.”

Chase didn’t want to miss this. Five years on this ship, and it was still his favorite part. The interior of the cylinder was grey and featureless, the lighting harsh and glaring. Workers in space suits passed by the nose of the ship, zipping around on handheld gas jets, some scurrying to get out of the way. The Tamar sidled out of its niche and into the black.

The Earth was a blue jewel hung in space, the biggest Christmas tree ornament ever made, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He hadn’t been back to Kalispell in seven years, hadn’t set foot on Earth since he’d gotten out of the Army, but despite all that, it was still home. Then the ship was turning, bringing Gateway into view. The tin can wasn’t much to look at, but the radiators were a glittering series of cooling vanes that made the station look like an idea of the future as seen from the 1950s. Ships slipped in and out of the docking bays, reflecting the sunlight like a swarm of fireflies.

It still seemed unreal to him. Most of the younger soldiers he’d encountered took it all in stride, as if there’d always been giant airships floating over the cities, and spaceships hauling in ore from Luna and the Belt, and colonists heading out to the stars daily. But Chase had been born to a world without the S-T drive, and despite all the chaos and violence and death it had brought about in the last twenty-odd years, it still filled him with awe.

“We’re nearly out of the restricted zone,” Pri announced, fingers tapping against the throttle, a racehorse snorting and twitching in the blocks, waiting to stretch its legs.

Gravity, Chase noted, had returned gradually, sneaking in the back door and settling in before he’d realized it. Not a full Earth gravity yet, and he knew that had something to do with how much power the drive was getting, just a gentle tug down into his seat.

“Hey, boss,” Hill said, a curious upturn to his voice, like he’d just found a raisin in his corn pops, “you seeing those two bogies hanging out at about sixty klicks out?”

“Bogies?” Pri repeated, frowning at him. Chase hadn’t been in the Space Force and was no sort of pilot, but he understood her unspoken question. A bogie was an unknown threat, and the ships coming out of Gateway were mostly just innocent transports. “What are you seeing, Adrian?”

“Look at ’em.” He waved at the front screens. “They’re both up-armored transports, Eurojet VS-78s, surplus from the war, right? They gotta be together. And they’re just sitting out there, just outside the restricted zone. What the hell are they doing out there?”

“It’s Gateway,” Aguilar growled, seeming unconcerned. “They’re probably swapping a load of contraband they made a deal for while they were on the station.”

“Yeah, probably,” Pri allowed. “Anyway, we’re going to be burning ergs toward hyper-light in a few seconds, so…”

Whatever her point had been, she didn’t get the chance to make it. The ships, Chase realized, had been waiting for the Tamar to nose across the imaginary demarcation between Gateway’s restricted zone and open space, and the second she did, they lunged after them like lions pouncing on a gazelle.

Priyanka cursed reflexively, and Chase leaned forward in his seat as if he were about to spring into action, as if there was anything he could do except stare at the main screen and watch the twin transports split off and move to block the Tamar in, the 20mm Vulcans mounted on the portside spar of each of the ships slewing around to cover them.

“What the hell’s going on?” Angel demanded, fingers hovering over the quick-release of her harness.

“They’re calling us,” Aguilar announced, as casual as if this was just another day at the office.

“Put it on speaker,” Pri told him, her hands on the steering yoke, ready to make a break for it at the first opportunity. “And prep the Avengers.”

“Weston, I know you’re in there!” The voice crackling over the cockpit speakers was all-too-familiar, and Chase winced, knowing exactly who was in those transports. “It doesn’t have to go down like this! Give us what you owe us, and this can all be solved peacefully!”

Angel gaped at him, accusation in her eyes, but Chase didn’t waste time trying to explain. Each station in the cockpit had a mic built into the armrest of the chair, and Chase keyed his with a touch on the control panel.

“I don’t owe you shit, Navarro. How many of your goons do I have to leave bleeding before you take the hint?”

“You didn’t just leave them bleeding,” Antonio Navarro reminded him, a shrill note coming into his voice. “You put a knife through Eddie’s fucking brain.”

Chase barked a laugh at the show of outrage.

“I’m sure he would have been giving me foot massages as we speak if only I hadn’t greeted his kind advances with such senseless violence. Fuck you, Antonio. If you don’t want your people killed, stop sending them after me. How the hell did you even know I was here?”

“Let’s just say our boys Spencer and Guster know which side their bread is buttered on. I’m going to give you thirty seconds to turn around and head back to Gateway. Maybe then we’ll just take the ship and let you and your friends go. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to blow a few holes in her, then scrape what’s left of you out of the inside.” Up till now, Chase could have believed Navarro was putting on an act for their benefit, but the next words were spoken in absolute earnest, like a backwoods preacher swearing on the Bible. “No one fucks with Los Gatos, Weston.”

And that, apparently, was enough for Priyanka Ambedkar.

“Light ’em up, Chief!”

They were moving. There was a sense of motion, though Pri had assured him repeatedly that it was all in his head, an illusion caused by watching things speed by on the viewscreen, but Chase was certain of it. He’d tested it, keeping his eyes shut and still felt the whoosh in his stomach when she fed power to the drives. The view on the screen couldn’t quite shift fast enough to keep up with the acceleration—the Los Gatos ships had been zoomed in enough to fill the screen, but they’d been miles away still. In less than a second, the slate grey of a hull was all he could see while he waited for the cameras to zoom back out, though he knew Chief Aguilar had a better view from the gunsight at his station.

The Tamar shuddered like the inside of a snare drum and, beneath their feet, God cleared his throat.

The GAU-8 Avenger had originally been designed for a now-obsolete tankbuster fighter jet called the A10 Warthog. The A10 was long gone, but the gun was still damned useful and surprisingly easy to duplicate on modern 3D printers. Two of them squatted like cave trolls in niches under the Tamar’s chin, and even with the counterthrust of the S-T drive, the recoil from the 30mm monsters nearly pushed the ship backward.

It did much worse things to the converted Eurojet transport. The Los Gatos ship was up-armored, its hull reinforced by plates of scrap metal, but a few inches of armor was a minor inconvenience for the depleted-uranium slugs. Chase couldn’t see them. Sometimes he could, if the target was far enough away and the Sun—or whatever sun was handy—was at the right angle. Then, they twinkled like wishing stars and he often made the wish that they’d chop right through the enemy’s reactor core.

This time, the depleted-uranium fairy granted his wish and the thermal sensors feeding their input to the main viewscreen showed a spike in the Eurojet’s internal temperature. And that was it. No explosion, no flames, just the transport surrounded by a cloud of dust for a moment before it began to tumble. It was almost anticlimactic.

They didn’t stick around to watch the thing cartwheel out of control, though. Something smacked hard into the bow of the Tamar, a petulant knock by an impatient child and they were moving. Chase expected evasive maneuvers, expected Pri to open up on the second ship, but the view on the main screen slewed around to their right. Starboard? Dammit, I can never remember. Open space ahead and then the stars began to elongate with a sudden burst of acceleration. There was that old, familiar roller-coaster feeling in the pit of his stomach, what Pri had explained as a bleed-through of hyperdimensional gravito-inertial buildup… whatever the hell that meant. He sometimes thought she made shit like that up just to screw with him.

“You think they can catch up to us?” Chase asked, hands clenched on the armrests of his chair. He was a spectator in this fight and the feeling didn’t sit well for him.

“Naw,” Hill answered, a skeptical twist to his usual scowl. “Them VS-78s are running old NASA-surplus Stirling engines.” He shrugged. “Banks of ’em, sure, but it still don’t add up to more than a Megawatt or so.”

“Damage report, Chief?” Pri said, her tone all business.

Aguilar didn’t reply immediately. His station was lit up by banks of monitors, each showing a different vantage point of the hull through fiber-optic cameras, and he was staring intently at one with a view from the nose.

“We took a hit,” he said, “but I don’t think it penetrated all the way through the nose armor. Them gangbangers didn’t bother with armor-piercing rounds, just bought the cheapest shit they could find on the black market.”

“Thank God,” Hill added. He cast a baleful glare at Chase. “Weston, you really need to think about the rest of us before you make any more unilateral decisions to rip off interstellar crime syndicates.”

“We’re hyper-light in ten.” Pri’s announcement interrupted Chase’s indignant denial, and his eyes went automatically to the front screens.

Something rumbled, some hyperdimensional equivalent of a sonic boom, and the stars gathered together and wrapped around them, a tunnel of rainbow light for just a few seconds before the polychromatic mass clumped into a giant ball of white at the center of the screen. All around them was a darkness more than dark, an absent nothing that pilots called the Rift. In the rear cameras, an identical mass of starlight sat behind them, and once every few seconds, streaks of light would separate from the ball of fire in front to head for the one in the rear.

“Well,” Pri said, her grin lopsided and self-satisfied, “they’re not catching up to us now.”

Angel Cortez seemed to have been waiting for the jump to hyper-light, building up steam until the dimensional shift pulled the trigger. She was out of her chair and looming over Chase before he had the chance to even release his restraints.

Chase Weston had faced down Chinese and Russian special forces, bandits, pirates, and smugglers, faced blade and gun and fire, but none of them seemed quite as intimidating as all five foot six of the fiery-eyed woman standing above him.

“Who the hell are Los Gatos, Mr. Weston?”

“They’re criminals,” he blurted, tongue-tied for some reason. “Gangsters… they run drugs, weapons…”

He was going to elaborate, but she didn’t let him. Apparently, he’d only confirmed what she already thought.

“And it wasn’t us they were after, was it?” Her lip curled in a snarl. “Not just now with those ships, and not in that alleyway either. Was it? It didn’t have anything to do with those two losers in the bar, did it?”

Spencer and Guster had spotted him and sold the information to Los Gatos, but Chase didn’t think the woman was in any mood to debate the finer points of the day’s events. Besides, she made him feel exactly like his drill sergeants back in basic training and it was all he could do not to yell out no excuse, sergeant! at the top of his lungs.

“No,” he admitted instead. “They were after me.”

“We could have been killed.” Angel clenched her fists, her shoulders squaring off, and Chase was sure she was going to take a swing at him. And he’d have to let her, because she was right. “Victor was injured.”

“I saw the kid’s scratch,” Aguilar scoffed, waving it away. “I cut myself worse than that shaving this morning.”

“Chief,” Pri admonished, making a quelling gesture.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I had to hurt someone?” Angel demanded, ignoring the interplay, ignoring Aguilar’s comment. “I might have had to kill him. It was just luck that I didn’t. Maybe killing people is nothing to you.” She looked as if she might spit in his face. “You’re a mercenary. You sell your soul for money. But I worked too damned hard to save my soul to give it up that easy.”

Chase was speechless. Angel Cortez, beyond seeming angry, was obviously anguished, tormented. And it was his fault. She was breathing hard, her shoulders heaving, and Chase thought for a moment that she might break down, but she sucked in a long breath and steadied herself.

“It’s too late to turn back now. We’ve committed to this, and for all your other faults, you seem competent at violence. But let’s be clear, Weston. I don’t want you talking to me beyond what’s necessary for the performance of your duties. And if we get caught up in any more of your private, criminal dealings, don’t count on us for help, because I’d be just as likely to hamstring you and leave you for Los Gatos.”

Angel spun on her heel, then disappeared out of the hatch and down the corridor.

Everything was silent. No one moved a muscle, Pri, Hill and Aguilar staring after the woman in disbelief while Chase slumped in his seat, the quick-release for his safety harness still hanging, forgotten, in his right hand.

“Some things don’t change,” Hill commented finally, breaking the silence. “You’re still just as big a hit with the ladies as ever.”

Chase eyed the man sidelong and pushed himself up from the chair, then headed for his compartment.

“Shut up, Adrian.”

9

“Wow,” Victor Lee said, stepping into the compartment, looking at the exercise machines and matted floors in disbelief. “I can’t believe a ship this size has its own gym.”

Angel Cortez didn’t look away from the spinning back kick she was throwing into the gut of an imaginary opponent, didn’t let her answer interrupt her explosive kia! She’d brought along workout sweats for some reason, though Victor couldn’t imagine why she’d thought she’d need them, and now they were stained dark at the small of her back and her neck from the at least an hour of practice. Victor tried not to stare, but he thought she caught him looking because she paused in her training to pierce him with a disapproving glare.

“They live on this ship,” she reminded him, padding over to one bench for one of the machines to retrieve a towel and a water bottle. “I’m sure they have everything they need on board. Where else would they keep it?” Angel sucked down a swig, then gestured around her. “It’s not that big, anyway. Barely bigger than two of their berthing compartments put together.”

She tossed the towel and bottle down and walked back to the mat.

“Did you want something?” she prompted.

And he did, though he didn’t dare say it.

“Yeah. I, um… I kinda feel like I let you down back on Gateway, Doc.”

“You distracted one of the men attacking me,” she told him, dismissing the whole thing with a wave of her hand. “You did the best you could under the circumstances.”

“But my best wasn’t much good.” Victor gestured at the bandage around his wrist. “I need to do better. I…” He motioned toward her, the mat. “I was hoping you could teach me some moves.”

Angel looked him up and down, the skepticism practically dripping off her words when she answered.

“I’ll try. Take off your shoes and socks.”

He complied, standing in front of her flat-footed, hands clasped, wondering if he looked as awkward as he felt. Angel sighed, motioning for him to come forward.

“Try to grab me,” she suggested.

He extended his hands, hesitating, wondering where he should grab but afraid to ask lest he look stupid.

“Around the throat,” she suggested, “just to make things simple.”

“Okay.”

Embarrassment slowed him, and he took three tries before he worked himself up to actually try to grab her.

She did… something. He saw her hands whipping around in an arcing motion and then he saw her feet shuffling to the side and then the room was spinning and so was he. His back hit the mat hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs, explosions of light bursting in the air around him.

Victor tried to talk, but all that came out was a wheeze.

“That’s how you respond to someone trying to grab you from the front,” Angel told him brusquely, grabbing his hand and pulling him up to his feet.

Victor wobbled, unsteady and working very hard just to take in a lungful of air.

“Now try from behind,” she suggested, turning away from him. “Try to choke me from the rear.”

He waited a few more seconds, just to be sure the stars had stopped whirling in front of his eyes. When he advanced, it was with more care, and he wasn’t tentative about the grab this time. He tried to be as decisive as he had been with the gangbanger who’d sliced his arm, throwing an arm around her neck and trying to haul her backward, not nearly as worried about hurting her as he’d been last time.

It didn’t make any difference. This time, at least, he landed on his side rather than flat on his back. Pain wracked his shoulder and chest, and he knew if he’d been thrown onto the hard ground rather than a cushioned mat, he would have broken a few ribs.

“What…” He coughed, catching the phlegm in his mouth, then swallowed it again rather than spitting it onto the gym floor. “What did you do to me?”

“What?” she asked, staring down at him. “You want to try it again?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head violently and scrambling away from her. “No, that’s okay.”

“Why don’t I run it through with you, Victor?”

His head snapped around. He hadn’t noticed Chase Weston enter, but the man was there, amazingly quiet for his size. He was dressed for a workout in athletic shorts and a short-sleeved technical shirt with US Army imprinted at the neck.

“No, it’s okay,” he insisted, backing away.

“Slowly,” Chase promised, chuckling and patting Victor on the arm comfortingly, then guiding him with the hand out onto the mat. “Come on, I won’t hurt you, promise.”

Victor shook out his arm, trying to loosen up his shoulder. It hurt, and he had the premonition that it was going to hurt more no matter who was teaching him. He sighed.

If you’re serious about it, it’s worth the pain, right?

“All right,” Chase said, “first of all, let’s look at your stance. You need to have a stable base, but not have your stance so wide that you won’t be able to maneuver. Let’s start with a T-stance. Feet about shoulder width apart, left foot forward, right foot at a ninety-degree angle. Keep most of your weight on your back foot. You’re right-handed, right?”

Victor nodded, trying to keep up with the instructions. The stance didn’t feel natural, but he had to give it a shot.

“Okay, now shift your weight from front to back. Keep doing it. You don’t want to stay in one place because that just makes you a convenient target. Shift sideways, back and forth. Now, put your hands up. One in front of your nose… no, not that close.” He pushed gently against Victor’s arm and smacked him in the nose with his own fist. “See? Keep it out farther. I know, it feels weird, but do it anyway. Okay, other arm in close to your ribs. That one is to protect your torso. Stay like that, dance back and forth a little, get the feel of it.”

Victor felt stupid and awkward, but it was better than getting tossed around the gym, so he did it.

“Get into a rhythm. Play a song in your head with a good beat and dance to the rhythm, but keep moving. Front to back, side to side, don’t stand still.” Chase swatted a hand out and Victor managed to get his arm in front of it. “There you go. Keep moving.”

There was an old classic Victor’s father had listened to when he was a kid, something incredibly inappropriate for someone his age to hear, so, of course, he had asked his dad to play it over and over again. He hadn’t heard it in years, couldn’t remember the name of the group who’d sung it, but the song was still fresh in his memory. Something called “Lips and Hips.” The beat seemed ideal for the rhythm Chase was talking about, and Victor began dancing back and forth to it.

“Good, good. Keep that up.” Chase stepped in closer. “Now make a fist. Anyone ever teach you how to make a fist?”

“It sort of comes naturally,” Victor said. He’d stopped paying attention to Angel, but he caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, glaring at either him or Chase, or maybe both.

“You’d think, but really not so much. Here, put your hand out… now curl the fingers in tight and wrap your thumb around the outside. Tight, got to be tight. You see those first two knuckles? Those are your weapons. That’s what you’re hitting with. Here.” He held up his hand. “Hit me in the palm with your right hand. Hard as you can, don’t hold back.”

Smack. He hit hard, but also almost went off balance.

“Naw, Vic,” Chase said, shaking his head. “You’re trying to punch with your shoulder. You punch with your hips, your legs. You punch with your shoulder, it’s a fraction of your weight behind it. You gotta roll your hip like this.” Chase demonstrated and Victor tried to imitate it. “Now try again.”

Smack!

“Much better. Again. Again. That’s a cross. Now, we’re going to try a jab.”

A few more minutes of punching, and Victor thought he was getting the hang of it. The stance, the rhythm were coming more naturally.

“Okay, now, what do we punch, Victor?” Chase asked him.

Victor panted when he answered, the dancing beginning to tire him out.

“The face? The nose?”

“No. You know what happens when you hit someone in the head, Vic?”

“You knock them out?”

“No, you break your damned knuckles half the time. Hard targets, soft weapons. Soft targets, hard weapons.” Victor frowned in confusion, and Chase elaborated. “If you’re hitting something hard, like the skull, you use your palm.” Chase held up the heel of his hand, the fingers and thumb curled out of the way. “You punch with your fist, you punch the throat, the carotid, the solar plexus.” He demonstrated where each of those was with a slow-motion punch into Victor’s body. “Soft targets, no bones to break your hands. Got me?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay, then… punch somewhere you think would take me out… hard as you can.”

“But I could hurt you!”

Chase grinned.

“I’ll do my best not to let you.”

He swung a fist at the side of the soldier’s neck, and Chase seemed to block it in slow motion, even though the punch had been as hard and fast as Victor could manage. Chase grabbed his wrist and pulled it in close to his chest, turning the hand back inward, forcing Victor to step with him to avoid being pulled off his feet. Then Chase turned, bracing one arm against Victor’s elbow, and he was falling…

Chase caught him and helped him to his feet again.

“You see what I did there? I caught your wrist not by trying to absorb the power of your punch but by dispersing it, pulling your hand forward and into me to get leverage. Here, I’ll punch and you do it to me.”

Victor tried not to flinch at the punch. It was slow, and Chase let him try three times before he managed to get his hands arranged correctly to pull the fist toward him and turn the wrist. Another three tries before he got his elbow positioned correctly into Chase’s triceps. Finally, he managed to yank the man off-balance and topple him over.

Chase flipped himself over, slapping out to break his fall, then flipping upward to his feet again.

“Damn good job, Vic. Let’s leave it there for today. Don’t want to get too worn out, make mistakes and get ourselves hurt.” He offered a hand, and Victor shook it. “I’ll tell you what. It’s another 120 hours in the Rift until we reach Vishnu. Call it six days. Why don’t you come here every day about a couple hours before dinner, and I’ll show you some more stuff?”

“Thanks, Chase,” Victor enthused. “That’d be great!”

“You’re welcome to join us, too, Dr. Cortez,” Chase told Angel. “I don’t get a lot of chances at new sparring partners.”

“Really?” She sniffed her disdain as she stalked out of the gym. “I was under the impression that finding new sparring partners was easy for you. Since you obviously aren’t very picky about it.”

And then she was out the door, leaving the two of them staring after her.

“Damn,” Victor murmured, shaking his head.

“That’s a woman who holds a grudge,” Chase said.

“Well, you did almost get us killed after we hired you to protect us,” Victor reminded him. “It’s not that easy to get over.”

“There was nothing I could have done about that,” Chase told him, waving the idea away.

“I mean, you could have not ripped off a criminal gang,” Victor suggested. “Just saying.”

Chase shook his head with conviction.

“I’ve done plenty of things I’m ashamed of in my life, Vic, but ripping off Los Gatos wasn’t one of them.” He opened the small refrigerator in the corner of the gym and pulled out two bottled waters, then passed one to Victor. He didn’t speak again until he’d downed half of his own water. “They hired me to find a cargo they said had been stolen from them. This was back right after we… I had just gotten out of the Army, was trying to work the business like everyone else, looking for jobs on the net. I didn’t know who they were, just dealt with a middleman the way most PMCs do.”

Chase sat on one of the exercise benches, staring at the wall as if seeing something a thousand yards through it.

“I found their shipping container. The cargo carrier they’d contracted had stopped into an independent colony along the route with a pressure leak, landed on the habitable to affect repairs. When he checked the cargo, he found out he was carrying kids. Preteens. Refugees, orphans, kids who wouldn’t be missed.”

“What… what for?” Victor had hesitated because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Chase’s eyes went hard and cold.

“Organ harvesting. Spare parts.”

“Jesus!” Victor gaped at him. “People still do that? I thought we could grow organs on a three-D lattice for transplant! Why would anyone have to resort to something like that? It’s fucking barbaric!”

“Yeah, we can clone a new organ on a lattice… back on Earth. But a lot of the people who need those transplants can’t set foot on Earth without being thrown in prison. Or, if it’s an Alliance country, just shot behind the ear. And even for people who could go back, they can’t afford it. You know how much this trip is costing your university. Nuclear reactors and fuel roads aren’t cheap. Not even the new, smaller CCMHDs they’re churning out in the Belt now.” He smiled thinly. “That’s one of the reasons Pri—Captain Ambedkar—was able to talk us all into pooling our separation bonuses for the down payment on this ship. We never wanted to be counting on someone else for our ride again. And even then”—he leaned in conspiratorially—“I still had to steal her the nuclear reactor because we didn’t have near enough to cover it.”

“Wow. You must really love her.”

There was something wistful in the soldier’s eyes.

“Once upon a time. This line of work”—he waved demonstratively—“isn’t conducive to healthy relationships.”

“I wish I knew one that was,” Victor told him, taking a long pull of his own water and sighing. It tasted amazing. “I’d go apply to it tomorrow.”

10

It was amazing, Chase Weston mused ruefully, just how slowly six days could pass on a tiny ship. Particularly when one-sixth of the people on it were trying to not talk to him.

Dr. Angel Cortez was back in her appropriated chair at a corner of the cockpit, intent on being there when they exited the Rift, and this time, Victor was seated beside her. The grad student shot Chase a grin, though if it was out of gratitude for the time the soldier had spent teaching him fighting techniques in the gym or simply because he was happy to get off the ship, Chase had no way of knowing.

The kid had gotten better. He was still going to get killed if he faced someone with experience. It was one thing to know how to fight, another entirely to have been punched in the face. Plans and training and memorized holds and throws had a way of deserting you when the pain hit. That was something Chase didn’t want to teach him and hoped that he wouldn’t have to learn.

Maybe if I do my job, he won’t have to.

“We’re coming out of the Rift,” Pri announced. “Slowing to sub-light.”

It was nothing dramatic. She slid the control to the left, cutting back the power from the reactor to the S-T drive nodules and the kaleidoscope of colors around them solidified, down to the relativistic streaks for a minute before reality congealed into a new star system. The star was a bright dot on a screen filled mostly with the planet. Vishnu was green and blue and too much brown, the browns uninhabitable deserts, hotter than the jungles and not relieved at all by plant life or the cooling breeze of the sea. Anyone dumped into one of those deserts would be dead of heat exhaustion before they had a chance to die of thirst.

But it was best known for the greens, of course, the thriving jungles. If more of the planet had been blue and green, some major corporation or the Colonial Authority would have taken it over, pirates and bandits or no, but there was just enough fertile land to make it worthwhile for a few hundred thousand colonists to make their homes here.

“What have we got, Adrian?” Pri asked, fingers dancing over the controls as the ship slowed, heading for orbit. “Any traffic control down there?”

Hill snorted a sharp laugh.

“You kidding, boss? They don’t even have a moon base.”

Chase couldn’t see the moon in the view on the front screen, but a glance at Hill’s station revealed a white crescent in the display from one of the side cameras.

“What would be the point?” Aguilar interjected. “It’s not like anyone here has the resources or the money to build lunar mines. Shit, from what I read on the net before we left Gateway, the Hindi farmers are lucky if they can get five or six independent freighters visiting in a year, and those only come because they can jack up the price three or four times normal. Everything else comes through the drug cartels. And the cartels sure as hell aren’t interested in mining uranium.”

“Well, I’m gonna try anyway,” Pri said, tapping a control on the communications console. “This is the privateer Tamar calling for any traffic control. We are seeking clearance for landing at Jaipur. Does anyone copy? Over.”

There was no response, and the planet had grown in the screen to take over the entire view, filling the cockpit with the green glow of mid-morning on the eastern hemisphere of Vishnu.

“I guess we’re just going to have to watch for traffic on our own,” Hill said, shrugging. “It ain’t gonna be that hard. I’m not even seeing any aircars up, much less spaceships.”

“Why wouldn’t they have any aircars?” Victor asked. Chase didn’t stare at him, but the others did, and the grad student seemed to shrink under the attention. “I mean,” he went on, “Soong-Tierney engines are easy to make. I don’t know how you build one, but I know it just takes some platinum, copper, and… a couple other things I can’t remember.”

“Tantalum,” Priyanka supplied. “That’s the expensive one. Rare and costly on Earth. That’s how Dr. Soong-Tierney made her money, you know? She convinced her partners to invest in tantalum… they pretty much cornered the market right before the demand skyrocketed.” She shook her head. “Woman is a damned genius and not just when it comes to physics. She cashed out of tantalum just before someone brought in an asteroid full of it from the Belt.”

“Yeah,” Victor allowed, pressing on, “but all it takes to power one up enough for a flight to orbit is a few banks of lithium batteries, right? So, why wouldn’t they be using aircars to get around here on Vishnu? Why wouldn’t they have spaceships going to their moon?”

“You have to see this place to understand,” Chase said, finally deciding to let the kid down easy. “It’s not someplace you’d need an aircar… it wouldn’t be important enough for them to pay to have the S-T engines imported and no one here could afford it except the cartels.”

“You’ve studied up, I see,” Angel Cortez said, surprising him. He’d been convinced she wouldn’t speak to him again the whole trip. But when he turned back to her, the look in her eyes was just as venomous as he remembered. “Good to know there’s something else professional about you besides your capacity for violence.”

The Tamar shuddered as the atmosphere grabbed at her, plucking teasingly at her stubby wings. They were all she needed, the reactionless thrust of the drive substituting for lifting surfaces. Chase was no physicist or aerospace engineer, but he understood the basics of it, that the more power they could feed the drive, the less aerodynamics the ship needed and the higher it could climb. That was why shuttles still had wings, but aircars didn’t need them since they never went over a hundred feet or so in altitude.

“Any Vishnu traffic control station,” Pri repeated, “this is the privateer Tamar declaring intention of landing at Jaipur. If anyone has a problem with it, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Yo, Tamar,” the reply finally came, the speaker male, his English accented, though from where Chase couldn’t tell. “That’s a pretty name. And you got a pretty voice.”

“I got a pretty ship, too,” Pri shot back, scowling. “Pretty damned heavy and pretty damned big, and unless you want me to squish something with it by accident, you’d better tell me where I can land.”

“All right, all right, chill out, woman. There’s shitloads of free space, just drop down in the northeast corner. You’ll have half the field to yourself. But there’s a fee for landing and a fee for parking… a hundred in Dig-Coins a day, non-negotiable. And another fifty bucks a day for protection if you don’t want your ship vandalized.”

“Yeah, I read you,” Pri said, rolling her eyes. She shot Angel a look and touched the mute control. “Landing fee is probably going straight to the cartel, but I don’t think we can get out of it. Protection money is your call… it’s your dime.”

“Screw it,” Aguilar said. “I’ll sleep in the boat. Least it’s got air conditioning. Any of those assholes get too close, I’ll pop ’em with the Bofors.”

“You will not,” Pri insisted. “Those rounds are expensive. You’ll use a damned shotgun just like any civilized person.” She shrugged. “And I think all three of us will stay on the ship, with it buttoned up, at least for the first few days, until we get a sense of this place. Then maybe we can chance going out and leaving a guard.”

Chase nodded, motioning toward the radio.

“Copy that, Vishnu traffic control,” Pri said. “Where do we pay the landing fee?”

“There’s a fence around the field and you pay me at the gate. Can’t wait to meet you, pretty Tamar.”

“Tamar is the ship, Vishnu,” she reminded him, the corner of her lip curling in half a smile. “Maybe I’ll pay in person and tell you my name if you give me a discount.”

“Oh, we can talk about that when you’re down here, baby. Just chat up old Raphael here and I’ll see what I can do.”

Pri cut off the radio and laughed softly.

“I think I’m gonna have you pay the toll, Adrian,” she told Hill. “Just make sure you video the guy’s reaction when he sees you.”

“You may as well go ahead and pay him for the protection,” Angel said. “You can’t stay on the ship the whole time. We may be here for weeks.”

“You may be here for weeks, lady,” Pri returned, shaking her head. “We have better things to do. We’re sticking around for three or four days to make sure everything’s cool and you don’t need a quick hop out of here. Once you’re settled in, we’re out of here. We got a paying passenger to give a ride from Hephaestus to Port Harcourt, but we’ll be checking back in on you in a couple weeks.”

Angel didn’t seem happy at the prospect, but she said nothing. Chase thought she might be recalling the details of the contract, which promised secure transportation to and from the planet, but not that the ship would remain at port the whole time.

“It’s better if they don’t just sit there the whole time anyway,” he said, not sure if he was violating her wish that he not talk to her except in the execution of his duties. “The Tamar would just remind the wrong people that you’re there.”

Her only response was a glare.

This was going to be so much fun.

* * *

“Holy shit, it’s hot.”

Victor had barely stepped off the boarding ramp, and he was already dripping with sweat, his duffle bag hanging off of him like a lead weight.

“Get used to it, Victor,” Angel Cortez told him, looking like some stoic Spartan queen, uncomplaining despite the perspiration beading on her forehead. “It’s the dry season here, which makes it summer, which means no rain to cool things down so it’s not going to get any better.”

“But they have air conditioning in the buildings at the dig, right?” He was whining and he knew it, but it was as if they’d stepped into a broiler… it had to be over ninety degrees and the air was so thick he could almost drink it. How could it be this humid and not rain?

Angel looked at him sidelong.

“Take a good long look around,” she told him, “and tell me if you think this is the kind of place where people have air conditioning.”

He did and finally noticed anything beyond the packed, brown dirt of the landing field. The fence enclosing the field was only fifty yards away, and beyond it, a dirt road demarcated the backwoods excuse for a spaceport, leading out from the gate and into the town. He called it a town because it sure as hell wasn’t a city, and he couldn’t think of anything less flattering than town.

Shithole? Yeah, maybe shithole.

Victor Lee hadn’t left California until he was in his early twenties, and then only to other planets. But his mother had shown him photos and video of the hamlet where his grandparents had been born in Vietnam. It was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by jungle, yet somehow it managed to look claustrophobic, with the buildings packed tight together, the roads narrow and the people shoulder-to-shoulder on the streets, carrying water and grain balanced on their shoulders.

Jaipur made that Vietnamese village seem like the broad, open streets of San Francisco.

Well, there’s probably less human shit on the sidewalks here, but I guess all the cows make up for that.

The buildings weren’t made from rice paper here, anyway, nor from bamboo. Limestone was apparently plentiful because a good percentage of structures were little more than stacks of limestone blocks, the rest made from wood and plaster. But the most popular building material seemed to be metal or fiber mesh, because every door and window that could be open was, and every one of them was covered with mesh screens. He discovered the reason for that almost immediately.

“Shit!” Victor yelped, slapping at his neck and dropping his duffle bag. “Damn mosquitos!”

He hadn’t noticed Chase speaking in quiet tones to Priyanka, but when he bent to retrieve his luggage, Victor noticed the captain giving the soldier a chaste kiss on the cheek.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she cautioned him. “I’ll be just a radio call away.”

“You be careful, too. This ship is a big expensive target, so don’t be shy. Anyone causes any trouble, you cut loose and take off. You can come get us later.”

Chase gave her one last wave, then shot Hill a bird before he led them off toward the gate. It seemed ridiculous to Victor that the traffic control moron had stuck them off in this corner of the field, at least two hundred yards from the gate, when there was absolutely nothing else on the field for hundreds of yards around. In fact, the only other spacecraft on the whole landing field were a pair of orbital cargo shuttles sitting next to each other on the southernmost edge of the lot.

I am so out of shape. Two hundred yards carrying sixty or seventy pounds of luggage and he thought he was about to collapse. The only reason he didn’t stumble into the shack at the gate with Chase and Angel was that it was too small to hold more than the two of them and the grungy, long-bearded man behind the table inside.

“You gotta be Tamar?” The man smiled at Angel, revealing a mouth full of yellow, crooked teeth. “Wow, you’re as pretty as your voice.”

“The Tamar is the ship,” Chase reminded the man. “But you must be Raphael.”

“Hey, I was talking to the lady!” Raphael scowled.

“The lady wants to pay for a week’s worth of landing fees,” Angel said, slapping the bills on the table. It was cheap, pressed cardboard and cheaper aluminum, and it wobbled perilously at the impact. “I pay you, right?”

“Yeah, you pay me, all right.” He counted the money, then looked up, eyebrow arching. “You didn’t want the insurance?”

“I think we’ll be okay,” Chase told him. Raphael glanced at him with narrowed eyes, as if he was irritated that the soldier was even talking to him. “You see, the crew is going to be sleeping on board, and that boat has a pair of Bofors guns in her side that could turn anyone who even looks at her cross-eyed into ash.” Chase grinned at Raphael’s sudden change of expression as the man whipped around and looked out the window at the ship, clearly visible even from two hundred yards away. “Matter of fact, she can even fire those things on the ground, wouldn’t have to take off. Have to warn Pri about her aim though… she might accidentally wipe this whole shack out without meaning to.”

Raphael stuttered something that Victor couldn’t make out, but Chase just nodded and then left him there. Angel might have been smiling behind the soldier’s back, or it might have been Victor’s imagination.

The smell slammed into Victor like a solid mass by the time they hit the other side of the gate, wafted across the field by a stray breeze coming from town.

“Oh, my God,” he gulped, putting a hand over his mouth. “Is that the cows?”

A bull fifty yards away, lowed its discontent as it shuffled down the road without supervision, kicking up a cloud of dust, making no comment on whether it was to blame for the rancid stench in the air. It mooed and sidestepped at the approaching truck and the competing billow of dust from the squeal of its poorly maintained brakes.

The pickup was at least twenty years old, Victor thought. Maybe thirty. He wasn’t an expert on car body styles, particularly when most people who had the money for a new vehicle were buying aircars, but the rumble and growl of the internal combustion engine was as distinctive as it was foreign to his California-raised ears. The curled horns of a ram decorated the grill, though any other factory markings had long since been stripped off the primer-grey body of the four-door vehicle.

It kept moving in defiance of the protesting brake pads and Victor stumbled to the side, afraid it was going to run the three of them down, but the pitch of the rumble of rubber tires on dirt went lower, and the giant vehicle came to a clunking, pinging halt directly in front of them. Clouds of brown dust swallowed them up, and if it sent Victor into a coughing frenzy, at least it blocked out the smell.

The dust cleared, revealing the open driver’s-side window and a broad, white smile. The man behind it was neither broad nor white. He was skinny enough that his patched and repaired work shirt hung off of him like a tent, and Victor thought he was one of the local Indian immigrants. The smile broke in half a face creased and weathered by wind and sun and time, and the man could have been anywhere between forty and seventy for all Victor could tell.

“Good afternoon lady, gentlemen,” he said, nodding, his English with the vaguely British accent still left over from more than a century ago. “I am Tata, and I’ve been sent by Dr. Stephenson to pick you up and take you to the dig.” His eyes sprang wide open as if he’d just remembered something important, and he sprang out of the door, motioning for them to follow him to the back of the truck. “Here, here, here,” he said, lowering the tailgate. It barely hung on by an ancient, frayed, and rusted cable, as if daring anyone to use it to climb into the back. “Let us put your bags back here, my friends.”

Victor didn’t argue, happy to dump his duffle bag and roller onto the scratched and dented truck bed, not caring if they went all the way through the scraped, rusty metal to the ground. Chase threw his bags in as well, though Angel seemed reluctant, staring at the state of the truck with concern in her eyes.

“Are you sure this thing will get us all the way to the dig?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, ma’am, yes!” Tata assured her. “This is the finest vehicle I’ve ever owned, a vintage Dodge Ram Bighorn from 2021. The very best year for this truck, I assure you. Of course,” he went on, shrugging, “the engine has been replaced by one that runs on alcohol. And the transmission has been replaced by one from a 2013 Ford F150. And the drivetrain was adapted from a Chevrolet. But she’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

Angel sighed in resignation and tossed her luggage in with the others. Tata smiled again—he seemed to smile a lot, Victor thought—and pushed the tailgate shut quickly, as if she might change her mind.

“Everyone inside!” he urged as he climbed back behind the wheel and started the vehicle with the push of a button. The engine turned over reluctantly, grumbling like a massive dog just woken from a long nap. “The truck even has air conditioning!” He nodded to Chase as the man climbed in on the front passenger’s side. “The air conditioning unit is from a Toyota.”

Victor slid into the back on the passenger’s side, behind Chase, and closed the door quickly, anxious to feel cold air again.

“How far is the drive?” Chase asked, angling his vents toward the back and turning up the fan. Victor could have kissed him.

“Not far, not far,” Tata assured him, peeling out from the gate and nearly hitting the same white humpbacked bull, which mooed in protest. “We will be there in no time at all.”

11

Chase sank into the comfortable, if worn and patched, seat of the Dodge Frankenstein and tried not to listen to the man who called himself Tata. It was no easy task, since Tata simply refused to shut up.

“Yes, yes,” he said, looking back for far too long at Victor Lee and away from the narrow dirt road. “There are barracks at the dig site, but no one stays in them. They all live in the tents.”

“Why?” Victor asked.

“Because the barracks are twenty years old and weren’t built that well to begin with! Now, they leak like sieves and snakes and insects get in and…”

“Snakes?” Victor repeated, lunging forward in his seat like he’d seen one on the ratty floor mats. “There are snakes here? How did they get snakes here?”

“No, not really snakes, of course,” Tata admitted, motioning expansively with both hands, taking them off the wheel. “I mean, some of them have legs and others have bat wings, and some have these pointed heads with vanes on them, and others don’t have any eyes, but I say, they’re long and wriggly and scaley, so they’re snakes, right? And they all bite. Not all of them are poisonous…”

“Venomous,” Angel corrected him, staring out the window.

“Yeah, right. Not all of them are venomous, and even the ones they say are, their venom doesn’t hurt us humans too bad, but there are a couple that, if they bite you, you swell up and turn red and boom!” He clapped his hands together. “Just like that, you’re dead!” Tata finally turned his attention back to the road just as Chase was about ready to grab the wheel himself. “And then there’s one that injects you with a sting on its tail like a scorpion, and that won’t kill you, but you’ll be tripping balls for days, sweating and shivering and seeing visions from all your past lives.”

“The barracks?” Victor repeated.

“Ah, yes. Well, the barracks have snakes, and insects and rats—real rats, our rats, they stowed away on the ships that brought us here. So, no one sleeps in them. The tents are new, Dr. Stephenson brought them with him, and you stay dry and no bugs or snakes or rats unless you leave the door open too long.” Tata shook his head. “Don’t leave the door open. Some people do because it’s so hot, even at night, but I wouldn’t do it.”

“No air conditioning,” Victor moaned. “This is gonna suck.”

“There are fans,” Tata assured him. “Every tent has a fan. But you can only use them at night because they have to charge the batteries with the solar panels in the day.” He bobbed his head side to side, making a face. “Dr. Stephenson is a nice man, friendly with everyone, but he works us all too long and doesn’t pay us enough. I know your California college is rich. They can afford to pay us more, right? I mean, they sent the three of you all the way here from Earth just for some buried buildings.”

“I’ll be sure to bring it up with Dr. Stephenson,” Angel said, though her tone put the lie to her words, as utterly uninterested as a human could be and still be awake.

She was staring out the window, and something out there was interesting to her. Chase had been scanning the road in front of them for threats, but he twisted in his seat, trying to see what she was looking at. The jungle surrounded them, but it wasn’t unbroken. Here and there, a stream passed beneath the road through a culvert and pushed the trees aside, giving them a view of the mountains out to the east. They were tall and forbidding, much farther away than they looked, and capped with snow at the top. Chase frowned, trying to remember from the briefing packet how tall they were. 20,000 feet? Twenty-five?

“The mountains,” Angel said softly, as if talking to herself, but then she turned and glared at the back of Tata’s head. “The Karakorum, they’re called?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Tata enthused, nodding. “They are beautiful, are they not? I drove to them once, long ago, when we first arrived here. I was a younger man then, and it seemed like an adventure, but now I am middle-aged and it would be a daunting journey.”

“They’re on our left,” she interrupted, her voice flat and accusatory. “They should be on our right.”

“I… um… I’m afraid I don’t understand, ma’am?” Tata shook his head. He was like a bobblehead, Chase thought. The man couldn’t speak without moving his whole body.

“I studied this dig extensively. Watched Dr. Stephenson’s videos. In one of them, he recorded the drive from the landing field, and the mountains were on his right.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am,” Tata said, laughing with what Chase thought might be forced casualness. “You must be remembering wrong.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed, her mouth curling into a snarl, though Tata couldn’t see it since she was directly behind him.

“I have an eidetic memory, Mr. Tata. I don’t remember anything wrong. You’re taking us the wrong way.”

Chase had been half-ignoring the conversation, but at the accusation, he snapped to attention, checking in front of them and then behind. No one was on the road. He’d seen no one the whole drive, and now that he thought about it, the lack of traffic should have bothered him. People didn’t build roads to nowhere, not even out here on Vishnu. If no one was using this road, it might have been because they were warned not to.

“Pull over,” he ordered Tata, using the command voice he’d learned as a Ranger NCO.

“But we’re almost there,” Tata protested, pointing forward as if to show him. “We’ll be there in a few minutes, I swear…”

The grip of the FN automatic was rough, abrading his palm just enough to keep itself secure against sweaty palms or the fingerless gloves Chase often wore in combat. The 9mm had traveled with him for these last five years in the same spot under his left arm, concealed under the thin bug-repellent shirt he wore unbuttoned over his olive-drab T-shirt. The FN 509 was strapped in tight with worn nylon and stained white with the salt of old sweat, and it slid free as if it knew instinctively that Chase needed it.

The electronic sight popped up as it came out of the holster, but Chase didn’t need it. Not with the threaded muzzle of the handgun pressed against Tata’s head. The man squeaked wordlessly and let his foot off the accelerator, the truck slowing down to a crawl.

“Stop the damn truck.”

“Y-yes, yes, I’m stopping the damn truck.” The man couldn’t shut up, even with a gun to his head. “Please don’t shoot me, I am definitely stopping the damn truck.”

And he was, at least, even if he still felt the need to narrate it. The tires rasped and scraped, and Chase didn’t wait until the pickup came to a complete stop before he spun the shifting knob to park. The transmission, whatever its provenance, clunked and ground and threw Chase against his seatbelt. He waited until the belt let loose before he tried to release it, using the time to glance into the cupholder and confirm that the key fob was indeed sitting inside it, then unbelted Tata and pushed him toward the door.

“But sir, it is very bad for the transmission to do that!” Tata protested, holding onto the wheel to anchor himself against the push.

“Out,” he said, motioning with the FN. “Get out of the truck.”

“But I am responsible for this truck! No one else is allowed to drive it!”

Chase had officially run out of patience and announced the event by lunging across the cab, pulling the handle and pushing the door open with the same hand, then driving Tata out with the muzzle of the gun against the side of his head. Tata stumbled and went down in the packed dirt, flat on his ass, but Chase only watched him to make sure he didn’t pull a weapon out of the loose folds of his clothing. He kept his gun trained on the man as he scrambled over the center console and into the driver’s seat, then yanked the door closed.

“You don’t understand,” Tata said, pushing himself up to his feet as he backed off the road. He finally seemed upset enough to tell the truth. “They’ll kill me! They’ll kill my family!”

Chase set his gun in the center console and used both hands to turn the truck around, sending Tata dodging out of the way as he performed a K-turn and pausing before he drove away, sympathy getting the better of him. He rolled down his window.

“You’re pretty damned good at talking,” Chase told the man. “If I were you, I’d start thinking about how to talk your way out of this.”

Tata, for once, was speechless, and Chase pulled away from him in a spray of dust and gravel.

“What the hell is going on?” Victor demanded. A glance in the rearview mirror showed eyes wide and white staring back at Chase. “Why did you pull a gun on that dude?”

“He was taking us the wrong direction,” Angel told her graduate assistant, her tone making clear she thought it should be obvious.

“Why?”

“That’s why,” Chase told him, pointing ahead.

The cloud of dust was the first sign, but it was only another second before the ancient Land Rover emerged from it, glinting silver in the afternoon glare.

“It’s a car,” Victor said, still sounding confused. “What does…”

Chase had already jammed the accelerator to the floor, though it wasn’t achieving as much as he’d hoped in the kit-bash pickup truck, barely getting them above fifty miles an hour. It was fast enough that the Land Rover was rushing toward them headlong, and when it cut to its left and tried to block the road, Chase didn’t have time to slow down. He twisted the steering wheel to the right and went off the road, into the grass beside it, scraping the passenger’s side door against something that might have been a banyan tree had it been on Earth.

Victor’s yell started as a curse, but it had drifted into incoherence as they left the road, the suspension bouncing them roughly toward the ceiling as the truck thumped over roots and into ruts. Mud spattered the windshield, and Chase hit the wiper control automatically as he yanked the vehicle back onto the road past the stopped Land Rover. The old British SUV was stuck, trying to get turned around, but there was no way it was going to be able to catch up to them, not on these roads, and Chase smiled thinly. They’d gotten out of it without firing a shot.

He didn’t notice the Toyota Hilux tucked into the pullout until it came after them in a roar of alcohol-fueled fury, trailing smoke and dust.

“Damn.”

It looked newer than the Dodge or the Land Rover, new enough that it might have its original engine and transmission, and it was certainly going to catch them. Chase couldn’t push the accelerator any harder, and the readout was just now creeping toward sixty, the truck bouncing and sliding with every bump in the rough road, and still the newer pickup was gaining. The glare of the local star was flashing off the windshield, but when they passed through the shade of a taller tree overhanging the road, Chase could make out the faces inside the cab.

They weren’t smiling, and they weren’t Patsies like Tata. The three men in the cab were young, hard, and hungry, the same type Chase had seen on a dozen different worlds, living off the suffering and hard work of others. They always had guns, and these were no different. One of them leaned out of the passenger’s side front window and braced the barrel of an AK47 against the windshield frame, the muzzle flash barely a spark in the harsh light of the primary star.

Something metal spanged off the roof of the Dodge, and Chase swerved the pickup back and forth, trying to make sure the man didn’t have a stationary target.

“Do either of you know how to shoot?” he yelled over the roar of the engine.

“What?” Victor blurted, not screaming in terror yet but obviously not too far from it.

“I can’t drive and shoot behind us,” Chase ground out, knuckles white on the steering wheel. It was still slick with Tata’s sweat, and he would have given real money for a chance to wipe it down. “Has either of you ever shot a gun?”

Another chatter of automatic weapons’ fire, and this time Victor did scream as the rear window shattered and two rounds went out the windshield, spider-webbing the safety glass.

Angel Cortez hadn’t said a word, but she dove into the front seat with the grace of a gymnast… or a martial artist, which she was. Chase was about to tell her to strap in, but she did it on her own and he shut his mouth, impressed. She took the gun out of the center console, being careful to keep the barrel pointed away from him and her finger off the trigger.

“Is there a safety?” she asked, turning it in her hand.

“Just pull the trigger,” he told her, then swore and swerved again as another burst of antique Russian steel-core bullets took out the sideview passenger’s window. “Keep both eyes open and use the red dot to aim.” He remembered what she’d said to him on the ship and almost told her to aim for the tires, but he bit down on the words. It was possible to penetrate the front of a tire with a handgun, but it would take way too long for them to deflate.

Angel didn’t say anything, just rolled down her window. Air had been hissing through the holes in the window and windshield, but now it blasted in through the open window, deafening, sending a shower of trash swirling up from the floorboards. Angel unfastened her seatbelt and leaned out the window, holding the FN in her right hand, left hand clasped over it, most of her upper body through the opening. Victor cried out, grabbed her legs, and held her in place so she wouldn’t fall out from the bumps and jolts.

Chase could barely hear the shots, but he could see their effects in the rearview mirror. Angel didn’t hit the shooter with the AK, but she did walk a line of bullet impacts up the hood until they punched through the upper part of the windshield on the driver’s side. No blood sprayed inside the cab, and no one seemed to have been hit, but the Toyota fishtailed and nearly went out of control and the driver had to slow down. As the pickup fell back in the reflection, Angel scooted back into the passenger’s seat, the gun still held in her hands, the slide locked back.

She was panting, though not from the exertion, he thought. There was anguish in her face as she handed the gun back to him, butt-first. Chase took it, controlling the wheel with his knees for a moment as he pulled a spare mag out of the pouches beneath his right arm and dropped the empty, then slammed home a fresh one and dropped the slide on a live round.

Behind them, the Toyota was back under control, though it had lost ground and was probably a hundred meters back. If he could just keep up the gap…

He couldn’t. Whatever engine Tata or his shade-tree mechanic friends had shoehorned into the Dodge body, it was groaning and rumbling and tapping its protest at such treatment and was bound and determined that fifty-six miles an hour was its top speed limit. The Toyota was under no such restrictions, and it would be on them again in seconds.

“It’s reloaded,” Chase said, offering the gun back to Angel.

She put a hand out but drew it away just as quickly, shaking her head, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I can’t,” was all she said.

Chase was about to try to argue with her when a short burst of AK rounds punched through the tailgate and then through the back of the cab, dying in a spray of sparks in the truck’s useless radio. Chase dropped the FN into the center console again, both hands going to the wheel.

“The hell with it!” Victor said, and before Chase knew what the grad student was doing, he’d grabbed the 9mm out of the console and was twisting around, pointing it out the shattered rear window. “And the hell with these guys!”

Victor emptied the gun as fast as he could pull the trigger, and this time, Chase did hear the shots. They nearly deafened him, and brass cartridge casings bounced off the interior of the pickup, one of them singing his neck just above the collar before it clattered down to the floorboards. A seventeen-round magazine emptied much more quickly than most people could imagine, and it wasn’t at all difficult to go through a whole mag without hitting a damned thing.

Victor had hit something. Chase didn’t know what, but the Toyota fishtailed again, and this time the driver wasn’t able to pull it back. Dust and dirt and a single tire flew up from the wreckage as the truck rolled. Four times before it stopped, and even after it did, the tire was still bouncing down the road.

“Whoa,” Victor said, mouth hanging open, gun dropping down with the slide locked open on an empty mag.

Chase slowed down to a more manageable speed, then reached back and pried the pistol out of Victor’s hand. He reloaded and shoved the handgun back into its holster, sneaking a glance at the two academics. Victor seemed like he was still in shock, staring behind them as if he could still see the wreck of the Toyota, while Angel was curled in her seat, face buried in her hands. Victor’s reaction, Chase could understand. Angel’s, not so much. She’d killed a windshield.

He drove for another ten minutes, long enough that he was sure they weren’t being followed and there were no more ambushes waiting along the road, then pulled over to the side and twisted around to face Angel Cortez, waiting for her to come out of her funk and notice.

Finally, she looked up and seemed none too pleased to find him staring at her.

“What?” She wiped at her eyes.

“I hate to bother you, but you said you have a photographic memory, right?”

“Eidetic,” she corrected him with the brusque, didactic tone of a teacher. “What about it?”

“Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, we’re pretty freaking lost.” He threw up his hands and indicated the empty road and the trackless jungle surrounding them. As if on cue, something large and sinuous and vaguely reptilian darted from one side of the road to the other and was gone. “Do you have any idea how to get to this dig, or should I just go back to the spaceport and ask Raphael?”

“Get out of the car,” she told him, opening her door.

“Why?” he asked, not moving. She turned back to him, standing on the running board.

“Because I’m driving.” She sniffed, scowling deeply. “If there’s any more shooting to be done, you can do it yourself.”

12

“My God, Angel,” Dan Stephenson said, sweeping the woman into a hug, “you haven’t changed a bit!”

Evangeline Cortez returned the embrace warmly, though she wasn’t much of a hugger. Dan Stephenson was a good man and an old friend, and neither had been very easy for her to find.

“Neither have you, Dan,” she assured him.

“Oh, you’re a bad liar,” he said, laughing as he set her back down. “I’m afraid time doesn’t spare any of us, and hanging out in places like this”—he waved around at the camp—“hasn’t done me any favors.”

She had been lying. Stephenson was in his early sixties and looked it, though the deep lines in his face and the streaks of grey in his beard and long braided hair seemed to add gravitas and nobility to his high cheekbones and strong jaw rather than simply making him appear decrepit. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and powerful, but the years had put a bit of a stoop in his posture, and he didn’t quite fill his khaki shirt and baggy shorts the way he had when she’d been a graduate student, working on one of his digs.

One not too different from this one, except it had been a different planet, dryer and cooler, with less jungle and more highland desert plateau. The tents were the same, though. Same model, bought from the same outlet. Dan Stephenson never trusted the local housing and sprang for the tents and cots on every expedition. These had started out new, but the encroaching jungle had left them stained green with algae after going through the just-ended rainy season. He’d been here for months now, and the wear was showing on the people as well as the tents.

They shuffled between tents, carrying metal trays loaded down with what she assumed was either a late lunch or an early dinner. It had taken Angel a good two hours to get to the camp in the dilapidated pickup truck and it had to be sometime in the late afternoon local time, although she had no way of knowing since she hadn’t adjusted her phone and the place had no working satellites. The workers were almost all locals, which was the usual way of things, though she noticed a couple whose clothes and hairstyles likely made them grad students. The dirt caked on their clothes and the look of absolute exhaustion were the great equalizers, and not even the ones she’d picked out as possible students paid much attention to the newcomers.

Their presence did remind her of her manners, and though their necessity annoyed her, she couldn’t ignore them.

“This is my graduate assistant, Victor Lee,” she said, waving at the younger man.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Victor said, shifting his bags and offering a hand, acting as if he hadn’t been in a shootout and caused a possibly fatal crash just a couple hours ago.

“Pleasure’s mine, son.” Stephenson was as polite as ever, a fatherly twinkle in his eyes whenever he dealt with students. “Thanks for coming along to help us out.” He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his forehead. “God knows we need it.” He frowned at the truck as if he was just noticing it. “But tell me, where’s Tata? He picked you up, didn’t he? I mean, that’s our truck…”

Chase and Victor shared a look, and Angel blew out a breath of frustration. She’d somehow held onto the slim hope that the subject wouldn’t come up.

“Holy hell!” Stephenson exclaimed, walking over to the back of the truck and apparently just noticing the shattered rear window and the holes in the body. She knew the man wore glasses for distance vision, and now he put them on and his mouth dropped open. “What happened here?”

“I’m afraid your driver was getting paid by the local bandits,” Chase said, stepping in despite a quelling glare from Angel. “He tried to set us up for an ambush.” He shrugged. “Probably for ransom, but maybe for the ship we came in on. Dr. Cortez saved us… if she hadn’t recognized that we were going the wrong way, I never would have known. No GPS here with no satellites upstairs.”

“Those damned cartel bastards,” Stephenson spat, smacking a palm against the side of the truck. “They already soak the university for protection money to let us keep digging in peace, which irks me to no end, but what can you do?” He shook his head. “Before the expansion, when I was a younger man, I was part of digs in Colombia and Venezuela, and paying off the government and the drug gangs was just business as usual. But to do this to our people?” He laughed sharply. “They say the definition of an honest politician is one that, once he’s bought, stays bought. I suppose the same is true for criminals.” He looked up at Angel, suddenly alarmed, as if his fear for her safety had kicked in retroactively. “Are you all right? No one was hurt, were they?”

“We’re all fine, sir,” Victor told him. Angel frowned at the kid. He was more than over the trauma. He was walking around like a fighting rooster with a four-hour erection.

“But who are you, sir?” Stephenson asked, looking at Chase. “Another student?”

Angel barked a laugh at the idea, and Chase glanced at her, annoyed.

“No, sir, I’m Chase Weston of Tamar Protective Services.” He shook the archaeologist’s hand. “I’m here to act as security for Dr. Cortez and Mr. Lee.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Stephenson enthused. “Thank God you were with them. You should meet Gavin. He’s our on-site security.” He turned toward the tents and cupped his hand over his mouth. “Gavin! Come here, please!”

Gavin was a short, stocky, middle-aged man, his clothes just a bit higher quality than those of the workers and not stained by dirt, his slicked-back hair and mustache jet black and well-oiled. A compact handgun flapped around in an old leather holster at his hip, a lanyard attached to it running back to one of his belt loops.

“Yes, Dr. Stephenson?” he said, his accent flat-American. She judged him as a product of California rather than a direct export from India, though what he was doing here, she had no idea.

“This gentleman is Chase Weston,” Stephenson told him. “He’s Dr. Cortez’s bodyguard. I want you to take him for a tour of the site and show him our security measures.”

“Yes, of course.” Gavin nodded to Chase. “If you’d like to put your bags away first, I’ll show you to my tent. You can stay there… there’s no one else using the other cot right now.”

The two of them left, and Angel couldn’t have been more grateful.

“Here, I’ll show you two to your tents,” Stephenson offered, then smiled as if he’d forgotten all about the attempt on their lives. “And then, I’ll show you the dig. Oh, my sweet Angel… you’re going to love this.”

* * *

“Oh, my God.”

Evangeline Cortez wasn’t a woman who was easily impressed, but Victor could tell she was impressed now. So was he, though he hadn’t been at first. The excavation here at what Stephenson insisted on calling Rosetta was just like the two he’d seen in person and the half-dozen he’d toured virtually in the university’s virtual reality archives.

The Arborists might have had star travel, but their architecture was nothing to write home about, much less dozens of scientific papers. They liked low, stone walls made from local materials and cyclopean buildings that might have been built by some giant, clumsy child out of play blocks thirty or forty feet tall and three feet thick. Dean Devlin used to put an old internet meme on the projector in class, first with a picture of the giant slabs of stone and the question, “How did the Arborists move blocks of stone so large and heavy?” followed by an image of some weird-looking guy with funky, spikey hair saying “Could it be… aliens?”

Victor had never gotten the joke.

Besides the abandoned, half-buried, building-block cities, the Arborists hadn’t left much useful. They were humanoid, that much was obvious from the size and shape of their doors and passages and what was left of their furniture. But they’d had the same problem when it came to leaving clues for archaeologists as the modern human world might… everything was digital. They had what the researchers assumed were digital picture frames, their books were digital, their records were digital. And no one could figure out how to power the damn computers back up, much less decode them.

It was beyond frustrating, but if he’d wanted an easy specialty, he would have majored in medieval European archaeology. The paleontologists didn’t have it any easier. The Arborists hadn’t left much behind in the way of bones, either. It wasn’t as if they’d been wiped out, their cities destroyed… all of them were in good order, buried or partially so but not broken.

They’d just… left. They’d abandoned their buildings, their furniture, any computer system that wasn’t portable, and they’d pulled out of the various habitable planets they’d colonized.

This dig was familiar, very much like the others. The jungle had overgrown the ruins, leaving only the tops of the buildings sticking up from the dirt, but Stephenson and his diggers had cleared the doorways of a half a dozen buildings, the tree roots chopped and ripped away, no doubt with much elbow grease and sweat, since construction and excavation equipment would be expensive and hard to come by here. No skeletons littered the broad hallways of the largest building as Stephenson led them inside, no sculptures or paintings adorned the walls. If the Arborists had any representative art, they’d taken it with them.

Only the circular plant pots and the rings of enriched dirt remained of their many indoor plants and trees, several in each of the rooms and usually more in elaborate gardens between the buildings, the eponymous origin of their name. Victor had always thought it was a ridiculous thing, calling them the Arborists just because they liked plants. It would be like some future race running across the ruins of Portland and calling humans the Flower People.

But all thoughts of the ludicrous nature of their nickname fled when Stephenson took them to the chamber. This was not like the other Arborist digs he’d seen. The walls were curved, rounded, like all Arborist interior architecture, which always gave Victor a vaguely claustrophobic feeling, though he wasn’t sure why. There was plenty of space, twenty yards on every side, but the way even the floor was slightly concave convinced his hind-brain that the walls were closing in.

At the center of this oblate spheroid wasn’t more stone furniture or the fossils of potted plants tens of thousands of years old. No, what anchored this room was a…

A platform? A frame?

Neither words seemed adequate. The thing was ten yards across, stretching another ten from ceiling to floor, curved at the edges like the walls, and convex on the side facing them. The stone was wrapped in some sort of gold foil, thin as tissue paper but flat and seamless…and covered, from top to bottom and side to side, in symbols.

“Oh, my God,” Angel repeated, circling around the thing. She reached out a hand, but her fingers came up just short, and Victor could tell she was having to restrain herself from touching it. She looked sharply back at Stephenson. “How long have you known about this?”

“I found it nearly three months ago,” he admitted. He raised a hand to stop her before she could yell at him, which Victor knew her well enough to predict she was about to do. “And yes, I know I should have shared this with the university, but look at this place.” He waved behind them to show he meant Vishnu rather than the chamber they were in. “Look at who runs it. If they thought there was something important here, they would strongarm their way in here and hold it hostage until the university paid them or until they got tired of waiting and just blew it all up for the hell of it.”

“Is it writing?” Victor asked, ignoring Angel’s slow simmering at being kept in the dark.

“Yes,” Stephenson declared. “And I’ve translated it.”

“What?” Angel blurted, staring at the older man in disbelief. “Dan, this is an incredible find, but there isn’t enough here to even be sure this is writing! It could be some kind of art, for all we know. And there certainly isn’t enough to go on to translate it!”

“No, you’re right,” Stephenson admitted easily. “Not here.” He pointed further into the chamber, to a door so short, a passage so dark and narrow that Victor hadn’t even noticed it. “Through here.”

Victor grimaced, his awe and fascination at the prospect of the Arborists having left written records lost in the sudden return of his latent claustrophobia.

“Through there?”

Angel Cortez rolled her eyes at him.

“Jesus, Victor, we just got shot at and you’re afraid of a tunnel that’s been stable for the last ten thousand years?”

Victor looked at Stephenson, who was both taller and broader across the chest than he was.

“You can make it through there?”

“Barely.” Stephenson chuckled. “Actually, I got stuck once for an hour. I was shouting my fool head off, and finally one of the workers heard me and had to grab me by the ankles and pull me out.”

“Shit.”

“Oh, fine.” Angel waved a hand. “I’ll go first.”

The woman scrambled through the entrance without hesitation, wriggled her way inside, and disappeared into the darkness. Victor watched for a long moment, fear warring with shame in his chest. Shame won out and he sighed, going to his hands and knees in front of the tunnel. He reached out with one arm and folded the other beneath him, trying to reduce his breadth, and scooted inside. The tunnel was depressingly long and terrifyingly curved, which meant he couldn’t see the other end, and he nearly turned back despite his shame.

But moving backward proved even more difficult than continuing on, and Victor scuttled forward, convinced of his inability to breathe despite the fact he was, in fact, taking in air. He was a hair’s breadth from hyperventilating when he saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. This light was harsh and glaring and tinted yellow and he dug the toes of his boots into the smooth surface of the rock and covered the last few yards with the desperate speed of a drowning man heading for the surface.

Victor tumbled out the other end, back in the open air, gasping for breath and barely realizing where he was. He only moved from where he sat when Dr. Stephenson pushed him out of the way so he could exit the passage behind him. Portable lanterns glared in his eyes, seemingly far too bright for the size of the things, and he wondered why until he realized that the light was reflecting… off everything.

The chamber was larger than the one they’d just left, and every inch of the walls was covered by the gold foil. And every inch of the gold foil was covered by the writing…except for the center above them.

“That’s impossible,” Angel said.

But it wasn’t. The images would have looked the same if Victor had been reading them in any astronomy textbook for the last hundred years. At the center of the ceiling was a star map. The stars were circles surrounded by spikes of light, the planets depicted in ovoid line drawings showing their orbits.

“That’s not even the most incredible thing,” Stephenson assured her. He took one of the battery-powered lights and turned it on its stand, showing another section of the room, to their right and low to the ground.

Another familiar sort of illustration, though this one would have been more at home in a chemistry text.

“Those are, what?” Victor asked, looking between the two archaeologists. “Atoms?”

“They’re the elements,” Stephenson told him. “And each one is labeled. Between that and the writing beside the solar systems above us, I was able to get the translation software to get a start on the language.”

“But what is all this?” Victor asked him, shaking his head.

“For lack of a better term, it’s a grave marker. For a whole civilization.” The older man pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and shined it across the golden room, the glow haunting and otherworldly. “They knew they were dying… and they wanted someone else, anyone else who came along, to know what had happened to them.”

“And you know?” Angel asked, grabbing the man’s arm, impatience written across her face as plainly as if the Arborists had etched it there. “You’ve been able to translate all this?”

“Enough. I had to show you this first, but the whole story is back in my tent, on my laptop. I’m sorry for what happened to you today, but I think once you see it, you’ll agree with me.” He smiled like a man who’d been shown the secrets of the universe. “It was worth it.”

13

“How long have you lived here… Gavin, was it?”

“Yes, Mr. Weston. Gavin Patel. And I have lived here since the beginning,” the security guard replied, smiling broadly beneath a well-oiled hairdo at Chase as if this was something to brag about. “Over twenty years. I was hired by Lakshmi Nadar himself when he financed the first expeditions to this world. Watch your feet there… snake.”

Chase glanced down and saw the thing slithering across the trail. It was five feet long and about six inches around, spines growing out of its sides and a purpose to its movements, and he nearly ripped his 9mm out of its holster. But the thing was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

“The big ones aren’t venomous,” Gavin assured him, then shrugged. “Mostly.” He motioned upward. “Watch the overhanging limbs, though. Some drop right out of the trees onto you.”

Chase bit back a curse and wished the man hadn’t told him that. But they kept walking around the perimeter of the camp. It was surrounded by barbwire fencing, which Gavin had assured him had been installed by his workers, though paid for by Berkeley University, and while it wasn’t much at keeping out snakes, it did manage to keep the camp free of the larger predators.

“Mr. Nadar was recruiting people of Indian origin from all over the world, you see, telling us how we could make a new home for ourselves on another world, a place we could call our own after what had happened during the war. I had just graduated the police academy for LA County and was set to become a sheriff’s deputy, but this sounded so much more rewarding! I went to one of Mr. Nadar’s local meetings and talked to him, and he told me if I came with him, I could be the chief of police of a whole city!”

“I thought all of Nadar’s people got purged when the cartels took over.”

“Most did.” Gavin shook his head. “It was sad, Mr. Weston…”

“Chase. Or Sgt. Weston, if you have to, but not mister.”

“All right, Chase. It was sad, though. Things went very well at first. People were content here. We had very little crime, and I had very little to do. Which was just as well, since we had none of these.” He patted the handgun holstered at his hip. “Mr. Nadar did not believe in guns, you see. He wouldn’t allow them, not even for the police. He told me that he thought if we could start over, somewhere new, that we could outgrow the need for guns.”

“That didn’t work out so well,” Chase guessed.

“Mr. Nadar forgot that he and Dr. Soong-Tierney had sold the drive to everyone. And everyone included many bad people with guns. I was out in the jungle when the first of them came, from Mexico… well, from what was once Mexico. I show my age. The Sinaloa Cartel, they used to be. They don’t even call themselves that, now.” He laughed, and there was much bitterness in the sound for a man who seemed so constitutionally cheerful. “I suppose even criminals wish a new start when their old home is a radioactive ruin. But I digress. Where was I?”

“In the jungle,” Chase reminded him.

“Yes, I was in the jungle, not the city. One of the tigers…”

“Tigers?” Chase repeated, frowning.

“Ah well, it is like the snakes. They are not tigers, but they are a large, vaguely feline land predator that evolved to the jungle. There are many species, but we call them leopards and tigers, no matter what the zoologists might label them.” Gavin waved it away…or perhaps he was waving at the mosquitos. “One of the tigers had killed a farmer and, since we had no guns, I was sent in with a sonic fence to set up around the farm to keep the beasts out. By the time I returned, the ships were landing. Mr. Nadar went out to meet them, determined to welcome them as friends because that was the sort of world he hoped to build.” He walked silently for several steps, eyes staring into the past. “I saw them shoot him down. Him and the delegation of the city elders he brought with him. My deputies abandoned me, and I had no weapons, so I stripped out of my uniform and went back to my house and hid.”

“At least you made it.” Chase had heard worse stories… had seen them with his own eyes.

“It could have been much worse,” Gavin admitted. “Javier Martin, the leader of the cartel, didn’t want a bloodbath. He killed Mr. Nadar as an object lesson, but he kept his people from killing and raping and whatever else may have come naturally to them. Martin just wanted to be in control, to turn this place into his business. Oh, he stole. He and his people took what they wanted, took people’s homes and their businesses and forced them to hand over food. But it settled down quickly.” He spread his hands. “We, the colonists, stay on our farms and our shops and do pretty much what we did before… but we pay the tax to keep the peace, mostly in food but some in services, car repair, machine repair, construction, that sort of thing.”

“Doesn’t sound like the cartels are trying too hard to assimilate to the local culture.” Chase had meant the comment to be sarcastic, but Gavin replied as if he thought the soldier was making some academic statement.

“Not so far as worshipping our gods or respecting our traditions, no. Though there has been much intermarriage and perhaps someday, the differences will be blurred out. But no, there is very much a caste system here.” He snorted a laugh. “Ironic, given that was exactly the sort of thing we were trying to leave behind.”

The perimeter fence wasn’t going to prove much of a barrier to any of the cartel goons who felt like strolling in and checking out what the gringos were up to, that much Chase had already decided. But the jungle was pretty dense on the other side of the narrow trail along the fence line, and someone would have to be mighty curious to hack through it all the way to the camp. Which meant their biggest threat on a place like this, with few aircars or spaceships, was right up the main entrance road. That was doable. There were a few vehicles, a couple of old deuce-and-a-half Army surplus flatbeds and a couple more pickups. They could block off the road if they needed to, and maybe Gavin could scrounge up a few more people and a few more guns…

“Why didn’t you leave?” Chase asked him, which was entirely not the question he’d meant to go with. The two men stopped in their leisurely stroll and faced each other. “I mean, once you could do it, once things had settled down and ships started coming here again.”

“It takes money to travel,” Gavin said. “And while I have not starved…” He chuckled, patting his gut. “There is a difference between the money to buy food and clothing and the money to book passage on a ship.” His eyebrows went up. “Particularly the sort of ships which make berth here, no aspersion on your friends who transported you. This is a risky port and risk has to bring reward.”

“Once the University began the dig, though,” Chase pointed out, “I’m sure you could work something out with them.”

“Yes.” Gavin’s eyes clouded with memory. “Back to California. And how different a place that must be now than when I left. Do you think I could fit in there after making my life here, Chase? I have a child now. He’s a teenager, and he lives with my ex-wife, but I would be sad if I could never see him again.”

“Family always complicates things,” Chase admitted.

“And do you have no complications? No wife or children back on Earth waiting for you?”

“I got married young, right out of basic training,” Chase told him, surprised at his own candor. He never mentioned Jenny to anyone, even Pri. “No kids, thank God, because she filed for divorce while I was deployed to Venezuela. I came back and she’d cleaned out our apartment right down to the toilet-paper spindles in the bathroom. And our bank account. A whopping $17,562.98.” He chuckled. “Best money I ever spent.”

“And you were married to the Army after that?” Gavin surmised. “Career soldier?”

“For a while. But you can only fight other people’s wars so long, you know?”

“I have to confess, I know nothing about war. The only war we ever fought, we lost without firing a shot.” He patted his weapon again. “That is why I will never be without a gun again. Some of Martin’s people do not like seeing us go armed, but as long as I stay out here and away from their part of the city, they do nothing.”

“Well, you know this place better than me.” Which was a polite way of saying that Chase thought the man was indulging in some serious wishful thinking.

“Oh, look, we are back at camp already.” Gavin acted surprised, as if he didn’t know how far they’d walked.

The jungle had grown thicker near the end, vines and brush squeezing out the trail, but it abruptly ended where the locals had burned it clear. They came out on the other side of the entrance road, walking through the parking lot where they’d left the shot-up Frankendodge next to the other vehicles. Stephenson’s tent was the closest to the parking area, pitched under a large screened-in pavilion, a sort of headquarters tent to give the whole thing the sort of military nomenclature Chase was used to.

Tables and chairs were clustered under the pavilion beside a fat metal pot belching a pale cloud of smoke to keep away insects, and sitting at one of the tables, gathered around a glowing laptop screen, were Dr. Stephenson, Victor, and Angel. The three were deep in a conversation and his first instinct was to steer clear of them, since archaeological small talk didn’t seem too interesting. But something about the fervent glow in Angel Cortez’s eyes drew him in, whether because of the keen interest, the almost religious excitement he saw in them, or… maybe just because Angel had beautiful eyes.

“I’ll catch up with you later, Gavin,” he promised, waving the man off and hoping Gavin had the good sense to take the hint.

Cortez was so absorbed with the images on the screen that she didn’t even look up as Chase brushed the curtain entrance aside. Stephenson nodded to him absently, polite to a fault, even when he wasn’t paying attention.

“This is nuts,” Victor said, shaking his head. “This can’t be right.” He looked up at Stephenson. “Doc, are you sure this translation isn’t screwed up? I mean, yeah, there’s a lot to go on in that… library or whatever it is, but it’s still just one sample. What if there’s some kind of mistake with the program?”

“It’s a lot to accept, Dan,” Angel agreed, her tone subdued, daunted.

“It’s possible there’s some mistake,” Stephenson admitted, “but this is the only translation that fits the diagrams on the library wall. And it makes sense. If it had come out as gibberish…’

Convinced that no one was going to offer to explain what the hell was happening, Chase risked Angel Cortez’s wrath and pulled out a chair at the table, then sat down with a squeaking protest from the worn, plastic seat.

“I’m just the hired help,” he said, leaning against the table and staring at the photos of symbols engraved into what looked like Christmas wrapping paper, “but I have a feeling you guys are talking about more than an archaeological discovery here.”

“I thought I made it clear our conversations were only to be about the execution of your duties, Mr. Weston.” Angel Cortez didn’t disappoint him, and Chase restrained a smile. The woman was intimidating, but so were his black hats at Ranger school.

“You be honest with me, Dr. Cortez,” he told her, not backing down an inch. “You tell me whatever this earth-shattering secret you discovered won’t have any effect on your security situation, and I’ll walk right out of this tent, go have myself a coffee and not bother you again.”

Victor stared at Angel with morbid fascination in his eyes, as if he expected her to explode and didn’t want to miss it. Angel ignored him and shared a look with Stephenson. The older man tilted his head toward her, cocking an eyebrow.

“It’s probably the greatest archaeological find of human history,” he said. “And I told you what could happen if the cartel finds out about it.”

Angel Cortez looked as if she’d rather gnaw off her own arm than admit to it, but she finally nodded.

“Go ahead, Dan. You tell him.”

“You have to understand,” Stephenson said, gesturing at the laptop and the symbols on the screen, “that this is far from a complete story. The Arborists as a species have a long history, just as we have, and we still know next to nothing of it. All we can say for sure about them is that they were generally humanoid in shape—bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical with stereo hearing and stereoscopic vision. And perhaps because they were so like us, they thought much like us, or at least so these records have led me to believe. They were concerned with the future, with posterity, and they wanted someone to learn from their story.”

“Dan.” Angel shot him a quelling look.

“Yes, sorry,” the older man said, shaking his head. “Too used to teaching, I suppose.”

“It’s all right, sir,” Chase encouraged him. “Always ready to learn something new.” In fact, he cared little about the Arborists except as a curiosity… they were aliens, after all. But he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to hear the whole story unless he allowed the old man to talk.

“From what we can tell,” Stephenson went on, “the Arborists spread across this section of our spiral arm around ten thousand years ago. Now we know how. What’s described in the library texts sounds very much like the Soong-Tierney drive.”

“That’s no big shock,” Chase reasoned. “I mean, we know the S-T drive can get you to the stars faster-than-light. It’d be a damned strange thing if they’d found another way to get there.”

“Yes, well, it goes beyond the totality of that line of reasoning, Mr. Weston.”

“Sergeant,” he corrected.

“Sergeant Weston, it’s not only that they discovered the Soong-Tierney drive. It’s that they didn’t. It just appeared one day, and supposedly one of their scientists had developed it, but whoever it was never stepped forward. It threw their planet’s society into complete chaos, led to wars and fragmentation.” He waved a hand around them. “Does any of this sound familiar?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning. “Dr. Soong-Tierney invented the drive, and Nadar helped her to market it.”

“I’m no physicist, Sgt. Weston, but even I know that the Soong-Tierney drive shouldn’t work. Its very existence goes against every established tenet of modern physics, from Newton right through Hawking. The fact that it does work should mean that our assumptions about the universe are wrong and nothing we’ve ever invented or discovered prior to this is possible. And somehow it all works. Everything we made before and the drive, too. And every physicist I’ve ever met is ready to commit suicide… except of course they’re also giddy because those sorts of people love it when everything is turned on its head.”

“Dan,” Angel ground out.

“Right. The point is, there is no way in hell that Mara Soong-Tierney came up with this. No one in a thousand years could have come up with this based on our current knowledge of the universe. And I also happen to know that she has steadfastly refused to explain how she discovered it and recused herself from public life on her orbital city. Not only that, but she has exactly zero other scientific breakthroughs, papers published, zip. My point is, the S-T drive appeared for the Arborists just as suddenly as it did for us. And it had nearly the same effect on them that it did on us. Except worse.”

Stephenson wiped sweat off his upper lip with trembling fingers.

“They had one more war than we’ve had… yet. The one that laid waste to their home planet. And just like us, they hadn’t yet developed a large enough commercial base to allow their colonies to survive on their own. They were left here, with just what they had, a few farms, nowhere to go, and the war coming this way. Everyone else left, running for somewhere they didn’t know, just trying to get to safety that didn’t exist. But these stayed behind because they’d found something special.” His lip curled in an ironic grin. “You see, they were archaeologists. And they had a dig here, beneath the ruins we found. A dig from an earlier civilization. Something important enough for them to stay here and die instead of letting it go.”

The hair was standing up on the back of Chase’s arms in defiance of the stifling humidity in the air.

“What?” he rasped. “What was it?”

“Well, that’s why you’re here,” Stephenson said, gesturing at the three of them. “We’re going to find it.” He grinned. “And it’s going to change everything.”

14

“Do you believe this?” Victor Lee whispered, the light from his headlamp playing over the skeleton. “I mean, do you freaking believe this?”

“Yes, Victor,” Angel Cortez murmured, not looking away from her task of clearing the remains of dirt. She dabbed at the ribcage like a Renaissance painter, her brush twirling, her tongue between her teeth as she tried to remove a persistent chunk of rock from what looked like an ear canal. “I believe that we are digging up an alien skeleton from an alien excavation below our excavation of an alien excavation.”

The chamber was beyond what they’d come to refer to as the library, through a doorway of stone and down a long, rutted ramp that might have been the Arborist equivalent of a staircase. They’d brought the gear through from the library, and Angel was careful not to admit it in front of Victor, but she was very grateful that Stephenson had transported it through that damned tunnel before they’d arrived. She wasn’t afraid of enclosed spaces, but the thought of trying to haul spectrometers, radiocarbon analyzers, and half a dozen other pieces of equipment through the narrow space behind or ahead of them would have made her curl into a ball and die.

“You know,” Dan Stephenson said quietly, crouched behind the two of them and beside the tripod-mounted video camera, both observing their work unblinking, “there was a time when we would have had paleontologists, paleobotanists, anthropologists, linguists, and a dozen other specialists out here on a dig like this. Back on Earth. Maybe if this was on one of the Union-sanctioned colonies, we still would.”

“Union-sanctioned.” Angel clucked, the corner of her mouth turning upward with scorn. “Let’s be intellectually honest, Dan. The Union is the United States government. Maybe twenty years ago, Europe would have mattered, back when everyone with a nuclear reactor could build a starship and colonize their own planets, but since the war, well… the Union is the United States and the Alliance is the Chinese. With Russian muscle.”

“My dear,” Stephenson said, a hint of admonition in his tone, “I am sure my friends in the British and Australian governments would disagree with you about your estimation of their political pull in the Union government. But be that as it may, I dearly wish we were on a Union colony, because as talented and educated as you are, Angel, none of us are qualified to be handling this on our own.”

“Well, we have my Master’s degree in xenopaleontology, such as it is,” Angel allowed. “And a shitload of computer analysis software. And what I can tell you about this skeleton is… it’s damned old.”

Stephenson chuckled, but Victor just nodded. It seemed like he wouldn’t have even blinked if his body hadn’t absolutely required it. And she could understand that. No one had found Arborist remains before, and she still wasn’t sure they had. The Arborists were humanoid, that much was clear from all the evidence. This skeleton… wasn’t.

“It’s bipedal,” Stephenson said, as if he was reading her thoughts. “I think.”

“Yeah, but look at the hips, Dan,” she told him. “And the knees. If you want to call this thing humanoid just because it walks upright, then I guess an ostrich is humanoid.” She pointed with her brush at the digitigrade knees. “And I’ll tell you what, this thing had a lot more in common with an ostrich than it does us. Not that it much resembles any species I’ve ever seen. The hips and knees might be vaguely birdlike, or even… I don’t know, theropods maybe.” She snorted, realizing she was being recorded and not wanting to sound like a crackpot. “And no, for the record, I’m not saying they’re ancient alien dinosaurs. If you look at the ribcage”—she trailed a finger over the elaborate hoop structure. It reminded her of the interior of some European cathedral—“you can see it’s like nothing that’s ever lived on Earth. The organs aren’t preserved, but I’d say that they hung from the bones somehow… I can see wear marks from where something was attached. The shoulders could be described as somewhat anthropoid, though not quite hominid. There’s a range of motion that’s as complete as a human’s, but I think it could have even been stronger through the whole range.” She shook her head. “That’s really odd. On Earth, it’s pretty much an evolutionary trade-off, either range of motion or strength. I wonder what sort of conditions led to this arrangement?”

“Maybe it’s not an evolutionary adaptation,” Victor suggested. “Maybe it’s engineered.”

Angel was about to snap at him but stopped herself. It wasn’t an unreasonable speculation.

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “We don’t have enough to go on yet.”

Angel glanced over at Stephenson. She would have expected him to weigh in on the possibility, since he had an opinion on just about everything, and she even valued most of them. But he was staring intently at the display from one of the many sensors set up around the skeleton, frowning like he’d seen a ghost.

“What is it, Dan?” she asked him. “You picking up something from the skeleton?”

“Not from the skeleton,” he corrected, turning the screen around on its mountings and showing it to her. “Below it.”

The view was from the thermal camera, just one of the instruments and usually the least useful, given that what they were digging up was millennia dead. But the screen clearly showed the yellow-red glow beneath the skeleton… though not that far beneath.

“The hell?” Victor blurted, gaze flickering from the screen to the broad, shallow pit with the skeleton. “Is there another chamber under this thing?”

“It’s warm but not hot,” Angel said, mostly to herself, as transfixed by the thermal image as Stephenson. “Not biological, I don’t think, but what else could it be?”

Victor scrabbled around in the dirt on either side of the skeleton, his cheek against the packed dirt, as if he could see through the remains to what lay beneath.

“Can we dig around it?” he asked, pushing to his feet and grabbing a shovel from where it leaned against the rock wall. “We could be really careful.”

“You sound like my best friend’s five-year-old, Victor,” she told him. “Give me that shovel.” She spun the screen back around to Stephenson. “Guide me, Dan. I don’t need to be the moron who destroyed the first alien skeleton ever discovered in order to uncover the Arborist equivalent of a space heater.”

She took a moment, judging how far from the skeleton she should start in order to keep it supported by the surrounding pack dirt. She settled on a point four feet from the right shoulder, and even that far away, she didn’t plunge the shovel in like she was digging a ditch. Instead, she wedged the point a few inches into the soil and pried loose a small scoop, then did it again, until sweat was pouring down her face and she had to stop to wipe it away.

Victor handed her a water bottle, and Angel squirted about half of it into her face before downing the rest.

“You sure you don’t want me to take over?” he asked.

“No. As much as I don’t want to be the most infamous moron in the history of archaeology for screwing up the remains, I want even less to be the infamous moron who screwed up the biggest find in history because I let a graduate assistant do my dirty work for me.”

Victor looked offended, but she handed him the empty bottle and went back to work.

“I could help,” Stephenson offered. “I mean, I believe I have at least enough tenure to take the blame myself if I mess this up rather than shifting it onto you.”

“Maybe in a few more minutes,” she lied. She had no intention of letting anyone else touch that shovel. “Just keep the video going.”

It took another two hours before she’d uncovered the edge of the thing, though she couldn’t have guessed how long it had been without the occasional glance at the time displayed in the corner of the display screen for the spectrometer. Not a single thread of daylight penetrated into the chamber, and the only reason it wasn’t unbearably hot was that it was deep enough underground for the temperature to average a few degrees cooler than the outside.

Angel had been in a cave in Spain on a dig once in the middle of summer, and she’d wound up having to go back into town after her first few days to buy a jacket because it was far down enough that it was in the fifties round the clock, every day of the year. The pit of early human bones had seemed thrilling to young Evangeline Cortez, but now, it was a joke, a child’s toy chest. This was universe-changing. A non-human alien skeleton and God knew what else was down here.

“That skeleton is going to set the world on fire once we get it back to the university,” Stephenson said, the smile on his face spreading to his voice. “I mean, ideally we’d bring a whole team out here to study it in situ, but…” He shrugged. “Berkeley might have sprung for a single bodyguard for your trip out here, but to keep an entire expedition safe, they’d have to hire an army.”

“We’ll just have to make sure we document everything,” Angel agreed, prying loose another clod of soil. “Take samples, label them, bring it all with us when we leave.” She eyed him. “You should come, too. I don’t like that you have to rely on some overweight, middle-aged former cop as your only security. Not after what happened to us on the way from the spaceport.”

“Angel,” Stephenson laughed, “if I go, who’s going to keep the cartel out of here? Who’s going to keep the locals from using the blocks from the Arborist buildings to repair their fences? This whole dig goes right into the toilet if I leave.”

“And what happens if you stay? You think the cartel thugs are going to be satisfied with your payoff? I’d rather have this dig in the toilet than you buried in one of these holes.”

“Hey, Dr. Cortez,” Victor interrupted, shouldering into her and pointing at the floor. “What’s that? That looks like a corner of something, right?”

Angel was too busy looking at the hole to yell at him for running into her. He was right, it was a corner, squared off in a way too precise to be natural. She worked at the edges of it and followed it up the length of the skeleton, expecting it to turn back toward it… but it turned the other direction. She grinned and dug the shovel in harder, digging away from the skeleton now that she was sure she wouldn’t destroy it.

“It’s on top of something,” Victor said. “I thought it was like a platform or a table, but it’s a cover.”

“I believe you’re right,” Angel told him. She smiled thinly. “And I believe I’m about to do something that would get me kicked out of the Berkeley Archaeology Department.”

She dug the blade of the shovel under the corner of the slab, the scraping of metal against stone setting her teeth on edge. Stone, about three inches wide, three feet on a side. It was going to be heavy as hell. She gritted her teeth and pried downward, using the shaft of the thing as a lever, and the piled dirt as a fulcrum. And nothing. Too damned heavy. She shot a look at Victor.

“A hand, please?”

He rushed in and added his weight to hers, both of them yanking downward, his sweat feeling disgusting and slimy against her arm. The slab budged but started to sway back down, and only the strain of trying to lift kept her from laughing out loud at the desperate expression distorting Victor’s face.

Then Stephenson was there, squeezing between them, pulling on the shovel. She was sure the shaft would snap, that it was some locally made piece of junk thrown together in someone’s backyard, but it held and the slab moved. Slowly, painfully, with a grumble that suggested some ancient, sleeping monster more than a recalcitrant stone block, the slab moved.

“Left,” Angel grunted. “I mean, push the block to the left,” she amended when Victor tried to move the shovel to the left, which would have shifted the slab to the right.

They took it a foot off to the side of the hole before the fulcrum proved to be too far off, and the slab collapsed with a thunderous crash and a cloud of ancient dust that spread a diffuse glow from the lanterns.

“Shit!” Victor yelped, stumbling away from the hole, coughing at the dust cloud. “Oh man, did we break it?”

She almost thought he was right. The slab had cracked and crumbled into tiny chunks at the sides and absolute, chilling fear froze Angel’s insides, the fear she’d done something monumentally stupid. She grabbed the shovel away from Stephenson, who still had a hand on it, and was about to try to clear away the broken bits of slab when she noticed that the dust had settled, but the diffuse glow was still present. It wasn’t coming from the lanterns.

It was coming from the hole.

Angel knelt closer and peered into the gap, then gasped at what she saw.

“What is it, Angel?” Stephenson asked, leaning forward as if he wanted to approach but was afraid to take the step.

“It’s… beautiful.”

* * *

One jungle, Chase decided, was pretty much like another. He’d seen too many of them, from Venezuela to Ecuador to the Philippines to the colonies and they were all creepers and roots and way too many insects. Vishnu was no different. A harsh place, too hot and too wet and with too many people ready to kill him.

“You ever get tigers in the dig area, Gavin?” he asked, leaning out the window of the old Land Rover. They had, at least, driven out on this patrol instead of walking the perimeter the way they had the first two times. They’d parked on the entrance road a half a mile down and sat there while Gavin ate his lunch. He had offered to share it with Chase, but it was already hot enough for him without shoveling down the curry concoction Gavin had brought to work in a battered, plastic container.

“Sometimes, thankfully,” the security officer told him around a mouthful of lunch, nodding cheerfully.

“Thankfully?” Chase repeated, eyeing the man in disbelief.

“Well, they usually come around at night. Just like the sort we had on Earth, you see. And that is why we don’t have to send out night patrols. It would cost so much extra, and you can’t trust these farmers and artisans and workers to stay awake all night long. Can you imagine trying to work in the fields or in the shop all day and then come here and be alert at night? Not that I would trust any of them to carry guns without supervision either.” He waved the spoon demonstratively. “But thanks to the tigers, we don’t have to. None of the cartel people would dare to come out here at night and risk getting eaten.”

“Swell.” Chase’s hand drifted toward the butt of his gun, and he watched the trees with renewed interest.

“The leopards are worse, you understand. Just like the ones back home, they drop down on you from the trees, and you never know what’s happening until they rip out your throat.”

“What about elephants? You have those here, too?” Chase liked elephants. They didn’t take shit from anyone, and they never forgot a wrong done to them.

“Sort of.” Gavin made a face, then washed it away with a sip of coffee from his thermos. “They do not look as much like elephants as the tigers look like tigers. They are large and they occupy the same… ecological niche, I believe the phrase is. But they lack the trunk, the tusks, and the charm. They’re more like giant rhinos. I do not like them.”

“That’s a shame.” He eyed the man sidelong. “You refer to India as home, still. But you were in the US.”

“It is an old habit, perhaps exacerbated by the fact that Los Angeles is still there, while much of India is not. Though there are still elephants and tigers in the jungle.” He seemed wistful. “I wouldn’t mind taking my son there someday, but I don’t know if either of us will ever leave this place.”

That was sufficiently depressing that Chase was ready to let the conversation die… until he heard the whoosh. There was only one thing that made that sound. He opened the door and stood on the running board, staring into the azure, cloudless sky.

“Something’s coming.” A shadow passed overhead, large and black and malevolent. Chase swore and jumped back into the car, then motioned at Gavin to start the car. “Hurry!” he urged. “Get us to the dig!”

15

“It’s an alien egg,” Victor Lee whispered, staring down into the pit at the thing. “One of those funky-looking theropod things is going to hatch from it.”

Angel Cortez would have mocked him for paranoia… but she couldn’t honestly say he was wrong. The thing, now cleared of the stone slab and the bits of rock and dirt below it, certainly looked like an egg. Well, sort of. An elongated, slightly flattened egg a little over two feet long and nearly as wide. But she’d never seen an egg glowing gold, and inscribed with a brain-twisting pattern of intertwined whorls. Or, she thought it was inscribed. There didn’t seem to be any actual grooves in the material, more like the patterns were worked into the very metal like grain in a piece of wood. Yet this didn’t seem to be as close to the surface as a grain. She would have been willing to swear that the whorls were somehow deep inside the thing, inches down at least.

“This thing has been here for tens of thousands of years, Victor,” she said, prying her eyes away from it to recheck the numbers on the scanner. “And that’s assuming it wasn’t moved from deeper by the Arborists. God only knows… it could be hundreds of thousands of years old.”

“The skeleton is, judging by the radiometric isotopes we’re detecting in it,” Stephenson chimed in from the pile of equipment lined up beside the pit. “Four hundred thousand years, minimum.” He fished a Geiger counter out of the clutter and switched it on, then passed the device over the egg.

“It’s gonna hatch, and a baby theropod thing is going to jump out and try to eat us,” Victor insisted. “I’ve seen this movie before.”

“It’s not radioactive,” Stephenson declared, running the detector over it again. He cocked an eyebrow at the display, then at Angel. “In fact, it’s reading less radiation than the background.”

“Then why’s it glowing?” Angel asked him. “Bioluminescence?”

“Don’t you have to have bio to have bioluminescence?” Stephenson motioned at the golden egg again. “This doesn’t look like anything biological, despite Mr. Lee’s insistence that it’s going to dispense a face-hugger.”

“It’s alien, Dan. And not even humanoid aliens. We don’t know how advanced the Theropods were.” She frowned. Now she was using the term, which bothered her. It was imprecise. The things were not theropods. They were like nothing that had ever lived on Earth. Which made them different than the life they’d found on the colonies, which was very similar to Earth life, right down to the presence of DNA in the cells. And hadn’t that set off the debate among the evolutionary biologists. “My point is, we don’t know what biology would look like to them. Or what it would look like to us.”

“Can we touch it?” Victor asked, hand hovering over the surface of the thing. “I can almost feel its warmth from here. I bet it is biological.”

“You think it’s a biological egg bent on eating us,” Angel said, staring at him askance, “and you want to touch it?”

He shrugged, pulling his hand away.

“Sorry, didn’t think about that.”

“We need to put this in something secure,” Stephenson said. “Preferably something vacuum sealed.”

“We brought a hard case,” Angel said, gesturing back toward the tunnel entrance. “It’s back in my tent. I don’t know if it’s going to be big enough, though. Maybe if we take out the interior padding.”

“We’ll rig something up. This has to go back with you, too.” Stephenson tapped the side of the camera on the tripod. “I’ve been recording everything, and the readings from the instruments are all synched to my cell phone.” A chuckle. “Which is the only good it’s done since I’ve been here. But there’s enough to prove the provenance of this thing and the skeleton. And maybe, if you can get the Union Government involved, or even the Colonial Authority, we can get a real expedition out here for an honest-to-God scientific examination of the ruins instead of this grave-robbing bullshit we’re reduced to.”

“Yeah, that’s an idea,” Angel acknowledged. She didn’t like it any more than he did and was resistant to yanking artifacts out of the middle of a dig. It felt wrong. “Though maybe…” She made an expansive gesture. “It’s unlikely anyone would find this. Even if the cartels came in here trying to cause trouble, they’d likely never get this deep. You could steer them away, lead them to Arborist artifacts instead, make them think those are rarer and more valuable than they really are. I just really hate to disturb this find.”

“You’re in charge, Dr. Cortez,” Stephenson told her, and she winced at his use of her title. “But if you’re asking my recommendation as someone familiar with the local situation, I’d say you should take it with you.”

“Dr. Cortez!”

Angel stood and looked around. The call had come from somewhere far off, through the tunnel. The echo made the voice unrecognizable, and she was barely able to make out that it was her name being yelled.

“Dr. Cortez, are you down here?”

Louder this time, closer, and she recognized it.

“Mr. Weston?” she called back, stepping over to the tunnel. “We’re in here. What do you want?”

She searched quickly for something to cover the remains with, feeling an urgency to hide them from the bodyguard.

“There,” she snapped at Victor, motioning toward a duffle bag behind him. It had probably been used to bring in some of the equipment Stephenson had been using on the skeleton and the egg. “Get that. Cover this stuff.”

“What?” Victor grunted, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“He doesn’t need to know about this,” she insisted. “Give me the damned duffle bag!”

Victor shook his head but grabbed the dull green bag and handed it to her, then helped her to spread it out over the egg. They’d barely had time to tuck the sides down over the edges of the pit when Chase Weston wriggled through the tunnel exit, face covered in sweat, gun in his hand.

“What is it?” Stephenson asked, apparently realizing something was seriously wrong just a moment before Angel, whose first instinct had been irritation at the soldier’s presence. “Is it the cartels?”

“It’s not the cartels,” Chase told him, getting his feet beneath him and taking a quick scan around the chamber before he stood, as if checking for threats. “Look, all of you need to get out of here right now. We have to get to the spaceport.”

“Mr. Weston,” Angel said, stepping nearly nose to nose with the man, hoping to distract him from what was going on in the chamber, “none of us are going anywhere until you explain what’s happening here.”

“What’s happening, Dr. Cortez,” Chase said, his voice strained, his tone clipped, “is that there’s a troopship landing on the road outside the perimeter fence, and while it didn’t have any markings, I can tell you that it’s not the cartels or the locals or the Goddamned Boy Scouts! The only people around here that have a troopship are governments and mercenaries, and I’m not fighting off either one with this popgun.” He motioned back at the tunnel. “We need to leave.”

“Where’s Gavin?” Stephenson asked, looking behind him as if he expected the portly man to squeeze through the tunnel.

“He’s up top, telling the workers to clear out. He’s going to try to wait for us in the Land Rover, but I couldn’t swear to how long he’ll give us if he thinks it’s getting too hot up there.”

Angel’s thoughts swirled, first going through the process of determining whether or not Chase could be lying, then whether or not she believed him even if he was telling the truth. This could all be something easily explained, a cargo shuttle heading to the spaceport that had gotten lost or had an emergency, perhaps. But whatever other failings Chase Weston had demonstrated, incompetence hadn’t been among them. If he said there was a troopship, it was far more likely there was a troopship.

He was also undoubtedly correct in his assessment that the cartels wouldn’t be flying around the jungle in one. There’d be no need for them to fly at all, not when they veritably owned the city. And if it was soldiers or mercenaries…

“They’re here for the dig,” she said softly, not wanting to admit it but unable to avoid the conclusion. Stephenson was already nodding.

“Some of the workers must have talked.” The older man’s jaw firmed up beneath the bushy, grey beard. “We can’t let them have it.”

“Dr. Cortez…” Chase said, impatience written across his face and his shifting stance, as if he was about to head back through the tunnel whether they came along or not.

“All right,” she assented, “but we have to take this with us.”

“What…” Chase started to ask when she whipped the duffle bag off of the egg, bathing the little chamber in its glow.

For all his urgency, Chase said nothing for a long moment, just staring at the thing, gun hanging forgotten by his side.

“Is that…?”

“Alien,” Stephenson finished the sentence for him. “And I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you how important it is that we keep this out of the wrong hands.”

“Is it safe to touch it?” Chase asked, surprising Angel with what was a very good question.

“If it kills me,” Angel told him, kneeling beside the egg and unzipping the duffle, “then the answer would be no.”

She slid it over the sides of the thing, using the nylon of the bag to roll it into the duffle. It was shockingly light. She’d expected it to weigh a hundred pounds, but it couldn’t have topped twenty. The glow disappeared as Angel zipped the bag shut, picking it up by the handle and holding it out to Victor.

“Carry it,” she told him. He looked at her askance, and she thought he might balk at the idea, but he took the strap from her and slung it over his shoulder. Angel looked over to Stephenson to remind him to bring the camera memory card, but saw that he was already pulling it out and sticking it into the pocket of his utility vest.

She was surprised at how calm she felt as she nodded at Chase, then at the tunnel.

“After you, Mr. Weston.”

* * *

“Pri, it’s Chase. Do you copy?”

Nothing. He swore softly, crouching in the entrance to the Arborist dig, trying to scan the jungle around them, past the burned-out clearing. He’d started calling the Tamar the second they’d left the tunnel, and when he couldn’t reach her, he’d figured it was the stone buildings around them. But now they were outside and, unlike the phones the civilians were using, his was military-issue, a microwave transceiver that should have at least reached the spaceport from here.

Static answered him.

“They’re jamming us,” he announced to the others, knowing it would alarm them even more but needing them to understand the situation. “Pri can take down their ship, but not if she doesn’t know we’re in trouble.”

“We have to get to Gavin,” Stephenson said. The older man was worried, scared, that much was obvious. But he wasn’t panicking, which Chase considered a bonus. “Which way is the car?”

“Stay behind me,” Chase warned them, holding his handgun at high ready. “If the shooting starts, hit the dirt first, then crawl to cover.”

There was no gunfire yet. That had to be a positive. He listened for it over the crunch of the burned soil under his boots, over Victor’s heavy breathing and Stephenson’s feet dragging, aware the weapons could be suppressed. A suppressed firearm wasn’t totally silent, not like the movies, but it would be harder to hear from a distance.

Silence. Not even the calls of the jungle birds and monkeys, or whatever they really were. He was starting to agree with Gavin that all the fancy names were for the zoologists. If they looked like monkeys and acted like monkeys and occupied the same ecological niche as monkeys, then they were monkeys, even if the evolutionary biologists who’d stopped by for a brief survey a few years back had said the things had more in common with lemurs.

Except there were no monkeys. The animals knew something was going down, and they were holding their breath waiting for it, the same as Chase.

“Which way is the car?” Stephenson asked breathlessly, nearly running into Chase’s back.

“By the entrance.” Chase motioned him back. “Let’s keep our interval, okay?” At the archaeologist’s blank look, he elaborated. “Back off a little.”

At least Angel wasn’t crowding him, though that might have been because she was riding herd on Victor, keeping a hand on the duffle bag hanging off his back as if it were the most valuable thing in the universe.

God knows. Maybe it is.

“Did you see them, Weston?” Angel asked, hissing the words in an amateur’s attempt at a whisper. “Whoever’s on that ship? Did you see them on the ground? Maybe they haven’t gotten off the ship yet.”

He didn’t respond, just put a finger over his lips. Weren’t they all making enough noise without holding a damned conversation? They were almost out of the burn area, but there was a wall of trees and brush between it and the main camp, bathing the area in deep shadow despite the early afternoon glare piercing the jungle canopy over the ruins. Chase couldn’t see anything through it, no movement, no reflection of sunlight off gear or vehicles, and he hated plunging through the trees without a clear idea of what he was running into. But he’d hate standing around and letting the enemy outflank them even more.

Chase ducked beneath a hanging vine, resisting an urge to slap at the insects buzzing around his head. He hadn’t felt a bite yet, though he didn’t know if that was thanks to the repellent woven into the material of his clothes or because this particular strain of alien bugs didn’t go for human blood.

If they didn’t, they’d be the first.

High steps took him over tanglefoot vines and jutting roots at the cost of keeping his eyes cast downward, and just when he thought his vision had adjusted to the shadows of the tree canopy, he’d hit a gap where a dazzling beam of afternoon light would pierce through and flood his view with rainbow spots. The multicolored flashes faded with the overhanging canopy, but as they vanished, they revealed what he hadn’t been able to see… figures stalking through the shadows, their black and grey camouflage seeming to shift with the surroundings, even their faces covered with black balaclavas.

That’s gotta be damned uncomfortable.

If the sweat and humidity bothered the Chinese special forces, they certainly didn’t let it show. There was nothing else they could be, not with the body armor, the camo pattern, the QBZ-103 5.8mm bullpups. PMCs didn’t use Chinese gear, since most of them were from Union territories, and even the Russian mercs who still operated supposedly independently from the Alliance military used their own pre-war camo and AK-74s.

They were circling the perimeter just inside the fence line, flitting in and out of the picket of banyan tree roots just this side of the barbwire.

Looking for us.

Chase went to a knee, waving behind him for the others to do the same and hoping they understood what he was trying to tell them. He didn’t see any of the workers. The tents were on the other side of the camp, but that was less than a kilometer away, not so far that he wouldn’t have seen them if they were still hanging around. Maybe Gavin had actually done his job and cleared them out. If they scattered, heading back to the city on foot, they should be okay. It would take them hours, but there wouldn’t be enough Alliance commandos in that troopship to hunt them down. Hopefully, Gavin had gone with them.

Of course, if he had, that meant no one would be waiting for them at the Land Rover.

As if some ill-tempered god were reading his mind, an alcohol-fueled engine grumbled to life across the campsite and half a dozen Alliance special forces operators turned as one at the noise. They reminded Chase of footage he’d seen in school of prairie dogs or meerkats popping out of their holes to sound an alarm at the presence of a circling hawk, except those rodents didn’t usually have automatic weapons.

Chase held his breath and watched the Chinese soldiers move out of the trees into the open. There were more of them than he’d thought… their camo was well-designed, and they were very conscious of their surroundings, more disciplined than even his Rangers had been. He’d spotted six at first, but ten of them emerged from the trees, two carrying QJS161 light machine guns, and another with a grenade launcher.

And here I am with my damned 9mm and two whole spare magazines.

Chase didn’t spot the Land Rover until it started moving, kicking up a cloud of dust as it rumbled across the blackened dirt from the burn that had created the clearing. It was going slow but at a steady pace, like the driver wasn’t aware that there were Chinese troops surrounding the place, watching his every move and thought he was just going to go home and leave all the trouble behind him.

The Chinese commandos were disciplined as always, Chase noted. A regular infantry squad faced with a vehicle stop would likely have had a Mad Minute, everyone in the squad emptying their magazines into the car, but not these guys. Chase couldn’t hear the command, but he knew it had been given, because one of the machine-gunners opened up on the Land Rover. Just one, coughing hoarsely through its suppressor. Controlled bursts of seven to nine rounds, just the way US Army Rangers were taught, and even though the car was still a few hundred meters away, Chase could still see the bullets splintering the windshield and hear them pinging off the hood.

The car kept going, heading for the exit road, and if the driver was still alive, he had to be ducked under the dashboard, steering by guess and by God. The machine gunner had to step aside, still firing short bursts, through the passenger’s-side door now, a cowbell chorus of metal on metal, and yet the car kept moving. More gunfire, as the special operators lost their patience and went for the tires and the engine. Two of the tires went flat, and the car skewed to one side but kept going. Steam poured out of the burst radiator, and still the car kept going.

Finally, the commandos retreated from the vehicle, and Chase tensed, knowing what was coming next. Or, he thought he knew. He’d expected a rifle grenade, but that wasn’t what happened. The whoosh-hum of an S-T drive alerted him that the Chinese had other ideas. God cleared his throat, and when He did, the Land Rover exploded.

The hood was shredded, the engine on fire, the old SUV rolling a few last, labored yards on flattened, burning tires before the thing came to a permanent halt. Chase recognized the signature of the 30mm cannon. It had been the main gun of Chinese attack helicopters once, long ago, when helicopters had been a thing.

For some reason, it saddened him that kids nowadays would never see a helicopter outside of old movies or TV shows, would never know how crucial they’d once been.

“Hsst!”

Chase almost shot the man sneaking up from his left before he realized it was Gavin.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed, keeping his voice down and lowering the 9mm from where it had been pointed at the security officer’s forehead. “I thought you were in the Land Rover!”

“That would have been an extraordinarily stupid place to be,” Gavin told him earnestly. “I jammed the accelerator down with a toolbox and tied the steering wheel to the gear shift to keep it going straight.” He waved, both at Chase and the others. “By the time they figure it out, we’ll be gone. Come on!”

“Come on where?” Angel asked, a little too loudly, behind him.

“The pickup truck,” Gavin told her. “If we circle around the back of the camp, we can get to it without them seeing us.”

“And then what?” Chase demanded, crouching beside the man as Gavin rose from hands and knees to a kneeling position. “They have their gunship covering the entrance.”

Gavin had seen better days. His clothes were torn and covered in dirt, and his hair and mustache were limp as wet rags, but he still had that ancient automatic, and there was still a glint of purpose in his eyes.

“An entrance,” he corrected. “Not the entrance. There’s a cut-through on a game trail we can just get through if we’re not too worried about scratching the paint.”

“Why didn’t you show me that before?” Chase asked, shaking his head.

“A man has to have some secrets, Sgt. Weston.” Gavin smiled briefly, but the expression ran away, and he waved again, more urgently. “Come on! Time is short!”

Chase had doubts, but he also had no way to contact his only support and no other plan to deal with the commando team. He helped Gavin to his feet and motioned for the others to follow.

“Draw your gun,” he told the security officer who was walking beside him, hugging the trees. The older man goggled at him like he had two heads, nearly stumbling when he looked away from their path.

“What? You think it would actually do any good against them?”

“No,” Chase admitted. “The second they see it, they’ll kill you.”

“Yes, and…?” Gavin spread his hands in a silent question.

“And dying,” Chase assured him, “is a lot better than what’ll happen if they catch you alive.”

16

The only reason Victor Lee wasn’t hyperventilating was that he lacked the energy to even breathe hard. The egg, or whatever it was, wasn’t nearly as heavy as he’d thought it would be, or so he’d thought when he first shouldered the pack. Now, though, it might have weighed a hundred pounds, and the strap seemed to be cutting into his arm with each shuffling step.

This was just too much. When he’d come on this trip, he’d imagined bugs, maybe a few scary animals, and of course, the local crooks to be bribed. That was universal, even on digs planetside. Even the goons who’d come after Chase on Gateway hadn’t come as a complete shock. He’d been mugged, seen other people mugged. It had been an adrenaline rush, and he’d been pretty shaky for a couple nights afterward, but it wasn’t anything he might not have seen in Frisco.

The attack on the road had been another matter. No one had ever tried to kill him before. They’d shot at him. And he’d shot back. He might have even killed one or two when their truck crashed. He didn’t know how he felt about that. He thought he should have felt guilty, but he didn’t, and the fact that he didn’t made him feel guilty. The novelty of that had kept him from feeling quite as freaked out as he probably would have, but this…

Those weren’t criminals, weren’t drug dealers, and weren’t even cartel hitmen. All those he understood, even though none of them had ever shot at him before. These were Chinese soldiers, Alliance troops. That was what Chase had said. They were here for the alien artifact he was carrying on his back, and he’d be better off dead than getting captured by them. That was easy for him to say. He was old, almost forty… he’d lived his life. Victor was just starting out, and he wasn’t ready to die yet, particularly not for a glowing alien egg.

He wanted to run, but they were running… sort of. Jogging. Fast-walking really, but it was hard to run carrying this damned thing. He wanted a gun, which was very odd since he’d fired one a grand total of twice, and the first time had been a .22 rifle at an indoor range, and he’d only done that to impress a girl, who wound up dumping him. But he’d felt like he had agency when he fired Chase’s 9mm, and right now, he dearly wanted some agency.

But this seemed to be working, or at least that was what he wanted to believe. He was afraid to look straight at the commandos, afraid they’d see him seeing them, but glimpses out of the corner of his eye told him they were still busy at the front gate, gathered around the ruined Land Rover, searching around like they thought the driver had somehow escaped the vehicle while it was being shot to pieces. It seemed ridiculous to him, but he wasn’t a soldier, and he was trying to think positive thoughts at them, encouraging them to keep up the search and find that miniature escape artist hiding in the bullet-riddled car.

Keep looking. All you guys, just hang out over there.

They put the tents between them and the Alliance troops, and he let out a breath, feeling just a bit of the tension go out of his shoulders. Maybe they had thermal heat vision and ultrasound or whatever all that high-tech military shit was, but he still just felt better hiding behind something. Chase and Angel must have felt the same way, because they picked up the pace, nearly leaving Dr. Stephenson and Gavin behind… and him, too, if Angel hadn’t been pushing him, one hand maintaining contact with the duffle.

She’d probably leave me here if she didn’t want that egg so bad.

Maybe he was just being cynical, but she’d been treating him like shit this whole trip. Didn’t she realize how scary all this was? Did she expect him to be like Chase? Not that she was being very friendly to Chase, either, which made even less sense, since they were counting on him to keep them alive.

There. There was the truck. It was tucked in behind the supply tent, a bigger, older, canvas thing Stephenson had bought military surplus. Victor had seen inside it once, when one of the workers had gone to get food for dinner, and he knew it was jammed full of plastic tubs, air-tight to keep out the moisture and the ever-present bugs. He didn’t know much about the sensors the Alliance used, but he thought maybe having the tent packed with supplies between them and the Chinese soldiers would be a good thing.

Chase stopped at the edge of the supply tent, motioning Stephenson up. Victor followed the older man, not sure what Chase was going to say but wanting to stay close to the only one of them he trusted to know what he was doing.

“Keys,” Chase hissed at the older archaeologist. “Where are the keys?”

“In the truck,” Stephenson told him, and Chase nodded curtly, as if it was what he’d expected to hear.

“When we start the engine, they’re going to hear it, so I want all of you in the truck. Quietly. No slamming doors. Gavin, you drive. I’ll ride in the bed.”

“The bed?” Victor repeated, staring at him. That sounded dangerous, and not just because it violated traffic laws.

“It’ll give me clearer fields of fire. Go, get in the truck, all of you.”

Victor didn’t want to leave the cover of the tent without him, but he also very badly wanted inside that truck. He ran, not waiting for Angel to push him this time. The truck was so close, just twenty yards away, and even the bullet holes in the tailgate looked inviting. He’d decided to get into the back, passenger’s side seat, figuring that was the safest choice.

Something grabbed at his foot, hard and unyielding. A root, he had time to think, just before he went down the ground slammed into his chest and groin, even harder because of the weight of the bag on his back. The air went out of him in a pained grunt, an explosion of sound he couldn’t control, and dull agony roared in his ears, drowning out his own yelp, drowning out whatever it was that Dr. Stephenson was yelling.

Was yelling really a good idea? And what was that noise? It sounded like shooting, but softer… and was that thumping sound bullets hitting metal? Something grabbed him from behind, and through the haze of pain and confusion, he realized it was Angel Cortez, trying to lift him off the ground. He tried to help, rolling to one side, which was how he happened to see the Alliance soldiers running toward them.

There were four of them that he could see, and they were different than the ones at the gate. They had to be. There hadn’t been enough time for those guys to make it this far, be so close. Fear clawed at his guts, spurring him to movement, and he guessed it did the same thing for Dr. Stephenson. But where Victor scrambled forward, lunging for the truck, Stephenson just ran, straight toward the trees, maybe hoping the commandos would be so worried about the truck, they’d forget about him… or, more likely, just not thinking at all.

That stuttering sound again, not quite as loud as a regular gunshot, and the tiny part of Victor’s rational mind still working saw the funny, angular, fat extensions at the end of the carbine barrels and deduced they were some kind of silencer. He followed the end of the barrel to their target in time to see Dr. Dan Stephenson jerk and stumble, blood fountaining out from a half a dozen bullet wounds in his chest.

Victor had only ever seen people shot in movies. He expected the older man to fly backward when the slugs hit him, but instead, he just stood there, staring down at himself stupidly as if trying to figure out why his shirt was suddenly wet. Another burst of gunfire, and this time, it took him in the face.

Someone was screaming, and Victor realized dimly that it was him.

* * *

Goddamned civilians.

It wasn’t fair, wasn’t exactly compassionate or sympathetic, but it was the first thought he had when Victor Lee belly-flopped on the ground. The kid had tripped on a root, which was excusable, and then he’d let out a yell, which was not. But it wouldn’t have mattered, because the damned Alliance special forces hadn’t been as stupid as Gavin had hoped.

Chase wasn’t sure where the four special forces troops had come from… possibly the other side of the supply tent, sent to scout out the perimeter of the camp and make sure no one was doing what they were trying to do. He was sure that they wouldn’t be running away from these guys. But Stephenson hadn’t gotten that memo.

Chase was bringing up his gun, forming a yell to try to distract the enemy from Stephenson, but it was too late. He didn’t watch the man die, but there was a flux to a fight, a matter of angles and distances, and there was no way the Chinese soldiers were going to miss. Chase didn’t recall aiming, wasn’t aware of pulling the trigger, but the FN 509 bucked in his hand twice, and one of the commandos stiffened, his head snapping back at the impact of the slugs.

Too late to save Stephenson and too late to save himself. There were three more of them, less than twenty yards between the farthest out of the Alliance troops and his position, and they were wearing body armor. Chase had run drills against multiple enemies with rifle and handgun, and they always worked when he was shooting at pop-up targets. But when his Rangers, or later his squadmates in Tamar PMC, had tried those same scenarios with paintball guns, numbers always won out. The whole scenario played out in his mind just the way it had in those force-on-force drills, an iron-clad prediction of what was about to happen.

Chase would get two of them before they shot him, maybe have a chance at a third if he could keep his head while he was bleeding out. But one would get by him. He had to hope the others could get the truck started and get away, because he was going down shooting.

The muzzle of the FN seemed to float across to the next target, taking an eternity, as if he was moving through mud. But the Alliance soldiers didn’t move any faster, the whole scene unfolding in slow motion. He knew what it was. He’d studied the mechanics of it. Tachypsychia. Adrenaline fooling his brain into thinking time was running slower and he had forever to think about what was going to happen next.

The truth of it was, his conscious mind was running a half-second behind reality, giving him a very detailed look of what was happening without the ability to change it. He’d already acted, in his case out of training, experience, instincts beaten into him through years of practice, and more years of actual gunfighting. Now his brain was allowing him the chance to rationalize what he’d already done.

And what he’d already done was shoot another of the Chinese soldiers in the head. This one took the round in the temple, and the man collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. People reacted differently to being shot. Even a CNS hit to the brain stem, a sure instant kill, wasn’t guaranteed to knock someone on their ass. He’d seen people stagger around for interminable seconds with their brains leaking out of their nose.

And that was all he was praying for, just a couple extra seconds of life, enough time to take down just one more of the two left alive.

I’m praying to ask God to keep me alive long enough to kill someone else. There’s gotta be some screwed-up theology in that, but I’m hoping the Big Guy understands.

And maybe He did. Or maybe it was Vishnu speaking through Gavin Patel’s ancient Browning Hi Power, the hail of 9mm slugs emptying the magazine in less than three seconds. He’d hit what he was aiming for, but he hadn’t been aiming for the right target. Center mass, that was what Gavin had been taught in the LAPD. Shoot at center mass until the threat is over. But 9mm slugs, particularly the cast lead rounds they’d make on a planet like this, did next to nothing against the Chinese body armor.

One of the Chinese went down to a knee, blood spraying from an arm wound, but the other gutted out the agony he had to be feeling from multiple impacts to his vest and swung his assault rifle toward the security officer. And suddenly, the scenario changed. Two extra seconds, that was the gift Gavin had given him, and Chase didn’t waste it. It was just enough time to swivel his upper body another few degrees to the right, the gun held out in both hands in a triangle stance, the red targeting reticle in the electronic sights floating helpfully between the man’s dark eyes.

Two shots. One more than he needed, but you didn’t want to be stingy. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.

Three dead commandos, three headshots. It would have been quite the story to tell the crew over a few beers, but the other Alliance special ops troops weren’t going to be so enthusiastic about his accomplishment.

“Get in!” he bellowed at the others, all thoughts of stealth vanished now.

He might as well have been talking to himself. Victor was howling like a lost soul, Angel was staring at Stephenson’s body, her face blank like she’d shut off completely, and Gavin was fumbling in his pocket for a spare magazine. He, at least, hadn’t panicked, which made him the best place to start.

“Gavin, get the truck started!”

This time, the security officer looked up from his gun, eyes coming into focus as he finally seemed to realize what was happening. Chase thought for a second he might have to get the truck going himself, but Gavin scrambled for the driver’s door and Chase turned his attention to the others.

“Dr. Cortez,” he said, grabbing the woman by the shoulder and turning her away from the grisly remains of her friend. “Angel, you have to listen to me!”

Something of the slack stupor left her face, replaced by a killing fury, and Chase was, for the first time in this whole mess, afraid. The Chinese wanted to kill him but, as far as he knew, there was nothing personal about it. In that moment, Angel Cortez looked as if she would gladly rip his throat out and drink his blood. But the moment passed and she shook her head as if trying to dispel the overwhelming anger.

“Get in the truck,” he told her, pointing at Gavin just as the older man yanked the door shut. “Get that damned artifact out of sight!”

That had to be what the Alliance was after. They sure didn’t know he was here, and there were Arborist ruins all throughout human-occupied space. He wasn’t sure how they’d known about this… thing, this whatever it was, but they did. The warning seemed to penetrate Angel’s fugue, and she nearly picked Victor up bodily and slung him by the duffle bag toward the truck.

Chase waited until the two of them were climbing in the passenger’s side before he grabbed the tailgate and pulled himself up onto the back bumper.

“Go!” he yelled at Gavin. “Drive, now!”

It was exactly at that moment when Chase realized he had screwed up, and his first clue was the knife plunging toward his chest. He hadn’t exactly forgotten the Alliance special ops trooper who Gavin had shot in the arm, but the man hadn’t gone for his gun and seemed to be incapacitated, so Chase had concentrated on getting the others moving rather than finishing him off. That had been a mistake.

The guy’s dominant arm was clearly disabled, hanging limp and covered in blood, but that wasn’t about to stop him from doing his job. Chase could respect that, but he respected the laser-honed edge of the matte black blade even more. He blocked it at the wrist with his right forearm, the bones cracking together hard enough that the blow knocked Chase’s pistol out of his hand and sent it spinning into the bed of the truck.

What he should have done then was turn his wrist and catch the knife hand to gain control of it, and he would have tried just that if Gavin hadn’t chosen that very second to hit the gas and nearly thrown Chase right off the back of the old Dodge. Chase still had a grip on the tailgate, though the truck surging forward threatened to rip his fingertips free and he had to lurch back, losing his balance and tumbling over the side of the gate into the bed.

The world spun around him in a kaleidoscope of black and green and blue, the truck, the trees, the sky, and then he hit on his shoulder and rolled back to his feet with reflexes beaten into him in one combatives class after another. His pistol was in the corner of the bed, and he lunged for it, but that Alliance soldier was one persistent bastard. When the truck had pulled away, the special ops trooper had thrown himself after it, hooking onto the tailgate with his good arm and still holding onto that knife.

Chase caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, still leaning into the corner of the truck when the other man pushed off the tailgate, the knife held over his head. Chase snapped a back kick into the soldier’s solar plexus, and air rushed out of the man in a rattling groan as he doubled over… and the knife came down with him. A twist away from the downward blade was instinctive, but it left Chase off-balance again and landing on his ass across the truck, with the Alliance trooper sprawled on his knees, the point of his knife digging into the scraped and rusted metal of the bed.

His balaclava had been torn away in the fight, demonstrating that despite the supposed inclusion and diversity in the Alliance armed forces, he was, indeed, Chinese and pissed off. And young. Younger than Chase, maybe as young as Victor. Mid-twenties at the oldest, with the fresh determination of a man who’d spent his whole life being assured he was doing the right thing and hadn’t yet lived enough of it to realize he was just doing what he was told.

The young Chinese soldier was getting his feet underneath him, using the point of a knife like an anchor dug into the rusted metal.

Bad for the blade. The thought was clinical, detached, as if he was watching all this unfold from above. Watching his right hand fishing around behind him, his fingers finally closing around the grip of his FN.

The Chinese soldier braced against the tailgate and pushed off, and the knife darted forward just as Chase pulled the trigger.

17

Chase Weston had seen more dead men than he cared to count, yet he still scrambled out of the way as the Chinese soldier collapsed forward.

The 9mm had left only a small blue, red, and black hole through the man’s forehead, but when he fell, blood spattered upward from a gap the size of a fist in the back of his skull. Chase retreated from an unending pool of deep red as it advanced inexorably, only to be swallowed by a hole rusted through the truck bed, the blood sprinkled beneath the truck as it thumped and bumped over the rocks and roots of the game trail.

Branches and vines whipped at the sides of the truck, flagellating Chase like a medieval pilgrim, chastising him for the killing, but he ignored them. The trail had taken them through a gap in the trees and brush, and Gavin had taken a left turn Chase hadn’t noticed during his struggle with the Chinese soldier, putting a wall of thick brush between them and the camp. The trail ran along the perimeter on the west side of the dig site for a few hundred feet, then curved away from it, which was another reason Chase hadn’t noticed it during the tours of the place Gavin had taken him on.

Did the Chinese know it was there? Had they seen the truck drive away? The trail was overhung by jungle canopy, not obvious from the air, but thermal imaging would show the truck’s engine… if it was pointed in the right direction.

He sat in the back of the truck for five more minutes, crouching, surfing each bone-jarring bump and rattle, and searching the air. They were too far away now for the Alliance to catch them on foot. They’d get back in their gunship and search from the air. And there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do in the truck bed with his pistol against the gunship. He paused, regarding the dead soldier analytically. The body might have a force tracker transponder on it. Best to leave it behind.

Chase stuffed his pistol into its holster and flipped the dead man out of the bed. The body hit with a weird, boneless thrash of arms and legs and a dry puff of dust, one final indignity, and Chase felt guiltier about abusing the dead man than he had from killing him in the first place.

The passenger’s side front window was open, and Chase crawled into the cab through it, but he almost fell off when Gavin jerked the wheel in surprise at his sudden appearance, like he thought Chase was a Chinese commando who’d popped in out of thin air.

“I heard a shot back there,” Gavin said, “but I didn’t want to stop. I thought it might be the Alliance.”

“We had a hitchhiker,” Chase told him, jerking a thumb toward the bed. “I took care of him.” He twisted around in his seat and frowned.

He didn’t like what he saw back there. Victor was curled up in a fetal position, the duffle still slung over his back as if he’d forgotten it was there. The younger man’s arms were wrapped around his knees, and he stared at the stained plastic interior as if he were looking through it to something a thousand yards away.

Angel Cortez wasn’t much better, not curled up but her face slack with shock, fingers digging into the nylon of her hiking pants as if she wanted to rip it away. Chase thought about leaving them to their thoughts, but the situation was too fluid for that. They needed to be alert and ready to move.

“Are either of you hurt?” he asked. Neither of them responded, still staring straight ahead, and he tried again in a sharper, louder voice, enough to get their attention.

“No,” Angel said, still not looking at him.

“M… my stomach hurts,” Victor confessed. “And my chest. From where I fell. I think I hit a root.”

“Any bleeding?” Chase cocked an eyebrow. “Any swelling like you’re bleeding internally?”

Victor’s eyes went wide at the concept that he could be bleeding to death internally and not even realize it, and he quickly pulled up his shirt and checked. He had what was probably going to be a nice bruise on his sternum, but nothing that appeared immediately fatal.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said, smoothing down the front of his shirt. He seemed to finally notice that he was still wearing the duffle and shrugged out of it, then scooted it between him and Angel on the seat. “I’m sorry I tripped.”

“You were scared,” Chase allowed. “We were all scared.”

“It was my fault,” the kid insisted, his look stricken. “It was my fault Dr. Stephenson died.”

“Yeah,” Chase admitted. “It kind of was.”

That sparked Angel back to life, and she squared off at him, hands curling into fists.

“He’s not a Goddamned soldier!” she snapped. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing out here!”

“No, he’s not,” Chase agreed. “And neither are you. But I’m going to need you both to get your shit together and soldier up if you want to live through this.” He jabbed a finger at Victor. “You know what you did wrong, kid? It wasn’t that you fell. You fell and it hurt, and you yelled. Anyone can fall. Anyone can get hurt. What takes discipline is keeping your mind and body under control even when it hurts. Can you do that for me? Can you control yourself, not give in to the pain and fear even when it gets bad?”

Victor’s face was thoughtful, and he didn’t answer immediately, which was good. If he’d shot a yes right back, it would have meant he wasn’t considering the question.

“I think I can,” he said. “I’ll try.”

“Good man.” Chase reached back and clapped him on the shoulder, forcing a tight smile. Not that he felt all that happy about it. The kid didn’t belong here, and he doubted whether Victor would be able to keep his head no matter what he promised.

“What?” Angel asked, lip twisting in a subtle sneer. “No motivational speech for me?”

Chase bit down on the sharp response working its way out of his impatience and tried to remember the woman was no more used to this than Victor, though she was better at hiding it.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Gavin said, raising a hand like he was a school child asking to go to the bathroom, “but where are we going?”

By way of answer, Chase pulled out his radio link and keyed it again.

“Tamar, this is Weston. Do you read?” Static. “Shit.” Chase shook his head. “We’re too far away for their gunship to be jamming us. They must be jamming the Tamar. If she’s even still there.”

Chase squeezed his eyes shut against visions of the ship in a smoking ruin at the landing zone, Priyanka and the others dead inside her. Fear clawed at his chest, fear that he hadn’t felt fighting the Chinese commandos.

“If we stay out here,” he said, forcing himself to think, “they’ll find us. We need to get to town. We need to find a place to lay low.”

“You have any money?” Gavin asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“I have a DigCoin account on my phone,” Chase said. “A few thousand.”

“No good with the cartels, I’m afraid. Cash only, and they prefer Alliance Credits, since the Union tends to keep a closer eye on its money.” Gavin shook his head. “It’s too bad. The cartels would hide you for enough cash. Even from the Chinese.”

“You don’t have any money?” Victor asked, a pleading note to his voice. “I mean, we could pay you back… the university could.”

The security officer snorted.

“If I had that kind of money, I’d already be off this planet.”

“Just get us to the city.” Chase sighed, thinking of what Gavin had told him about his son. “We’ll take the truck from there. We’ll figure something out. I don’t want you or your family getting caught in the middle of this.”

Angel’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at Chase in what looked like the beginnings of a rant, but Gavin headed her off.

“No,” he said, raising a finger, then tapping it against his forehead as if trying to get his brain working. “I know someone who might be able to help. My cousin Francis.” Gavin rolled his eyes. “Well, my ex-wife’s cousin, but he owes me a favor. And he knows things. Things he’d probably be better off not knowing.”

“And he won’t ask for money?” Chase wondered, frowning skeptically.

“I never said that,” Gavin corrected, chuckling. “But he might take that DigCoin you talked about. If he’s in a good mood. Though honestly,” he added, his face scrunching up in distaste, “I’ve never known Francis to be in a good mood.”

* * *

Jaipur wasn’t as bad as Victor had thought when he’d seen it from the spaceport.

It was much worse.

The stench assaulted him even with the air conditioner blasting in his face, coming in through the shattered window and the holes in the front windscreen, a combination of human and bovine excrement and the fumes from distilleries turning out alcohol and the generators that ran on it. And something else, something chemical that he couldn’t identify.

“What the hell is that smell?” he asked, trusting that someone else would have been able to separate the worst offender from the mélange of stink. “It’s like walking into my older sister’s nail salon if it was built over an open sewer.”

“It might be the recycling,” Gavin suggested, pointing to a low fence with billows of white smoke coming from behind it. “Precious metals are hard to get here, so many people chip in and pay for cargo ships filled with electronic waste from Earth. Then they use caustic chemicals to separate the precious metal from this and sell it at a huge profit.” He shrugged, turning away from the sheet metal building as they passed it. “Of course, doing that will kill you. But the money is good, and many can’t turn down the chance to have something better. It is very popular with teenagers.”

The sheet metal construction was cheap and popular here, the walls faded and rusted, but yard after yard of it fenced off the courtyards of interconnected buildings at the heart of the city. And peeking out from behind those walls were men and women wearing the colors of a gang. Victor might not know the situation here in Jaipur, but he knew gangs, and the white and red was like a uniform, the only thing they all had in common. That and the guns.

More smoke, an even stronger odor of chemicals.

“Is that… are those recycling shops, too?” he asked, pointing at the wall manned by a short, stocky younger man wearing a denim vest, his arms covered in tattoos.

“No,” Chase said, casting a baleful glare at the place. “That’s a meth lab.”

“Seriously?” Victor blurted, head snapping around to look at the place again as they passed. “They have meth labs here?”

“They’re too easy to hunt down back on Earth. The cops have chemical-sniffing drones running everywhere. They used to make them in plastic bottles in the trunks of cars, but even that gets busted now.”

“Chase is right,” Gavin agreed. “It is made here, then transported across the colonies. It’s the one cash crop that we can sell. And again, people die from the labs every day, from the fumes or sometimes the explosions. And again, it is the younger people who are the first to take the jobs, trying to find a way out.”

They left the sheet metal behind them, and Victor sighed with relief, not just because the chemical smell faded but also because he’d felt as if the cartel gun thugs were staring at them, suspicious of the new faces and the bullet-riddled truck. The smell of shit remained, though, along with the cows.

“Don’t the cartels eat meat?” he asked when Gavin had to swerve to the left to avoid an oncoming Brahmin bull. The animal snorted and tossed its head, the curved sabers of its horns coming perilously close to the side of the truck.

“Some do,” Gavin admitted. “But they’ve come to understand that there are some things people won’t put up with, so they don’t butcher them publicly and they don’t try to force us to butcher them.”

Victor squinted at him, and it had nothing to do with the late afternoon glare shining in his eyes.

“Wait a second,” he said. “You’ll put up with them taking over your city, putting your teenagers to work in meth labs, killing people, extorting your food… but you draw the line at them making you butcher a cow?”

“If you figure out why people get wound up about religion, kid,” Chase commented with a chuckle, “then you can switch to anthropology and win a Nobel prize.”

“You are not a religious man, Sgt. Weston?” Gavin asked, seeming honestly curious rather than just making small talk.

“Not much.” Chase was watching the streets outside, eyes scanning back and forth like he was looking for threats, his pistol held low, below seat level. “My parents were. Which is among the reasons I haven’t been home in twenty years.” He laughed softly, half under his breath. “That and the aggravated assault charge.”

“Who did you assault?” Victor asked, then winced, realizing he’d sounded like a fanboy.

“Nobody important.”

“Everyone’s important to someone,” Angel Cortez said, staring out the left-side window, the words monotone, as if she didn’t want to admit she’d been listening. Chase offered her a tight smile.

“You’re right. He was, as it turned out, very important to the girl I was engaged to… a lot more important than I was, apparently.”

“You beat him up because he stole your girl?” Gavin deduced, and he looked as if he found the prospect amusing.

“No,” Chase said, irritation leaking through his usual cool reserve. “She wasn’t… she’s not a thing that I owned that somebody else could steal. She made a decision.” He shrugged. “It would have been damned nice if she’d told me about the decision instead of having me find out the hard way.”

Angel turned from the window, seeming interested in the conversation for the first time.

“So, how come the aggravated assault?” Victor asked. Chase scowled, looking as if he would rather have done anything else than talk about this.

“Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. I was at a party for high school graduation… out at the lake. Bonfire, bunch of kids, bunch of not-really-legal alcohol, and I was in a bad mood already, but my best friend had dragged me along because he was trying to cheer me up. And this guy just comes up to me. She wasn’t with him, didn’t want to see me because she was still ashamed of getting caught cheating. But this guy, Norm, he was already drunk and he just had to come rub my nose in it.”

“Oh, shit,” Victor said. “I bet that got ugly.”

“He was drunk. And I can be”—Chase’s smile was feral, cruel enough to make Victor shudder—“tactical, let’s say, in provoking people when I want to be. He took the first swing, and that was all I needed. I hope Sandra wasn’t into him for his looks. But his dad knew the county sheriff, and I was told in no uncertain terms that the only way I’d avoid jail was getting out of town permanently. My parents weren’t too happy with me drinking or fighting, so I solved everyone’s problem by catching a ride to Missoula and enlisting in the Army.”

“Ah, we are here!” Gavin said, yanking the wheel to the left abruptly enough that Victor nearly fell out of his seat.

He pulled the truck into an alley between two row houses, not what Victor would have called high-end, but better construction than most of the buildings in Jaipur, solid wood frame with slate-shingled roofs and glass windows. Whoever lived here had money, at least relative to his neighbors. Even the smell wasn’t as bad, less eau de animal shit and more curry and other spices… and smoke. Not cigarette smoke, either, and Victor brightened at the thought of copping a puff or two. Anything to settle his jangling nerves.

“Let me talk to him first,” Gavin insisted, taking his holster off his belt and stowing the gun under the front seat of the truck. “He is not trusting of strangers.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Chase said, slipping his handgun into its shoulder holster before he slid out of the passenger’s seat. “Leave the keys.”

Gavin looked hurt, but did as he was told and dropped them into the center cup holder. Victor twisted around in his seat and watched him through the spider-webbed rear window, moving until he finally found a section clear enough to see through. Gavin looked both ways at the end of the alley and ducked off to the right, moving with the exact amount of grace and agility Victor expected from an overweight fifty-year-old.

“Should we stay in the truck?” Victor asked, looking between Chase and Angel, not sure which one he was asking. He didn’t want to… he felt trapped, besides which, it was hot as hell inside the vehicle with the AC shut off and he hadn’t stopped sweating the whole ride even with it at full blast. His shirt was plastered to the small of his back, and he couldn’t remember ever stinking so badly.

“Yeah,” Chase told him, confirming his fears. Then he looked back. “Dr. Cortez, do me a favor and get behind the wheel in case we have to make a quick exit.”

Angel didn’t argue with him, which seemed like a minor miracle to Victor, just clambered into the front seat and adjusted the driver’s seat to fit her. Victor scooted away from the duffle bag, pushing it across the seat with his foot.

“Dr. Cortez,” he said, “do you think this thing is, like, harmful?”

She cast a sidelong glance back at him, her expression cold enough to dry his sweat.

“It got Dan Stephenson killed. Isn’t that harmful enough?”

Victor didn’t know how to respond and decided silence would be safest. He looked down at the floor, afraid to look away from possible danger and yet more afraid to look at it… and most afraid to close his eyes. When he closed his eyes, he could see Dr. Stephenson’s face, the blank terror behind his eyes when the first bullets had sliced through his chest, and worse, could see those features erased when the next burst had hit. He wondered if he would ever be able to not see it.

Victor jumped when Chase smacked a hand on the side of the truck and waited until Victor and Angel turned before nodding behind them. Gavin was returning, bustling over to them, his gaze flickering back and forth between them and the way he’d come.

“Francis will talk to you,” he said. He pointed a finger at Chase. “Just you. The rest stay here. And no guns. Guns make him nervous.”

Chase looked as if he wanted to debate the issue, but instead, he sighed with resignation and pulled his pistol from its holster, then reversed it and offered it to Angel. She took the weapon and set it on the seat beside her without comment.

“You hear or see anything that sounds wrong,” Chase told her, including Victor with a look, “you get out of here. Don’t wait for me, don’t come looking for me, just go.”

“Where?” Victor asked him. “To the port?”

“No. They’ll be looking for you there.” Chase’s eyes were seeing something far outside the alley, and Victor thought he was worried about the ship’s crew. “Don’t tell me where you’re going,” he finally said.

“Why not?”

“Because if I don’t come back,” the soldier told him grimly, “the best case scenario is, I’m dead. Worst case, they have me. Whatever I know, they’ll know.”

Victor stared at him in disbelief, but Chase shook his head.

“Nobody holds out. Not for long.”

“Oh, good grief,” Gavin said, rolling his eyes. “Come along, for God’s sake. Francis is a little shit, but he’s not that bad.”

18

Francis might have been a little shit, but at least he had a nice house.

The entrance hall was long and narrow, the floor polished white tile, the wooden wall paneling a little out of date but professionally made and decorated by small, framed paintings of wildlife—tigers, elephants, birds. All native to India, Chase noted.

Lots of homesick people here.

Also in the entrance hall were a pair of broad-chested, shaven-headed men who might have been brothers. They were at least brothers in arms, since each was carrying a sawed-off 12 gauge, and if the barrels weren’t pointed directly at Chase, they were certainly in the neighborhood.

“Put your hands behind your head, please,” one of them instructed, his voice deep and rumbling. At least he said please.

“I thought Francis didn’t like guns,” Chase murmured aside to Gavin as he complied and let one of the men pat him down. The bald bruiser spent several seconds checking his obviously empty shoulder holster but didn’t find the knife sheathed at the small of his back.

“Other people with guns,” Gavin amended.

“This way, please.”

One of the guards led them through the hallway, while the other brought up the rear. A coat rack marked the end of the passage, though God alone knew when exactly anyone would need a coat in this city. From the end of the passage, there was nowhere to go but to the right, into a sitting room, or living room, or whatever they called it here. The furniture was swathed in red felt, which was gaudy, but it wasn’t like he expected leather upholstery, not here.

Sitting on a very comfortable-looking chair at the center of it all, his feet propped up on an ottoman, was a skinny, grey-bearded little man, his clothes as colorful and showy as the furniture, diamond-encrusted rings on each finger. Must be a real bitch to try to eat wearing those.

“I am Francis Modi,” he said with an imperious wave of his sparkling hand. “My cousin tells me you need help.”

“I need a place for me and my friends to lie low,” Chase told him. “Somewhere the Martin cartel won’t be able to find us.”

“You have troubles with the cartel,” Francis asked, cocking an eyebrow at him. “That may be a problem. I have to live here after you’re gone. Betraying the cartel would be bad for business. And my health.”

“No, my problems aren’t with the cartel.” Chase hesitated. If he told the man the truth and Francis had an eye for profit, he could likely get quite the payoff by turning them in. But Gavin nodded to him, encouraging him to trust Francis. “There are strangers in town. Maybe you’ve seen them. Alliance soldiers.”

“Oh, yes,” Francis said, laughing softly, fingers steepled in front of him. He turned and yelled back toward the doorway to the kitchen. “Lata, bring us tea!”

The woman who brought the silver serving tray was attractive, younger than Francis by perhaps ten years, her clothes as opulent as his but more tastefully designed. She smiled as she offered Gavin and Chase steaming China cups. Chase hated tea with a passion, but he also didn’t want to offend their host, so he smiled back and took the cup.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“This is Lata, my wife,” Francis volunteered, taking the last cup for himself and not offering the bodyguards a drink. “Lata, this gentleman who Gavin has brought us needs protection from the Alliance soldiers.”

Lata nodded, her expression grave, and Chase had a sense she was taking the situation more seriously than her husband.

“They came not two weeks ago,” the woman told him, holding the tray in front of her as if it were a shield against the Alliance, “yet they act as if they own the city. They ask no leave of anyone, simply barge into houses and question any family with a man working at the archaeological dig where Gavin works. They even had the temerity to come here and question us about his job.” The corner of her mouth quirked into a half-smile. “We told them we didn’t associate with him since he abandoned Francis’ sister, though that was, of course, untrue.”

Chase didn’t bother to ask which part was untrue.

“Are they working with the cartel, then?”

“Working with?” Francis repeated, then snorted. “If by that, you mean are they paying them handsomely not to interfere with their endeavors, then yes. Martin and his people would take money from Kansa himself. But I may have a solution for you.”

“I told Gavin,” Chase warned him, “that we only have access to a few thousand in DigCoin and maybe we could scrape up a few hundred in physical cash.”

Francis waved it away.

“I don’t want your money. The Chinese are insolent and imperious, and it was they who destroyed our home, for all that the Pakistanis pulled the trigger. We all knew that the Alliance was spurring them on, trying to rob the West of their greatest ally in the region.” Francis might put on the disguise of a wanton hedonist, but Chase saw something bleak behind those dark eyes. “There is a townhouse only a few blocks from here. Everyone thinks it is owned by the cartel because it is in a block of buildings which Martin rents out to visiting business interests… drug dealers, pimps, weapons smugglers, the usual lot.” He took a sip of tea as if to wash the words from his mouth. “But not this one. The same people stay there, though they come and go, and sometimes when they go, it is with one of the independent cargo ships that visit us once in a while. Which is expensive, of course, particularly for someone who is not earning their way through the services of the cartel.” He cocked his head to the side. “I am, by nature, a curious man, since secrets usually equal power, so I had people I trust…”

Lata cleared her throat, and Francis nodded to her.

“We had people we trust spend some time watching this building. The men who come and go are doing their best to pass for the sort of criminals who might rent the buildings, wearing flashy clothes, speaking the language… but they all speak Spanish or Hindi or English with an American accent.” He smirked, as if challenging them to come up with the obvious deduction, and Chase had already reached it.

“CIA,” he murmured, staring at the wall and seeing a memory ten years old. “Goddamned spooks,” he added even softer.

“Is this not good news?” Gavin asked him, eyes wide, shaking his head in befuddlement. “These are your people! They can get you out of here!”

“They might be Americans, but they’re not my people.” Chase tried to keep his face neutral, but his lip curled as if on its own. “I’m not overly fond of the games the Company plays with people’s lives.” He sighed. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I will not take you there,” Francis added, raising his hands palm-up as if turning loose of the situation. “As I say, I still have to live here. But I will give you directions.”

Chase nodded.

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Modi.” He put a hand out, and Francis shook it, the look on his face a bit bemused. Chase turned and offered the same hand to Gavin. “You too. We wouldn’t have made it out of there without you.”

Gavin took the hand, but confusion passed across his face.

“This sounds very much like goodbye, Sgt. Weston. Will I not be accompanying you?”

“I’m grateful you want to, but no. You have family here. You need to think about them, and my advice would be for you to stay here until we’re clear of this place.” He motioned behind them. “I can go get your gun out of the car…”

“Keep it,” Gavin said, cutting him off. “If I truly need another one, I know where to acquire it. But my friend, I fear you will need it much worse than me.”

* * *

“Why don’t we just go in?” Victor asked. “How long are we going to wait out here?”

“Stop complaining,” Angel Cortez admonished him, slumped down behind the wheel of the Dodge, shifting her weight every few seconds to try to alleviate the ache in her back. “At least you can stretch out back there.”

“Yeah, right. Like I want to be back here with this thing any longer than I have to.”

Chase didn’t respond at first, sitting so still in the passenger’s seat that Angel thought he might be asleep with his eyes open. Though how he could be anything remotely near comfortable crouched down below window level of the seat like that, she wasn’t sure. Finally, he turned and eyed Victor, just the slightest hint of impatience tugging the corners of his mouth downward.

“We’re waiting,” he said, “because while I appreciate Gavin’s help, that doesn’t mean I trust his wife’s cousin not to throw us to the wolves for money.” He nodded across the street at the townhouse. “If this is a trap, a setup, then whoever’s behind it is going to get just as impatient as you pretty damn quick and blow their cover. The trick is to be more patient than they are.”

“And what if it’s not a setup?” Angel wondered. “If this Francis was telling the truth, then we’re just wasting time and taking a risk on the cartels or the Chinese finding out we’re here.” She waved around them at the cab of the Ram. “This pickup isn’t exactly unobtrusive, not with all these damned bullet holes in it.”

“Have you looked at the other cars on this block?” Victor asked her. “This might be the best section of Jaipur, but it’s not exactly Haight-Ashbury, either.”

He had a point, she decided, scooting up just slightly and risking a glance around. The houses here might have been nicer than most, but there were still at least three stripped-out cars on the street, one of them burned down to bare metal.

Chase sighed, though whether it was at Victor’s griping or just the general overall misery of sweltering in the pickup in the early evening heat, she couldn’t say.

“It’s been a while. Maybe long enough.” He sat up straight in the chair and opened the door abruptly enough that Angel glanced around to make sure that he hadn’t spotted Alliance soldiers in the street.

There was nothing, not even the intermittent gaggles of young locals she’d noticed parading up and down the street looking important and purposeful. Chase had told her they were couriers, running errands for the Martin cartel, though to her eyes they could have been any teenagers in any city.

“Are we all going?” she asked, getting out but hesitating at the sight of Gavin’s handgun still lying on the floor beneath the driver’s seat. “Do you want us to stay here again?”

“I ain’t staying here,” Victor declared, scrambling out of the back and making a slashing negation with both hands. “I’ve had enough of staying in the truck waiting.”

“We’re all going,” Chase assured them. “And I doubt we’ll be coming back to this truck, so grab everything. The gun, the duffle, everything.”

Angel slid the ancient Browning Hi Power out of the holster and admired it for just a moment, allowing herself to forget what it did and think only of the hand-tooled craftsmanship which had gone into the pistol. She made sure the safety was on before she tucked it into the small of her back and tossed the holster onto the floor of the cab.

As much as she’d hesitated with the 9mm, Victor seemed even more reluctant to take up the duffle again.

“Maybe we should leave it here,” he suggested, a higher, plaintive note rising at the end. “It could be really dangerous. I feel like I’m carrying a bomb around on my back.”

“Bring it, Victor,” she said, brooking no argument. “I can’t say I’m very comfortable handing it over to the CIA, but I know I don’t want the Alliance getting their hands on it.”

The grad student grunted his disapproval, but he pulled the duffle onto his back and followed the two of them across the street toward the townhouses. Low, stucco walls separated the stairs up to the front entrance from the street, not coincidentally shrouding the doorways in shadow which had to be useful for the sort of person who did business here.

Or for spies.

The gun dug into the skin at the small of her back, the metal cold and clammy against her sweat.

You’re just carrying it. You don’t have to use it.

Chase didn’t knock on the door immediately and instead paced up and down the entrance porch, peering at the shuttered windows as if he could see anything of the inside through them.

“Do you want me to knock?” she asked, hands on her hips, head tilted to the side. She wasn’t sure if she was angry with Chase for wasting time or angry at herself for her own lack of patience, so she decided on the safer course and pretended to be mad at Chase.

“I doubt it’s anything but a formality,” he said, nodding toward the windows. “With the alarm system wired into the door and the windows, I’m pretty sure they already know we’re here. But yeah, they might be going through the motions so they can pretend they don’t know we know.”

Chase stood off to the side of the door and banged the dark, polished wood with his knuckles before jerking back his hand. Angel realized that he was worried about someone shooting through the door, and she took a step away from it, then hesitated again as she found herself in line with one of the windows, which seemed an even worse idea.

For a long moment, she thought no one would answer, which would have been disastrous in that this was their only recourse, but might also have been a relief. The door opened a crack, and she nearly jumped at the squeak of poorly maintained hinges. It was as dark inside the townhouse as it was on the porch, and all she could make out was a figure lurking behind the door.

“What do you want?”

The voice was flat, with no anger or fear or annoyance or curiosity, and she could see someone mistaking it for generic American. But it wasn’t. There was an accent behind it, though she couldn’t place it.

“We need help,” Chase said, making no move toward the door. Still worried about getting shot. And I can’t say he’s wrong to be. “We’re all three American citizens.”

“And what do I care where you live?”

Either the man was, indeed, disinterested in their nationality and they’d made a huge mistake coming here, or he was used to dealing with people who needed him more than he needed them and had learned how to make sure they knew it. Angel sighed. Just the sort of political bullshit she’d been worried about.

“Listen, buddy,” she said, putting a palm on the door, “we know who and what you are, and I bet you know the exact same thing about us, so why don’t we stop wasting time and you let us get in off the street before someone else figures out where we are and tells the Chinese.”

Chase glared at her, making a quelling gesture, and she thought he seemed more upset at her mentioning the Chinese than at her butting in to begin with. It had been a risk, she had to admit, but not a bigger one than standing on the porch, waiting for someone to spot them.

The door slammed shut with an abrupt bang that stung Angel’s palm, then she pulled her hand away and shook the sting out, thinking she’d screwed up royally. But behind the thick, solid wood, metal rasped as a chain was unfastened, and when the door reopened, a man stepped halfway through.

He was, Angel had to admit, not at all hard on the eyes. Tall, rangy, with a weathered tan and wavy, brown hair, his handlebar mustache could have looked cheesy yet somehow didn’t. Maybe because of that strong chin. And those eyes… Steel blue, like something she read about in books. They flickered back and forth, taking in the three of them as that mustache sagged downward in a scowl.

Angel shook herself like a dog shedding water and forced her mind back to the situation.

“Who are you?” the blue-eyed man asked, and Angel thought maybe what she’d heard as a foreign accent was actually Cajun. “And what do you think I can do for you?”

He was wearing an unbuttoned long-sleeved shirt over a black T-shirt, and his right hand was hovering near his beltline. She’d watched Chase enough to know this likely meant he was carrying a gun on that side and was ready to draw it if he needed to.

“I’m Dr. Evangeline Cortez,” she told him, reasoning that maybe introducing the armed mercenary first wouldn’t be the best idea. “I’m an archaeologist from the University of California at Berkeley, and I was sent here with my graduate assistant, Mr. Lee here”—she nodded back toward Victor, who waved inanely—“to consult with Dr. Daniel Stephenson on a dig outside Jaipur.”

“That alien shit, right?” The man’s hand drifted away from his side, which she took as a good sign.

“The Arborist ruins,” she confirmed with a nod. “The excavation here is one of the most extensive we’ve discovered so far, and we were making excellent progress until earlier today.”

“Lady, if you want me to help you dig up alien bones…” He shrugged. “Honestly, it’s probably more fun than anything else I’ve done on this planet so far, but it’s not really my area of expertise.”

“Early this afternoon,” Chase cut in, his glower a sign of his fading patience, “an Alliance gunship landed a special operations team at the dig. They murdered Dr. Stephenson and would have killed the rest of us if we hadn’t managed to get to a vehicle.”

“The Chinese, huh?” The tall man stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Now, what the hell do the Chinese want with an archaeological dig?” He sighed deeply and waved toward the doorway. “Come on in. No reason to talk about this out here. It’s past five and I need a drink.”

“You didn’t tell us your name,” Angel reminded him as he was about to turn.

The man paused and grinned back at her over his shoulder.

“No,” he agreed. “I didn’t.”

19

“You aren’t any archaeologist,” the spook said, handing Chase a glass.

The label said Jack Daniels and for a wonder, that was exactly what it was. He’d seen enough reused bottles out in the colonies to be surprised. He sipped it slowly, appreciating the smooth bite, and leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair, the handcrafted seat creaking under his weight. Angel had taken a glass, which surprised him, then downed it in one gulp, which had surprised him even more. She hadn’t asked for a refill, just cupped the glass with her hands as if trying to absorb the cold from the ice cubes inside while sitting up straight in her chair at the kitchen table and watching the spook.

Victor had turned down the whiskey and asked for a beer. He was nursing the bottle, not seeming too enthusiastic about it. Chase didn’t blame him. It was a local brand, the bottle fat and awkward and hand-blown by the city’s glassmakers, and Chase had tasted enough colony home-brews to know how iffy they could be. But it was cold, or as cold as the beat-up refrigerator was going to make it, and that counted for something.

“I’m under contract to the university,” Chase replied. “Protective services.”

The spook chuckled around a sip of his whiskey.

“A merc.”

“Private military contractor.”

“Oh, of course.” The mustached man raised a hand in apology. “My bad. Anyone I might have heard of?”

This was a chess game, or at least a drunken frat-boy version of a chess game, and the goal was to be the one to reveal the least, but Chase wasn’t in the mood.

“I’m Chase Weston,” he said with the sort of clipped tone he might have used to report to a new unit, “sergeant, US Army Rangers. For the last few years, I’ve been with Tamar PMC.”

“Ah,” the spook said, saluting Chase with his glass. “I have heard of you, Sgt. Weston. Both you as a Ranger and you with this PMC.”

“Good things, I hope,” Chase said drily.

“Oh, you know.” He grinned around the mustache, seeming to acknowledge that the game was over, and offered Chase a handshake. It was dry and firm, and at least he didn’t try to test their grips. “I’m Sean Haricot.”

“Sean.” Chase nodded.

“Tell me something, though, Weston… your PMC has a ship. It’s right there in the name, the Tamar. Why didn’t you just hop on board and fly away if you had trouble?”

“You must know the Alliance is jamming the landing field. I don’t even know if the Tamar is still there, but I do know that’s the first place they’d look for us.”

“Are you CIA?” Victor blurted, and Chase very deliberately did not roll his eyes.

“I can neither confirm nor deny that I work for the United States government in any capacity,” Haricot told him with the look of the cat who’d just swallowed the last little bit of canary. “But you’re here, so tell me, what the hell do the Chinese want with an archaeological dig? I mean, everything I’ve ever read about the Arborist excavations says that they’re useless. Any tech that’s been found there is worthless, so rusted and corroded we couldn’t get it to power up even if we knew how it worked.” He shook his head. “As far as I know, no one even knows how to speak their language.”

“No one knew,” Angel corrected him. Chase wanted to shush her but kept his face neutral. This Haricot was sharp, for all that he was kind of a douchebag. He’d spot the change in Chase’s expression.

“Tell me more,” Haricot encouraged, one of his perfectly trimmed eyebrows shooting upward.

“There are engravings in a chamber at the dig,” Angel told him. She fell into a didactic tone that Chase imagined she used with her students. “Their civilization was collapsing due to internal strife, factional wars, and they knew it. They wanted to leave a marker for any other beings who might find the place, to let them know what had happened.”

“How fucking considerate,” Haricot murmured, leaning forward in his chair, the drink nearly forgotten in his hand. “So, they just died off?”

“The ones who could make it back to their planet probably died in the war. The ones who stayed…” She shrugged. “It’s been at least ten thousand years. If they survived for a while, they died off in the long run.”

“Why’d they die off when we didn’t? Bad luck?”

“You mean we haven’t yet,” she said. She seemed to be enjoying this, despite the situation. “They had the same problem we do. They had the S-T drive dumped in their laps way before their society was ready for it. They had factionalism, nation-states fighting each other, and suddenly, anyone could throw asteroids at their world and destroy a city with a rock the size of a building.”

“We do, too.” Haricot shrugged. “That’s why we have the Colonial Authority now, to control threats from space. Even the Alliance and the Union can work together enough for that.”

“The Arborists couldn’t. Maybe that’s the message they were trying to leave us.” She held her glass out to the man. “Would you mind refilling this, Mr. Haricot?”

“Sean,” he insisted, smiling as he took the glass and tipped the bottle and topped up her glass. “But tell me, Dr. Cortez…” He handed it off to her.

“Angel,” she said, taking the glass, perhaps lingering on it a bit longer than she had to.

“Angel. Tell me, are you sure that there wasn’t anything at that dig that the Alliance might have found strategically significant?”

“I’m certain there was,” she said, taking a long sip, and Chase nearly chewed off his own tongue trying not to yell at her. “The Alliance may be greedy and opportunistic and lacking in anything I might characterize as ethics, but they’re neither wasteful nor stupid. You should know that. They wouldn’t send their best troops all the way out here unless they thought there was something important.” She shrugged. “I just don’t know what it might be.”

Chase disguised his relieved sigh behind a drink.

“After all,” Angel went on, “I’m an archaeologist, not a military intelligence officer. I see these finds for their historical significance, not how they might be weaponized.”

“Sure, sure, I get that.” Haricot had a smile plastered beneath that mustache, and Chase couldn’t tell if the man was flirting or still trying to pump them for information. Or both. “But you said they were at war. Did they talk about any weapons systems in those records? Anything you haven’t heard of before? Maybe some unique application of the drive, or some way to shut the drive down from a distance?”

“Sean,” she laughed, “it was engravings on gold foil, not a quantum data core. We could barely figure out the language from the clues given by context.”

Chase wanted to laugh. Angel was better at this than he’d thought.

“Damned lucky thing you guys got away then, huh?” Haricot’s smile was just a bit too artificial for that question, and the insinuation was clear.

“There was nothing lucky about it for Dr. Stephenson,” Angel told him, her affected flirting disappearing in a chill frost. “They gunned him down in front of us. If Sgt. Weston hadn’t seen the gunship approaching and come to warn us, we all would have been dead.” She set her glass down and reached out to put her hand atop Haricot’s. The spook was good at controlling his face, but Chase could tell the man was surprised. “Please, Sean, can you help us?”

Haricot sighed and shook his head, patting her hand.

“I can’t make any promises,” he said, “but I have some people I can talk to. I might be able to get you guys off the planet, get you at least back to a Colonial Authority system. It won’t be luxury accommodations, if I can get it at all, and you’ll have to pay for it. But it’s better than staying here.”

“We’d appreciate anything you can do for us,” Chase assured him.

Haricot pushed himself out of his chair and left his glass on the table. “You’re probably tired. There are a couple spare rooms upstairs. Let me show you to them, and then I’ll have to head out.”

“Tonight?” Angel asked, clearly surprised.

“Something like this,” Haricot told her, the corner of his mouth turning up in a humorless smile, “you have to move fast. The Chinese don’t screw around. They’ll turn this whole damned city upside down if they think you have something they want. And as charming as I may find you, Angel, trust me when I tell you that I don’t want to have to choose between hiding you or having a Chinese special ops trooper putting a bullet in my head.”

* * *

Victor Lee, Chase had discovered to his chagrin, snored like a freight train.

He tried to sleep anyway, to at least rest his eyes and his brain if he couldn’t actually fall asleep, but the irregular, arrhythmic timbre of the snorting and grunting made even that impossible. Finally, after a heroic two-hour effort, Chase surrendered to the inevitable and rolled out of the bed, then slid his boots on and grabbed his shoulder holster before he headed out the door.

The rooms weren’t bad, he had to admit. Air conditioning went a long way, but the sheets were smooth, high thread count, the pillows were soft, and the box springs weren’t broken and squeaking, all of which made the accommodations worlds better than anything he’d become used to in the last five years.

Chase glanced back at the duffle bag on the floor beside Victor’s bed, wondering if he should take it with him. It was probably the reason behind all this, but if he was being honest with himself, he was scared shitless to touch the thing and was glad Victor hadn’t simply refused to carry it anymore. Chase shut the door slowly and carefully, not wanting to wake Victor up. The younger man had talked his ear off for nearly an hour before drifting off to sleep, and Chase didn’t want a follow-up conversation.

Monologue is more like it. I didn’t get a word in edgewise.

“You can’t sleep either?”

Chase spun at the words, his hand already on the grip of his FN 9mm before he realized the voice belonged to Angel Cortez. She leaned against the wall in the small sitting room between the bedrooms, arms crossed, watching in the darkness. The only light came from a candle flickering in a holder mounted to the wall, more decorative than practical, and as much as it revealed the archaeologist’s face, it also concealed in shadow.

Chase decided to be completely honest with himself for just one second and admitted that Angel was, on top of being intelligent, daring, and competent, a very beautiful woman.

Careful, Weston. You’ve gone down that road before, and you’re damned lucky you and Pri are still friends.

“No,” he agreed, “but I have your graduate assistant and his incipient sleep apnea to blame. What’s your excuse?”

“Every time I close my eyes,” she told him, not sharing his good humor, not meeting his gaze, “I see Dan Stephenson die. I’ve known him since I was an undergrad. I know his son. I’m going to have to tell Kyle that his father’s dead.”

Chase nodded and fell into one of the cushioned chairs arranged around a coffee table. He dearly wished there’d been some actual coffee on the table and debated for a moment heading downstairs to Haricot’s kitchen to see if he could make some, but he didn’t know if he’d be comfortable digging through someone else’s cabinets, even a CIA spook.

“Been there, done that,” he said. “It’s a shitty job. But in a way, there’s some closure to it. Telling them helps you to accept it better yourself.”

“And have you accepted it?”

Chase couldn’t see her eyes, the hollows buried in darkness as if there were nothing inside but the empty cavities of a skull.

“No,” he admitted. “I still see their faces every time I try to sleep.”

And now. The life slipped away from Lucia Perez’s eyes yet again, an endless loop in his memory. Chase shuddered, hoping the shadows would hide it.

“I wonder when Mr. Haricot will return,” Angel said, the abrupt change of subject jarring.

Maybe I’ve reached the maximum capacity of what she’s willing to share.

“You mean Sean?” he asked, trying not to tease but unable to help himself. She didn’t rise to the bait, and Chase shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry just yet. This kind of thing, you can’t rush it. Some people get scared if you rush them. Plus, I’m sure he’s doing his best not to get spotted by the Alliance. Honest to God, I’m just glad we have a place to sit the whole thing out.”

“Aren’t you worried about Captain Ambedkar and the ship?”

“Pri can take care of herself.” And he could say that all he wanted, but he knew he’d never believe it. “She’s got the ship and a bunch of heavy weapons, and if the Chinese tried anything with her, I wouldn’t bet on the Alliance. She’s probably more worried about me. After all, it’s just me and a couple magazines of 9mm against a bunch of special operations troops.”

“Oh, it’s just you, is it?” she asked, an edge to her voice as if daring him to agree.

“No slight intended,” Chase assured her. “You two have more than pulled your weight. And I’m going to get you both home, I promise it.”

Angel didn’t seem convinced, but any counter-argument she might have made was interrupted by an insistent pounding on the door downstairs. Angel and Chase exchanged a look and he pulled the FN out of its holster, holding it in front of him as he headed for the steps. The stairwell was narrow and dark, and if Angel got a bit too close to him on the way down, he wasn’t about to shove her away.

The bottom of the stairs was bathed in light from the kitchen, left on by Haricot when he’d gone, and Chase found the switch, then shut it off and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust before he moved to the door. A few stray threads of moonlight squirmed through gaps in the shades over the windows, enough that Chase could see Angel staring at the wood grain of the door as if she expected a video doorbell display to pop up.

“Do you think it’s him?” she whispered, far too loud.

“He wouldn’t be knocking on his own door,” Chase reminded her.

As if on cue, the knocking came again, harder and more desperate. Chase envisioned a Chinese officer behind the door, backed up by a squad of special operations troops, just waiting for someone dumb enough to open for them. He was about to tell Angel to get upstairs and retrieve her gun when a muffled voice from the other side of the door interrupted.

“It’s me! Open up!”

“Gavin?” Angel blurted, and Chase shot her a quelling look, but it was too late.

“Yes, Dr. Cortez, it’s me! Please hurry and open up before someone sees me out here!”

Chase held up a hand to stop her before she threw the bolt, taking a few seconds to peek through the window shades. The figure on the porch was shrouded in blackness, but it also seemed to be alone. Chase stayed off to the side of the door, back up against the wall, pistol held at the ready, and mimed for Angel to open it quickly.

The woman nodded and braced herself before unbolting the lock and yanking the door open. Gavin Patel had been leaning on the door and nearly stumbled headfirst into the house when its support abruptly vanished. Chase grabbed the older man by the shoulder and pushed him inside, then ducked out to check the porch. Nothing. Not a movement, not a sound except the chirping of some night insect. He pulled the door shut and secured the bolt before turning back to Gavin.

He had changed clothes since they’d left him with Francis earlier in the day, dropping the jungle wear and the vaguely uniform shirt for something close to the street clothes of the average resident of Jaipur, though all in black. He’d also presumably bathed since he didn’t smell like blood and sweat.

And I would have, too, if I had any clothes to change into.

“What are you doing here?” Chase demanded. “I could have sworn I told you to stay out of this and keep your family safe. You’re going to get yourself killed sneaking around here.”

“I had to,” Gavin said, nearly gasping, out of breath either from running here or from the fright at being pulled into the house. “It’s my fault! I brought you to Francis!”

“What’s your fault?” Angel asked him. “Did he sell us out?”

“No, no!” Gavin insisted, waving his hands like he was trying to scare away a swarm of bees. “Francis wouldn’t do that… if for no other reason than it would kill his reputation, and reputation is everything in his business. But he could only tell you what he knew… and after you left, I pressed him to find out more.” Gavin shrugged. “I’m family, sort of. He sent out the word and called in favors, but I didn’t get all of it until about ten minutes ago and I ran straight here.”

“What did he find out?” The hair was standing up on the back of his neck, a premonition he wouldn’t like what Gavin had to say.

“First off, he asked about our friends. It took a while because no one wanted to be the one to tell the secrets of the Alliance, not with them kicking in doors and strong-arming people across the town, but finally, he slipped a few Dig-Coins to the right person and got the story. A Chinese gunship—another Chinese gunship, not the one that chased us—came after the Tamar at the spaceport right about the same time as the attack on the dig site. The ship managed to take off and get away, and the Alliance ship followed her into orbit, and that was the last anyone saw of her.”

“Shit,” Chase hissed, fingers tightening involuntarily around the grip of his pistol. He forced his hand to relax and shoved the gun back into its holster. “No wonder they couldn’t answer my call. I thought the Alliance was jamming, but they were already out of range.”

“Yes, most likely,” Gavin agreed, nodding rapidly as if to hurry the conversation along to the next subject. “But that’s not the most important part. He also pressed his sources about the man who lives here, Mr. Haricot.”

As concerned as Chase was about Pri and the Tamar, the mention of the spook shifted his gears, and he grabbed Gavin by the sleeve of his silk kurta to pull him a step closer.

“What about Haricot?”

“He’s not CIA,” Gavin said, cringing away as if he thought Chase might strike him. “Or, at least, if he is CIA, he works for someone else as well.”

“The Alliance?” Angel asked, her eyes going wide.

“No, no.” Gavin shook his head vigorously. “Definitely not the Alliance. They pay with threats, not money. And everyone says this Haricot is very interested in money.”

“Damn it, Patel,” Chase said, beginning to lose patience with the man, “this isn’t a gender reveal party. Tell us what you came to tell us!”

“Hart-Klein! The man works for Hart-Klein Consolidated! At least, that is what Francis’ sources say.”

Chase let loose of Gavin and stepped back, a dark cloud descending over his thoughts.

“Hart-Klein,” he murmured.

“What the hell is going on down here?”

Chase didn’t start at the exclamation because he recognized Victor Lee’s voice and had expected the younger man to wake up at some point. The kid’s hair was standing up on one side, and there was a red print of the pillowcase across his face, which only contributed to the annoyed expression he wore. He stopped partway down the stairs and gaped at their guest.

“Gavin?”

“Hello, Mr. Lee,” Gavin said, waving.

“Hold on a second,” Angel interjected, raising a hand to bring the conversation back to the point. “Who or what is Hart-Klein Consolidated?”

Chase frowned at her, not sure whether she was putting him on.

“Seriously? You don’t know who Hart-Klein is?”

“If I knew,” she retorted, a dangerous edge to her tone, “I wouldn’t have to ask.”

“What does HKC have to do with anything?” Victor asked, rubbing at his face as he descended the rest of the way down to the living room.

“Gavin came here to tell us that our host, Mr. Haricot, isn’t with the CIA, he’s with Hart-Klein,” Chase explained.

“Someone,” Angel ground out, her shoulders taking a combative set, “had better start telling me what the hell all this means.”

Chase sighed, leaning against the wall beside the door, feeling suddenly tired.

“Hart-Klein is one of the mega-corps. You’ve heard about those, right?”

“Of course,” she said, clucking her tongue as if he was insulting her by asking the question. “Soong-Tierney, Sinopec/CNP, Applozon-Walton.”

“Well, Hart-Klein came after all those,” Chase said. “They bought a license from Soong-Tierney for the drive back before somebody—whoever it was, a lot of people think it was the Chinese government or Sinopec/CNP who did it—leaked the specs to the darknet. S-T wasn’t inclined to give the license fee back despite that, and HKC has spent the last twenty years trying to get even. Every single cutting-edge tech scheme that’s come around, HKC has had a hand in it. I remember reading about someone trying to use S-T freighters in a daisy chain trying to haul one of Jupiter’s moons closer in to the sun to make a second habitable planet in the Solar System, and HKC was all up in that shit.” He snorted a laugh. “Nothing came of it, maybe because it wouldn’t work or maybe because the Colonial Authority told them that any alterations to the Solar System would have to be voted on, and that it would belong to the nations of Earth, not any particular mega-corp.”

“Moving a moon?” Victor repeated, eyes wide.

“Since then, they’ve had their fingers in every pie, and if you haven’t heard of them, Dr. Cortez, that’s because they don’t want people to hear about them. I’ve done a lot of jobs these last few years on just about every independent, non-aligned colony and every single one of them, I eventually found out I was working either for or against people paid by HKC. They have their own army of PMCs, their own fleet of gunships, and they have spies in every government, including the Alliance. Like Gavin said, it’s possible this guy Haricot is with the CIA, and on Hart-Klein’s payroll, too.”

“But which one is he working for when it comes to us?” Angel asked.

“I can’t tell you for sure.” Chase shook his head. “All I know is, if Hart-Klein finds out about that artifact, they’ll kill to get their hands on it. And they’ll kill all of us just to keep it quiet.”

“Umm… Sgt. Weston,” Gavin said, looking through a gap in the shades, his face going pale. “I think you’re about to find out who Mr. Haricot is working for. I believe that’s him coming up the steps. And he’s not alone.”

20

“But… but… but…” Gavin Patel dithered as Chase pushed him up the stairs to the bedrooms. “Shouldn’t I go? Maybe out the back door?”

“No time,” Chase insisted. “Victor, get that damned duffle bag and bring it out here now!”

Victor and Angel had already moved past Chase and Gavin on the stairs, and the younger man nodded and sprinted into the bedroom.

“Why am I going to the bathroom?” Gavin protested as Chase pulled the door to the washroom open.

“You’re going to stay in here with the lights off and the door closed,” Chase told him, listening for the front door. It had already been too long… Haricot should have already been inside, and the fact that he wasn’t probably meant he was giving the men with him a last-second briefing.

Victor rushed out of the bedroom, arms full of the duffle, and shoved it off to Chase like it was diseased. Chase received it in the same spirit as it had been bestowed and dumped the hot potato into Gavin Patel’s arms.

“Don’t screw with this,” he warned the older man. “Just hang onto it, and no matter what, don’t hand it over to anyone but us.”

“But they’ll be armed,” Gavin insisted. “And I gave you my gun…”

“Take this.” Chase fished the thing out of the thigh pocket of his utility trousers and pushed it into Gavin’s outstretched hand. It was black and metallic, about the size and shape of a hockey puck, but with a pin attached to a ring at the center of it. “It’s a concussion grenade… a flash-bang, we call it. You pull the pin and toss it into the middle of the bad guys, then close your eyes and cover your ears.”

Gavin was about to ask another question, but the door opened downstairs and Chase pushed the bathroom door shut in the older man’s face. Angel dragged Victor into the bedroom, and Chase pushed from the other side, then switched on a light and motioned for the other two to sit down on the bed while he fell into a folding chair tucked against the wall.

“Act natural,” he urged quietly. “Don’t give it away that we know he’s with HKC, and don’t act afraid. Dr. Cortez, keep flirting with him, and Vic, you keep treating him like he’s some kind of superspy.”

“I was not flirting with him,” Angel spluttered.

“Of course you were, and it was working beautifully. Keep it up and keep him off his game. If he thinks we’re just scared, clueless puppies, he won’t be expecting any kind of resistance. By the way, where’s the gun?”

She moved the tail of her untucked shirt and showed the Hi Power shoved into her beltline. Chase raised an eyebrow.

“Not a big fan of Mexican carry,” he admitted.

“Of what?” she demanded, half-raising up from her chair.

“It means carrying without a holster,” he said, holding up a hand. “It’s from the vaqueros in the 1800s. It’s not a slur or anything.”

“Dr. Cortez?” Sean Haricot’s voice carried up the stairs, traveling upward along with the faint squeaks of weight pressing on the steps. “Sgt. Weston?”

“We’re up here,” Chase called, trying to sound innocent.

There was something different about Haricot. It took Chase a moment to put a word to it, but the man looked less purposefully good-natured than before, less hail-fellow-well-met and more the predator Chase suspected him to be. The four men with him only reinforced the predator image, a wolf pack following their alpha. They were cut from the same cloth, even dressed alike, dark clothing, practical yet also fashionable in a threatening sort of way. The oversized shirts were perfect for hiding weapons, and Chase could already spot the bulges of poorly concealed pistols.

“These are my colleagues,” Haricot introduced, his smile thin and tight-lipped. “I’ve communicated with my superiors, and they’ve instructed me to raise armed troops and retake control of the dig site.”

“They have?” Angel asked, giving a good impression of both surprise and relief, the only tell he noticed the way she kept her right hand tight to her side to block the gun she had tucked into her waistband. “That’s great news!” She glanced at the four men with him. “But you’ll need more than this, won’t you? There were at least twenty or thirty of them.”

“This is just a start.” Haricot patted one of the men on the arm. The big man grinned through a dark beard, baring yellow teeth. “But to move on, I’m afraid I’m going to need something from you.”

“Yeah?” Chase asked, leaning forward in his chair, putting his weight onto his feet. “And what’s that?”

Haricot’s half-smile was as cold as an Arctic winter.

“I’m going to need you to turn over what you took from the dig in that duffle.”

The cold of Haricot’s smile seeped through the air and settled into Chase’s gut. He knew. It was enough to shake him and it certainly shook Angel and Victor… and they weren’t as good at hiding it. Angel shifted in her seat, eyes darting toward Chase, then out to the hallway. Victor tried to keep his gaze straight down but couldn’t keep from staring out toward the bathroom.

“There’s nothing in the duffle but some supplies,” Chase said, trying to keep his tone mild. “The Alliance landed with a whole platoon. We didn’t have time to do anything but run.”

“Then you won’t mind showing me that duffle, will you?”

Haricot didn’t move, but the others did. Just a couple steps, but it was enough to put them within arm’s length of the three of them. Chase wondered why Haricot hadn’t had them searched for weapons already, but he sensed that was coming. Maybe it would be better to just accelerate things.

“Sure,” he said, rising from his seat. Two of the big men tensed as if they expected him to go after Haricot, and Chase put his hands up, palms out. “We just tossed it into the bathroom,” he explained, moving away from Haricot, toward the door. “I’ll get it for you…”

“No, that’s all right, Sgt. Weston,” Haricot told him. “You stay right here. I’ll go retrieve it for you.”

Chase’s stomach churned, but he kept his actions slow and unthreatening.

“Yeah, okay, Mr. Haricot,” he said, projecting his voice as if he were on a parade field back at Ft. Benning. “But that duffle bag is just sitting there in the bathroom, and all you’re going to find in it is some spare underwear and socks.”

Haricot cast a doubtful glare at Chase but went to the bathroom, having no reason at all to imagine there was anything in it except the duffle bag. He kept staring at Chase as he pushed the door open, as if he expected the man to try something, which was why he didn’t notice the stun grenade spinning across the floor, skidding to a stop near the open door to the bedroom.

Chase didn’t dare yell for fear of distracting the guards, so he grabbed Angel and held her head tight against him, covering his ears and blocking hers with his bicep and chest. He could only hope Victor would be smart enough to do the same, because he didn’t have time to warn him. He barely had time to open his mouth before the flash-bang went off.

Even with his eyes squeezed shut and the heels of his hands pressed against his ears, the light was sun-bright, and the sound was like being trapped in a barrel while someone hit it with a sledgehammer.

If it’s this bad for me, it’s purely going to suck for these guys.

When he opened his eyes, there were a few spots across his vision, but not enough to block out the image of the four armed toughs staggering blindly, eyes and mouths open. One of them tried to pull out his gun, and Chase slammed a forearm across the side of the big man’s neck. If he’d hit hard enough, the strike could have been fatal, but Chase held back, not quite knowing why. These guys would have killed him in a heartbeat if the situation was reversed.

“Victor!” Angel cried, grabbing the grad student by the arm.

The kid had not adequately covered his ears, and he was on the floor, clutching at them, his mouth open like he was yawning, shaking his head. Angel pulled him to his feet, and Chase was about to try to help when another of the thugs stumbled into the way, arms waving, not seeing or hearing them but knowing they were there and knowing his job was to not let them get away. Chase spun on his heel and swept his leg across the back of the blinded man’s calf, sending him crashing to the ground.

Then they were out the door, and Chase thought they were home free. But Sean Haricot was smarter than his hired muscle. He’d thrown himself down and to the side a second before the grenade had detonated, and now he was scrambling to his feet, his eyes all too focused and a SIG 9mm jumping into his right hand as if by magic. Chase made a grab for his pistol, knowing he would be too late, but Gavin Patel came to the rescue again. He swung the duffle bag like the galaxy’s biggest weighted sap and caught Haricot right across the chest, then he knocked the man’s gun down the hallway and threw Haricot backward over the railing.

It was not, unfortunately, a long drop, since they were only on the second floor and there was a landing halfway down, but the impact sounded painful.

“Come on!” Chase urged, pulling Gavin along with them down the stairs and retrieving his gun just in case Haricot was already back on his feet.

He was not. The fall hadn’t killed Haricot, but he was lying on his back, gasping for breath like a freshly landed fish, and Chase figured he had gotten the wind knocked out of him. Again, the temptation was there to put a bullet in the Hart-Klein mercenary and not worry about him anymore, but again, he restrained himself… and finally, he was honest enough to admit why. He knew Angel wouldn’t like it.

Which was ridiculous, of course. The woman was not a fan of him or his profession and seemed to blame him for all their troubles since Gateway. But denying the genie wouldn’t put it back in the bottle.

“Do you still have the keys to the truck?” Chase asked Angel as they passed by the helpless Haricot.

“Now’s a hell of a time to ask,” she snapped. “Of course, I do.”

“Francis’s place isn’t far,” Gavin offered. “I am sure he would find you shelter since his poor information caused all this.”

Chase was about to point out how little reason they had to trust his ex-wife’s cousin, but gunshots interrupted him. Splinters spun away from the wall paneling at the impacts of bullets only inches from their heads, and Chase pushed the others backward, firing back before he even had a clear target.

What had happened was obvious. Haricot might not have been CIA, but neither was he a fool. He’d left someone guarding the door and when that man had heard the flash-bang, he’d rushed in looking for someone to shoot and been lucky enough to find the right people. It was dark at the bottom of the stairs, but the faint light from the second floor showed a skinny, tattooed man with a shaved head, hands filled with what looked like some kind of AR15 pistol with a suppressor. Unlike what most people believed from movies, suppressors didn’t silence firearms, and it certainly hadn’t silenced this fire-breathing dragon. But the can did keep the sound down to something that wouldn’t blast your eardrums indoors, which was quite considerate of the gunman.

Chase’s return fire went high and smacked into the wall above the bald man, forcing him to duck back out of the doorway before the FN ran dry, locking back on an empty magazine.

And that was it. Chase cursed, but the obscenity was cut off by another blast of semiautomatic fire from outside that punched into the plaster of the stairwell in a spray of dust.

“Give me the gun!” Chase yelled to Angel, but she already had the weapon out and was spraying a long burst at the doorway one-handed.

He doubted she was going to hit anything, particularly since the windows seemed to be bulletproof and she probably didn’t want to, but she kept the man’s head down long enough for them to make it off the stairs and duck back toward the kitchen.

“The back door!” Chase said, holding the FN out in front of him like a totem, despite the fact that he was out of ammo.

It was locked. He’d expected that. When he slammed his boot into the lock, he also expected it to be reinforced, thought he was going to look damned silly when he bounced off it, but he was, for once, pleasantly surprised. The lock didn’t break, but the doorjamb did. Wood splintered, and the door swung backward with a pained creak.

Steps led down to the rear courtyard, which was shared with the rowhouse next door, manicured grass and a koi pond completing the upscale, urban look of the place. It was enclosed by a fence without any obvious door, which might have been why the back entrance hadn’t been reinforced. Chase looked around, for a gate, for a window, for anything. What he found was a rain barrel, plastic and blue and very, very handy.

He kicked it over, spilling about a foot of water out onto the grass, then hauled it upside down and pushed it against the six-foot, wood-slat fence.

“Get over!” he urged, taking the duffle bag out of Gavin’s arms before helping him up onto the barrel.

“I’m going to break my neck,” Gavin complained, heaving himself over the top nonetheless. He landed on the other side with a yelp loud enough to prove he hadn’t broken his neck, though Chase wouldn’t have taken long odds on the health of the older man’s knees or ankles.

“You next,” Chase told Angel, pulling Victor away from her. The grad student seemed to be recovering from the flash-bang, which was good and bad—good, because they needed him to take care of himself if they were going to get away, bad because if he was already getting over it, the gunmen they’d left behind would be as well.

Angel hopped up onto the barrel but threw herself over the top of the wall with such grace and strength that Chase would have bet she didn’t even need the boost.

“Get up,” Chase said close to Victor’s ear. “I’ll help you.”

Whether he heard the words or not, Victor went along as Chase pushed him onto the barrel, then boosted his foot up with a hand until he swung over the fence. Chase shot a last look at the back door before he leapt up and grabbed the top of the wall. Something was moving inside, a shadow cast long by the interior lights, and Chase swung over the fence just as another hail of gunshots blasted out from the back door.

The drop was farther than he’d imagined, the six-foot fence built into a three-foot tall dirt mound on the other side, and he had to transition into the parachute landing fall he’d learned at Airborne School over fifteen years ago. Balls of the feet, side of the calf, side of the thigh, hip and side of the back, the five points of contact to spread the impact out, and he still let out an involuntary grunt of dull pain when his back hit the rough, gravel road.

The others apparently had not attended Airborne School or done any sort of parachute training because they were still sprawled out, trying to pick themselves off the ground while Chase was already up on his feet. Victor was closest, and Chase pulled him to his feet and pressed the duffle bag into his hands.

“Not again,” the kid moaned, but he slung the bag across his back and staggered after Chase as the soldier helped Angel and Gavin up.

“Quick, up, let’s go!” Chase urged them, though he still didn’t have a clear idea of which way they were going to run.

The street behind the back fence of the rowhouse was down an embankment from the residential area, bordering on an open field someone had been using as a garbage dump and sporadically setting a fire to clear it. A few open flames flickered here and there on the half-acre lot, giving just enough light for Chase to see the gunman’s arm coming over the fence to boost himself up.

Shit. So much for trying to circle around to the truck.

“Through the garbage dump,” he hissed at the others, not wanting to announce their position to the guy with the gun.

“No!” Gavin said, just a bit too loud, hanging back as if the smell from the dump were driving him away. “There’s nothing that way but jungle! We can’t go out there at this time of night. We may as well let them shoot us!”

As if some ill-tempered gods were listening to him, a string of shots rang out, more than one weapon, and Chase grabbed at Angel and Victor, pulling them to the ground. Gavin was just out of his reach and lacked the instincts of a soldier, instead going with the training of a police officer, looking for the source of the shots instead of hitting the dirt. A second shooter had joined Baldy on the fence and was firing a handgun over the top, adding to the rapid, semiauto burst from the AR pistol.

Chase was about to yell at the older man to get down, but the words died in his throat, ripped away from him by the slugs slicing through Gavin’s chest. They exited his back on sprays of red and took Chase’s breath with them, as if he had been the one shot. Gavin stumbled, and Chase rose up in a crouch and caught him, then threw the wounded man over his shoulder and took off in a heavy, plodding run. Angel and Victor joined him without any further urging and picked their way through the trash.

Chase’s feet sank into something wet and foul-smelling, but he ignored it, concentrating on staying upright. More wetness plastered his shoulder, blood from Gavin’s wounds leaking out, taking his life with it.

He’s going to die, a voice whispered into his ear. Leave him behind. He’ll just slow you down.

Rangers don’t leave people behind.

That’s not what you said on Munin. You left your whole team behind, left them to rot on a piece of shit world with no one to bury them. You didn’t even bring their bodies back to their families.

He couldn’t answer the voice this time, nor could he answer the distant gunshots. And if one of them hit him, perhaps it was no worse than he deserved.

21

Angel Cortez couldn’t see Gavin’s eyes, could barely make out his body except where Chase’s flashlight played over it. The jungle was black, featureless but for the edges of broad leaves flashing green in the glare from the small tactical light, the clouds of mosquitoes following the track of the beam.

“He saved our lives,” she said softly, the words breaking in the middle along with her voice, wracked with a sob.

“Twice,” Chase agreed. His shirt was stained with blood on the shoulder that ran down all the way to below his ribs before it stopped. She shuddered as she realized the significance of the end of the stain, that it marked the moment Gavin’s heart had stopped pumping. “Once with the Alliance and now again. And we got him killed.”

The soldier sounded defeated, and somehow that shocked her more than the death of Gavin. After Dan Stephenson, death here wasn’t a shock. But Chase Weston had seemed like he was made of chromium steel, a stone killer unaffected by the bullets flying around them. Not anymore. But they still needed him to be a soldier.

“Those men killed him,” she reminded Chase. “Haricot and the others, the Hart-Klein mercenaries. No one forced Gavin to come down and warn us. He did it because it was the right thing.”

“We’re gonna be just as dead as him,” Victor moaned, holding his head. The bugs were swarming him, but he seemed oblivious to them, wrapped up in his own misery.

“Shut up, Victor,” she snapped. “That isn’t helping.”

“And what the hell is going to help?” he shot back, rounding on her, taking her back a step. She wasn’t used to him talking back. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Doc, but we are in a jungle filled with tigers and snakes and leopards! And that’s not even counting the corporate mercenaries and Chinese fucking ninjas!”

“Ninjas are Japanese,” she murmured, the correction as natural as breathing.

“I don’t fucking care!” he bellowed, seemingly unconcerned about attracting attention from either the aforementioned people or animals. “I want to be an archaeologist! No one said anything about all this bullshit!”

“Victor.” Chase Weston’s voice was low and calm yet somehow still commanding, not something either of them could ignore. The younger man looked over at him, blinking at the beam from the flashlight. Chase adjusted the angle so Victor could see his face… and Angel could as well. “You need to get ahold of your shit.”

Victor was panting, covered in sweat, and Angel thought he was a few seconds from hyperventilating, but at Chase’s words, the younger man sucked in a deep breath and shuddered as he exhaled it. He waved at some of the bugs flying around his head as if just noticing them. He wasn’t ranting anymore, but he wasn’t apologizing, either.

“Do you know where we are?” Angel asked Chase.

In response, he switched off his flashlight, plunging them all into absolute blackness for a moment until he pulled out his cell phone.

“Do you have signal here?” Victor asked. “Because I want to sign up for your service.”

“There’re no satellites here,” Chase replied, not losing his temper at the quiet sarcasm, which was, Angel supposed, better than blind panic. “They have towers in Jaipur, but they’re only good in the city. What I’m looking at here”—he showed the two of them his phone, which displayed a map— “is a topographical map of the place I downloaded from the Tamar’s navigational computer after we landed. It took the shots on the way in. The app uses dead reckoning from the time and place we landed.” He shrugged, his face swathed in darkness but his eyes lit up by the screen. “It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.”

Chase pointed back behind Victor.

“That’s north, toward Jaipur, the way we came. The landing field is off to the west of the city.”

“What good is that?” Victor demanded. “You heard what Gavin said. Your friend took off, and I doubt she’s going to come back and land at the port like everything is just back to normal, and that’s if the ship didn’t get shot to pieces by the Chinese!”

Angel wasn’t a psychologist, and she’d been told she wasn’t great at the whole empathy thing, but she was pretty sure Chase wanted to smack Victor upside the head for suggesting his friends were dead. The soldier’s fight to maintain his self-control was visible and a little frightening.

“Whether Pri and the others are there, or even whether they’re still alive,” Chase ground the words out like he was planning to make bread from them, “the landing field is where we need to be. It’s the only place we’re going to find a way off this planet. And I’ll tell you one thing, junior, if we don’t get off this planet, we’re dead. We can go back to the city, try to find Gavin’s ex-wife’s cousin again and convince him to give us shelter, but it’s only a matter of time before one of his people turns us in, either for fear of the Alliance or for the money from HKC. Then we get to go through this all over again, except maybe the next time we run into the jungle, it’s one of you lying there.” He jabbed a finger at Gavin’s body. “Or me. You hired me to protect you, and God knows, that’s turned out to not be worth the money. But if you want my professional opinion, our best hope to live through this is back at the port.”

“Do you really think we can steal a ship?” Angel asked him, trying not to show the doubt she felt. “Don’t most ships have all kinds of security locks to keep anyone from doing that?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a longshot,” Chase admitted. “Maybe we have to snatch the pilot, too. But I’d rather do that than wait out here to get eaten by the local fauna.”

As if to punctuate his words, something growled a challenge into the night.

“Point taken,” she said, just glad to have some semblance of the old Chase back. “Take us where we need to go.”

“Maybe we should try to use this,” Victor suggested quietly as he shifted the duffle bag around and patted the side. Angel stared at him, uncomprehending, until he elaborated. “To bargain with, I mean. The Alliance wants it, Hart-Klein wants it. We should offer to give it to one of them if they get us out of here.”

Angel drew in a sharp breath, ready to expel it in a stream of invective at Victor for even suggesting they give up the find of the millennium, when Chase responded a good deal more calmly than she would have.

“I’d consider it,” he allowed, “if I thought there was any chance they wouldn’t just take the artifact and then kill us to make sure no one knew it existed. The Alliance killed Dr. Stephenson on a non-aligned world. That’s a violation of the Colonial Authority Charter, which means Jack and shit, of course, to either the Alliance or the Union, but it does mean they won’t want witnesses to that left alive. As for HKC…” He shrugged. “If we were dealing with one of their suits. They think in dollars and Dig-Coins. But this guy Haricot is a shooter. He’s going to take what we did personally, and he’s going to want to hunt us down because we made him look bad.”

“How do you know?” Victor asked. Chase turned just slightly, and the darkness swallowed up his eyes.

“Because I would.”

* * *

Moving through the jungle in the pitch black was pure torture, and that wasn’t even taking into account the constant fear of being eaten. Every vine and root tried to trip Victor Lee up, the duffle on his back throwing off his balance enough to make each step a sideways, skating motion.

At least he didn’t have to try to see in the dark. Chase had left the flashlight app on his phone burning on low power in his back pocket, providing just enough of a glow through the fabric to guide the others without killing their night vision. It was kind of ingenious, and he couldn’t imagine it was something he’d learned in the military. They had night vision gear and infrared lights and all that tactical shit. It had to be something he’d either learned since he got out or come up with on the spot, which impressed the hell out of Victor.

In fact, Chase’s presence was the only reason Victor wasn’t curled up into a ball, screaming like a baby. The darkness and the incessant chirping of insects, the occasional cry of a night bird, reinforced the surreal haze that seemed to hang over everything, and only the sweat dripping into Victor’s eyes every few seconds and the constant buzz of insects around his ears helped him to remember that this wasn’t some drug-induced hallucination, it was reality. He was one wrong step, one stray bullet away from winding up like Stephenson or Gavin.

So many times, he’d lamented his life in Berkeley, the tedium, the sheer normalcy of it. It was why he’d switched his degree from regular archaeology to xenoarchaeology, which was a ridiculous mouthful of a word that hardly anyone in the field took seriously. Victor had figured it was a chance to go places, see things, put some excitement in his life. If he had it to do all over again, he would have happily settled for dull months brushing sand away from a Babylonian tomb in Iraq.

“Have you tried calling the ship again?” he asked Chase, mostly to hear someone’s voice, even if it was his own.

“Ten minutes ago.” He didn’t even sound annoyed, though he probably had a right to be. Victor wasn’t blessed with massive amounts of self-awareness, and if he hadn’t already known, there was a line of disappointed women who’d already informed him of the fact, but he knew he was being irritating. “No response, no transponder signal.”

“They have a transponder?” Victor didn’t know why he cared, but anything was better than the silence.

“Yeah, just in case the ship goes down or there’s too much jamming for a comm signal.”

“How does the jamming not affect the transponder?”

Chase grinned as if he thought it was a good question and hadn’t expected it from Victor.

“It’s just a raw, unmodulated signal. Jamming usually works by overwhelming the signal with raw EM broadcast. They have to have a pretty large antenna down at the port, for example, broadcasting over all frequencies. That makes it impossible to make out a modulated signal. But a pulse beacon doesn’t try to send out anything that can be broken down into video or audio signal, just regular bursts of low-frequency microwaves.”

Victor’s bachelor’s degree had been in history, and his Master’s was in archaeology and none of that prepared him to understand even a fraction of what Chase was talking about, but he nodded as if he understood.

“Can the Tamar track you, too?”

“Yeah, they have the frequency for the IFF transponder on my phone.”

“Your phone is sending out a signal?” Angel broke in, the question sharp and tinged with fear.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. Almost everyone out here has a cell phone on the local network. The only way anyone would know this one was mine is if they got the frequency from Pri on the Tamar, and she’d never let that happen.”

“Couldn’t Haricot just search for all cell signals in the jungle out in this direction?” she suggested. “Even if he didn’t know for sure it was yours, who else would be out here at night?”

“He couldn’t do it from in town. And he couldn’t do it from a vehicle on the road because we’re too far off the road. The only way he’d be able to pick it up is with an aircraft. If it was a helicopter or a tiltrotor, I’d have heard it by now.”

“He could have a S-T drive ship,” she suggested, “if this Hart-Klein is such a big deal as you say.”

“Except we didn’t see one at the landing field,” Chase pointed out. “And if they do have one stashed somewhere else, the Chinese would have spotted it.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think we have to worry about Haricot right…”

Chase stopped in mid-step and in mid-sentence, throwing up a hand to halt the others. Victor froze, looking up through gaps in the trees into the night sky, searching for Hart-Klein aircraft for a couple of moments before he noticed Chase was looking straight ahead.

“Nobody move,” Chase advised, his voice low but not a whisper. “Don’t panic.”

Victor was about to ask him why they might panic when he finally spotted the movement in the darkness, though he couldn’t make out any details. Chase pulled his compact flashlight off his belt and flicked it on, and finally, things became clear. Standing on the narrow game trail not twenty yards ahead of them was a tawny, long-bodied creature that, if it wasn’t exactly feline, was close enough for government work. Its jaws were as wide as Victor’s head, with fangs six inches long, unless he was exaggerating the size because he was terrified.

This was, he was sure, the thing the locals called a tiger. God knew, if he were back on Earth and confronted by the thing, he would have been convinced it was a tiger, despite the lack of distinct stripes and the beginnings of a proto-mane riding the back of its head like a mohawk. The jaws parted, and a low roar grumbled out of a deep chest.

Victor refrained from pissing himself only through a monumental effort of will, exceeded only by the amount of self-control it took to listen to Chase and not immediately take off running.

“I don’t suppose,” Chase said quietly, “that you have any rounds left in that Browning Hi Power.”

Angel Cortez didn’t answer, but Victor thought he caught her head shaking violently just in the periphery of his vision. That’s so unfortunate.

Chase slid a knife out of a sheath at the small of his back, the blade looking laughably short compared to the size of the tiger, which had to be nine feet long from nose to tail.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Chase told them, his voice preternaturally calm. “On my count of three, you two are going to split up, each of you run a different direction. Angel, you go right, into the open field. Vic, you go left, into the trees.”

The animal swished its tail, stalking back and forth, head low.

“What about you?” Angel asked, and Victor was amazed she had the composure to speak, because he sure didn’t.

“When you two run,” Chase explained, turning the knife in his hand, spinning the blade downward, “it’s going to turn one way or the other to go after one of you. When it does, I’m going to jump on its back and stab it in the neck.”

“That’s insane,” Angel hissed, actually looking away from the thing to stare at him, her face painted yellow by the glare of the flashlight. “It’ll kill you.”

“It is insane,” Chase agreed readily. “And it will kill me. But maybe you two will have time to get away. When you do, use the compass app on your phone to head west. That should take you back to the port.”

Now, even Victor had to look away from the tiger and at the man. How the hell could he speak so calmly about being killed?

“No time to argue,” Chase went on, eyes locked on the tiger. “It’s about to attack. On three. One, two…”

“What’s that sound?” Angel interrupted, looking upward. And then Victor heard it, too, the same whoosh-hum he’d noticed back at the dig site.

“Oh, shit,” Chase spat, sounding so much more worried about the noise than the tiger. “Scatter! Now!”

Victor was close enough to the edge of panic that he followed the order without question, which put him a good ten or fifteen yards toward the trees when the cannon salvo hit. He assumed it was a cannon. He didn’t know the terminology for military weapons, particularly not the ones carried by an Alliance gunship, but whatever it was, it lit up the night like a sunrise and turned the powerful, majestic, deadly predator into bite-sized tiger nuggets in the blink of an eye.

The concussion struck Victor in the chest like a baseball bat and sent him stumbling into the trunk of one of the oddly twisted trees that seemed to be everywhere in this area. Flashes of light floated across his vision, and a high-pitched whine muted the world outside, but he ran anyway as more explosions ripped apart the night and the jungle, not caring if he ran into a tree or even a tiger. Any fate seemed better than standing still and letting some unseen and unknown hand kill him from a thousand yards away.

Blind, deaf, and panicked beyond thought, Victor rushed into the open maw of the jungle, the weight of the artifact bouncing against his shoulder the only sensation that penetrated. It seemed to mock him, reminding him why he was running for his life, why everything had been turned upside down, laughing at him scornfully with every stumble, every collision.

You should have left me where you found me.

Then the ground dropped out from beneath him.

22

Chase Weston was floating in a haze of golden light, disconnected thoughts bouncing across his mind without taking root.

Wasn’t a rocket. No smoke trail. Had to be a cannon round, maybe a mortar. Do the Chinese use mortars on their gunships?

He tried to roll onto his side, but his body didn’t want to obey, and he just rocked from side to side.

Am I hit? Am I bleeding?

No sound, just the hollow whistle of abused eardrums.

Where’s Angel? Vic ran but where’s Angel?

He blinked hard, the one thing he could manage to do without his body rebelling, and the world slowly came back into focus. He was flat on his back, bathed in the harsh, white glow of the spotlight flooding down from the side of the gunship.

Was I wrong? Does Haricot have a gunship?

But the light revealed a red flag embossed on the hull of the ship, decorated by a circle of white and blue stars in the corner. Alliance.

I wasn’t wrong. You have to be in the air to detect my transponder. But I forgot that HKC aren’t the only ones searching for it.

He checked himself and was able to lift his head up finally. No blood, no protruding bones, no burns. Just concussion, then.

And there was Angel, only ten yards away, rolling onto her side, head cradled in her hands. She was alive. Relief flooded into his chest even though it made no sense, given their situation. But she was alive. And that meant more to him than their eventual fate.

The embodiment of that fate walked down the open ramp of the gunship three abreast, bullpup rifles levelled at him.

His knife. Where was his knife? Not in his hand, unfortunately. He spotted it a few feet away and twitched toward it, but it was far too late. A rifle barrel stared him in the face, seeming much larger than the diameter he knew it to be.

Above that barrel was a face, bare for the moment of its black balaclava. It was a younger face than he’d expected, younger than him, though aged by experience and marked by a puckered scar across the right cheek.

Bullet. Or shrapnel. He’s damned lucky to live through a wound like that.

“Please do not move,” the man said in unaccented English with a neutral American accent. He’d gone to school in the US, Chase guessed. Back when that was possible for a Chinese citizen. “I have no wish to kill you.” The smile seemed pleasant. “Not before we’ve had the chance to talk.”

Shit. Can I go back to knife-fighting a tiger?

* * *

Victor Lee was drowning.

Disgusting, scummy water filled his mouth and clawed at his eyes, and he was weighed down by that damned duffle bag, trying desperately to get it untangled from his shoulders so he could try to swim…

And then his feet touched the bottom and he stood up.

Damn. That was embarrassing.

He’d slid down a riverbank in his blind stumble, but it was only three feet deep. The water soaked his skin, neither cool nor refreshing, the consistency of lukewarm bathwater. It splashed off of him as he dug his fingers into the disgusting, soft mud of the bank and tried to climb back up. He didn’t know that there were carnivorous, crocodile-like amphibians on this planet, but didn’t not know it, either. Then he reached the top of the bank and froze, before scooting back down.

Not a hundred yards away, a dazzling yellow glare was coming off the Alliance gunship, lighting up everything within half a mile, including him. Victor’s breath caught in his throat, and he nearly ran off blindly again. Some rational part of his brain tackled the part that was ready to panic and slapped it across the face, explaining that running would be a marvelous way to get spotted, and he’d be better off staying right where he was.

Both the rational and panicky sections of his brain shut their damn mouths and watched in horror as the Alliance commandos picked Chase and Angel up off the ground and secured their hands behind their backs, then hustled them up the ramp into the ship. The Chinese had them… they had Angel. Which he had told himself didn’t mean as much anymore, not after she’d dragged him into this mess, but it did. And if he didn’t expect her to ever feel the same way about him, it didn’t change how he felt about her… and he couldn’t abandon her.

Should I surrender? At least then, I’d be with her. But that wouldn’t do a damn bit of good, because I’m not going to break out of an Alliance gunship and rescue everyone. I can barely keep from drowning in a creek that only comes up to my knees.

The ship’s ramp folded into its hull, the thump as it closed solid and final. Soong-Tierney drive pods crackled and hummed to life, and the ship rose off the ground, the light still playing across the jungle below it. The gunship moved off slowly, staying low, and Victor realized with dull horror that it was searching for him.

How do they know I’m here? They didn’t. Not him personally, but they knew the dig had found something, and neither Chase nor Angel had it on them.

Victor was frozen with indecision, afraid to run, afraid to move, and afraid to stay where he was. If he stayed out here alone, he was dead. He might be able to hide from the Alliance, but he couldn’t hide from all the things out in the jungle that wanted to eat him. Could he make it to the city? And do what? He couldn’t contact the Tamar even if she came back. And that was assuming he could find his way back. Chase had told them which way to go, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember which direction the man had said.

But there was one thing he could do, something simple and straightforward and utterly insane. He could follow that damned gunship. It was low, and slow, and shining a big-ass light to lead the way.

“Oh, the hell with it.”

Victor clambered over the bank and headed across the open fields after that ship.

* * *

Angel Cortez glared at the masked woman sitting across from her in the passenger compartment of the gunship. The woman was narrow and fine-boned, looking very fragile to be a commando, yet her eyes were burning coals, filled with fury, though at what, Angel couldn’t guess. It made little sense to be angry with the small Asian woman, but the choice was either finding a target and getting pissed off at it or cowering in uncontrollable fear. And she’d sworn to herself long ago that she wouldn’t ever let fear control her, so anger it was.

The small woman stared back, her glare as hard as the radiation from a nuclear core, and just as deadly, but Angel gritted her teeth and refused to look away. Angel knew she’d won when the woman slid a knife out of a sheath on her calf and held the blade against the side of her throat.

“What the hell are you staring at, bitch?” the Alliance special forces soldier growled in heavily accented English.

“Sergeant.” The word was firm and commanding, and also in English, which meant it was for her benefit. It was the officer, the one who’d spoken to Chase back on the ground when they’d been captured. “Let’s not lose our composure.”

The female NCO murmured something in Chinese that sounded vaguely apologetic.

“Sorry, Dr. Cortez,” the officer told her. He had an easy smile, and somehow, the scar on his cheek only managed to make him look more rugged, though sinister as well. “This has been a trying few days. Sgt. Lin here lost two very good friends yesterday… as did we all.”

“I didn’t kill them,” Angel said, and though she hadn’t meant it to, the words came out as defensive.

“I believe you,” he assured her. “You’re a scientist, not a killer.” His eyes drifted sideways to Chase Weston, sitting to Angel’s right, hands flex-cuffed behind his back, just like hers. “No, this one, he is the killer. Sgt. Chase Edmund Weston, United States Army Rangers before you went the private route. You have quite the record from the war.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Chase said, dry as tinder. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Of course. I am Colonel Liu Xiao of the Sea Dragons.”

Angel frowned in confusion, and Chase must have noticed her expression.

“They’re the equivalent of the Navy SEALs,” he explained, “but without the book deals and the PR directors.”

“Just so,” Liu agreed, chuckling appreciation. “Though like your SEALs, we are also in space as well as on land, in the sea, and in the air. It was a natural progression.”

“You’re not all that progressive,” Chase noted, glancing around. “I don’t see any Russians. Or any of your other Alliance partners.”

“Oh, they all have their place,” Liu said, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped atop his tactical vest. “The Russians make particularly handy cannon-fodder when such is needed. And they’re wonderful at deflecting attention… always so loud and obnoxious.”

“But you don’t trust them to be part of your special operations? No Spetsnaz?”

“Spetsnaz mistake brutality for lethality. They think if they kill enough civilians, they will be feared as much as they’re hated.” Liu shrugged. “And in a place such as this, established by a fool and run by criminals, I admit such an approach has its attractions.”

“Avoiding civilian casualties didn’t seem a priority for you when your people killed Dan Stephenson,” Angel growled.

“That was a mistake,” Liu admitted. “And of course, those responsible paid for it with their lives. Such is frequently the case in our line of work, wouldn’t you agree, Sgt. Weston?”

“Not always,” Chase said, voice neutral but something black and dangerous behind his eyes. “Sometimes, when we make a mistake, we get other people killed instead.”

“Granted. And you would know quite a bit about that, given your history.”

“If you know my history, Colonel,” Chase told him, “then you know I won’t be all that interested in cooperating with you.”

“No one is, at first,” Liu said, waving it off, not seeming to take offense. “But I’ve yet to find anyone who can hold out for long. Oh, wait, no.” He snapped his fingers as if recovering a memory. “There was this one fellow. Australian, I believe. SAS. He must have received extensive anti-interrogation training, because even the drugs couldn’t get him to talk.” He looked over at Sgt. Lin. “What ever happened to him?”

“Zhang put a bullet in the back of his head and tossed him into a lake,” she replied, eyes still fixed on Angel.

“Well, there you go. But let me assure you, Sgt. Weston, that as much respect as I have for your Ranger battalions, you’re not SAS and you won’t be able to hold out long. And you, Dr. Cortez, will last even less time than he will.” Liu had been affecting a relaxed ease, friendly and amicable, but the pretense ended as abruptly as flicking a switch, and he was leaning forward, nose only inches from hers. His breath smelled of spearmint. “We know you found something on that dig, and we know you took it with you when you ran. You’re going to tell us where it is. That is a certainty on par with the laws of the universe.”

That smile again, though perhaps with a bit more cruelty in it than before.

“If it will convince you of the futility of trying to lie to us, I’ll share with you the source of our information.” Liu laughed. “I admit that part of me resists this, as giving up secrets is anathema to my chosen profession, but secrets are only worth anything if you can eventually use them, no?” He spread his hands as if waiting for an answer. When none was forthcoming, he went on. “Your Dr. Stephenson trusted his workers far too much. He probably thought he was being oh-so-clever by not sharing the news of the dig beneath the dig with any of them, but they weren’t blind. Who do you think he had carry his equipment to the lower excavation? And when one of the workers turned on the thermal sensors and saw the buried object, he knew it might be valuable beyond price.”

“He sold Dan out to you?” Angel asked, bitterness creeping into her voice at the thought. Dan had treated his workers well, made sure they were paid a fair wage.

“No, they sold Dr. Stephenson out to the cartel. Which is, no doubt, why the cartel chose to try to attack you. They knew the dig was valuable but needed someone like you to tell them what it was worth.”

One mystery solved, then. She’d wondered why anyone would try to kidnap her.

“And of course, the cartel sold the information to us, just as soon as we made it clear we’d kill them if they didn’t. Once we took over the dig site, we checked the lower chamber and saw the progress you’d made. Something had been uncovered, removed from the ground.” His smile was thin. “Isn’t that grave-robbing? I mean, I know archaeologists were once known for such things but that was years ago. Decades. Aren’t you supposed to have more respect for ancient cultures?”

“If there was anything there,” Chase intervened, “we obviously don’t have it with us, and you searched around where you found us. What makes you think we know where it is? After all, we were captives of Hart-Klein. Didn’t you know that? We had to shoot our way out.”

“Hart-Klein has an office here?” Liu seemed genuinely surprised. “I didn’t see their shingle. I suppose that means it’s something off the books.”

“Real nasty piece of work. Guy who calls himself Sean Haricot. He conned everyone into thinking he was CIA, but if I had to guess, he was actually DGSE, French intelligence. At least the accent makes him sound French. If there’re any artifacts to be had from the dig, he’d be the first place I’d start if I were you.”

Liu shook a finger at Chase in mock admonishment.

“You, you’re a smart one, Sgt. Weston. You know I’ll have to check that out because I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t. You’re hoping it will distract me long enough for you to find some way out of your current predicament. What? You think I’m a micromanager, that I’ll leave you lightly guarded while I take everyone into the city and investigate this Haricot? Either you’ve seen too many movies or you think I have. No, I am a man who does one thing at a time, does it very thoroughly, and then moves on. We will get to this Sean Haricot, believe me. But before we’re through with you, we’ll know exactly what it is you took from that dig, and exactly where you left it.”

“And when you’ve told us all you know,” Sgt. Lin added, staring daggers at Angel, “I will give you the same courtesy we extended to the Australian. And maybe someday, in another thousand years, an archaeologist will find your bones and wonder what you were doing sticking your nose where it didn’t belong.”

“If there are any archaeologists here in a thousand years,” Angel shot back, her smile as venomous as one of Vishnu’s mutant snakes, “I can tell you one thing about them. They won’t be speaking Chinese.”

The Alliance NCO still had her knife in her hand, and for a second, Angel thought she’d ignore her commanding officer’s orders and use it. But then she reversed it and slipped it back into its sheath.

“Do you have to do that?” Chase murmured beside her ear.

“They’re already going to kill us,” Angel hissed back at him. “What else can they do?”

Chase shook his head, his expression bleak.

“You don’t want to know.”

23

Victor Lee squatted on the damp, marshy ground and wished he knew how to read a map.

It shouldn’t have been that hard. It was an app on his phone, albeit one Chase had forced him and Angel to install, and he’d navigated using apps on his phone his whole life. On paved streets, with signs and traffic lights. The worst part was that, when he was on his scooter, he could follow the little arrow and see which way he was going and what turn he’d missed, but walking in the dark with nothing but the light on his phone to show the way, he had to go hundreds of yards the wrong direction before the app showed him. Worse, it was dead-reckoning, not satellite-guided, which made it even more balky and unresponsive.

It had been so much easier when the gunship was still searching for him, hanging up in the air like a homing beacon, but he’d outsmarted himself. They’d given up and headed east. He’d stood there with his mouth hanging open, watching them go, ready to give up, when he’d remembered the map.

They weren’t going back to the city, which meant they had their headquarters or camp or whatever somewhere else. But what else was there besides Jaipur? It wasn’t like this planet had a dozen big cities or anything. Even he knew Jaipur was the only real city on Vishnu, and the small farming settlements that had been pushed into the jungle around it were all to the east and south, along the river. To the west was nothing.

Almost nothing. He’d had to squint and enlarge the screen until the display was pixelated beyond comprehension, but he’d finally seen it. According to the caption, it had been a banana plantation… once upon a time, when the colony had been new. But the tiny paragraph, which had to be expanded until it filled the screen just to read, informed him that it had proven financially unviable, and it had been abandoned ten years ago. But the buildings were still there, and the land had been cleared, which would make it a perfect place for the Alliance to land their gunship.

And maybe he was being overly optimistic, but it was the only place he could see on that map that would make a good base camp for the Alliance special forces.

And what are you going to do if you get there and there’s nobody home?

Well, it had been a plantation… there would be shelter and maybe water. And if there were any banana trees left, maybe food. Except he hated bananas.

“Northwest,” he muttered to himself. “I need to go northwest for two… miles? Or is that kilometers? Damn it, why is this writing so freaking small?”

He was talking to himself a lot the last hour or so. It was better than the dead silence, and much better than listening to the far-off yowl of the cat creatures. Felinoid? Is that a word? If it wasn’t, it should be.

He had read that people who went hiking in grizzly country talked to let the bear know they were around so they wouldn’t surprise it and spur an attack, but he didn’t think that worked for cats. Cats were assholes.

“Hell with it, I gotta start walking. It’s getting lighter.”

His phone hadn’t synced with the local time, but he was pretty sure it was close to dawn now. Would that make a difference? The Chinese were sure to have night vision and thermal. Maybe he would be better off waiting until dawn to make sure he didn’t break his leg on something. But waiting here would have meant listening to those damned yowls, so he moved out.

After a mile of walking, he was two and a half miles from the banana plantation. And the sky was getting a lighter grey, unless it was his imagination. No matter what logic and reason said about it, he didn’t want to be walking out in the open during the day. If he’d been back in the jungle, it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but walking through the tall grass of the open fields, he’d stick out like a sore thumb.

There had to be someplace to hide, and now that there was some light—not much, but some—he could look around for it. The ground was getting rockier, the grass shorter, the trees and brush thinner, and all that added up to no place to get out of sight. Panic began to squeeze at Victor’s chest as gold glinted at the horizon, backlighting the distant forest. The trees beckoned to him, but they were in the opposite direction of the plantation. Maybe.

More rocks, and he nearly pitched headlong over a low ledge, a rock face leading down toward another creek bed.

Wait. A creek. That’s gotta be on the map.

He checked it. Yes, he was going the right direction now. The plantation was a mile and a half away. Encouraged, Victor shifted the weight of the duffle—again—and turned to clamber down the rock face… and fell when it faded away beneath his feet. He screamed, but it was cut off abruptly in a fervent curse when his butt hit hard ground only two meters below.

“That hurt!” he complained, rubbing at his right hip. God didn’t reply, but his echo did.

Echo? He twisted around, holding his cell phone light at arm’s length.

It was a cave. Not a large cave, only a few yards deep and about four feet high, certainly not large enough to stand up in. But maybe big enough to settle down into until it got dark again. His breathing settled down, and relief flowed into him… until he saw the bugs.

“Shit!” The screech was much less manly than he’d expected from himself, but he didn’t feel the least bit guilty. There were hundreds of them, centipedes or millipedes or whatever the hell they were called… all he knew was they didn’t have any of them in his apartment in Berkley, and if he ever got out of here, he’d never leave it again.

He scuttled back, shrugging the duffle bag off his back when it scraped up against the wall of the cave. It landed at his feet, and the cluster of disgusting bugs scattered away from it. He assumed it was from the impact of the bag, but the bugs didn’t stop running. They headed out the entrance of the cave, and out into the approaching light, which seemed like a damned odd thing for nightcrawlers to do. And not just them, a stream of other insects of various shapes and sizes and degrees of ickyness joined them, pouring out of every nook and cranny in the rock, retreating into the night.

Away from the duffle bag. Away from the artifact inside.

Victor had been hauling the thing around for hours and hours, and somehow he’d forgotten it was there except for the annoying tug of its weight against his shoulder. It was invisible, out of sight and out of mind. But not out of sight anymore. The bag had slipped open when he’d dropped it from his back, and the golden glow from the artifact rivaled the coming dawn, drawing his eyes to it.

He should have been terrified. Every rational fiber of his being told him to be terrified, to run just like those damned bugs. But he couldn’t leave, couldn’t even look away. He hadn’t meant to, had given no thought to the possibility, but he took a step closer to the bag.

It’s beautiful.

So beautiful he had to touch it.

No, you moron!

Victor didn’t listen to the advice, didn’t listen to anything but a siren song coming out of that golden light. He brushed the surface of the thing with his fingertips… and he knew.

There was no better way to describe it. He didn’t watch a movie play out inside his head, he didn’t hear a voice explaining it to him, he just knew as if he’d always known, as if it had been a part of his memory for years and he simply hadn’t thought about it before. He knew that the aliens who’d built this thing were the same ones whose skeleton they’d found, and he knew it because he could see an image in his memory of the living creatures.

They were breathtaking, but not in the same way as the bugs. Nothing about them scared him, no part of their existence worried him because among the things he just knew was that they didn’t exist here anymore, nor anywhere in this galaxy. They were tall, broad-chested, and straight-backed, though the arrangement of their hips and knees were more reminiscent of a kangaroo than a hominid. Their faces, while definitely not humanoid, were also not the disgusting collection of cilia and mandibles he’d conjured up in his fevered imagination when they’d found the skeleton. Their skin was grey and scaly, not so much like a reptile but more along the lines of a pangolin or an armadillo. Their faces were angular, narrowing to an oval mouth with omnivore’s teeth, though they didn’t look as if they grew there from roots but were extrusions of the jaw.

And the eyes. The eyes reminded him of the egg, golden, with subtle shapes formed deep inside, floating yet also part of the structure. Their gaze pierced his soul, not like the memory they resembled but as if they stood beside him in the cave, for all that they were three feet too tall to fit in it.

But the cave was on one of their worlds, their home, its skies as blue as Earth’s, clouds as white. There were trees of a sort, more different from Earth flora than the greenery on Vishnu or any of the other colonies, yet still familiar enough that he wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d found them there.

Most importantly, he knew what the artifact was.

I am what you would call an artificial intelligence.

The voice was inside his head, but there was some audible component of it as well, as if he was listening to a translator talk over a foreign diplomat at the United Nations. Only this wasn’t any human language lying beneath the unaccented English. It was nothing that had ever come from Earth, but if he’d been forced, gun to head, to compare it to anything he’d ever heard before, it might have brought to mind the song of a whale. Though it had about as much similarity to a cetacean as the hoots of a chimpanzee did to a mezzo soprano singing opera.

Victor’s heartbeat thumped hard, drowning out his thoughts, drowning out the questions. Like why he wasn’t panicking. Panic was an old friend, his first refuge, an emotional wall he built against reality when the world turned from indifferent to hostile. Like now. But panic wouldn’t be found and fear was no comfort. He was naked to reality and had to accept it, accept that what he was seeing was the truth, not some hallucination caused by dehydration or exhaustion.

Victor sucked in a deep breath and faced the creature.

“What’s your name?” he asked it. Though he didn’t speak any more than it had. This whole conversation was taking place inside his head, or, more accurately, through his thoughts and into the contact he’d made with the artifact.

“In our language, my name is…” And the image of one of the aliens threw back its head and made another warble, as if Luciano Pavarotti had been born to a pod of orcas. “But you are unlikely to be able to correctly enunciate it without injuring yourself. In your tongue, it would literally mean Emissary for the People.”

“You call yourselves ‘the People?’ That’s original.” Now was certainly not a good time to be snarky, but it was Victor’s next instinct right after panic, and one of the consequences of the knowing, the lack of fear, that had thrown him back to his default settings.

“Yes, I sense that you are aware of many cultures from the past on your world who used this designation. And we are no different, for we so named ourselves before we knew that there was any other life in this galaxy, nor even a galaxy for there to be life within. We, at least, did not arrogate ourselves as ‘the true people,’ as many of your cultures have.”

“Okay, point,” he admitted. “But I’m not going to call you Emissary for the People. It sounds like a rap artist.” Victor frowned. “You’re an artificial intelligence? You mean like a real sentient system or just an emulation that imitates people? Err…I mean, The People?”

“If the imitation is executed well enough, is there a difference?” The thing laughed, which creeped Victor the hell out because its image didn’t even try to attempt to appear like it was laughing. “There was much debate on this when systems such as myself were first conceived, and, a thousand years later, the People were no closer to knowing the correct answer, so I recommend you do as they did and believe whatever makes you feel better.”

A thousand years…

“How old are you?”

“I was built twelve thousand years ago, but to ask how old I am is a worthless question as I have not been continuously operational during that interval, nor do I perceive the passage of time as you do, or, indeed, as my creators did. I believe, from what I gather via the link between us, that the question you really wish to ask is, am I insane after sitting buried on this planet for the last ten thousand years? And the only answer I can give you is that I don’t believe I am, but that is hardly definitive, as most who go insane don’t realize it.”

Oh, good. An honest machine.

“You guys aren’t here anymore.” Victor approached the thing from a different direction. “Not in this galaxy. At least that’s what I got when I touched the egg. So, where are you? Did all of the People die out?”

“I can’t say with any sort of certainty. I was, obviously, abandoned here ten thousand years ago, but at that time, their plan was to leave this galaxy and never return.”

“What did they have against this galaxy?” Victor was struck by another thought and stepped over his own question. “Hey, were you here… I mean, were you awake, conscious, whatever, when the Arborists were here? The aliens who were digging you up a few thousand years back?”

“That story becomes complicated, and we are getting ahead of ourselves. You’ve activated me, and there are things I am obligated to tell you by my programming. The first of which is, you being here is no accident.”

Victor shook his head.

“Of course, it’s not an accident! I’m an archaeology student, and Dr. Cortez brought me along because none of the other graduate assistants were stupid enough to say yes!”

Victor had never heard a computer speaking through the mouth of a non-humanoid alien sigh before, but this thing managed it somehow.

“We are speaking telepathically, and yet I still feel we have a communications problem. I will try again. Humans being on this planet was not an accident. Humans acquiring the stardrive was not some quirk of fate, some chance discovery by one of your scientists. Nor was it an accident that the race you call the Arborists, whose true name was the K’tchini, received the same technology.”

“Received?” Cold tendrils climbed up Victor’s back. “Received it from who?”

The thing’s face twisted into an expression Victor never should have been able to interpret, and yet he was. It was amusement.

“Why, from us, of course.”

24

Chase Weston blinked awake as the gunship jolted to a landing.

“I can’t believe you fell asleep,” Angel hissed in his ear.

Chase shrugged, letting one of the Chinese Sea Dragon commandos pull him up from his seat. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t going to admit it in front of Liu or Angel.

“You learn to grab sleep or food whenever you have the chance,” he told her, making it sound much more romantic than it was. “You never know when you’re going to get the chance next.”

“A wise attitude, Sgt. Weston,” Colonel Liu observed, putting a hand on each of their shoulders to guide them down the ramp. “Particularly since this may be the very last chance you ever have.”

“You’ve got quite the sense of melodrama there, Colonel,” Chase told him. “You been watching too many spy thrillers?”

“These opportunities come along so rarely, it’s difficult to turn them down.”

Chase smiled. Liu was a cold-blooded bastard, but it was hard to hate him. Not that Chase wouldn’t kill him if he had the chance, of course.

“What is this place?” Angel asked, looking around.

Chase had been observing out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be obvious about it, but she was a civilian, so he cut her some slack. The house was old, the wood rotten along the edge of the concrete slab, but he could tell it had once been an agricultural area. A well and the remains of a pump house, crumbling now after years of neglect, slumped off to one side like a forgotten toy, beside it the rusted hulk of a tractor. It was shabby, run-down, yet the golden rays of dawn lent it a certain beauty.

“Banana plantation,” Liu told her. “The previous owners found out that just because plants will grow doesn’t mean you can actually get them somewhere to sell without an established logistics train.” He grinned. “As a good Communist, I should probably not know so much about the mechanisms of capitalism, but then my country has always been pragmatic about making money.”

“You’re not a good Communist, Colonel,” Chase reminded him. “Not yet.”

“Oh, I get that joke, Sergeant,” Liu said, shaking a finger at him. He pushed open the door to the plantation house, the hinges squeaking in protest. The inside was a stark contrast to the disrepair of the outside, the bare, concrete floors swept clean and brown tarps hung from the walls to block off the holes. The interior walls had been torn down except one that might have been a bathroom, and portable work lights glowed on tripod stands, throwing the cots and chairs and communications gear into sharp relief, the shadows cast long behind them like knife edges.

Two more of the Sea Dragon commandos waited inside, seated in folding chairs behind computer monitors that were, he guessed, linked to drone surveillance.

“Anything to report?” Liu asked them.

“No, sir,” one of them, a younger woman with hair cut down about an inch from her scalp, reported. “The only movement out there has been the local wildlife.” She made a face. “Not that those tiger things aren’t scary enough. I wouldn’t want to face one even with a grenade launcher.”

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” he assured her, “we won’t leave you alone with the tigers.” Liu nodded to one of his people, a long-faced man with bad teeth, and the subordinate grabbed Chase by the arm and took him to a corner of the big room, where what looked like an old office chair was bolted into the concrete slab.

The fact that they’d thought to acquire the chair and bothered to go to the trouble of bolting it down worried the hell out of him, but he didn’t bother struggling when the man shoved him into it, then flex-cuffed him to the arms. Even if he could have somehow overpowered the commando and gotten his hands in front of him, there were still a dozen armed Sea Dragons between him and the door.

And Angel. Even if he could get out, she couldn’t, which meant he couldn’t.

“Perfect,” Liu said, clapping his hands as if he was a movie director about to shoot a scene. “I think we’ll start with Dr. Cortez.”

“Why not start with me?” Chase interjected, turning all their heads his way. He shrugged, trying to seem casual. “I’m easily bored, and I’d rather just get right to it. Anyway, the whole point of enhanced interrogation techniques is to instill fear and despair until you dole out just enough hope to get the subject to break. I’ve been around too long to be any more afraid than I already am, and I already know there’s no hope. So, just take me first and you can scare the shit out of Dr. Cortez in the process.”

The words had spilled out like he’d tipped over a water jug, and it took him a moment to reel them back in and shut his mouth, trying not to sound desperate and knowing he’d probably done a poor job of it.

Liu didn’t mock, didn’t yell. Instead, the look on his hard, scarred face was almost sympathetic.

“Oh, Sergeant,” he said, “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a more eloquent way of telling a woman you love her.” Chase bit down on an instinctive denial, and Liu grinned, too sharp to miss it. Angel Cortez stared at Chase, swallowing hard, as if the words scared her more than the prospect of torture. “But you’ve made a key error,” Liu went on, motioning for the others to take Angel across the room where another seat was set attached to the concrete slab, this one not office furniture, but something more like a dentist’s chair.

Angel didn’t make a sound except when Sgt. Lin pushed against her shoulder. Angel stomped backward with her heel and slammed it down onto Lin’s instep.

Lin cursed and raised the butt of her rifle to strike Angel, but Liu stepped in and grabbed the stock of the weapon, staring her down.

“Did I say,” he ground out in Chinese, slow enough that Chase could keep up with it from the remote-study courses he’d been taking for years, “that I wanted you to shove the prisoner?”

“No, sir,” Lin responded, not meekly but with obvious restraint, though Chase didn’t know if it was because of respect for Liu or fear.

“Trust me, Sergeant, if I want to use brute force against either of the prisoners, you will be my first resort. But not until and unless I give the order. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Strap her down.” Liu glanced back at Chase, eyes narrowing. “You speak Chinese, don’t you?” He’d asked the question in Mandarin, and Chase did his best not to react, not sure how successful he was. Liu shrugged. “No matter,” he said in English. “As I was saying, you’re making a key error. I know you’ve probably dealt with other elements of my government that are mired in the old ways… electric shock, waterboarding, bamboo shoots under the fingernails.” He laughed at the last, whether because he thought it was ludicrous or from pleasant memories, Chase couldn’t say. “I am quite aware of how unreliable intelligence gathered from physical duress can be. Which is why the Chinese government has been working for decades now on the correct combination of chemicals to loosen even the tightest tongue. Sgt. Chiao?”

Chiao was a tall man, over six feet and broad-shouldered, but his touch was precise and gentle when he unzipped the small black pouch and pulled out an injection gun and a small vial of brown liquid. Chase’s mouth went dry.

“That shit isn’t FDA approved, is it?” He’d meant the words to be casual, to show how little he was concerned, but again, he failed miserably.

“It won’t be pleasant,” Liu warned. “And I’m told there’s a hell of a hangover. But I haven’t noticed any permanent damage.” A low chuckle. “Then again, we haven’t conducted any long-term testing since the subjects tend to die of unrelated ailments soon after.”

Marvelous. Chase said nothing this time, having learned his lesson.

Chiao inserted the vial then pressed the injector against Angel Cortez’s neck and touched the trigger. There was a subdued hiss, and the woman winced. Liu pulled a Velcro cover off his watch face and checked the time.

“Okay then, just have to wait a few minutes for that to kick in.” He looked around at the others. “Who’s hungry?”

* * *

“What the hell do you mean you gave us the drive?” Victor Lee demanded. He never thought he’d be tired of asking questions—it was sort of what a grad student did. But he was getting sick of feeling like a three-year-old child trying to understand nuclear physics. “You said the People left the galaxy ten thousand years ago! You said you’d been abandoned here.”

“Abandoned was a poor choice of words,” Emissary allowed. “I am working from a perspective gained through your thoughts, and I used the closest term that would evoke my own feelings on the matter, perhaps a product of the lack of sentient conversation over the last several millennia. I was left here as part of a plan, and so were my brothers and sisters… a test of new civilizations that might arise. We were taken to planets where it was felt we might be discovered by sentient life, but in my case, the ship that brought me here developed problems with the drive, and we were stranded. The technician whose job it was to hook me to the network with the other units in the test was injured in the crash and eventually died while programming my uplink.”

Yeah, we found his skeleton. Wonder how badly someone had to screw up for ancient alien astronauts to crash and die?

“You said brothers and sisters… how many of you are there?”

“At one time? Hundreds. I don’t know what’s happened to them in the time since I was left alone here because the uplink was only partially successful. I can receive their data but can’t send my own.”

“Send it how?” Victor hadn’t been scared, but now he was frustrated. The thing spoke his language, but it sure as hell didn’t know a human mind worked. “Wouldn’t it take, like, years for any signal to get to you? Even with the Soong-Tierney drive, we can’t send any signals faster than light.”

“That is because you didn’t build the drive. We did. And we offered it to every sentient species we encountered over the last ten thousand years.”

“Holy shit,” Victor hissed. “You mean Dr. Soong-Tierney is a con artist? But she made like, billions on that drive! Oh, man, I am so going to call the FTC on her when we get back! If it didn’t belong to her, she shouldn’t have been able to sell it…”

The image of the People—the person?—took a step closer, almost bounding on the backward-canted legs, the golden eyes staring down into his, and for the first time since the psychic communication began, Victor felt a surge of fear.

“All humans can’t be like this, can they?” Emissary demanded, though who he was asking, Victor wasn’t sure. “Is there another I might talk to who would take this more seriously?”

“Like, take what seriously, dude?” Victor shot back, a flare of anger replacing the brief fear. “I mean, you’ve told me this story about how you and a bunch of other golden egg machines gave the S-T drive, or the stardrive or whatever you want to call it, to us and other races, and that’s a cool story that I guess I can sell to the newsnets when I get home and maybe write my doctoral thesis on, assuming I ever get out of here, but I’ve got other problems! My friends were captured by Chinese commandos, and I’m out here by myself with nothing but my cell phone, and now, I guess, you. It’s really trippy talking to an alien AI, but it’s not the only thing I’ve got to think about.”

There was a long silence, and Victor thought maybe he’d pissed the machine off and it wouldn’t talk to him anymore. Which would be a shame because it felt better talking to an alien computer than it did talking to himself.

“I sense,” the machine said, finally, “that your race is still embroiled in internecine warfare. Perhaps you aren’t up to the challenge, despite having survived the test.”

“You keep talking about a test. A test for what?”

“The reason the People left this galaxy. The approaching threat. The Sunkillers.”

Victor rubbed a hand over his face, trying not to sound impatient again.

“Can you, like, explain that? In real simple terms, man, because you could fit everything I know about physics in a pamphlet and still have room for a takeout menu.”

“The People discovered the stardrive tens of thousands of years ago and used it to explore this galaxy.” The machine had recovered its patience, which was great news for Victor since he had no desire to be stuck in this hallucination with an ill-tempered alien. “We discovered the ruins of many civilizations but never another sentient species still living. It seemed to us as if any which achieved high technology destroyed itself before it could leave the cradle. Yet still, we searched, refusing to believe we were completely alone.

“Then, we found the Sunkillers. They were a hive mind, no one of their individual bodies completely sentient, but the whole more than a product of the sums. We were thrilled and tried to communicate with them, which was a mistake. The Sunkillers didn’t care for the idea they weren’t alone, particularly didn’t care for the fact that the only other sentient species they’d discovered weren’t a hive intelligence like themselves. They considered individual consciousness akin to blasphemy. And they were determined to wipe it out.”

“You keep calling them the Sunkillers. Where did they get that name?”

“Once they determined the direction from which we’d come to their worlds, they decided to deal with the problem of our existence by ending it. They built the Sunkillers and sent them along our trail. Imagine a starship the size of a planet, with engines as large as this planet’s moon, and an electromagnetic scoop sucking in the interstellar hydrogen out of the vacuum for hundreds of thousands of miles around to provide the fuel for its fusion drive. You say you do not know physics, but can you picture the device of which I speak?”

“Yeah, I think I read something about this once,” Victor said, excited to finally find a subject he was familiar with. “It was an old concept of how to build a… relativistic, I think? Yeah, a relativistic starship. They called it the Bussard ramjet. But that was supposed to be like, a thousand years away, and now I guess we don’t have to worry about trying to build one since you gave us the S-T drive.”

“You should be worried about it, Victor Lee. Because one of them has been traveling toward your home system for tens of thousands of years, at just slightly under the speed of light. And when it arrives, it will plunge into your sun and cause it to go nova, extinguishing all life in your system.”

“What?” Victor gaped at the alien. “Why the hell would they try to sterilize us if they were pissed off at you?”

“The discovery of our existence was a trigger for the hive mind,” Emissary informed him, and if the sadness and regret in its voice was affected, it was a good imitation. “It decided that individual consciousness couldn’t be tolerated and the best way to get rid of them was to build hundreds of these Sunkillers, to devote all its resources to their construction and send them to any system which seemed capable of harboring intelligent life. Including ours. We sent everything we had up against it, but the magnetic fields it generates to collect interstellar hydrogen and protect itself from asteroid collisions are powerful enough to rip apart any ship which gets within a hundred thousand miles of the thing.” The image of the alien made a gesture with both hands together that Victor knew was one of grief. “We were forced to abandon our home, all the systems we’d colonized, and leave this galaxy for a home we thought far enough away to be beyond the reach of the Sunkillers.”

Victor’s stomach twisted at an image of one of the planet-sized weapons spearing into the Sun at close to the speed of light, of Earth scrubbed clean of life by radiation. Not just Earth… Gateway, the other orbitals, the Lunar base, the Mars outpost, everything gone. Maybe the mining facilities out at Jupiter’s moons would survive, but they were barely even crewed. How many ships could Earth turn out before it was too late?

Wait a second.

“You said the Sunkillers were travelling slower than light. How far away were they? Did their… ramjet thing hit your star yet?”

“By now, it has, though by the time I was stranded on this world, the systems of the People were all evacuated, the exodus begun.”

“And how long do we have?”

“I can’t say for sure. Each of the Sunkillers took decades to construct and the resources of an entire star system, and we were their priority. But they knew which systems were inhabited. They learned from us when they captured our emissaries and stole their files. They will be coming for you.”

“And what the hell can we do about it?” Victor yelled, waving his hands, finally giving into his old friend, panic. “You said you gave us the drive… somehow… in order to help us face the Sunkillers. But the People couldn’t do anything against them and you’re like, thousands of years more advanced than we are.”

“There is a planet. One chosen carefully, in a system where there were no habitable worlds, where there had never been any life. Before the People left this galaxy, they left every technological secret we had uncovered in our thousands of years of traversing this galaxy, not only of our own discoveries but also from the remains of other ancient and advanced civilizations we had come across.”

“Well, Christ, why didn’t you tell me that to begin with?” Victor asked, pacing around a cave too small to even stand up, knowing somewhere at the base of his consciousness that he’d never let go of the artifact this whole time… and that the time was as much of an illusion as the alien. “Just tell me where it is, dude! I’ll give the location to the government and be a hero, and they’ll figure out a way to get us out of all this!”

“I am not allowed to tell you, only to guide you. And only you.”

“What do you mean, only me?” Victor’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“What you refer to as the artifact is much more than that. It is more, even, than the receptacle for my consciousness. It’s a stardrive, a power source, a weapon… and a key. The key to accessing the storehouse of ancient knowledge.”

“Hey, that’s cool,” Victor insisted. “I mean, Dr. Cortez won’t be thrilled about giving it up, but I’ll personally be happy to give it up and get everyone off our backs.”

The way the alien looked at him reminded him of how his mother had stared him down when he’d said something stupid as a child. Or as an adult.

“You still don’t understand, Victor Lee. You activated the neural linkage between us. You are connected with it, and with me, forever. As I am Emissary for the People, you are now an Emissary for us… and for me. And no one else may achieve linkage for as long as you live.”

Time jumped back into gear, and Victor broke contact with the artifact, finding himself back in the cave, swaying side to side in shock and horror.

“It’s not real,” he murmured, staring at the glowing, golden shape nestled in the folds of the duffle bag. “It can’t be real.”

Trust me, Victor. It is.

The walls of the cave spun around him, and Victor sank into darkness.

25

Evangeline Cortez was swimming through a sea of lavender foam, comfortable and comforting, washing away all her fears and uncertainties, her trauma and pain. She never wanted to leave it, but a voice beckoned her, kind and soft but insistent, repeating the same question over and over.

“Where is the artifact?” the faceless, disembodied voice asked. “What did you do with the artifact?”

Angel started to tell him. After all, what harm would it do?

The sea of haze coalesced for just an eyeblink into the bloodless, dying face of Dan Stephenson, as if his visage was an answer to her unspoken question.

Where am I? Who’s asking?

The sea pushed back like the tide and reality flickered at its edges, swirling darker colors inward through the pink foam. Another face formed, but this one was no specter, no phantom of a dead man. This face was younger, handsome in spite of its imperfection, or perhaps because of it. A name pushed its way through the muddled fog of her thoughts, as if the word were a magic spell that could clear away her confusion.

Liu.

“Where is the artifact, Dr. Cortez?” Liu asked again.

“How do you know about it?” She hadn’t thought she was capable of putting together a coherent sentence, but it came out clearly, if softly.

“I told you,” Liu reminded her. “It was one of Dr. Stephenson’s workers…”

“No.” She tried to shake her head but couldn’t, the straps biting into her temples. “Not how you knew we had it. You had to know there was something here. There are digs all over the galaxy. What made this one so special?”

“I follow orders without pressing my superiors for details they don’t wish to give,” Liu said, and she wasn’t sure if she just imagined the impatience gathering beneath his calm depths. “Now tell me, where is it?”

“I don’t know what happened to it,” she insisted, not just saying the words but believing them, sensing the belief was important. “The last time I saw it was in Haricot’s townhouse. You should go check with him. Haricot must have it.”

Liu shook his head, admiration in his gaze.

“You are a tough one, Dr. Cortez,” he admitted. “But then, I suppose you would be. I’ve read your file. It’s quite extensive, you know. The Alliance maintains files on all westerners who travel among the nonaligned worlds and yours is particularly fascinating. You were born in Mexico… Sinaloa. Your father was a federale, your mother a prosecuting attorney. And when the cartels began to take over the government during the war, your parents did what any good parents would do and tried to get their twelve-year-old daughter somewhere safe. They tried to smuggle you into San Diego, but the cartels caught up with them first. Those cartel enforcers wanted to make you watch what they did to your mother and father.” Liu made a face. “The file was quite detailed. They were savages, of course, but amateurish in their enthusiasm. And you were to be next, a final warning to anyone who tried to enforce the law in those dark times. How did you escape that fate? That was one thing the dossier lacked, an explanation of how you wound up alone in downtown San Diego, an orphan, wandering nearly catatonic until the police picked you up. How did you escape?”

Angel didn’t want to tell him, but this question had spurred a wave of memories, washing over her like the tide rushing in, a rush that wouldn’t be denied, pouring out of her.

“My father… he’d managed to hide a grenade. He wasn’t supposed to have it, but he’d pulled it out of a cartel safehouse during a raid and saved it. When the Sinaloa cartel found us near the border, my parents tried to seek help with the local police, but they were paid off by the narcotraficantes. They didn’t search my father, though, since they didn’t want to give away that they’d betrayed him.”

She sucked in a breath, as winded as if she’d run a 10K race, sweat pouring down her forehead, matting her hair. And she was there.

“Don’t hurt them,” her father said. Emilio Francisco Cortez, Lieutenant in the Guardia Nacional, the inheritors of the original Policia Federale. He’d always been her hero, and seeing him scared made her even more afraid. “You have me. Do whatever you want to me. They’re innocent… don’t hurt them.”

The man they called El Principe laughed. Angel shuddered in the arms of her mother and wasn’t sure if Mama was shaking as well. Manuel Alejandro Santiago, second-in-command of the Sinaloa Cartel, the most wanted man in Mexico. Angel wasn’t even a teenager yet, but children in elementary school knew about El Principe, the Prince.

“You weren’t so concerned for innocent family when your platoon killed my grandfather,” El Principe sneered. “He was never a part of the cartel, just an old man driving with his son. But your people shot him.”

“It was a mistake,” Emilio insisted, pleading now. “One of your father’s men shot at us and my sergeant returned fire. I never ordered your grandfather killed. We didn’t even know he was there. Look, if you blame me for his death, I accept responsibility. I was in command, so anything my men did is my fault. Kill me, do whatever you want, but let them go. They can’t hurt you.”

“No, they can’t,” El Principe agreed. “But they can hurt you.

And he pulled the trigger. Angel jerked instinctively at the sound, hands going to her ears, but Mama was pulling against her arm. She didn’t know why, didn’t know why Mama was falling, why her white T-shirt was turning crimson. Why Papa was screaming.

But she did know what the thing was her father had pulled from his jacket. She’d seen it in the movies, the kind Mama didn’t want her watching, where men killed each other. It was a grenade. Much later, she’d wonder how the cartel gunmen hadn’t found it, why they hadn’t searched him, and she’d decide that they were just too cocky, too confident in their numbers and their reputation as cold killers. They figured no one would ever dare to fight back.

“Run, Angel!”

She would never know how she managed to do it. She didn’t think about her mother dying at her feet, about the men with guns, about what her father was about to do, just did what her Papa told her and ran as fast as she could for the door to the old, disused garage attached to the police station. One of the men made a grab for her, but she’d run track in school and out of the blocks, no one could catch her.

The sun was high and the glare blinded her on the way out, and she ran nearly into the arms of a man left outside to guard the entrance. He laughed at her desperate struggle and ran the cold steel of his shiny, nickel-plated revolver against her cheek. He was saying something she couldn’t hear when the grenade went off. It distracted him enough to slacken his grip, and when she pulled free, she took the gun with her.

Her father had taken her to the range twice, before Mama decided she didn’t like it. It was enough that she knew how to aim it and pull the trigger. She’d thought she’d fired just one round, but she emptied the cylinder, and the hammer was clicking on spent cartridge casings. The cartel thug was clutching at his chest, gasping, and choking on his own blood. She threw the gun down and ran.

And she’d never stopped running.

She shook her head, and tears she didn’t remember crying flew away.

“I don’t know why I did it. I was twelve, and I’d just watched my mom die. When I look back, I feel guilty that I was able to think about saving myself instead of losing my parents.”

She shouldn’t have been saying this, wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone. She hadn’t told anyone about that day since she was thirteen and had sworn never to speak of it again. But the same sense of pragmatism that had gotten her out of that police station a second ahead of the grenade blast whispered to her that this was the lesser of two evils, that tapping into the old pain would stop her from saying something even more damaging, something she wouldn’t let herself think of.

“I know people think of me as cold, callous,” she babbled on, past caring what she said, what embarrassing revelations she exposed in front of the commando team… or in front of Chase Weston. “Graduate students don’t want to work for me…” She stopped herself, somehow sensing she was skirting dangerous territory but not allowing herself to think of why. “But it helped me to survive when most wouldn’t have.”

Colonel Liu stared at her with a neutral expression, one that he must have worked very hard to perfect.

“That is impressive,” he admitted, nodding slowly. “Both what you had to do to survive and how effectively you used that memory to shut down the effects of the drug.” He applauded. “Yet I still want to know where the artifact is, Dr. Cortez.”

“I don’t know,” she said flatly, her voice disconnected from her conscious mind. “I haven’t seen it since we left Haricot’s townhouse.”

“What does it look like?” He was trying another tack ,and she wasn’t so muddled that she didn’t see the shift. “The artifact? Describe it to me.”

“Silver,” she said, deciding that the exact opposite of the truth would be the simplest path to take. “A sphere about two feet in diameter, and it glows, though it’s not radioactive. Impervious to X-rays, and it reads higher than the background temperature on thermal. We didn’t have time to figure out anything else.”

“And you don’t know what it does? What its purpose might be?”

“Not a clue.” And that part wasn’t a lie. “We’d just uncovered it when you attacked the dig.” Her lip curled. “And killed Dan Stephenson.”

Liu regarded her in silence, pacing in front of the dentist chair. Her eyes had trouble focusing on him, and the pink foam was returning, closing in on the edges of her vision.

“I could,” he declared finally, “give you another dose of the drugs and go through all this again. It would be unpleasant for you, possibly to the point of brain damage. Yet I hesitate to do that, not only because of the effects on you, but also for the fact that the more you repeat what I suspect are lies, the more your brain will settle on them as truth and the less likely I’ll get anything useful from you.”

Angel let herself breathe again. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep this up.

“No, I think it’s Sgt. Weston’s turn.”

The relief fled away, and Angel’s stomach tightened. She tried to convince herself it was because she was worried about him not holding up as well as she had… but if the drugs hadn’t kept her from lying to Liu, they at least refused to let her lie to herself.

* * *

“What the hell?” Victor Lee moaned, cradling his head in his hands. His temples throbbed, and his neck felt as if he’d slept on a rock.

He opened his eyes.

“Oh, yeah.” He had slept on a rock. But he didn’t remember falling asleep, didn’t remember being tired.

Fear, he did remember. Fear, panic, isolation, the fear of being all alone and the even greater fear of not being alone. It had been relentlessly dark, and he’d been hopelessly lost and somehow, he’d found this place. But it wasn’t dark anymore. Light turned the mysterious depths of the cave into mundane tans and reds and the black smear of dried mud, the shadowy interior only extending eight or ten feet before the rock face cut it off abruptly.

Victor edged toward the entrance on hands and knees, moving slowly and silently. The sun was near the horizon, and by the cast of the light, he was sure it was heading down and not up.

Did I sleep that long? It couldn’t have been full dawn when he’d found the cave. That would mean he’d been unconscious for nearly twelve hours. I must have been exhausted.

He backed into the cave, and his hand fell on the canvas of the duffle bag. Victor yelped and jumped back away from it, staring at the golden glow of the artifact, every memory rushing back to him in a surge of utter horror.

It was a dream, a nightmare. There was no way any of that could have actually happened. It was the product of an exhausted mind preyed upon by the fear of the tigers, the Chinese, and the corporate mercenaries, not to mention the background strain of carrying the alien artifact.

Yeah, that’s it. It was all a nightmare. I must have been nuts to think any of that was real.

And yet, it is true.

Victor screamed. He was, he realized, standing outside in the sun, in front of God and everyone, screaming his head off, and he abruptly shut up and ran back inside the cave, keeping the length of it separating him from the duffle bag.

“Calm down,” he told himself, closing his eyes, hands spread, palms toward the ground as if trying to steady himself against it. “Calm the hell down. Chase and Dr. Cortez need help, and they don’t need you panicking.”

And this was, he decided very much against his will, more important than which government got to study the artifact. He hated the thought because it was an admission that everything he remembered was, indeed, real, and that was enough to make him want to curl back up on the floor of the cave and cry like an infant.

Victor wasn’t sure why he didn’t do just that, why he didn’t throw in the towel on his sanity. Maybe it was the fact that Angel was in trouble, or maybe it was the residual effect of the neural linkage to the artifact and the way it had calmed his fears. Either way, he had to get back out and find that banana plantation before it got too dark for him to see, and more than that, he had to make sure that no matter what happened, the Alliance didn’t get their hands on the alien AI. Maybe he was being biased toward the culture he’d grown up in, but he couldn’t say with any certainty that the Chinese government would use the information that Emissary gave them for anything except seizing control of Earth.

But he also couldn’t chance losing the thing. And as he’d demonstrated more than once in just the last twenty-four hours, land navigation was not his strong suit. Victor stared at the bag, gears turning behind his eyes.

I’ve lost luggage in a lot of different airports, but I don’t think the baggage office is going to be much help this time.

He laughed sharply at a memory of trekking around the Cairo airport with Dr. Cortez scowling at him while he hunted for a lost suitcase. She’d wound up buying him a tracking strip that his phone could trace from up to two miles away…

Victor grabbed at his phone, clawed at the side of the protective cover, and pulled out the small, purple-colored tab. It was magnetic, but he didn’t think it would stick to the artifact. He tucked it into the side of the duffle bag, in a zipper pocket, then opened the app on his phone and held his breath. The purple glow on the screen hovered over the tab, then he moved outside and jogged fifty yards away. The purple halo got smaller on the screen but stayed in the same position.

“Holy hell,” he murmured. “This might actually work.”

* * *

In less than an hour, Victor was lost.

Well, I’m not lost lost. He knew where the cave was, could have found the artifact again if he had to. But he still couldn’t find that damned banana plantation.

It should have been easy. It was the only cleared land around for miles, and it was right there on his mapping software, but he couldn’t find it. The sun was heading downward with alarming rapidity, and he was going to wind up no better off than he had been last night.

I’m fucking useless. How the hell does that stupid machine think I’m going to save the galaxy from the Sunkillers when I can’t even find a damned farm in the middle of the jungle?

He slumped to the ground and took shelter behind a clump of brush, resting his hands on his knees. Heading back to the cave might be the smart thing to do. At least that was a known starting point. He was still debating the idea when a distant murmur teased at the edges of his thoughts.

That almost sounded like voices. But it couldn’t be. It had to be a creek, or maybe a tree swaying in the wind. An animal even.

No, those are voices!

He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were definitely human voices. It had to be the Chinese, out there looking for him. Did that mean Chase and Angel had given him up? Or were they just going off the idea that there had to be a third person carrying the artifact? Either way, once they didn’t find him, they had to head back to their base, that plantation.

I could follow them. If I keep them ahead of me, they’ll never know I’m there.

It was perfect, and he was so damned proud of himself for thinking of it, he nearly lost track of those voices. They were up on his right. He had to hurry, or they’d outpace him and he would be back to being lost in the dark, and maybe they’d even track him down.

No, there they were again. He heard them now, ahead and to the left. He risked making a little noise himself, roots and twigs crunching under his feet. They wouldn’t hear him, not while they were talking. They had to be on the other side of that stand of tall grass. It was like what he’d heard people call lion grass in Africa, though it couldn’t be the same thing, and not just because they were on an alien planet. This area was closer to Vietnam or India, or maybe even parts of Central America, so it couldn’t be that same kind of dry-growing vegetation. But it was close enough so he dubbed it lion grass in his head.

The Chinese had to be on the other side of it, near the stand of trees he could barely make out in the growing shadow of dusk. He could squeeze through the grass, maybe come out just behind them, and then he’d wait there until they moved off. They wouldn’t come through the grass… there’d be no reason for them to search in there.

He touched the long, green blades gingerly, half-expecting their edges to be razor-sharp, but they were yielding, soft, attached to a harder stalk, and they swayed to the side at his push. They rattled—softly, but enough to make him wince in embarrassment. It was a good thing they weren’t expecting him to be here.

He had to be near the edge of the clump of tall grass, but he still couldn’t see shit through the thick stalks. A glint of light caught Victor’s eye, and he pushed through one last clump of stalks.

On the other side of it was the yawning muzzle of an automatic rifle, and Victor yelped, then jumped back a step as he nearly rammed his eye into the barrel. And above the wicked-looking carbine, a familiar, bushy mustache rode a twisted grin,

“Well, hello there, Mr. Lee,” Sean Haricot said. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

26

Chase tried to steel himself for the onset of the drugs, but he couldn’t look away from Angel Cortez. She was strapped to the same office chair that had confined him only minutes ago, but the restraints probably weren’t necessary. She was lolling, her eyes unfocused, and moaning softly, and despite what Liu had said, he was still worried about the lasting damage from the drugs.

He hadn’t been special forces, so he hadn’t worked as closely with the CIA as the Sea Dragons did with Chinese intelligence, but he knew that they’d been after the holy grail of chemical interrogation for decades, and there still wasn’t anything foolproof. Anything powerful enough to break down mental barriers was also powerful enough to scramble your brain.

And now it was coursing through his veins, working its way up to his brain.

Small loss. Not like I’m an officer, or a pilot.

“Sgt. Weston,” Liu said, and Chase knew from the look the man gave him that he’d been watching Chase watch Angel. “Please believe me when I say that I sincerely hope this works.” He stepped close enough for Chase to smell the distinctive odor of someone who bathed with different soap and ate different food. “Because if it doesn’t, my friend,” he went on, a harder edge to his voice, “I’m afraid we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

* * *

Something wet was trickling from Victor Lee’s nose, but the haze hanging over his thoughts kept him from remembering what it might be, or connecting it with the coppery taste in his mouth. Everything was dark except for the lights flickering behind his eyes, the starbursts of pain, and the dirt was wet and sticky under his fingers.

But why was he on the ground?

Memory flooded back as if the hands snatching him up off the dirt had grabbed it and yanked it into existence. Haricot’s face wasn’t nearly as friendly as he remembered it. The light from the fading dusk cloaked it in malevolent shadow that mirrored the dark clouds gathered behind those formerly cold and calculating eyes.

“Where are your friends, Lee?” he demanded, cracking a slap across Victor’s cheek and bringing back another memory, that the blood running down his nose had come from a very nasty punch, a harder hit than Victor had taken even when he’d been mugged. “Where’s that asshole Weston? And what did they take from the dig?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Victor croaked, sticking with answering the first question since it was the one he could respond honestly to without betraying anyone. “The Chinese took them!”

“Chinese my ass!” Haricot drew back his fist, and Victor cowered, expecting another blow, but a large, meaty hand grabbed the other man’s wrist and held it in place.

“Sean, hold up a second,” a deep, sonorous voice said in a tone that made clear it was more than just a suggestion.

Sean Haricot looked around, his face screwing up in anger but settling into something closer to annoyance when he saw the man who’d spoken. He was tall, broad-shouldered, imposing, and intimidating in a way that even Chase couldn’t have managed. His skin was the color of well-worn teak and his dark hair was buzzed down to a light dusting in a widow’s peak. Like the rest of the squad of armed men clustered in the clearing, the big one wore civilian outdoor clothing, hiking pants, a loose-fitting button shirt, and work boots, and, like the others, he looked as if he’d be more at home in a uniform.

Victor squinted at the man, not wanting to cower but only able to think of how hard someone that big could hit.

“He ain’t gonna tell you shit if you beat him unconscious,” the big man pointed out, letting Haricot’s hand loose once it was clear that he wasn’t going to hit Victor again. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” The big man’s eyes were dark and serious and seemed uninclined to accept any sort of foolishness, for all that he’d stopped Haricot from beating Victor. “Why do you think the Chinese have your friends?”

“I saw them get taken,” Victor said, eager to say something that wouldn’t get him hit and also wouldn’t make him a snitch. “We were running from”—he shrugged and gestured around him—“well, from you guys. And Gavin, that nice security guy had… I mean, one of you guys killed him. And we had to run. And we were trying to call for our ship, but it didn’t answer. But this Chinese gunship found us, and I fell down a ditch and they didn’t see me, but Chase and Dr. Cortez got captured. I think I know where they are, and I’ve been trying to find them.”

The words had spilled out of Victor like a rush of water, and he gasped for breath as they ran out along with his air. He stared between Haricot and the other man, hands hovering around his chest, ready to block another blow.

“You’re saying the Alliance Special Ops team has the artifact?” Haricot asked, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket and pulling him closer.

Victor wiped blood away from his nose and nodded enthusiastically.

“They had it with them. The Chinese have to have it. And I know where they are.”

“I don’t believe him,” one of the others declared. She was short and thick-armed, like a bodybuilder, and her eyes smoldered with anger, though at who, he wasn’t sure. “He’s a lying little weasel, I can see it in his face.” She was carrying the same sort of carbine as the others, and she shoved the muzzle into Victor’s chest hard enough to draw an involuntary grunt of pain. “I say we hamstring him and leave him for those Goddamned cats, then make him beg us to kill him, and then he’ll tell us the truth.”

“Jesus H. Tap-dancing Christ, Molly,” the big man said, sighing and rolling his eyes. “You know this is exactly why I didn’t want to hire her, Sean.”

Molly shot the big man a bird.

“Screw you, too, Wilson. What? You think you were joining the damned priesthood? This isn’t your precious Rangers… we’re working for Hart-Klein, and they don’t care about anything except results.”

Haricot shot the woman a pained look.

“And discretion, my dear Sergeant Kane. Don’t forget discretion. People are supposed to believe I still work for the CIA, recall.”

Molly Kane barked a laugh.

“Like this asshole’s going to tell anyone”—she leaned into Victor, eyes narrowing and he drew back—“anything. Ever.”

A few of the others chuckled in appreciation, and the bottom dropped out of Victor’s stomach. No, you’re the only hope they’ve got. You can’t shut down. They need you. And the worst these guys can do is kill you, and they already said they were going to do that.

“I’ll tell you where the Chinese have them!” he promised, raising his hands palms-out. “But you have to agree to let us go. I take you there and you get the artifact, and me and Dr. Cortez just go back to Earth, and I swear to God I’m never leaving again.”

Am I a good liar? No one’s ever said one way or the other. I hope that means I’m good at it.

The big man, Wilson they’d called him, eyed Haricot, tilting his head to the side in a question.

“You can’t be serious,” Haricot said, staring at him under hooded eyes. “He’s lying through his teeth, and even if he isn’t, you can’t honestly be suggesting we make a deal with this pissant!”

Wilson grabbed Haricot by the arm and guided him off to the side, speaking softly… probably thinking Victor couldn’t hear him, but the hissed words carried farther than the two men thought.

“What’s it matter if we tell him it’s a deal?” Wilson asked. “If the Alliance has the thing they dug up, we have to get it back. They won’t be expecting us. We can take them out before they even know we’re there. And if he’s lying…” Wilson glanced back at Victor, and there was something about the big man’s expression that gave him pause. Victor freely admitted to not being the most perceptive guy in the world, but he would have sworn in court that Wilson was worried about him. “Well, if he’s lying, we’re not out any more than some time, right? And like an old friend of mine used to say, you can only kill someone once.”

“Right,” Haricot murmured, eyeing Wilson doubtfully, then transferring both the stare and the doubt to Victor. He stepped closer, speaking up again as if he thought Victor hadn’t heard their exchange. “This is what’s going to happen, junior. You’re going to tell us where the Alliance has your friends, and we’re going to go kick their asses and take back from them what you took from the dig. And if they happen to live through that, which isn’t guaranteed at all mind you, because the Alliance won’t be giving them up easy, then we’ll let you and your pet cougar go, though getting back to Earth is your problem.” He raised a finger in warning. “But, if you’re screwing with us, then the suggestion Molly made about hamstringing you and leaving you for the tigers?” His smile was teeth-baring and reminded Victor of the catlike predator he’d seen the day before. “Well, that’s going to seem like the easy way out.”

* * *

Angel was tired of pretending to be semi-conscious, and she wondered if she was fooling anyone. The Sea Dragon commandos didn’t seem to be paying attention, but she was sure they were experienced enough at this sort of thing to know when someone was faking it. Still, admitting it and opening her eyes would have seemed like surrender, so she watched Colonel Liu snapping his fingers in front of Chase’s face through slitted eyelids, her head tilted to the side.

“Can you hear me, Sgt. Weston?” Liu asked, loud and precise.

Chase made a sound that was halfway between an affirmation and a grunt, but it seemed to be enough for Liu.

‘Good.” The Alliance officer crouched down, putting himself at eye level with Chase, peering intently into the blinking, unfocused blue. “You know, Sgt. Weston, you strike me as a hard man, one who wouldn’t hesitate to kill. Yet a life like that can prepare you for the wrong challenges. Tell me about the artifact.”

Chase spluttered, something that might have been a laugh, and he shook his head.

“Egg,” he said, the word slurred. “It’s a big, honking, golden egg.”

Shit. He was totally out of it, spilling everything. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised. Nothing about his character had overly impressed her yet.

“It’s important, I guess,” he went on, laughing again. “I don’t know why. If the Arborists had anything important to teach us, why didn’t they write it down with the rest of their shit? All they found was that they weren’t even as smart as we are. They killed themselves off. We didn’t do that.”

“Hold on a moment,” Liu said, raising a hand to stop Chase. “You’re telling me that Dr. Stephenson and Dr. Cortez are able to read Arborist script?”

“I guess.” Chase’s head swayed as much as it could against the straps holding it in place. “Could we not before? I dunno. I don’t keep up with that shit. But yeah, they found some kind of library. There are pictures of it somewhere… maybe. If they were smart enough to save them.”

“And this writing didn’t say what the artifact was?” Liu pressed.

“If it did, they didn’t tell me. All I know is that you guys want it, and Hart-Klein wants it, and that must mean it’s something big, and if you put a gun to my head and said I had to decide whether to hand something that big over to HKC or the Alliance, well…” He settled back into the chair, shoulders shaking with laughter. “I’d probably shoot you in the liver for putting a gun to my head. But I’d take the bullet before I let either of you assholes have it.”

“And yet, you said that Hart-Klein does have it,” Liu said, the corner of his mouth turning up in what Angel interpreted as triumph. “You did give it to them.”

Chase frowned deeply, an almost comical expression.

“Gavin was a good man. He had a kid. Haricot and those HKC bastards killed him. If I see that cocky son of a bitch Haricot again, I’ll break his neck.”

“And you would have died before you left that artifact with him, wouldn’t you?” Liu prompted.

“You’re damned right I would.”

“Then who has it?” The Alliance officer was like a predator lunging after its next meal, all fangs and claws. “Who has the artifact? You were seen with a third man coming off the ship. Someone younger. Does he have it? What’s his name?”

Chase was sweating. Angel sighed, not caring that it might give away her pretense.

Good. Sweating meant he was fighting, trying to keep from talking. It was the first sign he was aware of the drugs and attempting to resist.

“He’s no one important, surely,” Liu said, sliding smoothly, easily from the pouncing leopard to a sibilant serpent. “No one worth dying for. Just some functionary, Dr. Cortez’s flunky? What do you care about him?”

“Vic’s a good kid,” Chase protested, and Angel hissed a curse. “He’s out of his element here, but he’s trying. I think he’s infatuated with Angel… Dr. Cortez.” A moment’s silence. “Not that I can blame him. She’s great. Brilliant and tough as nails. Saw her put a knife right through some lowlife’s arm. I’d drop behind the lines with her any time.”

Warmth flooded Angel’s face, and she realized with a rush of embarrassment that she was blushing. Then she blushed even deeper for the embarrassment, and it was nearly enough to make her give up on pretending to be unconscious.

Why am I angry that he likes me? The question was just as unexpected as his admiration for her, and she found she didn’t have an answer.

“Except she doesn’t want to kill anyone,” Chase went on, the smile fading from his drug-addled face. “And I get that. I’ve killed enough people for both of us.”

Chase fell silent for a moment, his eyes closing, and Angel prayed that it meant he was unconscious, but he spoke again and ended that hope.

“I’ve killed more people than cancer. That’s what my friend Zack used to say.” Chase snorted a laugh, but there was no humor in it. “I think he meant it as a compliment. Dr. Cortez probably sees me like some kind of monster, but it never bothered me. I hear civilians talking about how guys like me gotta be haunted by the people we killed, but you know that’s bullshit. Almost all of them were right where they wanted to be and could have stayed out of the fight.”

“And what does haunt you, Sergeant?” Liu asked him, and Angel could tell he was fascinated by the turn of the conversation.

“What haunts me…” The answer nearly tumbled out of the man’s mouth, but Chase stopped it, which was amazing given how free he’d been with everything else. It took another moment for him to force the rest out. “North Manila Harbor. November 13th.”

“I remember that day well,” Liu said, nodding. “It was a hard-fought battle.”

“Bullshit,” Chase spat. “We were kicking your asses. Until one of you set off the tactical nuke inside the freighter.”

“It has never been proven in international court that it was Alliance armed forces who employed the nuclear weapon,” Liu said with the exacting tone of an official talking point. “The Chinese government and the Alliance ruling committee both maintain that it was a terrorist attack unrelated to our military goals.”

“I hope that shit lets you sleep at night,” Chase mumbled, shifting in his bonds as if he wanted to attack the man. “You bastards killed four thousand civilians. Not even mentioning the eight hundred US military personnel caught in the blast.”

“And where were you, Sgt. Weston?”

“My platoon was clearing the container ship Ocean Providence. When the blast hit, the wave capsized the ship.” His mouth twisted into a snarl. “I was lucky. I got swept out a hatchway, washed up beside an overturned tugboat and grabbed a line. My whole company was wiped out in seconds. Every friend I had.”

Chase’s eyes squeezed shut and tears trickled out.

“I don’t give a shit about the enemy soldiers I’ve killed, including yours. What keeps me awake at night are all those kids I couldn’t save.”

“And could you save Vic?” Liu asked him, putting a hand on his shoulder as if the two were lifelong friends sharing a drink. “Could you save him from Hart-Klein? From us?”

“Vic’s gonna save himself,” Chase insisted. “He has the balls to carry that damned thing, and I sure as hell wouldn’t. It gives me the creeps. God knows what it’s doing to us just being around it.”

“Min!” Liu snapped, jabbing a finger at one of the techs. He slipped into Chinese, but Angel had taken Mandarin as an elective in grad school on the theory that, if she could learn it, some alien language couldn’t be any harder. “Go over the phones we took from Sgt. Weston and Dr. Cortez. See if you can find the number for anyone named Victor or Vic.” He smiled that predatory grin again. “If he’s as out of his element as Sgt. Weston suggests, I doubt he’d have the awareness to shut it off.”

Liu seemed like he was about to run a victory lap around the building, his chest pumping, face flushed. He shook himself and settled down beside Chase again, fingers tapping the plastic surface of the dentist’s chair.

“Tell me something, Sgt. Chase. You don’t strike me as someone who would be satisfied being a bodyguard. What have you been doing since you left your military? Who have you worked for? HKC? Soong-Tierney?”

“No one.”

Liu laughed sharply.

“Don’t insult my intelligence. You haven’t been farming on a colony. Who did you work for?”

“I said no one,” Chase insisted, his drugged voice sullen as a teenager. “I… we were running bounties for Union Military Intelligence.”

“Bounties?” Liu repeated, head tilting to the side, not as if he weren’t familiar with the term but more as if he was horrified. “You mean…?”

“We raided your bases, your intelligence outposts, stole your gear and sold it to the Union. Until you took out my whole team. I watched them die. They’d counted on me to keep them safe, to make this work, and I watched them die. That was when I decided I couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t get other people killed because they were stupid enough to follow me.”

Liu snarled something that might have been meant to be a laugh.

“You know, Sgt. Weston, I had thought we might just kill you quickly, painlessly. I didn’t look forward to it, but these things must be done sometimes.” He shook his head. “Not anymore. I’m taking you back to Earth and dumping you at a blacksite somewhere in Manchuria where they’ll keep you alive for years after you wished you were dead.”

“Colonel.” Angel couldn’t move her head enough to look aside, but the voice sounded like one of the techs. “We found Victor Lee’s phone number, but there’s no way to track it from here without satellite coverage. We could send up the gunship, but…”

“…but he’d see it from ten kilometers away, yes.” Liu paced in front of the dentist chair, ignoring Chase, who was rambling incoherently now. Abruptly, he stopped and turned back toward the techs. “But I believe I have an idea. Do we have a location on the Tamar?”

27

“This is a bad fuckin’ idea,” Adrian Hill declared. “And I wanna make sure I go on record as saying that.”

“And as much as it pains me,” Chief Aguilar added, “I gotta agree with Hill. We just shook the one Alliance gunship, and now you wanna go put us in the sights of the other?”

“Stop running your mouths and do your jobs,” Pri snapped at them, instantly regretting it.

They were both right. This was nuts. She’d known it before she’d abandoned their very effective hiding spot behind Vishnu’s moon, and it was even more obvious as they descended through the atmosphere toward Jaipur. They were on the night side of the planet, but that did Jack shit to hide their thermal signature from orbital satellites or spy drones.

“I’m going to give you three good reasons why we’re going back,” she told her crew, not looking up from the main screen, expecting either or both of the Alliance gunships to pounce at them at any time. “And once I do, you’re going to shut up and Charlie Mike.” Continue Mission. That was Ranger talk, and she’d learned it from Chase many years ago. She held up her fist and extended a thumb.

“One, do you like eating? Do you like not having to work for some corporate bean-counter? In this business, keeping a steady income means being dependable. Which means not abandoning your clients, even when there’s a threat, because protecting them from threats is what they pay us for!”

Her forefinger.

“Two, this is my boat and my command. That’s what you all decided when we went in together on the Tamar, and if I was voted out since, no one bothered to tell me about it.”

Her middle finger.

“And three, Chase is one of us. And we don’t leave any of our own behind, even if it means getting our asses shot off. Do I hear any arguments?”

“No, ma’am,” Aguilar said, the words clipped off as if he was back in the Union Space Force again.

“No, Pri,” Hill echoed. “You know we’ll follow your lead,” he added with a twisted smile, “but I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ when this goes pear-shaped.”

“Noted,” she told him, glaring balefully. “Now start searching for their phone signals. If they’re in trouble, I know Chase has been calling us.”

“Not finding anything,” Hill announced, gaze flickering back and forth across the comm screen. “Not even a transponder signal. Their phones are either turned off or busted. And if… wait! I’m picking up a signal from Chase… or his phone, anyway.”

“Try to call it,” she suggested.

“Don’t have to,” Hill said. “He’s texting us.”

“Texting?”

“Yeah. I’ll throw it up on the main screen.”

The discrete packets of words streamed across the front display, typed in the abbreviated lingo of texts, which Pri’s mind translated automatically into regular English.

In trouble. Alliance troops hunting for us. Can’t talk. Need extraction at old banana plantation. Clearing there will be LZ. Separated from Victor Lee. Need you to do a low pass and track his phone signal, relay it to us so we can link up.

Pri grinned. Chase was a cockroach… nothing could kill him.

“Send a reply,” she told Hill. “Tell him we’re on our way. ETA in the area, ten mikes. Will contact once we’ve located Victor Lee.”

“Wonder what kind of trouble that kid has gotten himself into,” Aguilar murmured.

* * *

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sean Haricot murmured, looking down the barrel of his carbine, using the thermal scope as a night-vision aid as he stared at the plantation house. “You aren’t stuffed full of shit, after all.”

Victor Lee tried to stand up and get a better look at the plantation he’d hunted for in vain for hours, but Molly restrained him with a grip like iron, digging into his shoulder hard enough to make him gasp.

“There’re Alliance troops out there,” Wilson confirmed and knelt down beside Haricot, staring out through his compact enhanced optics, which were barely larger and thicker than a pair of sunglasses. More than anything, they reminded Victor of ski goggles, and all the mercs were wearing them. “I make two sentries on this side, one at one hundred meters out, the other at fifty. Not to mention the drone surveillance and security scanners they’re sure to have out here.”

“Too hard for you, Wilson?” Molly taunted quietly.

Wilson didn’t deign to answer her, motioning silently to one of the other mercs in the squad.

“Give us twenty mikes,” Wilson told Haricot. “We should have the sensor spoofs ready by then. Fredericks and I will take care of the sentries, but once we hit the spoofs, we’ll only have a few minutes before the Alliance soldiers realize what’s going on. If we want to take Weston and Cortez alive, we’ll have to move fast.”

Wilson reminded Victor of Chase Weston. Not the others… certainly not Haricot. Haricot was a mercenary, but he was no soldier and had never been one if Victor was any judge. Maybe he’d worked for the CIA and maybe he hadn’t, but he was a killer more than a fighter. And the others, like Molly, were just criminals. Whether they’d ever worked for anyone’s army, they were hired guns now, thugs who would have been pirates or raiders if they hadn’t gotten a job working for Hart-Klein.

But Wilson was different. Professional, a killer but not a sadist. Victor wondered what the hell he was doing with this crew. Wilson and the other man, Fredericks, faded into the darkness of the jungle like ghosts, moving with stealth that belied their size. Victor could barely see their movements, and he wished for night vision. He could have brought a pair of cheap goggles with him, if he’d thought about it, though it was unlikely Haricot would have let him keep them. With the glow of the full moon through gaps in the ever-present clouds, Victor could just make out the man’s features, his mustache blending in with the camouflage paint on his face.

The mustache twitched in a sneer, and Victor knew the man was staring back at him.

“You’re a fool, Lee,” he said, the tone low and chillingly matter-of-fact. “Why the hell do you think I’d let you go after we get the artifact? You’re out of your league, kid. You should have stayed on Earth.”

“I sure should have,” Victor agreed without hesitation, and should have kept his mouth shut but couldn’t resist firing back at the man. “But what makes you think I’m telling the truth about the artifact being here?”

Haricot snatched off his night-vision goggles and glared at the younger man, and Victor grinned at the look of horror and fury in the man’s eyes. Haricot opened his mouth to yell something, though Victor couldn’t imagine what, so close to the Alliance lines. He never got the chance.

“Go!” Wilson’s voice was tinny and distant, but Victor was close enough to hear it over Haricot’s earpiece. “Go! Go!”

No one waited for Haricot’s order, which might have been a tribute to their training or, more likely, a statement about how little they valued his leadership. They simply rushed ahead into the darkness, leaving him no choice but to follow.

“Bring him!” Haricot hissed at Molly while gesturing toward Victor. “And watch him close!”

Molly’s grip was a vise on Victor’s arm, and he winced… and still couldn’t help but grin as she pulled him into the darkness.

* * *

Oh, my God, I fucked up.

Chase’s head felt like a gorilla had worked him over with a baseball bat, but the pain of the hangover from the drugs was nothing compared to the humiliation of how easily he’d talked. He hadn’t realized it at the time, hadn’t had any thought at all. It had been as if he was talking to himself, thinking out loud with no one listening. It would have been better if he hadn’t remembered any of it, like some colossal bender of the like he’d indulged in when he was a young enlisted man, but no, he remembered every word of it.

He couldn’t even look at Angel. She must think he was the biggest idiot in the galaxy. He concentrated on trying to translate what the Chinese Sea Dragon commandos were saying, which was something about Chase’s phone. He’d thought he’d secured it well enough to resist decryption even by the Chinese, but that had proven to be wishful thinking.

“We have a response from the Tamar,” one of the technicians reported, twisting around at her station to face Colonel Liu. “They’ve located Victor Lee.”

Damn it! Now I’ve gotten the kid killed, too.

“Excellent,” Liu said, casting a sidelong glance at Chase in what looked very much like gloating. This guy really held a grudge. Liu gestured to the two pilots lounging in the corner, conspicuously contrasting with the Sea Dragons by their demeanor and their uniforms. “Get the gunship ready to fly.” He turned back to the communications tech. “What are his coordinates?”

The technician frowned, brow wrinkling in what seemed to be consternation.

“Sir…” The woman shook her head. “This doesn’t make any sense. The Tamar says that Victor Lee is at the plantation house, close enough that Sgt. Weston should be able to see him.”

Liu’s eyes went wide and he scanned the room as if he thought they might have captured Victor’s phone along with Chase’s and Angel’s and not realized it. Chase had the same thought for a moment, followed closely by the horrifying notion that Victor Lee had followed them and was sitting outside in some crazy, stupid attempt to rescue them. But that was ludicrous. The kid could never have found this place without help.

Apparently, the same thing occurred to Colonel Liu at the same moment, because he touched a control on his earpiece.

“Sgt. Xiao, do you see anything out there? Any movement? Anything on thermal?” Liu frowned. “Xiao, are you there?” Liu murmured a curse and punched an address into his wrist control. “Sgt. Zhang, I can’t reach Xiao. Do you see her?”

Chase’s ears perked up, and all thoughts of his failure to resist the drugs faded along with the ache in his temples. He shot a look at Angel Cortez, but her expression was distracted, as if she was concentrating on something to the exclusion of all else. Her shoulders were tense, the muscles of her right forearm flexing as her wrist moved behind her.

Chase frowned, unsure what she was doing, until he saw something shiny and pointed between the fingers of her right hand. He didn’t know where she’d picked it up, but she was sawing at the plastic flex cuffs holding her to the chair, and when she noticed him noticing, she smiled. It was the first honest smile he’d seen out of the woman, and by God, if this was what it took to coax one out of her, he might have to settle for a scowl.

“Damn it!” Liu shouted, slamming his palm down on one of the equipment tables, the impact rattling the metal casing of a computer. “Can anyone get me comms with our LP/OP?”

There was a sound. It wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t silent like the movies and TV always portrayed it, either. It sounded more like a truck revving its engine, one of the local antiques that took a few tries to turn over, but Chase knew exactly what it was, and so did Liu. Suppressed automatic weapons fire.

The Sea Dragon colonel’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t let the surprise rule him for long. He jabbed a finger at the two techs, the only ones in the farmhouse not wearing combat armor and night vision.

“You two, stay and guard them. The rest of you, with me.”

Angel stopped sawing at her bonds, as if she sensed they would be under extra scrutiny for a few moments, and Chase did his best not to keep staring at her, instead looking around as if he, too, was trying to figure out what the noises were. Liu spared him a glare on the way out.

“If these are your friends,” he warned Chase, “you’ll get to watch them die before we take you back to Earth.”

“I don’t know who they are,” Chase replied, being honest without the need of any drug, “but I know they’re no friends of mine.”

Liu grunted with obvious skepticism as he pulled down his balaclava and his night vision goggles, but he made no further comment as he led the rest of the commando team out the door, switched off the lights before he opened it, then ducked quickly into the darkness. The rest of the team vanished into the night with the grace of a troupe of dancers. The two technicians assigned to stay with them followed close behind, the woman pushing the door shut before the man switched on an interior light. The two exchanged a worried glance, and they drew their sidearms, standing beside the door, straining to hear anything from outside.

Chase kept one eye on them and the other on Angel. She’d noticed where their attention was focused, and she was taking advantage of it, sawing the flex cuffs with renewed vigor. There was a nearly imperceptible click as the plastic parted, and then her hands were free and she was leaning over, slicing at the plastic binding her right foot. With better leverage behind the makeshift blade, the strip of plastic gave way in just seconds, and she didn’t even look up, just went to work on her other leg.

Chase watched the guards, sweat beading on his forehead. If they saw her, they’d likely shoot her, but both of them were still waiting at the door, and he could swear they were holding their breath. He glanced back at Angel and saw she was free but was still in her chair, watching the guards, waiting. He wanted to yell at her to hurry up to get him free, and he mouthed the words at her, but she wasn’t paying attention.

Gunfire again, the same hoarse stutter of suppressed rifle fire, but this time coming from all sides of the building. The woman stayed where she was and shut off the light, then she pulled the door open a few inches and peeked out through it, while the man ran to the other side of the building, to a shuttered window. That was, apparently, the break Angel was looking for.

She lunged from her chair but didn’t come to him to use the shard of metal on his bonds. Instead, she went to one of the worktables, where the Sea Dragon officer had placed their personal items… including their knives. Chase grinned and was sure he was in love.

If the techs had night vision, they would have spotted her immediately, but neither of them did, and the scant light from the computer displays was just enough for her to find one of the knives and dash back to Chase. The blade sliced through the plastic flex cuffs with ease and feeling came back into his hands with a pins-and-needles sensation. He barely had time to flex his fingers and shake his hands out before Angel was pressing the knife into his palm. Now that she was closer, Chase could see that she’d grabbed a second knife as well, the one she’d been carrying on Gateway and had presumably kept with her this whole time.

He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to ask this of her, knew she didn’t want to do it, but there was no other way. He motioned toward the woman at the door, then to Angel, then at his own chest and the man at the window. Angel hesitated for just a heartbeat before she nodded.

He couldn’t watch, couldn’t help—he had to trust her. And he found that he did, which was even more surprising than the fact he was hopelessly attracted to her. He crept up on the window, moving as stealthily as he could with a hangover the size of a starship and cramps traveling up and down his calves and through his shoulders. The Chinese technician had the shutter pulled aside and his nose pressed up against the cracked and stained glass, searching for movement, for the source of the brief bursts of gunfire outside.

He didn’t look up until Chase snaked an arm around his throat and yanked him backward. The technician attempted a yell but only managed a squeak before the knife plunged home. Chase knew some people aimed for the kidney, some for the carotid artery, but he was too used to fighting soldiers in armor and he went straight for the eye, the blade sinking home into the brain. He ripped it free with a familiar, sickening crunch and the Alliance technician collapsed bonelessly.

Chase grabbed the handgun off the ground where the man had dropped it and spun back toward the door, but he was too late. Angel Cortez held the other technician’s arm behind her back, restraining the Alliance soldier as her life ran out from the gaping wound in her neck. Angel let the woman drop and watched as the last few spasms ran through her.

“Are you okay?” Chase asked, knowing how inane the question was but unable to keep himself from blurting it out.

By way of reply, Angel wiped the knife blade clean on the soldier’s fatigue blouse and then sheathed it at her belt. Chase retrieved the dead woman’s handgun and held it to Angel butt-first. It was a QSZ-92 5.8mm and while he didn’t care much for the cartridge, it was better than nothing. Angel took the weapon, a look in her eyes that was half anger and half surrender.

“What’s out there?” she asked, checking the pistol’s load with experienced motions, her finger held off the trigger.

“People who want to kill us.” He shrugged, remembering something, and turned back to the table with their things, grabbing both their phones and slipping Angel’s into her jacket pocket. “And, I think, Victor.”

“Well, we better go make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.” She motioned at the door. “You first.”

He smiled tightly as he passed her, handgun held at the high ready.

“Yes, ma’am.”

28

“Get down, you moron!” Molly snapped at Victor, pushing him to cover behind the remains of an old tractor.

Victor could barely make out the lines of the thing by the moonlight, but he could hear quite clearly the pings and thocks of the bullets on the other side of the machine. Molly had crowded beside him, and she leaned out, firing off a burst from her rifle, then another before retreating back and switching out the magazines.

“Who’s winning?” Victor asked her, panic gnawing at his gut. He wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be, since if the Chinese won, they’d still have Chase and Angel, but if Haricot won, he’d be pissed that the artifact wasn’t here and he’d take it out on Victor.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Molly admitted, apparently too distracted to remember she hated his guts. She sounded as confused as Victor was, which he supposed was comforting since she was wearing night vision gear and had a radio earpiece in place.

Something exploded, and Victor cried out, curling into a fetal position and covering his ears. Another blast, closer this time, close enough that the body of the tractor vibrated with the concussion and flares of light sparked afterimages in his vision. Victor couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, and he felt around him, trying to find the tractor so he wouldn’t accidentally wander out into the line of fire.

His hand came down on top of something wet and yielding, and he cursed and pulled it away. His vision cleared enough to make out the lines of a body, and he realized it had to be Molly. He didn’t mourn for the woman, mostly because he was sure she would have killed him if she could have gotten away with it, but she’d been the only one trying to protect him, and another rattle of bullets off the tractor reminded him that he definitely needed protection.

Victor gritted his teeth and felt for the woman’s face. Her skin was still warm, and so was the blood splashed across it, but he found what he was looking for, the straps of her night-vision goggles. Pulling them on over his own head was even worse than touching the dead woman, since her blood still drenched the strap, but being blind and vulnerable out here was even worse.

The interior of the lenses glowed green and once he had them over his eyes, the whole world glowed green, but at least he could see. He peered out into the tall grass and trees behind the tractor and saw figures moving through them, still nearly invisible even with the goggles on. He shrank away from them… no matter whose side they were on, they were still his enemy. Victor scrambled off to the right side of the tractor, keeping low, hoping he might be able to crawl around the other side of the farmhouse and find a way inside.

He was so interested in staying low and avoiding the soldiers behind him that he didn’t even notice the one standing only twenty feet ahead of him, between Victor and the farmhouse. The soldier was Chinese, Victor could tell because of the balaclava the man was wearing, but it didn’t really matter if the rifle the man held was Chinese or American, the important thing was that it was pointed at Victor’s head.

Bang.

Victor flinched at the sound of the shot, but he immediately knew he wasn’t hit, that it wasn’t the Alliance soldier who’d fired. The Chinese commando tilted sideways, staggering as if he were drunk, and when his head turned to the side, Victor could see that the back of it was gone, though thankfully the night-vision glasses robbed the image of the gut-wrenching depth and color it might have had.

Victor didn’t dwell on the dead Alliance soldier, more interested in the two figures coming up behind him, backlit by a gentle glow of the farmhouse door, now hanging open.

“Angel!” he blurted. “I mean… Dr. Cortez! Sgt. Weston! Are you okay?”

“As okay as we’re going to be,” Chase told him, yanking the rifle off the shoulder of the dead Alliance soldier. Gunfire smacked into the side of the farmhouse, and Victor ducked. “Who the hell is out there, Vic?”

“Haricot. He found me wandering around looking for you, and I promised him the artifact if he rescued you.”

“Tell me he doesn’t have it,” Angel said, grabbing his arm.

“No, I hid it,” Victor assured her. “I told him you had it with you when the Chinese captured you.”

“Good thinking,” Chase said, clapping him on the arm.

Chase handed over the pistol he’d used to kill the commando, and Victor took it with a catch in his breath. He’d thought it would make him feel more powerful, but for some reason, he only felt more vulnerable.

“And I’m glad you’re alive,” Angel added, the gentleness of her tone surprising him before it disappeared into harsh imperative. “Now take us to that artifact.”

Chase guided Victor away from the tractor with a steering hand on his shoulder, and the three of them ran for the trees and away from the gunfire. Winding through the trees, head ducked down in a futile attempt to avoid stray bullets, Victor felt the tug of idle curiosity at the edge of his thoughts, and he wondered who would win the fight. And he thought about his Uncle Tommy, an unrepentant Raiders fan. When Tommy watched the Chiefs play the Broncos, Victor would ask him who he was rooting for. Uncle Tommy always replied with one word.

“Injuries.”

* * *

“Are you sure you can find this cave again?” Angel asked for what Chase thought had to be the third time in the last half an hour. Not that he was ready to criticize her for talking too much, given how he’d spilled his guts to Liu under the drugs.

“Kind of,” Victor admitted, then threw his hands up in surrender. “I mean, I thought I was being smart, leaving the luggage tracker with the thing, but then Haricot took my damned phone.”

Victor sounded put out, probably because they were making him walk point… but he was the only one with night vision goggles and also the only one who—theoretically—knew where they were going, so there hadn’t been any choice. Chase slapped at a mosquito and cursed, wishing he had the spray he’d carried with him in his pocket, but the Chinese had taken that. Probably thought it was some sort of chemical weapon.

The thought of the things the Alliance had taken from him brought to mind his phone, and he shrugged, then pulled it out to try again. He’d attempted to call Pri just as soon as they’d gotten clear of the farmhouse battle, but she hadn’t responded and he’d assumed they were too far away with too many trees between for a line-of-sight signal.

“Pri, this is Chase,” he said, abandoning any commsec, communications security, since everyone trying to find and kill them already knew who they were and what frequency they were on. “You there, Pri? Talk to me, Tamar.”

Nothing, and he was about to put the phone away when a small, tinny voice called desperately for his attention just as he was about to tuck the device in his pocket.

“Chase, it’s Pri! Do you read?”

Chase held up a hand to bring the others to a halt, then took a knee, trying to reduce their silhouette in case anyone was looking for them. Angel followed his example, but Victor hesitated, still looking around with his night-vision goggles, until Angel yanked at the back of his shirt and pulled him to the ground.

“I got you, Pri,” Chase said, unable to keep the relieved sigh out of his voice. “Damn, it’s good to hear from you. We’re in some deep shit here.”

“The shit don’t get any shallower on this end, Weston,” Adrian Hill cut in on the comms. “We had a damned Alliance gunship chase us around the damned moon a few times. And I wouldn’t count on them giving up.”

“Shut up, Adrian,” Pri snapped. “Chase, we tried for a pickup at the plantation, but it’s too hot down there, and I couldn’t stick around once the gunship took off.”

“It wasn’t me who tried to get you to land there,” Chase explained. “We were picked up by Sea Dragon commandos. They were trying to use our phones to get to Victor, but we got away when Hart-Klein mercenaries attacked trying to get at an artifact from the dig.”

“Hart-Klein?” she repeated, confusion obvious in her tone. “Sea Dragons? Artifact? Chase, what the hell have you gotten yourself into down there?”

“Too long of a story to tell right now. Pri, if I give you the code for a remote luggage tracer, can you track it down and guide us to it?”

“You lost your luggage? Is this really our number one priority right now?”

“It’s important,” he said, trying not to sound angry with her. “Can you send a route to my phone?”

“All right, wait one.”

Sitting in one spot was a risk, and not just because it gave the bugs an opportunity to swarm around them, but wandering around blindly was an even bigger gamble, so he waited. Victor started to ask a question, but Chase shushed him, then checked again to make sure he was keeping his finger off the trigger of the Chinese pistol… or, as his old Ranger instructors used to say, keeping his booger hook off the bang switch.

“Okay,” Pri said after a few minutes, probably spent circling to triangulate. “I got you a location, and the coordinates are on your phone. Shouldn’t be more than a half an hour away on foot.”

“Thanks, Pri. Can you meet us there in a half an hour, then, for a dustoff?”

“Roger that. I’ll find the closest LZ and contact you then. If I see anyone on your tail, I’ll try to let you know, but I’m going to be flying low to try to avoid those Alliance ships, so I might not have signal.”

“Copy. Do what you have to do, Pri. I’ll see you soon.”

Chase checked the dead-reckoning mapping software on his phone and found the course Pri had sent to him.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head, “we were going the wrong direction.”

“Well, sorry,” Victor said, gesturing a bit too wildly with the gun. “I’m not great with the whole cardinal directions thing!”

“That’s a weapon, not a damned pointer. Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction or I’ll take it away.”

“Yes, sir,” he said quickly, pointing the muzzle at the ground.

“And don’t call me ‘sir,’ I work for a living.” Chase realized he was slipping into drill-sergeant mode and reminded himself that the kid wasn’t a new recruit in basic training. Although this is as rough a basic training as any I’ve ever heard of.

“And give me those damned night vision goggles,” he added, holding out a hand. Victor was shamefaced as he handed them over. The deep of night turned to the greenest day, and Chase felt as if he was whole again. He offered Angel his cell phone. “I’ll walk point if you can navigate for me, Dr. Cortez.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she sighed, snatching the device from him. “I think you can call me Angel.”

Chase smiled, though he knew she couldn’t see it.

“Tell me where to go, Angel.”

“Be careful what you wish for… Chase.”

* * *

“This is it!” Victor said, nearly yelling in his relief at finding the cave. He ran into the entrance before Angel could tell him to stop and let Chase clear the cave first.

She shook her head and handed Chase back his phone.

“How that boy has survived this long, I don’t know.”

Chase tucked the phone into his pocket and ducked inside the cavern, the barrel of his rifle held low. Angel tried to imitate him as she backed in, keeping an eye on the way they’d come. There was a glow in the cave, and she wondered if Victor had stashed a flashlight inside, but a glimpse from the corner of her eye caught a hint of soft gold, and she knew the truth of it.

“Why do you have that thing out?” she asked Victor. “I thought we agreed it could be dangerous, and we shouldn’t touch it. I believe you were one of the biggest proponents of not touching it.”

“Oh, we’re way past that now, Dr. Cortez,” Victor said, a tinge of fear behind the snark. “I kind of, like, psychically bonded with an alien AI.”

“What?” Angel abandoned her post searching for threats as well as the idea of trying to keep her voice down and lunged into the cave.

Victor was sitting cross-legged beside the glowing golden orb, chin resting on his fists, staring at it.

“He says I should tell you everything,” he said with all the enthusiasm of an elementary school student explaining to his parents why he’d been called to the principal’s office. “I’ve tried to tell him that it’s not a good time, but he insists.”

“He?” Chase repeated, eyes narrowing, looking as if he was about to try to take back that Chinese service pistol sitting next to Victor’s leg.

“Well, I guess technically, he doesn’t have a gender, since he’s an alien and a computer. But it’s easier to think of him that way.”

“Assuming you’re telling the truth,” Angel said, trying not to let the possibility short-circuit her brain, “and assuming this… thing… is not only real, but is also telling the truth, what the hell does it have to say that’s more important than the Alliance commandos and corporate mercenaries hunting for us?”

“There’s like something out there.” Victor began to motion with the sidearm, then seemed to remember Chase’s warning and used his other hand instead, waving outward at the sky. “Like, another alien species but different from the People.”

“The People?” Angel said. Then she closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples. “You mean the Therapods? Don’t tell me that’s what they call themselves?”

“Yeah, I said that, too,” Victor agreed, brightening for a moment. “But you know how primitive societies are, and everyone gets their name for things when they’re primitive. At least that’s what the Emissary said.”

“The Emissary,” Chase said, and Angel realized they were both starting to sound like parrots. “That its name, the computer?”

“Emissary for the People, to be exact.”

“That sounds like a rap singer,” Chase said and Victor pointed at him, nodding agreement.

“Doesn’t it? But anyway, there’s these other aliens, like maybe a hive mind or something. I didn’t quite get that part. But they’re pissed off that any other intelligent life exists except them, or maybe they’re paranoid it’ll kill them? That wasn’t quite clear either…” Victor touched the glowing orb for just a second, as if it had called to him, and his eyes glazed over, but cleared up the second he let go. “Emissary says it might be both. They can’t understand the Sunkillers any more than we can understand the Arborists.”

Angel almost repeated the word, then sighed, determined not to do that again.

“Why are they called that?” she asked instead.

“Because that’s what they do. They sent out a bunch of ships, each the size of a big asteroid, like Ceres, with those Bussard ramjet things on them.”

“Bussard… what?” Chase frowned, shaking his head.

“It’s a theoretical fusion engine that sucks in the interstellar hydrogen for fuel,” Angel told him. “It’s way beyond our capability to build, but there’ve been descriptions of it in popularized science for decades. No one knows if it would work because there’s debate on how thin the interstellar medium is on hydrogen.”

“Well, it works,” Victor assured her. “Because the Sunkillers have been using them to destabilize the stars of any world with intelligent life… or even the possibility of developing intelligent life. They’ve been working their way across the galaxy ever since the People made contact with them tens of thousands of years ago. And they’re headed this way.”

“What do you mean this way?” Chase pressed, taking a step closer, but then hesitating, as if he was afraid that approaching too near the orb would infect him with the same delusions Victor was having.

“I mean, they’re working their way toward us,” Victor said, the edge in his voice a signal he was beginning to get pissed off, either at their disbelief or the position into which he’d been put, or maybe both. “They may not destroy Vishnu’s star, because God knows nothing intelligent would have ever evolved here with all the damned big cats ready to rip it apart, but they’re definitely going to hit the Sun. Our sun. And the Emissary says we have to…” Victor rubbed at his face, looking like he was about to pass out. “Oh Christ, he says we have to get everyone to believe us so we can collect a bunch of other orbs just like him and then find this planet where they collected all the technological information they stored up over thousands of years and use it to try to stop the Sunkillers, and good fucking luck, because the People couldn’t. And look at us, man!” He nearly sobbed the words. “Look at us! We got mercenaries from a corporation and Chinese soldiers after us trying to get an edge that’ll make it easier for them to take control, and they don’t even know what we’ve got! Can you imagine them getting their hands on all the collected knowledge of some ancient alien race? Shit, I don’t even trust the Union with that kind of power and I like the Union government.”

He had a point, though admitting that would mean admitting she believed any of this, which was a concession she wasn’t willing to make.

“This can all wait,” Chase said, “no matter what your friend in the golden egg says. We need to get to the LZ and get the hell out of here, then we can debate whether alien computers talk to Vic in his brain or if he’s just gone too long without food and sleep.”

“Oh, Jesus, did you have to mention food?” Victor moaned, rubbing his stomach. “I feel like I’m going to die…”

The gunshots weren’t loud, weren’t the sort of explosion of sound Angel expected from an automatic weapon, but even with their integral suppressors, the report of the rifles echoed in and out of the cave, nearly drowning out the spack-spack-spack impact of the rounds on the rock walls.

“Down!” Chase yelled, slamming into her, taking her and Victor to the rock floor in a body block that would have done a rugby player proud.

Angel’s breath left her in a whoosh, and the only reason she wasn’t cursing him for knocking her over was the cold rush of fear closing down her lungs and her ability to speak. Motion broke the spell… Chase’s motion. He didn’t hesitate. It seemed like he never did. He rolled off them and into the mouth of the cave, the Chinese rifle snug against his shoulder, and began firing off short, controlled bursts of fire. Angel scrambled over to help him, pulled the service pistol he’d given her out from beneath her, and pointed it at the darkness, hoping either of them could hit anything.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!” That voice… it was Sean Haricot. “Weston, we know you’re in there! We used the kid’s phone to track you down.”

“Damn it,” Victor muttered, still huddled behind the alien orb as if it could protect him from bullets.

“What do you want, Haricot?” Chase replied, then rolled off his position and motioned for Angel to do the same thing.

“You don’t have to die here. I know you’re just a working man like me, a contractor. That thing they found, it doesn’t mean anything to you. Just let us have it, and you can walk out of here.” Haricot chuckled. “Now, I won’t be covering your contract or anything, but you’re a resourceful man. I’m sure you’ll find your way off this ball of mud. And it’s a hell of a lot better than taking a bullet for these university assholes.”

“Not a chance,” Chase yelled back. “The only way you’re getting this thing is if all three of us walk away.”

Angel glanced at him sharply, but he shook his head and tapped his wrist as if there were a watch there. She understood. He was playing for time… and he had his phone out. He was texting something one-handed, a skill she’d never mastered. And there was only one person he could be texting. Angel looked at the sky and offered a prayer to a God she hadn’t given much care for in the last twenty-five years.

“Oh, I’d love to do that for you, Chase. Truly I would. But my employers seem to think the archaeologists…”

“Xenoarchaeologists!” Angel put in, getting sick of the smarmy, too-handsome man.

“Beg your pardon, Dr. Cortez. They seem to think you xenoarchaeologists will be necessary to interpret the importance of your find. But I can guarantee that I won’t hurt your friends. And I’m sure Hart-Klein will treat them fine… as long as they cooperate.”

“They’ll never let us go free,” Angel said, knowing this was all to stall the mercenaries and trying to help. “Hart-Klein would squeeze everything they could out of us and then we’d be disappeared. They’re no better than the cartels.”

“Sgt. Weston,” Haricot said, “I have an old friend of yours out here. He seems to think he can talk some sense into you. If he approaches, do you agree not to shoot him?”

Angel looked a question at Chase, and he shook his head in bewilderment.

“Tell him to keep his hands in sight,” he called back.

The figure that emerged from the darkness was tall and broad-shouldered, his skin dark enough that it almost blended in with the night without the benefit of camo paint. His rifle was slung across his back, his hands out to the side, heeding Chase’s request. Angel watched the expression on Chase’s face change from bewilderment to disbelief, though he didn’t rise from the prone position until the other man filled the entrance to the cave.

“Hey Sarge,” the big man said, nodding. “Didn’t think we’d meet up in a situation like this.”

“Zack Wilson,” Chase breathed, raising to a crouch, his rifle still trained on the man. “Don’t tell me you’re working for these Hart-Klein shitheads.”

“Hey, a man’s got to eat, brother.” Wilson patted his stomach in illustration. “It’s not like I could show a damned résumé after what happened to our old outfit. And HKC was hiring.”

“You could have come with me,” Chase said, and Angel could have sworn the man sounded hurt. “I offered you a spot on the team.”

“Personal protection?” Wilson shook his head. “I happen to know you and Pri barely make enough money to keep that boat in the air. I want to retire someday, Sarge. And HKC even has a damned health plan.”

“So, this is a recruiting pitch?” Chase guessed. “I hand over Dr. Cortez and the kid and that thing”—he motioned at the glowing orb—“and I get a nice, fat, HKC paycheck?”

“That ain’t up to me,” Wilson admitted. “But I’ll put in a good word. But, Sarge…” Wilson leaned closer, speaking softly. “Just between you and me, there are some of these people who aren’t as sentimental as I am. They’re not going to be patient much longer.”

How Angel saw the movement in the night, she wasn’t sure. It was just as dark out there as it had ever been, and her eyes were no better adapted to the night than they had been minutes before. It was just a shift of something dark against the slightly lighter tones of the sky, but it was enough for her to see the gun swinging around.

“Look out!” she yelled, and Chase trusted her and moved.

But he didn’t go alone. He grabbed Zack Wilson by the front of his tactical vest and pulled him down just as the front of the cave exploded. Concussion rang Angel’s head like a handbell, and pain blossomed in her head and left shoulder as the force of the blast threw her back against the cave wall. Lights exploded in her vision, and it was all she could do to stay conscious, much less try to figure out where her handgun had wound up.

It was, she realized somewhere deep in her consciousness, a grenade. Probably launched from a rifle, and she was lucky to be alive. Chase and his old friend Zack Wilson were moving, though there was blood staining Chase’s left sleeve and pant leg, and his night-vision goggles had been dislodged, lost somewhere in the smoke and haze that filled the small cave.

Only Victor seemed to have emerged unscathed from the attack, though he was curled up into a ball, shuddering, in obvious shock.

And they’d be coming. Dark forms were moving in the night, rushing forward, and she had to do something. There was no one else…

But there was. The sound of the S-T drive overhead was angel’s wings, and the chuff of its Bofors guns was the last trumpet. Or at least it was for the HKC mercenaries. The explosions that tore apart the night made the grenade seem like a July 4th firecracker. They kicked fountains of dirt twenty feet into the air and threw bodies around like leaves on the wind. The fire and fury of their detonations was such that Angel didn’t even see Sean Haricot until he was already in the mouth of the cave, rifle pointed at Chase.

Chase had just managed to struggle into a sitting position, though his stolen Chinese rifle was three feet away, and might as well have been a hundred miles. He blinked and shook his head, seeming as if he were having trouble focusing on Sean Haricot or the muzzle of the rifle.

“Call them!” Haricot bellowed, his words atonal, like he couldn’t hear himself talk from the concussion of the bombardment. “Tell them to cease fire and land now or I’ll kill every single one of you, starting with the kid!”

Haricot shifted his aim to Victor, and didn’t seem to notice Zack Wilson getting to his feet. The big man wore a mask of blood and an expression of unbridled rage. He didn’t try to swing his rifle around off his back, just pulled a handgun from a chest holster and started shooting.

At Haricot. Angel knew the mercenary was wearing armor, and she couldn’t tell how many of the rounds penetrated, but she saw blood spray from the side of the man’s neck and the rifle fell from Haricot’s hands as he pressed them against the side of his throat and ran. She wished for the guns of the Tamar to catch him somewhere out there, but the fire from above had ceased, as had the gunfire from the darkness outside.

All that was left were the echoes.

Chase stared up at Zack Wilson, doubt and pain twisting his features, clearly expecting the big man to shoot him as well. But Wilson sighed, holstered his gun and offered Chase a hand.

“Come on, Sarge.” He stared off into the night and shook his head. “Guess I’m going to need another job.”

29

“Zack Wilson!” Chief Aguilar exclaimed as the big man clomped up the boarding ramp, supporting a wounded Chase Weston from one side while Angel Cortez held him up on the other. “Holy shit, I never expected to see your ugly ass again!”

“I’m like a bad penny, I guess,” Wilson told him, nodding to the chief but under obvious strain, not just from helping to carry Chase but from his own wounds. Blood had soaked through the right side of his fatigue shirt just under the armored tactical vest. “Sick bay still in the same place?”

“Get him strapped in,” Aguilar advised, waving the big man down the passageway. “Might be rough. That Chinese gunship is back on our tail, just entered atmosphere.”

Victor’s ears pricked up at the announcement, and he tapped Aguilar on the shoulder as the others went toward the sick bay. The chief eyed him doubtfully, though to be fair, he seemed to look at everyone that way.

“Where should I go?”

Aguilar snorted softly.

“That’s a loaded question, boy. For right now, come on up to the cockpit and find a seat. We’re out of here as soon as the ramp is up.”

Victor followed the surly NCO back through the narrow passage to the Tamar’s cockpit, so relieved to be back on the ship he nearly collapsed into the first seat he found, one of the fold-down chairs at the back of the compartment.

“What? We got a foundling in here with us?” Adrian Hill asked, looking back at Victor askance.

“Just do your job, Adrian,” Pri snapped. She was tracing lines back and forth on her touch screen like an artist painting a virtual portrait, her eyes locked on the sensor screens. “That gunship is about ten seconds behind us.”

“Roger, cap’n,” Hill drawled. “Reactor’s up, ramp is closed. Ready to lift.”

The ground fell away and Victor’s stomach stayed with it. He clamped his teeth shut and tried to keep the bile down, staring at the front screen to keep his visual cues aligned with his inner ear.

“Why’d you bring your luggage with you, kid?” Chief Aguilar asked, moving into the cockpit with the grace of an ice skater despite the gyrations of the ship.

Victor started and stared down at the duffle bag resting in his lap, the strap still slung around his shoulder. He hadn’t even realized he’d brought it along, could have sworn he meant to leave it in the cargo bins just inside the ramp.

It didn’t want to be left alone.

“They’re five seconds behind us,” Hill added helpfully, earning a noncommittal grunt from Priyanka.

“This is the most dangerous time in a firefight,” Chief Aguilar confided to Victor, leaning over in his seat as if he was a tour guide. “Before we leave the atmosphere, I mean. You know why?” Victor shook his head, hoping the man would take it as a signal to shut up, but Aguilar took it as a cue to explain what he meant. “This is when we’re vulnerable to the enemy’s S-T drive missiles.”

“They have those?” Victor asked, cursing himself when it came out in a squeak.

“Oh, yeah,” Aguilar confirmed, nodding firmly. “They’re the only thing that can match the speed of an S-T drive starship… but only in an atmosphere. The Tamar can actually outrun the missiles in space because the S-T drive speed is totally dependent on the power source, and a nuclear reactor is better than the batteries the missiles carry.” He sounded proud, either of the fact that the ship had a nuclear reactor or of the fact he knew the physics of it. “But in an atmosphere, there’s also air drag, and the missiles have less of that. Oh, and look, here they come.”

Aguilar pointed to the targeting screen, where four red delta shapes had separated from the bigger red delta that Victor assumed was the Alliance gunship. The missiles were, as advertised, damned fast. They outpaced the Chinese gunship as if she were standing still, streaking across the screen and the dozens of miles that space represented and closing in on the Tamar. Victor gripped the armrests of his chair with white knuckles and checked the main viewscreen to see if the missiles were visible in the optical cameras.

They were on the light side of the world now, the primary star a golden glow across the curve of the ocean, turning it into a white haze, and somewhere in the rear views, four pinprick glints pursued them, growing larger every second.

“Oh, shit,” Victor murmured, his breath ragged and short. “Oh, shit, oh, shit.”

“Don’t worry, son,” Aguilar assured him, patting the joystick in front of his display. “We have these.” He flipped a switch and adjusted the joystick, and servomotors whined, the vibration conducting through the metal of the hull.

“Th-those big guns in the front of the ship?” Victor guessed, remembering Chase’s threats back in the spaceport.

“Naw, those are in the front. Those are for offense. These are for defense.”

Aguilar teased the targeting reticle over the blob of white and silver that was the lead missile, and squeezed the trigger. A slight shuddering, like a truck going over ruts in a road, and the missile flared briefly and tumbled out of the air, a pinwheel flickering in the sun.

“20 mike-mike Vulcans,” Aguilar said, his grin predatory.

Another adjustment of his aim, another long squeeze of the trigger, another missile sent tumbling, this time close enough that Victor could determine the shape of it. A wedge, a chisel like his Uncle Tommy had used to work wood. Two left, still closer, though the air was getting thinner, the sky more black than blue, and the missiles seemed to be gaining less on the Tamar.

Another burst.

“Shit,” Aguilar murmured.

“I don’t like it when you curse, Chief,” Pri told him, though she didn’t look away from the flight controls. “Especially not when you’re shooting down missiles on our six.”

“I’ll get ’em,” Aguilar insisted, finger caressing the joystick like it was an old lover.

A longer burst this time, long enough for Victor to catch the faint whirr of the barrels spinning. The third missile came apart like a plastic model rocket, and the old man laughed, a sound of genuine happiness, as if this was what he lived for.

“Yipeekiyay,” Aguilar crowed.

“There’s one left,” Hill reminded him, and he sounded not nearly as jovial as the chief. “Four miles.”

“Got him, got him, got him,” Aguilar chanted like a prayer. “Last one, he can’t carry more than four in a ship that size. Twelve hundred rounds left. Might as well use it all.”

Aguilar’s finger stroked the trigger and this time, the whine of the barrels and the shudder of the 20mm rounds firing shook the ship, a wave from an ocean of atmosphere. Victor found he was holding his breath and had to suck in a lungful of air before he passed out. He nearly missed the last missile getting hit, but the sparks flying off the thing drew his attention. It was so close, he could see the Alliance red star on the side before the slugs from the Vulcan sawed across them and through to the battery compartment beneath. Suddenly lacking power, the thing’s S-T drive cut off and it nosed down, heading for the vast oceans on the other side of the planet from Jaipur.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Aguilar said, grinning at Hill.

“That gunship is closing fast,” Hill warned. “She’ll be in firing range in a few seconds.”

“We’re clear of the damned atmosphere, finally,” Pri added. “Gonna be a few more minutes before we make it to the Rift.”

“Okay, here’s where it gets interesting,” Aguilar said, still speaking to Victor, but almost to himself, like he just enjoyed hearing himself talk. Or maybe he just enjoys scaring the shit out of young, inexperienced civilians. “Once we’re out of the atmosphere, the Alliance ship is going to catch us, because the Chinese and the Russians can afford to buy better and bigger and more powerful reactors than a bunch of half-assed guns for hire like us.”

“Go to hell, Chief,” Pri said, though there was a certain affection in her tone. Aguilar acknowledged her with a wave, but kept on.

“At least, they can catch up with us until we jump to the Rift, because nothing touches nothing in the Rift… it’s like you’re the only thing in that whole universe. But that’s going to take some time, as our esteemed captain just said.”

“If they can’t hit us with missiles,” Victor interrupted, hoping to at least get the Chief Warrant Officer to the point a little faster, “then what can they do?”

“Glad you asked.” Aguilar enthused. He wasn’t looking at Victor anymore, instead running his hands over a series of controls, the motions causing mysterious clunks and whirrs deep in the heart of the Tamar. “There’s three ways for S-T ships to blow each other up. The first is a missile that’s basically a ship, with its own nuke. The Alliance and the Union both have those, but they aren’t going to send them out on a covert op like this. Those things are huge, bigger than the Tamar and they’d need a ship the size of a carrier to haul them around in.”

He wagged a finger at Victor, still not looking at him, eyes still glued to his board. On the main screen, the Alliance gunship was in visual range, angular and batlike and deadly.

“Second, if you’re faster than the other guy, you can try to get ahead of him and lay down mines in a pattern where he has to run into them. Problem with mines in space, though, is that space is big and S-T drive ships can maneuver fast, and you can’t do proximity shots. No atmosphere to conduct the blast, so even if it’s a nuke, the target has to be close enough to get fried by the heat or the radiation, and that’s a hell of a lot closer than it sounds, since most starships are pretty well shielded against radiation and heat.”

“That’s good, I guess,” Victor said.

“But what the Alliance ships do have that we don’t,” Aguilar said, “are weapons lasers. Damned fragile and expensive and yet they go the speed of light, and we aren’t far enough away yet for that. And that’s what they’re firing at us right now.”

Maybe the flush of heat that Victor felt was psychosomatic after hearing about the laser and maybe it wasn’t, but the sweat was real. He looked around him, expecting the hull to give way any second and Aguilar laughed.

“She’s a gunship, not a carrier. She can’t burn a hole through us unless we sit still like idiots.”

“And we’re not doing that,” Pri declared. “Energy dispersal spin.”

“Oh, fun,” Hill moaned, and three seconds later, Victor discovered why.

He wasn’t a physicist or a pilot or even interested enough to read pop-science articles about it, but he knew that the S-T drive was reactionless, which meant people inside a ship using the drive didn’t feel acceleration. But that didn’t mean they didn’t feel angular momentum. Priyanka Ambedkar sent the ship into a spin, and Victor’s inner ear rebelled. He put a hand to his mouth and barely restrained the puke before it splashed across everyone. Acid filled his throat and nearly made him vomit again, but somehow he kept it down.

“What the hell?” he managed to choke out.

“It’s to disperse the heat energy,” Aguilar said, cheerful as ever, as if the carnival-ride rotation didn’t bother him. “Don’t worry, we don’t have to do it for long.”

“Get ready, Chief,” Pri told him. She sounded unbelievably calm. “We’re only going to have a few seconds.”

“Roger that, Captain. She’s cocked and locked and ready to rock.”

“Turnover in three… two… one.”

If God Himself had grabbed Victor around the waist and slam-dunked him through a basketball hoop, it couldn’t have felt much different than what came next. Victor figured out what had happened later, deducing that Pri had shed the spin and simultaneously flipped the Tamar end for end. He didn’t know why the S-T drive couldn’t push them backward as easily as it pushed them forward, but he assumed it had something to do with physics or engineering or all those other college courses he didn’t have the math to handle.

The result was, the Tamar was pointed straight at the Alliance gunship as she streaked toward them at thousands of feet per second. Aguilar growled deep in his throat and thumbed a firing control. The ship shuddered backward from the recoil of the huge guns tucked under her wings, the vibration of their discharge enough to rattle the hull… and Victor’s teeth inside his skull.

Pri didn’t announce it, but the ship flipped again and then rolled, and through the kaleidoscope of colors and shapes, Victor caught a glimpse of the Chinese ship zipping past them just before they took off again after it. He expected the Alliance vessel to try a similar maneuver, to try to turn and fire on them, but it kept running straight ahead, heedless and mindless.

“I’m getting thermal blooms from the cockpit area,” Hill announced. “And she ain’t trying to change course.” Victor would have expected the man to be enthusiastic about it, but instead, there was a certain melancholy tone to the words. “I think they’re toast.”

Pri sank back in her chair, the air leaving her in a long sigh.

“Thank God.”

Victor wiped vomit off the corner of his mouth and stared at her.

“Aren’t you Hindu?” he blurted, and she laughed, an explosive sound as if it took all the tension with it.

“I was raised by fundamentalist Baptists,” she told him, “and then thrown into a universe with aliens and starships and people killing each other. I don’t believe in much of anything.” She shrugged. “Except my friends.” Her eyes softened and she turned away, perhaps not wanting him to see it. “Ready for the jump to the Rift.”

The stars had twisted into a tunnel of rainbow colors, and with the touch of a control, they gathered into a mass of blue-white ahead of the ship, while all around was nothing. Pri powered back her chair and hit the quick-release for her restraints. “I’m going to check on Chase.” She looked down at him in amusement and gestured at the duffle bag. “If you want, you can stow that bag in your compartment.”

He wanted to tell her what was in it, wanted to explain, but he looked around at Aguilar and Hill and decided it would be better to wait for Dr. Cortez to do it.

“Yeah,” he said, agreeing with her but also with his own conclusion. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

* * *

“…and that’s what we know,” Chase Weston finished. His throat was dry and his leg was sore, and he took a sip from the water bottle but didn’t sit down. Four pairs of eyes were staring at him from their seats in the galley, their faces in various stages of disbelief. Chase shrugged. “Sorry, I should say that’s what we think we know.” He held a hand up when he saw an objection forming in Victor Lee’s expression. “Not that we doubt what you’ve told us, Vic, but you only have this machine’s word for it. I wouldn’t trust a human-built AI, and I sure as hell don’t trust an alien one.”

Victor shut his mouth, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“I’d say you were all chock full to the brim with bullshit,” Zack Wilson said, legs stretched out, size thirteen boots hanging in the middle of the compartment from his seat next to Aguilar and Pri, “but Hart-Klein doesn’t devote those sorts of resources for bullshit, and neither does the Alliance. They gotta think there’s something to this.”

“Let’s say there is,” Pri allowed, surprising Chase. He expected her to be the most skeptical of the whole business. “Let’s say this thing is talking to the kid, and it’s telling the truth.” She spread her hands. “What then? It’s not like we can go gallivanting off searching for these other…” She shook her head. “What did you call them?”

“Emissaries,” Victor declared, but Angel Cortez spoke over him.

“Artifacts,” she said.

“Whatever,” Pri went on, waving the replies aside. “We can’t go searching all across the galaxy for these things. This is a job for the military. We should take this thing directly to Farragut, to the Union base there, and dump it in their laps. All we’re doing by holding onto it is bringing more trouble down on ourselves.”

“Hart-Klein ain’t gonna give up until they get their hands on this thing,” Wilson confirmed, nodding at the glowing orb on the table between Victor and Angel.

“We need to consider this,” Angel said. “You all know how the military runs, what a bureaucratic mess anything the government touches becomes, how much corruption and abuse there is. Do you really want to just hand this over to the government and trust them to do the right thing?”

“What’s the alternative?” Hill asked. He laughed sharply. “Not that I think this is anything other than some bullshit fantasy, but say it’s true, what the hell do you suggest we do with it, Doc?”

“The Colonial Authority,” Angel suggested. “They’re non-national, and they’re supposed to represent everyone. We could go to Ararat and explain it to the CA commander there.”

Aguilar, Wilson and Hill shared a mocking laugh, and the only reason Chase didn’t join them was an effort to not hurt Angel’s feelings. Priyanka saved him the task of having to explain the facts of life to her.

“Dr. Cortez,” Pri said, gentle in her admonishment, “the CA is a joke. The Alliance and the Union use it to criticize each other, but they both hold veto power and nothing important ever gets done. The only thing they do even halfway well is protect existing colonies from squatters and wildcatters, and that’s only because it’s advantageous to both sides. If we hand the… artifact over to them, they’ll just pass it right along to the US or the Chinese, whichever one happens to be paying them more this month.”

“The Emissary doesn’t want to be handed over to anyone,” Victor insisted, his words sharper than usual, more tinged with anger. “None of you understand. We are bonded together. No one else can speak to him now, only me.”

“Yeah, I vote we not tell them that part,” Chase suggested. “The CIA or military intelligence is just as likely to grab Vic right along with the artifact and stick them both in a lab somewhere.” He raised his hands, palms-out. “I’m not saying they’d dissect you or anything, but they wouldn’t want to let you go if they thought you were the key to understanding this thing.”

“You sound like you have a better idea, Chase,” Wilson said. “Let’s hear it.”

Chase frowned. His head hurt, and not just from the newly closed cut. Everything about the situation was beyond his comprehension, from the politics to the archaeology to the science… to Angel Cortez and his feelings for her. But he was the closest thing any of these people had to a leader.

“I have some connections in Farragut,” he said, the words coming out slow and deliberate, just a half-second behind the thoughts that engendered them. “Old friends from the war. I haven’t talked to any of them in a long time, but I think they’d at least hear me out. I could go down there in a scheduled shuttle from the space station, leave you guys up there with the artifact.” He gestured and winced at the pull against one of his shrapnel wounds. “I could get a feel for how they’d react to the whole thing, you know? See if they might be willing to string us along as an intelligence source without telling them about the artifact.” He shrugged. “If it felt wrong, we could just leave, maybe head for Ararat like Dr. Cortez…” She arched an eyebrow at him, and he corrected himself. “Like Angel said.” He shot her an apologetic look. “Though I do have to agree with the others that the Colonial Authority is notoriously corrupt, and when they’re not, they’re paralyzed by politics. Still, it’s the only thing I can see to do.” He glanced around, spreading his hands. “Anyone object?”

“The Emissary says we don’t need them,” Victor said. “He says we can do it ourselves.” His hand was inside the duffle bag on the table, his palm resting on the golden surface of the thing. The look in his eyes was distracted, almost vacant, and it creeped Chase the hell out. Then Victor’s eyes cleared up and he focused on Chase. “But he also says he’s calculated the odds and knows none of you will listen to him until it’s too late.”

“How the hell does he know so much about the way we think?” Zack Wilson demanded, frowning with what might have been confusion or even fear.

It was strange having the man back with Tamar PMC. He’d been part of it from the beginning, right up until that day on Munin, that day Chase still couldn’t scrub from his memory. Was having him back a good omen or bad luck?

“He’s a computer built by an alien race, millennia ahead of us technologically,” Victor reminded Wilson. “It’s burned through every file on this ship, not to mention it can basically read my mind. It knows as much about us as I do.”

“So, it’s as clueless as your typical college student, then?” Hill cracked, earning a dirty look from Victor.

“Enough,” Priyanka said. “I say we go with Chase’s plan. What about you, Doc?” Pri cast a questioning look at Angel.

Angel steepled her fingers, tapping both forefingers against her lip, eyes thoughtful and fixed on Chase. His ears burned, and he realized he was embarrassed by the attention, which was ridiculous for a Ranger NCO, a man who made a living through the application of extreme violence. And yet, there it was.

“All right,” Angel said, finally, nodding, a look in her eyes that Chase couldn’t identify. “Let’s do it.”

“You heard the woman,” Pri said, nodding to Hill and Aguilar. “Let’s go set a course for Farragut.” She pulled out her phone and tapped information into an app. “We should arrive in about thirty-five hours, subjective.”

Hill and Aguilar trailed out of the galley behind her, the copilot still mumbling complaints. Zack Wilson watched them go, then downed the last of the fruit juice pack and tossed it overhand into the trash with inerrant aim.

“You know,” he said to no one in particular, “I’m wearing everything I own.” He shrugged. “Well, I have a pretty good nest egg in an anonymized account… I’m not stupid. But somehow, I don’t think I’m going back to my corporate apartment at L5 to reclaim my clothes and household goods.”

“You can shuttle down with me at Farragut,” Chase offered. “Get some clothes fabricated for you. I think there’s a few spare toothbrushes in the bathroom.”

“You’re so damned pragmatic, Sarge. Maybe I just wanna bitch and complain for a while? Be miserable because I don’t have a pension or a health plan? Or a chance to go on a third date with the secretary at the Hart-Klein personnel department?”

“I’d thank you again for saving my life,” Chase said, grinning, “but I know the real reason you shot Haricot was that he shot you first.”

Wilson looked as if he wanted to object, but the righteous indignation melted away into a reluctant nod.

“That guy’s an asshole. I hope I killed him, but I doubt it. He’s like a damned cockroach. First, the CIA got tired of him playing both sides of the aisle and tried to have him killed, then the Alliance tried to kill him when the intelligence he sold them turned out to be bad, and now this.” He shook his head. “I’m telling you, Sarge, if we see this guy again, he’s bad news.”

Wilson yawned broadly and stretched his arms above him.

“Damn, I’m wiped out. I’m gonna take a shower and get some sleep.”

“Zack,” Chase said, pausing the man in the hatchway. “Thanks for saving my life.”

Wilson grinned and disappeared around the corner. Victor slipped the duffle bag over his shoulder and followed him without a word. Chase thought about suggesting to the kid that he leave the artifact behind, but he knew exactly how receptive Victor would be to the idea so he kept his mouth shut.

Chase expected Angel to leave the galley as well, but she hadn’t moved and was still watching him.

“Hey, um…” He stumbled and tried again, pushing through. “About what happened back there at the plantation, I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I should have been able to hold out.”

“It was a dangerous cocktail of psychoactive drugs, Chase,” she said, dismissing his guilt with a toss of her head. “I blamed you too, at first, but I was an idiot.” She stood, coming dangerously close to him. His legs felt weak, and not because of the shrapnel. “I’ve been blaming you for the violence and the danger, as if I didn’t know I was stepping into something dangerous.”

“I didn’t know what had happened to you, to your parents,” he said, his mouth dry. He wanted to take a sip of the water sitting beside him on the table, but he didn’t. “I won’t say I understand, because there’s no way I could. But I see why you’d want to avoid people like me.”

“Stop,” she told him, putting a hand on his arm. Electricity coursed through his body from the contact. “I was thinking the same thing at first, that you were like the men who killed my parents. But I was wrong. You’re like my father, like one of the people who gives their lives to do the right thing. You saved our lives over and over and I wanted to thank you for that.”

“You saved your own life,” he told her, the words tumbling out as if of their own accord. “You’re as tough as any of the Rangers I served with, Angel.” He sucked in a breath and asked the question stuck in the back of his throat. “Do you… have anyone back home in California?”

She laughed, which seemed like the worst possible response to him… and then she leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were warm and soft and everything that he’d thought they would be, and the kiss lasted an eternity. When she finally pulled away, he felt as out of breath as if he’d run a sprint and there was a blithering-idiot grin on his face that he couldn’t stifle.

Angel was smiling as well, though her expression was cooler and more controlled than his. She nodded toward him.

“You got pretty banged up,” she noted. “Must hurt.”

“A little,” he admitted, “but I’ve had worse. I’ll be fine.”

“Really?” She grabbed his hand, then let each finger go in a slow, teasing pull before only his forefinger and hers were locked together. She kept her finger tight around his and tugged him toward the door. “Show me.”

Thirty-five hours, Chase thought as they headed for her cabin, could be a very long time.

EPILOGUE

“Attention, privateer Tamar,” the officious, bland voice of the traffic control officer droned on the cockpit speakers, “your clearance has been approved, and you are eighth in line to dock with Farragut Station. Please maintain relative position and speed until you receive clearance. Approximate wait time is sixty-seven minutes.”

“Roger, Farragut Control,” Pri replied, then smacked the comm control to shut down the speakers. “Are we sure that isn’t an AI program?” She eyed Victor, who had the duffle bag in his lap, as always. “Not as sophisticated as your friend, of course,” she allowed.

“No,” Zack Wilson assured her, “the military would never be efficient enough to use a computer when they could find a mind-numbingly boring job for an actual person to justify their budget allotment.”

Wilson could go back and forth between a backwoods hick accent to sounding like a college graduate at the drop of a hat, and Chase wondered just how the man had actually talked when he was a kid back in Indiana.

“It’s always like this here,” Aguilar said with the assurance of someone who’d been assigned to every single military base in the colonized worlds at one point or another. “I mean, look at all that damned traffic.”

And Chase did. He’d been to the system before, of course. It was where they’d come to deal for the intelligence they used to acquire from raids on Alliance listening posts. But he tried to see it from the eyes of a newcomer, from Angel’s perspective. There was nothing terribly distinctive about the planet, except for the fact that it was habitable, which should have been considered a miracle but was common enough now that people took it for granted. It had all the usual characteristics of a world humans could live on—the greens of chlorophyll-powered plants, the blues of vast, deep oceans and the white of the polar ice caps. Those ice caps were larger here than they were on some other worlds he’d visited, surely much larger than Vishnu.

And the moon, of course. Chase had heard Angel arguing with Victor on the trip to Vishnu about whether a habitable world was possible without a large moon and he personally had no clue, other than the fact that every living world they’d found so far had such a satellite.

The moon wasn’t visible in the main screen, though the man-made satellite where they were trying to dock certainly was. Farragut Station was the largest space station outside the Solar System, a massive, spinning wheel decorated for Christmas or maybe Independence Day with the flickering reflections of the primary star off huge solar panels and cooling vanes. The docking bays sticking out either end of the station were beehives of activity, swarmed about with ships docking and undocking, many of them military transports, others corporate cargo vessels, more of them independent freighters. They were too far away for the optical cameras to make out their details, but each was a glowing star lit up by 82 Eridani.

Farragut was the largest of the star colonies, and the first one settled by the United States before the formation of the Colonial Authority and the treaties banning nations from claiming entire worlds as their own. Grandfathered in, this planet was unabashedly American, right down to the flag painted across the side of the docking hub.

“Can we listen to the news or something?” Hill suggested. “I don’t want to just float around for an hour waiting for these morons to get off their asses. I wanna know who won the World Series.”

“I got news for you, Adrian,” Aguilar told him, “it still ain’t the Padres.”

Hill shot the chief a bird but the older man just laughed.

“The news,” Pri repeated, shaking her head. “Jesus, Adrian, it’s still going to be like a week old. The only way to get ‘news’ here from Earth is on board a ship.”

“It’s newer than anything I’ve heard in weeks, Pri,” Hill shot back.

“Fine.”

Chase was only half-listening to them. Strapped into the acceleration couch beside Angel Cortez, he was debating whether or not she would consider him a sappy high-schooler if he tried to hold her hand in public. He had a feeling she would, though he wasn’t certain if she’d mind. Chase still refrained, deciding he needed to try to be a serious professional while he was in front of the troops. It was difficult. He hadn’t felt this way about a woman since Jenny, and it felt wrong to even think of Angel Cortez in the same context as his ex-wife, not least because they’d both been stupid kids not ready for what they’d stepped into.

Angel Cortez was many things, but she was not a kid.

The blast of sound from the cockpit speakers jolted Chase from his reverie and Pri quickly turned it down, grinning an apology at the others.

“The commercial stations are always so much louder than the government ones,” she explained.

The video for the broadcast popped up in the center of the main view screen, the announcer unseen and probably nonexistent, just a computer program written to imitate the stereotypical news broadcaster.

“And now the latest from the UBC news and sports, dateline October Twelfth.”

“Jesus, that’s two weeks ago,” Wilson muttered. “Haven’t they got anything more recent?”

“Damn it,” Hill said, smacking the arm of his chair in frustration. “The Series wasn’t even over yet when this was recorded.”

“In financial news, Soong-Tierney LLC has doubled its profits in the last quarter, signaling yet another banner year for the innovator.”

“Innovator,” Victor scoffed, eyes still focused downward on the artifact, as if he was talking to the Emissary rather than them. “All she did was take something she’d been given for the benefit of all humanity and make a huge profit on it.”

“You say that like there’s something wrong with it,” Hill said, eyeing the younger man doubtfully. “Like any one of us wouldn’t have done the same thing if we’d been put in that position.”

“What?” Aguilar asked Hill, goggling at him. “You’re not saying you believe this cock-and-bull story about aliens giving us the S-T drive so we could save ourselves from some Sunkiller robot that’s going to blow up the Earth?”

Hill shrugged.

“I ain’t saying either way, I’m just saying if some aliens handed me the S-T drive and said ‘save the world,’ I’d definitely save the world, but I’d also make a little coin along the way.”

“You also said you wanted to listen to the news, Adrian,” Pri cut in, “and yet all you’ve done is talk over it.”

Hill raised his hands in surrender and made a show of leaning in to pay close attention to the news report. The deep-voiced male who’d been reading the last report was replaced by a woman, her face perfectly designed by computer algorithms for comfort and attractiveness.

“And now for the latest in science news,” she said enthusiastically, as if this was the highlight of her day. “There’s been a mysterious development from the Deep-Space Telescope at the L5 Lagrangian point, first revealed in a report from the Union Astronomical Survey two days ago. According to the spokesman for the Survey, Dr. Elton Tophoj, there’ve been an inexplicable chain of stars going nova in an area of space in line with the Carina-Sagittarius arm of our galaxy.” The woman chuckled ruefully. “And if you don’t have the slightest idea where that is, well… join the club! Let’s just say it’s our next-door neighbors, sort of. We’re in the Orion arm, and the Sagittarius arm is the next one over, just a little more toward the center of the galaxy than we are.”

A computer simulation of the Milky Way replaced her on the screen, first edge-on and then flipping upward to show the breadth of the galaxy. One of the spiral arms flashed green.

“This is the Orion arm,” the female voiceover explained. A dot blinked blue near the edge of it. “And this is us here on Earth.”

Who’s “us?” I haven’t been anywhere near Earth in five years.

“And this,” she went on as the next spiral arm inward from Orion lit up orange, “is Sagittarius.” She giggled inanely, and Chase wished he could find the programmer who’d created her voice and slap the shit out of him. “Looks pretty close, huh? Well, don’t worry too much… even though the scientists say this could be some gigantic interstellar calamity, some chain of novae caused by a gravitational anomaly or some such thing, it’s all happening over seven thousand light-years away! Even with the Soong-Tierney drive and using our biggest, most powerful ships, it would take us years to reach that area, so I don’t think anything there is a real concern for us.” She touched a finger to her chin, aping deep thought. “Though it is a conundrum, why over a dozen stars hundreds of light-years apart would all go nova at the same time!” Another giggle. “Guess we just have to hope there weren’t any intelligent aliens in those systems! Hate for them to all die off before we finally get to meet them!”

The hair was standing up on the back of Chase’s neck, and he nearly jumped out of his seat when something brushed against his hand. He looked over at Angel. It had been her fingers he’d felt, closing on his hand, gripping it with no thought to what the others might say. The haunted look in her eyes surely matched his own. He thought for a moment that they’d be the only ones to grasp the significance of it, but Pri reached out to shut off the transmission, her face ashen as she turned back to the rest of them.

“Shit,” Zack Wilson hissed, eyes wide.

“Still, that’s seven thousand light-years away, right?” Hill said, shaking his head. “Even if that is those Sunkiller things that the kid was talking about, it’s still a long way off, right? We should have plenty of time.”

“Goddammit, Adrian,” Pri grumbled, staring daggers at the copilot. “Didn’t they teach you anything in pilot training? The images that telescope is seeing from the Sagittarius arm are traveling at the speed of light… which means all those novae happened seven thousand years ago.”

“And the Sunkillers are traveling at just a few percentage points below lightspeed,” Victor added. He didn’t seem alarmed or shocked, just morose and resigned. “Which means they’ll be coming right behind those images.”

“We don’t have much time,” Angel declared, squeezing his hand tighter. “We hardly have any time at all.”

* * *

“Sean, my good friend,” the Artificial Man said, “you look like hammered shit.”

The Artificial Man was the only way Sean Haricot could think of James Edward Hart, because there wasn’t a single original piece of the little shit left. He’d been born short, scrawny, and ugly as sin, and between him and his parents, had used a good-sized chunk of the family fortune correcting what he thought of as God’s mistakes. Human Growth Hormone, bone extensions, hair implants, and extensive plastic surgery had turned the adult Jimmy Hart from the proverbial ugly duckling into the most beautiful swan money could buy.

Hart poured money on top of money, his Armani suit grown in a vat on a human-shaped lattice 3D-printed from a laser scan of his body. And the shape never changed because his personal trainers and nutritionists and pharmacists wouldn’t let it. Haricot wondered if the man’s hair was naturally blond.

“I did get shot a few times, Mr. Hart,” Haricot rasped, his voice not quite returned after the peripheral damage to his vocal cords, as he limped into the office.

If there was nothing natural about Jimmy Hart, everything about the office was natural, from the mahogany desk to the heart-of-pine floor to the Japanese fighting fish in the tank against the wall.

And the overpriced little shit even flew all that stuff into orbit.

“Come in, come in.” Hart waved at him with obvious impatience, ignoring Haricot’s still-healing wounds. “Sit down and tell me all about how incredibly badly you’ve screwed things up. I can’t wait to hear those details.”

Haricot winced, and not just from the lingering pain of the wound in his hip. He’d known when he’d got the summons to HKC Orbital Headquarters that it wouldn’t be pretty. At least the leather seat in front of Hart’s desk was comfortable, and he sighed as he fell into it and stared at the fish tank that made up the whole back wall of the office.

“You know how much it cost to import those things up here?” Hart asked him, apparently noticing where he was looking.

“A lot?” Haricot guessed and frowned again, as he did every time he heard his own voice. He was used to the smooth, tranquil, salesman’s tones he’d practiced for so long, and it was going to be months before he got that back. I find Zack Wilson, I’m going to kill him slow.

“The fish themselves cost a lot,” Hart admitted, gracefully placing himself in his throne-like seat. “The tank cost more than a moderately priced house in the suburbs. But transportation?” He grinned. “Free. As long as you don’t count the wages of the pilots, but they’re on salary. You see, that’s the thing, Sean… the company is mine. Its assets are mine.” The bonhomie had been as artificial as anything else about the man, and it vanished between one heartbeat and another. “And you, Sean Haricot, are mine. You’re an asset. When one of these fish dies, I have another flown up straight from Japan because I can. Because there are more just like them available. So, tell me, why should I not have you tossed out an airlock and import one just like you from Earth?”

“I won’t sugarcoat things, Mr. Hart,” Haricot said, and though his smooth, convincing tones had abandoned him, he still retained his one superpower, the ability to avoid flop sweat. “I screwed up big time. But not by anything I did on Vishnu. I screwed up by trusting Zack Wilson. I should have known he was too much of a straight-arrow type. All those damned Rangers are. I thought because he spent a few years as a merc, he was a bit morally… flexible. But that whole time, all he did was screw with the Alliance. I should have figured he was a super-patriot type.” He smacked the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “Because, despite everything, boss, despite that asshole Weston and the damned Chinese Sea Dragon team and the cartels, I had that artifact in my hands. If Wilson hadn’t backstabbed me, Weston would be dead and that thing would be right here, along with Dr. Cortez.” He shrugged. “I mean, I know I made a bad mistake trusting Wilson, but surely the fact that I was able to put myself in a position to get the package is worth something. One more chance?”

Hart was silent, his mouth hidden behind the hand propping up his chin, his eyes unreadable. Haricot was convinced it was a lost cause and was scanning the room, wondering if there was anything he could use as a weapon, when the Hart-Klein CEO slowly nodded.

“All right, Sean.” Hart spread his hands. “Maybe I’m a fool, but I’ll do it. One more chance to make this right.” He raised a finger in warning, eyes going hard again. “But only one.”

“I’ll get that thing for you, sir, whatever it is.” He hesitated, wondering how far he could push his luck. “What resources will I have available?”

“Why, just about anything.” Hart smiled. “Anything that won’t be traced back to Hart-Klein, I should say. Because you see, Sean… that artifact is the exact thing we’ve been looking for these last twenty years. The one thing that can dethrone Soong-Tierney and put Hart-Klein at the top of the heap.” The man’s eyes were afire with holy light, like the most fervent fundamentalist Haricot had ever met talking about God. “And I don’t just mean pulling in more profit than Soong-Tierney. I’m talking about power that makes the Union and the Alliance seem like paper tigers in comparison, the power to turn all the human worlds into an empire… with me as the man behind the curtain, the power behind the throne.”

He smiled again and could have almost passed for a normal, reasonable man for a moment.

“As you can see, this means a lot to me.” He leaned forward across that mahogany desk and grabbed Haricot’s right hand, then held it tight between both of his, not as a threat, but almost as a sign of affection. “You do this for me, you’ll be right there beside me. Someone I can trust to do my dirty work. And believe me, that position will be well rewarded. And if you don’t…” He let go of the hand as if discarding a piece of trash. “If you don’t come through, I advise you not to return here… or to show your face on any civilized colony ever again. You understand me?”

Sean Haricot understood just fine. Jimmy Hart was bugnuts crazy, way past the way most billionaires were a little crazy. And he also understood that his only hope of making it off this station alive was to tell the Artificial Man whatever he wanted to hear.

If I was smart, I’d take whatever ship he gives me and get out of the Solar System, crawl into a hole and pull it in after me.

He wasn’t going to do that. Because the thing about crazy, rich assholes was, they sometimes delivered exactly what they promised they would… and being the right-hand man of the emperor of the galaxy sounded like a damn good career move.

“I understand, sir,” he said. “I guarantee, in less than a month, that alien tech is going to be sitting here in your office.” He smiled thinly. “And Chase Weston’s a dead man.”

Chase and Angel will return in SUNKILLER: LEGACY, coming soon.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him online at jnchaney.com.

He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

* * *

Rick Partlow is that rarest of species, a native Floridian. Born in Tampa, he attended Florida Southern College and graduated with a degree in History and a commission in the US Army as an Infantry officer.

He has written over 40 books in a dozen different series, and his short stories have been included in twelve different anthologies. Visit his website at rickpartlow.com for more.