Prologue

Alliance Border World

Sentinel Kriss walked the wall, eyes sweeping the landscape beyond the fortified sector. He and his team had been dropped on-world a few day/night cycles past. He wasn’t really sure how long one of those lasted here, didn’t much care either. Nothing had happened since he and his team had arrived—literally nothing.

Sentinels weren’t supposed to be dropped onto a quiet world.

The Alliance bulletin on this world indicated that an action was supposed to have happened. Some sort of assault, according to the best intelligence. His team had landed on a piece of dirt farmland, with no sign of bad weather coming, let alone any hint of an attack.

Lucians weren’t farmers.

Oh, there were Lucians who farmed, but that was a pitiful existence. Kriss knew of none who took pride in it, not that they should, and none who wanted to farm. Just being on a farm world with nothing to fight made him itch.

“Sentinel Kriss.”

Kriss half turned, nodding to the Parithalian who was approaching.

The tall, somewhat spindly, and blue-skinned Pari’s were the elite ship handlers of the Alliance. Every race had their merchants, their battle groups, and their private navies…but the Parithalians were the acknowledged masters of maneuver. Only the Ross were even close to them, and it wasn’t the Ross’s natural skill that put them on that level, but rather their unnatural link to space-time.

It was damn hard to outmaneuver someone who could literally control the shape of the field you were playing on, yet the Pari were known to do it.

Kriss had a lot of respect for that level of natural skill.

“Master of Shuttles.” He nodded to the young Parithalian. “Anything new off the Link?”

The Intelligence Link was part of the wormhole communications network, the fastest communications available in the Alliance. If the Intelligence Services knew anything, an update should have come through.

Since nothing had, that meant no change in intelligence, so the attack alert was still in effect.

Which meant he and this team were stuck standing here in the middle of the most disgustingly peaceful planet he’d ever had the everlasting misfortune of standing on.

“At least the weather is pleasant,” the master of shuttles told him.

Kriss snorted. “I would prefer an ice storm and class-eight winds to this…boredom.”

The Pari looked at him askance for a second before apparently deciding that there wasn’t much point in pursuing the conversation. He just nodded awkwardly and retreated back the direction he’d come, leaving Kriss to turn his attention back over the wall to the eternal stretch of farmland beyond the secure walls.

He struck the rim of the armored wall in frustration, staring at all that quiet.

The only reason the system even had a fortified base was because it was Alliance requisite procedure to install one before a new colony was authorized. This world was—well, had been—primordial. No life to speak of beyond the early multi-cellular level, which made it perfect as an agri-planet. Drop probes, automated planting drones, harvesters…the whole process took centuries to complete, but within a relatively short time, the world was producing, and by the time the system was fully implemented, one world would feed a thousand.

It was a good way of doing things.

Normally the system operated entirely in the background, completely beneath notice, and certainly without the attention of a brigade of Lucians lead by a platoon of Sentinels. That was how it was supposed to work.

Kriss grunted in annoyance and turned his back to the fields to look down over the base.

So what were he and his team, to say nothing of the rest, doing here?

Kriss flipped on his comm system. “Sentinals. Report.”

He listened as his team checked in, reporting nothing over and over again. No sign of anything out of the ordinary, no single blasted reason for a Sentinel team to be on-world.

If something didn’t happen soon, he was pulling his team back to the base. There was no sense leaving them scattered all across a damned agri-world if there were no threats to be had.

*****

Irak paused in his patrol, looking over the seemingly never-ending fields with a sneer.

“Everything is so…green,” he said to his partner after a moment.

“Green isn’t evil, Irak,” the other Lucian said with a rasping chuckle. “Great battles have been waged among the green.”

“Not this color green, Histh.”

That, the other Lucian supposed, he would have to give to his patrol partner. Battles of note were more normally conducted among a darker green, with real cover around them. Not these never-ending fields of light, practically pastel, green.

It was disgusting.

The color wasn’t something that should be found in nature; it was just an unending pastel-green sea of leaves and vegetation barely up to the Lucians’ calves. The crop was a prime source of food for the Alliance, but to the Lucians’ sensibilities, standing in the midst of it all was a singularly disturbing experience.

He took a step through the muck, then paused in confusion as an odd sensation filled him.

Before Histh could react, or even think, he had an impression of pitching forward as everything went from that hideous pastel-green to an all-encompassing, eternal black.

Though he could not know it, all around him Lucians pitched forward into the green, landing solidly on the dirt and plants and shivering for a few moments before they stopped moving entirely.

*****

Kriss frowned, glowering at the communicator. Half his team had failed to check in.

“All units, check in. Comply.”

Nothing. No response.

The Lucian Sentinel abruptly crossed the room and checked the secure scanners, looking for any anomaly. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, out of the ordinary that he could see. Every system check, all remote scanners…they all showed clear.

“All Sentinels. Check in. Comply.”

Kriss grabbed up his weapon and strode from the tower. He made it to the door when a screaming sound tore the air around him and a wash of heat and fire engulfed the building behind him, plucking him up and throwing him across the open section of the base and into the fields beyond like a toy in a hurricane.

In the wet muck beyond the base, Kriss painfully shifted over to his back and stared at the utter destruction of the building he had just a moment earlier been inside. He cast around slowly, grasping at the muck as he looked for his weapon, but it was nowhere to be found.

Blackness slowly reached out to swallow him as he doggedly started to crawl back toward the fire, his stubborn instincts such that he made it almost a dozen meters after he’d passed out.

Chapter 1

Hayden subcontinent

The jungle rolled by under them as the drop ship captain leaned back in his jump seat and looked over his shoulder at the full-bird colonel strapped in behind him.

“We just went ‘feet dry,’ Colonel,” he announced. “We’ll be at the LZ in five minutes.”

“Understood,” the man answered back, wiping perspiration from his face.

The humidity was unreal, and it was only going to get worse, he had little doubt. The colonel looked down at his uniform and mourned the crisply pressed pleats that it had begun the day with. The drop ship was matching the local climate where they were heading, part of the acclimatization protocols, which he supposed was for the best overall but he wasn’t the biggest fan of just then.

He leaned forward in the seat, just able to get a glimpse of the rolling hills of the subcontinent over the co-pilot’s shoulder. The Hayden hardwood trees were well-known as high-value luxury imports on Earth, but the population made more money off pharma-crops and research grants from what he understood.

Why anyone in their right mind would come out here if they didn’t have to, I have no clue.

The subcontinent was almost entirely unpopulated, only recently having been opened for land grants by the Hayden Council. No one had been much interested before, but apparently a few people got the ball rolling and that was that. Now he had to fly out to the literal arse end of nowhere.

The pilot of the DL-90 SpaceHawk nodded off in the distance. “There’s the locator beacon. Hold on, I’m going to bring us around and approach from the cleared section.”

The colonel frowned. “Why? The wind shouldn’t be bad enough to affect our approach.”

The pilot laughed. “There’s almost no wind to speak of, sir, but this is Captain Aida’s spread, which brings up two big points. The most important of which is, it’s only polite to let the captain see who’s coming from a decent way off.”

The colonel slumped back, mollified, before another question occurred to him. “What’s the second?”

“Sir?”

“The second, point, what is it?” he asked.

“Oh, that.” The pilot chuckled, tapping his threat board. “We’ve been painted by surface–to-air since we went feet dry, so I really don’t want to be impolite.”

The colonel grimaced, knowing that he probably should be surprised but not quite able to muster it. He’d read the woman’s file, so protocol or not, it didn’t much surprise him that she had managed to rig up surface-to-air defenses to cover her property.

Lord knew, most of the people he’d served with would have done the same in a heartbeat if they could without bringing the full force of governmental law enforcement on their heads. Figures that an SF specialist would find a way to make it happen anyway.

******

Sorilla glanced up from the machine she was working on as the drop ship fired rockets and settled into an easy hover over the landing field that had been the first thing she’d cut out when the Council had confirmed the land grant she’d claimed. The bird was one of the new SpaceHawks, she noted, which meant there was a new Sol-Class battle cruiser in orbit, unless she missed her guess.

Explains the traffic spike, Sorilla supposed as she finished tightening the last bolt and kicked the power switch on the MOFA she’d just fixed. The mobile fabrication unit whirred through its boot process, then rose up on its spider-legs and scampered off to join its fellows in the assigned work.

Basically a 3D printer on legs with to the centimeter GPS and dead reckoning software, the swarm of MOFAs had been surplused after the Ares incident had shut down the mines on the Mars-class world during the war. War economy being what it was, the sturdy robots were largely obsolete by the time anyone could figure out a practical use for them. She’d found them sitting in a cargo hull, waiting to be recycled if anyone ever got around to paying to bring them back to Sol Space.

Buying them hadn’t broken her. Most of her pay for fifteen years had been accumulating and earning interest, including combat pay, since there had been literally nothing she could spend it on most of the last decade. It took a fair chunk just the same, however, and she’d traded shamelessly on her on-again, off-again relationship with Alexi and his precious Socrates to get them transshipped to Hayden as well as favors from a dozen other old friends in and out of SOLCOM.

Sorilla was surprised so few people had figured it out, but Hayden was going to be the center of commerce for Sol before much longer, which was why she’d applied for a land grant almost as soon as the war ended. There were worse places to retire, in her opinion, and as long as it remained wild she intended to enjoy it as much as she possibly could. If civilization made it too boring for her, she’d sell out and maybe get herself a ship to find somewhere else to her liking.

It was big galaxy, now. Bigger than most people realized.

Sorilla clapped the worst of the dust and dirt off her hands and made her way casually toward the drop ship as it settled down on the carved stone pad she’d cut out of a block of stone too big to move with anything she had, and watched as the hatches popped and the first figures appeared.

It looked like a security detail, a couple armed soldiers who held themselves like they had just gotten out of boot. The sort assigned to someone senior enough to have a guard, but not important enough to put any real effort into the task.

That told her volumes it and of itself.

Sorilla signed and brushed her shorts and shirt off, sending dust wafting in the slight wind kicked up by the drop ship as she got into range of the ugly military ship. A man in a colonel’s dress kit dropped to the stone and looked around for a moment before focusing on her.

She winced, automatically, at the thought of what the humidity and heat would do to the dress uniform long before the man got back to the ship.

This is a man who is far too concerned with appearances, she noted as she schooled her face to a neutral mask and greeted him. “Colonel. Welcome.”

The man stared for a moment, a flicker of something in his eyes. She was guessing distaste, but it could have been anything, Sorilla supposed. Finally, he smiled and took a step forward. “Captain Aida, I have a dispatch from Brigadier Mattan for you.”

Sorilla nodded slowly, knowing that wasn’t the whole of it. If it were just a simple dispatch, it would have been transmitted to Hayden Control and relayed on to her when she picked up her mail. She paused in front of him and saluted, barely holding the gesture long enough for him to return it, before accepting the physical transfer of the dispatch he was offering.

“Haven’t seen the brigadier in eight years,” she said as she tapped the memory card to her computer and transferred the data over, scrubbing the card in the process. “What does the old man want?”

The colonel choked, doing a fair job of masking it in the process, but he definitely choked when she called Mattan “the old man.” Not that she’d needed the confirmation, but there was no chance in hell she was dealing with an SF man. Everyone called Mattan “the old man” in the field, including his secretary.

“I’m sure it’s covered in the dispatch, Captain.”

Sorilla sighed, but nodded as she pulled up the files on her implants and flash-read the brief without bothering with any of the details just then. When she was finished she frowned. “I put in for leave, Colonel. I have a lot of leave time saved up, more than enough to hold me over while SOLCOM processes my papers. I would say that this better be a joke, but you don’t look like a stripper to me.”

He wasn’t remotely good enough to hide his choking that time.

“Excuse me, Captain?”

Sorilla snorted at the censure in the man’s voice, noting the barely hidden grins on the two soldiers behind him.

“If the old man was setting me up for a gag,” she said, giving him a once over, “he’d have sent a stripper. Frankly, Colonel, you wouldn’t meet standards. So, why the hell is SOLCOM calling me back up now? We’re not at war anymore.”

“Captain,” the colonel said through clenched teeth, “you’re treading dangerously close to insubordination.”

Sorilla laughed openly at him.

Treading hell, I just danced over that line with cleats on and that’s the best you can manage?

She knew when she was dealing with a paper pusher and really should probably lay off him in all reality. It wasn’t his fault, after all. He wasn’t much more of a cog in the machine than she was…arguably less, really. Just a delivery boy, really. What was worse was that he was a desk slave, which meant he was likely to be a lot touchier about protocol than she’d ever been, let alone than she was now.

The problem was…she really wasn’t in the mood.

“Colonel,” she told him evenly, “you’re going to go back and you’re going to file a complaint with the brigadier about my attitude, right? Should I tell you, perhaps, what the old man will do with that complaint? Once he gets finished laughing in your face, I mean?”

The man was the perfect picture of rigid indignation, but as he turned red in the face, Sorilla saw recognition set in and nodded knowingly.

“You’ve been with the old man long enough to know,” she said. “So let’s not play games. There’s nothing in this brief about why the old man or SOLCOM wants me back. I’m tired, Colonel. I’ve fought my wars. Why me?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” the colonel told her dryly.

“Then tell the old man I said ‘hi’ and ‘no,’” she said, slapping the now-empty card against his chest.

He clutched at it, stumbling back half a step. “Excuse me, Captain! You’re being recalled—”

“Shove it, Colonel, I know the regs,” Sorilla told him. “Short of an open declaration of war, SOLCOM can’t deny me my mandated leave…especially since the service shrinks all said I was on the ragged edge and advised medical leave before the Child of God Op. I’ve already put in my papers, so I’ll be discharged long before my leave time is done, Colonel. Tell the old man I said no thanks and to watch his six.”

She rolled her eyes, turning away from him.

“Captain! Captain!” he called after her, but she just flipped him off as she walked, knowing that Mattan would get a kick out of that in the report if nothing else.

*****

The retro firing of rockets caught her as she was tweaking the MOFAs’ programming slightly with new designs for the home they were about to build. The excavations units had run into iron deposits close to the surface, which was good for the fabrication units once she’d gotten it all dug out and sent off to the smelter to be pulled into wire for them to weld with, but in the short term it meant a redesign of the sub-Hayden floor.

On the upside, it was going to much improve the safe room and bunker area.

She didn’t bother leaving her work, figuring that whoever it was would wait or not, and she didn’t really care a whole lot which.

The crunch of footsteps on the dirt warned her of the approach long before the person was anywhere near her.

“Don’t want whatever you’re selling,” she said when the footsteps stopped. “Couldn’t afford it I did.”

A deep laugh surprised her.

“Now I know that’s a lie, Captain.”

Sorilla shook her head and set down the MOFA controller she was interfacing with, rising to her feet as she turned.

“Old man,” she said with a crisp nod and a more respectful, if not much neater, salute than she’d offered the colonel, whose name she’d never gotten. “Apparently you’re more serious than I thought you were when you sent the paper hawk.”

Brigadier Mattan chuckled. “I wouldn’t have sent him in the first place if I’d thought you were serious about putting your papers in, Sister.”

Sorilla rolled her eyes. “No one’s called me that in a while. I think I was leading guerrillas here on Hayden the last time, actually.”

“You’ll always be Sister to us,” Mattan told her, nodding to a folding chair that was leaning against a nearby tree. “May I?”

She waved. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking the chair and unfolding, groaning as he settled into it. The legs sank into the soil. “I am getting too old for this job. Life extension treatment my aching ass.”

She laughed at him. “You’re not too old, General. You’re too fat.”

He glared at her, but sighed and didn’t dispute it. “Too much time in zero gravity ships with nothing to do but eat while the Navy boys did all the work. Felt like fitness requirements kept getting harder and harder to meet. Now my organs are healthy enough to belong to a twenty-year-old athlete and my bones belong to a ninety-year-old cripple. They never really laid out the consequences of all those years in space, you know. It was all buried in the fine print.”

“Some of us read the fine print, old man,” Sorilla said, half smiling and half saddened.

Bone density loss was one of the few things that was still rather difficult to treat. Prior to the war, the rules had been pretty strict on how many hours one could serve in a microgravity environment, but that had gone out the window in the scramble for space hands. Being administration or, worse, operational tactical command meant a lot of float hours, and while regulations were supposed to keep everyone fit, when your job was planning and execution, it was easy to start skipping your workouts.

“Ah well, I’ll live until I don’t,” Mattan shrugged, “and pain is just reminding me that I’m still winning.”

“You said it, sir,” Sorilla told him.

The brigadier looked around, eyes watching the swarm of robots working with interest.

“Quite the spread you’ve managed to get,” he said after a moment. “We mapped it from the Sol, deep scans by the way. There’s a lot of minerals here, waiting to be pulled up.”

Sorilla shrugged. “Nothing that isn’t cheaper to get in asteroids, I imagine.”

He tipped his head, conceding the point.

Gold, silver, pretty much all the valuable metals of yesteryear were little more than curiosities on the Solar markets. Iron was worth more than gold by a considerable margin. Iron was useful, after all. Gold, aside from minor traces in electronic devices, really had few good general uses to the general public.

The historical value of the metal had turned out to be almost purely fictional in the end. No more real than the paper money that replaced it, or the digital currency that replaced that. In the galaxy they lived in, practical value was real value.

“I suppose, though I’m sure your robots could pull up enough to build almost anything you might want,” he said. “That’s something, at least. Couldn’t do that on Earth anymore.”

That much was true. While Earth wasn’t mined out by any means, all the useful materials were generally a significant distance under the surface, requiring some rather extreme technical miracles to bring them up. Hayden was still a mostly virgin world, with what had once been priceless minerals practically lying around on the surface.

Sure, none of them were worth much on the markets—it would cost far too much to transport significant quantities to Earth, and the local demand for such things was saturated by simple asteroid mining—but for her personal use, almost everything she might need was just sitting there, waiting to be picked up.

“Has to be lonely out here, though,” he observed.

Sorilla laughed at him.

“Old man, when was the last time any of us were lonely in the field?” she asked, shaking her head. “How many months did you spend in the jungles in Brazil? Were you lonely then?”

He waved idly. “Point taken, but you know what I mean. You go a little weird in the head when you’re in the field alone for too long. Maybe it’s not loneliness, but it’s real.”

“I’m fine, General,” Sorilla laughed softly. “This is Hayden, not Earth. It’s a big planet, but a small community. On Earth you can be alone in the middle of New York. Here? More visitors drop by to chat in a week than I ever met with while training at Bragg.” She took a breath and looked around. “I put in for the land grant years ago, you know, more on a whim than with any real plan. I wasn’t so tired back then. The idea of retiring was something I joked about. It wasn’t real.”

Mattan nodded.

He remembered that feeling, being young and immortal. By the time he had grown weary, he’d been up for promotion out of the field and behind a desk. It wasn’t what he’d loved, but he had been able to rest finally. Not that he’d recognized it at the time. In that, Aida was well ahead of him. She always did know herself better than he ever did.

“What are your plans for it?” he asked idly, looking around curiously.

The MOFA swarm was building up curving walls out of local cement, and he could see that she would have one hell of a view when the home was complete. If that was all she was interested in, however, she wouldn’t have needed a land grant. There were plenty of incredible views a lot closer to civilization, here and on Earth, that she could have easily afforded.

The Hayden subcontinent wasn’t exactly in high demand. Only half a dozen people had applied for grants out of the entire colony, and he knew that she was the only one of them who hadn’t been born on-world.

Sorilla turned, gesturing out to a stone plateau that rose out of the jungle, masked by drifting clouds along its base. “Do you know what’s out there?”

Mattan looked, but only saw jungle and water and a large bare rock plateau rising up to the clouds, so he shook his head.

“No, can’t say that I do.”

“In addition to more land than anyone could possibly buy on Earth, and all of it rich in potential,” she said, “right there is the original tertiary site scouted for Hayden’s orbital tether. The colonists went with the main continent, but it was really just a coin flip. The two sites were equally viable.”

Mattan frowned, confused. “Alright…”

Sorilla smiled. “It’s always surprising that no one reads the dispatches. I suppose it shouldn’t be. Gil applied to SOLCOM for a second tether just after the war ended, with the stated intent to put diplomatic facilities on a different part of the planet. A lot of Haydenites aren’t ready to have Alliance diplomats and traders living next door just yet, even if they recognize the value of letting SOLCOM use Hayden as a diplomatic point of contact.”

The brigadier general laughed. “So, you own a chunk of land the size of Texas right next to what will likely become the main trade hub between Sol and the Alliance?”

“Not quite that large,” she said mildly. “And next to? Oh no, General, I own the land it will be built on. No one’s figured that out yet, so do keep it to yourself, old man. The rest of the MOFA swarm is already at work up there, putting in buildings, the tether plug foundation, and other facilities that will be needed.”

She fell silent for a while, before going on.

“So you can see why I’m not interested in whatever you want me for.”

Mattan nodded, knowing that they’d come to it finally.

“It might interest you, for all that,” he said. “It’s a joint op with the Alliance.”

As much as she might have tried to deny it, there was no way Sorilla could have hidden her interest in that.

“Well, that’s going to set the hawks among the pigeons,” she said finally. “Can’t be too popular a move, unless I miss my guess.”

Mattan snorted.

That was an understatement if he’d ever heard one. Too many lives had been lost to the Ross, and by extension to the Alliance, for people to much like the idea of working with them for any reason. It had to be done, though, and more…it had to succeed. Otherwise the war would inevitably roll back around, and it was a war that Sol couldn’t win.

So far they’d held their own, and that had bolstered morale powerfully on Earth, but the military men and women who had access to the full breadth of intelligence knew the truth. SOLCOM held key choke points, which permitted them to focus their forces and hold off much stronger opposition, and the Alliance was unfocused and not terribly interested in the sector of space Earth resided in, no matter what the Ross seemed to think. The Alliance was huge, however, a slumbering giant that had nearly swatted humans from the stars accidentally.

Given purpose, that strength must inevitably sweep SOLCOM into the bin of history.

“You might say that,” he told her dryly. “Which is why we need you for this, Captain. You have more field experience with the Alliance than anyone else available.”

“Killing them, General. I have more experience killing them,” she reminded him. “That’s not exactly the sort of experience you want for this.”

“I know you, Aida,” he said gently. “You don’t hold grudges. The killing was never personal for you; it was just the job. Now the job is to work with them, and unlike a lot of people under my command, you’ll actually prefer it that way.”

She sighed. “What’s the op? The brief you sent with your ‘secretary’ didn’t explain that.”

“That’s because it’s classified, at least until it’s over,” he told her, not bothering to mention that would let them carefully bury it if anything went wrong. She’d understand that part better than most. “Are you familiar with the Diaspora Colonies?”

“Vaguely.” She shrugged. “Mostly independent colony ships, left Earth on their own dime. Majority of them never bothered to file accurate destination records, from what I remember.”

“That’s because most of them wanted nothing more than to get as far away from Earth as they could possibly get,” Mattan filled her in. “We’ve located a few over the last century or so, but most of them just vanished. Probably dead. Of the ones we do know of, two are in the no-man’s sky between Hayden and the Alliance.”

Sorilla snorted. “Surprised they weren’t annihilated by the Ross, in that case.”

“For whatever reason, their worlds didn’t interest the Ross,” Mattan shrugged.

What did interest the Ross was a long-standing mystery, but he was all too aware that the enigmatic grey aliens were as like to skip a dozen populated worlds on their way to what did interest them as they were to do anything else. Figuring out the inner workings of what passed for Ross’El minds was a fulltime occupation among xeno-psychology specialists in SOLCOM now.

“Since we’re looking to team up with the Alliance, I suppose one of them is causing trouble?” Sorilla asked, irritated.

Teaming up with the Alliance was one thing, but she didn’t much feel like drawing down on other humans in the process. It sounded like political bullshit to her.

“Somewhat,” the general said. “Frankly, if that were all, I doubt the Alliance would have bothered to contact us at all. The Diaspora Colonies we’re aware of are hardly in any shape to tangle with SOLCOM, let alone the Alliance, and there’s precious little we could do to stop the Alliance from stomping all over them if that was the goal.”

Sorilla nodded, understanding that well enough. “Alright, I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

Mattan chuckled. “You’re going to laugh when I tell you, then feel a little guilty for it.”

Sorilla groaned, closing her eyes. “That statement does not bode well.”

“Two of the earliest Diaspora ships were funded by religious groups,” the general said. “One from America, one from Europe. I don’t know how, other than perhaps God having a sense of humor, but they both must have gotten ahold of the same charts and picked the same destination…”

Sorilla nodded cautiously. It wasn’t actually as crazy as all that, given the limited number of potential Earth-type planets known to scientists early in the colonial movement. Hell, Hayden hadn’t even been on that list, and it was the most Earth-like anyone had located.

“You’d think they’d have checked with one another, just to avoid that sort of thing,” she noted.

“That would have been the sane thing to do, yes,” Mattan said with a roll of his eyes. “The trouble is, the American ship was funded by Christian fundamentalists and white supremacists, and the European ship got its money from extremist Muslims.”

Sorilla winced.

This was rapidly sounding like a comedy of errors that had no possible outcome beyond the tragic.

“Who the hell thought it was a good idea to let groups like that loose in space?” she asked, mostly rhetorically.

“I suppose it seemed ideal at the time,” Mattan said with a dry laugh. “Some of the worst extremists in their respective nations wanting to leave? It wouldn’t surprise me if we found that a big chunk of their funding came from people who just wanted to see them go.”

“God damn short-term thinking,” Sorilla swore.

“Yeah, well, welcome to the human race,” the general told her. “Where have you been for the last few thousand years?”

“They picked the same planet to colonize?” she asked painfully, almost not wanting to know the answer.

“I wish. They’d probably have long since offed each other if that were the situation,” Mattan sighed. “No, they picked two planets in nearby systems. That was the reason they both went in that direction. There was a cluster of potential planets all within a few light years of one another.”

That made sense to Sorilla. At least it would allow them to more easily shift to a secondary world if the primary wasn’t fit.

“Still not seeing the problem,” she admitted. “There’s no way either group could possibly have interstellar capability at this point.”

“True,” the general said, “or it would be if the Alliance hadn’t annexed those worlds and moved in.”

Sorilla laughed involuntarily, then immediately grimaced and cursed.

“Fuck.”

Mattan nodded. “It gets worse.”

“How the hell can it get worse than two xenophobic Earth cultures being annexed by the Alliance while we’re trying to make peace with them?” she asked, unbelieving.

She honestly didn’t know which side would be more up in arms over it if it got out. Humans because the Alliance had invaded more human-controlled worlds, whether they were actually connected to SOLCOM or not, or the Alliance once either of those two groups started really digging into their repertoire of atrocity. She could see why SOLCOM and the general thought this was a priority situation. It was a ticking time bomb that could easily blow up in everyone’s face.

“Well, they were actually annexed long before Hayden was invaded,” he corrected her. “No one knew it, on either side. Since then they’ve alternated between killing the invaders, killing each other, and killing themselves near as anyone can figure out. Recently, however, they upped the ante.”

He looked her evenly in the eyes. “They’ve started using chemical weapons the likes of which we’ve never seen. Lethal on an order of magnitude higher than nuclear weapons and, apparently, invisible to Alliance detection…probably ours too. That’s just too damn dangerous to leave in the hands of a bunch of extremists, Captain.”

“Which group did it?” Sorilla asked, frowning.

“We don’t know. At this point, thanks to the Alliance having a fairly liberal policy of transportation, it could be either,” the general admitted. “Some of them have their own ships now, Captain.”

Sorilla honestly wanted to cry.

Or laugh.

She really wasn’t sure which, but tears would be involved. That much was certain.

Mattan got to his feet, wincing as he did. “I’ll leave you to think about it, Sister. The SOL will be in orbit for a few more days if you want to get ahold of me.”

Sorilla didn’t even hear the rockets of the drop ship as it took off.

Chapter 2

“Hey, Sarge! You here?”

Jerry Reed hopped over some strewn rock and debris as he made his way through the clearing, looking around. The swarm bots didn’t pay him any mind as they continued their tasks, having come a long way since the last time he’d dropped in for a visit. He paused again to admire the location that Aida had chosen for her home, the view of the ocean, rolling jungle below, and the plateau rising up out of the green and into the clouds was perhaps matched on the main continent, but not exceeded.

That moment of admiration aside, however, he returned to his task in short order.

“Yo! Sarge!” he called again, looking around with just a little frustration.

The woman was a ghost by times, if she wanted to be, and that was annoying as hell. Hayden Pathfinders had been cultivating that skill since the invasion, since prior to it the idea of being hidden in the jungle or anywhere else was sheer lunacy itself, but they were still students compared to the “master.” Or, in this case, he supposed “mistress” might be more appropriate.

“What is it, Jer?”

A voice from behind him made him jump, and he just barely managed to keep from screaming as he twisted around. The sound he made was, if he were pressed to admit it, more of a squeak, but at least it wasn’t a scream.

“Don’t DO that!” he snapped after he got his heart under control and his breathing slowed.

She just smirked at him, and he was about to comment further when he spotted her pack in her hand. The long, hard case was a familiar sight to anyone who’d served with the woman or any of her contemporaries on Hayden, and Jerry was well aware that it meant she was leaving.

“I thought you were sticking around this time,” he said with a nod to the pack.

“Service calls,” she answered. “One last ride into the cold black night.”

Jerry shook his head. “Every time is one last ride. Can you talk about it?”

She just shook her head. “Sorry.”

“I don’t suppose you can at least let me know on the quiet side if it’s anything that’s likely to blow back on us if things go wrong?” he asked, just a hint of pleading in his voice.

The inhabitants of Hayden had developed something of a healthy paranoia when it came to outside threats, and the sarge was something of a good luck charm to the whole planet. If she was leaving, he wanted to know why.

“It shouldn’t,” she said, and he relaxed a bit. “But if something were to happen, I would expect you to have fair warning this time.”

“Says you,” Jerry grumbled, but he figured he had to accept that.

“Yes, says me,” she told him evenly as she hefted the pack and walked past him, heading for the landing pad.

He followed after her. “What about your spread here, Sarge? Lots of work going on.”

“The MOFAs will continue on automatic,” she answered. “I’ve loaded enough details to keep them busy for months, at least. Probably the better part of a Hayden year. And you do remember I’m not a sergeant anymore, right?”

“Eh, I could call you Cap, but I’m old fashioned,” he informed her with a grin. “Get yourself a ship and we’ll talk.”

She laughed lightly as they arrived at the pad.

Jerry’s Flitter was a light aircraft with the legs to circumnavigate Hayden if it had to, but really intended more for short flights of a few hundred miles or so at a shot. A nice, economical, and generally reliable bush plane. It suited him well.

Sorilla had gone…a different direction.

She banged the lightly armored side pod of her sub-orbital drop ship, one of the old pre-Terra-class ships that could survive a hot insert into an atmosphere but not make it back out on its own power. The pod dropped open and she slid her pack in before sealing and locking it tight. This one had been left on Hayden after its mother ship had bought it in a furball while she and hers had been bleeding dirt-side.

SOLCOM hadn’t bothered retrieving it, so she’d gotten it for scrap, and after cleaning out the jungle that had been well underway to reclaiming the drop ship for itself, getting the rough and tumble bird flying again hadn’t been difficult. The biggest problem was finding local fuel hot enough to keep it in the air, but hydrocarbons were easily come by on Hayden, so it was just a matter of getting an automated refinery up and running.

Military contacts, particularly the ones she’d made over the years, were basically ideal for just that. She was a specialist in building infrastructure, at least in terms of what she would need to logistically support an armed force, and Sorilla had no compunctions about using every bit of what the Army had taught her in her retired life.

Once they let me retire, she thought darkly.

“Heading back to the tether, I assume?” Jerry asked, eying her drop ship for a moment. “Or are you going straight…up?”

Sorilla glanced at the top hook still mounted to the frame of the drop ship, intended to allow the ship to be plucked out of midair by a starship on a sub-orbital trajectory, and laughed. “No, I’m flying back to the tether. I’m not starship-qualified on one of these babies, or anything else.”

Maybe on a Titan, she supposed, though that had never really come up.

“Well, if you want, I can swing out this way every now and then and make sure it’s all in order?” Jerry offered.

She nodded. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that, though it shouldn’t be much of a bother for you, other than the distance flying out here. The gear is all on automatic, and I’ve kept up the maintenance. It should be good for a while.”

Jerry waved off her comment about the distance. “I’ve been meaning to run some more extensive botanical studies of the subcontinent anyway, so it’s a good excuse for me to spend some time here. Do I need to worry about your…ah, security?”

He scowled as he asked that question, unhappy with the fact that he’d been tracked each time he flew into her spread of land.

Sorilla just shook her head. “Nah. None of them are armed. I just keep the scanners active so I know someone’s coming, and to keep military types polite.”

Like most of her gear, the surface-to-air setup was surplused gear that had been left behind on Hayden after the fighting. It was all obsolete, sold for scrap, and technically had been demilitarized before it had been released to her. Finding the parts to “re-militarize” it had been moderately difficult, but only because she had to have one transshipped from Sol so she could break it down and write up code for her fabricators to produce more.

SOLCOM didn’t care if she were armed, as long as none of the active gear could be traced back to them, legally speaking, and the local government honestly didn’t have any regulations in place for the subcontinent. That would change in short order, of course, but Sorilla figured that she’d deal with that when it came around.

“That’s a relief,” Jerry said with genuine feeling. “You mind if I use your Biv while I’m in the area?”

“Knock yourself out,” she told him as she walked around the drop ship and began a pre-flight inspection. She was her own flight engineer, as well as pilot and chief mechanic, but thankfully the drop ships had been built for SOLCOM by a Russian firm. Elegant they were not, but they’d fly through a black hole and have an even shot of holding together, and the beasts could be repaired with wire and chewing gum.

Perfect for her needs in the short term, and more than workable well into the future.

“I’ll send you the code to deactivate the security,” she said. “Just stay clear of the depot. It’s marked.”

“No problem. I’ve had enough of that shit already in my life,” he said, knowing what she was likely to keep in the depot. “I’m fine with my rifle, thanks.”

Sorilla nodded, smiling. Jerry had always been the reluctant soldier, the very epitome of a gentleman researcher turned guerilla. Back in the day it probably would have been a gentleman farmer, but farming was mostly done by machines now. Researching was still one of the few true human endeavors left.

That and warfighting.

“Looks like I’m ready to go,” she said finally. “Unless you had something else?”

“No, I was just checking on you and planning to use that as an excuse to scout around for samples,” he admitted. “The usual.”

Sorilla nodded. Jerry, like most of her…of Hayden’s Pathfinders, was a PhD first and foremost. Guerilla fighting came in a very distant second, if that, for him and the others.

“Well, go ahead, have at it,” she told him. “Not like I need an escort back to the world.”

He nodded. “Thanks. I’ll keep up the maintenance on your bots. You mind if I bring some students in? I’ll keep them out of your stuff.”

“Everything dangerous is under heavy security,” she waved off the concerns. “Just keep them out of the way of my MOFAs. I’d like to have a real house in place when I get back.”

“You got it, Sarge, and thanks.”

Sorilla shook her head as she climbed up and opened the side hatch to swing into the drop ship. “Not a problem, Jer. I’m not so far gone that I’m that paranoid about strangers. Not yet anyway.”

He laughed as she smiled at her own words, but both of them knew that there was more than a hint of real truth buried there. There was a brittle edge to her that hadn’t been there when she landed on Hayden the first time.

Crashed into Hayden might be more accurate, Sorilla thought, amused by the thought.

All the fighting had tempered her over the years. She had never been exactly soft, of course, but even she recognized that a lot of her flexibility was gone now. Hard and brittle, and aware of it, Sorilla was wary of that unknown strike that would shatter her for the last time and leave nothing worth cleaning up in its wake.

Paranoia, perhaps, but she knew it wouldn’t take much for those fears to come true. She needed to decompress, to let her steel relax and settle into something hard but flexible. If she ever got the chance, it would be a nice thing to experience.

Sorilla swung her leg over into the cockpit of the drop ship, then let herself fall into the bolstered pilot seat. She leaned back out the window. “I’m serious. Stay the hell out of the depot, Jer!”

With that parting rejoinder, she pulled the armored glass down and then dogged it tightly shut from the inside. As the big turbines of the drop ship began to whine, Jerry moved away quickly.

He watched as the ugly, ungainly beast of a ship slowly lifted up above the clearing and then pointed its nose up as the whine turned to a roar and the drop ship accelerated away.

“God speed, Sarge,” he said into the silence she left in her wake. “And give them hell, wherever you’re going.”

*****

USV SOL

Hayden Orbit

“General, sir.”

“Yes, what is it?” Mattan asked as he looked up from his computer.

“You asked to be advised if there was movement from the target area, sir?” his aide said.

“I’m assuming there is,” he said dryly. “Out with it.”

“We’re tracking a Thunderbolt Five drop ship leaving the area, vectoring for the main continent and the tether, sir.”

Mattan nodded. “Thank you, that’s all.”

“Yes, sir.”

He waited for the bulkhead door to slide shut before sending a signal from his computer.

“Yes, General?” Admiral Ruger’s face came back almost instantly. The man had as much paperwork to deal with as he did.

“She’s on her way.”

“Good. I’ll tell the captain to begin preparing to leave orbit.”

“You do that. I have more planning to do here,” Mattan said, with a twist of his lips before he killed the signal and glowered at the documents that replaced the admiral.

*****

Sorilla spotted the gossamer thread of the orbital tether before she could see the lights of the city built around it. Light from the setting sun glinted off the carbon ribbon, scattering into an array of colors—an incomplete rainbow whose colors told her implants almost as much about the composition of the tether as the actual material specs would have.

Her implant suite had been getting less work than usual as of late, and she supposed she’d have to get back into the habit of using it as much as possible. The tools she had at her disposal were as much a part of her as her skill at hand-to-hand or the guns that rode on her hips. Letting her skills with any of those die out shouldn’t be a problem she needed to worry about anymore, but it was hard to break old, bad habits when the brass wouldn’t leave her be.

“Flight niner-three-alpha, Hayden Tower.”

“Go for niner-three-alpha, Tower,” she said, having been pulled from her reverie by the control tower breaking in.

“We have higher than normal traffic. Please shift to holding pattern three and wait for clearance to enter tower airspace.”

“Roger, Tower. Redirecting, pattern three,” Sorilla read back, shifting her course.

Times were changing on Hayden, that was for sure. There had been a time, not much more than a year or two earlier, when she would probably have gotten her ship on the dirt before anyone at the Hayden Tower realized she was there and the worry about other traffic was all but nonexistent.

With Hayden becoming the diplomatic and trade center of contact with the Alliance, however, a lot of people were making a point of coming to see the sights. There was even a regular tourist trade from Earth now, though a big part of that was just getting to see the Alliance ships in orbit or, if one were really lucky, see an actual alien on the tether station.

The demand for new commercial hulls was such that Sorilla had sat down with Gil Hayden a few weeks earlier to discuss the logistics of building a ship-forge facility in Hayden System orbit. She didn’t know why Gil and the council wanted her opinion on it all; she wasn’t even Navy, let alone a shipwright. Still, she had told him it sounded like a good idea, even if it was likely that SOLCOM wouldn’t authorize them to build or install singularity cores.

There was a demand for commercial ships, after all, slow though they might be. With SOLCOM construction being almost entirely dedicated to military production, it seemed like the Sol Corporations were chafing to get into space by any means available. Old Philosopher-class ships were still the most common, but the asking price on those had gone up tenfold and there wasn’t one of them under a hundred years old.

Where there was demand, there was money to be made, and Hayden could do with a major industry to bring in both money and more skilled workers.

Hayden was the next big thing, there was no question of that in her mind. Though whether that was a good thing or not…well, Sorilla would beg off answering that question until more information was available. She wasn’t above taking advantage of it, though, using what little insider information she had to set herself up for the future.

After all, with the various life-enhancing treatments available, many of which she’d already received as part and parcel of her service, she could expect to have a fairly significant future to look forward to. She might as well make the most of it, and to her mind, the real future wasn’t back on Earth anymore.

It was among the stars.

*****

Hayden Tether Counterweight Station

“Gil?”

Gil Hayden looked up as his secretary stepped into the office. “Yes, Sal?”

“I thought you might like to know, Captain Aida is on her way up the tether.”

Gil frowned, considering. “I don’t have an appointment with her, do I?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said, wondering what it was that was bringing the woman from her self-imposed exile.

Since she’d returned to Hayden and the land grant she’d received, it had become almost impossible to get her to leave the subcontinent. Those who wanted to chat with the formidable lady who’d lead the Hayden Resistance, and was honestly still venerated by many of the Hayden militia, had to make their way to her.

He didn’t mind, nor did most who cared to talk to her. No one moved to Hayden to live in air conditioned luxury, so a chance to explore even a bit of the subcontinent was almost as big a draw to visit as the lady herself was. It had been noticed, however, and a few of her friends from the war had become worried.

He sighed, turning his chair around so he could see out the rather impressive view that was currently dominated by the new SOLCOM ship that had arrived a few days earlier. It had been a comfort, having that behemoth in the system as a balance to the Alliance ships that regularly visited. SOLCOM maintained a regular patrol, of course, but those were rarely visible, as they tended to spend more time at the outer system jump points.

Hayden’s safety was a high priority, but it was second to keeping the Alliance from jumping deeper into SOLCOM territory, sadly.

Unfortunately he suspected he now knew that the big ship was here for another reason than just making Hayden’s citizens sleep a little better at night.

“Sal,” he spoke up, coming to a quick decision.

“Yes, Gil?”

“Deliver a message for me, would you please?”

*****

“Captain Aida?”

Sorilla paused, dropping her pack from where it rested on her shoulder, and turned to the speaker. She recognized the woman as Gil Hayden’s personal assistant. “Hey, Sal, surprised to see you here in receiving.”

“Mr. Hayden would like to speak with you, if you have time?” Sally Morell said, sounding nervous as her eyes flicked to the military-issue case Sorilla had just planted on the floor beside her.

“Of course, always have time for Gil,” Sorilla said, hefting the pack back to her shoulder.

“I can have someone take care of that for you, if you prefer.”

“No thank you,” Sorilla said with a brief shake of her head.

It was old habit, but she had no intention of letting her pack out of her sight until it was secured on the SOL. Bad things happened to soldiers who left their kit lying around where civilians could play in it, even if they weren’t carrying anything dangerous.

“Of course,” Sal said. “This way, then.”

“Lead and I’ll follow, Sal,” Sorilla smiled.

She knew the way, of course, though she’d only been to Hayden’s office a few times and only one of those had been in the last year. It was listed on the station’s records, of course, and she had full access to those, even if she had forgotten her way. Still, she let Sal lead the way to the administrative levels and into the rather impressive office that belonged to Gil Hayden.

Gil was the grandson of the original captain of the crew that originally colonized Hayden’s World, and the family namesake for the entire system. His family had been at the core of the planet’s community since before it had existed and showed no sign of letting up on that side of things.

The Hayden Constitution had laid out term limits and election rules relatively early on, as part of their agreement with the Solari Organization that had partially funded the colony, but as on Earth, sometimes a name alone was enough to get you elected. Thankfully, so far at least, the Hayden family had proven to be competent, if not spectacular, leaders since they had, often as not, been at the helm of Hayden society.

“Captain!” Gil greeted her as she entered the outer office, coming through the door with his hand reaching out toward her. He paused as he saw the pack on her shoulder and his hand dropped as he sighed. “Damn it. I thought you’d put in your papers.”

“I did,” she said, shrugging, “but duty is a harsh taskmaster.”

“There’s duty, Captain, and then there is plain abuse of power,” Gil said darkly.

He’d not been on Hayden at the time of the attack, having been on Earth as part of his job securing a regular trade route for the small colony when it went dark, so Gil didn’t know Sorilla as she’d been when she arrived on-world during the invasion. He had made a point of getting to know her since, and had swung more than a little of his weight around to get her personnel jacket pulled once he realized how much her opinion held sway with the colonists.

Most of it had been blacked out, of course, but he was experienced enough with government-speak to read between the lines. Her superiors had advocated for vacation time for her almost a dozen times during the war, but experienced people had been at such a premium that the only time she had time to speak of had been when they’d upgraded her implant suite, and even then her convalescence had been cut short when a mission popped up.

Her psych evaluation had similarly been blacked out, aside from the SOLCOM psychiatrist highly suggesting time off again.

It created a pattern in the documents that fit the woman he’d first met when he hitched a ride on a Cheyenne-class starship to return home on the heels of the alien retreat. She’d been…a powerful presence then, the sort of larger-than-life hero you only read about in history books. Since then, he’d watched her grow smaller and quieter every time he met her.

When she asked for a land grant, he would have expedited it anywhere she wanted short of taking land from someone else. Asking for it on the subcontinent had just made it easier for him to expand her request considerably as part of the gratitude of the colony she had saved. Over the last few months, he’d visited often, wanting to get to know the legend.

She’d been slowly getting better, in his estimation, though he had been concerned about her propensity for solitude, as were many of her friends.

Gil was not happy to see her shipping out with another SOLCOM warship.

The colonists slept better with her on-world, as silly as that seemed, but more than that, he’d come to count her as a friend and it seemed that SOLCOM was determined to break his friend.

“I could turn them down,” she said simply, as though she’d read his mind.

Gil shook his head. “Then why don’t you?”

Sorilla considered that question for a moment. It was a question she didn’t know the answer to, honestly. Sure, Mattan had caught her interest. The Diaspora Colonies were living history, now that she knew that some of them had survived, and she had to admit to burning curiosity as to how they’d turned out. Honestly, though, if she were brutally honest, Sorilla suspected that she was answering the call out of pure habit more than any other thing.

“It’s important,” she finally offered, the words sounding lame even to her, for all that they were true.

“It will always be important, Captain,” Gil said softly. “It’s time for others to shoulder that burden.”

“Last mission, Gil,” she said. “My papers are still in. When I come back from this one, I’m done.”

Gil nodded. “I suppose that’s the best I’ll get, isn’t it? Make sure you come back, will you? A lot of people sleep better at night here, knowing you’re out there in the jungle.”

She laughed at him. “I’m sure they’ll make do without me, Gil.”

“Of course they will,” he agreed. “You know our citizens, they’re tough. That doesn’t mean they don’t have their symbols to believe in, though. I know you won’t believe me, and that’s fine, but people take comfort where they will.”

“Yeah, well,” Sorilla shrugged, “I’ll do my best to get back. Have work to finish anyway.”

“You do at that,” he agreed, glad to shift the topic. “I’ve been monitoring the plans you filed. Ambitious stuff.”

Very ambitious, from what he could tell, especially for a woman who really just lived alone. When he’d authorized the large grant in the area she’d requested, he hadn’t thought much of it. He’d expected her to clear jungle and start sowing pharmaceutical plants, Hayden’s single highest profit export. He had not expected her to start prepping an area for what was effectively a small city by every measure he might make, and would have laughed at the suggestion if he hadn’t seen the mobile fabrication swarm she’d brought in.

Gil himself couldn’t call on that much fabrication capacity. The entire colony might match what she had, though he personally doubted it. Her MOFAs were newer than the ones issued to the colony, and no one had ever really seen the need to upgrade what was working fine for their limited population. The fact that she’d been able to afford as many last-generation MOFAs as she had, had shocked him until he put the details all together and realized that she’d managed to get them for scrap when the Ares Mining Conglomerate shut down and didn’t want to spend the money shipping its tools home.

The war had left a lot of gear lying around unused, for that very reason. On Hayden it tended to be military equipment. Old battle tanks, light automated combat drones, damaged and undamaged dropships, and lord the sheer number of rifles and even alien combat tech they were still pulling out of the jungles was enough to turn his hair grey if he hadn’t already lost all color there years earlier.

Different systems had different situations, though, and the Ares facility had been a rare metals facility from long before the war. Built to supply SOLCOM and SOLCORP with the materials needed to quantum computing and VASIMR drive consumables, it had limped along after deep space deposits of the same materials had been located. When the Ross caused so much damage, there was no way the Ares Corp was going to pay to repair a tenth of the needed facilities. So they just pulled out, abandoning most everything right in place. Materials that would be valuable on Earth or Hayden, was scrap not worth shipping on Ares.

Sorilla shrugged. “I have the capacity, so I figured why bother just making a house for me.”

“Most people would settle for a sizeable plantation with guest homes, not a small city,” he said chidingly, “especially since there’s no one to live there.”

“They’ll last,” she said confidently. “Stone and carbon construction don’t wear down on human timescales. Besides, I think they’ll see use sooner than you expect.”

Gil shrugged. “Well, they’re your machines. So as long as you’re fine maintaining them, you can build whatever you want.”

“While I’m here,” Sorilla told him, as though thinking of something just then, “my father may be arriving while I’m away. I’d appreciate it if you could arrange to have him seen around, transported out to my land if he wants it, a room here if he prefers. On my account?”

“Of course,” Gil said simply. “I’ll make sure of it. I didn’t know he was visiting.”

“A chance at a new frontier, and a wild one at that?” She scoffed. “You couldn’t have kept him away. He was always going to come out sometime. I think he only stayed on Earth as long as he did because he was raising me after Mom died.”

She looked out the large vista beyond Gil’s office to the planet below.

“I wonder what it would have been like if he’d just packed us up and hopped a colony ship.”

“As much as I believe you’d have been an asset to any world, ours preferably,” Gil smiled, “I can’t say as I’m saddened that he did things the way he did.”

“It has worked out, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully before visibly shaking herself free of the thoughts. “Well, I should go.”

“Thank you for coming, Captain,” Gil said, taking her hand and shaking it firmly. “And God speed on your mission.”

“Thank you, Governor Hayden,” Sorilla returned with a grin as she hefted her pack to her shoulder again and walked back to the central lift.

Gil watched her go until she had been out of sight for a long moment, then forcibly pulled his thoughts back to the present and the work at hand.

“Sal,” he said, “make a note to let me know if Captain Aida’s father arrives. I’m afraid you’ll have to look up his name, but I assume the family name is Aida.”

“I’ll see to it, sir.”

“Thank you.”

*****

USV SOL

The United Solar Vessel, SOL, was the namesake of the latest class of SOLCOM warship. Over fifteen hundred meters long, its design was mostly an incremental improvement over the previous Terra-class, with more efficient singularity controls supported by a new control system known colloquially as the “Parker interface” that allowed for incredibly fine-tuned control applications within the ship and without.

Bigger, stronger, faster, and many, many times deadlier, the SOL was the new flagship of the rapidly growing SOLCOM fleet.

For Admiral Ruger, it was just one more deck to walk, however, in a line of many decks before.

He found the objective of this particular stroll of the decks in short order. The general was standing over one of the expansive observation decks on the admiralty spire, looking out to where Hayden’s World floated in the black.

“You called it, General,” Ruger said as he approached. “My yeoman just informed me that Major Aida hitched a ride on the supply shuttle.”

Mattan nodded, unsurprised, though he had expected her to take a little more time.

“You ever wonder if we’re the villains in our story, Ruger?” he asked softly, not turning around.

“You’re getting philosophical in your old age,” Ruger answered, shaking his head. “I do what I have to do, no more, no less.”

“I’ve read her files,” Mattan said. “She shouldn’t have been on half the missions she saw, let alone leading them.”

“You need to get your head in the game,” Ruger admonished him. “The major has succeeded brilliantly, every time. She’s done the impossible for us.”

“And, in turn, we expect her to do it again,” Mattan snorted derisively. “That’s an untenable course of action, and you know it. Eventually, we’ll ask too much. Maybe we already have.”

“I’ve worked with her more than you have through the war,” Ruger reminded the general. “I’ve seen her turn disaster into a fighting chance, then take that chance and shove right up the enemies’—”

Mattan chuckled, cutting him off. “She always was good at that. I could tell you stories…”

“Another time. Just trust her. She’ll be fine,” Ruger said.

“She’s tired. Her head’s not in it anymore,” Mattan said. “I saw that the moment she spoke. She wanted out. I’m uncomfortable with this, we shouldn’t have pulled her back.”

“If I have to send a thousand, ten thousand, a million good men and women into the meat grinder to keep Sol free, then that’s exactly what I’ll do,” Ruger said coldly. “And it’s what you’ll do too, and you know it.”

“I do,” Mattan sighed. “I’m just getting old enough that my regrets are starting to rally enough forces to outnumber my patriotism.”

“For a Special Forces man, General, you think way too much,” Ruger laughed. “At any rate, if you want to meet the lady, she’ll be landing in twenty.”

Mattan nodded. “Thank you, Admiral.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ruger said. “And, General? Regrets aren’t worth the consequences of not acting.”

“On that, Admiral, we are in accord. Regrets are for peacetime,” Mattan said, his tone hardening.

*****

“Pressure’s equalized,” the pilot’s voice drifted back as Sorilla released her restraints and rose up from the uncomfortable jump seat she’d been afforded when she showed up just before the shuttle left the Hayden Station. “Lock seals will open in ten seconds.”

Sorilla worked her jaw to keep her ears from popping when the seals did. The pressure being equalized really just meant that they were within military requirements to open the seals, and the odds were good that the shuttle was still a little out of sync with the ship. She was proven right when, a moment later, a pop and hiss filled the cabin and she felt the air bear down on her eardrums uncomfortably.

She swallowed, then pinched her nose and forced a little more internal pressure to her ears, then sighed as she smelt the carbon filtration of the big ship fill her nose.

I almost missed that. Almost.

It wasn’t pleasant—a burning sensation that invaded her entire body through her nose and lungs—but it was a memory of home too, in its way. She drew in a few deep breaths until the burning sensation faded, then Sorilla shouldered her pack and navigated her way through the stock of fresh food and other supplies the shuttle had brought over from Hayden until she stepped onto the ramp and walked down and out of the belly of the big military shuttle.

“Major, welcome aboard the SOL.”

Sorilla was only mildly surprised that the general had chosen to meet her and not surprised at all that he’d found out she was coming, though she hadn’t announced herself officially.

“Sir.” She nodded. “Pleasure to be here.”

He scoffed at that, but refrained from commenting. “We have a billet for you set up in officers’ country near the admiralty spire. I’m told it’s one of the nicer ones.”

She laughed. “I’ve been sleeping in an emergency shelter for the last few months, sir. I’m sure I’ll get by, no worries.”

“I expect you’ll be onboard a fair amount this run,” he told her, “so it may as well be decent accommodations, I suppose.”

She shrugged. “What is my assignment, specifically, if you don’t mind my asking, General?”

“Expected it,” Mattan answered. “Hand off your pack and walk with me. Corporal!”

A Marine who’d been standing nearby stiffened. “Sir?”

“See to the major’s pack, would you?” The general gestured. “Her berth is in the computer.”

“Yes, sir, ma’am,” the corporal said, taking the pack off Sorilla’s hands. “It’ll be waiting for you in your room, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” Sorilla said, already turning to follow the general.

“No problem, ma’am.”

*****

“Here’s what we know,” Mattan said, shooting a file to Sorilla’s implants. “You can review the details at your leisure, but the quick and dirty is that the Alliance is just as interested in keeping this from blowing up in anyone’s faces as we are. They probably would have kept it to themselves as an internal matter, but they’re aware that we’ve got at least some penetration of their public media now and weren’t sure they could keep it quiet for long.”

Sorilla nodded, flipping through the file on her corneal implants. “Makes sense. Of course, bringing us in gives them better access to us as well, you realize?”

Mattan snorted. “Teach your grandpa to suck eggs, Sister. That’s one reason we want you in on this.”

“Give them a known factor rather than someone new who they may actually end up facing in the field later,” Sorilla agreed. “Right. Any other reasons?”

“Well, your specialty, of course. We are dealing with rather noted terrorist types. You spent a fair amount of time in the field against them,” he told her.

“Against Muslim extremists, yes,” she said. “Never dealt with Christian terrorists, at least not white supremacist types. Tangled a bit with Christian extremists in central Africa, but that’s a different breed. They operate more like Muslim terrorists; it’s a culture thing. I’ll need full briefs on everyone who shipped out with that colony ship, sir.”

“It’s in your files already,” Mattan said, his tone clearly amused that she would be telling him how to do his job. “I think you’ll find them more complete than you’re used to.”

“That’ll be a nice change,” she said, calling up the files on the American Diaspora vessel. “How come?”

“Enforcement against them was…not always as stringent as one might wish,” Mattan said with a twist of his lips, “but the old FBI did take them seriously just the same. Most of those boys couldn’t fart in the woods without it being recorded, so we know everything they knew the day they left Earth.”

“Alright, I’ll start breaking that down into a cultural brief,” Sorilla said tiredly. “It’ll take time.”

“Well, you can do that, but we’ve not exactly been sitting around on our asses, Sister.” He grinned.

“I’ll do it anyway, before I look at what you have done up,” Sorilla said. “I’d rather approach it cold. How long until we’re in Alliance space?”

“A week,” Mattan told her as he looked out of the vista afforded him by his office on the admiralty deck. “Another reason we wanted you in on this, Sister…”

Sorilla flicked the files off her implants and looked intently at the general. “Yes, sir?”

“The Alliance already assigned that Lucian Sentinel to the mission, the one you faced on Hayden.”

“Kriss?” Sorilla asked, not unpleased. “He’s a solid man…Lucian…whatever…but not who I’d expect to be in charge of this sort of thing.”

“The reports are sketchy, but I think one of the terror groups ambushed some of his boys with chemical weapons. Not too many made it out, if the reports are right,” Mattan told her with concern in his voice. “That gives him a personal stake in this, and maybe an axe to grind.”

“I’ll watch my back,” Sorilla said. “Who’s on the team from this side?”

Mattan smiled and sent another file her way with a gesture. “I’ve operational detachments from the Fifth. A hundred and forty-four men, most of them with some experience in various theatres back home, half a handful with deep space hours in their jackets, and nearly ten percent rookies. The admiral will keep the SOL standing by, so we can use her Marines if we need them, but obviously we’d rather keep this under our berets. There’s another forty in the C-team for operational control. Most of them are experienced, but no real space ops among them, I’m afraid.”

“A C-team seems like overkill on this op, sir,” she commented, a little confused. “Why have a battalion-level command and control handling a pair of detachments?”

“Normally we’d probably second them off to a single B-team,” he admitted, “but that would strain the command a little, and there’s not going to be much help to call on from home for this one. Additionally, HQ is worried that this might expand to a full blown confrontation, and in that case they want an experienced command team already in the slot.”

Sorilla nodded. “Understood. Who’s the op commander of the C-team?”

Mattan laughed at her. “You are.”

“That’s not a captain’s slot,” Sorilla objected. The last thing she wanted was that pain-in-the-ass job. “Lieutenant colonel, at a minimum, sir.”

Mattan pulled a pair of silver oak leaves from his pocket and tossed them at her. “Consider it your last promotion. SOLCOM was going to give you the bump as part of your retirement—would have made great PR from what I understand. Now, I suspect they might be a little less interested in going public, but somehow I doubt that’ll bother you much.”

Sorilla caught them on reflex, looking at the insignia like they were some particularly disturbing species of insect.

“Skipping a full grade, sir?” she asked skeptically.

“Well, you have more experience than most of our full colonels right now,” he told her honestly. “And you blow away their deep space time, as well as other stats, but really it was the retirement bump that decided it. Someone thought it would be a nice gesture for the ‘heroine of Hayden’.”

“The only rank I ever wanted was Top,” she said mournfully as she stared at the lieutenant colonel’s pins.

Mattan grinned rather nastily at her. “Still think officers don’t work for a living, Colonel?”

Sorilla resisted, barely, the urge to flip off her superior.

Chapter 3

USV SOL

En route to Alliance Space

Sorilla made her way through the bulkheads that separated the lower port spire from the core of the ship, a section generally reserved for visiting dignitaries but currently seconded for use by the U.S. Special Forces C-team while they were in transit. Sorilla didn’t know how she was going to handle this level of command, but she supposed it was time to find out.

Prior to this assignment, the most she’d been in real command of was Irregular Forces, or her own A-team. Commanding Irregulars was often more like herding cats: You were better off letting them do their own thing while being as subtly encouraging as you could to get them moving in the general direction you wanted. An A-team was a different bird, of course, but those were composed of highly motivated, highly intelligent people who were generally all on the same page. The barest of instructions was all you needed to get good results and, in fact, micromanaging people like that was as likely to lead to disaster as anything.

A C-team was a headquarters element, and not generally her forte, but Sorilla could see the logic of putting her out front on this one. The Alliance would be building extensive dossiers on the commander of this operation, for future reference in case they met in combat, and giving them plenty of data on her eccentricities would, if anything, just cloud Alliance analysis.

The new oak leaves felt heavy and awkward on her collar as she walked into the observation deck that had been converted over to handle the command and control functions for the C-team’s planning staff. She paused only momentarily, before anyone noted her, to make sure her beret was adjusted properly.

Once she crossed the bulkhead that marked the separator between the observation deck and the corridor, a subtle signal flashed from a sentry to one of the men standing in the middle of the controlled chaos she was observing. Sorilla’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at her briefly, then refocused back on his work.

She got enough off him for a facial recognition scan, however, and had his file up on her implants a second later.

Major Pierce Strickland, she read off the man’s name.

Most of his file was redacted. Not exactly uncommon, but enough to raise her eyebrows a couple notches, as she should, in theory, have access to all the files of everyone under her. That wasn’t always true of a detachment, she knew though, so she was inclined to set that issue aside for the moment.

The sheer amount of what was redacted, however, raised her eyebrows even more. Her own file had less black on it, and Sorilla was well aware that she had been involved in more missions that didn’t happen than ninety-nine percent of the Forces. With a record like that, the man had either seen a lot of action in places the government didn’t like to talk about, or he’d been involved in some highly classified projects.

If he were from most other units, it would be a tossup, but since he had the black flash of the Fifth on the beret he wore, she’d lay her money on the first option.

Eyes were on her as she walked across the deck, directly for the major without bothering to look at anyone else.

“Major Strickland,” she said as she came to a stop a few feet from him.

“Colonel,” Strickland acknowledged as he came to attention and saluted.

Sorilla returned it, acutely aware of the multitude of black flashes on many of the soldiers’ headgear around her, and the nine stars that made up her own flash. In her day, she’d served with the Fifth, but they’d used gold bars across the black flash then. She wondered, idly, when they’d changed back to the solid black, as she’d lost contact with the organization while serving with SOLCOM. It was difficult, sometimes, to get news from home when you were several light years out. The solid black flash, and even the switch itself, wasn’t an unusual affectation for the group, however, so she didn’t think much of it. The Quiet Professionals seemed to alternate between those two designs for their beret flashing with some regularity.

The others present represented soldiers from various other militaries that had specialists in the sort of work that was her chosen vocation. Sorilla recognized them as mostly European, though there were a couple Canucks and an Aussie or two in the group. It was a less mixed group than usual, as it seemed SOLCOM had opted to pull primarily from the Fifth Special Forces Group. Likely the idea was to hit the ground running with an already solid team.

“My orders, Major,” Sorilla said, offering him the chip given to her by Mattan.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, accepting them. “I have been briefed. The team is yours, ma’am.”

Sorilla nodded curtly. “Continue as you have been. I have to bring myself up to speed and prepare a cultural brief on the likely aggressors before I get too involved here.”

“We have that prepared, ma’am,” Strickland offered.

“Thank you. I know, but I want to look at this cold before I go over anyone else’s work,” Sorilla told him with a shake of her head. “Call it a habit, Major. It was my specialty—one of them, at least.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand,” he said.

She looked over the people present briefly before turning her focus back to the major. “I probably don’t have to say this, Major, but it bears repeating so I will anyway. When dealing with the Alliance, I want everyone here to maintain the lowest possible profile. Don’t give them anything. Just send them to me as much as you can. You all will likely be dealing with them well into the future, so let me be your shield for now. This is my last rodeo. They can write up as detailed a profile on me as they like. I’m sure it’ll make for great entertainment eventually, but it won’t do them much good once I’m out.”

The major nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll make certain everyone understands.”

Sorilla nodded, knowing that he would do just that and not concerned about it really. The Fifth were known as the Quiet Professionals for a reason. They didn’t sign up for fame and glory. The Special Forces was the most thankless special operations job the Military had to offer, and you had to know that before you signed up. If you did the job right, no one ever knew you were in a country at all, and if people knew, then you’d fucked up. That meant that the men and women in the room with her all knew the score. Flying under the radar was the way they lived, at home and in the field.

Glory was for the SEALs.

“I’ve been told that the Alliance commander we’ll be dealing with is one I’ve crossed swords with in the past,” she said. “He’s a Lucian Sentinel. That makes him the Alliance version of the SEALs, only tough.”

A few people within earshot chuckled, but a glare from the major shut them up.

Sorrilla ignored them; her comment had been intended to do get just that reaction after all.

“That means he’s likely to favor a direct confrontation,” she said, “which would be fine, if we could find all the targets, but you know how that goes.”

Strickland nodded.

Guerilla forces lived and died on a very few basic factors. One of those was being able to hide from the regular forces they generally fought. While exceptions did exist, of course, in general no guerilla force stood much of a chance against a comparable regular unit. If the regulars could find them, the guerillas would die. Hiding was a survival trait, and any long-time active guerilla force were, by necessity, masters of it.

“I expect to spend most of my time talking him down and trying to keep his Sentinels from stomping all over our operations,” she admitted. “But I’ve been surprised by the Alliance before, so we’ll see how it plays out. When it comes to the real fighting, though, I can vouch for their competence in the field. Just make sure our people watch their backs. I don’t read the Sentinels as holding a grudge against humans, but exceptions always exist.”

“You don’t think they’ll have any problems working with us?” Strickland sounded skeptical.

“Oh, they’ll have problems,” Sorilla said, “but my read is that their main concern will be that we’re horning in on their action. Seriously, treat them like SEALs or Rangers. They’re pros, they’re motivated, and they want to be there…but they signed up for action, not the job. With exceptions, of course, they’re not going to be patient.”

“Right, I suppose I should have expected that,” Strickland sighed, seeming to relax a little.

The job was often a long game for Special Forces. You didn’t generally build, or topple, a functioning system overnight. Not unless you wanted to be really flashy about it, and that was anathema to the Forces. Doing the job right generally took years of nudging a little here and a little there, until everyone involved genuinely believed it was their idea in the first place.

It took time, but it worked.

Flashy solutions were almost always temporary solutions.

“I’m not overly worried about the Lucians, though,” she admitted. “It’s the Alliance intelligence that bothers me. That and the North American Colony.”

“Not the European one?”

She shook her head. “Muslim extremists are flashy, but largely ineffective. They’ll kill some people, sure, but the real damage they cause is going to be the overreactions people have to their methods. Frankly, the brief I’ve seen so far doesn’t sound like them. I’ll need to get more information, but a chemical weapon ambush is unusual. Muslim fundamentalists usually aren’t that competent. I’d have expected martyrs if it were Muslims.”

“Well, you’re not wrong there,” the major sighed. “So you think it’s the white supremacists?”

“Maybe.” Sorilla wasn’t committing to that, though. “But it’s hard to say. They’re more dangerous back home in the States, but mostly just because they fit in better and there are more of them. In other parts of the world, the Muslim Extremists are the real threat, so I suspect it’ll come down to which group is more desperate, so we’ll have to see once we get in the field.”

The major nodded and made a couple notes. Desperation was the single most defining feature of effective terrorist groups. Without desperation to fuel their recruitment campaigns, those sorts of groups generally withered on the vine. Few people were truly fanatical enough to sign up to kill or be killed, unless they were desperate.

“Honestly,” Sorilla went on, “I’m not writing off the third option.”

“Third option?” The major looked up at her sharply. “That wasn’t in the brief.”

“That’s because I haven’t given that brief yet,” she said. “The Alliance has their own terror groups and resistance cells. The use of chemical weapons no one can identify makes me wonder if one of them isn’t backing the human groups, using them as a front.”

“Jesus,” the major swore, leaning his head back. “As though this wasn’t complicated enough.”

“Welcome to interstellar politics, Major,” Sorilla said with a wry smile. “And this is still the 101 class. My money says it’s only going to get worse from here. So once we’re in the muck, stay close but stay behind me. Listen, don’t speak. SOLCOM needs you to know everything I know, but to be invisible. I went and made myself famous, at least to the enemy. Don’t do that.”

He snorted, amused, but nodded. “I won’t.”

“Good.” She grinned suddenly. “And on that, I’m going to need to know where my office is. I have a brief to prepare.”

“I’ll show you,” he said. “We have space waiting for you.”

*****

Kriss hissed in pain as he woke from the drugged stupor he was in, attracting the attention of a nearby medic.

“Hold on, Sentinel,” he heard a voice order him. “You were caught in an ambush.”

“Ambush, Abyss,” he gritted out. “The cowards weren’t even on-world, were they?”

“No, we don’t believe they were,” a second voice said.

Kriss turned painfully, glaring at the speaker. “Your vaunted intelligence was wrong, then.”

“So it would appear,” Seinel told him dourly. “I do apologize for that.”

Kriss looked away from the Sin Fae, his expression unchanging, though he did grunt and grit out a response.

“Mistakes happen,” he said.

“I would that this were merely a mistake,” Seinel said. “However, I believe that somehow these agitators have turned someone within my organization.”

The Lucian turned back, his gaze piercing the other with a look both incredulous and questioning at once.

“I can think of no other way that our intelligence could have been so completely wrong,” Seinel said, starting to pace. “We are not perfect, of course, far from it…but we should not have been this far from the mark, Sentinel Kriss. Not remotely.”

Kriss drew in a painful breath, the burn from the chemicals he had breathed in infusing his body with pain, and from that pain he drew determination.

“Then we find the traitor, use him to discover the enemy, and then execute him for his crimes.”

Seinel paused, but nodded. “In that I believe we are in agreement. However…things have changed. The Alliance governor of this sector has decided that the situation has become…dangerously untenable, as it concerns the humans. He’s elected to allow the Terran government to send a group to help root out the agitators. This has become something of a joint mission, I’m afraid.”

Kriss slumped back, wallowing in his pain briefly.

“This will complicate matters,” he said painfully.

“I know,” the Sin Fae said. “Though it is a good chance to get further intelligence on the Terrans, I could wish that the situation were a simpler one.”

“No matter,” Kriss decided. “I will endure and overcome.”

A dark thought struck him then, and he turned sharply to look at the spymaster, despite the pain he felt. “It is still my mission, correct?”

“It is,” Seinel assured him. “I had to alter a couple of the priorities on the reports sent back, but the governor is unaware of precisely how serious your injuries were…otherwise you would have been replaced with certainty.”

Kriss grimaced, slumping back and closing his eyes.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

The gratitude was real, though the expression of it short and perfunctory, and the Sin Fae took it as it was intended.

“You have nothing to thank me for,” he said simply. “I am more familiar with Lucians than the governor, and have no desire to deal with a new field commander on top of the Terrans and whatever other insanity the agitators cause. I am simply looking out for my own skin here.”

Kriss grunted once in suppressed amusement, but didn’t argue.

If the spymaster wanted to play it that way, it was fine by him. He suspected that there would be ample time to pay back any favors he might owe before this was all over.

Certainly he owed a few to the enemy that he intended to pay back…with interest.

*****

Sorilla’s lips curled up as she examined the psych profiles of the colonists on the two Diaspora vessels.

It was, without question, an example of good riddance to bad rubbish when they’d acquired their early private ships. She wasn’t surprised at all to find that a rather sizeable amount of the funding had come from outside donors, many of them just wanting the bastards gone from the country and the world.

The two ships had ironically similar lists of humanity’s “finest,” though the information available on the European vessel was a little less complete, sadly. She supposed that she should be grateful for having more experience fighting Muslim extremists, since she could fill in a lot of the blanks that way.

The sheer level of data available for the Americans, though, was stunning. She’d honestly never seen files this thoroughly detailed before, not even in her wildest dreams. The feds must have bugged their bathrooms to get some of this intelligence.

The ship’s captain had been former military, dishonorably discharged for trying to knife one of his comrades in a bar fight. His entire jacket read like something out of a bad movie. He’d spiraled down from his discharge, joined a militia movement, wound up serving under someone worse than he was.

That someone was one of the ship’s key elders, Mitchell Gain.

Gain was well-educated, a strong proponent of the benefits of eugenics…because of course he was, Sorilla thought with some disgust. Though it wasn’t even eugenics that bothered her so much as she read the file, but rather the fact that he supported the theory during a time when it was almost possible to at least attempt such a thing ethically, but he didn’t bother.

She didn’t personally ascribe to the concept, but Sorilla was aware of some of the academic arguments in favor of doing things to strengthen the genetic code of the species. In a time when direct manipulation of the genome was not only possible, but almost commonplace, those arguments were common fodder among anyone with even basic education.

The man whose file she was looking at, however, ascribed to the old school methodology. Not because there weren’t better ways to do what he claimed to want, but because he enjoyed it.

And this is one of the guys who helped form this culture. Joy, she thought dryly to herself. Just fucking perfect.

It would have been some time since he’d died, since the Diaspora ship had left during the very, very early days of medical life extension, so that meant that there would have been time for significant cultural drift. People just weren’t, by nature, evil, but indoctrination was a tough chain to break. Sorilla hoped that they wouldn’t be dealing with the worst case scenario, but it would come down to what sort of government controls they had instituted over their society.

White supremacists generally espoused a belief in personal freedom and, in the case of those who came from the U.S., the articles of the American Constitution and amendments to same. Even casual observance of those sorts of ideals would eventually undermine auto-and theocratic beliefs, which would cause a cultural drift away from the more dangerous aspects of fundamentalism.

The difficulty lay in how quickly that drift would propagate, which she had no easy way to determine.

In that, she could far more easily predict the European ship. They’d left as a theocracy, and there was no indication that would have changed in the interim. That meant she could expect that culture to be following relatively close to Sharia Law.

Of course, both ships had been crewed with more than just believers. You didn’t travel between the stars on faith, not and survive the trip at least. So they had educated elements in both groups.

This is going to be interesting, Sorilla thought as she continued to work out the cultural report of the original ship’s crews and passengers.

She honestly had no idea how this particular mix of people would have evolved. She was rather annoyed, actually, that the Alliance had happened upon them. It would have been fascinating to see what they did with another couple hundred years on their own, removed from all the variables that drove tensions on Earth.

*****

Alliance space was a few jumps from Hayden, but the annexed worlds were closer than Sorilla had generally come to expect in her dealings with the alien Alliance. So she only had a few days to work on her plans for the upcoming mission before the ship’s intercom announced their arrival at the initial contact point.

She made her way from the office she’d been given, heading for the SOLCOM deck where the rest of the team from the Fifth were likely already watching the SOL’s entry into the system.

She wasn’t disappointed when she arrived. Even the old man had come down from the admiralty deck to watch the show from there. Sorilla quietly stepped into place beside him and Major Strickland, eyes on the augmented display that could be seen through the massive surrounding transparent view of deep space that surrounded them.

“Alliance beacon is up.” Strickland nodded to the red light that had just lit off on the display. “Why aren’t there any ships yet?”

“They’re running doggo,” Sorilla answered. “Unless you catch them with their pants down, it’s tough to spot an Alliance warship that isn’t maneuvering. Tough to spot ours too, for that matter. Space is a big place.”

One by one the planets of the system were mapped and appeared on the augmented display, one key world showing up highlighted and enlarged on the screen.

“That’s our target world,” Mattan said softly. “The North American colony. The Alliance says the locals call it Arkana.”

Sorilla nodded, wishing that the Alliance files had been remotely detailed. Unfortunately, the brief they’d gotten from the alien Alliance had been rather less than, and she doubted it would get much better once they were onsite. The Alliance wouldn’t entrust them with much, just out of professional caution. Exposing what intelligence you had was always a risk, as just knowing what you knew might be enough to expose how you had gathered it.

She linked her implants into the ship’s computers and started gathering some intelligence of her own, pulling up the take from the ship’s hyperspectral scanners.

“It’s a pretty arid world,” she said. “Oxygen is on the low side, but breathable.”

She frowned, doing the math in her head. “With as many generations as they’ve had, I think we’d best be careful with the locals. They’ll be adapting to the air, unless they’ve wasted a lot of resources on enclosed environments, and that will make them tougher than you’d expect.”

“Thin air, arid environment, and it looks like a heavy gravity,” Mattan rumbled, clearly doing the same thing she was. “Sister, you ain’t lying. Proto-Ghurkas?”

“Physically, anyway,” Sorilla shrugged. “I doubt they’ll have the attitude.”

“Small mercies.”

“They’ll be generations away from the same adaptations the Ghurkas have reached,” Sorilla said, “at least, but at least some of them will be adapting already. We’ll need to keep our oxygen close.”

“Surface temperature is high,” Strickland offered up. “That’s going to affect operational capabilities on our side. Without environmental suits, we’re looking at two weeks to adapt for basic operations, six months before we’re capable of full-scale ops.”

“We’ll start adapting onboard,” Matton ordered. “SOLCOM decks will be adjusted to local temperatures and humidity, effective immediately.”

The other two nodded in agreement, but the situation just irritated Sorilla.

“They could have given us basic data like this,” she grumbled. “We’d already be ready to roll the moment we put into orbit. I don’t like this.”

“What’s to like?” Strickland asked, a little wryly. “We’re here on the behalf of an alien empire, tasked with putting down a human revolution against them. I don’t care how you cut it, that’s just screwed up.”

Sorilla snorted, smiling slightly, drawing the attention of them both. “Do you really see that as the mission, Major?”

“You don’t?”

“Not even close.” She shook her head. “This is primarily intel gathering and diplomatic outreach.”

“Outreach? We could do that from Hayden.”

“Major, we’re not reaching out to the Alliance.”

Matton chuckled. “Takes notes…Major Strickland. Yes, we would rather avoid a diplomatic incident with the Alliance, but that’s not our primary mission.”

“We have two potential groups of human infiltrators inside the Alliance,” Sorilla said. “Even if we can’t work with them, we’re here to learn how to infiltrate them. That will allow us to insert agents into Alliance space.”

“I’m not used to this,” Strickland admitted. “That would normally not be a consideration. Imitating one group to infiltrate another? Usually we just train people to imitate the group we’re really concerned with.”

“New game, new rules,” Matton said firmly. “Learn them, or step aside.”

“There.” Sorilla nodded to the display. “The Alliance ships just lit off their drives.”

“Well, game faces, people,” Matton ordered. “We’re about to meet our partners for this op. Play nice.”

Chapter 4

Seinel looked on as the human ship settled into the hangar of the big Parithalian starship. It was a different design than the ships he had been briefed on in the past, not matching any of the profiles they had on record from the war. While he was certain that the Parithalian crew were carefully recording every detail of the new ship design, Seinel did his best to commit it to memory as well while trying to work out why they had made the changes they had.

It was new, the polish on the metal still visible beneath the paint. Cosmic radiation and grit from space hadn’t blasted away the first layer of paint yet, to say nothing of the metal beneath.

They sent a completely new ship, if not a new model. Interesting.

The humans were clearly in an accelerated development phase. Exposure to Alliance technology during the war had pushed them faster than he would have anticipated based on the earlier intelligence he’d been provided. The Ross were notoriously unreliable when it came to providing intelligence, but their scanners were top rate all the same.

The initial brief on the humans matched the profile of a young interstellar civilization. They had jump drive capability, but extremely low acceleration ships, likely no more than a handful of worlds under their control. He would not have been shocked if their homeworld was still politically split, as seemed common in early space-faring races.

Now, however, Alliance Intelligence Services had their ships pegged at very nearly as fast as the best Parithalian cruisers in the fleet. In fact, Parithalians respected the Terrans as decent ship handlers, and that was before the latest series of their ships had been introduced.

Sometimes I wonder if the Ross were not correct about them. Perhaps we should have steamrolled them from the beginning and ended these people as a threat. Unfortunately, by the time that seemed the more intelligent course, it was already too late.

He knew the Alliance could still win such a war, at least by even their worst case estimates, but the will to fight such an ongoing conflict would strain the Alliance populace to a breaking limit.

A hiss caught his attention and Seinel looked up to see the blast of pressurized air from the shuttle, signaling that they’d broken the seal and were preparing to disembark.

A ramp detached from the shuttle, lowering to the deck of the hangar, but there was motion already on the ramp before it touched down. Security descended first. They were armed, obviously, but moving calmly and merely taking up positions at the bottom of the ramp. Very showy, they moved with flourishes that Seinel recognized as the mark of professional show forces.

That didn’t mean they weren’t good at what they did, of course, he was well aware of that. It just meant that one of the things they did was look very, very impressive.

It was the figures that followed them down that attracted his focus.

One in particular caught his eye almost instantly.

Oh my, they sent her.

*****

Facial recognition software was running even as Sorilla started down the ramp, and she swept the crowd at the back first. Initial hits showed two faces she knew, highlighting them in her implants.

Kriss I expected, but Seinel too? They’re taking this seriously, that’s obvious, but it almost makes me wonder if they knew I was coming. The old man said that SOLCOM didn’t provide them any information about who was being sent, though, so that is hopefully unlikely.

The little, unobtrusive alien was purported to be part of an Alliance merchant race, which made for a perfect cover for an intelligence agent. He was good at what he did, clearly, but how good…that was something she did not know for sure.

Sorilla shot off the facial hit and file on the intel agent to Mattan and Ruger before her boots touched the deck of the alien starship.

The diplo types stepped out front, making their pleasantries and the general sort of meaningless nonsense that diplo types thrived on. Sorilla tuned them out, instead filing away faces and names as she could, shooting the information to the network and then back to the ship.

Most of the faces she was seeing would be meaningless, of course. Few people at these sorts of things were anyone important…yet, at least. Some might turn out important in a few years, with some seasoning, but probably not.

There would be perhaps five faces that mattered in the crowd. Sorilla already knew two of them.

It wasn’t her specialty, though, figuring out the remaining three. She’d leave that to the intel weenies onboard the shuttle and the SOL.

The meet-and-greet was a standard sort of thing, not that she had spent much time at them before. Usually, when it did happen, she was one of the guards posted. Invisible in plain sight, often plotting how to disrupt the event in a way that would best serve her assigned agenda. It was unusual in the extreme for her to be one of the faces pressing flesh and smiling vacuously for posterity.

Sorilla desperately wanted this nonsense to be over.

Just let me do the job.

*****

Kriss hated every moment of his current existence.

The pain from his injuries was bad enough, but those he could deal with. No, it was the insufferable presence of so many mealy-mouthed politicians that drove him up the way. So many self-important fools, pretending they mattered, pretending that they weren’t there mostly just in case the Terrans decided to be troublesome.

Filling out the room with expendable shields of meat and bone meant that there was a better chance of the few actually important members of the Alliance government escaping in the worst case scenario.

Oh, he knew that wouldn’t happen, of course.

For one, the Terrans weren’t suicidal. They were many things—some he liked, some he didn’t—but they wouldn’t just do something that stupid without a damn good reason, which he didn’t expect them to have.

More importantly, though, if they did…Kriss was well aware that the Terrans were good enough to make sure nobody got out alive.

There was more than enough power in the reactor of the shuttle, if nothing else, to blow out the hull and cripple, if not entirely destroy, the ship they were on. And that was assuming they hadn’t brought in a shielded explosive of some sort.

Protocol dictated little things like this, however, so lots of faceless peons got to play important government official for the duration.

There was only one face in the room he gave a damn about.

It will be interesting to work with her again, he supposed.

She’d been promoted. He, like every soldier in the Alliance—Sentinels especially—had been briefed extensively on Terran rank insignia. Unless he was mistaken, he was looking at a two grade increase from her previous ranking in Alliance records.

That would make her a light colonel, I believe they call it. Why are they pushing her up the ranks? She’s a field soldier, not some office-bound bureaucrat.

It didn’t make any sense to him, but rarely did what non-Lucians do make much sense to him or any other Sentinel. The highest rank a Sentinel ever achieved was Sentinel. Field command was decided on a case-by-case basis, based on strengths and experience. A Sentinel was only promoted in two ways: through death in service or, for the very unlucky, when they were too old to continue serving.

Kriss hoped very much that the former took him before the latter.

*****

Seinel was careful to mix with the crowd liberally, talking mostly about his cover business as a mercantile professional. He actually owned a small fleet of such ships, just enough to explain his presence at these sorts of things without being enough to stand out at all. So he made small talk with various local business persons invited to the meeting, exchanging vague promises to discuss real business at a later date.

With the Terrans he made similar sorts of probing inquiries, seeing if they would be open to purchasing various goods he had available for sale. He rather doubted they would, despite the positive response he received. He was a known face to the Terrans, so he doubted there would be any real value in it for him, even if they did contract with him for whatever minor items he could get cleared into their space.

He kept up appearances, though, more for the sake of the local merchants than the Terrans.

While doing so, however, Seinel kept an eye on the one familiar face he cared about in the room. The admiral was the same as last time, but while he was of interest to Alliance Intelligence, of course, Seinel considered him interchangeable. Just another upper echelon data mover. The woman, the lieutenant colonel now, she was far more interesting.

Her presence on this assignment might have been considered almost innocent, if this were her first time in Alliance space. The two human groups causing trouble here were perfect targets for her sort of specialty, after all. However, this was not her first assignment in Alliance space. The first assignment, she had been pretending to be a security specialist, of all things.

That woman was dangerous.

Of course, Seinel supposed, so was he. So were many of the people sprinkled in the hangar and the conference rooms that followed. Unfortunately, most of them were the sort of dangerous that he could do little about.

If he were to authorize her death, someone would replace her. Similarly, if the Terrans killed him, all they would manage would be to eliminate the face they knew.

There were times when Seinel despised the work he did, and the compromises it required.

It was a strange thing, he supposed, when many of the people he most liked, respected, and considered to be…almost friends…were also his enemies.

With that very thought in mind, he made his way over in the direction of the subject of his current concerns, the merchant’s mask firmly in place.

*****

Please, Lord, let this bullshit party be over soon.

Sorilla despised these sorts of things when she was required to just stand there and watch from the shadows. Actually being part of the party was worse, somehow. Everyone wanted to talk about nothing.

She didn’t care about whatever was popular to chat about on Earth. Why would any of the people in the room with her think she gave a damn about pop culture in the Alliance? She smiled, though, and did her best to seem like she gave a damn. All the while keeping an eye on the only two faces in the room that mattered.

“Ah, Lieutenant is it?” A vaguely familiar voice, cheerfully speaking Alliance Standard drawled from her left as she turned, recognizing Seinel as the nondescript alien smiled blandly at her, “I understand that your government is considering opening up trade to more serious businesspersons in the near future?”

Is that the game? Sorilla thought, rather amused as she slipped into the counter role to the bland merchant, her nose going up slightly, “Lieutenant Colonel, actually, and I’m sure I don’t know the government’s plan, nor would I speak for them.”

A twinkle of amusement lit Sienel’s eyes as the alien waved casually, as though to ward off any offense.

“Oh, terribly sorry, Lieutenant Colonel of course. So hard to read military ranks, you know. Bad enough when it’s Alliance ranks, and those actually matter.”

Oh, you little shit.

Keeping from laughing was one of the harder things she’d had to do at the party, just behind enduring the boredom up to this point actually, but Sorilla managed while looking down her nose at Sienel and ignoring the attention they were drawing, both from the human contingent and the Alliance group.

“I suppose you’re someone of importance, then?” She asked, coloring her tone to indicate otherwise, “I’m afraid I don’t generally maintain much interest in merchants. What do you sell?”

Interestingly, from what she could see, the Alliance people were looking at Sienel, somewhat aghast by his brazen and clumsy approach. Her own people mostly had access to facial recognition files and knew who he was and, if they were smart, that she knew him from a previous Op.

“Oh, a little of everything you might say,” Sienel replied airily, “It’s not so much what I sell as what the Alliance and your lovely little government will allow me to sell.”

Despite her demeanor, Sorilla was interested actually. With her new land grant on Hayden, and the coming movement to turn Hayden into something of a modern version of Geneva where SOLCOM and the Alliance could meet without straying too far into each other’s’ territories, this was a contact she actually had some interest in developing. She could likely do something along those lines in private, and would actually, but that didn’t mean she was going to give up the chance to lay the public ground work now that he’d opened the door for her.

So Sorilla affected a vaguely disinterested look, but made it appear as fake as she could.

“Not really my sort of thing, you understand, but I suppose I might be able to help you out,” She said, “As part of a sort of… diplomatic outreach, you know.”

That set Sienel back, as he’d clearly been expecting to be shut down. He stared for a moment, until he realized that he was also drawing stares from those who were equally shocked that his approach seemed to have netted an opening.

He seemed stymied for a bit, before rapidly regaining his composure and character as he shot back details of what he could offer a budding entrepreneur in terms of alien luxury items. Sorilla listened politely, nodding along with the conversation, not really caring what he was actually offering. They could talk real shop later, in private. For now it was just important to be seen chatting about business, regardless of what was said.

While Seinel was chattering away, she swept the room again with her implants checking everything. It was on her third such sweep that she noticed something concerning.

Kriss, the Lucian, was injured.

She had almost missed it at first. The Lucian was tough as hell, but a very slight wince had given it away. After that she focused a little more on him, and the hyperspectral scanners in her ocular implant picked up the chemicals he was packing around his injuries.

He shouldn’t be on his feet. What the hell are they playing at?

She suspected she knew, but he couldn’t have hid that injury from his superiors without help.

If he’s on a revenge play, that’s going to screw up our operations even before we get started. Damn it, I figured him for being more professional than this.

Unfortunately, she was all too aware of how easy it was to let anger override professionalism.

After Seinel finished up his spiel and excused himself to go off after another ‘target’, Sorilla spent the rest of the party trying to figure out just how badly this would compromise her operations. She almost didn’t notice the little meet-and-greet ceremony winding down, not until she was quietly approached by the admiral’s aide.

“Ma’am, we have a private session scheduled with the Alliance officials.”

She nodded and let herself be guided out of the crowd and off to a side door, then down the hall. She was only very mildly surprised to find that both Kriss and Seinel were waiting for her by the time she was led into a rather small conference room.

The admiral was already there, along with the old man and their Alliance counterparts.

“So,” Sorilla said with as sweet a smile as she could manage, “this is where the real party is.”

“Sister, take a seat,” Mattan told her with a wry smile. “We’re just about to discuss the nature of our joint operations with our esteemed Alliance counterparts.”

Sorilla nodded, slipping into one of the seats that looked to be designed for Parithalians but was close enough for a human to use.

“Now that everyone has arrived,” Admiral Ruger said, looking around the room, “I believe it’s time to discuss the tactical situation.”

Sorilla looked around, eyes seeking out the Alliance official in charge. She spotted him quickly, his body language giving him away as he stepped forward to center the attentions of the room.

He was a species she wasn’t aware of, but the Alliance had several she hadn’t been specifically briefed on. Sorilla’s interest generally began and ended in the field, and until a species showed itself to be useful, or important, to her job, she had better things to work on.

“Welcome, to our…allies in this endeavor,” the alien said. “I am, by your language, a provost marshal of the local sector and have been tasked with organizing the military response to the terrorist activities perpetrated by the group we’re here to deal with. Alliance intelligence has been provided to the displays in front of you.”

Sorilla glanced down at the display, noting that it was Alliance Standard and likely nothing particular new. She could have used her implants to pull the data, but instead picked it up and casually flicked through the files that were already loaded.

They even translated them into English. Showing off.

“I don’t see any data here for the European group,” she said after a moment, looking up. “Are they no longer suspects?”

“The files here cover only the local system,” the provost said. “Files will be made available as needed.”

“This job is going to be hard enough as it is. Making us develop plans on the fly is not going to make it any easier.” Sorilla scowled. “We should have had basic environmental data weeks ago.”

“Information will be made available when needed, not before,” the provost restated firmly.

Sorilla dearly wanted to object, but she recognized the tone of a self-assured politician who wasn’t interested in anything beyond his little fief. She silently lifted the display and continued reading.

The basic report was about as she’d expect.

It was light on culture, heavy on technical details, and mostly useless information. She wasn’t sure if that was intentional on the Alliance’s part or if it was just normal bureaucracy at play. The report was typical of what she’d expect, which could mean it was on the level, or it could mean it was put together by someone just like her.

“We’re ready to deploy to the local planet by this time tomorrow,” Mattan said, stepping into the silence. “Do you feel that the inhabitants are our primary target, or are we still in intel-gathering mode?”

There was a moment of silence on the Alliance side of the table, glances exchanged that Sorilla might have read more into if they weren’t alien faces and bodies. Unfortunately, without far more experience, she couldn’t read much detail into any of it.

“We are still uncertain as to who the primary targets are,” the provost admitted, seemingly reluctantly.

“Then, with your permission,” Mattan answered, “we will deploy to begin gathering information on the local culture and to determine the nature of the threat in the area.”

“These are your people. Don’t you already know the nature of the threat?” the provost asked, a hint of real sarcasm in his tone.

“We acknowledge no ties to the people of either this world or the other in question,” Ruger cut in smoothly. “We do not issue orders to these people; we do not maintain any communications with them. Until you approached us, we were unaware that the colonies in question existed.”

“They are YOUR people!”

“Fine,” Ruger said, sounding bored. “In that case, SOLCOM is willing to accept your turning the control of the two planets and associated stars to our jurisdiction.”

The provost jerked back as though Ruger had slapped him.

“We are not turning over our stellar territory to you!”

“Then they are your people, Provost,” Ruger told him, stone-faced. “We are here partly because we were asked to help, partly because neither of us want this to blow up in our faces…which, I can almost promise you that it will. It always does, sooner or later. But do not try to put any of this on us. You annexed these people against their will. Don’t try to pretend they invited you in. The psych profile of the people below us is clear. They are a naturally xenophobic, libertarian idealist culture. They will literally blow their own cities into radioactive dust before they accede to alien rule, and the profile on the other colony is worse, in its own way.”

He stood up, causing Sorilla to stand with him a heartbeat ahead of the old man.

“So please do us the favor of not wasting our time,” Ruger told the man. “We don’t have so much of it to spend that we want to sit around listening to you talk.”

“You…arrogant…”

“Enough.”

All eyes in the room shifted away from the still-blustering provost to the new voice.

Seinel stood up. “We will ensure that you are cleared to land and begin your investigations tomorrow. May I presume the lieutenant colonel will be conducting the mission?”

Ruger and Mattan glanced over at Sorilla, who simply nodded curtly.

“I will.”

“Excellent. Would you be willing to take Sentinel Kriss along?” Seinel asked. “I believe it would be useful to begin working together.”

Sorilla nodded. “That would be fine, but unless Lucians are common in the local community, I would prefer making my initial approaches with humans only. Sentinel Kriss would be welcome to observe from a distance, however, if that would be acceptable.”

“Eminently.”

“Then we have an initial plan of action,” Sorilla said. “Do you have photos of the local mode of dress?”

“We do. Check the files we sent you.”

Sorilla looked at the display again, loading the photos and cycling quickly through them.

“Interesting,” she said. “Most are armed. Do they fight duels?”

“Occasionally.” Kriss nodded. “We wondered if that was normal.”

“Not in human society at this time, no,” Sorilla said. “However, in the culture these people idealize, the maxim that an armed society is a polite society is a common one. At least I won’t have to hide my sidearm.”

“The Alliance generally looks down on walking around armed,” Seinel admitted. “However, that has more to do with the general damage potential of our more common weapons than any other reasons. We saw no reason to take their weapons when we annexed the planets.”

“It would be a bad idea to try,” Sorilla said. “I can assure you that they would have brought whatever tech they needed to produce weapons at need. Banning their weapons would just drive them underground, and that would merely push more people into the arms of the terror group, assuming they’re based here.”

“They can keep them for all I care,” Kriss growled. “The toys they use can’t defeat Alliance combat armor. They can shoot each other all they want. It’s the chemicals I want.”

“Chemicals aren’t really the methodology I would expect from either of these groups,” Sorilla admitted. “Not that they’re above such things, but chemicals are usually not effective enough and are too volatile for these sorts. Explosives are preferred, as they’re more stable and require less technical proficiency to use effectively.”

“These ones were effective.”

Sorilla glanced sharply at Kriss, the dark tone he had taken, but he didn’t say anything else.

“That’s one of my primary concerns,” Sorilla said finally.

“What do you mean?” Seinel asked her.

“What I’m seeing in here so far—” She held up the display. “—doesn’t indicate a culture with the capacity to develop cutting edge chemicals. How did they develop chemical weapons that even you couldn’t track?”

Seinel was silent for a brief period before he responded. “That is one of our concerns as well.”

“What are you talking about?” the provost blustered again, surprising Sorilla, as she’d forgotten he was there as soon as Seinel took over.

Kriss scoffed. “They’re discussing whether the locals have help from other Alliance dissidents…or perhaps someone higher in the Alliance command structure with an interest in promoting a little…shall we say, local chaos?”

“That’s preposterous! Why would anyone help these…filthy…?”

Kriss moved so quickly that only Sorilla saw the motion coming, and only she didn’t jump when the SOLCOM-issued blade slammed into the table directly in front of the provost.

“Silence, before you make our guests think the Alliance is even more filled with fools than they already do,” the Sentinel snarled.

Sorilla cocked her head to one side, noting the make of the blade with some amusement. “Still carrying that thing, Kriss?”

The Sentinel shrugged. “It’s a good blade.”

The pair ignored the stricken-looking provost marshal, who was staring at the black blade jammed into the metal table in front of him with undisguised shock and fear.

“It should be,” Ruger grumbled. “They cost us a bloody mint.”

“You’re such a penny pincher, Ruger,” Mattan chuckled.

“I think we have a basic plan for the morning,” Sorilla cut in. “I’ll take a team down, with Kriss and any he chooses to bring, and we’ll get the lay of the land. In the meantime, we need to know how much off-world travel the people here, and at our other target world, are up to. Who they’re in contact with, who is shipping materials to them, those sorts of things.”

“I’ll have the SOL begin orbital scans of their population,” Ruger said. “If they have a chem lab based on anything Earth has ever put together, we’ll find it.”

“Very well,” Seinel said after glancing at Kriss. “That will do, in principle.”

He put a hand on the provost marshal to stop the alien from objecting, and with that the meeting was closed.

“See you in the morning.” Sorilla nodded to Kris.

“I am…looking forward to it.”

Chapter 5

Ship’s morning came early, and Sorilla found herself standing in front of the group she’d picked out for the first trip planet-side, looking them over. Everyone was dressed for field work. The clean-cut, professional look she’d seen when she arrived was now decidedly on the ragged side, as most had stopped shaving and the sweat from the new environmental settings had slicked through their hair noticeably.

She nodded approvingly as she appraised each in turn, liking what she was seeing. She hadn’t expected anything else, of course; everyone assigned to the SOL knew the way the game was played. Everyone had generic mil-spec load-bearing gear, battle rifles, and sidearms. It would do for the moment, though most of them would be staying near the shuttle anyway.

Sorilla herself was in SOLCOM armor, with the heat settings running at local temperatures to help her acclimate. If worst came to worst, she could kick in the climate control and cool down her core in a hurry, but she would prefer not to do that if it could be avoided. Her sidearms were belted on, one hanging low on her right tight, the other belted in a cross draw along the front of her waist.

She’d seen that the locals often carried two pistols, which was likely just bravado for the most part as humans couldn’t particularly use two guns effectively at the same time and it was usually faster and more effective to just reload than to fumble around with a second gun. She was an exception to that rule, however, so she didn’t mind playing into the local culture, as with her implants she could actually engage multiple targets simultaneously with little issue.

Over the armor she’d tossed a poncho the SOL’s logistics team had fabricated based on the local pictures she had brought back from the briefing.

All in all it was rather Hollywood Western, in her opinion, but that was to be expected given the nature of the culture that founded the world below.

“Okay, people, we’re going down on a soft recon,” she said. “We will be hosting a contingent of Alliance soldiers, likely all Sentinels. However, I will be keeping them back and out of our initial operation on the excuse that I want to see how the locals react to new human faces and would rather not deal with any baggage the Alliance is bringing along with them.”

The faces surrounding her nodded, understanding that.

“That’s the excuse, and a good reason,” she said, “but I also want to have a few words with the locals out of earshot of any Alliance personnel while I have a chance. So, with that in mind, make sure everyone scans everything for listening devices and transmitters. Alliance frequencies are in your implants, but don’t get complacent. They’re at least as tricky as we are, and I think we all know just how tricky that is.”

The men laughed openly.

“Most importantly, do not antagonize the Sentinels. They’re here to do a job, but it’s not the job. They’re action junkies as far as I’m concerned. Good at what they do, but they don’t do what we do,” she told everyone. “So show them a little pity for the obvious learning disability they’re suffering from and try to make allowances.”

More laughter.

“Don’t take that as permission to patronize them,” she warned, her tone dropping a few degrees. “They’re not idiots. Treat them like you would special teams from a host nation—a top-tier host nation.”

They nodded, understanding that. Oftentimes what passed for special teams were anything but. However, they’d all been guests in other world powers on Earth. You didn’t get far if you were dumb enough to disrespect the Russian Spetsnaz or Chinese Special Operations Forces to their faces, whatever you thought of their methods.

“I catch anyone deliberately pissing off the Lucians, I will have you bounced back to Earth and your deep space clearance burned. Am I clear?”

Sorilla looked around intently, but saw none of the signs that anyone was inclined to ignore her. She hadn’t expected it, honestly. The people SOLCOM had picked for this mission were the sorts who would normally be assigned to work with people they personally detested; it was part of the job all too often.

“Good. Mount up!”

The team quickly filed into the shuttle as she watched, along with Major Strickland, until everyone was onboard. She then followed Strickland onboard and stood on the ramp as it was pulled up into the belly of the shuttle.

One quick stop and they would be mission-operable.

Oddly enough, she found herself both dreading it and looking forward to it. There had been a time, once, when she would have just been looking forward to it. Of course, she’d been younger and dumber back then, and not in charge of anything.

Simpler times.

Sorilla missed them.

*****

Kriss watched as the Terran shuttle once again opened up in the hangar of the Parithalian ship, the ramp coming down amid the hiss of escaping atmosphere. Instead of the expected guards, though, only two humans appeared. One he knew, of course, and the other had been at the greeting ceremony and meeting the night before but hadn’t spoken.

“Sentinel Kriss,” Aida had said quietly as she approached. “It is good to see you again, now that we’re not surrounded by politicians.”

Kriss grinned, exposing teeth that tended to make even Alliance people uneasy. She didn’t even flinch, just grinning back in kind. Kriss rather liked the Terrans, in all honesty, though he suspected that he was being unduly affected by his limited interactions with them.

“Political niceties do tend to cloud meetings between friends,” he agreed.

“Indeed,” she said, turning her focus to the team he’d assembled. “All Sentinels, I presume?”

Kriss nodded, gesturing to the rank of a dozen Lucians with him. “Of course. My personal squad.”

Aida nodded, gesturing to the other human with her. “This is my aide, Major Strickland.”

“Major,” Kriss nodded, looking the other human over briefly before focusing again on Aida. “My men are ready to deploy…Light Colonel, is it now?”

“Lieutenant Colonel,” Aida nodded, a hint of something on her face that he couldn’t place. Human emotions were often difficult for Kriss to decode. “It is a recent elevation. And, please, we have room for your men prepared.”

Kriss turned to the Sentinels. “Boarding! Single file! Take the places the Terrans show you. Cause no trouble!”

That last order was necessary, he knew, not because the Sentinels present had anything against the humans, but rather because they’d heard about the fighting during the war but hadn’t had a chance to partake themselves. Most of them wanted to test the mettle of the enemy “Sentinels,” and Aida’s reputation among Lucians had been set by Kriss’s own reports. Any group she was commanding would not be the normal rank and file of the Terran military.

Once his men had embarked, Kriss followed Strickland up the ramp while Aida took up the rearguard position.

*****

The shuttle was packed. Between the two groups of soldiers and all the gear they’d loaded on, there wasn’t much room to do more than breathe, but for Sorilla, who was used to being stuffed into an oversized shotgun shell and fired out of a magnetic accelerator for orbital insertions…well, it was positively roomy.

Everyone else was dealing with it, to varying degrees, as the shuttle hit turbulence in the upper atmosphere. Sorilla found herself amused at the sight of Special Forces literally bumping shoulders with Alliance Sentinels, neither group quite willing to entirely acknowledge the other as their guts jumped into their throats when the shuttle dropped into a rough freefall.

“Five minutes to LZ,” the pilot said over the intercom, mostly in deference to their guests. “Secure for deceleration.”

“We’re good,” Sorilla said. “Hit the brakes before we hit the ground.”

“Roger that.”

Her spine was suddenly compressed as the shuttle hit retro thrust hard, slamming her and everyone else into their seats as the shuttle decelerated. It wasn’t remotely as hard as a combat drop, but there was no point showing the Alliance the real specifications of the shuttle if they didn’t have to. They might need that ace in the deck for another time.

The flight smoothed out quickly, and she could feel the acceleration curve through her implant suite with enough precision that she didn’t need to consult the computers to determine their path.

They’d chosen to land at a local field rather than the secured Alliance facility, primarily to differentiate themselves from the Alliance from the get-go. Getting clearance from the locals had been surprisingly easy, as they were apparently pretty slack about air corridors.

Also helps that they didn’t bother to develop much in the way of an air force, given they don’t have anyone to bomb, I suppose.

The shuttle settled in easily a few minutes later, sinking into the dirt pad as the weight of the bird was focused on the four large pylons below. Sorilla felt a wash of hot air bring an instant sweat to her forehead as the ramp seal broke and it started to drop. She was walking down it before it stopped, stepping out onto the arid and dusty ground as she looked around.

It was a fairly typical airfield, she determined at a glance. A few long runs for cargo planes, a bunch of short ones and pads for VTOL and VSTOL craft. The shuttle was sitting on one of the pads, and not one of the nice ones. Sorilla blinked away a little dust from her eyes, flipping a pair of wraparound glasses from under her poncho and slipping them on.

“Feels like a third world shithole,” one of the men said as the team stepped off behind her.

“I thought it felt like New Mexico,” another answered.

“I stand by my statement.”

Sorilla shot the first speaker an annoyed look. Having grown up between New and Old Mexico, she didn’t appreciate the implication, but, frankly, they were both right.

“Shut it,” she told them anyway. “Locals might hear you.”

And they were garnering a bit of a crowd, so that was more than possible in all actuality. She scanned them all quickly, getting facial rec data while analyzing the genotype based on bone structure.

Most of them were of clearly European original stock, though the high local UV index seemed to have darkened everyone’s skin to a tan that matched her own pretty well. Given her decidedly mixed racial background, Sorilla found that rather amusing. She twirled her finger vertically in the air, telling her team to get unpacking, and casually walked over to the closest onlooker.

“There someone in charge of the field here?” she asked.

“You speak English?” The man seemed surprised, looking past her. “But you came with them, and I’ve never seen a ship like yours before.”

Sorilla glanced over her shoulder to where the Lucians were disembarking, then shrugged and turned back.

“This world was annexed by the Alliance,” she said. “Earth signed a truce with them a few years ago now, but they don’t like us flying around their space without a minder. Which is fair enough. We don’t let them fly around our space at all if we can help it.”

The man’s eyes snapped to her intently. “You’re from Earth?”

“That a problem?”

He looked her over, then past her to the rest of her group and the shuttle.

“No,” he said finally. “Just a little surprised. We sort of thought everything had likely gone to hell back home after we left. Didn’t look all that good when we left, according to the histories.”

“Had its moments,” Sorilla admitted. “Still does, but we get by. We always seem to. About the guy in charge, by the way?”

The man just waved toward a squat building in the distance. “Just go sign in over there. You’re responsible for the security of your own ship and any goods you’ve brought. Other than that, not too many rules around here.”

Sorilla nodded, unsurprised. “Thanks.”

She waved casually as she walked past, heading for the building he’d pointed her to.

Definitely a libertarian lean here, she decided as she made her way into the building.

She wasn’t too worried about security for the shuttle. If a squad of Lucians and a couple A-teams from the Fifth weren’t enough to secure the shuttle, the trouble was likely a lot deeper than it had appeared to be. In that case, they had the SOL’s Marines, not to mention her long guns.

She looked around for anyone in the building, but didn’t see a soul, so Sorilla rapped her armored knuckles on the wall.

“Hey! Anyone here?” she called out.

“Hang on a minute, hold your damn engines.”

Bemused by the response, Sorilla leaned on the wall until an old man with white hair and a craggy face appeared.

“What do ya need?” he asked, wiping his hands on his shirt as he appeared from a side door.

“Looking to sign in,” Sorilla told him. “Just landed.”

He snorted, looking out the window. “That shiny bird belong to you?”

“It belongs to SOLCOM,” she said honestly. “I’m just the one who got to sign for it this time.”

“Solcom? Never heard of it,” the man said, pulling out an old paper book and sliding it, along with a pen, over to her. “That a company?”

“International organization,” Sorilla said, grabbing up the pen and taking a moment to scan the page she was looking at into memory, both to learn the format expected and to see who else had signed in.

“Inter-what?” the man asked, clearly confused.

Sorilla scribbled her name, along with the tail ID of the shuttle, into the provided space. “International. As in multi-governmental group. SOLCOM is Earth’s Solar Military Organization.”

That brought his eyes back to her in a flash, wide and piercing.

“You joking?” he demanded, snagging the book and twisting it around to look at what she’d written.

“Do I look like a comedian?”

“You sound like a crazy person,” he countered, looking up from the book to examine her more closely. “What is a lady from Earth doing out this far?”

“Heard about you folk here,” she said, unconsciously adopting the familiar drawl she had once spoken as her native tongue, growing up in the south of the U.S. and the north of Mexico. “Figured we’d check in and see what was up.”

“Things were nice and peaceful, until those friends of yours showed up,” he said coolly, looking out to where the Lucians were standing by the shuttle.

“Tell me about it,” Sorilla laughed. “We only stopped trying to kill each other a few years ago…well, out in the open at least. I expect we still have our moments in the shadows, but that’s how these things go.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, fought a whole war with the Alliance,” she said. “But I don’t suppose you got much news about that here.”

He snorted. “You could say that again. Most of the time they don’t even seem to care that we’re here, which is better than when they do.”

“Of course. You never ran into the Ghoulies, though, did you?”

He frowned. “The what?”

“Alliance folk call them Ross’El,” she said. “Little short grey fuckers with big heads.”

He laughed, but shook his head. “Never seen ‘em.”

“Didn’t think so, or you’d hate the Alliance a lot more than you’re showing,” Sorilla said. “The Alliance don’t much like the Ross either, of course, but they would rather keep those bastards where they can see them coming from a long way off.”

“That bad?” The man seemed skeptical.

“That bad. Their idea of dealing with snipers involves nuclear weapons,” Sorilla told him. “And ‘civilians’ ain’t a word in their language, far as we can tell.”

“Ouch. Seriously?”

Sorilla nodded, casually leaning on the counter. “Yeah, they rolled into Hayden—one of our worlds—came up on the night-side and took out the orbital tether. From there they drove everyone out of the main colony site into the jungle. People on Hayden spent the next two years fighting a guerilla war before SOLCOM managed to clear the skies and they drove the Ghoulies off the surface. It was touch-and-go for a while, to be honest.”

“You’re terribly free with information,” the man said, sounding suspicious.

Sorilla chuckled openly. “Why wouldn’t I be? This is public stuff at home, friend. Headline news.”

The man nodded slowly.

“What brings you to Arkana?” he asked finally, pronouncing the word “Arkahna,” as Sorilla had expected.

“Alliance finally admitted there were human worlds out here,” Sorilla said. “So SOLCOM got permission to come out here and take a peek.”

“Going to claim us?” the man asked, almost but not quite sneering, though she detected a real hint of curiosity there.

Sorilla shook her head. “Not likely. Politically we don’t have the power, and militarily it’s an open secret that while we’re too strong for the Alliance to take without dedicating far more of their military than they are willing to…we’re not strong enough to take them either.”

“So we’re stuck, are we?”

“Seems like,” Sorilla agreed, walking to the window and looking out. “On the plus side, it’s not a bad world you have here. A little hot for most tastes, but we saw the city from orbit. Nice little river delta, looks like the Nile actually.”

“That’s what the history books say,” the man agreed. “And the world is home, don’t know what else to say about it.”

“Trust me, there are worse planets out there.” Sorilla smiled. “Ares folded during the war. Survivors left, no one wants to go back.”

“Never heard of it.”

“After your time,” she told him. “Mars-type world. Mining colony mostly. Ghost town now, and probably forever.”

She looked out the window, noticing the SOLCOM APC rolling out of the shuttle drop ship.

“Well, my ride is down,” she said, walking over to the door.

She paused, glancing back to tip her head.

“Have a good day.”

Chapter 6

“What was that about?” Strickland asked as Sorilla climbed up on the squat six-wheeled APC. “Why’d you tell him all that?”

“Why not?” Sorilla asked, having noted him listening in via her implants. “If we were trying a stealth infiltration, we would have landed way out in the sticks. We don’t have time for stealth. We need intel quickly, and that means we need people to know that we’re looking…and if you need people to know you’re about, can you think of a better person to tell than the guy in charge of a transport hub?”

He stared for a moment, but didn’t opt to say anything as Sorilla banged on the roof of the armored vehicle. “I’ll ride on top. Roll on out.”

The APC was built on a V-shaped, armored hull and rolled on six airless tires, each of them almost two meters in diameter. The ride wasn’t exactly smooth, but it could drive over anti-vehicle land mines and keep rolling.

That wouldn’t do much against a Ross gravity valve, unfortunately, but it made for a reasonably secure ride.

Sorilla settled into a crook in the armor and let the breeze cool her down as the vehicle accelerated out of the landing area and took a right down the road that led into the city a few miles away, down at the river delta.

*****

The man in the transport depot watched the APC pull out and head down the road before he turned away and walked into the back room to pick up a handset.

“Hey, Eri, it’s Malcom down at the field. Interesting arrival today, looks like a military ship. Naw, not the Xenos. Earth.” Malcolm laughed. “Hell yes I’m serious. Had a nice chat with a pretty lady in combat gear…looks better than our stuff. Hell, I think it looks better than what the Xenos have…or use anyway.”

He listened for a moment, before continuing.

“They’re cruising in toward town now. Looks like an armored rig, but they’re not riding for a fight… Because she’s riding on top, that’s how I know, and her face is exposed. If she were spoiling for trouble, she’d be riding inside, or wearing a helmet at least, Eri, give me a break.”

Malcolm sighed. “Of course they’re armed. She’s packing at least two pistols in belts, a knife…not sure what else, but the rest of them looked like they were loaded for Kodiak Maulers…and that’s the rub. They’ve got a squad of the Xenos with them. Yeah, the tough fuckers.”

He listened for a while longer before speaking again.

“To hear her say it, Earth just found out we were still alive and asked the Xenos to let them take a look around… Yeah, don’t know that I buy that either. Anyway, I have work to do. Just figured that you’d like to know. I’ll see you, man.”

Malcolm hung up the handset and settled in behind his desk.

He saw the damndest things come through his station.

*****

The APC was near-silent on its electric motors, and the road wasn’t horrible, so Sorilla found herself rather enjoying the ride as they made their way rapidly from an extremely arid environment to a much more tropical-feeling one as the low brush was replaced by thick foliage and irrigated fields.

Buildings were few and far between, but they were mostly made of local materials by obviously older-generation fabrication units. She could see the layering lines that were a distinctive signature of early-gen machines. Newer ones, like her own, were designed to smooth out the lines and leave a crisp surface to work with.

It was a minor change, as such things went, but it was noticeable.

The road they were on paralleled the river, passing plenty of acres of arable land. Most of it was heavily irrigated from the river, judging by the multitude of pipes that were visible pulling water out of the source.

“I’m seeing rice, wheat, looks like corn,” she said, gesturing to the fields. “Good staples. They planned well when they left.”

“Their leaders were assholes, but they were survivalists,” Strickland responded. “Strict isolationists, very big on self-sufficiency.”

“True, but that’s not enough and we both know it,” she said. “They left before flash flesh was feasible. Where’re the herd animals? Protein from vegetable source…you can live off it, but it doesn’t satisfy, and these guys? They’re not vegans.”

Strickland looked around, thinking for a moment.

“Cloning?” he suggested.

“Resource intensive,” Sorilla answered, “but maybe. The question then would become…why? It would be less effort to just seed grazing land for the animals, I’d expect.”

“Planet is extremely arid. Maybe they’re just not willing to waste land,” Strickland said. “Long term it would be questionable. You know how much waste is involved in livestock. It’s a losing proposition for a colony. Hell, it damn near crippled Earth before flash flesh was developed.”

Sorilla nodded.

Livestock was several times more resource intensive than crops, but at lower population levels it wasn’t a massive problem. When Earth topped ten billion or so, livestock had become near-crippling for even Earth’s impressive biome. No colony world could sustain livestock for long; the population would just tend to outstrip available land, unless someone hit the lotto and scored a near perfect Earth analog world.

Still, while cloning would free up a lot of land that would serve well for staple crops, it still required the same level of feed energy, and she didn’t think that was sustainable.

On a more arable world, with the appropriate bacteria cultures and natural food, sure. Not on an alien exo-planet that had to be slowly adapted to a Terran biome.

“Well, it’s one more puzzle to work out, I suppose,” she said. “I wish the Alliance were half as diligent as they should have been, or were sharing what they have at least. Just too many things to figure out here and no time to do it all in. I hate working like this.”

“If we always had the intel we wanted, this job wouldn’t be half as interesting,” Strickland told her as they drove along.

“Maybe not, but boring can be good too, Major.”

*****

The airless tires crunched on the dirt and stone as the APC slid to a stop along the outskirts of the city, just in front of what looked like a bar. Sorilla had called a halt as soon as she spotted the bar and slapped the armor a couple times as she hopped off. “Security, stick close to the APC. Lucians, stay inside. I’m going to take a walk.”

“Take a partner!” Strickland snapped.

Sorilla sighed, pausing. He was right, and she knew it, but she didn’t want to work with anyone. That was one of the reasons for retiring. She was tired of getting people killed.

“Fine,” she said after a moment, looking over the men who’d taken up positions around the APC and pointing at one of them, basically at random. “Corporal, you’re with me.”

A baby-faced soldier stared at her blankly for a moment before Sorilla gestured in annoyance.

“Come on, move your ass,” she snapped.

“Go on, Nicky,” Strickland growled. “The colonel gave an order.”

“Yes, sir!” the corporal said quickly, breaking from his position and running over to match Sorilla’s pace as she started back toward the bar.

Sorilla looked up before entering, judging the sun.

The local UV index was bad enough that she’d be tempted to use sun block if she were out in it much.

Definitely not conducive to long-term health. I wonder what the skin cancer rates are here?

Given the genetic stock the colony was based on, and the nature of the planet itself—low ozone, magnetic field weaker than Earth, and a few other factors she’d noted—Sorilla was betting it was obscenely high.

While it was patently false that darker skin was “immune” to skin cancer, light skin was as much as twelve times more vulnerable. For a colony with no logistical support from Earth, plucked from a gene group with high risk factors, and dropped onto a planet with high aggravating factors, it could get out of control in hurry. The social implications would be interesting, if it was as bad as it could be.

She filed the speculation away as she stepped up to the door of the bar and pulled on the handle. It didn’t budge, so she pushed and the door swung smoothly inward. She looked around as she stepped in, ocular implants allowing her to adjust to the darker lighting instantly.

It was almost a Wild West saloon.

I think they took their affinity for the West a little too far.

The culture was clearly modeled on an idealized vision of the American Old West. She wasn’t surprised in the least; given the nature of American libertarians, it was almost inevitable. There were worse cultures to base off of, in her opinion, so to this point she was actually rather enjoying herself.

“Anyone here?” she called out, scanning the interior as the corporal took up a place beside the door.

The wall behind the bar was interesting. She spotted a lot of bottles, mostly local distillates, she suspected, but enough Earth brands to raise her eyebrow.

Sorilla stepped up to the bar and looked closer, noting several bottles of Jack, among multiple other brands she knew. She couldn’t imagine they were still good to drink, not unless the proprietor had taken extreme caution in the high UV environment they’d been brought into, but it was possible.

“What can I do for you?” A woman’s voice came from a door behind the bar.

Sorilla slipped onto a stool as an older-looking woman stepped out, wiping down a glass as she looked Sorilla over.

“Haven’t seen you in these parts, and I’ve seen everyone,” the woman said firmly. “Also never saw a rig like yours parked outside.”

“New here,” Sorilla said, eyes scanning the bottles again. “What’s good?”

“Everything.”

Sorilla laughed. “Now that’s never true.”

“Who are you?” the bartender asked, scowling.

“I’m almost disappointed you don’t know,” Sorilla admitted. “I figured telling the story to the man at the landing field would have spread it around by now.”

“Malcolm? If you told him a good story, then he called Eri before you were out of sight,” she laughed. “Eri wouldn’t spread it around unless there was value in it to him.”

“Ah.” Sorilla nodded. “I should have expected that. So, who’s Eri?”

“Now I know for sure you’re not from around here,” the woman snorted. “Everyone knows Eri.”

“Is that a bottle of Johnny Walker Black?” Sorilla asked, shifting the subject as she looked over the woman’s shoulder. “Haven’t seen one of those in twenty years.”

The woman glanced back involuntarily at the sealed bottle before she nodded. “Came over on the ship, been in the family for four generations now. Don’t ask, it’s not for sale.”

Sorilla chuckled, reaching under her poncho.

“Relax,” she said as the woman tensed, eyes darting to something under the bar. Sorilla exposed a carbon-fiber flask as she pulled her hand back. “I said I haven’t seen a bottle of it in twenty years. Give me a glass.”

The woman eyed her suspiciously but slid a glass over to Sorilla as she popped the lid off the bottle and poured a couple fingers of amber liquid, then slid the glass back.

“Fifteen-year-old Johnny Walker Black,” Sorilla gestured. “Enjoy.”

“Fifteen? That’s not possible.” The woman shook her head, even as she lifted the glass and very lightly swirled the liquor around before taking a sniff of the evaporated alcohol. A sip followed, eliciting a surprised look with wide eyes. “That’s not local.”

“When I was briefed on the colony ship that came out this way, I stocked some good American booze,” Sorilla said with a grin, “and a fair amount of rotgut. How’s the local stuff taste?”

The woman never took her eyes off Sorilla as she mechanically retrieved a bottle, blowing dust off it, and broke the seal to pour her a serving. Sorilla intercepted the glass as it was slid in her direction and mimicked the woman’s actions, wincing as the burn of the alcohol seemed to eat at her eyes.

“Strong,” she said, whistling, “and I haven’t even taken a sip yet.”

It was a barley whiskey. She recognized that much when she did take a slow draw and the liquid burned down her throat and set every pain receptor in her mouth on fire. She’d never quite call it smooth, but it wasn’t bad. An acquired taste, but easily acquired, she suspected.

“What’s that aftertaste?” Sorilla asked, puzzled.

It wasn’t the darker flavors she was used to, almost like a hint of apple or almond.

“The filters don’t get all the hydrogen-cyanide out of the distillate,” the woman said with a smirk as Sorilla’s eyes widened as she looked closer at the drink. “It’s from the ground here. Only trace levels, of course, but you can taste the effects.”

“And I thought Absinthe was asking for trouble,” Sorilla joked as she held the glass up, examining the liquid through her hyperspectral implants.

The hydrogen-cyanide spike was there alright, but only when she cranked the sensitivity up to extreme levels. Certainly not lethal, but she couldn’t imagine it was good for her either.

Sorilla made a mental note to be more careful about the local area and foods.

“So, you’re clearly not from around here, and if this is really fifteen-year-old whiskey from Tennessee, I suppose that means you’re from Earth,” the bartender said.

“Hayden’s World these days, but I was born in the southern states,” Sorilla confirmed, taking another sip of the local whiskey. “This is almost like home.”

“Hayden’s World?”

“Jungle planet, about halfway back to Earth from here,” Sorilla said, oversimplifying massively. “Almost surprised you lot didn’t find it on your way out here. There’s not a lot of other ways you could have gone, so you almost had to have jumped through there.”

“As I understand it, the captain didn’t stop to look around at random systems on the way out.” The bartender shrugged. “Jump in, jump out.”

“I suppose it probably seemed pointless,” Sorilla conceded. “It’s not a high-probability star, and by then you’d have passed a lot of dead systems.”

“Could be,” was the reply. “I’m Lira, by the way. Welcome to Arkana and my pub.”

“Sorry, where are my manners,” Sorilla laughed, shaking the extended hand. “Sorilla. The heap against the door is Corporal Farrel.”

“I was going to ask,” Lira said dryly. “Does he follow you everywhere?”

“No, though it seems he may start,” Sorilla groused a little. “They don’t much like letting me out of their sight these days.” She looked over her shoulder. “Damn it, Corporal, stop looking like you’re guarding the President and act sociable. You’re in the Fifth, damn it, not the Marines. Blend in.”

“That would be difficult, wearing that gear,” Lira laughed. “Where you get your poncho anyway? Design looks local, but I can see that material ain’t.”

Sorilla shrugged. “Had it put together last night before we came down, based on photos we got from the Alliance.”

Lira’s eyes narrowed. “You’re with the Xenos?”

“‘With’ is a strong term, except literally, I guess.” Sorilla shrugged. “Got a squad of Lucians riding with us. Alliance weren’t exactly going to allow us to fly around their space unescorted.”

“This is our space,” Lira hissed.

Sorilla just sort of looked bored. “Maybe someday, but Alliance controls your orbitals. That makes this their space, I’m afraid.”

Lira glared at her, but Sorilla just poured her another couple fingers of whiskey from the carbon flask.

“I’m not saying anything you don’t already know,” Sorilla told her bluntly. “No point getting pissed at me for making you face it. You’ve got no serious space industry, no fleet, and no hope of standing up to the Alliance in a straight-up fight. So, for now, they control the space.”

“For now? Maybe someday?” Lira asked, cautiously taking a sip as she looked at the other woman over the glass. “You suggesting something?”

Sorilla chuckled. “I’m a guerilla warfare specialist. I don’t need to suggest anything. I know the signs, and lord knows I can read the psych profile of the colonists that landed here. If you’ve not begun an active resistance, it’s only because you’ve not finished planning it yet.”

Lira shrugged, but said nothing as she looked over the corporal, who was stiffly taking a seat beside Sorilla.

“Get you something, Corporal?” she asked.

“No, ma’am.”

Sorilla shook her head. “Goddamn, Corporal, what would you do if an Afghani offered you a drink in his own home? Turn him down? You can’t be that green.”

“Twice, yes, ma’am,” the corporal responded instantly. “Accept the third offer.”

Sorilla smiled. “Good. But this isn’t Afghanistan, Corporal. These are American cultures, or they originated from them, so what do you do here?”

“Face value, ma’am. No hidden agendas in an offer from the States.”

“So what did you do wrong?” she asked, turning to cast an even gaze at the man.

Corporal Nicholas Farrel stared back, a little blankly, with no answer on his lips or in his eyes.

A glass with a splash of local whiskey slid to a stop beside him, and he turned as Lira laughed at him.

“You called me ‘ma’am,’ soldier. This ain’t an army base,” Lira told him, amused. “Hell, we don’t even have an army base.”

“Sorry, ma’am…” Nicholas winced. “Lira.”

“Better, Nicky, better,” Sorilla said.

“As amusing as the lessons are,” Lira said, “why are you here?”

“Officially, unofficially, or actually?” Sorilla asked, laughing at the question. “I’ll warn you, though, all those answers are subject to change with no notice.”

“And you wouldn’t tell me the truth anyway, I expect,” Lira sighed.

“It’s not whether I’d tell you the truth,” Sorilla told her, “it’s whether it would still be true tomorrow.” Sorilla shrugged and went on. “It’s an old game. I’m getting tired of playing, to be honest. Right now, the actual reason we’re here is to gather intel.”

“On us?” Lira asked, skeptical.

“No, though we’ll do that too,” Sorilla said with blunt honesty. “SOLCOM is more concerned with the Alliance. Me? I’m actually fascinated by the two cultures you represent.”

“Two?”

“Yeah, the Muslim ship that colonized a world a few light years from here as well,” Sorilla said. “For my specialty, the idea of seeing how two cultures developed once isolated from Earth is not something I could pass up.”

*****

“Hiding in the transport is not what I agreed to,” Kriss growled, eyeing the open door and the humans who stood guard.

“Boss says you stay inside,” one of the Terrans answered without turning, “then you stay inside.”

Two Lucians started to get to their feet at that, but Kriss waved them down despite the rebellious glares they shot him.

“Calm down,” Strickland said, coming up the ramp that opened to the back of the vehicle. “You’re not missing anything. This is strictly intel gathering and just presenting ourselves to the locals. We don’t want to rub their face in the fact that the Alliance is in charge here. They wouldn’t respond well.”

“We will do things your way, Major,” Kriss grumbled, “for now.”

“If there’s any fighting to be done,” Strickland said, “you can be pretty sure it’ll be all hands on deck, but hopefully it won’t come to that just yet.”

“We should be hunting the ptahs down!” a Lucian spat out, his English far from perfect but better than Strickland’s Alliance Standard, despite the random indecipherable curse in the middle of it.

“What do you think we’re doing?” Strickland asked simply. “Unless you’re holding out on us, you don’t know where to find them. Alliance brief on this op is clear: The goal is to suppress local terror operations without turning this into an interstellar incident. This is hunting them down.”

Another started to object, but Kriss shut him down.

“The major is correct,” Kriss said, sounding like the admission actually hurt. “Without active targets, we would only make things worse.”

Strickland nodded. “The colonel was surprised when she learned you were assigned to this op, Sentinel. She told us it didn’t seem like your type of mission. In her estimation, you were more direct action operatives.”

“The colonel, as you say, is correct. This skulking around is not the duty of a Sentinel,” Kriss admitted. “However, others were sent before us and had little success. Casualty rates were high, and so the Alliance Council elected to send us. It was a statement to the public of the Alliance.”

Strickland nodded, understanding. “It’s funny how often the government’s ‘statement to the public’ involves screwing the job up just because they don’t have the patience to do it right.”

“‘They’ who? The government, or the public?” Kriss asked, amused.

“Yes.”

****

“So,” Sorilla asked as she leaned into the bar, “who is this Eri?”

Lira looked her over briefly before shrugging. “Eri controls most of the arable land in the area. You drove past his crops coming here from the landing field. What land he does not control, he mostly provides irrigation for.”

Local land baron, Sorilla thought, filing the name away. “We noticed a lot of good crops coming in, but no grazing land.”

“Grazing?” Lira looked confused.

“Livestock crops?” Sorilla suggested, getting a similarly confused look. “Meat animals.”

“Ah, no, we do not raise them. Land is at a premium here,” Lira said, “or, rather, arable land is. Water is available, of course, but it takes much work to clear a section of land from the toxic trace materials.”

“Like hydrogen-cyanide,” Sorilla said.

“Among some others,” Lira confirmed. “Levels are much higher here than on Earth. The current belief is that this world is younger than Earth, so the levels of such things haven’t been washed down by millions of years of weathering.”

“That fits with our initial scans,” Sorilla said. “We scanned several fresh craters that would indicate some pretty massive orbital bombardment in recent geological history. The system doesn’t seem to be too active, though, or it wasn’t in my brief if it was.”

“We scanned the system in depth before we landed the colony ship,” Lira said. “It was declared as safe as one might reasonably hope, though the night sky is quite active.”

Sorilla nodded in agreement while she was prepping a query file for the people on the SOL, making appropriate noises until she’d pulsed the file out.

“What do you do for meat?” she asked. “I’m assuming that you aren’t vegan. That would be unusual, considering your originating culture.”

“Vegan? As in vegetarian?” Lira asked, amused. “No we are not. We vat-grow meat proteins.”

“Cloned meat, then,” Sorilla said. “Figured it would be something like that. Still quite energy intensive, but I suppose you have solar to spare to supplement chemical growth mediums. Most colonies seem to come to similar solutions. Even Hayden mostly uses flash flesh. Only Earth really still maintains livestock herds.”

Sorilla was only a little surprised, and that only because the colony had left so early in the development of jump drives that most of the colonial technical advancements were years away when they quit the Earth. She had expected them to have tried to maintain herd beasts, as much as part of their culture as anything. They had certainly brought the materials to make the attempt, with tens of thousands of embryos from a wide genetic sampling of everything from cows to pigs and even horses and other useful beasts.

“You’re from Earth,” Lira said suddenly. “Have you eaten…steak?”

Sorilla chuckled. “I have. A lot of people are neo-vegans these days. They refuse to eat actual meat, just flash flesh, but my dad was never one to buy into that particular social convention. I grew up on Texan barbeque just as much as I did on cultured proteins. I’m guessing you mostly eat burgers here though?”

Lira nodded. “I would like to try steak sometime. The books describe it as being very good.”

“It can be,” Sorilla agreed.

Cloned proteins and flash flesh had similar issues when it came to classic foods, primarily texture. It was easy enough to get the taste close, and nutrition was a no-brainer, but texture was a real problem. Muscles had to be worked to get the sorts of fibrous composition to most meats. It could be simulated in a rather rough way, but it took a lot more work and energy to do so, so most flash flesh setups just ground up the protein into burgers.

She hadn’t actually considered that as part of her preparations for this mission, but now that it had been brought up, Sorilla loaded another pulse comm message and sent it off to the SOL, just to see if they had any real steak in inventory. For many cultures, it wouldn’t be more than a moderately interesting delicacy, but she suspected that here it would be worth its weight in gold…back when gold had actually been worth something.

Even if it isn’t, it might be worth it just to have an excuse to raid the admiral’s freezer, she thought, amused by the idea.

Her implants logged a response from the SOL on her previous inquiry, so she loaded it up and read the file while continuing to speak.

She let the conversation meander, occasionally nudging Nicky to offer up his own thoughts, all the while reading the report from the SOL. They’d been analyzing the much more detailed hyperspectral scans from the ship’s scanners, showing that Arkana had relatively low oxygen and ozone in the atmosphere, but with her pointedly directing their focus, they had now begun looking at trace elements as well.

Hydrogen-cyanide was present in high enough quantities to be a serious consideration, making Sorilla wonder just what it was that drove the original crew to choose this world as their stop of choice. She supposed that the discovery of an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere had probably blinded them somewhat to the faults.

They’ve lasted this long and seem to be thriving on the surface, so I guess they acclimated and adapted well enough.

The Alliance files told a bit of a different story, unfortunately. The planet had been hit by three civilization-killer asteroids in the last hundred thousand years, and she didn’t understand how the rock wasn’t a snowball from an effective nuclear winter.

Since the Alliance had claimed the local space, they’d actually prevented another four impacts…not to the same level, of course. They estimated that over the last century at least twenty decent-sized rocks had made it to the surface, and they couldn’t even estimate how many airbursts there had been.

The irony of this mess is that if the Alliance hadn’t found these people, they’d probably be wiped out by a rock before long.

She kept a smile on her face as the conversation with Lira wrapped up and she said her goodbyes, leaving the rest of her flask with the woman in thanks.

She and Nicky stepped out into the sun, their implants automatically adjusting to maintain their vision as they walked toward the APC.

“So, what did we learn?” she asked the younger man.

“Ma’am?”

“Homework, Nicky,” Sorilla chided him. “What did we learn?”

“Other than to look for poison in the drink we’re offered?” he asked, a hint of a jab in his tone.

Sorilla accepted it with an easy smiled. “Not a bad lesson. We have hyperspectral implants; use them. I wouldn’t have spotted the hydrogen-cyanide spike anyway, though. It’s far below the threshold my scanners were set for.”

Nicky seemed a little disappointed that she hadn’t reacted more, but he shrugged as they walked. “She said they didn’t even have an army base. No professional soldiers?”

“Why would they?” Sorilla agreed. “They’re the only culture on the planet, and they’re not big enough or old enough to have formed any significant schisms. No one to wage war on.”

“Militias, though?” Nicky asked, uncertain.

“Probably, and good ones, I would wager,” Sorilla said. “That’s traditional for them, if I’m not missing my guess.”

“Not a lot of good against a starship in the orbitals.”

“No, but they could make life a living hell down here for the Alliance,” Sorilla said, “assuming the Alliance gives a damn about what goes on down here. I doubt they do.”

“The swastikas behind the bar were creepy,” Nicky said dryly.

Sorilla just nodded, “I know.”

They stopped at the back of the APC and Nicky glanced in to where the Alliance Sentinels were waiting impatiently.

He switched over to a direct comm, cutting out the open air speaker. “So why are they here at all?”

“Governmental inertia,” Sorilla said on the same channel. “The Alliance is expanding, so whether they need this space or planet now is beside the point. They’ll claim it so no one else can.”

“No matter who got here first.”

“Power speaks, always has,” Sorilla said as she climbed into the APC and walked over to where Kriss was sitting, staring pointedly at the Lucian beside him as she continued to speak over the private channel. “Alliance corporations probably want resources in the outer system where it’s cheap to mine them. That was how the Ross got clearance to move into Hayden.”

A silent nod from Kriss was all it took for the Lucian to get up and make room so that Sorilla could drop into the bolstered seat that was really more of a built-in restraint system. She locked the restraints in place before turning her comms again to the open air.

“Locals are definitely planning a resistance,” she said. “Don’t know if they have anything in motion yet, though. The odds of them having the chemical know-how to do what you report is…higher than I would have expected.”

“Yet you do not seem convinced,” Kriss said calmly.

“Too early to be certain,” Sorilla admitted. “but higher than expected doesn’t mean high, it just means that they have come skill in handling chemicals that I wasn’t counting on. How many people have access to Alliance spacecraft?”

“All Alliance citizens, including protectorates, are guaranteed right of free travel,” Kriss said firmly. “Open berths made available for a minimal cost, subsidized by the government. Better quality accommodations are also available, unsubsidized, of course.”

“Of course,” Sorilla said dryly. “Well, that means that we’re going to have no end of suspects to look at.”

“Your opinion of the local resistance, then?”

“They’ll be effective, more inclined to strike-and-fades than chemical or other types of attacks,” Sorilla said. “Don’t mistake that for an unwillingness or inability to use those sorts of strikes. They’ll just prefer to be more direct.”

“Good. They might be fun to spar with in the future,” Kriss chuckled.

“The only question now is whether they’re already active or not,” Sorilla said, sighing, “but I’m leaning toward not.”

“Why?” Kriss demanded sharply.

“Frankly? I’m guessing that they’re still deep in intel gathering, and the local barons are likely still working out how they can profit from your tech base,” Sorilla said. “It’ll take longer for a resistance to form without their say so.”

“Barons?” Strickland asked, leaning over as the APC closed up.

Sorilla nodded. “Probably of the robber type, but I’m just spit-balling there. Land baron by the name of Eri controls pretty much all of the arable land. I’m guessing there’s likely a meat baron of sorts, controlling the cloning vats used to produce meat proteins. Name a resource, there’ll almost certainly be some figure controlling it.”

“Not a terribly libertarian ideal, is it?” Strickland asked, snorting.

“Power vacuums have to be filled, Major. If the government doesn’t do it, individuals will,” Sorilla answered. “That’s always the balancing act: a government strong enough to protect its citizens, but not so tyrannical as to utterly dominate them.”

Kriss laughed. “Has anyone from your worlds ever achieved that?”

Sorilla shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. There is a saying, Earth history…‘a government strong enough to give you everything you need is strong enough to take everything you have’.”

“Wise saying,” Kriss nodded.

“I have a corollary for it,” Sorilla went on. “Any government too weak to take everything you have is too weak to protect anything you love.”

“That sounds like a catch-22, Colonel.”

“History is a catch-22, Major,” Sorilla answered Strickland. “The question isn’t if a government, or system, goes bad on you. It’s when and how. Doesn’t matter what the idea behind the system is, the rot is at the core of the system…”

“The laws?”

“The people,” Sorilla said, dead serious, looking at Kriss. “I don’t know how it is with the Alliance, but humans are corrosive. We’re bred to break any system we live in, to take advantage of any hole we can. We push into the cracks and widen them, until the system crashes down around us…and then we build it all up again and start over.”

“It is a familiar story.” Kriss nodded. “Most technological species seem to do the same.”

“Yeah, I wish I were more surprised,” Sorilla sighed. Abruptly, she banged on the side of the APC, three heavy thumps. “Move out! Take us closer into the main colony site.”

The APC silently whirred off on its electric motors.

*****

Eri Constantine was a man accustomed to the finer things in life.

That was something that had not changed when the Xenos arrived, and he didn’t foresee it changing anytime in the near future.

Things were changing apace, however, that much was certain. The Xenos brought with them new opportunities, and once they’d established meaningful contact, it was clear that they were a reasonable sort. He had wondered where they’d learned English, but with the news from the airfield he’d recently been made aware of…well, that question seemed answered.

I must admit to some curiosity about how Earth has turned out.

He’d never admit it in public, but Eri had always harbored doubts about the official histories. The idea that they were fleeing a doomed planet, sinking in its own filth, was romantic and compelling, but it sounded too much like fiction to him. Of course, that might have been because most local fiction had been informed by those histories, so maybe there was a little bias there.

In any case, it seemed clear that Earth hadn’t quite managed to fry itself in natural disasters or sink into the cesspool of racial mixing…whatever that really meant.

His scouts had already reported back on the progress of the vehicle the Earthers were riding in, and it looked interesting. Clearly not Alliance tech, but clean and advanced, and very impressive from the photos he’d been sent.

They have a shuttle capable of atmospheric escape. He let his finger brush the display with the image of the craft in question.

He’d give a substantial chunk of his wealth for one of those, and to have one so close…and humans who could presumably build, repair, and maintain it as well? It was frustrating in the extreme, because he knew that taking it would be the worst possible course of action. An atmospheric shuttle was worthless without a jump ship to match it to, and the only one the colony had was a rusting hunk of junk that would never fly again.

The Alliance was more than willing to sell tech to him, of course, though he had determined that it was pretty much obsolete crap by their standards. The costs were the problem. Food, mineral wealth, and the like were all of little to no value to the Alliance.

None.

It was beyond his understanding. Nothing in his life had every prepared him for it. The idea of material wealth being all but worthless had been the biggest shock of meeting the Xenos. Even their inhuman appearance hadn’t been remotely so stunning.

He’d lived his entire life in the comfort of being wealthy. His father had left him control over almost all the local productive land, as well as the means of making it productive. What he didn’t personally own, he had control of through one method or another.

The Xenos didn’t care about food, however; they had plenty. Gold? Steel? With access to asteroids, those were about as valuable as dirt, and damn near as common.

Some pharmaceuticals had value, and he’d parlayed those into a few bits of technology here and there. Technology had value as well, but the Alliance was well above anything Arkana had to trade.

Put simply, it was an infuriating situation, but not an impossible one. He’d spent much of the past decade working on ideas and products the Xenos would trade for, competing with his fellow patriarchs to see who could acquire the most useful technologies from the Xenos.

The arrival of the humans from Earth, though, they represented a new variable…and new possibilities.

“Grant,” he called suddenly, turning around.

“Sir?” Grant Portman, his family’s retainer, stepped into the room practically the instant he’d spoken.

Eri often marveled at how frighteningly efficient Grant was, but couldn’t imagine living without his assistance either.

“I want to speak with the Earthers,” he said. “Arrange a meeting, will you?”

“Would sir like them in any particular frame of mind?” Grant asked.

Eri considered then. “Willing to deal.”

Grant was silent a moment before smiling slowly. “I believe I know just the men to make the invitation, sir.”

Chapter 7

The colonists had spread out a lot compared to Hayden, Sorilla noted as they drove. The APC was making decent time on the packed dirt road along the river, but the main site was easily an hour’s drive from the airfield and they’d passed lots of small villages on their way in.

They were maybe another ten minutes from the city limits, so to speak, when the APC skidded to a halt. Sorilla twisted around, swapping over to the driver’s channel.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a welcoming party, boss,” the driver said. “You might want to check it out.”

Sorilla linked directly into the APC’s feed, getting a look at the situation. She whistled in appreciation as she got an eyeful.

“I do declare,” she said with a bit of a Southern drawl, “that looks like an old fashioned posse come out to meet us.”

“I see a couple Alliance blasters in the bunch, boss,” the driver said nervously. “This baby can take a lot, but those will scuff the paint a bit.”

Sorilla shot an annoyed look at Kriss.

“You’re selling them weapons?” she demanded over the open air.

“I’m not,” Kriss said. “However, what merchants choose to sell here is not my concern, unless it is illegal or breaches an active embargo. At this point, there is none to this world.”

“Please tell me those aren’t mil-spec,” she groused.

“They are not. However, there is very little difference between military-issue and civilian,” Kriss admitted. “Primarily safety systems, control locks, and other similar items. The damage they cause is close to identical.”

“Great,” she grumbled, hammering the door. “Open it up.”

“Colonel…?” Strickland got to his feet.

“I said open it up,” she repeated herself. “I’ll see what’s up. Hopefully this isn’t a fight in the brewing…so just play it calmly.”

Truth was, she rather doubted it was a fight. If they’d wanted that, then they would have ambushed the APC, rather than blocking the path. She grabbed her helmet on the way by, but didn’t put it on as the door started to open.

The door of the APC was only halfway down when she jumped from it and planted both feet in the dirt, taking a moment to look around with her optics fully active.

“Eyes open, everyone,” she ordered. “Watch for snipers.”

Unless the group ahead of the APC was particularly stupid, she knew they would be out there.

Sorilla fingered her helmet, considering putting it on, but ultimately decided against it. Unless she fouled this up badly, she didn’t expect the situation to deteriorate. Putting the helmet on would just make them more nervous, and in the worst case scenario, she rather doubted her head would survive a hit from those Alliance blasters whether she was wearing it or not.

She clipped the helmet on her hip belt as she walked around, making a show of clearing the poncho from her armor to open access to her guns.

Not looking intimidating was one thing; looking like a pushover was something else entirely.

“Gentlemen,” she said evenly as she tipped her head in the direction of the group. “Fine day today, isn’t it?”

The men looked at each other, some uncertainty there, but mostly they were looking to the man in the middle of the group for direction. Sorilla shifted her focus primarily to him, tagging him in her HUD as the group’s leader.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair and deeply tanned skin that was just starting to show the craggy look of a man who’d spent too much of his life in the high UV of direct sunlight. Sorilla noted the star pinned on his chest and blinked to adjust the focus and zoom of the liquid lens over her eyeballs so she could easily read the lettering on it.

Arkana Rangers.

She wondered what their legal status actually was, locally, but supposed it didn’t really matter a lot. She’d treat with them as actual authorities until it was time not to.

“Ma’am,” the leader said sternly, “going to have to ask you to surrender your weapons.”

Sorilla smiled slowly. “That’s interesting, Ranger, is it? I was informed this was an open carry community.”

“Citizens have the right to carry,” he told her evenly. “Unless you have papers to show otherwise, I’ve never seen your like in these areas.”

“Ranger, if you want to play those semantics, I can play right back,” Sorilla said evenly. “This is Alliance territory, and we have all necessary permissions from the Alliance to operate within their space. Put simply, my authority is higher than yours. Mine controls the orbitals.”

She glanced up pointedly.

“Fuck those Xenos!” one of the younger, and stupider, men shouted, surging forward, only to be held back. “This world ain’t theirs!”

Sorilla honestly wished she’d had the time to do the job properly from the start, but the Alliance had pushed too hard in the beginning and there was no way either Alliance or SOLCOM would accept a long-term familiarization with the local culture. It probably wasn’t feasible anyway, given that the colony site was small enough that it wouldn’t take too long before any attempt at infiltration was discovered.

It was large enough that no one could know everyone, but small enough that everyone knew someone who knew anyone in particular. Any outsider would automatically be pegged as an off-worlder, and that would totally destroy any point in the soft approach anyway.

“Shut up, Frank,” the leader snapped, glaring at him as the protesting man was dragged back.

“How about we get to what you’re really here for?” Sorilla suggested, her link back to the APC filling her in on the location of snipers they’d found so far. Two men on overwatch, both within three hundred yards.

Honestly, she was a little disappointed if that was all they had.

There was a moment of indecision in the man’s eyes, and Sorilla tried to work out just why that was. He had to have come in with a plan. Had he actually expected her to just hand over her team’s weapons?

No way. They’re under Alliance protectorate status and have been for at least a decade. They aren’t going to expect military people to hand over their weapons, no matter how nice they ask. There’s another game here.

There was a clear undercurrent of anger toward the Alliance she could see for the first time out in the open, though. That was good, confirming her psych profile at least in part.

The leader seemed to have made up his mind, judging from his body language. He shifted his attention back to Sorilla and away from the loudmouth, all indecision gone from his stance as his hand started to move to the gun on his hip.

Sorilla’s guns were in her hands and clear of the Kevlar holsters before he’d fully gripped the handle of his own, and she thrust them out in front of her as the men were highlighted in her corneal implants as yellow and red threats.

The leader was still yellow as he froze in place, both guns aimed to take his head off. Sorilla ignored the red threats for the moment, as they had frozen in shock despite already having rifles and carbines in their hands.

“I think we should keep this talk all civilized-like,” she said with a sweet smile, letting the leader stare down the barrels of her Metalstorm tactical pistols for a moment before she abruptly returned them to her holsters with fluid, efficient motions.

The whirr of the APC’s main gun rotating out of its armored storage protection and aiming over her shoulder caused the whole group to take a step back before even thinking about it.

“Don’t you guys think that’s a good idea?” she went on casually, as though nothing had happened.

“Yeah, civilized is good,” the leader said, swallowing hard.

“Excellent,” Sorilla told him. “Now, we have a bit of an impasse. I can certainly understand your desire to keep military ordnance out of your city, and that is not unreasonable, but we’re not handing over our guns when no one else is walking around unarmed.”

She casually walked closer to him, the group of men parting to put as much room between them and her as possible. Sorilla had no intentions of doing anything hostile, though, and so she simply clapped a hand lightly on the leader’s shoulder.

“Why don’t we work out a compromise?” she suggested, stepping in close to him and smiling up at the taller man.

“Right,” he stammered a bit. “That…that works?”

Sorilla didn’t make any notice of the hesitance in his almost questioning tone, outwardly at least, but instead just continued to speak calmly and as pleasantly as she could.

“What if we—?” She was forced to pause as the loudmouth from earlier lunged for her.

She slapped her hand into the leader’s chest, pushing him out of the way as she twisted to deal with the threat.

*****

Everything was just a blur, it happened too fast.

Ranger Dalton had been cursing the whole situation from the get-go, particularly the “deputies” he’d been ordered to bring along. Doing favors for Eri Constantine was part of the job, but he was smart enough to recognize when he was being set up for something.

Having a handpicked team of the worst hotheaded idiots in town assigned to him was enough of a clue that he’d have known something was up if that was the only part of the situation that stunk. They didn’t have near enough firepower to go around hassling Xenos, for one, and that ignored the fact that the targets were riding around in an armored vehicle that looked right out of the old media clips in the approved histories.

The Xeno blasters they had were impressive, but Dalton knew damn well that if it came to a fight, they were about as likely to be enough as pop-guns. That armor may or may not stand up to the Alliance blasters, but he’d bet almost anything in the galaxy that it would give the people it was protecting a chance to react.

His people wouldn’t get that much in the retaliation strike.

Still, he’d done what he’d been bade. You didn’t turn Eri down flat, or bad things were likely to happen to you or people you gave a damn about. Dalton had been surprised when the only person to emerge from the vehicle was a woman, wearing local garb as best he could tell, until she cleared room to expose her pistols.

Those were obviously not local.

She was too calm for a woman facing down a dozen men with guns, some of which he knew had to be a threat to her, no matter how effective any armor she might have. When Frankie had gone off like the hotheaded idiot he was, and things started to deteriorate, Dalton decided that was about as good an opening as he was going to get.

He started to go for his gun, just as he’d been told…and then he froze.

As God was his witness, Dalton hadn’t even seen the woman move.

One second he was casually reaching for his weapon just to punctuate the line he’d been told to deliver, the next he was staring down four big bores in two very big guns that looked outsized in the hands of the woman, who was looking pleasantly at him without looking down the sights. Normally, he’d consider that the sign of an amateur, but her guns didn’t waver and he knew they were both dead on target.

He, very slowly, drew his hands back from his pistol and lifted them up with fingers splayed. The whirr and clunk from the armored vehicle as it exposed a big gun that now moved to cover him and his men was mere punctuation as the moment stretched out forever, in his estimation.

Then it was over. The two guns vanished back into the woman’s holsters and she was all smiles again as she spoke cheerfully and stepped in close, as though there was no reason to be concerned. He found himself agreeing with her, nodding along as though she hadn’t just put guns in his face, and for the life of him he didn’t know why.

So it was a surprise when she suddenly shoved him, hard enough to make Dalton stumble a few steps back. As he got his balance and looked up sharply to see if she was attacking him or not, he spotted Frankie, that idiot, charging the woman.

“Frankie!” He snarled a warning, but stopped short when the woman again moved so fast he was barely able to figure out what she’d done after the fact.

She stepped out of the way of the lunge at the last second, not even looking in Frankie’s direction, pivoting to face the idiot as he stumbled past her. Then, with a single, smooth motion, she kicked his feet out from under him while striking him in the chest with a ridge hand. The combined forces laid Frankie out flat in midair, a shocked expression on his face as stupid as anything Dalton had ever seen in the man, and that was saying something.

She wasn’t finished, though.

She spun around in a smooth motion, ridge hand closing into a striking fist, and with the spin to add force, she delivered a hammer blow to Frankie’s sternum before he could even finish falling. The added force of the blow drove Frankie the Idiot, which would forever be Dalton’s name for the fool from then on, into the ground with enough force to throw up dust in all directions as he gaped and flopped around like a fish out of water.

Two more of the idiots he’d been saddled with had gone to help Frankie, but they both pulled up short as one of her guns was jammed into the first’s nose while the other was bent over in pain as her other gun was jammed into his crotch.

It was only at that point that Dalton realized that the rest of the soldiers in the APC had gotten out at some point during the conversation or fight.

What was worse, though, was that as he looked at them…not a single one of them had their weapons at the ready.

At least twenty guys, big guys, were standing there with weapons hanging from tactical slings or holstered. Some were leaning casually on the APC, others were just standing there and watching…including the Xenos.

He rather thought the Xenos looked even more amused than the humans.

Jesus Christ, Eri, what the hell did you get me into? Dalton thought as he swallowed.

Then she looked back at him, still holding her guns on the two dumbasses. “I believe we were talking about a compromise?”

Dalton nodded, taking a breath.

Fuck Eri. I’m not paid nearly enough for this. If this bunch start breaking laws, then maybe I’ll do something, but I’m not one of his paid guns.

“Yes, I think we were. Everyone, stand down,” he said. “I’m Ranger Sasha Dalton.”

“Brilliant,” she said, withdrawing her guns as the two men carefully stepped back and everyone relaxed a bit. “Sorilla Aida, colonel for my sins, don’t you know.”

“I don’t, but I’m beginning to guess,” Dalton said, sighing. “Sidearms in town are fine, but we’d prefer you leave the tank on the outskirts.”

“We can work with that,” Sorilla said. “Would local transport be available for rental?”

“Colonel Aida,” Dalton said dryly, “for you, I’ll take you and show you around personally.”

“Fabulous.”

*****

That had not gone to plan.

Grant Portman, like everyone else, had been shocked by the speed and power the woman who seemed to be the spokesman for the group had exhibited. Everything had been going more or less as expected, right up until the Ranger had gone to draw his weapon. That was the signal they’d agreed on, and it would have allowed him to show up and play peacemaker after a brief standoff was allowed to play out.

A bit risky, but everything they knew about the woman and her team seemed to indicate that they weren’t looking to start anything, so he’d decided it was worth the risks. Wasn’t him down there, after all, and there were always up-and-coming young bucks who wanted the prestige of the Ranger’s badge if he’d miscalculated.

He obviously had done just that, but not in the way he’d expected.

The woman was fast.

She’d shut down the attempt at standoff before it had even properly begun, and then in the follow up had gone on to utterly destroy one of the more reliable hotheads in Eri’s employ before charming the Ranger into showing her around town.

He was going to need a new approach.

Grant turned to one of the men with him and extended his hand. “Radio.”

The secure radio was dropped into his hand, and he thumbed it open with a motion.

“Eri? Yeah, didn’t work out. Going to offer your invitation in a different way. No, shouldn’t be too much of a delay. Might I suggest visiting the Red Room this afternoon, however? Excellent. See you there.”

He flipped the radio closed and handed it back, mentally still replaying the fight.

He did not want to be within that woman’s reach…not for any reason under the white sun.

Chapter 8

Kriss had been amused, watching the human casually take out one of the more foolish examples of local toughs like he was the nothing he clearly was. As with his counterpart in the human forces, he’d issued a stand-down order to his men, as it was clear there was no actual threat to her. What impressed him more was how she’d managed to completely dissolve the tension with the leader of the group, and now he and a few others were packed into the back of the man’s own vehicle and driving casually into town.

They’d split off, leaving guards and, more importantly, he supposed, potential backup with the APC, while Aida, Major Strickland, himself, and a couple young human soldiers had piled into the Rangers’ transport and in short order were being personally shown around the city with the local law enforcement as their tour guide.

This human is dangerous despite her weapons, not because of them.

He would have preferred to keep his Sentinels together, but he was realistic enough to understand the issues they were facing on this world. The Alliance was not the most popular group to these humans, for reasons he could easily understand. Normally that was one of the last things Kriss would care for, but since they’d invited the humans’ forces to help, he wasn’t going to actively attempt to sabotage their efforts on his behalf.

He was a soldier; he wasn’t an idiot.

So he followed along, listened to every word, and mostly kept quiet. Aida, on the other hand, was chatting amiably with their new local guide, never letting silence last, and honestly seemed to be enjoying herself, as best he could tell.

Such an odd set of skills for a warrior of her caliber.

*****

“Main landing site was just over there,” Sasha Dalton said, nodding to a rusting hulk that dominated the view to their right.

“One of the early colony ships,” Sorilla said, looking it over. “I’ve read about them, but there was surprisingly little in the way of video or in-depth blueprints. What drive system did you use?”

“Orion.”

Sorilla’s eyes bugged out as she snapped back to look at Dalton before looking back to the hulk that was resting in the distance.

“That would explain why the official records are light,” Sorilla said. “I’m suddenly shocked that you ever managed to get it built in the first place.”

“We had powerful friends,” Dalton told her.

Sorilla was certain they had, but even that didn’t explain how anyone was insane enough to allow a noted group of supremacist fundamentalists to build an Orion-class vessel in Earth orbit. A base design Orion would require literally thousands of thermonuclear charges for propulsion, and unlike the antimatter system in a modern drive, those charges were not integral to the ship’s core.

A madman could easily have them removed from the drive chamber and redeployed in any way he chose.

Someone let that lunatic ship thousands of nuclear devices on orbital shuttles?

It didn’t make sense.

She filed it, pulsed it out to the SOL, and got her head back in the game.

“Must have been some ride,” she said, “landing that thing.”

“So they say,” Dalton chuckled as he drove. “Radiation was slightly elevated in the landing zone for a few decades, but nothing too bad.”

“We don’t design interstellar ships to land anymore,” Sorilla admitted. “It’s a little wasteful, and the new drives would do more than leave a little elevated background rads.”

“You leave colony ships parked in orbit and shuttle the people down?”

“Not exactly. We tether them to the planet and the people take the elevator to the surface,” Sorilla told him.

Dalton glanced sharply over. “You got the materials science to work for a space elevator? That’s incredible!”

“Our Alliance friends did us one better,” she said with only a slight twist to her tone as she said the word “friends.” “They play with gravity in far more efficient ways than we do, so far at least.”

She half turned, shooting Kriss a grin. The Lucian didn’t have expressions in the way humans generally recognized, but his grayish face twisted in an emulation of a human grin that would make most people nervous.

“Their big ships actually land and take off,” she said, looking back at Dalton. “We haven’t bothered with that yet, though it’s only a matter of time. I’ll miss the tethers when they phase them out. There’s something about the view as you go up one of them that is really mind-bending.”

Kriss snorted. “How was the view falling from one?”

Sorilla laughed. “I was a little too busy trying to kill your dumb ass to really enjoy it.”

Dalton looked at her oddly. “You fell from a space elevator?”

“That bastard—” She jerked her thumb in Kriss’s direction. “—hit the tether car with surface-to-air ordnance while we were moving through the air/space interface. Sucked me right out of the car. I dangled for a bit by a strap, but it inevitably snapped and after that it was a long way down.”

“Shooting with your damn rifle the whole way,” Kriss laughed.

“You two tried to kill each other?”

“Probably more than once,” Sorilla admitted, “but that time was the only time I got a decent image of him that I could later confirm.”

“But you’re working together…?” Dalton looked confused.

“War is hell, but we’re professionals,” Sorilla said with a light shrug. “Today we’re ordered to work together, so we work together.”

“Tomorrow maybe they let us try to kill each other again.” Kriss grinned that terrifying smile. “We can only hope, yes?”

Sorilla rolled her eyes, ignoring the jibe, and turned back to Dalton.

“The Alliance isn’t all that different from humans, frankly,” she said. “The Ghoulies notwithstanding.”

Dalton glanced over sharply as he drove. “Ghoulies?”

“The Ross’El,” Kriss grumbled unhappily. “A blight on the Alliance, and the galaxy.”

“Short grey fuckers with big heads,” Sorilla said. “They have a mastery of gravity that’s unbelievable to see. They also can’t communicate in any meaningful way outside of certain advanced mathematical exchanges. We don’t know if they eat, but they don’t seem to realize that POWs need to, and they respond to pretty much any threat level with the same degree of force. Gravity-induced fission weaponry, or the Gravity Valve. If you had them here, they’d have turned much of the surrounding area into craters by now.”

“Honorless ptahs,” Kriss muttered.

“The Alliance only puts up with them because they’re too powerful to wipe out without collateral damage being truly obscene,” Sorilla said. “They blew up a planet against us once, just to slow down one of our squadrons and keep them from using the gravity of the planet to sling around.”

“In the last war with them, the Alliance lost over fifty inhabited worlds,” Kriss said. “The Ross lost almost as many star systems. Neither of us have recovered.”

Dalton looked sickened at the idea. “That’s insane.”

“That’s the level of play your people are now standing in the middle of,” Sorilla said sharply, her pleasant mask dropping briefly. “Welcome to the galaxy.”

*****

The city was decently sized, Sorilla noted as they drove into the more crowded and narrower streets that wound in around the buildings. There were few building codes, she imagined, and almost no urban planning. Not as big a deal as it might have been, since the work had all been done by computer-driven fabrication units.

The main colony site at Hayden had plenty of room in all directions, so the community there covered hundreds of kilometers in any given compass point from the tether site. Public transport was high speed and integrated into the urban planning for the site, so even several hundred kilometers out was no more than fifteen minutes to the city center.

Here they had opted to build up, with some decent skyscrapers that reached up a pretty impressive height. It wasn’t up to the scales of Dubai or some of the Martian resorts, but for a colony site she was impressed.

“You must have modded your fabricators,” she said as they drove. “The early generation models couldn’t manage more than five stories, last I checked.”

“Early on it was clear that we needed centralized water purification as well as access to food production,” Dalton said casually as he navigated the streets, darting through a hole in traffic before continuing. “So they added some components for extruding carbon-reinforced steel I-beams.”

“Impressive,” Sorilla said. “I don’t think we did that for another few generations. Steel easy to come by here?”

“Yeah, lots of it right on the surface. Meteor iron all over the place, lots of veins waiting to be pulled from the earth.” Dalton dodged a car that ran a stop sign, shaking his fist out the window as it screamed on past, but otherwise ignored it as they pressed on.

Sorilla had seen worse drivers in her experience, though not by much.

At least there aren’t as many people on the road as in New Delhi after the war, Sorilla supposed. That had been some hair-raising driving.

“It’s probably a good thing we left the APC out of town,” Sorilla admitted. “I don’t want to think about the damage we’d have caused with these idiots bouncing off the armor.”

“One reason I headed you off before you made it into town,” Dalton confirmed.

“One reason?”

Dalton glanced over at her, then away quickly before nodding up ahead. “City Hall up that way. Not too many people there most of the time, other than some paper pushers.”

Sorilla just nodded along, letting the change of subject pass, eyes focusing of a massive old-school cathedral that dwarfed everything around it.

“Nice church,” she said.

Dalton looked over. “Cathedral of the Holy Stars, the colony’s center of worship.”

It was, quite possibly, the most impressive building of its type she’d ever seen. Most of the Earth-based churches had long since moved to far more modern types of buildings. The older, stylized ones still existed, of course, and were meticulously preserved on Earth, but there had been severe limits to the full extent of their original construction.

The Cathedral of the Holy Stars was the product of a culture at, arguably, its apex of technical achievement and with centuries of Earth’s creative history to draw on. She could tell that it had been built by fabricators, at least in part, but most of the telltale striations had been smoothed out by hand and the rest artfully hidden behind ornate sculpting of the external wall.

It was the centerpiece of the colony, and a fitting one at that. The steeple was clearly the highest point in the city, towering hundreds of feet over the closest skyscraper and topped by a gleaming white cross that seemed to float in midair.

“It’s very impressive,” she told him. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it, not on that scale at least.”

“We are rather proud of it,” Dalton said, smiling as he looked at the Cathedral himself.

“You have reason to be,” Sorilla said. “Short of the Vatican itself, I think it may be the most impressive one I’ve seen. The history of the Vatican City is difficult to match, no matter how beautiful the competition, however.”

Dalton nodded slowly. “I think…I would like to see that, someday.”

“Might be possible,” Sorilla said. “It’ll depend on how things work out between SOLCOM and the Alliance, but I expect some exchange between the Alliance and Hayden at least to begin within the year or so.”

“You’ll let Xenos onto your territory?” Dalton asked, skeptical.

“Whether we’ll let them any deeper than Hayden is still being considered,” Sorilla said, “but Hayden is a known system, so yeah, we’ll at least have exchanges there. Better to talk and deal than to start leaving entire planets and star systems dead and full of rubble.”

Dalton looked skeptical, though of what exactly Sorilla couldn’t tell for sure. She hoped it was just some residual, and understandable, xenophobia rather than a belief that destroyed star systems were better than talking.

So far he seemed like a reasonable sort, but if he was harboring the kind of irrational hate that would ignore the consequences of that sort of warfare, that could not be a good sign for the culture as a whole. It seemed unlikely. She’d never encountered any population that far gone in the past, but she had never dealt with a constructed populace like this either.

“Since you’re interested, this is as good a place as any to pull over,” Dalton said as he pulled the off-road vehicle aside and into a parking slot, only scuffing two other vehicles in the process. Sorilla doubted either owner would notice the new marks; there were enough on them to begin with.

Strickland hopped out of the back as she stepped out of the passenger side and looked around.

“Remind you of anywhere?” he asked, looking around.

“Take your pick of any really old metropolis on Earth,” she said with an amused laugh, eyes on the traffic. “Lousy drivers, optional rules of the road, more bikes than cars, and not a single rig on the road without at least three dents.”

“I was thinking Turkmenistan, myself, but your description covers it decently,” the major admitted.

“Traffic got a lot better in the developed world when autocars took over in the cities,” Sorilla said. “But believe it or not, a lot of the old Eurozone cities were just as bad in their day. Narrow roads, way too many people, and an amusing disregard for the rules of the road. They were built without a mind for the level of traffic they developed, and while they did patch things up in places it could still get pretty wild, especially in small neighborhoods.”

They walked around the front of the rig and were joined by the others, including Kriss and Dalton.

Strickland looked out at the crowded roads, still amused. “You don’t believe in traffic cops here?”

“Not many police officers at all,” Dalton said, “and those we do have tend to work actual crimes, not minor traffic issues.”

Strickland looked around, disbelieving, but Sorilla just chuckled.

“Different strokes, Major, that’s the beauty of the galaxy,” she said. “Just roll with it.”

*****

Grant considered the information he’d heard from the chatting in the vehicle via the transmitter he had on Dalton.

How many times he’d wanted to be there to nudge the conversation, he’d lost count of, but there had been plenty of things to learn just the same. It was hard to believe that Earth had managed to defend their space from what was being described—possibly too hard to believe. That they would then enter into negotiations with the Alliance after that was just frankly disgusting.

Unfortunately, he’d already seen that people were easily led astray. Even his own employer had fallen to the lure of what could be gained from the Xenos, ignoring the risks associated with such exposure.

If that could happen, then there was no doubt in his mind that the filth that had taken over Old Earth would do the same and far more besides. The sickness that had taken over the world before the colony had left had been so pervasive that he would not put any depths of depravity beneath them.

There was nothing he could do to end the Xenos at the moment, and so a longer game would have to be played…no matter how sickening it was.

*****

Sorilla’s implants were working overtime as she scanned the city and its inhabitants around her.

Practically every moving person was listed as a yellow-level threat, at the very least, with several red threats appearing every few seconds just for flavor. Weapons rested on the belts of almost every man, and her hyperspectral analysis picked up explosive accelerants on basically everyone, which told her that if she couldn’t see a gun it was just because the person had likely concealed it. She filed the accelerant signature for her report to the SOL and would let them work out what sort of gunpowder equivalent the locals were using.

She could tell that the other members of her group were picking up the same, even without tying into their implants. Their hands never strayed too far from their sidearms, and even Strickland’s head was on a swivel. They were all used to open carry—many of the places they’d spent their careers were not the sort of places anyone went without a gun—but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking to be surrounded by that many armed people with as little backup as they had available.

She didn’t let it reach her face, however, and just smiled pleasantly at Dalton as he gestured to the cathedral and started listing off points of interest. She tuned most of it out, though her implants were keeping a running tally as she examined the people closer than just whether they were armed or not.

The women wore dresses, for the most part. Conservative by many Earth standards, but freer than quite a few as well. Light and airy were the words of the day, which was a sign of practical dress rather than anything traditional. The men wore tans and browns, but mostly classic-cut suits or rougher work clothing. No leather, of course, but otherwise close to what she’d expect in New Mexico, aside from being of a slightly older stylistic choice.

It was a nice city.

She could easily see herself settling in some place like it, if she hadn’t found Hayden first.

And if it wasn’t behind enemy lines, of course.

Of course, one of the main traits that had led Sorilla to her particular career path was that she was able to slip into almost any culture on Earth and embed herself there like a native within a remarkably short time. She didn’t do that by pretending to like the cultures she worked in; she did it by finding the aspects of those cultures that she genuinely enjoyed and identified with and burying herself within them.

There was a lot to like here, but Sorilla could read the signs of deeper problems. There were always deeper problems, of course. She was too well-trained and too experienced in spotting them to have missed them, even in her own home cultures. Perfection was the realm of the Gods. When mortals even attempted it, things would not end well.

*****

The woman was saying all the right things and making the right noises at the right places, but Dalton had a feeling like she was barely paying him any attention at all. He watched as her eyes flicked across the streets, never seeming to stop on anything in particular, never focusing on anything. That might not have bothered him much, but every now and then he thought he caught a glint of light in them that had nothing to do with any reflections.

The others seemed the same, aside from the single Xeno he’d acquiesced to allow to ride with them. He still wasn’t sure how she’d talked him into that, but the squat and powerfully built Xeno was seemingly more at ease than any of the others, which set Dalton’s nerves on edge. No one should be that calm-looking when they were surrounded by, what was to them, xenoforms all armed to the teeth.

Something in his expression must have brought the woman’s focus back, though, as her eyes stopped their flicking about to focus sharply on him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, expression now entirely intent on him in a way it hadn’t been just a moment earlier.

“Nothing,” Dalton said, a little more gruffly than he intended.

She seemed to lose focus again, then abruptly turned to look over at the Xeno for a moment.

“He’s not as calm as he looks,” she said, an amused tone in her voice.

“How…?”

Sorilla gestured vaguely. “Lucians have different body language than humans, Dalton. Kriss is tense, alert, but keeping any hints of it under control. Same as the others.”

Dalton looked at her sternly for a moment, but she just smiled brightly back at him until he shook his head. “The Church entrance is up ahead…”

They walked around to the front of the cathedral, and Sorilla was taken by the scene that felt like she’d walked through a time warp into something far before her time.

Churches on Earth were historical sites more and more, and the number that were still holding services seemed to drop every year. She’d never been one to spend time in one of them personally, but like most people serving, she had spent a fair amount of time with one chaplain or another over the years. She didn’t know whether God existed, but once in a while everyone needed to vent to someone who wasn’t going to be armed to the teeth and watching your back the next day.

It always felt a little strange kicking down a door with a buddy you’d just raged at the night before, no matter how often it happened.

There was a man in black greeting people at the door, and Sorilla couldn’t help but wince and extend a line of silent sympathy to him. Wearing black in the heat they were dealing with couldn’t be comfortable.

“Padre.” Dalton tipped his hat to the man.

“Ranger.” The padre smiled back, looking over the group, eyes widening just slightly as he spotted Kriss. “Who are your…friends?”

“From out of town,” Dalton said simply.

“Yes, I’d gathered that, at least in part.”

“The rest of us as well,” Sorilla smiled, extending a hand. “Padre.”

He took is carefully, shaking it firmly, but his eyes continued to graze over the group. “Where from out of town, if I might ask?”

“Southern States, originally,” she said. “Grew up in northern Mexico, though. Earth, of course.”

“Of course,” he replied quizzically, looking at Kriss again. “Have the Xenos claimed Earth as well?”

Sorilla shook her head. “One of them tried to take our colonies, but we managed to hold them back. Exchanged control of that colony a few times through the war, but it ended in the same hands it started in. We have a treaty with the Alliance at the moment. Neither of us are really in any position to take on the other…for now.”

“Fascinating,” the padre said. “Oh, where are my manners? I’m Father Egrid.”

“Father.” Sorilla nodded. “Sorilla Aida, colonel out of SOLCOM. This is my second, Major Strickland. Corporals Farrel and Smith. The Lucian is Sentinel Kriss. He’s Alliance Special Operations.”

Father Egrid greeted each of them in turn, pausing briefly before doing the same to Kriss finally.

“Well,” he said, “a momentous occasion, then, visitors from the Father World. Welcome, all of you. Please come in and experience our church.”

Sorilla nodded her acceptance, the group stepping toward the door as she did. Dalton stepped in front of Kriss quickly, however.

“You’ll need to wait outside.”

“Nonsense! Shame on you, Ranger Dalton!” Father Egrid chastised him. “All are welcome in the house of the Lord.”

“But, Father!”

“No, the doors of this church will be barred to no man so long as I am in charge of them.”

“That is no man!” Dalton protested.

“It is not a problem, I can wait,” Kriss said stiffly.

“I will not have it,” Egrid said firmly. “The house of the Lord is for all those of his creation. Ranger, stand aside and let them man…erm…”

Sorilla stepped quietly to his side and whispered in the padre’s ear, causing him to smile.

“Let the Lucian pass,” he said.

“Of course, Padre,” Dalton said, hesitant, but finally stepping aside.

Sorilla quickly looked around. They’d gathered a crowd, and she couldn’t be happier, as she recorded images of every expression on every face. Most were more curious than anything, she noted, a few were standing taller and looking with admiration at the padre…and just about as many were clearly fuming, though keeping their tempers in check.

She had the images compressed and loaded for another pulse to the SOL.

Egrid led them inside, and Sorilla couldn’t quite mask the sharp breath she sucked in as she saw the interior for the first time.

The cathedral left her with an impression of being bigger on the inside than it could possibly have been from the outside, an impressive feat in itself considering how large it was on the outside. She had a flashback in that moment, the fighting inside the Ross’El portal ships causing her to stumble slightly.

“Are you alright?” Egrid asked, undisguised concern in his tone, his face, and his body language.

Sorilla found herself instantly liking the padre more and more. He had an honesty about him that she’d rarely encountered.

“Fine, Padre,” she said firmly, taking a moment. “Just flashed back to an uglier time.”

“The Church hold bad memories for you?”

“No, nothing like that,” Sorilla said. “I did a lot of fighting in the Ghoulies’ starships. They’re technically members of the Alliance, though only because the Alliance members don’t want them running around on their own. The church here made me think of that time for a moment.”

“My church reminded you of fighting in a Xeno starship?” Egrid seemed bemused by how that might be possible.

“Please, take it as a compliment,” Sorilla said firmly. “The Ghoulies are masters of space-time in ways no one else has ever approached. Your church reminded me of their ship because of how you made it seem larger on the inside than the outside… For them, however, it is no illusion.”

Her audience seemed shocked by that for a moment before Egrid broke the silence again.

“I would not have imagined such a thing was possible,” he said, frankly stunned.

Kriss grumbled, “The Ross’El are noted for doing many things thought impossible…things that any sane universe would see as impossible.”

Sorilla grimaced slightly, another set of memories flashing to her. “They’re as close to demons as I’ve ever met, Padre…though I think what makes it even worse is that I don’t believe they’re actually evil. Just so disconnected from the world as we understand it that they don’t see us as thinking beings. And because communication is all but impossible with them, no one can convince them otherwise.”

“You are kinder toward them than most Alliance members,” Kriss said, darkly amused by that.

“The Alliance suffered through a much nastier war with them than we did.” She sighed, shaking her head. “It’s not important. You have a magnificent cathedral here, Padre.”

Egrid looked at her evenly for a moment before reluctantly nodding. “I think it is anything but unimportant, but I thank you for the compliment on the premises.”

“I was telling Dalton earlier that it may be unmatched by any I’ve seen, save perhaps Vatican City, and I think that still holds, but the interior is more stunning than even that,” she said, examining the stained glass that filtered the external light into the massive space within.

“You’ve been to the Vatican?” Egrid asked, surprised. “Our histories seemed to imply that it would likely be overrun by nonbelievers by now.”

Sorilla laughed. “Still its own sovereign state, Padre. The power of the church isn’t what it once was, that’s true enough, but the core remains.”

“That is good to hear,” the padre said as they walked down the stone floor of the cathedral, toward a panoramic art display that swept from the floor to ceiling, encompassing everything in between.

Sorilla examined it silently, noting that it told the story of the colony as it left Earth and crossed the intervening space. She examined the images from Earth, unsurprised that they showed scenes of war and tragedy. The scenes of the crossing were filled with biblical references, and the world of Arkana was depicted interestingly as well.

She looked at the image of the world from orbit, noting that they’d shown it as barren except for one dot of green. That was not strictly true, not now anyway, but there was no doubt in her mind that the river delta she currently stood on was that point of green.

A new Eden then, Sorilla supposed.

“Beautiful,” she said aloud as she recorded the entire mural for later analysis with her implants.

“It is but our humble declaration of intent before the Lord God,” Egrid said, actually managing to sound humble as he did.

Sorilla smiled at him, admiring the honest and earnest belief the man held.

She’d met a lot of “men of God” over the years, some good…most mediocre…and a few as bad as any men she’d ever known. The good ones always left her in a state of awe like little else. There was something about a good man in the service of the Lord that brought out the best in ways that few other callings did.

“The Alliance willing,” Sorilla nodded to Kriss, “I would not be shocked if you saw pilgrims arrive in the future, just to see this place. You’ve done something I’ve not seen matched on any other world, Father. This is an accomplishment to be proud of.”

“Pride is a sin in the eyes of the Lord,” Egrid said softly, but he was smiling. “We did what we were called upon to do. No more and no less.”

There was nothing more to say, so she just bowed slightly as the group continued their tour of the cathedral. Sorilla paid closer attention to the people watching them, particularly their reactions to Kriss. The church was impressive, but the social data she was gathering was invaluable. Still, she couldn’t help but let her gaze linger for a moment on the carved swastikas set on either side of the cross for a moment, only just able to disguise her grimace as a smile that she knew must have looked pained.

They were exiting the church when Dalton received a call, the timing almost making Sorilla snort, as his radio had chirped almost the moment he’d stepped outside. He quietly separated himself from the group, speaking low enough that most people wouldn’t have a chance of hearing him.

He clearly wasn’t used to dealing with enhanced humans. The implants in every single SOLCOM operative were more than capable of isolating sounds—speech most certainly—and amplifying it.

Chapter 9

“Yes, what is it?” Dalton growled, knowing just who was calling and plenty unhappy with the man because of the mess he’d been put into the middle of.

“The Elder would like to meet your guests.”

“I don’t suppose you have a better plan than the last one?” he asked, sarcastic. “You know, the one that nearly got us all killed.”

“They were clearly not looking for trouble, Ranger. The threat of death on your part was low,” Grant assured him calmly. “Eri wishes to meet with them, now.”

“No clever plot this time, then?” Dalton demanded. “I just invite them?”

“That will be fine, yes.”

“Well thank the Lord for his smallest mercies,” Dalton snorted. “I’ll extend the invite. If they refuse, however, I’m not trying to force the issue.”

“They will not,” Grant said calmly. “They’re here to gather information. Refusing the invitation would go against their mission.”

“Information for what?” Dalton hissed, suddenly concerned.

“That isn’t any of your concern.”

“Like hells it isn’t!” he growled sharply. “I’m the lead Ranger here and—”

Grant cut him off. “A position that can easily be filled by someone else. Elder Eri will be at the Red Room.”

The signal went dead, leaving Dalton glaring at his radio, his knuckles tightening around the device until they were white from the pressure. He finally relaxed a bit and loosened his grip before slowly returning his radio to its pouch and turning back. He forced a smile he didn’t feel, approaching the group of off-worlders.

“I’ve been informed that one of the colony Elders would like to meet with you,” he told Sorilla directly.

She didn’t look surprised as she nodded slowly. “That would be fine. It would be rude to refuse, after all.”

“I suppose it would,” Dalton said, gesturing to his patrol vehicle. “I’ll run you over there, of course, and ensure you have transport back to your own vehicle. The Elder is waiting at the Red Room.”

*****

The Red Room was apparently something of a local centerpiece itself, Sorilla decided as she noted that the care taken with the finishing of the building that proudly proclaimed the name was very near, if not matching, the quality of the work done of the Cathedral of Arkana itself.

The building itself was imposing, less Gothic than the cathedral, more with a Roman quality to it. Like many other buildings of import she’d recorded, the heavy symbolism around it was thick with religious and political iconography.

Sorilla paused as they approached it, examining the statues on either side of the approach with care.

“The ship’s captain,” Dalton told her as she looked at one, a hint of real reverence she’d not even heard in the church as he gestured to another, “and the Founder himself.”

Sorilla had seen both men’s file photographs, and doubted that either of them had ever looked as good as they were portrayed in the local stone carving, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell the Ranger that.

On Earth, they were both considered monsters. Here, they’re almost Gods.

The universe had a strange sense of humor, she rather thought as she walked past the two statues and up the broad stairs, past roman pillars. Perspective is everything.

Big wooden doors opened as they approached, a man in a dark suit stepping out to greet them.

“Welcome to the Red Room.” He bowed his head, almost hiding a grimace as he took in the combat gear most of the men were wearing and failing completely as he looked over Sorilla herself. “Your host has set aside rooms for you to refresh yourselves. Suitable clothing will be provided.”

It’s going to be one of those days, Sorilla thought, much more successful at hiding her own grimace.

“Thank you.” She nodded curtly back, sweeping past him with a disregard she would normally not even consider, recognizing the shift in culture they were walking into.

She was more of a specialist in what many would consider the more backward cultures on Earth. Living in the field, eating what you killed…in many ways those were where she felt most at home. That didn’t mean she hadn’t studied others, however. Often one could be taken by surprise by how quickly one could go from a field camp to some hopped-up general’s ball where being polite to the wrong person was a sign of weakness.

All things considered, Sorilla had always preferred the field camps, but she knew her way around both.

*****

“So,” Eri said as he watched from the upper level, “these are the Earthers then.”

“Yes, sir,” Grant said simply. “Don’t be fooled by the woman’s appearance, sir. She is…formidable.”

“Indeed.” Eri nodded. He’d seen the video of the incident, and had been impressed. His family had been known to hire some of the best gunslingers on Arkana in their day, but he’d never seen speed like that.

He rather wished that they’d been able to get recordings of her in actual action, as he would like to know how her accuracy with her guns compared to those in his employ.

An idea, perhaps, he supposed.

“She is rather…interesting,” he said finally, undecided whether he considered her attractive or not. “You’ve seen to providing them with appropriate clothing?”

“Of course.”

“The Xeno as well?” Eri said, lips curling slightly.

Grant hesitated, but nodded finally. “Yes, sir.”

“I know it’s distasteful, Grant, and I agree…however, needs must, always.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eri sighed, putting that aside for the moment. “Ensure that her clothing is of fitting quality. Send in a proper seamstress.”

Grant had expected that, knowing his employer’s preferences. “Already ordered.”

The Elder, a young man of thirty, smiled.

“You know me too well.”

*****

The interior of the Red Room showed where the building had gotten its name.

Thick red carpets and tapestries filled the hall; gold accents on most surfaces made the color pop against the slight reddish hue of the local stone and sand the place had been built with. Sorilla had been in more ostentatious locales in her day, but not many.

“This way, lady, gentlemen…sir,” the butler, she supposed he had to be, said, only slightly sneering at Kriss as he directed them.

Sorilla said nothing, merely followed along as they were led into an antechamber for a luxuriously appointed suite. Doors off to either side led to private rooms, and she could see, with a glance inside, that each had their own baths. It was a nice suite, there was no question.

“Madam will find what she requires in the room to the right. Sirs will find supplies in the left,” the butler said firmly, backing out the door and closing it behind him.

“Well, this is interesting,” Sorilla said with a crooked grin, glancing around as she spotted all the listening devices currently transmitting.

There were at least nine in the main room, and she assumed that video was covered as well. Well, it was hardly the first time she’d been the star of someone’s private videos.

“Corporals,” Strickland gestured to the pair, “check and clear the rooms.”

The two nodded and split up, not quite bringing their weapons up as they entered the rooms to either side.

“It seems like a formal affair, ma’am,” Strickland said. “Not quite what we were expecting.”

“Not surprising,” she said. “They’ll want to put us off balance.”

Not to mention get us out of our armor, she subvocalized and pulsed to him.

“It is good tactics.” He nodded before subvocalizing his next words and pulsing them back. Do you think they know the armor is powered?

Sorilla shrugged. “We’ve been here before.”

Unlikely, however, we’ll leave the grunts in the rooms to guard it, she returned via the pulse com. Be sure to secure yours to biometrics.

“Right,” Strickland responded to both statements in one.

“Clear on this side, sirs, ma’am,” Nicky said from the left room.

“Same here,” Corporal Hardy said from the right.

“Okay, good. The major and Sentinel Kriss will be with me,” Sorilla said. “You will stay with the gear. No one touches our kit, clear?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Sorilla sighed. She didn’t like dropping the armor in what amounted to possible enemy territory, but if that was what the mission called for…so be it.

A knock on the door almost made her start, and she half turned. “What is it?”

The door opened and a slim, redheaded woman stepped in, bowing her head.

“I’ve been sent to help you dress, ma’am.”

Of course her instinct was to tell the woman that she hardly needed help dressing, but Sorilla stomped down on that firmly. She nodded instead and gestured into the room. “Thank you. I’ll be with you shortly.”

The redhead quickly entered, giving Kriss in particular a wide berth as she darted for the room on the right.

“Here’s hoping that doesn’t mean they have some insane ball gown I need help to get into waiting for me,” Sorilla scowled, much to the amusement of her men and the slight confusion from Kriss. She looked around at them. “Well? Get to it then.”

They split up, Strickland and Kriss to the left while she went right. The others took positions, guarding each door in turn. Neither side let the door close as they started getting ready.

*****

Strickland was mildly impressed, but unsurprised by the suits waiting for Kriss and himself. They were of classic-cut—men’s fashion rarely changed, in his experience—and these would have fit in reasonably well in most upper society affairs on Earth. That wasn’t what impressed him, however.

What impressed him was that the suit prepared for Kriss was reasonably fitted.

“They either work very quickly, or they’ve entertained Lucians before,” he said, examining the cut of the clothing.

“They have not, to my knowledge,” Kriss said, “and I would know.”

“Impressive, then… They must have been planning it,” Strickland said. “But it’s still a neat feat.”

His own suit was rather obviously cut a little large. They’d not compensated enough for the armor, though they had clearly tried.

Well, he’d worn worse.

Strickland killed the magnetic seals on his armor.

*****

Sorilla swept the room, and the young redhead, carefully. It was clean, aside from the monitoring devices, of course. She didn’t even get a hint of the accelerant on the redhead, which, if she was right about that hyperspectral spike, meant that the girl was unarmed.

No gun at least. Still a rather large list of other items she could be carrying.

No venom or toxin spikes either, aside from the ever-present, low hydrogen-cyanide spike that seemed inherent in the world now that she knew to look for it.

The red dress on the bed caused her to raise her eyebrow, however.

“I’m pretty certain you don’t have my size right,” Sorilla said, mildly amused. She might have been insulted by the clearly oversized dress, but she understood where they’d screwed up.

Guessing dress sizes was tricky at the best of times; doing it through powered armor was basically impossible. She shucked the poncho she’d been wearing over her armor, tossing the garb to the floor as she killed the magnetic seals on her armor.

“I think I’ll need a belt,” Sorilla laughed.

“I’ll make alterations as needed, ma’am,” the redhead said quietly. “Do not worry about that.”

Sorilla cast a skeptical eye in her direction, but figured one way or another she’d deal with it. She reached up and pulled the chest piece away from her body, a sucking sound filling the room as the oxygenated gel that connected the suit’s multiple internal sensors to her body tried to keep from giving up its grip on her flesh.

The redhead’s eyes widened as she saw Sorilla’s naked chest within the armor, darting to the open door wildly. She started moving, but Sorilla reached out and caught her.

“The door stays open.”

“But…but, ma’am…” The redhead looked panicked.

Sorilla shook her head. “It stays open. Look, what’s your name?”

“I…I…” she stammered. “Rebecca, ma’am.”

“Hello, Rebecca, I’m Sorilla,” Sorilla introduced herself. “I know this is strange for your culture, but I’m a soldier. There’s very little about my body I’m worried about hiding, otherwise I’d have killed the spying devices your boss put in here.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened even farther, something Sorilla was honestly shocked at, and she looked slowly around. “Spying…?”

“Full video and audio,” Sorilla nodded. “So trust me, I’m not worried about my own men catching a glimpse. So just relax and breathe slowly.”

The girl looked like she wanted to hyperventilate, but finally just nodded and seemed to calm down. Sorilla took that as a good sign and finished shucking herself out of the armor, feeling a lot like peeling skin off, and then walked naked into the bathroom while leaving a trail of blue oxygenated gel in her wake as the armor stood there on its own, open and dripping on the carpet.

The shower felt decent. She kept the water cool as she rinsed the gel off, then washed the sweat out of her hair. Rebecca was waiting for her when she stepped out, a towel in hand and the dress hanging on the door.

“Thank you.” Sorilla accepted the towel and started to dry herself off.

Rebecca grabbed another towel and moved up behind her, forcing Sorilla to step down hard on the instinct to grab the girl and clear enough room between them to reach her weapons and bring them into play. Instead she let the girl wrap the towel around her head and start vigorously drying her hair.

“Rebecca,” she tried, “I can dry myself.”

“It’s my job, ma’am.”

Sorilla sighed, but that was enough to stop her from complaining any further. She wouldn’t get in the way of a professional doing their job; that just wasn’t acceptable behavior unless it was on mission.

“Fine.”

She found herself dried and then carefully powdered, a set of fresh underwear from a sealed package was fitted on her, and then it was time for the dress. She had to admit, privately, to being impressed by the speed Rebecca made in adjusting the fit of the dress to her needs. There was no time for a custom dress, but with a few artful folds and quick stitches, Sorilla found herself neatly encased in a tight-fitting, strapless gown that would probably be worth a fair chunk of a month’s salary back home.

She examined herself in the mirror, turning as Rebecca looked on from the side with a critical gaze.

“You do nice work,” Sorilla complimented her.

“Thank you, ma’am. I wish we had time to do it properly,” Rebecca said, sighing. “However, in the time we have, this will do.”

Sorilla smiled. “The mark of a professional, Rebecca, is never being happy with a job that isn’t done right…even if it’s done good enough. I have no complaints.”

Rebecca flushed a little, but nodded and thanked her again.

Sorilla stepped out into the room proper and looked over her weapons where they were settled beside her armor. She sighed. “I don’t suppose you have a solution to how I’m going to wear these?”

“With this dress, ma’am?” Rebecca looked more than a little scandalized.

“Right. Didn’t think so.”

There was no way she was going anywhere unarmed, that was just not an option. However it was going to be tricky as hell to conceal one of the big Metalstorm guns in a sheer strapless gown.

These are not the sort of problems I’m trained to consider normally, Sorilla thought, amused despite herself.

She grabbed up one of the guns in the hefty holster and propped her leg up on the bed, letting the split in the dress slide aside to expose her lower leg. A couple tugs tightened the strap and she strapped the gun to her shin and calf, letting the dress fall back over it.

One gun will have to do, she decided, killing the electronics in the other so no one could use it, even if they somehow got around the security, and settled it on the dresser next to the bed. Next she secured her armor in similar fashion, leaving it in standby mode requiring an implant check to reactivate.

The only other thing she took was the long fighting blade.

That was tucked into the decorative belt that secured the dress around her waist, earning her a scandalized look from Rebecca but no voiced complaint. All of that complete, Sorilla turned and walked out of the room to find Strickland and Kriss waiting for her, both dressed in ill-fitting suits. Strickland’s was amusingly bad, while Kriss they had actually managed to guess at pretty close.

I suppose not wearing powered armor is good for some things after all.

“You both look…good,” Sorilla said, not bothering her hide her smirk.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Strickland grumbled. “I hate monkey suits when they fit right. This is just ridiculous. We should have packed dress uniforms.”

“Next time,” Sorilla said, looking around. “Shall we?”

They nodded, and the trio turned and left the rooms. It was time to meet the Elder.

Chapter 10

“Wow.”

Grant tipped his head in acquiescence. “She does clean up reasonably well.”

Eri snorted. “You have a talent for understatement, as always.”

Grant sighed, knowing his employer too well for his own comfort. “May I please beg you to be careful, sir? She is armed. You do realize that, I hope?”

Eri laughed. “Of course she’s armed, Grant. If she weren’t, I wouldn’t let that woman in the same room with me. I would assume she was trying to get me to drop my guard.”

Grant sighed, closing his eyes. “As you say, sir.”

The object of their attentions had just entered the grand ballroom of the Red Room, flanked by a rather nondescript human on her right and the Xeno on her left. Grant was mildly irritated to note that the Xeno had clearly been better fitted for his suit than the human. It was a small thing, but it hurt his sense of propriety all the same.

With them on either side of her, the woman in question looked all the more striking in the flowing red gown they had provided to her. She had a dusky skin tone, normally matched only by those who worked in the sun most of their lives, but unmarred by the leathery look that generally followed.

As she walked, his sharp eyes were able to just pick out the dark of the gun holster he knew was attached to her following leg. She was leading with the bare leg, letting that show through the split of the dress and effectively distracting most of the assembled crowd’s attention from the big gun on the other.

Grant had to give her credit for that. If she’d been in his employ, he would have been inclined to increase her pay and give her much tougher assignments. As a potential adversary, however, he found himself concerned as to what she was going to bring down on all their heads.

“Have me introduced,” Eri ordered.

“Yes, sir. Just a moment and I’ll fetch Ranger Dalton.”

*****

Sorilla’s eyes swept the room, implants again recording everything and everyone. The faces here were more likely to be influential on the colony’s culture than the random sampling she’d grabbed earlier.

Most of the people she scanned were automatically registered as green threats, unarmed by any means she could tell. There were several yellows in the crowd, but it was the red threat levels posted around the perimeter that she considered the only real problems, despite not wearing her armor.

She spotted Dalton speaking with a man she didn’t know, then the pair of them crossed the room to a third and all three turned in the direction of herself and her companions.

“Heads up,” she said softly. “Unless I miss my guess, this is our host approaching.”

Kriss and Strickland shifted in her peripheral vision, both falling back a couple steps as she forced a smile and took the lead again.

It was far from the first time, even as a sergeant or earlier. She had often been the first point of contact with people her teams had to deal with. Men, military men especially, whether they were trained properly or not, tended to underestimate a woman. It was odd, honestly, because they would do it even after seeing what she could do.

So when dealing with various third world tyrants or tyrants in the making—sometimes called patriots if they had paid up their dues with the company—she had often been the lead contact while the rest provided support from varying ranges.

“Colonel Aida,” Dalton said stiffly as they met in the center of the ballroom, “I would like very much to present you to Mr. Eri Constantine.”

Sorilla kept her focus on the tall blond man in the white suit who was clearly the center of the attention of the trio who had approached them. She extended her hand, unsurprised when it was smoothly accepted and turned over flat as the blond bowed over it and lightly brushed her palm with his lips.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Aida,” Eri Constantine said with a pleasant tone.

“Charmed, Mr. Constantine.”

“Call me Eri, please. Everyone here does,” he said firmly.

“Then call me Sorilla,” she said in response. “I’m afraid what everyone calls me would not be suited to the current surroundings.”

Kriss snorted, amused behind her, attracting the attention of the others. Sorilla’s eyes narrowed as she read their body language and facial tics. Dalton tensed slightly, his face briefly flickering to irritated, as though he smelled something bad, but he schooled it to neutral form quickly. The dark-haired man she hadn’t been introduced to yet was better controlled, but she caught his micro-expression and read almost pure hatred in his eyes for an brief instant before he returned to the pleasant smile he had adopted.

Eri, however, merely looked politely at Kriss with a quizzical expression.

“Did the lady say something amusing?”

“Apologies,” Kriss said. “I was just thinking of some of the names she has in the Alliance. I believe the Ross identify her with the mathematical symbol for entropy.”

Sorilla twisted, looking at him in actual shock. She hadn’t been aware of that. “The Ross know who I am?”

“Uncertain if they know you by name. The Ross don’t use such things,” Kriss answered. “However, reports from the Gav confirm that the Ross have your vital statistics on file, under the title ‘entropy,’ with a coded order to capture alive at all costs.”

“Oh fuck me,” Sorilla blurted, unbelieving.

“Avoiding that would be advisable,” Kriss confirmed.

Eri looked confused. “Are these Ross not part of the Alliance?”

“Sadly, yes,” Kriss confirmed.

Sorilla was still swearing up a storm, but she’d managed to contain it to her own mind after the initial shock. She calmed enough to speak up. “The Ross are a perfect example of ‘keep your enemies closer’ to the Alliance. They’re too powerful to destroy, and too dangerous to leave on their own. Be thankful you’ve not dealt with them. They consider humans to be beneath them. We’re not even living things to them, I believe sometimes, just…things to be removed from the field.”

“Not only humans,” Kriss said. “All Alliance species as well, save, arguably, the Sturm Gav.”

“We just call the Ross ‘Ghoulies,’” Sorilla said. “They’re…they’re so different from humans that no communication seems possible. I don’t think they consider us to be alive, let alone sentient or sapient. Being captured by the Ross generally means being locked in a hole until you starve or die of thirst.”

“Judging from their interest in you,” Kriss said, “I believe that end would not be your primary concern. Vivisection, that would be my worry in your place.”

Eri had wide eyes. “That seems somewhat extreme, doesn’t it?”

Kriss gestured idly. “Actually, yes, it does. However, the colonel here has personally caused the Ross more trouble than many species have managed in the past. Few are the people who successfully manage to raid not one, but multiple Ross vessels…and even steal one.”

Grant looked the groups over skeptically. “Should the Alliance not be turning her over to the Ross, then, rather than working with her?”

Kriss scoffed loudly at that. “The Ross can rot in an eternal Abyss so far as the Lucians are concerned. If we kill her in battle, that’s one thing…a very good thing even, but we’ll not hand her over to those things.”

“I can just feel the love,” Sorilla said sarcastically before sighing and refocusing on Eri. “I apologize. My previous adventures, such as they were, and the consequences from them are not the purpose of my visit here.”

“Please, Sorilla, no apologies needed. I’m utterly fascinated,” Eri insisted. “I had not previously been aware of such divisions in the Alliance, and the tales of your efforts during your war with them are of great interest.”

“The war was less interesting than one might think,” Sorilla sighed. “I spent most of it sweating in the jungle while the real fighting happened above the orbitals. We took a lot kicks in the teeth in the early days, lost a lot of ships because the enemy just outclassed us by unbelievable levels.”

She took his arm, leading him away from the group. “Allow me to regale you with the tale of Task Group Los Angeles and the crew of the HMS Majesty…”

*****

USV SOL

Admiral Ruger was scowling as he examined the daily reports.

Alliance shipping in and out of the systems seemed entirely out of proportion to the size of the local population. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but there had to be something in the system that had caught the eye of the Alliance Mercantile Fleet, if not the government itself.

“Admiral, the resource scans you requested,” his aide announced as she handed him a portable computer display.

Ruger thanked her and started flipping through those reports next.

Metals, heavy metals, more or less as expected. It wasn’t a resource-poor system—a decent carbon signature from the gas giants, lots of metals in evidence in the Trojan point belts that existed on either side of the larger two.

The planet itself had high levels of organic compounds, mostly what would be associated with a much younger Earth according to the scientists onboard. Some of those were reasonably valuable on Earth—manufacturing them could be quite costly—but none of them really explained the traffic he was seeing.

The Alliance contact he had, Seinel, had no answers for him either. Ruger couldn’t tell if the alien was stonewalling him or honestly had no idea himself, which just pissed the admiral off even more. He was used to being stonewalled—that was part of the game—but normally he was savvy enough to recognize when it was happening.

Reading alien body language was a pain in the ass.

*****

Parithalian Diplomatic Cruiser, Red Sky

Seinel swore as he examined the files from the local mercantile fleet representative and shared data provided from the surface.

Why did I not see this before?

The weight of cargo being transshipped into this system made no sense.

He had been privy to the Alliance classified report on this system and, while surprisingly valuable on the whole due to various organic chemicals that cost a great deal of resources to replicate, there was nothing here that would explain the weight of metal and cargo flowing through the system.

He had been too long out of the more mundane drudgery of the mercantile fleet if he’d missed this and had to have it pointed out by a human of all things. It was professionally insulting.

He started examining freight manifests, looking for patterns. Obviously, he was looking at some sort of smuggling operation, but whoever was running it had chosen a frontier system with few valuable jump points nearby, so he couldn’t easily fathom what they were smuggling.

Seinel knew that once he worked out what it was, figuring out who was doing it would be far easier, however, so he set himself and his team to crunching the numbers. Clearly he couldn’t trust the manifests, as they would be faked, but in order to hide what they were actually transporting, he knew that there would be certain telltales all the same.

If one were transporting counterfeit machine parts, one wouldn’t list organic chemicals on the manifests, for example. Working out what they were actually moving would take time, unless he wanted to raid a few vessels. That was a tempting thought, of course, but it would only net him a few ships and their crews.

Seinel wanted the people behind the plot, if only for making him waste his time in this manner when he had so many more important things to do.

*****

Arkana

Grant watched, disgusted, as the woman charmed his employer, the two of them dancing on the upper level where everyone could see them.

How Eri could carry on with someone tainted by the multi-cultural cesspool of Earth like that he did not understand. Ultimately, though, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot. Of that Grant was certain.

The Xeno invaders would be forced off Arkana. Ultimately, that was the inevitable outcome. That was the outcome decided by God when those filthy beasts decided to defile the surface of Arkana with their presence, and it was the outcome that Grant would personally ensure.

One way, or another.

He stepped back into the shadows, where he was most comfortable, and lifted his radio to his mouth.

“Do it.”

*****

Eri and Sorilla stepped off the polished stone dance floor and walked over to the low railing that ran along the edge of the platform they were on, each of them leaning into it as they paused for a rest.

“You dance well for a soldier,” Eri said, smiling.

“And how would you know how a soldier dances?” Sorilla asked, amused.

In reality, she was well aware that he was flattering her. She could dance, yes, but she wasn’t particularly good at it, and what little she was decent at were all Earth styles. Arkana had evolved a little in their own direction since the colony had been founded, so she had been forced to follow his lead and had done so a little clumsily.

“Touché,” Eri said, laughing lightly. “We don’t have any soldiers here, that is true. Just Rangers and militia. Are they really that different?”

Sorilla shrugged. “Depends on what sort of soldier you’re talking about.”

“Your sort,” Eri said, turning to look at her intently.

“Vastly different,” she told him. “I am a cultural specialist and combat trainer.”

“I have no idea what that means,” he admitted.

“It means,” she said as she looked out over the assembled crowd below them, all dressed to the nines and enjoying the party, “that I specialize in slipping into a culture, becoming one of them, and then teaching them to fight against stronger, more powerful enemies. Guerilla warfare, asymmetric tactics…” She paused, dipping her head down a bit. “Terror strikes.”

He looked at her, a concerned look crossing his face. “That sounds like no business for a beautiful lady.”

“It’s no business for anyone,” Sorilla said, “but someone has to do it.”

“You sound unconvinced,” he told her.

“I sound tired,” she corrected him. “I’ve been doing this for a lot of years now. I’m the old woman of the teams now, should never have accepted the OCS offer.”

“You’re hardly an old woman,” Eri corrected her.

She shot him an amused glance. “I’ll be fifty in just a couple more years. Life extension treatments have improved considerably since your people left.”

He stared, jaw hanging a little low as he stammered. “I…I never would have believed it.”

“The years don’t show on the outside,” she said, “but they still weigh on the inside.” Abruptly she straightened, her smile returning. “Still, when they came to me with this mission, I couldn’t turn them down. You and your sister colony are too incredible an opportunity for me to pass up.”

“Sister colony?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

“The Muslim world,” she responded. “I believe they called it the Greatness of God, in Arabic, of course.”

His expression darkened. “I would hardly call them our sister colony.”

“Points of view, Eri,” she told him. “You left at similar times, your ships had similar compositions, and you found worlds that allowed you to develop away from the triggers that drove your people to extreme beliefs on Earth. I had to see how you had come along.”

He scowled, though not at her. “And how did we do?”

Sorilla had a sad look on her face as she looked out on the crowd below. “I could live here, but you didn’t change so much as I hoped…though more than I had feared. The tribal fears are still here, even removed from the original sources. I hate that the Alliance annexed your worlds…I would love to have seen what you could have done with another century.”

“You speak of us like an experiment,” Eri said, his expression dark.

“I suppose I do. I’m sorry,” Sorilla said. “Occupational hazard, I suppose. You have one of the few colonies Earth sent out that succeeded, beyond question. Most failed within a few years, couple decades at most. You’ve been here almost a century?”

“Nearly that, yes.”

“You can’t know just how impressive that is,” Sorilla told him, “but trust me when I tell you that Arkana and Greatness are two stunning anomalies. By all rights, neither of you should have survived. That you did is a testament to the strength of the people, and your leadership.”

She was laying it on just a little thick, Sorilla knew, but it was also true, so she expected that would disguise the more blatant aspects of the flattery.

“It has not always been easy,” Eri said, his tone shifting just slightly as he looked out over the crowd then, “but we have always prevailed against whatever came against us.”

“Great people always do,” Sorilla told him. “But there’s a storm coming.”

Eri snorted. “There is always a storm coming. You speak of the Alliance, I suppose?”

“Indirectly,” Sorilla said. “I think, at least.”

“That clears things up.”

Sorilla laughed softly. “Not enough information yet to be sure. I can just tell that something is brewing. You should prepare for whatever it is.”

“I am always prepared.”

Sorilla nodded. “I suppose you would have to be.” She straightened up, turning to look at him evenly. “So, Eri Constantine, have you learned what you wanted from me? Or do we have yet more business?”

“Oh, Sorilla Aida, I rather think we do,” he said with a smile. “Might I offer you a drink?”

“Local whiskey?” she asked.

“If that is to your taste.”

“I accept.”

*****

Kriss stood stiffly at what humans might call attention, ignoring the glares, the curious looks, and the attention in general as he observed the party he had found himself in. Humans were little different than most Alliance species, he supposed. There was a certain oddity about that, because in some ways he considered them quite different…had actually wondered if they might be a species similar to Lucians for a time.

Gatherings like this told him otherwise, however.

Lucians would not waste their energies in such blatant shows of self-important power games.

Either you had power, or you didn’t. Parading it around like a puff-bird merely underscored how weak you actually were. Strength wasn’t something that needed a golden plating; it was undeniable in its raw form. The more bluster, the more boasting, the more someone proclaimed their strength…

Well, the more the rot of weakness existed under the golden shine.

There was at least some metal in the species. Humans had produced warriors worthy of a fight, but so had every Alliance race at one point or another.

Few had the fortitude to maintain a real standing force in the absence of a true threat.

Lucians stood on guard through war and through peace, because hard times rarely had the decency to announce their arrival in advance.

******

Major Strickland examined the party with dispassionate eyes, casually moving among the gathered “elite” of the colony with the practice of a man used to maneuvering through crowds of generals and politicians and other various people who might easily step on him merely from a whim. He was careful to chat with people. Being seen to be part of the party rather than an observer would make him less memorable in the eyes of the majority there.

Those he did speak with, he kept his voice almost monotone and his answers dull and lifeless. If they seemed too interested in him, he would intentionally drone on about some mundane aspect of his job that he knew far too many details about. Paperwork usually sufficed to provoke a vacant, glassy-eyed stare in his listeners.

Tomorrow, if the majority of them remembered him at all, he expected that they would only have a blurry image of some boring bureaucrat who was serving as an assistant to the much more vibrant and memorable soldier from Earth who spent the evening dancing and chatting with Elder Eri.

Behind that façade, however, he was cataloging every person that passed his vision, logging whether they were armed, their names, facial recognition stats, any interesting hits from hyperspectral imaging, and a host of other details. Each person went into a file, was compressed and logged, and then pulsed out to the SOL.

A smaller percentage of those present were armed, but still quite high compared to similar groups on Earth. No weapons were visible, but the accelerant was still visible to his scanners, so either they were concealing or they’d carried into the party and checked their guns on the way in.

Since he, Aida, and even Kriss had been permitted to keep their weapons, Strickland assumed that people were concealing.

The local EM spectrum was pretty hot, a lot of encrypted signals bouncing back and forth, but most of the codes were not only ludicrously simple…they were historic. His implants teamed up with those of the rest of the squad—the lieutenant colonel’s aside, as she had more important things to focus on—and they cracked those codes in seconds.

Not unexpectedly, there was nothing of any particular value being tossed around there, but having them cracked did expose the few signals with real encryption…and a few of those were really active.

SOL, Strickland, he subvocalized while taking a sip of what passed for punch locally. It was mildly alcoholic, with a strong hint of apple and a notable HCN spike that made him nervous despite his system assuring him it was well below a lethal…or even harmful, dose.

The SOL communications department came back almost instantly, just a short lag between his transmission and their reply to remind him that the SOL was in high orbit.

‘Strickland, go for SOL.’

Request signals sweep, current location. Crack encryption, locate transmit sources as designated, he replied, sending along the spread frequencies being used by the more advanced encryption sources to give the people on the SOL a better target to work with.

‘Roger that. SOL out.’

With that done, Strickland settled back into his role as the boring, incredibly forgettable party guest that no one remembered enough to regret his presence.

*****

Eri Constantine found himself enjoying the conversation with the soldier from Earth, impressed at her grasp of many aspects of his business and finding many of her offered opinions to be rather fresh compared to the rather limited perspectives he normally had available. Her frank evaluations of the local whiskeys amused him equally, and he found himself looking forward to setting up a supply route with Earth just for luxury items he and the colonists had long done without.

Time had slipped past quicker than he would have thought possible, and they had settled into a two-seat table that featured prominently on the second floor terrace in the sight of everyone who’d come to the Red Room that day. When he was in his home away from home, Eri tried to be visible, as it reminded people just who he was.

Him being visible with an attractive woman from Earth would shortly tear through the colony’s gossip mill and give him a noted edge over his few true peers.

In fact… he glanced at his watch and then out and around. Odd. I expected some of them to be here by now…

Eri looked back to his companion and was struck by the look of physical discomfort that appeared on her face.

“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned.

She looks like she’s going to throw up. He hoped she wouldn’t, really. It would be a horrible cap to the night, and the rumor mill would eat it up in ways he really would rather didn’t happen. Is there something wrong with her drink?

He was about to ask then when she surged out of her chair like a missile fired from a launcher, lunging across the table and hitting him full in the chest with enough force to throw him back from the table and upend his chair. Eri’s eyes widened in shock and, for a moment, he wondered if it was an assassination.

Am I about to die?

They were still in the air when the table the pair of them had just vacated so quickly and violently exploded into shards.

Eri just had time to wonder what the hell had happened before they hit the ground and slid across the dance floor amid shouts of alarm and anger from all sides.

Chapter 11

The gravity pulse of the Alliance warp weapon almost took her by surprise. She’d gotten used to not feeling the constant flux of gravity cores since putting her papers in, and oddly the SOL had barely affected her on the trip into Arkana. When the blaster powered up, though, Sorilla had felt a sharp reorientation of her senses that didn’t match what her eyes were seeing, and the old, familiar nausea had come back in spades.

She hit Eri in the chest with her full bodyweight on instinct, just seconds before the weapon discharged. They were in the air when the table behind them was violently compressed and then allowed to snap back to its proper space-time lattice, with predictable results. Shards of the resulting debris tore into her back, drawing a hiss of pain from Sorilla as she and Eri hit the ground in a slide away from the target.

She wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt, but her implants went to work automatically as she registered the situation as a combat priority alpha. Nerve deadeners killed the sensation of pain burning along her back, while her processor cheerfully noted that no critical nerves appeared to be neutralized by the damage.

She put her right knee into Eri’s chest, snarling as she brought her left leg up, planted it beside his face, and let the red dress fall away to reveal the big Metalstorm pistol strapped here.

“Stay down!” she snapped as Eri struggled under her, the gun filling her right fist as she swept it from the holster and snapped it out straight. “Are you alright!?”

His eyes were wide, mouth open as she scanned him with part of her focus while the rest was looking out the camera embedded in the structure of the pistol, seeking a target.

“Are you alright?” she snapped again, not seeing any injuries, but an Alliance warp weapon could do some pretty nasty internal damage even with a near miss.

“I…I think so?” Eri stammered, confused. “What was that?”

Her pistol fired, the recoil hammering her hand into her wrist, and that into her arm, and so forth, up through her body with enough force to deform flesh temporarily. She and Eri both looked in the direction she’d fired in time to see a man with a big Alliance weapon be thrown back off his feet as a bloody halo filled the air where his head had been.

“Assassination attempt,” she said. “Don’t know if they were aiming for you or me, but with that weapon it wouldn’t have made a lot of difference.”

She paused a bit, sweeping the area another time before deciding to move.

“Okay, we’re clear for now. Up!” Sorilla stood up quickly, pulling Eri along with her as he struggled to get his feet under him. “Are you armed?”

“What?”

“A gun, do you have one?”

“No! Grant carries my pistol in the Red Room,” Eri said.

“Grant? The dark-haired man who was with you when Dalton introduced us?” she asked.

When he nodded, she swept the area again. “I don’t see him. Okay, stay behind me.”

It probably wouldn’t do much good if a warp hit her, but at least if he were behind her he wouldn’t be getting in the way of her gun. Sorilla hefted the awkwardly heavy weight of her Metalstorm pistol, gripped it in two hands, and twisted. The pistol came off easily and she shifted it forward so that the weight of the weapon would rest more on her wrist and forearm. Designed primarily for use in armor, the weapon was front-heavy in its normal configuration, but since it used electronic ignition to fire, it had been designed to be configurable according to needs.

As she did that, Sorilla linked into the implants of the rest of the team and got an instant update of threats in the area layered over the grid map they had been accumulating since they’d arrived.

“You’re bleeding!” Eri gasped out.

“It’s only shrapnel.” She put him off, not because it wasn’t serious but because she didn’t have time to worry about it.

The chances were that she’d gotten lucky. The lightweight table had taken the hit, so most of what struck her would be plastic and whatever else it was made of. Nothing that would hold its velocity over range, and nothing that would penetrate deeply in comparison to properly selected shrapnel materials.

Of course, it had been at basically point-blank range, so the saving grace she was counting on certainly had a limited value.

As her link to the others was synced, Sorilla swore.

Fully half the signals in the area were red.

*****

When the explosion above them tore through the air, Strickland twisted around and his hand went to his hip on instinct, only to find nothing there. He swore and shifted to reach under the jacket where his own M-Tac was slung, drawing the big pistol but keeping it pointed down as he held a hand out to hopefully stave off anyone shooting him by accident.

It took only a few seconds for him to realize just how useless that gesture was.

Snarls of gunfire erupted all around them, causing both Strickland and Kriss to hit the ground hard and fast.

“What are they shooting at!?” Kriss swore, grimacing as he struggled to get his sidearm out of the human suit he was wearing.

“I don’t know!”

Actually, Strickland had his doubts if any of the shooters knew either.

A few seemed to be panic-firing, though that could be deceiving. In any event, those few had instigated return fire from another portion of the crowd, and that seemed to set off a wave of back and forth firing that had no apparent targets as far as he could see. No one seemed to have a plan or be working toward anything but total mayhem. However, that might have been the plan.

With as many guns as there were in the room, in the hands of people he simply didn’t know, Strickland had no way to judge what the hell was going on.

“Look for people who look like they know what they’re doing!” he snapped, crawling for a nearby wall so he could have at least one direction he didn’t have to cover.

“And when we find them?” Kriss demanded.

“Either we hook up with them, or we kill them,” he answered. “Situational answer!”

There was a dry rasping sound from the Lucian that initially concerned Strickland until he realized, with some horror, that the unnatural sound was the Sentinel laughing.

“So Sentinel Aida is not the only warrior among humans, I see.” The Lucian grinned an utterly terrifying grin in his direction.

Strickland brutally suppressed the shudder that his body wanted then. The jagged teeth of the Lucian would be something he saw in his nightmares if they got out of this alive.

*****

Corporal Nicholas Farrel sat bolt upright as the alarms screamed over his implants and all the potential targets in the room with the bosses went from green and yellow to yellow and red in an instant.

“What the hell is going on?” Corporal Sanders blurted from beside him.

“You know what I know,” Nicky snapped. “Watch the door. If it’s a double cross, they’ll be hammering us anytime now!”

Sanders and Private Smith shifted their guns to cover the door while Nicky looked around nervously, palming remote sensors from his load-bearing kit. He tossed them into each of the adjoining rooms where the armor and kit for the others was waiting, then queried the network to see how his superiors were faring.

Strickland seemed to be fine, as was the Lucian, as best he could tell, but the life scans from the colonel were all over the map.

“Colonel Aida’s been hit,” he announced. “Can’t tell how bad, but her white blood count is climbing, nerve block has been administered. She’s active, and her gun is firing.” He got into the tactical net. “Major, Colonel, do we assist?”

*****

Sorilla was trying her best to pick valid targets out of the crowd, but everyone appeared to be armed and none of them seemed to have any idea what the hell was going on. Most seemed to be civilians, completely oblivious to the situation, waving around guns that they had no goddamn clue how to use.

The real threats would show themselves occasionally, through the crowd. She’d put down two others since the first, charging her position with alien guns in their fists. Sorilla still didn’t know if they were after her or Eri, however.

‘Major, Colonel, do we assist?’

“Negative! We’re coming to you, Corporal. Prepare for exfil. Call in the APC,” she ordered.

“Who are you talking to?” Eri demanded.

“My team,” she said without missing a beat as another alien weapon appeared through the crowd, charging her and Eri’s position. Her sidearm roared, recoil slamming her arm back into her body, rippling her flesh violently as the nearly half-inch-diameter round designed to perforate medium vehicle armor was launched from the lower muzzle of the weapon.

The round crossed the range in a split second’s travel and, finding no armor to perforate, punched into the man’s chest with ease. At that point, the second-phase design of the round came into play. As the light tungsten tip hit the water content of the body, it began to slow down faster than the heavily depleted uranium slug wrapped around the base of the round.

The slug tumbled almost instantly in the body, caving in the man’s chest as it transferred enough force to blow an engine block to shards directly into the internal organs. His heart and lungs weren’t shredded by the round; they were liquefied.

The body hit the ground as she kept moving, Eri pressing close behind her.

“Four up, four down,” Sorilla said. “Anyone have eyes on the attackers?”

‘Lots of apparently panicked civilians down here, Colonel,’ Strickland replied. ‘Not seeing anyone I could define as a definite bad guy. Shooters everywhere.’

“Local guns or Alliance?” Sorilla asked. “Attackers here used warp blasters.”

‘All local guns down here. I think there are plants shooting at random, just to fan the flames.’

Sorilla caught a hint of movement to her left and twisted, reaching back with her free hand to yank Eri off his feet as another Alliance warp blaster discharged.

The ripple of the space warp passed over their heads, impacting the far wall and tearing a chunk out of it in the compressive wave before letting it snap back out and explode as chemical bonds were torn apart in the process.

Sorilla rolled, dragging Eri down and to the ground and twisting over him, coming up on the other side of him to her knees. She extended her sidearm out and fired, dropping the shooter in place.

“They’re after you,” she said, climbing back to her feet and dragging Eri up.

“What? How do you know that?”

“They planted shooters in the crowd below to make them panic,” Sorilla said. “The attack is too organized. They didn’t have time to set this up since we arrived. Our presence may have triggered it, but this was aimed at you.”

“No one would want me dead!” Eri objected, then hesitated. “Well, no one would want me dead and have the resources to pull this off. I control the importation of alien technology on Arkana. Believe me, I know where every one of those weapons wound up.”

“Well, someone did an end run around you,” Sorilla scoffed. “Imagine that—arms dealers without a sense of honor.”

‘APC inbound, Colonel.’

*****

Master Sergeant Chavez growled as he hung onto the strap above him, the APC rocking back and forth as they hit the paved section of road, bouncing a little as the suspension adjusted to the new surface.

“How far out?” he demanded.

Private First Class Kieran didn’t look back. “Depends on traffic, Sarge… Unless you want me to drive over these people, I’m going to have to be gentle.”

“Don’t kill anyone,” Chavez snapped, “but fuck being gentle! The colonel is out there!”

“On it.”

The APC accelerated into traffic, a siren screaming out of its loudspeaker as Kieran ran the vehicle over another car’s front end, the airless tires collapsing as they wrapped around the car and rocked the APC side to side as they drove right over it.

“Get out of the road!” Kieran yelled over the loud speaker, pushing the accelerator down.

The heavy vehicle shouldered its way onto the road, taking up the better part of both lanes heading into the city. Local cars, trucks, and the more common bikes veered out of the way as he pushed the APC as hard as he could, heading for the location mapped out on his HUD.

*****

“Evac is inbound,” Major Strickland said as Kriss followed him, pushing through the crowd. “We need to join up with the colonel and get to our gear. Stick close, try not to kill any civilians.”

Kriss laughed. “Do they count as civilians if they’re trying to kill me?”

“On this mission? Unfortunately, yes.”

“I do not like your mission parameters, Major,” Kriss grumbled.

“Not terribly fond of them myself right about now,” Strickland admitted.

A screaming man charged them with a pistol in hand, pulling the trigger constantly despite it clicking on empty chambers with each pull. Kriss intercepted him bodily, lifting the man and tossing him aside to slam into the wall and slide to the floor.

“Too much?” he asked when Strickland paused to look at him.

The major looked down at the now unconscious man for a couple seconds and shrugged.

“I’d say that’s about right.”

“Good.” Kriss grinned again, hiding the grimace of pain as he felt his side growing wet. “Shall we go?”

Strickland nodded. “Right. Yeah. Let’s move.”

The two continued to push across the room, heading for the stairs.

*****

“Grab the blaster,” Sorilla ordered, giving Eri a push in the direction of a blaster dropped by a now very dead attacker. “Try not to kill anyone with it unless they’re trying to kill us, will you?”

Eri glared at her, stumbling as he came down to one knee by a cooling body and gingerly unslung the blaster from the former person. He glanced it over as he picked it up, scowling as he recognized it as one of the same model he had personally signed off on importing.

“Someone tried to kill me with my own guns,” he gritted out.

Sorilla yanked him upright by his collar, near choking him in the process.

“Get mad later,” she ordered. “It’ll just get in the way of surviving right now. Come on!”

She dragged him down the stairs, nodding when she spotted Kriss and Strickland pushing their way through the fighting to meet them.

Shoving Eri ahead of her, Sorilla swept the crowd with her implants, spotting only local guns and plenty of accelerant spikes in the air. If she were in armor, she’d ignore them and focus entirely on the blasters, but in a shredded ball gown of all the damn ridiculous things, she had to worry about every gun in the place.

“Form up, the Elder to the center,” she ordered. “I have point. We’re heading for the back rooms and our gear in the rear. Move.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Strickland responded, taking position as he pushed the blond-haired Elder into the center of the group.

Kriss intercepted the Elder, relieving him of the weapon he was carrying as he holstered his sidearm. “I will take this.”

“Hey!” Eri objected, right up until Kriss grinned at him. “Right. You can take that.”

“Get down!” Sorilla snarled, trying to push through the crowd of people. “Everyone on the ground!”

The crowd was buffeting them as they pushed through, no one paying her or anyone else any mind. They were making progress, but it was slow and treacherous.

Kriss made an adjustment to the weapon he had taken from Eri. “Stand aside.”

“Wha…?” Sorilla’s eyes widened as she saw the big blaster leveled at him, twisting out of the way on instinct as she felt the gravity shift of the weapon firing.

The warp pulse rippled past her, slamming into the people ahead of them and throwing them in all directions. People crashed into the ground, walls, and each other with cries of shock and pain from all quarters.

“What the hell was that!?” Strickland demanded, slamming a hand into Kriss’s chest.

Kris flinched, though just barely, and covered it by grinning again.

“Blasters have more settings than we normally use,” he said. “They will live. Bruised, but alive.”

“Never mind, come on!” Sorilla started moving, dragging Eri along with her and forcing the other two to follow. “We need to get out of here.”

*****

Nicky gestured to the door. “Here they come. Open up!”

Smith yanked the door open as Sanders stepped out with his rifle to his shoulder, sweeping the corridor.

Aida, Strickland, the Lucian, and one other rushed in past him, and he backed in while keeping the area covered. At the last moment, as Smith swung the door shut, Sanders pulled his rifle clear and stepped back.

“All clear.”

“We’re alive,” Sorilla said, checking her weapon. The magazine was almost empty, so she cracked it open and let the barrel assembly fall to the ground as she walked to the room, tearing the useless red gown off herself with her other hand. “I’ll be right out as soon as I get dressed for the occasion.”

“What she said,” Strickland grumbled, fighting with the oversized suit he had on, tearing at the tie and tossing the jacket aside.

The three soldiers looked at their superiors briefly, then slowly turned to the Lucian, who just looked back.

“What? This isn’t bad. Rather comfortable, frankly,” Kriss said, focused more on fiddling with the weapon he was carrying than anything else.

“APC is inbound, ma’am,” Nicky called. “ETA is three minutes!”

“Got it!” Aida’s voice filtered back from the far room. “We’ll be ready to move in two.”

Kriss seemed to scowl, glaring openly at the weapon he was carrying.

“That isn’t right.”

“What isn’t?” Nicky asked, curious.

“One moment,” Kriss said, tossing the weapon down and walking after Strickland. A moment later he emerged with the gear he had left there, pulling a small device from his pouches. He passed it over the rifle, then glared again at the result he read from its display. “We have an issue here.”

“What’s wrong?” Sorilla asked, stepping out into the room, now clad in her armor with helmet in hand.

“This is not an Alliance weapon,” Kriss said.

“Bullshit,” Sanders snorted from by the door. “Where else could it come from? It’s sure as hell not Earth design.”

“It is Alliance design,” Kris conceded. “However, the weapon is not serial-registered. It is a blank. This is…illegal in ways I cannot stress.”

“Black ops?” Strickland asked, also stepping out of the room in armor.

Kriss shook his head. “My scanner can read those serials.”

“He is Alliance black ops,” Sorilla reminded them before turning back to the Sentinel. “So what is it then? I know we’re reverse-engineering Alliance kit, but I don’t think we can make them ourselves yet. Of course, the Admiralty wouldn’t tell me if we could…”

“No,” Kriss said, “the manufacturing is extremely high level. If it was not made by Alliance factories, the replication of them is perfect. Someone fabricated a run of untraceable warp blasters and then sold them to insurgents. This is not acceptable.”

Sorilla turned to Eri. “You said you imported Alliance tech. All Alliance tech. Where’d the guns come from?”

Eri held up his hands. “All gear I import has the appropriate certifications. I strictly operate aboveboard!”

Everyone gave him skeptical looks, but the blond didn’t budge from his position.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Sorilla said as she fitted the helm over her face and let the clamshell mechanism close around her head. Her voice altered through the speaker as she picked up her pistol and shifted the grip back to the rear of the weapon. “VIP protection formation, Kriss and Eri in the center. Nicky, you have point. Move to the APC and exfil. Hopefully we can draw the attackers away from the civilians and deal with them then. We move in thirty seconds. Grab your shit.”

Chapter 12

They hit the corridor together, rifles covering all sides as they moved. Sorilla took up the rearguard position as they walked, heading back for the main ballroom and the foyer that led out to the front of the building.

The crowd had thinned. Most of those fleeing had fled, and the rest were far more likely to be targets rather than civilians. Sorilla would give anyone with human-designed weapons, lighter ones at least, the benefit of the doubt. Anyone holding an alien blaster was going to be lit up before they had a chance to identify themselves, however.

“Room looks clear,” Nicky said as they paused at the entrance to the ballroom. “No movement.”

“Roger,” Sorilla said, “proceed.”

“Roger. Proceeding.”

They broke cover, keeping Eri and Kriss—much to the annoyance of the Lucian—safely in the center of their formation. Their footsteps echoed off the stone in the now-quiet room. Where there had been a veritable flood of targets just minutes earlier, now everything was quiet.

Halfway across, Sorilla suddenly drew her weapon and fired into the upper floor on automatic. Everyone started, pivoting and looking for targets, but by the time the team had adjusted and looked around, she was already holstering her weapon.

“What the hell was that?” Strickland demanded.

“Sanders.” Sorilla ignored the question. “There’s a warp blaster on the upper deck. Retrieve it please. Smith, cover him.”

The two soldiers exchanged confused looks, then snuck glances at Strickland, who just glared at them.

“You heard the colonel.”

“Yes, sir, ma’am!” Sanders said, breaking formation and running up the stairs with Smith in pursuit.

At the top floor, Sanders slowed to a crawl as he checked the area.

It was empty, aside from a body in the middle of the dance floor, an Alliance warp weapon on the ground beside him. He slowly crossed the floor, with Smith on his six, and knelt by the body.

“How did she know?” he asked, making sure he was on a private link to Smith. “Did your scanners pick up anything?”

Smith just shook his head. “Nothing. Yours?”

“Zip.”

Sanders slung the Alliance weapon and stood up, sweeping the area again. “Alright, let’s move.”

The pair headed back to the staircase and started down to where the others were waiting.

“Got it,” Sanders said, patting the weapon.

“Good. Let’s go,” Sorilla said.

They stayed close, making it to the door in a few more seconds, where they paused and surveyed the street.

“I don’t like this,” Strickland said. “That’s a kill box out there.”

“The alternative is staying here,” Sorilla said, head on a swivel as she looked for any sign of movement. “This building isn’t secure enough to hold.”

“I know.”

“APC arrives in one minute!” Nicky announced.

Sorilla reached out a hand. “Rifle.”

“What?” Strickland asked.

“I need a rifle. Now.”

Strickland hesitated only a second before handing his battle rifle over to the colonel.

Sorilla accepted it, checking the action and ensuring there was a round in the rifle’s chamber. She secured the breach, then shouldered the weapon.

“APC in thirty seconds!”

“Cover me,” Sorilla said as she stepped out into the open.

*****

Making a target of herself was an incredibly stupid thing to do, but considering the rest of her career, Sorilla wasn’t going to split hairs on what was an intelligent decision. She closed off most of her HUD displays, focusing instead on the accelerometer suite SOLCOM had implanted in her body.

She made her way out into the middle of the shockingly empty street, considering how crowded it had been just a short time earlier, rifle to her shoulder but at the low ready position.

The APC was only seconds away, and she knew that the Alliance weapons could do serious damage to their only way out. If there was a trap, she’d set it off now.

Her guts twisted just a couple steps from the center of the street, and Sorilla spun around and dropped into a crouch as she lifted the muzzle of her weapon. The warping of space passed over her head, and she settled the muzzle of the rifle on the source and started firing as she rose back to her feet.

The ground exploded behind her, this time shrapnel barely being noticed as it rattled on the back of her armor. Her rifle bucked into her shoulder, hammering sounds into the upper floors of the Red Room with twenty high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds. She stopped firing when the feeling in her gut changed, and dove forward as another blast tore through the air she had just occupied.

Hitting the ground in a roll, Sorilla twisted around, but by the time she’d brought her rifle to bear, the rest of the team had opened fire on the target. Her implants counted one hundred twenty-three rounds into the target before they stopped.

Not even the Alliance weapon survived.

The slight whine of the APC’s electric motors was audible as the armored vehicle rolled in.

“Go hot,” Sorilla ordered. “Live targets in the LZ!”

Powerful servos whined as the APC’s gun rotated out of the armored housing. Strickland and the rest of the team bolted from cover as the APC skidded to a stop, the rear hatch dropping open. Sorilla leapt forward, planting one foot on the angled armor of the APC, and launched herself to the top of the vehicle.

“Get inside!” she ordered, linking to the APC and stealing control of the gun.

*****

Strickland shoved Eri ahead of him, pushing his head down so he wasn’t brained on the armor. Behind him he could hear the others doing much the same as they forced the Lucian Sentinel in behind him.

“As soon as the colonel is inside, seal up and get us out of here!” he ordered.

‘Belay that!’ Aida’s voice echoed over all their comms. ‘Seal up, roll out!’

“C…Major!” Master Sergeant Chavez snapped, twisting around. “She took the gun!”

“Get us out here!” Strickland snarled.

Chavez nodded, hammering the back of the driver’s seat. “Move out!”

The APC jerked as the wheels started turning, biting into the hot pavement as the driver pushed the throttle down. Strickland lurched forward, grabbing onto the edges of the bolstered seats to steady himself.

“What do you mean ‘she took the gun’, Master Sergeant?” he demanded.

Chavez looked up from the gunnery controls. “I mean she inserted her codes into my system and TOOK MY GUN!”

Strickland looked over the data coming from the APC’s gunnery panel just as the gun swiveled into action and the APC was rocked by the sonic boom of the EM accelerator firing a fifty-centimeter tungsten steel rod. Across the street, a third-floor room exploded, showering hot plasma and debris out above them.

“Was there a target there?” Strickland demanded.

“No!” Chavez snapped. “Wait…I don’t know.”

He played back the shot, freezing it just before the weapon discharged. The computer sharpened the image, interpolating to higher detail, and the two soldiers found themselves looking at the gleaming profile of an Alliance warp blaster.

They exchanged glances; the master sergeant’s eyes were wide.

The APC rocked again as the gun discharged. Chavez instantly called up the shoot records. It only took seconds to identify a familiar profile in the imagery.

“Sir, she’s beating my gunnery system to targets before they expose their position! How in the hell, sir!?”

“I don’t know,” Strickland said, “and right now, I don’t care.” He looked past the master sergeant to the driver. “Get us out of here!”

“Yes, sir!”

*****

Grant watched the Earthers’ armored vehicle accelerate away, vanishing down the street and around the corner. He couldn’t believe how much of a debacle the whole operation had turned into. The Xeno weapons were supposed to have been game changers. They completely outclassed anything Arkana could produce, but an entire team using them had utterly failed to accomplish anything!

The Earthers might not have been lying or bragging as much as I believed. They may have actually fought the Xenos and won.

That was a wrinkle he did not need at this point in the plan, damn it.

Damage control on this was going to be a bitch.

*****

The APC had put several kilometers between them and the kill box before Sorilla banged on the top hatch and it popped open. She dropped down into the vehicle, pulling the hatch shut behind her.

“We’re clear,” she said. “No sign of pursuit, no Alliance weapons in evidence. Is everyone okay?”

“Yes. You?” Lieutenant March, the team medic growled. “You’re only standing because of the nerve blockers, ma’am. Sit down, or I’ll override the blockers and drop you where you stand.”

She chuckled weakly, allowing herself to be pushed to the front of the APC and settled into a sling. “Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”

“White blood count is spiking, temperature is going up…your body is reacting to the injury already, Colonel,” March growled, ignoring the mildly sarcastic jab. “You’d be fine if you cleaned the shrapnel out, but of course you had to leave it all in your damn back, ma’am.”

“We were in a rush at the time, Lieutenant.”

“That armor is going to have to come off,” March ordered, looking around. “We don’t have room for this here. Get us back to the shuttle!”

“Negative!” Sorilla countermanded. “We are not done here.”

“Ma’am, you already have the start of an infection,” March snapped. “If we clean it all now and get you back into some fresh suit gel, it’ll save you a hell of a lot of pain.”

“We have a job to finish.”

“You have a back I need to look at, and we don’t have room for that here,” March countered.

Sorilla looked over. “Eri! You have room for some impromptu surgery at your place?”

“What?” Eri looked confused.

“We need your paperwork for those guns; I need some pieces of table picked out of my back,” she said. “Let’s kill two birds with one stop, shall we?”

*****

The APC pulled into the garage of a massive villa, the door lowering shut behind it as the soldiers disembarked from the armored vehicle and moved to ensure the area was secured. Lieutenant March helped Sorilla step out, ignoring her protests that she hardly needed help and countering with a threat to lock up her armor on a medical override if she didn’t shut up.

Major Strickland found the whole scene amusing and made certain to record the interaction. He suspected that the old man would find it endlessly entertaining.

In the meantime, the lieutenant colonel was right about one thing.

“Mr. Constantine,” he said, pulling his helmet off, “we really do need to see your paperwork for those weapons imports.”

The blond shakily nodded his head. “I keep them in the office.”

“Show me,” Strickland ordered. “Sentinel Kriss, we’ll need you for this.”

“Of course,” the Sentinel said, straightening up.

Eri shook his head at the absurdity of the situation, but led the way to his office. Inside he went straight to the wall safe and opened it with his biometric signature.

“Those are the files,” he said, nodding to the Alliance-issue data clusters inside.

“Sentinel?” Strickland gestured.

Kriss produced his device and began examining clusters at random. After the first few, he shook his head. “These are aboveboard, as he said.”

“I expected no less,” Strickland said. “He wouldn’t have illegal data here, and wouldn’t lead us to it if he did.”

“Then why have me examine them?” Kriss demanded, irritated.

“Because those files will tell us what should be here,” Strickland answered. “We already know some of what shouldn’t, but telling the difference will be the trick.”

“I do not understand any of this,” Kriss grumbled. “You sound like Seinel.”

“The Alliance intel puke? Shut your mouth, Sentinel,” Strickland glared at him. “I work for a living.”

Kriss laughed. “Some of you humans are actually worth speaking with…on occasion.”

*****

“Ow! Damn it, doc!” Sorilla snapped as the lieutenant pulled a piece of glass from her back.

“Oh, boo hoo, Colonel,” March told her. “It’s your own fault for grinding this junk in deeper. You’re lucky none of this crap cut into your spinal cord. Goddamn stupid heroics.”

Sorilla rolled her eyes as she pressed her face down into the cushion and restrained the urge to yell again as he plucked a chunk of wood from her lower back.

“Impressive,” March said. “I expected a scream from that one. It was only a few centimeters from your kidney.”

“Fucking sadist.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Sorilla rather thought that the least he could do was turn the nerve blockers back on. She did not buy that bullshit he’d spewed about needing to follow the nerve signals to ensure he got it all.

Medics were all fucking sadists.

*****

Strickland and Kriss spread out the paperwork for importation of Alliance technology to the colony, and after a few minutes of it, the Sentinel gave up in frustration and pulled out a communicator to get Seinel in on the hunt.

It was the spymaster’s job anyway.

“What have you found, Sentinel?” Seinel demanded, his image floating above the communication device as Kriss set it to room-scale communication.

“Insurgents here are using Alliance weapons,” Kriss growled.

“Insurgents everywhere use Alliance weapons, Sentinel. I know this. You know this.”

Kriss sneered at the image. “Insurgents do not acquire blanks, Seinel. Weapons more blank, in fact, than any issued to me in my position as a Sentinel. Perfect blanks.”

Seinel shifted back, his face growing pensive.

“That is disturbing. What about the components?” he demanded.

“Complete blanks, Seinel,” Kriss growled. “Every component.”

Seinel scowled. “That should be impossible. No insurgent group, or even black market supplier, should possibly be able to produce blanks for every component. Alliance law prevents organizations from owning the rights to every component for military projects.”

“What a shocker,” Major Strickland scoffed, “someone is breaking the law.”

Seinel looked over at the major. “I’m afraid you don’t understand the level of illegality involved here, Major. In order to do what Sentinel Kriss is describing, someone would have to own…not one, not even two or three, but as many as several dozen fabrication facilities…facilities that Alliance law expressly prohibits any single entity from owning more than two of, specifically so things like this, among others, cannot happen.”

“Why is it so important that these weapons have serial numbers?”

Strickland didn’t understand the import of what he was hearing. It didn’t make sense. What could be so important about weapons manufacture that they’d split up sourcing to that degree. Initially he had assumed it was a combination of anti-competitive measures combined with simple tracking, but it didn’t sound like that at all.

Seinel’s image looked over to Kriss for a moment before turning back.

“I am not at liberty, as you say, to give you that information, Major,” Seinel said firmly. “Frankly, we have likely told you far more than we should already. Suffice to say, it is incredibly illegal.”

“They’re terrorists, Seinel,” Strickland responded. “Illegal is what they do.”

“It is also indicative of a penetration into Alliance fabrication at a higher level than I have ever heard of before,” Seinel said reluctantly. “A level so high…I do not, even with Sentinel Kriss’s word, entirely believe it now. Sentinel, I will look into this. I can say this, however: The level of merchant traffic in this system is far above what it reasonably should be. There is more here than I believed.”

Strickland frowned. “What about Greatness?”

“Excuse me?” Seinel looked confused.

“The other colony we were to investigate, Greatness of God. Are they also running more traffic than can be explained?” Strickland asked.

“I do not know,” Seinel said.

“See if you can find out,” Strickland asked. “It might give us a better idea of what’s going on.”

“I will have the information redirected,” Seinel replied. “In the meantime, I can confirm Mr. Constantine’s importation certificates are complete and to date.”

Strickland nodded. “Thanks for that. We’ll be able to narrow things down on this side using that information.”

“Good luck,” Seinel said. “Whatever is going on, I do not like the feeling I am getting. This is not a minor insurrection.”

*****

“Okay, that’s the last of it,” March said as he pulled a sliver of wood from her back. “Going to seal you up, but this is going scar without immediate attention on the ship, ma’am.”

“Chicks dig scars,” she joked. “Just do the job.”

“Yes, ma’am,” March chuckled. “I’ll make it as neat as I can, minimize it at least.”

Sorilla nodded into the cushion as the medic produced a stack of sealing adhesive sheets, using them to draw her skin together tightly. He took special care to make certain that the injuries were sealed with good vertical and horizontal alignment so that the skin wouldn’t pull awkwardly either before or after healing.

It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do short of the medical decks on the SOL.

“Finish clearing out her suit,” he ordered over his shoulder. “I want her in fresh suit gel as soon as I’m done here.”

“Almost done,” Nicky called from where he was wiping down the last of the used gel, contaminated with debris from her wounds. “Hey, Smitty, hand me that canister, would you?”

Smith dropped a fresh canister of suit gel into Nicky’s hand, shooting a look over at the colonel as he did. He leaned in. “You see anything in there that explains how she did all that stuff?”

Nicky shook his head very slightly. “Standard SOLCOM suit. No additional gear I can see.”

“Maybe it’s software.”

“Software for what?” Nicky challenged quietly. “What kind of software do you think can spot targets that the hardware can’t see?”

“She iced Tangos blind, Nicky,” Smith hissed. “How the hell does someone do that?”

“Classified.”

Both men started, twisting to where the colonel was still lying on her front while March was sealing up the slashes and cuts in her back.

“Ma’am?” Nicky asked hesitantly.

“You want to know how I did what I did?” Sorilla said. “The answer is classified. The exact details, anyway. I can tell you that I have a prototype implant suite, early developmental generation. Discontinued.”

“Bullshit,” Master Sergeant Chavez blurted. “If they had implants that could do that, we’d all have them.”

“There were…side effects,” Sorilla said. “Extreme nausea is the least classified one. Trust me, Master Sergeant, SOLCOM was not happy when they found out what they’d cooked up.”

She chuckled painfully as she got up, stretching just enough to get a feel for the injuries.

“Good work, doc,” she complimented March as she walked over to the suit.

The men watched as the naked woman turned around and backed into the open suit, activating the seals with a thought, and the armor sealed tightly around her. Sorilla sighed as the gel was infused around her, cushioning her and providing medical contact for the suit’s internal scanners.

She stood up from the portable cradle they’d put her suit in and started diagnostics running in the background.

“I’ll be with the major,” she said. “Secure the perimeter, set up long-range scanners. We’re camping here for a while.”

“Yes, ma’am,”

Sorilla nodded curtly, walking out of the garage and into the villa proper. With the location of the major on her HUD, she walked unerringly into the office where the three others were working.

“Report.”

Strickland looked up. “All patched up, ma’am?”

“Good as new,” Sorilla confirmed. “What’s going on here?”

“It seems we’re in deeper than anyone expected, Colonel,” Strickland said. “Our Alliance friends included.”

That did not sound good.

“How deep is the shit, Major?” she asked.

Strickland snorted. “You’re talking like a top, Colonel. We officers don’t say ‘shit.’ We choose more polite wording.”

“Fine,” Sorilla said, her lips twisting. “How deep is the doo-doo then?”

Despite turning a fascinating shade of red and shaking suspiciously, Strickland just managed to keep from laughing at that. Eri Constantine, on the other hand, didn’t even try to stop his laughter from exploding out.

“It’s deep,” Kriss grumbled, ignoring the human’s odd interactions. “Whatever this doo-doo is, it is deep.”

And that was when Strickland lost it.

Sorilla smiled, but nothing more as Kriss handed her a data cluster. It was Alliance-issue and easily linked to SOLCOM’s updated interface to her implants. She scanned the data quickly, but didn’t see anything that jumped out at her.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

“Transport manifests,” Kriss said, ignoring the gales of laughter from the slowly recovering duo. “Every piece of Alliance production to enter this system, every piece of local resources to leave.”

“Alright…” she said slowly.

“The numbers do not match the mass of metal entering and leaving this system,” the Lucian said, “which means that someone has been using this system as a center of smuggling.”

Sorilla frowned, eyes glowing as she reviewed the data again.

“So the smugglers delivered weapons to insurgents?” she asked.

“It appears so, yes.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sorilla objected. “I’ve run these sorts of ops in the past, more than once. Smugglers wouldn’t risk their hub by bringing down this kind of attention on it. If this were a transshipping hub for smugglers, they’d have done everything they could to shut down the local insurgency’s supplies.”

“What would you have done to get weapons in, then?” Kriss asked. “I know you would have found a way.”

“Sure, you set up a second line of delivery,” she said. “Something the smugglers don’t know about.”

“There is no evidence of that,” Kriss countered. “Perhaps we are missing something, or perhaps this isn’t as simple as we believed.”

“It’s never as simple as you believe when you go in,” Sorilla said, still reviewing the files. “People are complicated. People make things complicated. Do your people track every ship that comes into the system?”

“And everything they offload,” the Lucian confirmed.

Sorilla was quiet a moment, considering that information.

“You’re right,” she said suddenly. “It is deep.”

Chapter 13

USV SOL

Seinel looked around with undisguised interest as he was escorted through the decks of the human ship. This one was a different design—subtly in places, but different—than the ship class he was familiar with. The two human guards who stood on either side of him carefully kept him out of reach of anything he might be able to compromise.

It was amusing, honestly, and a little flattering.

They made their way out to a large area with a panoramic view of the local space. Normally that would be rather dull—space was of very little interest, in his experience—but this close to the local world, it made for something rather impressive.

“Welcome aboard, Mr. Seinel.”

“Just Seinel,” the tall alien said. “My people do not use the same identifiers as yours.”

“Seinel then,” Admiral Ruger said. “Welcome aboard the SOL.”

“A pleasure to be here.”

“We’ve been monitoring the events on the surface. I assume you have as well?” Ruger asked.

“Indeed,” Seinel confirmed. “The soldiers have turned up interesting information.”

“The sanitized weapons.” Ruger nodded. “I’m not sure I understand the importance of that intel exactly, but it is interesting.”

“The full importance is…classified, I believe you would say,” Seinel told them. “However, the fact that blanks exist and are in the hands of insurgents is concerning enough that I will have to send this information up the ranks. Likely, it will go to the very top of Alliance Command. This has become the most important aspect of my side of this investigation.”

Ruger nodded slowly, his mind whirling as he tried to understand what the hell was going on. He was missing something, that was obvious, but what it was…he could not tell for the life of him.

“I don’t understand, but we’ll adjust as needed.”

“You don’t need to concern yourself with it,” Seinel said. “Continue your side as you originally planned.”

“We intend to,” Ruger said. “There’s clearly an underground here on Arkana, funded and equipped by outsiders. That means that Colonel Aida’s theory of an Alliance source for the neurotoxin that killed your people is looking more likely than ever.”

“Yes, I am aware of that as well,” Seinel said sourly. “Locate what you can about them from your side of things. I will locate what can be found from mine.”

*****

Arkana

Grant Portman took a breath as he approached his employer’s villa.

Security was not usually a big thing on Arkana, though there were always exceptions of course. Eri Constantine had never been one for security, not of the visible sort at least. Playing the man-of-the-people role he enjoyed so much, Eri Constantine preferred to be more…approachable.

Now, however, security was quite obvious. Obvious, and not local.

Grant made himself walk up the drive, ignoring the weapons he knew were trained on him the whole way. He went, as he always did, to the side door and opened it. The barrel of a big rifle met him as soon as it swung open.

He put his hands up, swallowing. “Who are you?”

“Search him,” a voice ordered.

Grant found himself yanked into the room, the door slammed shut behind him. He was roughly shoved up against a wall, something brushed along his back and sides.

“That is my retainer,” Eri’s voice called. “It’s alright. Let him in.”

“He’s clean,” another voice he didn’t know spoke up.

Grant felt himself pulled away from the wall, spun around so he could see the others in the room. The soldiers in armor from Earth where there, most of them with blank-faced helmets, but he saw the woman was still showing her face. Eri, of course, was there looking at him…and the Xeno.

“What is that doing here?” he blurted out.

“The Xeno is…invited,” Eri said, sounding reluctant about it but not nearly as disgusted as Grant felt he should be.

The whole villa would have to be cleaned now, just to be rid of the smell.

He got himself under control, though, and forced down the revulsion he felt before he turned to Eri.

“If you say so, sir,” Grant said. “What happened at the Red Room? I’m relieved to find you alright. Were you taken by these…people?”

“I was saved by these people,” Eri growled, “and I should be the one asking you, Grant. Where was the security for the Red Room? We were attacked and they were nowhere to be seen!”

“There was an incident that called security away,” Grant said, swallowing. “It was minor, but they were entirely out of position when…whatever it was happened.”

One of the armored off-worlders shifted. “A distraction then. They pulled your security out of the way so they could move. They’ve been plotting this for a while.”

Eri nodded reluctantly, his face grim.

“My decision to treat with the Xenos wasn’t the most popular among the more hard-line adherents to the ideals of the Founders,” he admitted. “However, I saw no other reasonable options, either at the time or now.”

“Fringe thinkers don’t care much about reason, except as it might agree with their established positions,” another armored speaker, but this one a woman, said. “It’s called confirmation bias. They will lock onto whatever they can find that supports what they believe, and ignore everything else.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Eri growled. “They’ve made a declaration of war. My father and I did not agree on all things, especially not toward the end…but one thing that was absolute is that you do not treat with someone who opens negotiations by trying to shoot you in the back. If they want a war, I’ll show them a war.”

*****

Sorilla eyed the man as he made his declaration, as well as the only other local in the room. Eri was showing all the signs of someone she would normally peg as a local leader worth cultivating. The only thing that left her wondering was just how he stood in the colony’s favor overall. Did he represent an extremist opinion of his own?

That seemed unlikely, but it was possible.

The upper class of any group were more likely to be conservative, leaning toward the continuation of the system that had made them its leaders. They would protect the system because it was in their interests to do so. Most especially those who inherited their money, as Eri had, would be inclined to this.

Those who created new wealth…they tended to be the revolutionaries.

If that were the case here, then they might have just gotten luckier than Sorilla had ever imagined. Eri might well represent a large block of the population’s thinking, or if things were as bad as they might be, he might represent the old guard about to fall to the revolutionaries.

She hoped it was the former.

‘Aida, SOL.’

Sorilla stiffened at the call from the starship overhead, subvocalizing her response. SOL, go for Aida.

‘We’re tracking encrypted signals from the ambush site, Colonel,’ the watch officer told her. ‘Sorry, we still haven’t cracked the encryption.’

Sorilla wasn’t that shocked. A new encryption was difficult to break under good conditions, and working with whatever you could intercept from orbit was far from those. Even with the local armor relaying the signals, it wasn’t a shock that they would still be crunching the numbers.

She knew, however, that the SOL wouldn’t have called just to tell her that.

What is it, then? she asked.

‘We’re tracking one of those signals now. It’s coming from inside the room you’re currently in.’

Sorilla turned, eyes locking on the man named Grant as she flipped her suit’s imagers over to EM spectrum. The signal pulse coming from him was strong, showing as a blue-green pulsing light in her HUD. Analysis ran on it, and the color shifted to red as the encryption was detected, showing military-grade encryption.

The fact that he had been broadcasting at both the Red Room and now at Eri’s villa might be coincidence. Perhaps he had a tracker or personal comm system that was cloud-enabled. Just being present at both sites wasn’t enough to label him a threat.

Understood, she responded, still subvocalizing.

It wasn’t so much to keep Grant from hearing her. Her helm would do that job admirably. However, subvocalizing and compressing her messages would keep the enemy from doing exactly what she was now doing to Grant himself. There were no always-on links between herself and her fellows, or the SOL.

She shot a quick update out to the others, shifting Grant from a green contact on their HUDs to yellow. The others shifted silently, opening up their formation so they wouldn’t be caught too close together in the case of treachery.

SOL, Aida, Sorilla called back. Request ten-kilometer radius, current position, full scan.

‘Roger, Aida. Standby.’

She shifted, her right hand resting on her thigh, just below where her right pistol was holstered. Sorilla glanced over at Strickland and nodded to the window. The major nodded and gestured with his left hand, causing Smith and Nicky to casually walk over to the window and take up positions on either side.

“Casual” was a relative term, of course. A man in powered armor wasn’t exactly subtlety in motion by most people’s standards.

Grant and Eri noticed, of course, shifting their focus to the two men.

Sorilla drew her pistol quietly while they were looking away, shifting so that it was hidden from the two locals when they turned back.

“Is something coming?” Eri asked, clearly worried.

“No, probably nothing,” Sorilla said. “Just precautions.”

“For what?” Grant asked suspiciously.

“Just in case we flush anyone out with what comes next,” she said.

“What?” Eri asked, confused. “What do you mean ‘what comes next’?”

‘Pulse out.’

The signal from the SOL was what the team was waiting for, and they all killed their armors’ power systems at once.

For Sorilla, everything felt suddenly sluggish as her armor became near dead weight on her limbs, dragging her down. More disorienting, however, was the sudden loss of signal from her implants as they, too, cycled through shutdown. Her HUD went out, and she would have been blind except that the SOLCOM engineers had planned for a loss of power.

Without the low-level trickle of power that kept her helm opaque, it turned crystal clear in an instant just as a tangible hum of power built around them.

Eri moved to cover his ears as it became a whine. “What is that!?”

The scanner pulse from the SOL was powerful enough to be considered an energy weapon at close range, but from orbit it was merely enough to blow out any unshielded gear with an active circuit. Even heavily shielded gear, like their own armor, was potentially vulnerable in places.

The lights in the room got brighter, quickly, and then popped with explosions of sparks falling from them. The room barely grew any darker, though, as the display screen began to power up despite having been turned off. Free power in the air was fed directly into the OLED display, and it showed a pulse pattern for a brief moment before also exploding.

Startled by all of that, Grant entirely missed the smoke coming from his pocket until a pop and a flame signaled the destruction of his transmitter. He yelped and beat at his pocket, putting the fire out as other devices exploded in sparks around them.

“What’s happening!?” Eri called as he covered his face.

“A SOL-class battleship just lit up your villa and a ten-kilometer radius around with a full-power scanner pulse,” Sorilla said, head tilting slightly, her focus on Grant, though she was speaking to Eri.

“Why would they do that?” Eri asked.

“Because I asked them to.”

Grant, having finally put out the flames from his pocket, twisted to glare at her. “Why would you do that?”

*****

USV SOL

“Signal return from the surface, Captain.”

Captain Nero Ramirez looked over. “Put it on the main display.”

“Aye, skipper.”

The big display that showed the planet flickered, then rushed in on the world below them as though the vessel were plummeting from the skies. In seconds it was focused on the villa below them, icons of the Special Forces unit within lighting up first. Three unaffiliated signs followed, two humans and a Lucian.

Those were expected signals all accounted for.

The seventy-five human signals closing on the villa, however, were not on the expected list.

Nero whistled. “Looks like the colonel had good reason to be suspicious. Okay, tell her what’s coming, and inform her that we can be on-site in fifteen minutes.”

“Armor reboot should be…fifteen seconds and counting, sir.”

*****

Grant Portman glared at the dark skin of the woman who was staring evenly at him from behind her armor. The arrogance in her eyes infuriated him, but he knew that he wasn’t carrying anything that could breach combat armor of any sort, let alone what he was looking at.

“Why would you make such a destructive scan?” he demanded, trying to mask his worry.

She smiled crookedly at him. “Call it a hunch.”

“A hunch?” Grant raged. “Do you know how much the things you destroyed here will cost to replace?”

“Less than the cost of being surprised,” she said, a light flickering on her armor as she spoke.

“Surprised by what?” Grant demanded. How can she know?

Her face faded away, the helmet darkening back to matte black. “Anything surprising, of course.”

*****

USV SOL

“Armor’s up!” the watch officer at the comm panel said.

“Send the intel from the scans,” Ramirez ordered. “How are shuttle preps going?”

“We can launch in three minutes, sir.”

“Get those birds into space,” Ramirez snapped, standing up.

“Comms up!”

The icons on the display went from light grey to blue as the soldier’s armor began transmitting IFF signals. Every human sign outside the villa switched to red, while the remaining signals inside remained yellow.

“Colonel Aida,” Ramirez said, “we’re monitoring a significant force closing on your location. They’re coming in from all sides. Full details to your tactical HUD.”

*****

Sorilla twisted, looking around herself as her HUD lit up with data from the SOL’s scanners. It wasn’t realtime, but now that they had a lock on the OPFOR surrounding them, the SOL was able to feed steady updates without using the extreme power of a full scan.

Red icons lit up her HUD in all directions, with distance and heading information listed. She watched as the forces approached.

“We have a company-scale force approaching,” she said, “and we have to assume that they have Alliance weapons. Air support and dust-off is still twelve minutes out, at best, but they’ll be cautious with gravity weapons in play, so I’d expect a little longer.”

“We’ll need to move the APC out so it can provide support,” Strickland said. “Inside it’s of limited value.”

“We’ll get one strike before that,” Sorilla said, “through the walls.”

“Through the walls?” Eri objected. “This is my home!”

“And a fine home it is,” Sorilla told him honestly. “I think I may make some changes to my plans back home based on your architecture. However, right now, it’s soft cover and nothing more.”

She turned on Grant, striding over and grabbing his shoulder before he could move.

“Let…go of me!” he snapped, gritting his teeth against her enhanced grip.

Sorilla ignored him, tearing at the scorched pocket and pulling the burnt-out device from within. She flipped it up, tossing it over her shoulder to Nicky as he reached up and snagged it from the air.

“See what you can learn from that,” she ordered, not looking away from Grant. “Tell me if we have a Judas, or a goat.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the corporal responded, cracking open the case of the device and examining the burnt-out remains.

“Grant, what is she talking about?” Eri demanded, looking around in both fear and confusion.

“I have no idea!”

“Judas, ma’am. It’s a secure comm, not a tracer,” Nicky spoke up.

Eri turned back to Grant. “What have you done!?”

Grant’s expression twisted. “What you didn’t have the spine to do.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Sorilla said, twisting to toss him toward Kriss. “Hold onto him. We’ll need what he knows.”

The Lucian easily caught the man as he stumbled across the room. “I am no interrogator, nor am I a prison guard.”

“You’re lucky I’m not tying your dumb ass down and leaving you out of this entirely,” she snarled. “Or did you really think I wasn’t going to notice that you’re bleeding?”

The Lucian’s hand went automatically to his side, hiding his wince. “You knew?”

“Wasn’t my business if you wanted to be an idiot,” she said flatly, “but you’re not fighting beside my men with an open wound. When did you pull the stitches?”

“At the Red Room.”

Sorilla nodded, unsurprised. “You stay back, guard the prisoner…or I knock you both out and come back for you when the fight is over.”

The Lucian glared at her, something she returned in kind, though he couldn’t see through her helm. The others shifted uneasily as the silence built up slowly, until Kriss finally laughed sharply and gestured in surrender.

Temporary surrender, of course. That was the only kind a Sentinel would permit himself, and even then, never in battle.

“I will watch the prisoner,” he said finally.

Sorilla continued to stare for a moment before nodding curtly and turning away to address her men. “We have multiple priorities, but survival takes top spot. Major, what do you think? Defend or break out?”

Strickland frowned, considering the question.

“A company-size force with Alliance weapons is a problem,” he said.

Sorilla snorted. “No shit.”

“I mean that I don’t know that we can defend a soft target like this for twelve minutes or successfully break out with only a single APC as our primary asset,” Strickland answered.

“You have a third option?”

Strickland looked over to Kriss. “Are we cleared for heavy weapon deployment, Sentinel Kriss?”

“Define heavy,” Kriss responded. “Alliance officials will be unimpressed, shall we say, if you were to deploy weapons of mass destruction on an Alliance protectorate.”

“Understandable,” Strickland replied. “I was thinking more along the lines of low-yield kinetic warheads, launched from orbit.”

“Still problematic,” Kriss responded. “Orbit-to-ground destruction is viewed in very similar lines as any other weapon of mass destruction, I am afraid.”

Strickland swore softly. It was a bad thing to be between a rock and hard place. If the Alliance looked poorly on the use of orbital bombardment, that might cause relations to degrade, which could lead to resumed fighting. On the other hand, without some type of support, he didn’t see a way out for the team.

“Sentinel Kriss,” Sorilla spoke up, “can you contact Seinel? He could release weapons clearance, I believe?”

“If anyone in the system could, or would, it would be him.” Kriss nodded. “I will try.”

“In the meantime,” Sorilla said, “prep for breakout.”

Strickland looked at her for a moment, but then nodded. “You heard the colonel. Let’s move, people!”

Chapter 14

Airfield

Lieutenant Sharon Caliph, call sign Peregrine, bolted upright when every system on her baby started screaming.

“What the hell is going on?” she blurted, leaning in and examining the instruments as her eyes widened. “Oh holy hell.”

Someone had just stepped in a bear trap.

She slapped her hand down on the alert, triggering a lighting shift in the small flight deck of the shuttle drop ship and an external alarm. She heard people scrambling in the back, and in a few seconds Captain Harrison stuck his head through the open blast door that separated her from the troop section.

“What’s going on?” the captain demanded.

“The SOL just went scanners active, full power ping,” she said. “I’ve got updates coming in. Looks like the team got themselves in a bit of a mess. No orders yet, but get everyone ready to move, and step up the alert.”

Technically she shouldn’t have been giving orders to a superior officer, but as the pilot in charge of the drop ship, she could lay down the law to a certain degree, no matter who she was talking to. Up until the SOL issued orders, at least.

“Got it,” Harrison said, ducking back out as Caliph brought the drop ship’s scanners up to full power.

While her baby didn’t have the power of the SOL, the drop ship’s scanners were plenty potent. On full power, though, they’d drain her standby batteries in no time, forcing Caliph to bring the reactors up.

Let’s see if that’s necessary, she thought as she worked, pausing only to glance over her shoulder. “Someone tell Swift to get his ass in here!”

“I’m coming!” Ensign Thomas “Swift” Gin shouted as he stumbled through the hatch, quickly dropping into the RIO seat. “What’s going on?”

“Team stepped in the shit, now we get to see how deep. Bring up the scanners,” she ordered. “I expect we’ll get orders to move in short order.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Caliph leaned forward, checking out the armored windows of the drop ship. The field looked quiet. She wasn’t seeing anything that made her worry locally, so far at least.

She hoped that kept up.

*****

Scott Harrison stomped down the ramp, waving to bring his team in close, noting that the Lucians who had been left with them followed suit.

“What’s up, Cap?” Lieutenant Hardy asked, speaking for the team.

“Colonel stepped in something. Alarm’s been sounded. For now we make sure we’re secure here,” he said. “Peregrine is going to scan-pulse the area, but I want eyes out on all sides. We don’t know what’s going on yet, but if the colonel found trouble, it might come looking for us. Go.”

His team split. They knew their jobs, leaving him standing there with the Lucians.

“Who’s in charge absent Sentinel Kriss?” he asked, looking them over.

“Whoever is most capable in the given situation,” one answered simply, which told him pretty much nothing at all.

“Who would that be now?”

They exchanged glances briefly, one stepping forward.

“I am Sentinel Mae,” he said in the gravelly tone Harrison had come to associate with the Lucians. “I am best versed in establishing defensive requirements and directing them as needed.”

“Alright, Mae, you’re with me,” Harrison said crisply. “Deploy your Sentinels as needed, but keep in contact in case we need to lift off. The situation just became highly unstable.”

“Very well,” the Sentinel answered curtly before turning and barking out orders in the Lucian language.

Harrison caught perhaps one word in three, likely less. He was starting to learn Alliance Standard, but his Lucian was far from fluent.

He was really going to have to work on that.

*****

“Scanners up!”

Caliph glanced over at the main threat board as the scanner echoes started hitting back. There were several grounded birds around them, all local build, all atmospheric designs, of course. None of them had any sign of power, which left them dead on her scopes. The building was lit up, but no signs of anything hostile were in evidence.

People were another story.

There were quite a few, of course; it was a semi-busy airfield and had people coming and going regularly. They were all pretty much armed. Figuring out which of them was a threat was going to be a pain.

“Okay, we have thirty-four yellow-level threats. Log them, track them, and elevate them to red if they breach the outer perimeter,” Caliph ordered.

“Roger that,” Ensign Gin acknowledged.

She didn’t see any military signals—not Earth or Alliance, at least—anywhere in range. That surprised her slightly, in all honesty. They’d been on the ground for some time. She would have expected some sort of response from local authorities by this point, even if it was just to keep an eye on them.

“SOL, Peregrine,” she said into the comm.

“Peregrine, go for SOL.”

“What’s going on?” she asked the comm officer. “We’re not getting any updates here.”

“Still gathering intel, Peregrine. You’ll have to standby.”

“‘Standby’ he says,” Caliph grumbled, killing the signal as she looked over to her RIO. “Do we have anything on the colonel and her team?”

“Relay data from the SOL only,” Gin told her. “Location, not much more.”

“Great. So where the hell are they then?”

“Forty-eight miles due north…give or take a little to the east,” Gin told her. “Suit feeds aren’t being relayed. We’ll have to get closer to get into those.”

“We’re not taking off yet,” she told him.

“Going to have to make a choice soon,” Gin replied. “Batteries are down thirty percent. We’ll have to kill the actives soon, or light the fires.”

*****

Eri’s Villa

“APC is ready to rock and roll, Colonel.”

“Thanks, Corporal,” Sorilla responded, her focus on the external perimeter.

The approaching forces were almost to the hundred-meter line, which would put them within range of most unaided small arms. Given that they were equipped with Alliance warp blasters, they were well within their effective range.

So why haven’t they opened fire yet?

Sorilla was well aware of the effective ranges of the weapons in question, and in their place, she would have already engaged. She also had a good idea why the enemy was holding back, or were apparently doing so at least.

They have no idea what they’re doing, she realized with a sudden certainty. They’re children playing with toys they haven’t the training, or the intelligence, to understand.

That thought reoriented her thinking, and she started working out how they were likely to operate with limited tactical experience with their weapons.

If they’re using those weapons entirely on manual control, they’re going to be extremely crippled by that.

“Major!” she called, turning from the window. “They think they’re carrying assault rifles.”

“What?” Strickland looked over, confused by her statement.

“They think they’re using rifles, Major,” she said again. “They have no clue how to deploy the weapons they’re carrying.”

Strickland turned, looking out and through the walls with the augmented HUD, pensively silent for a few seconds as he considered that.

“Break out,” he said, nodding firmly. “Master Sergeant!”

“Sir!” Chavez responded instantly.

“Weakest point in the enemy line?” Strickland snapped, getting in motion as he headed for the APC.

“Northeast, away from the river, sir,” Chavez said. “And the airfield!”

“Noted, Master Sergeant,” Strickland said, looking to Sorilla. “Colonel?”

Sorilla nodded. “That’s the move. Break out through the gap at the three o’clock. Hook up with our backup in eleven minutes. Re-evaluate our options then. Go!”

*****

Reggie Maxim shifted uncomfortably as he moved through the scrub that surrounded the villa.

Damn Xeno crap. What can’t they build these things to fit humans better?

He twisted the Xeno weapon around, trying to keep it from rubbing against his arm and chaffing the skin off any more than it had already. Nothing about the damn thing was right. It felt like it had been designed by a retarded child, if anyone were to ask Reggie his opinion.

No one ever seemed to, more’s the pity, to his thoughts.

The back of the villa was just up ahead. He and the others were supposed to make sure no one came out the back door, but there was no motion at all in the entire back section so it looked like they were wasting their time. The guys in the front were going to have all the fun, apparently.

Wasting a race traitor like Eri was the best kind of fun too.

Any righteous man would have known better than to trade for Xeno goods. Human gear was perfectly fine; no one needed the off-world junk.

One more traitor down, and Arkana would be that much more pure.

Reggie paused as he adjusted his grip again, speaking into the encrypted communications system he was wearing.

“All clear on the rear. Looks like they’re holing up inside,” he reported.

Good luck to them, Reggie sneered. The weapons he and the others were carrying were going to turn that villa into a smoking crater, along with everyone inside.

He was still fantasizing about the state he was going to leave Eri’s ranch villa in when the back wall of the garage blew out, sending him and the others diving to the ground for cover.

*****

The electric motors on the APC all spun up instantly, sending pure torque to the six wheels. The airless tires bit in and twisted under the stress, throwing the big vehicle forward with acceleration. Everyone inside was thrown back, almost two full G’s of acceleration slamming them into their bolstered seats as the APC lurched forward and the main gun fired.

The explosive round blew out the back wall of the garage just a second before the APC hit the remnant rubble and exploded through, flying over the threshold and slamming back to the ground before accelerating away in a cloud of dust.

Men scattered in all directions as the big APC bounced, spinning its wheels in the air and biting them into the ground when it landed, teetering precariously on as little as one wheel at one point before finally settling into its suspension and getting full traction.

Farther away from the explosive exit of the APC, some of the men got themselves together a little quicker. Several shifted their focus, arming their weapons and trying to get the APC in their sights.

The main gun on the big armored vehicle whirred around, supersonic explosions erupting from it. The air ignited in a direct line from the gun to the target, and there the ground erupted and men were sent in all directions from the blast.

*****

“I have the gun,” Sorilla said over the din of the APC banging around, just seconds before the cannon roared.

“Four targets down!” Chavez called. “Two ain’t getting up, not without some pretty impressive prosthetics, at least! Don’t know about the other two.”

“As long as they’re not shooting,” Strickland said, “I could not care less!”

The major pulled down the security brace a little harder, cinching himself in against the jarring motion of the APC. He had the tactical overview up on his HUD, the realtime imagery from the SOL filling his worldview.

With Aida handling the gun, however the hell she was doing that, he focused on the tactical situation.

“Shift course, three…no, eight degrees east,” he ordered the driver. “They opened a hole in their line when they dove for cover.”

“Roger that.”

They were all shoved to one side as the APC turned. The gun roared again, shaking them even through the armor.

“Two targets down,” Chavez announced.

“Hold on,” Sorilla spoke up. “There are too many of them. I’m not going to be able to stay ahead of them any longer. This ride is about to get bumpy!”

*****

The gun on the APC whirred and roared. Lines of fire lit the air between the APC and the shooters with every shot of the EM accelerator. Dirt exploded from the ground, throwing men and gear into the air and to the ground. Every shot of the gun took time, however—not to reload, as the weapon was an auto-cannon capable of a thousand tungsten rounds per minute, but time to re-aim.

The enemy were arrayed around the APC in all directions, and while the gun could fire extremely quickly, it could only track just so fast. Worse still, the primary targets weren’t positioned in an efficient sweep either. Sorilla had to prioritize targets who were preparing to fire as the highest threats, and that could mean having to traverse the weapon entirely across the firing arc to kill the target, and then sweep right back for the next.

She tried to take out targets in mid-sweep, as opportunities arose, but inevitably she had to pass on secondary threats to engage the primaries. That, unfortunately, left the secondary to become a new primary just seconds later.

It was inevitable that she would begin reaching targets just…moments…too late.

The warping of the air flashed across the intervening space, lightning-quick but far slower than the weapon’s actual effect. The APC took the hit side-on, the angled armor deflecting the force down into the ground and lifting the vehicle up on three wheels briefly as the center tire was shredded, Kevlar and carbon-reinforced polymers flying off in all directions.

True to design, however, the tire held despite missing large chunks of its body. The APC kept moving, stubbornly taking another hit and bulling on through as the big gun continued to roar with a staccato rhythm of thunder and fire.

*****

Inside, Sorilla was sitting in her command station and staring straight ahead. The gun was on auto-fire now, the computer handling the actual release of each round while she just kept control of the tracking system.

“There’s too damn many,” she gritted out. “Everyone get ready. If this goes wrong, we’ll be on foot and fighting in the field in another minute.”

“Finally,” one of the Sentinels growled, eagerly shifting his grip on the alien weapon in his control.

The other Lucians growled their agreement, and it was even mirrored a bit by the human soldiers that sat across from them. Quiet Professionals or not, as patient as the soldiers of the Fifth were, they weren’t entirely immune to the urge to take the fight right into the enemy’s face. In fact, in the current situation, nearly every one of them wanted little more than to do just that.

“Just hang onto that attitude,” the driver called, sounding insulted. “We’re not toasted yet!”

They were still accelerating forward, but now the constant firing of the gun shook them in their seats and rattled everyone’s teeth as the limited suspension built into the personnel bracing was completely defeated by the power of the supersonic concussion of each round.

The occasional blast of the warp guns slamming them around was just terror-filled punctuation.

“Not going to make it,” Sorilla said abruptly before she called out her next instructions. “Master Sergeant, take the gun!”

“About time!” Chavez snarled, leaning into his controls and taking over the firing sequence for the APC’s cannon.

He didn’t have the magic touch the colonel seemed to have with predicting who was going to fire before they did it, but Chavez knew his gun better than she did. He knew how it turned, and how it fired, and just how to squeeze the best out of it in a fight. In only seconds he had the system running on efficient algorithms, picking targets out and off smoothly with the methodical certainty of a machine.

Sorilla hit the quick release on the brace holding her in place and got to her feet, bracing against the roof of the vehicle as she started moving.

“Colonel! What do you think you’re doing!?” Strickland snarled, twisting so he could see her properly.

“You know what my teams called me, after Hayden?” she asked, her voice suddenly much calmer than it had been.

Strickland felt his gut churn. He knew that tone. He’d heard it before. Hell, unless he was very much mistaken, he’d used it before.

“Lieutenant Colonel…” he started, a warning growl climbing from his chest.

Sorilla got into the APC’s computer and cracked the back door, opening it up to the outside as she drew her two guns.

“They started calling me a new name, behind my back,” she said, smiling. “They thought I didn’t know. Is it in my file, Major?”

The ramp was half down as she tensed.

“No, Colonel, it’s not in your file. Now let’s think about this a minute…”

“Get Eri and the prisoner out of here, Major,” she said firmly. “That’s an order.”

As the ramp opened level with the ground, Sorilla crouched just enough to launch herself into a sprint.

“Colonel!” Strickland screamed.

Sorilla hit the ramp as fast as she could physically manage in armor, given the short takeoff and limited room. She jumped off the ramp, throwing her feet forward and her arms out to either side.

“They called me John Wayne.”

*****

“Holy Shit!” Corporal Nicky Farrel blurted, leaning forward so he could see as the guns roared just as the colonel dropped out of sight.

Strickland was swearing. Most of the team looked completely baffled by what had just happened, but the Lucians on the other side had no such compunctions.

“Sentinels!” Kriss roared, laughing. “Will you let the human steal our action? Deploy!”

The aliens were laughingly hitting their quick-release catches, then following the colonel out the back of the still-racing APC.

“Holy shit,” Nicky repeated himself as Strickland apparently managed to curse himself out.

“B-Squad! What are you waiting for?” he snarled. “Back the lady up! Master Sergeant! Ice those motherfuckers!”

Whatever else was going on, Nicky lost track of it in a hurry as he hit the quick-release to his restraints, grabbed his rifle, and followed his squad out the back.

****

Sorilla hit the ground on her back, skidding along the dirt-and dust-covered ground for a few meters before she slowed enough to flip back over her shoulder and use the remaining velocity to bring her to her feet.

Her guns were on full computer release as she aimed them out to either side, letting her implants fire the weapons as needed while she just worried about directing them. They fired automatically, whenever the muzzles crossed an enemy target, leaving part of her mind free to work out exactly what she was going to do now that she’d committed to insanity.

I never should have become an officer. It’s just not where my strengths lie, Sorilla thought grimly as she methodically lined up target after target.

A twisting in her gut caused her to snap around, almost lining her guns up with the shooter until she recognized one of the Lucians firing his own blaster.

“I told you to stay out of this fight,” she said in the clear as she recognized Kriss, picking himself up off the ground and getting his weapon to the ready. “You’re injured.”

“I will fight,” he told her, “until the enemy is dead, or I am. Injuries do not matter.”

Sorilla looked over his shoulder, spotting members of the Special Forces A-team de-assing the APC, and her lips pulled back.

“If you get my team killed,” she snarled, “we will have words.”

She pinged her team’s implants, getting their attention, and whirled her right hand over her head.

“Security perimeter, centered on the APC, now!” she ordered. “The asset and the prisoner get clear, no matter the cost!”

Her team deployed automatically, putting an umbrella between the enemy forces and the APC, engaging a “retreat under fire” strategy as they did so. Sorilla plugged herself into their formation, feeling like old times had come back for a brief moment.

“Kriss,” she called, “we have to defend the APC!”

“You defend! We attack!”

“Fuck!” Sorilla swore, connecting back to the team channel. “Give them cover if you can, but the APC is our priority!”

Chapter 15

USV SOL

Brigadier Mattan thundered into the tactical observation room of the SOL, eyes blazing.

“What the hell is going on down there?” he demanded. “This was a touring op, basic cultural intel-gathering. Sister could do this work in her sleep. How the hell did it turn into a running gun battle!?”

Ruger glanced up in his direction, shrugging. “She’s not the same woman you knew in the Fifth, Mattan, but as it turns out, they apparently walked into some local drama.”

“Local drama?” Mattan growled. “What kind?”

“Looks like someone took advantage of our team’s arrival to trigger an assassination plan against one of the local barons,” Ruger grumbled, annoyed by the whole situation. “Why they thought they’d have a better chance with a team of armed soldiers onsite, I will never understand.”

“They likely didn’t,” Mattan said absently, focusing on the information he was seeing on the displays. “They were probably going to blame our team for the hit, figured it was worth the added risk to be able to shift the blame to outsiders. They were using Alliance weapons?”

“Confirmed, yes,” Ruger said, “though the Sentinel with the team identified them as counterfeit.”

That caused Mattan to pull up short. “Counterfeit? How does that work?”

“That I don’t know,” Ruger admitted, “but it seemed like a big deal to the Alliance. Just one more piece of this puzzle we’re looking at. I’m starting to think that Aida was right from the start. This is a long way from being about a couple militant cultures kicking up a stink. Someone bigger is pulling strings.”

Mattan snorted. “Someone bigger always is. You really think any revolt or rebellion was ever as clean as the history books pretend it was? Without big money interests, guerilla factions are usually not much worse than a minor annoyance to established governments.”

“Tell that to the founding fathers,” Ruger replied.

“Do you really think that was a revolt?” Mattan asked. “Revolts are when the underclass rise up and overthrow the rulers. In the Americas, the founding fathers were the ruling class. They were the power and the authority and the establishment. That wasn’t a revolt; it was a war of secession. Power against power, albeit unbalanced powers, I agree…and you have no idea how close that came to turning out differently.”

He shook his head. “No. Trust me, Admiral, revolts need backing. The people here would fight regardless, I have no doubts, but to be making the Alliance actually take them seriously, someone is backing them. If these counterfeits are as big a deal to the Alliance as you seem to think, then we’ve located proof of that.”

“All this game-playing isn’t worth our time,” Ruger grumbled. “We need to find the puppet masters. Probably the Alliance itself, playing shadow games with us.”

“Possible,” Mattan conceded, gesturing to focus the tactical display in on the fighting. “The locals, how well-trained are they?”

“Poorly,” Ruger answered. “They’re good enough shots, but tactically they’re completely unfamiliar with their weaponry. That many warp blasters, they should have turned the villa to a crater and been done with it.”

Mattan nodded slowly. “Where are we on air support?”

“Took a couple minutes to clear it with the Alliance, but they’re dropping through the upper atmo now. Seven minutes to intercept.”

Mattan grimaced.

Seven minutes was a long time on the ground with no support.

*****

Airfield

“Peregrine, SOL.”

Caliph practically lunged for the controls, securing the comm channel. “SOL, go for Peregrine.”

“Standby for relay,” the communications officer said. “Field team is now in motion.”

“Finally,” Caliph growled, looking over to her RIO. “Call them back. We’re going mobile.”

“You’ve got it, Peregrine.”

The telemetry relay from the team’s armor was up on her HUD a second later, making Caliph stare with wide eyes for a moment at what she was seeing.

“Holy…” she drawled. “SOL, confirm, are they withdrawing under fire?”

“Confirmed. Be aware, enemy combatants have Alliance warp blasters.”

Caliph swore. “Because of course they do.”

Alliance warp blasters were a pain in the ass. They weren’t exactly intended to be anti-air weapons, but they could hum the tune in a pinch. Actually, they weren’t really great at any one aspect of battle, as best she knew, but they were probably the finest multi-purpose weapons she’d ever heard of.

“Roger, SOL. We are aware. Peregrine is standing by to deploy,” she announced.

“Air support will be on the deck in six minutes,” the comms officer told her. “Field team has a potential asset and a prisoner we need intact. Get into position and dust-off with the asset and the prisoner. That is your first priority.”

Caliph scowled. She knew exactly what those orders meant.

“SOL, please confirm. The team is going to be in the APC for dust-off, correct?”

“Ideally, yes. If not, then they can take care of themselves for a while, Peregrine.”

That was pretty much exactly what she expected.

“Roger that, SOL.” She confirmed the orders, swearing mentally the whole time.

“Reactor is firing up,” her RIO said. “The field team is pulling back into the ship.”

“Tell them to buckle up,” Caliph ordered. “We’re going into a hot LZ.”

*****

“Watch the flank to your three o’clock!” Sorilla called, hopping backwards as she tried to stay ahead of the enemy while keeping herself and her team between them and the APC.

Her guns roared, but she had killed the auto-shoot function in her implants just out of concern that the Sentinels would cross her sights and be mistaken for a Tango. She absently noted two of her squad break off to cover the six o’clock position. A small squad of the locals had gotten ahead of them, dug in, and was now peppering the general area with warp blasts.

Sorilla was about to order an assault on the position when a convergence of warp blasts just tore it to shreds. She grimaced as the opposing gravity fields turned men to little more than wet meat flying in all directions, but kept her peace and just nodded to the Lucians who’d launched the attack before moving onto the next.

“Colonel,” Strickland’s voice came over her comm, “air support will be on deck in five minutes.”

Sorilla mentally hit the confirm toggle, keeping her eyes on the fight and her attention split between the actual fighting and the men arrayed around her on the overhead map she had up on her HUD. She was going to have a damn migraine when it was all over, just from keeping her head wrapped around the competing information streams she was dealing with.

Multitasking was a prerequisite before SOLCOM would even think about giving an operator a full implant suite, but there were limits to what any human could manage without suffering consequences. The mother of all migraines was generally the first, and least, of those.

She swore as a fast-moving icon appeared on her HUD, followed by more.

“Enemy have acquired vehicles. Eyes wide and look for fast movers pursuing the APC,” she called. “Kriss, detail your Lucians to eliminate those vehicles!”

“Be advised,” Strickland’s calm voice came over the team comm, “drop ship has lifted off and is en route for dust-off. Priority has been issued to the APC, our prisoner, and the local asset. Anyone not onboard the APC during dust-off will be picked up later.”

Sorilla hit the confirm toggle again, not bothering to respond. That was hardly an unexpected development. She’d been on the receiving end of orders exactly like that all her career. Her team could handle some time playing escape and evade if it came to that.

The Lucians, on the other hand, might be a problem in that regard.

“Kriss,” she called out, “pickup is coming. Get your people back to the APC.”

The Lucian didn’t seem to pay her any attention, but frankly, she didn’t have time to worry about him either. She’d given him the warning; if he and his were left behind then they’d have to hack it with everyone else.

*****

Atmospheric turbulence shook the A-334 Saddleback drop ship as the pilot fought the motion of the craft while he reached up to adjust the directional thrusters.

Lieutenant Commander Marcus “Viper” Washington noted the altitude and then flipped a bank of switches off to kill the drop ship’s heat shielding. Heavy ceramic plates slid away from the more sensitive instrumentation, as well as the cockpit canopy.

“SOL, Viper.”

“Go for SOL, Viper.”

Washington examined the instruments, making minute adjustments as he spoke. “Viper One has cleared the atmosphere interface. Heat shields are down. Am proceeding to area of operation.”

“Roger, Viper. Realtime updates are being relayed to you now.”

He checked down, noting the IFF codes and icons filling the tactical display. “Roger that. I confirm transmission receipt.”

“Be advised, there are non-coded friendlies in the area of engagement. Say again, non-coded friendlies are in the area of engagement.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Washington glared over his shoulder where his RIO was sitting behind him, killing the comm. “Shut it, Geoff.” He turned the comm back on. “Roger, SOL. Intelligence received and understood. Will maintain watch for any non-coded friendlies.” He killed the comm, again glaring over his shoulder. “Do not make comments like that over an open line, Geoff. We’re being recorded. If you ever want the cowboy’s seat, you’ll follow protocol.”

“Yes, Lieutenant Commander.”

“And now that the comms are off,” Washington said, taking a breath, “well, fuck us both! How the hell are we supposed to provide close air support with non-coded friendlies in the mix!?”

“Who are we talking about, anyway?” Lieutenant Geoff Molen asked.

Washington checked the intel download as the atmosphere outside thickened enough to really start kicking them around.

“Looks like the Alliance Special Ops guys,” he said. “At least we should be able to tell them apart from the shooters, assuming we get in that close.”

“I can’t believe we’re about to lay down fire on humans to save a bunch of Alliance troops,” Molen muttered.

“We’re not. We’re about the lay down fire to save our Special Forces team and help extract an asset and prisoner,” Washington growled. “We’re going to avoid killing any Alliance soldiers because we’d rather not start the war up again. That’s it.”

“Yes, sir.”

An alarm sounded and Washington turned his focus back as they continued to drop.

“SOL, Viper One. Viper One is dropping past angels ninety,” he said, turning the comm back on. “Nosing down, angling toward the AO. We’re running hot and clear to the engagement area.”

“Roger, Viper One. You are cleared for weapons hot.”

Washington flipped the safety-off switch and thumbed it over, lighting up another bank of displays to his right as well as changing his HUD to red.

“Viper One is weapons hot.”

The Saddleback shook as the weapon pods opened up, catching the air and altering the already crude aerodynamics of the heavy-duty ground support drop ship. Nose down, reactors burning hot, and weapons winding up, the Saddleback was going to war.

*****

Sorilla landed in a crouch, extending her guns in front of her as she picked out targets and opened fire.

Her team leapfrogged back under the cover she provided, their rifles roaring as they lay down suppressive fire to keep the enemy from regrouping or returning fire with any organized intensity.

“Colonel Aida, Viper One inbound,” the voice broke into her comm link on the command channel. “We have a package for you.”

“Good to hear, Viper One,” Sorilla responded as she leapt back, arcing over ten feet in the air and fifty along the ground to evade a warp pulse that tore apart her previous position. “Standby for priority tasking.”

“Standing by.”

Sorilla emptied the remains of her magazines into the man who’d fired on her, then started tagging the enemy vehicles.

“Viper One, prioritize enemy mobile vehicles,” she said. “When those are neutralized, orbit and provide general cover as possible.”

“Roger that. Piece of advice, Colonel?”

“Speak.”

“I’d duck if I were you.”

“Roger that, Viper One. Bring the heat,” Sorilla said, opening up to the general combat channel. “Heads up, boys, close air support is inbound. Unless you want to be hit by friendly fire, you might want to stay closer to the ground.”

Everyone hit the confirmation tags, and she hoped that was enough. Close air support was a chancy thing at the best of times, but with as many people mixed up in the mess as they were dealing with now, it would a minor miracle if someone didn’t at least catch a stray.

*****

“Angels seventy, boss.”

Washington nodded, pushing the throttle forward to keep up their speed as they continued to dig deeper into the ever-thickening atmosphere.

The Saddleback was the latest in a long and distinguished line of close air support craft, and like its predecessors, it was in many ways a gun that someone designed an aircraft around. The hundred-millimeter auto-cannon Washington was currently straddling ran the entire length of the Saddleback, powered by twin reactors and enough capacitors to light up a small city. Five rails and a ten-thousand-round-per-minute feed rate would put ten-centimeter-diameter depleted uranium slugs wrapped around a tungsten core downrange at hypersonic velocity.

There was little that existed that could take that kind of heat and come out unscathed.

“Target acquired,” Washington said. “Confirm lock.”

“Lock confirmed,” Molen responded. “No tagged friendlies in the line of fire.”

“Let’s hope the untagged ones got the message,” Washington said as he cleared the last safety. “Viper One. Guns, guns, guns.”

He stroked the firing stud, barely bridging the circuit for an instant, and in that moment the Saddleback rattled around him as the gun loosed just over forty rounds downrange. The rounds hit the air in front of the Saddleback with enough speed that the friction lit the oxygen in the atmosphere on fire. Streaks of fire rained down from the cannon, reaching out into the distance and vanishing into a cloud between him and his target, but Washington was already shifting to the next target.

“Target acquired. Confirm lock.”

*****

Sorilla dropped when the alert hit her HUD, trusting everyone else on her team to do them same, but she was far from certain about the Lucians.

“Kriss!” she called over the open air, amplifying her voice. “Get down!”

The cloud cover overhead parted like the hand of God had punched a hole through it, which wasn’t a bad description, in Sorilla’s opinion. The hundred-millimeter rounds lit straight lines of fire as they slammed into the ground and destroyed anything between them and the ground in the process.

The first burst tore a four-by-four to shreds in midair, the vehicle having been caught after going over a particularly large bump. The strike perforated the vehicle’s battery core, which was already operating on a heavy load, the heat and chemical reaction exploding the batteries in some rather impressive fireworks.

Huh, they’re using old-style batteries, Sorilla noted idly as she gingerly stuck her head back up to survey the situation.

Another burst parted the clouds, slamming into a second vehicle and turning it into flaming shards. She looked around, making sure to get her implants enough scans to match up with the data she was still getting from the SOL’s overhead scans.

The APC was still moving away, now putting some distance between them and the enemy formation…such as it was. The strikes from the Saddleback had scattered the enemy in all directions.

The second the Saddleback signaled the end of the strike, Sorilla was moving even before the shots landed. She charged directly into the lines of fire as they burst through the clouds and tore apart another vehicle, both guns blazing as she charged.

*****

In the back of the transport drop ship, Staff Sergeant Manuel Gutierrez stomped across the bay.

“Get in your racks!” he bellowed. “Every last living one of you better be in your racks before I turn back around!”

He made his way to one end of the bay, pivoting on his heel when he got there and freezing as he noted every single Special Forces man in their rack as he’d ordered…and every single Lucian standing there in the middle of the bay, staring at him.

Gutierrez took a breath, muttering under his breath, reminding himself not to cause an interstellar incident. SOLCOM did not need a new war with the Alliance because he tossed a bunch of Alien pansies off his plane without chutes.

“What in the ever-loving hell are you lot doing?” he demanded finally, glaring at them.

“You do not give orders to Sentinels,” one of them growled in rough English.

Gutierrez stared for a moment, just restraining himself from laying into them. Finally he just shrugged and walked over to his own rack and pulled down the restraints.

“You know what? Stand right there,” he said, all smiles and pleasantries. “Just a heads up, though, we’re about to do a hot retrieval. That means this bird is about to rock and roll, and that floor your standing on is about to be open to the atmosphere. I highly recommend you hang on, cause we’re about to have one hell of a ride.”

The Lucians exchanged glances, confusion pretty clear in their posture.

“What does this mean?”

“It means, you dumbasses,” Gutierrez swore, “that if you don’t get in your damn racks, this flight is about lose a bunch of extra weight that is apparently too stupid to be worth the space it’s taking up. So rack the fuck up!”

Reluctantly, the Lucians moved over to their side of the drop ship hold and finally got themselves locked into the racks that secured them properly. Gutierrez looked them over, checking that all the telltales were green, then connected to the cockpit comm.

“We’re all locked in and ready here.”

*****

Caliph acknowledged the staff sergeant’s report as she trimmed the drop ship’s flight profile and bumped up the throttle just a bit. They were circling the fighting, coming around on the APC from the west as she tried to avoid any ground-to-air potshots from the locals.

“Keep an eye on that Saddleback,” Caliph ordered. “We don’t want to stray into his line of fire.”

“You can say that again,” Ensign Gin snorted.

The cannon on a Saddleback was a very real threat to anything short of a starship hull, and while the SOL could laugh off anything the ground support drop ship could dish out, her transport sure as hell couldn’t. Getting between it and what it was shooting at was a sure-fire way to ruin your day.

Caliph opened up the comm to the back. “Captain, Staff Sergeant, we’re about to open up the doors. Keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times; otherwise you damn sure will lose them. Cheers.”

She closed the comm and flipped off the safeties, then triggered the lower bay doors. The drop ship shuddered as the bay opened up, pressure differentials rattling everything as the bay equalized.

“Ping the APC. Get me sub-centimeter location and vector information,” she ordered her RIO. “I don’t want to bounce that thing around the back. If that happens, we’ll be lucky if we only lose men back there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gin answered, “pinging the APC.”

Caliph hit the thrusters as she decided on her approach vector, and they were pushed hard back into the seats as the transport drop ship accelerated into the running firefight.

*****

“Dust-off inbound!”

Strickland looked over to where Chavez was sitting. “ETA?”

“Two minutes, sir.”

“Roger that,” Strickland said, shifting in the command chair of the APC and accessing the team communication channels. “Two minutes to dust-off. I say again to all units, two minutes to dust-off!”

The steady roar of the APC’s gun had dropped off, targets getting smarter about presenting themselves now that fire from the sky had joined the fray. Hammers of the Gods slamming your ass into the ground had a tendency to make even the most hardened fighters question their life decisions.

The APC was rattling them around like dice in a box, though Strickland was thanking the designers of his suit for having put an integral air supply and really good filters. Both Eri and the prisoner had thrown up several times already, and he didn’t envy whoever was going to clean that up.

Chapter 16

“Angels twenty!”

“Got it,” Washington said, not looking up. “Hold on, this is about to get fun.”

“Angels fifteen!”

Washington didn’t acknowledge the update, though he noted it as the drop ship continued to plummet through the lower atmosphere. He deliberately moved through the checklist, his motions unhurried as the ground level practically screamed up toward them, flipping over a bank of switches.

“Angels ten!”

“Retro thrust engaging,” Washington stated simply.

The Saddleback shook even more violently than when the gun was fired, and they were slammed down into their seats. Washington felt his spine compress as the thrusters roared and smoke surrounded the cockpit.

“Angels seven!”

Seven thousand feet, still dropping hard and fast, Washington kept on the thrusters as the Saddleback flattened out its flight pattern and changed from a steep drop to a sharp arc.

“Angels six!”

“Initiating variable flight geometry,” Washington said, pushing a lever forward.

The Saddleback rattled ever harder for a few moments as wings swiveled out from armored compartments, and then smoothed right out.

“Angels five…and holding,” his RIO said, sounding a lot calmer.

“Viper One has transitioned to low atmospheric flight mode,” Washington announced over the comm. “Coming around to orbit the area of operation.”

“Roger, Viper One, good hunting,” the SOL’s communication’s officer replied.

“All hunting is good hunting. Viper One out.”

Washington looked over his shoulder. “Line ‘em up, Lieutenant. I’ll knock ‘em down.”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant Commander. You want it, you got it.”

Washington nodded as the Saddleback arced around and switched his focus again. “Peregrine, Viper. Make your pickup run. We’ll cover you.”

*****

Caliph nodded, flipping a couple overhead switches. “Thank you, Viper. We’re making our run in thirty seconds.” She looked over to where Gin was sitting. “Tell me we have the positioning and vector data.”

“We’ve got it, updating five times per second,” Gin responded. “I’m trying to get it faster, but there’s some interference in the air.”

“Five times per second is enough for the job,” Caliph said, pushing the throttle forward and putting the nose down. “We’re going in. Signal the APC. Ready or not, they’re about to be caught.”

“APC signaled,” Gin confirmed. “They’re waiting on us.”

“Alright, let’s do this.”

Caliph pushed the stick and the throttle forward, dropping the transport low to the deck as the speed increased. Ahead she could see flashes and smoke from the fighting, so she hit the alarm to tell everyone to buckle up.

“Setting countermeasures, twitch settings,” Gin said.

“Won’t do much good, but if it makes you feel better…” Caliph replied. “They’re using manually operated Alliance warp blasters. If one of them has decent aim and gets off a shot, we’ll be hit before the countermeasures notice anything.”

“Cheery,” Gin said. “Thanks for that.”

“Any time.” She grinned. “All part of the fun.”

“You need help, Peregrine,” Gin told her. “Just so we’re clear on that, okay?”

“Crystal, Gin. Crystal.”

*****

Sorilla hit the ground as warp blasts rained down around her, the fire far less focused but a lot heavier as the enemy fired blindly but enthusiastically as they tried to substitute that enthusiasm for discipline. It was a common tactic, especially among weaker and lesser trained forces, but not one that generally worked.

She pushed her guns out ahead of her, taking time and aiming carefully, each shot dropping a target with methodical precision. Controlled fire around her from the rest of the team told her that the others were doing the same.

Briefly she glimpsed figures moving in and out of the smoke of the battle, the Lucians taking the fight right to the teeth of the enemy despite the threat of a blue-on-blue strike from her, her team, or the air support Saddleback.

Sorilla admired their guts, if not their brains.

A rumble built up, penetrating her focus and armor, causing Sorilla to glance up as the transport drop ship came in low and fast, though decelerating quickly. The belly of the flying beast was open, and she could see men and Lucians strapped into racks within as the craft slid on by overhead.

“Anyone close enough to get to the APC, here’s your ride,” she called over the team comm link, not really expecting anyone to take it.

“I’m good here if you are, Colonel,” Nicky said over the comm, a chatter of gunfire in the background.

Sorilla shook her head, unsurprised by the response but exasperated all the same. “All right, you lot, cover the APC’s pickup and then get ready to E and E.”

Escape and evade would be their next step, once the primary objective was accomplished, at least until the SOL could send another craft for an extraction. Her team was all well-versed in such things, of course, but she really didn’t know about the Lucians. She had to assume they had some version of the standard course, but what sort…well, she supposed there was always time to find out.

*****

Major Strickland surreptitiously doubled checked his restraints, not wanting to freak out the two civilians about what was to come.

“Hang on, everyone. About to get rough here,” Chavez said from the gunnery station. “I’m securing the gun for transport.”

The whirr and clank of the gun rotating back into its housing vibrated through the armor to the interior as they were rocked and bounced around the interior of the APC. The driver was fighting to keep them on the straight and narrow as the pickup closed in, and that was making for a rougher ride as the driver stopped trying to find smoother paths.

“What’s going on?” Eri asked, ashen-faced from where he was secured into a trooper rack, looking undersized in the space intended for a big man in full armor.

“Standard extraction,” Strickland answered brusquely. “Just hang on. It’ll be fine.”

Chavez choked off a strangled laugh, earning him a glare from Strickland.

“Shut up, Master Sergeant.”

“Sorry, boss,” Chavez said, switching over to a private channel, “couldn’t help it. I notice you didn’t tell him that no one has tried this move in an actual fight yet.”

“It worked fine in field trials. We’ll be fine.”

“Famous last words.”

*****

The transport drop ship cut speed as it approached, matching the running APC as it settled in a few dozen feet off the deck to give Caliph a moment to double check her assumptions. When the math checked out, she dropped the stick and sent the big transport descending at a faster pace than any sane person would ever try outside of an emergency.

The open belly of the transport loomed over the APC as the craft jittered around while the computer made the last-second adjustments needed to keep from crashing and killing everyone on both vehicles in a fiery ball of death. Then the transport steadied and came down quick, swallowing the APC in an instant.

Muffled clangs were heard for hundreds of meters as the transport locked the APC in, and then the reactors whined loud as the thrusters flared bright for a moment before vanishing invisibly into the infrared spectrum and the craft pulled up from the ground.

It was like a magic trick to those outside. One moment the APC was there; the next it was gone. Like the old game of cups and balls, only with just one single ball and cup pulling the effect off.

Caliph pushed the throttle all the way past the red line, nosing the transport up and making for altitude as fast as the drop ship could claw its way up.

*****

“Peregrine, all units. Extractions complete. Returning to SOL to offload asset and prisoner. Good luck.”

“Thank you, Peregrine,” Sorilla said. “All units, break contact. Escape and evade. I say again, escape and evade.”

Sorilla provided cover as her team broke contact on her orders, but rather than picking the best route for herself, she waited until the team was on their way and then started fighting her way to the Lucian Sentinels…and, of course, toward the enemy.

She bolted across the dusty ground, sliding into a trench dug up by enemy fire where Kriss was lying on his side for cover. The Lucian twitched in her direction, but she closed a hand on the body of his blaster and held it at bay as he recognized her.

“Time to go,” Sorilla said.

“The enemy are still fighting.” Kriss grinned, a slightly maniacal look on his face. “It will be time to go when they are all dead.”

“There are still fifty enemy soldiers, at least, coming around the villa,” Sorilla growled. “My team has pulled out. You are not going to reenact the Battle of the Alamo on my time!”

“Reenact the what?”

“Kriss!” she snarled. “It is time to leave!”

He glared at her. “You humans are beginning to disappoint me.”

Sorilla leaned in close to him. “Ask me if I care.”

Kriss glowered at her, but she didn’t budge, despite the sound of warp blasts tearing the living hell out of the battlefield all around them.

“You’ll actually sit here arguing with me while the enemy descend upon us?” Kriss asked, a touch of wonder in his tone.

“If that’s what it takes to get this through your thick skull, yes.”

He maintained his straight expression for a short time longer, then abruptly broke into what passed for alien laughter. Sorilla wasn’t entirely immune to the chills it invoked, but she refused adamantly to let that show.

“Acceptable,” he told her, grinningly wildly, and for a moment Sorilla thought that meant he would happily stay there at an impasse until they both died under enemy fire, but he snapped a hand up. “Sentinels! Withdraw! We have accomplished the task!”

Sorilla masked a sigh of relief. “Good. Let’s move.”

“Move along. I’ll follow,” Kriss told her with an almost absent wave.

Sorilla started to her feet, then paused as she noticed a discoloration on the ground below him. She paused, scanning the light reflected off the discolored dirt, and sighed audibly.

“Damn it, Kriss. I told you to stay out of the fighting.” She dropped back to one knee beside him. “How badly did you tear open your wounds?”

“That is not your concern. Go. I will cover your withdrawal.”

“You damned idiot,” she growled, hooking his arm up over her shoulder and lifting him to his feet. “If you get me killed, I swear I’ll find a way to make you pay for it.”

“Leave me be, human,” Kriss protested. “A good death awaits here.”

“Against these worthless pieces of shit?” Sorilla scoffed, extending her free arm and putting three rounds into a particularly brave, or more likely stupid, attacker. “You won’t punch much of a ticket to Valhalla here, Kriss.”

“What is this Valhalla?” he gritted out as she physically hauled him out of the depression in the ground and away from the fighting.

“Is this really a time for metaphysical discussion?” she asked, pulling him back as she fired back toward the enemy positions with her free hand.

Kriss hefted his warp blaster and propped it against his hip, firing it as they moved. “You can think of a better time?”

Sorilla sighed, exasperated.

“Grit your teeth,” she ordered.

“What? Grit my…? Argh!” Kriss roared in pain as Sorilla ducked down and put her shoulder into his mid-section, lifting him up over her shoulder. “You human—”

“Stop yapping and shoot them while I run!” she snarled, turning and bounding away.

He swore fluently in several languages, only a very few of which did she personally understand. Swearing was swearing in any language, however, so she dutifully set each of them to memory. It always surprised Sorilla, actually, how very useful swearing was to her job.

Kriss’s weapon fired steadily as she moved, the staccato beat twisting her guts with each surge of the gravity warp. Sorilla ignored it as best she could, using the focusing techniques she’d been able to use to keep from puking during ship jumps.

The entire battlefield was a twisted mess of conflicting signals, each of which was pulling her attention in different directions. The result was the mother of all nausea episodes and a real impact on her ability to maintain balance as she ran. She leveraged the suit sensors to compensate for the disorientation and did her best to maintain stability with her eyes instead of her whole body.

Even with all the practice she’d had over the years, she still stumbled when a blast flew by close enough at just the wrong moment. Staggering with the extra weight on her shoulders, Sorilla barely avoided pitching to the side as another blast warped the air by her right side.

“What are you doing?” Kriss demanded from over her shoulder.

“Shut up,” she snarled in return, gaining her balance again and pushing forward again.

“Colonel,” a voice came over the command channel. “Viper One, coming around. Need a hand?”

“Roger that, Viper One, and thank you for any cover you can provide.”

“We have your IFF on our scopes. Keep your head down and we’ll bring the fire.”

“Negative, Viper One. We are not keeping anything down. Withdrawing under fire, provide cover as you can,” Sorilla ordered.

“Roger that, Colonel. Package inbound.”

With warp blasts chasing them, Sorilla and Kriss ran out into the desert just as lines of flame struck across the battlefield, rolling thunder echoing across the field as the Saddleback appeared from the distance, firing steadily, then arced slowly away as it completed the fire mission.

*****

Washington looked over his shoulder as he pulled the Saddleback around and left the area of operation.

“SOL, Viper One.”

“Go for SOL, Viper One.”

Washington flipped off the capacitor link to the gun, securing it for flight.

“Viper One reports fire mission complete,” he said over the comm. “Gun is secured. Viper One proceeding away from area of operation. Request window for orbital extraction.”

“Roger, Viper One, hold for calculations.”

“Roger, SOL, holding.” Washington secured the comm and checked over his shoulder again. “Any sign of air defenses?”

Lieutenant Molen shook his head. “No radar, no LIDAR, not even any gravity scanners other than the Alliance ship. We’re in the clear.”

Washington frowned. “That make any sense to you?”

“Does what make any sense?” Molen asked, confused.

“No air defenses, at all?” Washington asked. “You’d think they’d have some sort of monitoring system in place, if nothing else.”

“Maybe they shut it off?”

Washington scowled. “Shut it off? Why would they do that? Unless they were planning on…” He trailed off, checking the instrumentation package before opening the comm to the SOL again. “SOL, Viper One.”

“We don’t have your window yet, Viper One.”

“Not that. Do you have any unidentified flights anywhere near the AO?” he asked. “There’s something odd down here.”

“Hold on.”

“Yeah yeah, hurry up and wait, I know the drill,” Washington said, securing the comm again before turning to look back at his RIO. “Keep an eye on the scopes.”

*****

USV SOL

“Operation complete.”

Mattan didn’t look up at the pronouncement, too focused on the remaining icons left on the world below.

The green ones were moving away from the fight, which was fine. He knew his men, and he knew Sorilla well enough to know that they would be fine. In many ways, the lot of them would be more at home down there, on the run, than they ever were in their rooms on the SOL. The grayed-out icons, those were the ones he spared a moment of silence for, however.

Three men. Rather low, considering the force they went up against, I suppose.

It didn’t really matter, though. One was too many.

“The transport drop ship has gone to full orbit burn,” a young ensign announced. “The SOL will have to shift orbit to pick them up. They do not have enough fuel to reach a stable orbit.”

Ruger nodded. “Tell the captain to bring us down to pick them up. Let’s find out what they stumbled into, whether it was worth any of this.”

Mattan snorted. “It never is.”

“Points of view, General,” the admiral said, “points of view. The life of one good man is worth more than all the bastards we’ve ever put down over the years…but the intelligence that man can deliver to help us put down more bastards…that might just be worth the effort.”

“You ever get tired of playing this game, Admiral?”

“Never. You?”

Mattan laughed. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t.”

Ruger shrugged. “I’ve worked Navy intelligence most of my damn life now. I enjoy it. Of course, I’ve always been a sociopathic piece of shit, if you listen to my superiors.”

The general chuckled. “I believe them, but you’re our sociopath. I never really got the hang of separating myself from the lives that got tangled up in the ops I ran, both soldiers and civilians. Probably why I never got tapped for the hot seat.”

“You never got promoted to organization command because you can’t play the political game worth a damn,” Ruger told him. “Had nothing to do with your competence. You just pissed off too many people over your pay grade.”

Mattan laughed openly. “Says the man whose superiors call him a sociopathic piece of shit.”

“General, in my line of work, that’s a compliment.”

Mattan tipped his head slightly, acknowledging that fact as a lieutenant stepped over to the table.

“Sirs?” the young ensign said nervously.

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Ruger said. “Spit it out.”

“Lieutenant Commander Washington just requested any information we have concerning unidentified flights approaching the AO,” the young man said.

“Oh? Were there any?” Ruger asked, leaning forward.

“Yes, sir, one, sir,” the lieutenant said, tapping the display table and flicking the appropriate scans across it to where Ruger watched.

The view of the area of operations was from overhead, live scans from the SOL overlaid with digital enhancements. The icons and timestamp were from the height of the battle, just minutes earlier.

To Ruger it felt like hours.

He spotted the highlighted icon of an unidentified craft approaching the AO, only to see it turn away abruptly just shortly after the Saddleback had opened up on its first steep approach. He tracked it with his eyes.

“Where is it going?” he asked. “The airfield is the other way.”

“Private field, Admiral,” the lieutenant said, gesturing to shift the focus of the scan.

It was a field near the mouth of the river delta, in the lushest and richest part of the colony. The unidentified craft was heading straight there, apparently unaware of its being tracked.

“Do we know who owns it?” Mattan asked.

“No, sir,” the lieutenant said.

Ruger’s eyes shifted over to the icon of the transport drop ship that was now passing angels eighty and heading for orbit.

“I bet you we know someone who does.”

Chapter 17

Sorilla skidded to the ground along her hips, keeping Kriss balanced mostly on her shoulder as she dropped into a drainage ditch. She offloaded the grumbling and severely pissed Lucian, shrugging him to the dirt and pushing him over onto his back.

“How bad is it?” she asked, glancing at his injury before pulling a scanner stick from her armor and jamming it into the dirt at the top of the ditch so she could keep an eye on approach vectors.

“I am not a healer,” Kriss growled.

“You’re leaking like a sieve,” Sorilla told him. “I’d be close to passing out by now.”

“Lucians are tougher than most sophonts,” he responded. “I will likely live.”

“Don’t be so optimistic, Kriss,” she snorted. “You sound like you’re disappointed.”

“My injuries are debilitating,” he said after a moment. “Once healed I will be removed from the active duties of a Sentinel.”

She looked at him in silence for a long moment. “You really were trying to punch your ticket to Valhalla.”

“What is this Valhalla?” Kriss asked. “There was nothing of that in our cultural briefs on your species.”

Sorilla scanned the desert around them, seeing nothing approaching from any direction or the air as she spoke.

“Valhalla is the warrior’s afterlife,” Sorilla said, choosing the simplest explanation she could fine. “When a warrior dies in combat, he or she will be carried off to Valhalla by…maidens on winged mounts.”

“And…you believe this?” Kriss asked, barely disguising his amusement.

Sorilla shrugged, the exaggerated expressive used by people in armor. “It’s not common these days, and no, it isn’t my faith. However, it is one that appeals to soldiers. I served on Task Force Valkyrie, named after the maidens of the story. A number of those who served with me were faithful—some just because of the task force’s nickname, but a lot of them got very serious about it as the war drew on.”

Kriss slumped back. “I can see the attraction of such a faith.”

Sorilla nodded. “It spread quickly, especially during the harder moments of the war.”

“Such times try even the hardiest,” Kriss said. “The war with the Ross…changed many things among the Alliance races.”

Sorilla nodded but didn’t reply when a hint of motion was caught on the scanner. She refocused her attention, scanning the area through the mobile stick, but didn’t see anything.

“What is it?”

“Scanner picked up motion,” she said. “Don’t see anything though.”

“Wind, perhaps.”

“No.” Sorilla shook her head. “Something is out here.”

“Your instruments show nothing?”

“Not a thing,” she replied.

Kriss stared at her for a long moment. “And you don’t believe them?”

“Something is out here.” Sorilla drew her right-hand pistol, checking the load. “Stay here.”

Kriss laughed painfully, holding pressure over his injury. “Where would I go, Colonel?”

Sorilla didn’t respond as she began moving down the ditch in the general direction of the motion that her scanner had briefly picked up. The furrows in the ground were deep and winding, providing plenty of cover for people who, like themselves, were looking to avoid being spotted.

None of her scanner systems were particularly adept at penetrating the ground/air interface, which meant that she would have to go peek around the curves herself.

She edged over to the turn in the trench, leading with her gun and using the barrel camera to look around the corners. As she pushed around the corner, Sorilla caught a blur of motion on the camera feed and started to react just as a force slammed into her arm and jarred the gun loose.

She flipped her hand around, grabbing at the arm that knocked her, and yanked, jabbing a hard left that was blocked as she dropped her head to avoid a swing on her head. She caught the glint of a blade and reacted by stepping in closer, levering the attacker up and heaving him into the air with all her strength.

Spotting another figure, and suddenly recognizing them both, Sorilla sighed mentally and reached out to grab number two before stepping backwards. She yanked her target forward, just in time for number one to come crashing back to the ground, crushing the second into the mud.

“Are we quite done?” she asked, looking down at the two Lucians who were working to extricate themselves from the tangle they were in.

Kriss was laughing to kill himself, which, with his injuries, was an entirely possible outcome.

“Shut up, Kriss,” she growled. “You’re going to make your injuries worse.”

She retrieved her pistol, shooting a glare at the two Lucians who were getting to their feet.

“You two idiots need more practice ghosting,” she said. “Motion trackers picked you up at least five times before you got within fifty meters.”

“I warned all of you to be wary of the humans,” Kriss chastised them. “You should not have gotten within her reach at all, let alone without your blasters charged.”

Sorilla rolled her eyes. “If they were trying to kill me, that would be true. They weren’t interested in killing me, however. They were testing me.”

Kriss laughed. “I have seen you fight. They still should have come fully armed.”

“Possibly,” Sorilla replied, holstering her weapon once she got it cleaned off. “In the meantime, are there any more of you nearby?”

The Lucians glanced at Kriss first and got a signal from him that Sorilla noted and memorized before they would speak.

“The others are not far. We elected to approach and determine your status,” the Sentinel said to Kriss.

“I have been better,” Kriss responded. “However, it seems that I will yet live…to fight another day.”

“It’s better if we stay split up until a dust-off can be arranged,” Sorilla said. “I don’t see any sign of pursuit, but this is their land. If anyone can sneak up on us, it’ll be them.”

“We saw no signs of pursuit either,” the other Sentinel said. “We watched after we broke contact. After the chaos from the air assault faded, the enemy milled about for some time, then picked up their bodies, as well as ours, and withdrew back toward the colony.”

“How many did we lose?” Kriss asked.

“Two.”

Sorilla looked down. “I saw three of ours go dark.”

“Five losses,” Kriss considered. “How many of theirs were eliminated?”

“Forty-three, we counted,” one of the Sentinels responded, grinning. “Not the best exchange ever recorded, but far from the worst.”

“Against those pansies, we should have done better,” Sorilla growled. “Fucking amateurs.”

“Certainly.” Kriss nodded wearily. “Skilled soldiers, with those weapons and the time they had to prepare, should have destroyed us. We would have made them pay dearly, but we should not have escaped, let alone inflicted the casualties we did.”

Sorilla dropped into a crouch, sighing. “No way these losers took out your people, Kriss.”

The Lucian Sentinel gritted his teeth, but gestured in agreement.

“They are rebels, no doubt, but they’re not the ones we want most.”

“We’ll clean up here,” Sorilla said, “then move on to the other world. Maybe the organization we want will be there.”

“Perhaps,” Kriss said, dully.

“We know someone is shipping…what did you call them? Blanks?” Sorilla asked, getting an affirmative gesture. “That kind of illegal weapons market doesn’t just go to some group of nobodies like these people. Sell them weapons? Sure. But state of the art blanks, like this?”

Sorilla got up and paced.

“We’re dealing with an organization that is deeply entrenched in the Alliance,” she said. “They’re delivering incredibly valuable military-grade ordnance to losers like these local fools…and just letting them play with it? When I was with the Fifth, I’d never have just handed a bunch of local yokels those sorts of munitions without supplying a training team. You’d have to be completely insane to just dump military-grade weapons on a bunch of idiots like this and then leave them to their own devices.”

“Perhaps they are meant to distract us,” Kriss suggested.

“I could get the exact same results with a few lots of obsolete gear that no one in your command chain would have even blinked at,” Sorilla said. “You said yourself that weapons are regularly sold to Alliance protectorates.”

“True enough,” Kriss conceded. “That leaves us with nothing then.”

“None of us are investigators,” Sorilla said, “but we have more than nothing. We have a local militia with weapons they shouldn’t have. That’s reason enough to come down on them like hammers of the Gods. Maybe we pick up some more evidence in the mess that’s left over.”

Kriss laughed, grinning at the other two.

“I rather enjoy the way you think,” he said. “That would be a rather satisfying way to proceed.”

“Yeah,” Sorilla said. “Yeah it would.”

*****

USV SOL

“We have the intelligence, sir.”

Ruger looked up as the chief petty officer marched up to him. “He talked?”

“The prisoner tried to hold out,” the chief said, “but with the asset to provide enough information to check him when he lied, it wasn’t hard to check his bullshit.”

Ruger nodded, gesturing to the map table. “What do we have then?”

“The target area is one of the original colonist lots,” the chief said, pointing to the map. “These days it’s where the upper class live so they can keep out the riffraff.”

“I was under the impression that Eri was one of the…um, upper class?” Ruger asked.

“Yes, sir, but Mr. Eri seems to be young and rebellious. He apparently moved his primary home out to be closer to the fields that his family controlled,” the chief said. “Something the hoi palois apparently found rather distasteful.”

“So, the airfield we tracked the aircraft to?” Mattan interrupted, steering the conversation back.

The chief shifted. “Private, but communal, field. Used exclusively by the original controlling families only.”

“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” Mattan grumbled. “So, were they observing, or were they hoping to grab someone or something after the strike?”

“We haven’t been able to sweat that out of the prisoner yet. Working on it.”

“That’ll do for now, Chief,” Ruger told him. “I think we have enough to proceed. Keep us updated.”

“Yes, sir.” The chief saluted before turning and leaving.

Ruger looked over to Mattan. “Call Aida. We have a new mission directive for her.”

“Most of her team is up here now.” Mattan frowned.

“She’ll make do. She always has before.”

*****

Night was falling across the desert when the call from the SOL came through. Sorilla had settled into a small indent in the ground above the lip of the ditch and was keeping watch with the full array of her scanners.

“Colonel Aida, SOL.”

“Go for Aida,” Sorilla replied automatically.

There was a brief pause before a familiar voice replaced the comm officer’s.

“Hey, Sister,” Mattan responded. “Have some new intel for you, and new mission directives.”

“Bring it on, old man,” Sorilla said, a hint of a smile playing at her lips.

“We have two areas of interest for you,” Mattan told her. “Sending to your system.”

Sorilla noted the push notification of the new mission locations pop up on her HUD and opened them with a thought. Two places on the colony were lit up on her map, along with intel files for each.

“Short version?” she asked.

“Location A is the location of an airfield that an unidentified aircraft redirected to shortly after Viper One went operational. We think they were planning on grabbing something, or someone, and changed their mind when the Saddleback opened up with its gun.”

Sorilla snorted. “A pissed Saddleback will make damn near anyone reconsider their priorities. What’s location B?”

“That’s where the armor, and bodies, of our fallen were taken.”

“Mission accepted,” Sorilla responded without hesitating. “What’s the window for backup?”

“We can drop a squad on you almost any time, of course, but we’re not sure if a full drop ship deployment is in the interests of the mission,” Mattan told her. “It’s your call.”

“Hold them ready for now,” Sorilla decided. “I’ll take what I have here and scope things out. If I need help, they’ll be, what, twelve minutes out?”

“Fifteen if you want the drop ship. Twelve if they sleep in the tubes.”

“Tell them sweet dreams, old man.”

Mattan chuckled. “You got it, Sister. Good hunting.”

“It always is,” Sorilla answered. “Stay tuned. I’ll be in touch. Aida out.”

She killed the comm link and leaned back so her head was hanging over the edge of the ditch, switching to open air.

“Hey, we’ve got a mission. You mission-ready?”

Kriss looked up at her, grimacing as he sat up.

“I am.”

Sorilla looked at the others, who simply got to their feet and looked back, and she nodded.

“Let’s go. All of you.”

*****

Corporal Nicky Farrel shifted from where he was lying, covered in dust and dirt in a shallow depression, a push notification shifting his focus from watch duty to his HUD. He checked the information, then opened up a short-range comm channel.

“Wakey wakey, everyone,” he said. “Vacation’s over.”

Sand and dust moved nearby, revealing the remaining seven members of the operational detachment A-team as they broke from their cover and rose to their feet.

Warrant Officer Brackston checked the notifications. “The colonel has intel. We’re to meet up with her and the Alliance guys on our way to check out an unidentified aircraft that apparently decided to reconsider its flight plan when the Saddleback opened up on the ground forces.”

Nicky snorted. “I’d reconsider my life decisions if I thought I was about to cross that bad boy.”

Several others laughed openly, but the warrant officer cut them off.

“Once we clear that objective, we’re to recover Jackson, Briggs, and McKinnon,” he said seriously. “So pucker up, boys. Time to go recover our own.”

*****

They came out of the desert in two groups, dust swirling in their wake.

Sorilla nodded to the warrant officer as the two groups joined up just east of the active fields.

“Warrant Officer Brackston.” Sorilla nodded as the rest of the A-team joined up with her and the five remaining Sentinels. “Are the men ready to roll?”

“Hoo-ah, Lieutenant Colonel,” the warrant officer replied instantly. “Running defense sucks, ma’am. Looking forward to playing offense.”

“Well, good news there, Warrant Officer,” Sorilla said. “I’m in a mood to be offensive.”

“Good to hear, ma’am. What’s the plan?”

“Well, from what our friend,” Sorilla sneered a little at the word, “told the old man, or whoever he has doing interrogations this time, an unidentified craft we tracked lead right back to the colony’s top families. We’d like to know who was behind the force we encountered and why they wanted to assassinate, or kidnap, Eri.”

“How about why they decided to do it when we showed up?” Nicky snorted.

Sorilla turned to look at the corporal. “I assume they intended to blame us for whatever it was they were going to do.”

“So we lost three good men because they wanted patsies?” Brackston growled.

“That’s about the short of it.” Sorilla nodded.

“You do know, ma’am, that for that we’re going to have to make this hurt, right?” Brackston asked.

“Right there with you, Warrant Officer,” Sorilla said as they walked. “Let’s just be sure of our targets before we pour on the pain. Clear, Warrant Officer?”

“Crystal, Lieutenant Colonel.”

Satisfied, Sorilla refocused her attention. “The only question is do we handle this in the order the old man gave us, or do we go get our own first?”

“We do not put the mission at risk.”

Sorilla glanced to where Kriss was stiffly walking along with them, flanked by his Sentinels.

“No,” she agreed. “No, we don’t. However, there are good case arguments to be made for reversing the order of the mission. I’d like some more intelligence before we bust up the local robber barons, if only to see if we can get anything on their security before we try breaking it.”

“You think we can get that where they took the bodies?” Brackston asked.

“If you were grabbing advanced combat armor, beyond what SOLCOM had access to, where would you take it, Warrant Officer?” Sorilla asked.

“Wherever SOLCOM told me to, ma’am.”

Sorilla chuckled. “And where would that likely be?”

Brackston gestured in concession. “A secure facility, where the armor could be examined.”

“And from my experience, secure facilities are goldmines for all sorts of intelligence.”

*****

USV SOL

“How are they doing?” Ruger asked, walking over to the display table.

“Sister and the others met up outside the fields. They’re heading into the colony again now,” Mattan said.

“Good,” Ruger said. “How long before they hit the airfield?”

“Assuming they proceed directly to the target? Four hours.”

Ruger looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, ‘assuming they proceed directly to the target’? You issued orders, mission priorities?”

“Of course I did. You heard me,” Mattan said. “And I fully expect Sister to evaluate the situation on the ground and make her own call. She always was good at that, even the first time I met her…raw boot, straight off the Q-course. She called out an eight-year vet, a staff sergeant, because he’d gotten a cultural indicator wrong. She was right, of course, but that didn’t save her from his wrath.”

“You step in?” Ruger asked.

“Hell no. I helped him punish the uppity little bitch,” Mattan laughed. “Right or not, you don’t call out your superior without consequence. She took her licks, like a good little soldier, then went right back to work. If Sister thinks she has the right of things, you’d need a warhead to move her.”

“I’ve noticed,” Ruger admitted. “Not one of her best features, but I’ve been willing to put up with it because she’s the most experienced soldier in SOLCOM and her results speak for themselves.”

“You put up with it,” Mattan chuckled. “I actively kept her on my teams because of it. In the field, Admiral, when you’re out of contact for weeks or more at a time, the ability to make decisions in the absence of orders, or even that seem to go against orders but ultimately advance the mission, is a priceless skill.”

“SOLCOM agrees,” Ruger said with a shrug. “That’s why she was accepted when she applied for deep space training. I was an intel man before the war. Didn’t get involved in the field until I made admiral, ironically enough.”

Mattan snorted. “You were an intel weenie your entire career until you made admiral? That’s ludicrous.”

“General,” Ruger sighed, “you never applied to SOLCOM, which means that while you may know how bad things got in the war, you really have no idea. In the first month we lost damn near every skilled spacer we had. I’m not exaggerating. Aida is currently the most experienced deep space officer in SOLCOM, and she has been almost since the day her first SOLCOM squad died.”

“So you got promoted to field work, what? Because no one else was available?”

“Only a grunt like you would call what happened a promotion.” Ruger rolled his eyes. “Mattan, I took the field position because no one else could do the job. I wasn’t promoted; I voluntarily stalled my career because the job needed to be done. Same reason your golden girl got on the fast track. We needed people do jobs that we didn’t have anyone for, so some of us got pushed into positions we weren’t ready for.”

“That’s war, Admiral. No one is ever ready for it.”

Chapter 18

“Now that,” Sorilla said as she knelt under cover of a copse of trees, “is what I would call a guerilla base.”

She had ultimately decided to redirect her team to the location of the bodies before making a decision about which objective to focus on first. They had followed the locator beacons in the armor suits to what Sorilla recognized as a pretty classic guerilla, or terrorist, training camp.

“Get a count on forces, categorize weapons, vehicles, whatever else comes up,” Sorilla ordered, gesturing to the Forces men. “Kriss, if you spot any Alliance tech we need to worry about, I’d appreciate a heads up.”

Kriss just grunted, issuing similar orders in what she had come to recognize as a Lucian battle code that she had yet to crack.

“I’m going to dive the suits,” she said, leaning back against a tree and closing her eyes as she linked into one of the captured suits, trying not to think about the fact that she would be looking through a dead man’s eyes in the process.

Her eyes reopened inside the guerilla base, inside the armor of Corporal McKinnon.

The armor was in lockdown; the death of the wearer secured all classified intelligence, wiped all but the basic identifiers, and put the armor itself one step away from a hardware wipe. So far the enemy forces hadn’t attempted any intrusive examination of the armor, so the systems were still mostly intact.

Sorilla looked around, positioning herself. The armor had been left in the back of a truck, propped up on a couple other bodies taken from the battle. She checked, but neither of them were Lucian or in SOLCOM armor.

The warp blast that had killed the man whose suit and implants she was using hadn’t done too much to the hardened armor, thankfully. Unfortunately, armor was of little value against a space-time warp, which was one of the reasons Lucians didn’t bother with the stuff. Sorilla didn’t need to access the internal scans to know that the body was little more than jelly.

The suit scanners were in decent enough shape, however, and she used them across the field of view she had to get an idea of what kind of forces were in the camp and what they’d be looking at when it came time to pull out the bodies.

They were training, unsurprisingly.

What put her off was the fact that they were doing so in an incredibly stupid way. Target practice with an Alliance warp blaster was akin to learning how to aim a small nuke. Aiming it wasn’t the issue. Making sure you didn’t kill your own people…that was a bit more of a problem.

Sorilla observed everything the suit could see, making mental notes and logging anything solid she saw before disconnecting from the armor and opening her eyes back in her own body and armor.

“They’re so twenty-first century it hurts to watch them,” she said as she got up from where she’d been sitting. “I’m not ruling them entirely out—it’s always possible that they have a few prodigal minds in the bunch somewhere—but by and large these are the sort of idiots we send rookies in to cut their teeth on.” She shrugged, glancing over at Kriss. “Initial recommendation is leave them be. Use them to train your recruits, but these idiots aren’t a threat to anyone but themselves.”

The Lucian snorted, clearly enjoying the evaluation. “I would be inclined to agree, so far, and will take that under advisement.”

“What about the bodies?” the chief asked from where he was kneeling. “We’ve scanned another eighty combatants in the camp…probably only forty or so that are really ready for a fight though.”

“Leave them for now,” Sorilla decided. “The armor is on lockdown again, and they’re not prepping for any invasive attempts to breech it, which is what I was worried about. We have the lay of the land now. I’m thinking this is where we do exfil.”

The chief laughed. “That’s ballsy, ma’am. Caliph is going to love you.”

“She needs training in a real hot drop anyway,” Sorilla said. “It’ll be fun.”

“If you say so, ma’am. So, what now?”

“Now we head for the airfield.”

*****

Thankfully the rich dicks never seem to want to live close to the poor bastards who pay to keep them on top.

Social elitism seemed bred into humans, and while it offered some advantages to the elite…particularly when times were good, it also made them easy and obvious targets in bad times. Right now, Sorilla and the men and Lucians with her were looking to usher in some very bad times indeed for whoever had tried to take them out at the villa.

They bypassed the colony, using the extensive irrigation ditches for cover once the thicker flora was no longer an option. Since the local elitist types didn’t want any of the underclass living up next to them, much of the surrounding area was ostensibly irrigated for food production.

In reality, Sorilla discovered as they got closer, the plants growing in those fields were more chosen for their pleasing appearance rather than any caloric or nutritional value.

It figured.

It was a walled compound, but the overall security was nothing particularly impressive. There was evidence of cameras. However, they were either turned off or in bad repair because she was able to scan the models and determine that there was no power to any of them.

“Security seems light,” the chief said as they observed the area.

“They didn’t build to keep out soldiers,” Sorilla said. “The wall is…it’s strange. It’s not a rich man’s wall either. Those are more ornate.”

“Seen it before, ma’am.”

Sorilla half turned. “Where would that have been, Corporal?”

Corporal Janus stepped in closer and nodded to the wall. “It’s a typical militia design, ma’am. Still in use back home. It’s not really intended to keep out a military force; it’s more intended to slow down cops.”

Sorilla slumped. “I should have realized that. They probably built it after the ship landed, using specifications they were familiar with. Well, good for us, I suppose. Corporal, shall we?”

She gestured to the wall, and Janus nodded before stepping in closer.

“Quietly, please,” she told him.

“Yes, ma’am.” Janus put his hand on the wall, using the suit to scan the construction a little closer with the suit’s infra-sonic system. “Okay, we can breach with a standard kit, ma’am.”

“I said quietly, Corporal,” Sorilla reminded him.

“Trust me,” Janus said, retrieving a kit from his pack. “We’ve made them better.”

Sorilla held up her hands, conceding the point to the corporal’s experience as she stepped back. “Do your thing, Corporal.”

Janus got to work, laying out a strip of flat, rubberized material in an oval large enough to walk through, then he grabbed a small detonator and connected it to the rubber material.

“Okay, step back,” Janus said, taking his own advice. “Fire in the hole.”

Sorilla automatically started to flinch away, but rather than the dull crump she expected, the sound was more of a fizzle and her gut twisted very minutely. Intrigued she looked back and leaned in, noting the almost smokeless burn from a pure white flame. The sizzle ran quickly, just a few seconds, and material started melting away from the wall in a small river.

The section inside the thermal material slumped in place, then fell back as Janus stepped aside to let it land in the mud.

Sorilla nodded and looked through the hole. “Impressive. Clean through. I didn’t think you could get that without an explosive cut.”

“Directional thermite,” Janus replied. “It uses an EM field to direct the iron in the paste. At least, that’s more or less how they explained it.”

“It’s not electromagnetic,” she said, looking through the hole.

“It’s not?” Janus asked. “I distinctly remember the briefing saying that.”

Sorilla nodded, swapping to the squad secure channel. “Not surprising. Pretty sure the real reason is classified like you wouldn’t believe. I’m surprised they issued it to you for this mission.”

“Why this mission, ma’am?”

Sorilla glanced over to where the Lucians were standing, observing them.

“Just don’t let the Alliance people get too close when you’re using that,” she ordered. “The EM story should hold, for now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Janus said, sounding confused but accepting the order.

“It’s cool enough,” Sorilla said, scanning the hole. “Proceed.”

The team broke cover and moved through the wall, heading into the compound and toward the airfield.

*****

USV SOL

“Finally.” Ruger rolled his eyes as they watched the team enter the compound and begin their approach to the target.

“I told you, Ruger,” Mattan said, “Sister makes her own calls.”

“I’m not annoyed with her, or her decision,” Ruger grumbled. “What I am is aggravated as hell that we couldn’t give her enough intelligence to keep her on target from the start. This mission is a mess, start to finish.”

“Finish is a long way off yet,” Mattan said, “but yeah, it’s a field op. They’re always a mess. Now, where’s the target aircraft?”

Ruger gestured over the table and one of the hangars lit up. “Right here. Is the backup team ready to go?”

“Sleeping in the tubes. They have been since the start of this,” Mattan confirmed. “We’ll launch them the second the team is spotted, or when Sister calls for them, whichever comes first.”

“Drop ship will be following them down, I presume?”

“With the Saddleback covering them both,” Mattan nodded. “Relax. We know our job.”

“I hate field ops.”

Mattan chuckled. “I’ve seen your record. You’re surprisingly not bad at them for someone who dislikes them so much.”

“Too much at stake to be less than perfect, General. Far too much.”

*****

With the Lucians, Sorilla reflected absently as they moved quickly to the side of a hangar for cover, she had the equivalent of a full platoon for the operation. It was an odd composition for a Special Forces platoon, of course, but so far it seemed to be clicking well enough together just the same.

The twelve-person team settled in against the corrugated metal of the hangar, waiting while the forward observer edged out to the corner and extended his suit scanner beyond so he could get a picture of the field beyond.

Piggybacking on his scans, Sorilla observed the scene carefully.

It looked much like any small airfield might, on Earth or Hayden. Her own personal field, in fact, was quite similar. The days of long stretches for takeoff and landing were mostly gone, aside from a few seriously large heavy lifter vehicles that still had need of the space, so everything was assigned to relatively small pads that were carefully leveled out of the local terrain and surfaced over to prevent FOD damage from any stray particulates.

The hangars were for repair tools and gear, as well as more secure spaces for people who wanted to keep their craft protected from whatever might happen. Less affluent sorts just left their own vehicles out in the open in their own space.

All very standard, extremely normal.

Except one of these was flying toward Eri’s villa right at the time of the attack.

It seemed…less than likely to be a coincidence.

“There’s the target hangar, ma’am,” the forward observer said, tagging the building in question.

“Map us a least-contact path to the building,” Sorilla ordered. “Everyone else, look for witnesses. I want to be in and out quietly, if at all possible. Certainly I want to acquire whatever evidence we need before the shooting starts, clear?”

“Crystal, ma’am,” Chief Warrant Officer Brackston said firmly. “We’ll ghost this whole damn place if that’s what it takes.”

Sorilla smiled slightly. “I suspect our friends here might feel put out if we don’t get in at least a little shooting, Chief.”

“There’ll be shooting enough for everyone when we recover the bodies of our own, ma’am.”

“Right you are, Chief. Very good point. Ghost away.”

The chief warrant officer nodded and gestured quickly, signaling the others without accessing the NFC communications channels. Men broke up into pairs, swiftly going about their business with the quiet professionalism she expected from the Fifth.

Sorilla caught the shoulder of one of the men, the team’s shooter, and gestured with two fingers to a tower near the wall some distance off.

“That looks like an old watchtower, Sergeant Craig,” she said. “No sign of use for some time, but I believe you might make good use of that?”

The sergeant glanced over at the tower, considering for a moment.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe I can. Permission to take Corporal Gilbert and secure the tower, ma’am.”

“Make it happen. Oh, and Sergeant,” she said before he could head off.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Be sure to secure your egress point as well.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sorilla watched the man tag another troop and the pair broke off, keeping low in the weeds as they started across to the tower.

Chief Brackston came over. “Ma’am?”

“We need overwatch from a little closer than orbit, Chief. I’ll feel better with a marksman watching my back.”

Brackston nodded. “No complaints here, ma’am.”

“Ma’am.” A corporal gestured, calling her and the chief in closer. “We have an approach route.”

“Good. I want to see the inside of that hangar. Let’s move.”

*****

“What happened!?”

The elderly man roared his anger over the voices of everyone present in the opulent establishment.

“We sent over SEVENTY men! Seventy men armed with the best weapons we could acquire from those beasts that call themselves our rulers. How is it possible for us to have lost so many against so few?”

The listeners shifted uneasily, no one willing to volunteer a response.

“No one?” he ground out. “Not one of you even has an excuse?”

“Apologies, Elder,” one younger man finally said, stepping forward. “We misestimated the skill of the Earthers who were working with the Xenos and traitor. Elder, we have not had a standing army since landing on Arkana. Our militia are brave fighters, they did not flinch, but they were outclassed on every level.”

The old man glowered hotly across the room at the speaker, letting his hands drop to the table.

“So, one of you has the balls to state the obvious,” he gritted out. “We have had no need for an army here, not since we left the filth of Earth behind. We should have realized, perhaps, that eventually that filth would reach out to us…or even that there would be other unholy beasts from beyond the stars themselves that would seek us out.”

He sighed, taking a seat with ginger care. “Pull the archives, everything we have on organization and training for a standing army. It is clear now, we have been complacent. We will no longer be guilty of that sin.”

He sighed, looking around the group.

“Call up the militias,” he ordered. “I want the weapons secured. Eri survived, and as long as that holds, there will be elements in the colony we’re are unable to fully control. These damn Xenos and the Earthers are conspiring against us, and at this point we do not need that sort of attention.”

*****

“Colonel, overwatch,” Sergeant Craig said as he lay prone in the old watchtower that had seen its best days more than a few years before. “In position.”

“Roger, overwatch,” the colonel’s deceptively soft voice came back quickly. “Standby. We’re going to cross to the target hangar. Watch for any sign of witnesses. Sing out if you spot anyone.”

“Roger that. On it.”

Neither he nor the corporal splayed out beside him were looking through scopes just yet, using their suit systems to get a decent magnification on the compound. Sniper scopes were more powerful, by far, but the field of vision was correspondingly narrow and that made it difficult to spot anything other than exactly what you were looking at.

“Call out if you see anything,” Craig ordered over the NFC link to the corporal. “I’m going to check the windows of the big hall over there.”

“Got it, Sergeant.”

Craig shifted his focus, tightening in on the large hall. The building was ornate, with lots of large windows opening up on the zone the team was going to have to cross. He quickly scanned from window to window, looking for anyone that might be peeking out in the wrong direction, but determined that the windows had to be set high in the building to provide light rather than a view.

The locals seemed fond of gothic architecture, or perhaps neo-gothic might be more accurate.

“Colonel, overwatch. You’re clear to move.”

*****

“Go,” Sorilla hissed, gesturing to send the first four men sprinting low across the open space to the hangar.

The rest hung back until they had gained cover by the hangar, then Sorilla paused just long enough to confirm they were clear again before she sent the next group across. That left her and the Lucians waiting for the next window.

“We’re next,” she said. “No contact, no shooting. We’re still in intelligence-gathering mode. Clear?”

The Lucians all gave her a look that she interpreted as rebelliousness, but Kriss nodded curtly.

“We understand. Patience is a warrior’s ally,” Kriss said. “We can be patient…until it is time to not be patient.”

“That time is coming,” Sorilla promised, glancing over as she cocked her head to listen to a voice they couldn’t hear. “Move.”

They broke cover, springing low and bent over as close to the ground as they could, not stopping until they reached the cover of the hangar, where they were met by the rest of the squad with rifles covering all directions around them.

“All clear, Colonel,” the chief said, gesturing over his shoulder. “Side door, just up there. We’ve scanned the building, eyeball and tech. No one inside.”

“Breach the door,” she ordered. “Let’s get inside.”

“Roger that,” the chief said, gesturing to the breaching team.

The door popped with no effort, and they went through quickly into the dark interior of the hangar.

It was big, of course, with a single aircraft parked in the middle.

They approached slowly, the team covering all sides as Sorilla, Kriss, and the chief walked up to the aircraft.

“Access is open,” the chief said, nodding to the lowered staircase that was unfolded from the fuselage.

“Old design,” Sorilla said as she approached the access point. “We haven’t used tubular fuselage in…what, decades?”

“More,” Chief Brackston said. “I’ve flown on a few of these rattletraps, restored antiques and the like. They fly like pigs who can’t figure out how they got up there.”

Sorilla chuckled as she climbed the stairs into the belly of the beast. It was large enough inside, she found, and clearly outfitted as a mobile command post of sorts.

“Chief, call in Keane,” she ordered.

The chief nodded. “He’s on his way.”

The technical specialist appeared seconds later. “Chief? Ma’am?”

“This looks like a mobile command vehicle, Corporal,” Sorilla said. “I want a full data dump of their computers before we move on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sorilla watched briefly as the man got to work, but turned her focus away to move forward to the cockpit.

She took a seat in the pilot’s chair and examined the controls. They were pretty standardized; controls hadn’t changed significantly since the VTOL systems became standard. She reached under the console and flipped the switch marked for power, bringing the systems online.

“I’m going to pull the flight data,” she said as the chief stepped in behind her. “See if you can find anything useful.”

“I’m not much of an investigator, ma’am. More of an instigator, frankly,” the chief replied.

“Noted,” she said as she turned on the navigation system and flipped through the recorded waypoints stored in the system. “Someone was definitely planning on landing at Eri’s villa…huh…”

“What is it?” the chief asked.

“They weren’t coming here after the villa,” she said. “They had another waypoint set.”

“Where?”

Sorilla shifted, looking to the north for a moment. “Out to sea, several miles out to sea.”

The chief frowned. “I don’t remember any islands or structures out that way on the map.”

“There aren’t any. I expect it was a one-way trip for someone,” Sorilla said, shutting it down.

The chief winced. “Ouch. Seems a little extreme, though. Why not just shoot the target and plant him somewhere?”

“Politics would be the obvious answer,” Sorilla replied. “Some people are too dangerous to leave around, even if they’re just a dead body…especially a dead body in some cases. It’s not uncommon to lose a body that’s more trouble than it’s worth, Chief. We’ve done it in the past.”

“Chief! Colonel!”

The pair got up and made their way back into the command post part of the plane.

“What is it, Corporal?” Sorilla asked.

“Data dump is finished. You might want to check this,” Keane said, sending a packet to them.

Sorilla opened it quickly, examining the files.

“Oh, shit.”

“What are seeing?” Brackston asked. “I’m not seeing anything here.”

“Kriss!” Sorilla twisted, heading out of the aircraft. She only paused to glance back. “Good work, Corporal. Shut it down. Get back with the squad.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*****

Craig swore, looking toward the gate. “We have trouble.”

His spotter twisted, looking over, and let out a slow whistle.

Men and vehicles were coming in through the gates, and they didn’t look like they were arriving for a social occasion.

“Boss,” Craig said quietly, “we have an issue.”

Chapter 19

Parithalian Diplomatic Cruiser, Red Sky

Seinel would have been swearing, if he weren’t one to keep all emotions as close to his core as he kept his holdout weapon. The Alliance bureaucracy was not in any way being particularly cooperative with his requests, and the entire situation was making him wonder how much of it was normal obstinacy and how much was conspiratorial in nature. He was now all but certain that at least some of it was the latter, just the degree of which remained in shadow.

Most of his recent information requests had been dropped into some black hole between the stars, or as near as he could tell, and it seemed that the only solid responses he had gotten were in the negative.

No, the humans may most assuredly not fire on the planet. No, you may not fire on the planet. No. No. No.

He’d expected at least some of that, of course; it was hardly common for any government to allow an alien force to engage people on their territory in any sense. Permitting the humans to use ground forces, even as a joint operation, was stretching what the Alliance would allow to begin with.

However, he had expected his follow-up request to provide fire support himself to be granted.

When that answer came back as quickly as it had, the wheels began cranking in his mind.

In his experience with the Alliance, or almost any governmental body for that matter, fast answers were bad news. It meant that someone had already thought of what you’d just asked, made a decision, and then decided not to tell you about it until you asked. There were few reasons to do that, almost none of them good.

He was preparing a new set of requests, strategically arranging for them to arrive at different specific times and to be sent to different branches of the Alliance government, in order to see just how far the conspiracy—whatever it was about—had spread, when an urgent pulse from the planet below demanded his attention.

Seinel examined the file identifier first, noting that it was from Kriss, and then quickly opened it.

As he read, a sensation of cold and ever increasing depth began to weigh on him.

This is impossible. No one would be so…interminably foolish. Would they?

Seinel killed the file and immediately looked over his requests again.

Something is far deeper here than I feared. What is going on?

*****

USV SOL

“Well, this isn’t good.”

Mattan snorted, amused by the sheer ballsy weight of that particular understatement. “Admiral, you have a talent for stating the obvious.”

Ruger shot him a mild glare, but compared to the chill in his guts he was feeling from looking at the colonel’s report, his irritation with Brigadier Mattan was a minor thing.

“Okay, I get selling weapons,” he grumbled, “I do. I even understand selling weapons to terrorists. It’s a dumbass thing to do, but hell, we’ve done it before and no doubt we’ll do it again.”

That was true enough, Mattan knew. Selling weapons, even to your enemies, occasionally made some flimsy sense. Often your enemies had enemies of their own that you didn’t like, and that was enough to excuse arming them.

What they were looking at now, however, was something very different indeed.

“No one, but NO ONE,” Ruger went on, “sells weapons of mass destruction. Goddamn period. You don’t even sell those fuckers to your allies, let alone potential terrorists. What the hell is going on here?”

“That is a question I don’t think any of us can answer just yet,” Mattan said. “However, it’s clear that this isn’t the situation we were briefed on by the Alliance. The only question is did they know how badly their briefing was fouled up? Or are they as flat-footed as we are right now?”

That, Ruger supposed, was the question.

Wasn’t it?

*****

Arkana

Elders’ Compound

“This makes less sense than the blanks,” Kriss growled out as he examined the data Sorilla had pulled from the aircraft’s computer. “And I assure you, the blanks made no sense at all.”

Sorilla was grim as she examined the data more in depth, agreeing with him as far as she was capable.

She’d found reports of recent acquisition of Alliance singularity devices.

They were crude versions of the Ross’s gravity valve that, while not nearly as versatile in nature, were more than powerful enough to take out…well, honestly, she wasn’t entirely sure how powerful they were. The Alliance had never used them on any targets during the war, preferring tactical weapons on the ground and ship-based strategic weapons in space.

That was fair enough, to her mind. Largely SOLCOM had followed similar doctrine. The only group that didn’t were the Ross, which she supposed counted as Alliance, though Sorilla had begun to segregate the two in her own mind.

“How much yield are we talking about?” she asked, grim-faced.

“Yield?” Kriss asked. “As I understand your conventions, I do not believe the term applies. The explosive power associated with these weapons is incidental and hardly adds anything significant to the damage. They are sub-planetary devices, which means they can be used on the surface of a world without creating a sufficiently massive singularity to swallow said world. However, in terms of destructive power…I believe the correct term would be their radius.”

“Which is…?” Sorilla asked through clenched teeth.

Kriss made a face she couldn’t decode. “In human terms…ten kilometers, I believe.”

“Jesus.”

A ten-kilometer radius meant that if one of those were set off, everything for ten klicks around would be destroyed. Not damaged, mind you. Destroyed. The weapon would dig out a bowl of dirt, suck in buildings, people, everything for ten kilometers in every direction, and compress it together with enough force that, when the singularity lost cohesion, the resulting expansion would snap atomic bonds. The implosive power would then turn explosive, and everything would be spit back out as energy.

Well, mostly energy. Some of the matter would survive the singularity long enough to be flung back when the field collapsed. Not many weapons Sorilla was aware of would use buildings, for example, as shrapnel.

“Leaving these intact would be a mistake,” Sorilla sighed.

“It would be a crime,” Kriss corrected her. “A high crime against the Alliance. We must neutralize those weapons.”

That was not really what she wanted to hear, though she had no intentions of leaving those things around. Adding the pressure of “high crimes” to the play just made things that much more aggravating to deal with.

Deal with it they would, however.

“Alright then, Sentinel. Let’s be about it,” Sorilla decided. “We have a location on the material, so I’m calling for backup. You should do the same.”

Kriss nodded grimly. “I am beginning to think that we should simply wipe out every insurgent and be done with this entire situation.”

“Careful,” Sorilla said. “Violence has never in the history of the universe solved anything. Usually it just makes problems like this worse.”

Kriss snorted. “That is an amusing statement coming from one such as yourself.”

“Violence isn’t a solution,” she reiterated. “Violence is currency we use to buy time to implement a solution. And like all currency, if you overspend on what you’re buying, you get screwed. The key is to buy just enough time to achieve our goals, otherwise we’re likely to get ourselves in a death spiral where we’re forced to spend more and more violence to buy less and less time. Eventually, if you go that route, you wind up being forced to choose between giving up or just murdering every living thing in your path until there’s no more time to buy. Neither option is palatable to me, so let’s do this the smart way, if you don’t mind?”

Kriss grunted his response, but didn’t object.

Sorilla figured that was the best she was going to get. She masked a sigh as she considered the situation, knowing that whatever they did, there would be an inevitable blowback. It was the ultimate problem when dealing with insurgents of any stripe.

A key factor in their strategy was death. Their own.

It was how guerilla forces drove recruiting, by encouraging their enemies to kill them. It was also one of the hardest things for civilians, and even most soldiers, to understand about terrorists. They really did want to die, or rather their leaders really wanted the rank and file to get killed. It was good recruiting propaganda, and terror groups recruited or died on the vine.

Conventional forces set against terror groups were in a no-win scenario from the beginning. When your enemy wanted you to kill them, and they were willing to inflict incredible horrors on random targets to force you to do just that, you had little choice but to give them exactly what they wanted.

The key was to only do what you had to, nothing more. Collateral damage was a gift to the enemy, and treason to the innocent and allies alike. Of course, that only worked if someone had a plan to actually correct the issues that led to the terrorist problems in the first place.

Too bad it was so much easier to say than to accomplish. Few people gave a damn about the causes of the problem. They just assumed that if you solved the problem itself, everything would be fine, while ignoring the underlying issues that would inevitably result in more of the same happening in the future.

On the other hand…literal army marching through the gates.

“Make your calls,” Sorilla said. “Let’s bring the thunder.”

*****

USV SOL

Alarms blared from all sectors as the SOLCOM Navy chief stomped across the deck, hammering on hatches.

“Wakey wakey!” he yelled. “Get ready for a hot drop, ladies!”

The soldiers in the tubes, who’d been there waiting for days already, hit their acknowledgement switches in turn, and lights began turning green as the chief made his way to the command and control statement. Once there, he keyed into the ship’s command network. “Drop pods are green. Waiting for launch orders, Captain.”

“Standby for insert coordinates and final clearance, Chief.”

“Aye aye, Captain. Standing by,” the chief confirmed, tapping in a series of commands.

The green lights on each tube were joined quickly by a second light shifting from red to yellow as he opened up a connection to the entire group.

“We are in launch-standby mode,” the chief said firmly. “ETA to DZ is ninety seconds, barring de-orbit burn.”

The men in the tubes acknowledged the update, leaving the chief to his work as he waited for the final order.

It came within the minute.

“Launch is green, Chief. Flush the tubes.”

“Roger, DZ window opens in thirty-eight seconds,” the chief said firmly. “Engaging automatic launch sequence.”

A new alarm blared as the yellow light began blinking, the countdown entering terminal launch mode.

“Drop in thirty seconds.”

The computer voice took over then.

“Twenty-nine…twenty-eight.”

The SOL swept orbit over the primary colony of the world below as the countdown progressed, the launch tubes swinging into position just as the final few seconds ticked by. In the silence of space there was no sound, or any flash of light or fire, or practically any visible trace at all as the first three tubes launched.

Rotating cylinders thunked heavily into place before three more fired.

And again.

And again.

Six repetitions of three launches per, fired off in the span of less than twelve seconds, putting eighteen men briefly into space before the fires of entry friction began to ablate away their armor.

Eighteen shooting stars tore through the atmosphere of Arkana in a loose spread formation, followed by two drop ships and four alien shuttles from the Parithalian flagship paralleling the SOL’s orbit.

War was coming to Arkana, from the deep black to the dusty sands.

Chapter 20

Sorilla surveyed the compound. “Overwatch, situation?”

“Nominal. Minimal movement,” Craig replied.

“We’ve located coordinates for local WMD stash,” she said, kneeling by the doors of the hangar and sweeping the exterior with her implants. “New mission priority. Secure and demilitarize WMDs. Drop inbound.”

“Roger that, ma’am. Orders?”

“Provide cover for team and drop. Sending target coordinates now,” Sorilla said firmly, sending along the pulse of data with her words.

“Receipt confirmed, orders acknowledged. Wilco.”

“Aida out.” Sorilla broke the link as she waved Brackston and Kriss forward. “The WMD depot is inside the compound,” she said. “It’s sure to be guarded, but we should be able to secure it with minimal casualties.”

“Is that truly a mission priority at this point?”

Sorilla glanced at Kriss. “Depends on whether you want to do this properly or not. We’re not going to risk our own people, but if we can take it clean, that’s what we’re going to do. So keep your people back. We’ll survey the scene and direct the drop team in. Your team will provide support and cover if things go bad, as will our drop ships. That work?”

Kriss looked unhappy about it, but finally nodded.

Sorilla half thought that the only reason he agreed was because it would mean more fighting for those Sentinels already present, but really didn’t care much as to his reasoning. As long as he held up his part, she was willing to take it and call it a win.

She lifted her hand, getting the attention of everyone as she sent highlighted data to the HUDs of her own people.

“Break on my signal,” she ordered. “Move toward the depot. Ghost as long as possible, but do not allow any forces to flank our positions. Better to break cover than get ourselves surrounded when the balloon goes up. And it will go up. Clear?”

No one spoke, not even the Sentinels, but most nodded firmly.

“Good. Break!”

The team slipped out of the hangar, covering each other in groups as they sprinted across the open field to the next building.

*****

Mitchell Sands balanced the rifle he carried on the strap across his shoulder, bracing it on his knee as he leaned up against the side of the Elders Hall, and lit the cigarette in his hand. The flash of sparks spotted his vision briefly as he sucked in the smoke and held it, blinking against the light and smoke.

Rumors were rampant, and he knew for sure that the Elders were in an uproar, but no one had told him what the hell was going on yet. Whatever it was, he hoped it was good enough to be worth wasting his time as he was.

He let out a cloud of smoke, chest heaving as he relaxed back in the shade cast by the building he was resting against and wondered how many, if any, of the rumors were worth the air it took to relay them. Everyone was buzzing about contact from Earth, which seemed like a dream.

Everyone had sort of figured that Earth had descended into the crapper after the ship had left. It sure seemed to be heading that way in the histories. Multicultural idiocy had let terrorists right in through the front doors of nations that should have had more sense but were blinded by liberals’ bleeding hearts.

It shouldn’t have been sustainable, but if Earth had made it seriously into space, he supposed that somehow they’d pulled it through.

Probably got smart finally and just wiped out all those barbarian fuckers, he supposed. It seemed like that was the only sensible solution, after all.

Mitchell took a last long drag on his cig, casually flicking the smoldering stick into the sand as he pushed off the wall and started to move again. He crossed past the corner of the building just as a flicker of motion moved in his peripheral vision.

Mitchell didn’t get a chance to turn in that direction when a looped arm draped around his neck and tightened abruptly as another reached forward and knocked the rifle from his grip. He struggled, gasping as his air was cut off, and more spots popped in his vision as everything started going dark.

*****

Chief Brackston dropped the figure back in the shade of the building, propping him up in a sitting position as he retrieved the half-smoked cigarette and tucked it back into the unconscious man’s lips.

That done, he gave the weapon he’d taken a brief once over before ejecting the round from the chamber and catching it in midair.

“Looks like a modified NATO round,” he said as Sorilla approached from behind him. “Heavy, big, but pretty much obsolete.”

“It’ll do the job against anything short of power armor,” she said, “and enough of them would probably push our armor to a failure point just the same. That’s not a hunting round.”

Brackston nodded, closing his fist around the military-designed, armor-piercing round. He tossed it aside, then reached into the breach of the weapon he was holding, using the strength of his armor to break off the firing pin before he tucked the rifle back into the arms of the sleeping watchman.

Sorilla was already past him, signaling for the next team to move as she took up covering position and let them leapfrog to the next position.

Brackston hefted his assault carbine and followed along, taking his position in the formation as they crossed the compound, heading for the location listed for the Alliance WMDs. He kept part of his attention on the Lucian “allies” of the moment, impressed by their line discipline now that the action had commenced.

Prior to that, he had to admit, he hadn’t been overly impressed with them.

Unruly, seemingly angry, and, as Aida had told him, action junkies.

SEALs without the focus, almost, at least until the fighting starts, he supposed. Of course, he had known more than a few SEALs who pretended to be total hotheads when not on mission as well. The difference being, they’d been on mission since leaving the SOL and the Lucians didn’t seem to be pretending.

*****

Sorilla was trying to keep her mind on all the different factions that were converging while attempting to figure out how it would play out once everyone realized just what the hell was about to go down. It was easier to think than it was to do, however, if for no other reason than because she knew there was at least one entire faction she had no intelligence on at all.

The WMD storage has to be guarded, and if they have any sense, those will be the best and most trusted people the Elders can call on, Sorilla knew.

It was possible they were stupid enough to use fodder for the job—she knew that a lot of the militia idiots on Earth that had made up the colony ship here were that level of stupid—but she couldn’t count on that.

Didn’t want to count on that, frankly.

Stupid enemies were always nice, but only for certain levels of stupid.

Stupid enough to easily outthink, that was good. Stupid enough to trust morons with the protection of WMDs was the sort of stupid that burned everyone, however. She would generally prefer her enemies to be just a hair smarter than that, as a good rule of thumb.

“Bunker ahead,” she said, designating the target building on her HUD and pulsing it out to the squadron as she cocked her head slightly. “Drop team inbound. ETA to reinforcements… eight minutes. Confirm receipt.”

Lights on her HUD lit up green as the team signaled confirmation back, leaving her to only have the Lucian team to worry about.

She needn’t have bothered. Kriss was already beside her.

“Our team is coming just behind,” he told her. “Half again the estimated arrival.”

Sorilla nodded, logging that as twelve minutes on her HUD. “Understood. Watch for security. They should have their best people on that.”

“One would hope. However, I long ago lost faith in such things,” Kriss snorted. “Do you really have your best people on such things?”

Sorilla considered some of the stories she knew about strategic weapons depots and cringed.

“Point,” she conceded.

Guarding WMDs was a vitally important task, but it was also a mind-numbingly boring one. In theory, only the best of the best went in, but the duty was a mental meat grinder that could break damn near anyone.

“Assume otherwise, however,” she ordered. “If they’re incompetent, all the better, but I’m most worried that someone onsite will have the codes.”

Kriss shot her a startled look. “The weapons are in the middle of their Elders’ compound and the primary colony site. Surely they wouldn’t do something that insane!”

“Remember what the admiral said?” she asked dryly as they proceeded toward the bunker. “These people began as xenophobic by nature, whatever they may be now. It’s entirely possible that some of them will literally turn their city to expanding radioactive gasses rather than allow aliens to take over.”

“You have a disturbing culture,” Kriss snorted, seemingly amused. “I believe I might rather enjoy it.”

Sorilla rolled her eyes, though he couldn’t see it.

Lucians.

“You and they deserve one another,” she said dryly.

They paused, covering behind the last building before the bunker she had identified from the files they’d dumped from the aircraft’s computers. It didn’t look like much, but she supposed that it was too much to ask that they have an actual proper munitions depot to secure weapons that could practically crack the planet’s crust.

“Team’s in position,” Brackston informed her. “Do we wait for the drop team?”

Sorilla debated that for a moment, trying to determine their best move. The team was now a little more than six minutes out, but the garrison reinforcements were less than three away from the depot. That put her and the local team in a tough position.

If they couldn’t take the depot in three minutes, they’d be caught in between two forces for three more while waiting for backup.

If they waited, then the reinforcements would have that three minutes to join up with the garrison. Not good if they wanted to blitz the depot and secure the special weapons as quickly as possible.

Sorilla sighed. “Kriss?”

“Take the depot,” the Lucian grunted. “The weapons are the primary mission at this time.”

“Major?” she asked.

Brackston sighed. “I want to hold back, Colonel, but concur with Sentinel Kriss. Take the depot.”

“Roger that. All units…take the depot.”

*****

Guard duty was the worst.

Harold Macks grumbled to himself as he walked his post, passing his fellow as they moved around the front of the depot building.

“Militia is coming in,” George Crumm told him as they approached one another. “Looks like the Elders are in a bit of a spit.”

“What else is new?” Harold asked, rolling his eyes. “They’re always in a twist over something.”

George shrugged. There was no denying that.

“Still, has to be something big, don’t you think? Looks like they called up everyone,” he said. “We were told to expect a pretty big reinforcement.”

“Probably the Xenos,” Harold said. “Rumors are that they’re messing about on Arkana again.”

“Rumors are that some humans from Earth are with them,” George laughed.

“That’ll be the day.”

The two shared a chuckle, but Harold cut off abruptly as he caught a hint of motion in his peripheral vision.

“What the hell…?”

He twisted, voice trailing off as he found himself staring at something in the shadow of the building that just…didn’t look right. He was trying to figure out why when it moved again, suddenly lunging right at him and changing color abruptly to become an armored figure seemingly blending right out of the shadow and becoming real in front of him.

“Holy—!”

He started to swear, but his voice was cut off by a diagonal strike that snapped his head around, sending the world to black as he pitched into the ground.

*****

Brackston dropped to a knee and cleared the guard’s rifle as a slight tussle beside him signaled that the Lucian Sentinel had taken out the other guard just as neatly as he had his own.

“Guards down. Move!” he said, snapping the rifle in two pieces and tossing them aside as he rose back to his feet and nodded curtly to the Lucian. “We have two and a half minutes.”

The alien grinned at him, sending a chill down his spine.

“More than enough time.”

It wasn’t the teeth, exactly, but there was some eerie, uncanny sensation in seeing the alien flesh move in a way that was almost but not quite human. He suppressed the sensation and gestured to the bodies.

“Let’s get them inside,” he said. “That may buy us a minute or more while they try to locate the guards.”

The Lucian nodded and they pulled the bodies through the dust and dirt, inside the front door where two Lucians and an armored human were already setting up to hold the position from any attack.

*****

Sorilla brought her knee up, folding the target nearly in half over her leg before tossing him aside by the back of his BDU jacket.

“Main entry secure,” she said, looking around. “Kriss, move your people to find and secure the munitions. Major, hold the front door.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Brackston replied. “Holding the door.”

Kriss was already moving deeper into the depot, which was in reality just a large aircraft hangar, as best she could tell. Sorilla swept the large area as best she could, eyes focusing up on the rafters above as she spotted movement.

Her pistol cleared leather in a moment, barking once as it fell into line with the target. Across the hangar a figure silently fell from the rafters, the impact with the ground only audible to enhanced hearing.

“Sniper down,” she said. “Watch the rafters for designated marksmen.”

The cat was out of the bag at that point, and almost instantly she heard shots fired from varying points around her.

“Weapons free,” she ordered, unnecessarily in reality but in keeping with protocol. “The stealth portion of the evening is over.”

Chapter 21

Kriss twisted, a pulse from his warp rifle expanding out from the weapon to smash a charging man into the far wall with enough force to buckle the steel wall. He made one check to ensure that the target was down then looked around before sliding his weapon back behind him and leaving it to hang on the straps as he approached the large Alliance Standard containers.

“This is all wrong,” he grumbled in Alliance Standard, retrieving his tactical scanner and sweeping the ceramic canister.

A chirp from the device, barely audible over the sound of warp blasters and gunfire, refocused his attention, and he swore softly in Lucian.

“Don’t know those words, but I know the tone,” Sorilla said as she approached from behind him. “What’s the situation?”

“More blanks,” he growled. “These containers don’t match any documented numbers in Alliance systems.”

“They blanked containers?” Sorilla scowled. “That seems…excessive. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just buy actual containers?”

“Yes,” Kriss grumbled, reaching to pop the seal on the container. “Cover me, as you say?”

“Got it,” Sorilla responded, turning to examine the area as she slowly swept her guns across the interior of the cavernous building.

The lid of the container opened smoothly on its pistons, just as he’d expect from the real examples he had encountered in the past, and Kriss swore again as he examined the contents.

“Still don’t know the words, still know the tone,” Sorilla said dryly.

“A moment,” Kriss said, scanning the contents of the canister.

The little chirp went unnoticed this time, because he was already intently examining the outcome of the scans.

“This is not possible,” Kriss said. “No one has this capability. NO ONE.”

“Blanks?” Sorilla asked.

Kriss reached up and tried to slam the lid down, but was undone by the pistons fighting to soften the blow. “There is no possible way anyone could blank a singularity fabrication line. It can’t be done!”

“Say that when we’re not dealing with something that has obviously been done, Sentinel,” Sorilla reminded him. “Can we demilitarize them?”

Kriss looked up the line, counting off ten of the doomsday devices.

“In three minutes—?”

“Less than two now.”

“No, we cannot,” Kriss snapped. “These are not devices to be rushed. Demilitarizing them will take hours.”

“Right,” Sorilla growled, opening her command channel to all the forces under her command, including the drop team that had now cleared the entry heat. “All units, WMD threat is confirmed. We will hold this location. Sending op orders to your HUDs. Confirm receipt.”

As the team began steadily confirming her orders, Sorilla drew her second pistol and started walking back to the front of the depot.

The Elders’ compound was about to become a warzone, and she doubted any of them had the slightest clue just what that meant…let alone that it was coming.

Too bad for them.

*****

Carson McLaran, Commandant of the Arkana Elder Militia—which was the oldest paramilitary group on Arkana—was not in a particularly good mood as he led his group toward the armory depot under orders from the Elders. Normally they would give at least some decent warning before requiring a full call-up of his entire group, but this time events were proceeding at a pace he wasn’t particularly fond of.

“Hey, Car,” one of his men called, “something looks strange up here.”

Carson looked over, noticing that the line had paused and stopped as well as he walked over. “What is it, Sam?”

Sam Sprite, one of his marksmen, pointed to the depot. “Where are the guards?”

Carson scowled, shifting his focus as he realized that Sam was right. There weren’t any in sight. He growled under his breath. “I swear, if those idiots are drunk again, I’m going to skin one of them alive and leave him out in the sun. Okay, let’s do this right. On your guard, approach slowly. Chances are they’re inside taking a break, but since this is all screwed up anyway, we might as well be the only group acting like we know what we’re doing.”

His men chuckled, as intended, but did as he’d told them and hefted their rifles and Xeno blasters as the column started moving forward again.

The closer they got to the depot, the more a quiet alarm began to sound in his mind.

Sure, the guards were prone to reckless disregard for their duty, so it wasn’t entirely unusual for no one to be immediately obvious, but usually there would still be someone kicking around. He called a slow-down as they got closer, fingers twitching on the Xeno blaster he carried as he tried to guess what the hell was going on.

Is this some idiot kind of test?

“Sam,” he called.

“Yeah, Car?”

“Take three men. Go on ahead. Rouse those idiots if they’re sleeping at the switch,” he ordered.

Sam nodded slowly. “And if they aren’t?”

“Then we’ll have you covered.”

Sam looked at him evenly for a moment before calling up three of the guys nearest him and starting on ahead. Carson gave the signal for his group to spread out, wondering if he was just being paranoid.

Sam’s team walked up to the front entry, looking around nervously, but nothing happened to them.

If something were up, they’d have spotted it by now, wouldn’t they?

Carson was forcing himself to relax by that point, assuming that he was just paranoid. Any enemy force would have to trip the ambush by this point, otherwise the risk of Sam’s group sending up the alarm would have blown the whole thing.

He was calming down as Sam walked up to the main entry to the depot, just as another voice called out for his attention.

“Car!”

Carson shifted, looking over to where a man was holding something up. “What is it?”

“Busted rifle. Something snapped it in half, Car.”

He frowned, tilting his head in confusion.

Busted rifle? Why would anyone just toss it like that? he thought, before he realized.

They wouldn’t.

“Sam!” he screamed, snapping back around.

Sam was halfway through pushing the big door open, and looked back at him.

“Wha—?” Sam started, his call being cut off sharply as he was suddenly yanked off his feet and into the dark interior of the depot.

“Shit! Set up for covering fire! Interlocking…” Carson started, only to be cut off like a light switch had been flipped.

He never even heard the round that took him out.

*****

“Hit. New target,” Craig grunted, shifting to the next target on his HUD, prioritized by estimated importance combined with how far he would have to move his rifle to draw down the bead on the man.

“Kill,” his spotter confirmed. “New priority target. Looks to be second in command. One-thirty, fifteen degrees elevation. Three hundred forty meter.”

“Roger that,” Craig replied as his rifle bucked again. “Hit. New target.”

Three hundred forty meters was a chip shot for the rifle he was using—almost any boot could hit a man-sized target at that range with all the computer-aided systems integrated into the system—but he treated each shot like it was an over-the-horizon target.

Methodical, slow, with utmost confidence.

The round went out, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t even sniper ranges, honestly, but he’d tuned his rifle down to subsonic speeds for just that reason. It made accuracy a little harder to achieve for him, but it made the electromagnetic rifle nearly whisper-quiet. With no muzzle flash or sonic boom to give away the position, he and his spotter were all but invisible.

“Hit. New Target,” Craig intoned.

“No priorities,” his spotter said. “Can’t tell who’s in charge. Targets of opportunity.”

“Roger, shifting to tee-oh.”

The rifle started to bark slightly steadier and quicker as Craig just began picking off targets—first come, first served.

*****

Sorilla ducked back as a burst of automatic fire raked the door, just ahead of wildly fired pulses from Alliance warp blasters.

“That’s a lot of men,” she griped, focusing on the fight through her HUD and the details being fed to her from Craig, his spotter, the SOL, and the approach drop forces that were now in final approach before they popped their chutes at the end of the OLO drop.

“Too many to hold forever,” Brackston said grimly, firing a burst through the door.

“Don’t need forever, and they’re not organized.” Sorilla grinned. “We can hold long enough.”

“Only if they don’t figure out that they’re on a clock,” Brackston said, risking a glance through the door and up.

No sign of chutes or figures in the skies, yet, but he knew that with as few clouds as there were, the time was short before they’d be visible to the naked eye. At that point it would be anyone’s guess whether the approach would be noticed. Normally a shootout would keep people focused on the ground level, but anyone who looked up would be more than enough to alert the rest to the threat.

If they chose then to charge the depot, Brackston believed that they could probably take it back. They’d have to be willing to absorb a lot of casualties first, however, and he wasn’t sure if they were likely to be willing to lay down on the wire.

Still, the threat was there.

“This is a damned screwed up thing, you know that, right?” Brackston said, using the command channel directly to Sorilla. “Helping the Alliance against a human colony.”

“These weapons shouldn’t be here,” Sorilla said firmly. “We’d take them out anyway, if we knew about them, and you know it.”

There was truth to that, he supposed. No way they’d allow any group as clearly unorganized and slapdash as the Arkanans were proving to be to control an arsenal of WMDs of any stripe. Strategic weapons were bad enough in the hands of groups that were capable of using them strategically. The same weapons in the hands of groups that could only act on tactical scales were a nightmare and a half in the making.

“True,” he admitted, “but it still feels wrong.”

“Yeah,” Sorilla admitted in turn, albeit reluctantly.

She wasn’t going to admit more than that, especially not while on a sanctioned joint op with the Alliance, but even she wasn’t immune to the feeling of being the betrayer. She’d been there before, more than once, however, and ultimately Sorilla wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.

“Lay down suppressive fire,” she ordered, changing the subject. “Keep their heads down and distracted.”

*****

The volume of fire from the depot doubled, and then redoubled, forcing the militia to hit the ground in all directions as they scrambled for cover from the blistering hail of destruction rained down on their positions. Rounds whined off the ground and surrounding buildings, whirring past overhead, and men pressed themselves into the ground like they were trying to burrow through to the other side of the world by sheer force of will.

If they were in range, they scrambled for the closest building; if they weren’t, then they would just freeze and cover their heads as best they could in the hopes that the angry swarm of bees buzzing around them would somehow choose to move on.

One man, realizing that there was cover to his right, tucked his rifle in as close to his chest as he could and rolled for his life in that direction. He ended up on his back behind cover, eyes wide with terror as he pondered mortality, the stench of fear, and the sound of those rounds tearing at the air around him.

It took several seconds before he realized that he was looking at the sky, and then a few more before he noticed something unusual overhead.

A crack of thunder out of the clear orange sky left him with one confused thought.

“What the f—?”

*****

Bravo Squad’s armor had ablated away the last of the sprayed carbon ceramic heat shields, pre-forming their terminal flips to orient themselves feet-down to the target LZ, and all systems were in the green as they crossed angels forty at well over terminal velocity and slowing as the air thickened.

“Everyone, sound off,” Strickland ordered as he got his bearings, feet down, moving at better than mach three, friction giving him enough of a hotfoot that he was starting to feel it through the heavily insulated armor.

The rest of the team signaled back quickly, confirming their positions as they arrayed about the sky, falling on target to the LZ.

“Blitz the landing,” Strickland ordered. “I want military dominance clearly established on our side the second we hit Arkana. Confirm.”

Lights on his HUD swapped to green one by one as the team signaled back their confirmation as the whole group passed angels twenty and slowed to just over mach one.

Normally, by this point, Strickland would have ordered deployment of their flying wings, both to slow decent as well as to fine tune their descent and ensure they hit the LZ clean. In this case, however, they’d launched from low orbit. They were going to hit the LZ with sub-centimeter precision, and he had zero interest in slowing down.

At angels ten, the last of the team dropped below mach one, taking a few seconds to recover from the transition through the mach interface. The distant boom of their passage rolled over them as they slowed, rocking the suits and even being felt all the way through to their bones, but they’d all felt worse.

In fact, they were all about to feel a hell of a lot worse.

Angels five.

The ground was now starting to approach exponentially faster, even as they continued to slow from just air friction. Buildings were growing in size, and with their suit and implant enhancements, they could not make out the figures on the ground that had only been represented by icons on their HUDS.

As they crossed the last thousand meters, impact alarms began to sound in every man’s armor. Warnings sounded that they’d passed the suggested minimum pull altitude for best deceleration on their airfoils at current speeds. Strickland ignored it as the numbers continued to plummet crazily, waiting as he mentally counted down the last possible seconds.

Just under a hundred meters, his chute blew, snapping into position above him and crushing his spine into the base of his armor as he began decelerating crazily. The ground rushed up, buildings twisting as he rocked back and forth on the carbon-reinforced cables keeping him secured to the chute.

With a dozen meters to go, he flexed his legs and gritted his teeth, knowing it was about to hurt.

Strickland slammed into the surface of Arkana, kicking up an explosion of dust and actually cratering the ground slightly as he was driven to his knees, even in powered armor. Pain tore through his legs, and he was pretty sure he felt something else tear in there as well, but the nerve block kicked in almost instantly and it was gone. He rested for a moment, on one knee, as the dust settled slowly around his position.

All around him, the other seventeen men of Bravo Squad were in similar positions as roiling dust was blasted out from their positions.

Men lying on the ground, already terrified by the extreme suppressive fire they’d been under just seconds earlier, stared in stark horror as the black-clad monsters rose from their knees and reached behind their backs as one entity to pull rifles forward and level them in their direction.

The snarling, tearing roar of half those rifles exploding into action sent men again scrambling in terror of the dragons in their midst. When the fire ended, the half that hadn’t opened up now let their weapons loose as the first group reloaded.

Strickland keyed to his loudspeaker channel as he strode forward with the rest of the team.

“All hostiles,” he said, “lay down your weapons now, or die here. Your choice.”

There was a terrified pause before the words sank in, and then the first rifle clattered to the ground. In seconds it was followed by more and more, until the last of them had given up.

“Strickland to Aida. Op cleared.”

“Roger that, Strickland.” Sorilla’s voice sounded tired on the radio. “Confirmed, and thank you.”

“Standby for EOD arrival,” he said. “I hear you have some bombs to take care of.”

“You could say that. Inform higher we require Alliance EOD,” Sorilla sighed. “These things are…more finicky than I would have believed.”

Strickland shuddered slightly, not wanting to go anywhere near that depot when she said that, but just confirmed the message receipt.

“Don’t stub your toe, Colonel. That would be one stupid ass way to meet our maker.”

Epilogue

USV SOL

The SOL was the center of discussion, hosting a meeting of local Alliance officials as well as the district politicians, military, and intelligence coordinators assigned to the issues that had brought the humans and the Alliance together. Neither side was particularly happy with the way the situation had turned out, for differing reasons, but Sorilla didn’t much care.

Eri had been sent back home, and was now cooperating with Alliance Intelligence, at least to some degree. Sorilla privately expected him to flip sooner than later, while he might not be insane, he was a product of his culture. She had already advised that SOLCOM approach him on the side to work for them, which would put the man in a tight spot as a possible triple agent in any future events, but with as many lives on the line as there were she wasn’t going to go soft on him.

In the meantime, she, Kriss, and Seinel listened to the bluster moving back and forth between the various groups, doing their particular species’ version of rolling eyes with numbing regularity.

Finally, Sorilla stood up and met eyes with Seinel across the group, cocking her head to one side. When he nodded slowly, she turned and excused herself, leaving the SNAFUed political discussion behind.

It only took a few minutes before Seinel and Kriss joined her outside in the hall, Sorilla gesturing the Marines back when they attempted to intercept the pair of aliens.

“Well done,” Seinel told her as he came to a stop a few feet away. “Those weapons would have murdered many.”

Sorilla snorted. “They’d have probably killed themselves with them. We both know that.”

Seinel nodded simply. “Likely, however, many others would have died first. The odds of at least one of those weapons detonating unintended, in hands as inexperienced as those, is a near certainty…but likely not the first one.”

Sorilla sighed, but nodded. “We still have a problem. The mission isn’t over.”

“She’s right, and you know it,” Kriss grumbled, unable to hide his injuries any longer as he winced with almost every motion. “The poisoners are still out there.”

“The other colony?” Seinel suggested lightly.

“To begin with,” Sorilla agreed, “but we all know, even if they did it, I doubt they developed those weapons themselves. You’ve got an internal problem.”

Seinel grimaced, looking away.

“My superiors are…unwilling to entertain that belief at this time,” he admitted.

“Fools.”

Sorilla wasn’t surprised, nor was she inclined to disagree with Kriss’s estimation of the politicians’ faculties at the time.

“We’ll do the rest of the mission,” Sorilla said. “I speak for SOLCOM on this. From me to you, this is their voice. We value our truce and tentative…friendship…with the Alliance.” Sorilla grimaced. “However, my voice now. Not SOLCOM, me. The Alliance has an internal problem. If you can’t find and fix that, none of this is going to matter. I would rather not deal with Alliance strategic weapons accidentally finding their way to Hayden. I have a nice little place there; I’m looking forward to retirement. I don’t want it sucked into a black hole, however temporary. Gentlemen, get your house in order.”

Kriss laughed, amused, but Seinel was less so.

“That is going to be a more difficult task to accomplish than to order,” he said, holding up a hand. “However, I will personally see that an investigation is launched. No matter what else, we agree on this. Whoever is behind this must be brought to task.”

Sorilla nodded, extending her hand to Seinel.

The alien regarded it for a moment before he took it and the pair shook firmly.

“You see to that, and I’ll do everything my power to help you accomplish that task,” Sorilla said. “No matter how much harder it is to accomplish than to say.”

END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

About the Author : Evan Currie is a Canadian author of science fiction and fantasy novels whose work has been translated into multiple languages and sold around the world. Best known for his military science fiction series’ Odyssey One and On Silver Wings, Evan has also dabbled in far flung Space Fantasy like Heirs of Empire and steampunk-ish alt-history among other worlds.

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Cheers everyone, I hope you enjoyed the novel.