AUGMENTED FATALITY

FREE WORLDS™ BOOK THREE

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Copyright © 2023 LMBPN Publishing

Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

A Michael Anderle Production

LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

LMBPN Publishing

PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

Las Vegas, NV 89109

Version 1.00, March 2023

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-838-6

Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-242-2

THE AUGMENTED FATALITY TEAM

Thanks to our JIT Readers

Daryl McDaniel

Zacc Pelter

Kelly O’Donnell

Diane L. Smith

Paul Westman

Jeff Goode

Angel LaVey

Jan Hunnicutt

John Ashmore

Editor

The SkyFyre Editing Team

CHAPTER ONE

To George Dane, there was nothing more gratifying than flying a star fighter.

There was also nothing worse than having to sit in the copilot’s seat while someone who didn’t know how to fly one fumbled at the controls.

“Oh, jeez. Should I have engaged the stability system or not?”

Lieutenant Adam Hart was a good kid. A signal engineer who had focused on stuff like radar and radio wave detection, who hadn’t hesitated in answering a call to protect the colony on Varuna. Soldiers from Earth with nanites in their brains that supplanted their own motives and intelligence could arrive any day.

The people of Varuna needed to be ready to fight. Dane knew this. Hart knew this. It was all anyone had talked about since the three refugees had arrived on the Prometheus a month ago.

Hart could have stayed in the engineering bay and worked on building fighters and updating signal arrays. Instead, he chose to become a fighter pilot and put his life on the line for his people. There was honor in that, and Dane would be damned if he let the kid’s bravery go to waste by risking his life unnecessarily.

Though training wasn’t actually supposed to be life-threatening.

“You’re flying drills, Hart. There’s no reason to put your stability system on.”

“Oh, gosh. I feel like I always mess this up.” Hart turned the stability system off. Dane knew this not because the mirrored display in his copilot’s seat behind the pilot showed him, though it did. He knew because the second Hart turned it off, they began to weave and dip like a drunk on the way to the next bar.

“You’re overcompensating, Hart. Try to keep it steady.” It took a herculean amount of courage not to take control of the ship. Dane only resisted because he understood how dire their situation was. An invading force of unknown size and capabilities could arrive in their solar system without warning. They knew about the danger because a trio of desperate people from Earth stole a spacecraft outfitted with faster-than-light travel, a technology the scientists of Varuna were not able to so much as begin to reverse-engineer from the stolen craft.

That technology alone would be threatening enough. As far as Dane knew, the Augmented could literally drop spacecraft into opposite ends of Varuna’s solar system. However, the augmented humans were in control of more than star drives that seemingly broke the laws of physics.

The Prometheus arrived with three starfighters aboard, each brimming with technology the Varuna engineers were only beginning to understand. Much of it relied on the pilot being augmented and therefore remained out of the colonists’ grasp. Though some of the Russians had rudimentary brain implants compared to the Augmented’ tech, they couldn’t do anything with the fighter craft without using their hands.

Most of them had steadier hands than Hart.

“Steady. Like this?” Hart hit the accelerator. The ship lurched forward and slammed Dane back into his seat. Funny how the sensation of acceleration was so delicious with your hand on the throttle yet absolutely nauseating when someone else squashed you with it.

“Slow down, damn it! You’re trying to fly through those rings, not smash them to pieces!”

“Sorry!” Hart cried as he dropped the acceleration. Spacecraft didn’t slow down like atmospheric or marine vehicles did. There was no air or water resistance in space, so they kept going. This meant when Hart tried to steer toward one of the rings, Dane’s stomach lurched sideways.

“You can’t only turn the accelerator off. You have to engage the stabilizers to slow down.”

“Oh, jeez!”

Dane never thought he would advocate for pilots to spend more time playing video games. As his stomach rocked in the copilot’s chair, he wished Hart had honed his craft with a screen and haptic feedback.

At least Hart understood the goal of the exercise. He turned the fighter hard and tried to make his way through the second ring of the system. It wasn’t easy. The ship could make the maneuver easily enough, but doing it at high speed was another thing entirely.

The fighter crafts’ built-in limits prevented pilots from killing themselves through raw acceleration. However, Dane was concerned that the Augmented might be able to bypass those limits. Could their nanite implants protect them? Could they prevent aneurism by reinforcing a blood vessel with a single thought? It didn’t seem like a stretch compared to the challenge of integrating tech with the brain.

They missed the ring, but Hart had the reflexes to go wide and not crash into the thing. The rings were cheap and designed to break away on impact, but preventing debris damage and setting up another ring would take time they did not have.

If they were back on Earth, Dane would be proud of Hart’s progress. This was only his fourth time in the cockpit, and he was handling the craft more than adequately.

Here and now, that wasn’t good enough.

“Center yourself and make for the third ring,” Dane ordered.

“Even though I missed the second?”

“You’re going to miss some of the shots you take. That doesn’t mean you can quit, especially if they bring more than one ship.”

“You don’t really think they will, though, right?” Hart asked as he brought them around and headed for the last part of the obstacle course. The third ring rotated like a coin, flipping end over end, so it wasn’t as simple as finding a course and flying straight. Hart would have to time his acceleration perfectly.

“There’s no telling how big the other colonies are or if these Augmented see us as a threat. We need to be ready for anything.”

“I guess so,” Hart remarked as he decreased his speed. Dane would have liked him to increase it. That was almost always the better play when enemy fighters were trying to shoot you to pieces. He didn’t say anything, though. Hart needed to build his confidence, and besides, there were plenty of times when slowing down was the right call. Like in an asteroid field.

Hart timed his approach correctly and hit the center of the ring as it rotated around.

“Well done,” Dane told him. They could dissect how he could have done things differently later.

“I should have made the second ring. I made it last time.” Hart sighed.

“You nailed the third one, though. That’s a toughie.”

“The third ship won’t matter if I get blown up by the second one.”

“We’ve been working hard, and you’re going to get better. Don’t beat yourself up, all right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, take us back to the Prometheus.”

“Uh, sure. Right. Let me hit the stability system…or no. Wait.”

Dane worriedly watched his display as Hart activated one system, then another, while steering the ship toward the Prometheus.

“Lieutenant, you need to adjust your orientation. From our perspective right now, this ship needs to dock on the ceiling of the bay.”

“Right. Sorry. I forgot.”

Hart sent the ship into a spiral, but instead of stopping at a hundred and eighty degrees, he kept rotating.

“Hart!”

“Sorry, sir!” Hart’s fingers twitched on the controls, and the ship jerked in the opposite direction of rotation.

Dane’s vision closed in as the blood was forced from his eyeballs, but he held onto consciousness.

Hart was not so lucky.

He went limp in the cockpit and bonked his head against the glass separating them from the void of space. Not an unusual thing to happen, but his hands flopped onto the controls and spun the ship faster in the wrong direction.

Hart came around with a start and grabbed the controls.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled.

It was too late. They were going to smash into the Prometheus and destroy the only ship in the solar system with faster-than-light travel.

That was unacceptable.

“My controls,” Dane snapped and tried to save their lives while he still could.

CHAPTER TWO

The hardest thing about flying the stolen Augmented fighters was not using the full power they had available. If Dane flicked his wrists too hard, he’d throw the ship into a spin and still crash into the Prometheus. Despite his pounding heart screaming for him to stop, he didn’t let his fingers get the best of them.

He adjusted their angle of rotation, trimmed speed, readjusted the angle, trimmed speed again, and slowed dramatically. Then they were inside. One last twenty-degree twist and the landing gear was in place. Dane initiated the auto-docking procedure and let himself breathe. So much for training exercises not being life-threatening!

“I, uh, I didn’t mean to,” Hart mumbled as he climbed out after the airlock had closed.

“No one means to make mistakes, kid. They happen. It’s part of life. What matters is how we react.”

“Did I react poorly?”

“You could have reacted better,” Dane prompted, which made Hart wilt like kelp at high tide.

“Rest up and take the shuttle back to Varuna. Hit the sims for a few days. You only need some practice, and you’ll be fine.”

“Oh. Okay.” Hart didn’t sound like he believed that.

Dane left the kid wallowing in his self-doubt. He felt like a jerk for berating Hart on his flight. He could do better than that. He had to. It was his job to train these kids, and he couldn’t take out his frustration on them.

The problem was he understood how difficult the task was. It was supposed to take years to train someone to fly a craft like that. Dane had been working on it for a month. Of the four fighters they had, one Russian and three stolen from the Augmented, two were in constant flight. They stayed in the bay only long enough to be refueled, checked over, and maintained. The other two were kept in reserve for when the enemy showed up.

Dane didn’t want to push their pilots so hard, but what choice was there? He was halfway confident that if one ship like the Prometheus dropped into the solar system, they could defeat it. If they sent two…or ten? They wouldn’t stand a chance. He couldn’t take the time he needed to prepare them, which meant he had to cut corners. Which could end up screwing them in the end. It was a catch-22, and Dane wished he had a third option.

“Hey there, stranger. You look like you just flew a spaceship a hundred and fifty years more advanced than your pilot.”

“Hey. Lopez. Is it that obvious?”

Haley Lopez’s long black hair was tied in a tight ponytail. Dane forced himself not to wipe away the smudge of grease on her face, much as he wanted to.

“That you’re in a crappy mood?” she asked. “Yes. I heard your grinding teeth echoing off the bulwark. Your jaw muscles are so tight. I was worried you had tetanus, and it developed into lockjaw.”

“Yeah, well, tetanus sounds better than getting blown to pieces by warships in the blink of an eye.”

“The blink of an eye? You’re not giving Nat and me nearly enough credit. These new fighters will buy us three blinks. Maybe even five!”

Dane’s cheeks pulled into a smile. Lopez always started the process of cheering him up, no matter how glum he’d been. “I guess five blinks is a pretty long time. I could hold my eyes open to prolong it.”

“There ya go!” Lopez enthused. “You won’t want to close them at all when we’re done. The engineering bay on this ship is advanced, to say the least. We’ll be done with the first ship soon, but five more are already in the works. The first spacecraft fully built in this solar system! Tell me that’s not cool.”

“It’s kind of cool,” Dane admitted.

“Kind of cool? That’s the best you can do? The brilliant Nat Granger designs spaceships that can outmaneuver anything we brought with us and dive into the ocean. Yet all the stiff-necked Dane can say is ‘kind of cool?’ Is your neck so stiff that it’s shutting down your brain function? Do you need a massage or something?”

The idea of Haley giving him a massage was intoxicating, but he wouldn’t say that aloud. He was in his sixties. Yes, rejuvenation treatments made him look in his prime, but a relationship with Lopez still seemed…a bit much. He didn’t actually know how old she was or if she had taken the same treatments. It was not the sort of question one asked if they were trying to be polite.

“It’s these new pilots,” Dane declared. He’d started rubbing his neck and pulled his hand away, realizing he was thinking about Haley’s fingers instead of his own.

“I’m sure you’re doing everything you can to prepare them, right?”

“Of course. These Augmented are the biggest threat to the colony. Bigger than the Big Damn Fish. I’m using every minute I have to train these kids. Stark and Athanas train them when I need to sleep. It’s still going too slowly. I wish we had more time.”

Haley laughed. Dane loved the sound of her laugh and how easy it was to pull it from her, though he seemed to do it unintentionally most of the time.

“Time? You wish you had more time? Pretty rich, considering you’re past sixty and still look like you could star in an action film. I mean, you can shred carrots on your abs, right?”

“I…uh…”

Lopez waved off the words before they could stumble from his mouth. How did she make him feel like he was sixteen again?

She smiled. “I wish I had more time, too. Days here are close to fifty hours, but people still have to sleep and eat. Honestly, I want more people. That would solve some of our problems in engineering. Although a manufacturing base on the planet would be great. I wish we had one of those, too. And while we’re talking about things we want but don’t have, I wish I had an apple. Do you remember apples? Not worth the effort to transport, I guess, and apparently, they don’t grow true from seeds. But damn, do I wish I had an apple.”

That earned a full-on guffaw from Dane. “An apple? Really? If you could go back to Earth and get anything, you’d go for an apple?”

“Sure. Or maybe a peach. Come on, though. We could spend all day talking about what we wish we had. More time. More people. Apples.”

“You were the one talking about apples. Not me.”

“Fair point. I’m saying at the end of the day, we have what we have. We need to make do. No point in wishing for things we can’t have.”

Dane nodded. He’d been in the military for his entire career. He was accustomed to getting jobs done with fewer resources than they required on paper.

“I wish I knew when they were going to come or if they’re coming.”

“Say you knew the Augmented were going to show up tomorrow, or next week. What difference would it make?”

“We’d make sure our pilots and ships were ready…”

“You mean the ship that just landed, which is already being worked over and fixed up? That ship? Because I can tell you it’ll be ready in less than half an hour. Meanwhile, another pilot is ready to start training on the one they’ve had prepped for twelve hours. Fact is, you couldn’t push any harder if you wanted to.”

“How does that not freak you out, though? We could be under attack tomorrow! It’s a miracle they haven’t shown up already.”

“It sure is. I, for one, think we should be thankful for that miracle. You’ve had a month to train. Everyone is far more prepared than we could have been. If we’re lucky enough to have another few days, we’ll have a fifth ship. A better ship! An underwater ship!”

“I’m sort of feeling like you want to show me the ships.”

“I would love to.” Lopez beamed.

Dane followed through a massive airlock to the storage holds of the Prometheus. It currently held six fighters, three on each side. Their noses pointed toward the middle like they were on a showroom floor.

“This one is the furthest along.” Lopez gestured at the fighter on the left, closest to the door they’d entered through.

“I can still see its guts,” Dane pointed out.

“This is true, but notice how you can’t see its skeleton? That’s what we in engineering call ‘progress.’”

She was right. Compared to the third fighter back on the opposite side, this one was positively crammed with machinery. Fuel tanks, sensors, gyroscopes, ammunition racks, and a hundred other devices had been packed in like the world’s best-played game of Tetris. There was also more wire than he thought existed on the whole of Varuna. Dane peered around the craft. The next one in line was equally stuffed but not wired as much, and the one behind that was missing components.

Lopez explained, “The last thing we’ll do is put on the panels. The manufacturing tech they brought on the Prometheus is amazing. It can pump out stronger plating than anything I’ve seen, and when it’s damaged, it can melt it down and recycle it. It’s awesome. Wait, why do you look like you saw a ghost?”

Dane sighed. He prided himself on not letting his emotions show, but Lopez always saw what he was thinking anyway. “If the Augmented put this on a single ship, it makes me worry about what they can do with the full capabilities of Earth and its population.”

“Fair point, and yes, we should assume they can make things bigger and faster. This isn’t a scout ship, though. At least, we can’t be sure it is. Grant Richmond and his people stole it. From what they’ve told me, I think this is one of the Augmented’ most advanced vessels.”

Dane looked around the bay, wondering how much faith he dared put into that idea. As security chief, he wanted that boon, but as a pilot, he put more faith in the brave people who tucked themselves in cockpits than the mindless machines. Though if everything Grant Richmond said about the Augmented was true, these were no “mindless” machines.

“Given enough time and a larger crew, I’m pretty sure we could build an entirely new Prometheus from scratch.” Lopez continued, unconcerned by Dane’s woolgathering.

“Now who sounds like the dreamer?” Dane teased.

Lopez grinned. “Fair. That’s why we’re working on fighters instead.”

“You said those are different, right?”

She nodded. “We can’t quite figure out some of the components. Not that we’d want to. The way the Augmented interface with these things is not intuitive for us.”

“These are something new, then.”

“That’s right! A synthesis of all the ships in the system, really. The Russian fighters were a good place to start, but we couldn’t resist some of the gyroscopic tech the Prometheus fighters had. We’re calling these six Defender-class fighters. Relatively short-range, so they can be based on the planet or on one of the colony ships. They can enter and exit atmosphere and are designed for low water resistance.”

“They have an amazing shape,” Dane cooed. “Almost like an F-101 out of the history books.”

“That’s to help them in the water and atmosphere. If there’s an invasion, they’ll have the hardest time making it to our underwater base.”

Dane nodded. “I like that. When can we start training with them?”

“This one should be ready to test within the week.”

“Sounds good. I can’t wait to get in the cockpit.” Dane’s only contribution to the design was suggesting they make them one-seaters. Considering how short they were on pilots, it didn’t make sense to spend extra resources on a seat that would be empty most of the time. That also meant the most experienced pilots, himself foremost among them, would be first to fly these Defenders. Turned out there was something besides Lopez that could make him feel like a sixteen-year-old again. He couldn’t wait to get behind the proverbial wheel.

“What about weapons?” he asked, thinking how naïve the Alliance of Democratic Nations had been to insist on not sending weapons with space colonists. Dane had demanded they bring hand weapons with them, but their original colony ship wasn’t armed at all. It made him feel like a relic from a different time. Which, he supposed, they were.

“They’ll each carry a nose-mounted railgun. We started with that as a given for the design, so the entire craft is balanced around it.”

“No kickback?”

“It’ll slow you down if you fire too many times, but it shouldn’t send you spinning one way or the other.”

“Impressive. Missiles?”

“We’re going full-tilt to get the first Defender into testing so we can free up people and manufacturing space for missiles. Neither the Cosmos nor the Zhemchug had the capabilities. We’re working on a facility planet-side as well, but it’s not running yet. We are including a variety of hard points, though. Once we have missiles, we’ll be able to put them on.” Lopez gestured at a few plates on the outer edges of the tangles of machinery and wires.

“Amazing,” Dane noted, impressed that so many people were working on so many facets of this while he’d been in the training trenches.

“I know I am, but what do you think of the Defenders?” She winked at him.

Dane was still formulating a reply—so, how about some kelp tea seemed lame—when his tablet dinged with a priority message.

“You should probably take that,” Lopez remarked, smiling.

Dane wanted to say something clever, but all he did was nod and take out the tablet.

Richmond’s hard face appeared. “Shuttle bay, Dane. We leave in five.”

“On my way.”

CHAPTER THREE

Dane reached the shuttle bay less than a minute before launch.

Navigating the Prometheus was odd. It wasn’t built the same as other ships. Dane didn’t know how to describe the differences, but the design didn’t feel intuitive. As if it had been designed by an algorithm, he supposed. Or possibly ants.

None of the three ships in orbit above Varuna could ever land on the watery world. All were made to stay in space forever. Well, technically, the Cosmos was supposed to land, but since there was no land on Varuna, that bit of engineering would forever go unused. The Prometheus looked the least capable of surface life. It more closely resembled a grain of pollen or a diatom than something humans had built.

Which was to say, sometimes, Dane got turned around.

Maybe it was his age. He arrived to find Hart already in the shuttle, sitting quietly in a corner. It looked like he’d been there a while. Grant Richmond was also there and greeted him with a curt nod, as he always did.

“How you doing, Richmond?” Dane asked, trying to engage the man in conversation for the umpteenth time.

Not that he blamed Richmond for being tired. Richmond had been in the U.S. Navy, then worked shipyards as an aquatic welder for years after that. Scars pockmarked his dark skin from numerous instances of welding on the surface without proper protection. Dane sometimes wondered if Richmond had flinched when hot sparks hit his hands or face. If he was being honest, he doubted it.

“Fine. Yourself?”

Richmond was in a good mood today. That was twice as many words as usual.

“Doing all right. The recruits are getting better, but it still feels like there’s so much we don’t understand about those ships. I don’t even know what systems are lost to us because we know nothing about the implants.”

“Consider yourself lucky there,” Richmond pronounced. “I’d trust my own hands over new tech any day.”

“Are all the people you brought with you Luddites, or just you?”

That earned a rare glimmer of a smile that vanished as soon as it appeared. “All us rebels hate tech.”

“Are they liking it here?” Dane asked. When they’d first met Richmond, there had only been two people with him. However, they’d learned another hundred or so had been aboard the Prometheus, stowed away in case the people of Varuna had already been augmented.

Richmond shrugged. “They’re civilians. They’re happy to be back doing civilian things.”

Dane nodded and waited for a beat. When Richmond said nothing further, he pressed him. “I take it you’re not.”

“War’s not over yet. It’s hard that the soldiers are all on the other side.”

“You mentioned that. The military required implants, huh?”

“Started as a ‘protect our troops’ drumbeat from Congress. Turned out the whole protest was paid for by Silicon Valley.”

“And by the time that came out, it was too late.”

Richmond nodded.

“The people you left on the Prometheus are solid, though. Molly’s great, and Chad’s not bad.”

“He tell you to say that?”

“I heard it from him, yeah.”

Richmond snorted. “Sounds like him.”

“Oh, wow.” Hart broke into the conversation and gave Dane an opportunity to look away, which he was more than happy to take.

“There’s more outside than in,” Richmond muttered.

They were passing by the Zhemchug, or what was left of it. Sophia Novikov had badly damaged the vessel, and it needed extensive repairs. Though with the threat of the Augmented, it hadn’t made sense to preserve a colony ship. Instead, they had opted to refit it for defensive capabilities. The Prometheus was their only warship, but the Zhemchug was being customized to serve as a mini aircraft carrier. After the Defenders were completed, they’d be held on the Zhemchug.

“They have to remove everything faulty first,” Dane explained. He’d heard how it worked from Lopez enough times. “I know it looks bad, but they’re working on most of the components out there in space. They’ll be slipping everything together sooner or later.”

“Better be sooner,” Richmond commented.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dane didn’t get much more out of Richmond. Not when they landed on the floating platform, nor when they took the transparent elevator down to Homebase. They entered the volcano-turned-colony and walked up the stairs to the control room at the top of the cone.

The room didn’t awe Dane like it once had. Before, the wide windows on every wall and the towering ones that overlooked the sea like skylights inspired him. They’d made him feel like a master of this world. Now, they were only a reminder that there were lots of fish out there. Big damn fish with big damn appetites. Their perimeter system was working, for now. Yet after being attacked by nessies, sea stars, and BDFs, Dane wasn’t sure they’d ever feel safe on this planet. It seemed like every level of the ecosystem wanted to eat them.

“Security Chief Dane, Captain Richmond. Welcome. Please take a seat.”

Dane almost asked for coffee but decided against it. With Winters in jail, they didn’t have a coffee snob as an XO anymore. He could go without.

They didn’t really need an XO anymore with a more civilian-style government in place. They were lucky this government was working. Dane was thankful Richmond had been willing to join the security team, too. It technically made Dane his boss, though when it came to questions about the stolen ship, Richmond was still the undisputed expert.

Dane took a seat beside Lev at the large, round table. Since the Russian general had been falsely accused of planting a bomb and Dane had cleared his name, they’d developed a decent friendship. Nothing like reminiscing about trying to blow each other out of the sky while sipping kelp-based liquor, Dane supposed.

Next to Lev was the former leader of the Zhemchug and current second-in-command of the colony, Lieutenant Governor Mikhail Petrov. Adams sat beside him, looking as concerned as ever. Carlos Alvarez and Nat Granger were involved in an animated conversation about something nerdy, no doubt.

Dane was happy to take the stress over things like training flight pilots so those two could focus on improving life for everyone on Varuna. Between Alvarez’s breakthroughs around understanding this planet’s ecology and the items Granger had made, no two people were more important to the colony’s continued improvement.

Dr. Thorson was also present, his eyes icy as ever, blond hair slicked back as if the cup of coffee in his hand had scared it off. Dane idly wondered where the surgeon had gotten the cup…

Captain-turned-governor Adams began the meeting. “Welcome, everyone. First off, I’d like to let everyone know we haven’t seen any sign of the Augmented. We’re continually monitoring the solar system, but nothing yet.”

That drew scattered applause, though Dane did not participate.

“That being said, we’ll start with defense as usual. Dane, you’re not clapping. I take it the news isn’t great?” Adams asked.

“We’re still preparing for an attack, but it’s slow going. It takes time to train pilots and build ships. Lopez assures me we’re going to be testing our first manufactured ship this week. I’ll feel better after that’s flying, and we have someone who can handle it. May I ask about the Zhemchug? It doesn’t look great.”

“I’d say we have about a month to completion on that,” Nat replied. “I have crews working on all the major systems, so it’s still a mess. We’ll start buttoning it up soon, though.”

“That’s good. I don’t want our warship doing double-duty as a carrier any longer than we have to,” Dane put forth.

“How is our warship looking?” Adams asked Richmond.

“Good. Still a few backups that need to be honed in.”

“Better than the pilots,” Dane muttered.

“You’re still struggling?” Adams questioned him.

“Like I said, they’re improving, but not fast enough. I’ll keep pushing, but they’re only human. If they don’t get enough rest, all the training in the world won’t matter.”

“We don’t want anyone burning out,” Adams agreed. “We can’t afford them to. Stick to regulations, and we’ll get them where they need to be. At least you’re not stuck down here worrying about BDFs. Petrov, how is that effort going?”

“It is going well, Governor.” Petrov almost always used Adams’ title. “We have a grid set up with no dead spots around our habitations. We built in thirty-minute window of detection, which gives us time to send a submarine before the BDF is too close. We had one incident, but we shoot it in face and it swims away. No one likes being shot in face.”

“I’d like to know we can do more than bother it,” Dane uttered.

“We can,” Granger cut in. “The subs have been updated with improved weapons. Namely, guided torpedoes that can take down the BDFs. We don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“Keeping them out doesn’t seem to be hindering the ecology,” Alvarez interjected. “We are not seeing an increase in the populations of space stars or nessies. I’m hoping we don’t knock anything out of balance again. We will keep watching, though, bueno?”

“That’s good. I’d like to talk about expansion, if possible,” Adams declared.

“As would I,” Petrov rejoined. “We have now taken every Russian out of stasis as of last week. Everyone is settling in well. Now that Novikov is not stirring the stew, things are going better. We have set up three of our inflatable habs, but I would like to set up the fourth.”

“I still want our people close,” Adams insisted.

“Of course, and I agree. To be honest, Governor, my position as lieutenant governor helped morale. My people feel like they have a place at the table. That is all we ever wanted and never got on Earth.”

The soldier in Dane, who knew a thing or two about history, thought the Russians might have a better place at the table if they hadn’t tried taking a seat by threatening the other proverbial diners with a knife. That was ancient history now, though. The two, now three, groups were working together. The situation was far better than it had been a year ago.

“Not everyone is out of stasis, though,” Richmond pointed out.

“That is correct, Captain. Dr. Thorson, how are our prisoners doing?”

Thorson leaned forward, his icy eyes betraying little emotion. “They are stable. No health fluctuations. No reason to think they are in danger. I still have my reservations about using these pods as jail cells, though. They are for medical emergencies, and even that comes with a risk. It is not ethical to keep them like this.”

“They tried to blow us up,” Dane reminded him.

“They tried to send a message,” Thorson countered. “The bomb they used could have blown a hole in Homebase and ruined the entire facility. They did not do that.”

“Novikov crippled the Zhemchug, though,” Granger remarked. “That’s taking a lot longer to fix than what they did to the power room.”

“If you are proposing to free your man Winters and not Sophia Novikov, you must know that is not an option. Not if you want my people to be happy,” Petrov claimed.

“Novikov used a warship against us!” Granger countered.

“There is no proof she would have done that without Winters egging her on,” Lev noted. Dane didn’t find that a strong argument, but then, he wasn’t about to argue for either one to be released.

“We stand on the precipice of war. Like the lieutenant governor said, we can’t have them stirring the stew,” Dane put forth.

“The precipice of war?” Thorson’s eyebrows rose toward his slicked-back. “We have met a group of refugees who have told us a story.”

“It’s not a story,” Richmond insisted.

“We have no reason to doubt it,” Dane quickly added. “The level of technology in the Prometheus is beyond anything we’ve seen.”

“My wife has been working with the crew of the Prometheus. Everything they say is cierto. Their stories check out,” Alvarez advised.

“I believe them.” Thorson addressed the governor. “Yet we have seen no enemy. Our chief of security says we are on the precipice of war. How long is the precipice? The history of Earth is rife with examples of people who did terrible things using war as a justification. I will not repeat their mistakes.”

“That’s why you’re our chief medical officer,” Adams suggested. “I want all of us asking these questions. There’s no reason to follow the same paths we used on Earth. Varuna can be a new start for everyone.”

“Not if the Augmented have their way,” Richmond grumbled.

“What do you think they intend?” Adams asked. “I would have us all remember what is at risk here.”

Richmond drew a deep breath and released a sigh that seemed to drain some of the tension in his face. When he finished, he looked both older and hungrier. As if the tired, quiet face he wore so much of the time was simply that. A façade.

“The implants started out like any other tech innovation,” he explained. “It was for kids to play with. Watch videos in their head. See what others were seeing. Play better games. That kind of thing. They didn’t stay that way.”

“You said soldiers were among the first to be implanted?” Dane pressed.

“They were one of the first major visible groups, but it took a while to get there. We don’t know which politicians got implants first, but we’re pretty sure it started in what used to be America. Those from Texas blamed the tech sector in California, while the Californians blamed the power players in Texas. You can only imagine how much fun the media had with that. Back when there was still a media.

“Anyway, there was some debate at first. A bilateral committee was formed to protect our troops. Across-the-aisle kind of thing. We’d heard all that before, of course, but it had been a long time since the war. People had forgotten what working together actually looked like, but they agreed on those implants. Started putting them in soldiers to help with brain injuries, rescue stranded people…the possibilities were endless.”

“I thought you said it was a long time since the war,” Thorson commented.

“You’re from what, Norway?”

“Iceland.”

Richmond nodded. “The Americans and Russians probably get me better. Even when those countries aren’t at war, they’re at war. Certainly enough combat out there in the third world to make it clear the implants were helping soldiers.”

“How did they jump from soldiers to civilians?” Granger asked. Despite manufacturing torpedoes, the chief engineer was a civilian at heart. Dane didn’t think she’d fire a gun under any circumstances.

“It started with the politicians. They moved from mandating it for our soldiers to paying for it for our allies’ soldiers. Then they started saying the police needed it.”

“Federal oversight, literally,” Dane remarked.

Richmond nodded, but he didn’t laugh. “There used to be pushback from local politicians, but our thinking is they’d already injected key locals from the big cities before they went with a public push. Anyway, the cops all got implants, then it was one more step to start mandating implants for prisoners. Cut down on suicides and fights, that kind of thing. One more step and people who were arrested were given implants…as a precaution. That was when I got involved. Started organizing protests.”

“Because you saw how the arrested people were suffering?” Alvarez asked.

“Far from it.” Richmond chuckled ruefully. “More like we saw how everyone injected with nanites turned into happy pro-Augmented supporters. It was fucking bizarre. One day, they’d be out there on the streets with us, shouting for freedom ‘til their throat was raw. The next, they were thanking the people who’d injected robots into their blood.”

Richmond trailed off, perhaps into a memory of someone he’d lost.

“This was all in America, yes? What about rest of world?” Lev inquired.

He shrugged. “If I’d been smarter, I would have paid attention to the rest of the world sooner. Once they started forcibly implanting anyone they could get their hands on, it was too late. They already controlled the media at that point. The internet, the airlines. They were organized and had started Augmenting with the rich and famous. They’d reached everywhere but the last corners of humanity. I don’t know what was happening in Russia or anywhere else, but I know the result was the same. Augmentation was unstoppable.”

“Yet you resisted,” Adams mentioned.

“Yes, ma’am. We tried to, anyway. It was hard. We couldn’t organize like we used to. Internet was too dangerous, same with cellphones. We tried to be careful, but that slowed us down. Yet every damn time we went too fast, we’d miss a spy.”

“Spies?” Lev asked.

“Augmented people act differently than regular folk, but they know how they used to act.” Richmond grimaced. “We lost cells of hundreds of people simply because a spy got in, injected a couple of folks, and took over the entire group. We were lucky to have Molly. She helped develop the device that can detect implanted people.”

“Which you were all kind enough to share with us,” Granger remarked.

“It’s the least we can do.”

“You’ve done a lot more than that.” Adams smiled. “We only know about the Augmented because of you. You’re a hero. I hope you know that.”

“It doesn’t feel that way, ma’am. A hero would be able to save more than a few dozen people. A hero would have been able to do more…” Richmond sagged and covered his face with a hand.

“You did do more,” Dane encouraged. “You discovered they were taking their mandate to the stars and wanted to implant nanites in all the colonies. You didn’t have to come and tell us, but you did.” Dane had heard parts of the story before, but never all at once. It was a lot. Worse than shooting at enemy Russians in space, that was for sure.

Richmond nodded and wiped his eyes, drawing strength from somewhere.

“We knew the colonies were our only hope. The Augmented…they’re not great at keeping secrets. They believe in open information. Plus, they can access each other’s minds. They still knew they would have to be careful about coming to the colonies and not tip them off. We thought if we could beat them here, we’d have a chance.

“The plan was to steal half a dozen of their ships and go to as many colonies as we could. Maybe all of them, if we had the fuel for multiple warps. But…well, shit. We failed.”

“You didn’t,” Adams insisted.

“With all due respect, ma’am, we did. The people I brought with me are the last of the rebellion. Of those six ships we were supposed to steal, we got one. We made it here to Varuna, which I’m thankful for, but you all have less than a thousand people. It’s…it’s not gonna be enough.”

Richmond lost it and leaned back in his chair, hand on his face to cover his tears.

“That is what we’re up against,” Adams announced to the group. “We can quibble about what to do with our prisoners or the best way to fend off Big Damn Fish, but we are facing something far larger. We are talking about billions of Augmented people. If we let them, they will swallow us up in a blink. It’s likely we’re only alive because we are too small to be considered a threat. What I want to know is how we change that.”

“What we don’t have, but we need, is a sample of the brain implants, or the nanites that built them.” Richmond’s voice was muffled. “Maybe then I could figure out a countermeasure.”

“There were none of these injection devices on the Prometheus?” Alvarez asked.

Richmond wiped his face and shook his head. “That’s my fault. You have to understand that implant tech is everywhere on Earth. Cops carry injectors on their belts. Grocery stores have them at the checkouts. There were some on the ship, but my people have been trying to destroy them for years. We dumped them into the upper atmosphere. It felt like a victory at the time, but now…”

“It’s all right. We’ll figure something out,” Adams assured him and looked around the table. “For now, I want us all to continue as we have been. Training pilots is a top priority, as is preparing our defenses. Dr. Alvarez and Dr. Thorson, see what you can find in the Prometheus’ records. Maybe there’s something there about the composition of the nanites we can use.”

“They’re made of iron,” Thorson claimed. “So maybe magnets? It seems like a long shot, though.”

“Keep looking,” Adams ordered. “I know we all have a lot to do and not enough time to do it, so I’ll let you get back to it.”

Everyone saluted and stood to leave, but before Dane crossed the room, the governor tapped his shoulder.

“Dane, a minute in my office?”

He did not dare refuse, considering the expression of dread on her face.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Have a seat, Dane.”

“That bad, huh?”

“The closest thing we have to a barista on this planet turns out to be a traitor to peace, and now we’ve got refugees fleeing robots. Could it be worse than that?”

“I don’t think the Augmented are actually robots.”

Adams snorted. “True. Robots would be simpler.”

Dane nodded. “I imagine they would be. None of this not knowing who to trust stuff.”

“At least we’re not dealing with all that yet.”

“You trust their device does what they say it does?”

Adams allowed herself a small shrug. “I didn’t, but Granger’s taken the thing apart and put it back together five times in the last month. I trust her. Plus, they’ve submitted to every medical test Thorson and Alvarez could think of. For the time being, I think it’s safe to say there are no Augmented among us. My question is how long we can keep it that way.”

“If they send an ambassador, we should be able to intercept them. I’d like to have more pilots trained, but between Anderson, Lev, and myself, we always have a more-than-competent pilot on call.”

“And if they send more than an ambassador?”

“What do you mean, exactly?”

“What are our chances of surviving if they send an invading force?”

Dane laughed out loud.

Adams frowned. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse. I mean, I hate to be pessimistic, but I’d put our chances at zero. No chance at all. We’ve got one warship that I don’t know how to fully use yet. Richmond says he does, and I mostly believe him. Yet the simple truth is he did not build that ship. The Augmented might be able to utilize it in ways we simply are unaware of. As of this moment, we only have one fighter and a couple of shuttles. No one really knows how to use the three fighters from the Prometheus, not even me. And if the rest of these new Defenders get finished in time, we still have novice pilots.”

Adams nodded. None of this was news to her, which meant she shared his opinion.

“What are your thoughts on the Augmented’ capabilities?” she asked.

“We need to assume they’re far more experienced than us. Richmond’s been clear that soldiers were augmented early on. That means most of the best pilots are already under their control and have been for a long time. Furthermore, they gotta be better organized than us. Richmond hasn’t talked about this a ton, so it’s guesswork. But if they can communicate mind-to-mind, surely they can coordinate in a way we can’t.”

“I’ve been thinking along the same lines. Plus, we don’t know what they’re using to send messages to each other. They could have a level of encryption we can’t detect.”

“You also have to consider what’s backing any soldiers they send. If the Augmented only control half of Earth, that’s still five billion people. Any damages we inflict, they’ll be able to repair and replace far faster than we can. Earth has industry. It’s been in place for centuries. If we get clawed into long-term conflict, that will be an insurmountable challenge.”

“What if it’s a smaller fleet?” Adams wondered. “Do you think we could push them back?”

Dane shrugged. “Part of the problem is we don’t know how big their fleet is or what their priorities are. I think it’s safe to assume they haven’t built an ungodly amount of warships simply because they haven’t invaded yet. Though Richmond thinks they had another five or so under construction when they stole this one. Considering Earth’s manufacturing capabilities, I’d assume they have at least ten ships by now, though it could be twenty or thirty, depending on their priorities. Honestly, though, that hardly matters.”

“How do thirty ships not matter?”

“Because six to one is already bad enough odds to completely remove luck and skill from the equation.”

“What if we finish the Zhemchug before they get here?”

“That will help, but at the end of the day, the Zhemchug is a transport vessel. It can’t handle the stresses of combat maneuvers. I think we can make it prickly enough to present a difficult target. Rail guns are rail guns whether their brains have implants or not. Still, we can’t press an attack with that ship. The Cosmos is worse. It’s archaic compared to the Zhemchug. If they decided to attack that, we’d have to let it go. It would basically be scrap in a battle like that.”

“Our population isn’t ready for something like this,” Adams contended. “We can’t go into full wartime production. We’re still figuring out the best ways to grow our own food! A thousand people simply isn’t enough, even if we did have better ships. We have to be smart if we’re going to survive. We need allies.”

“Hate to be a downer, Governor, but we’re the only people in this entire solar system. I know the nessies are useful against space stars, but I don’t think they’ll be able to hold the line,” Dane couldn’t resist adding. It was ridiculous. They were alone out here with no one to call on but long-necked pseudo-reptiles with too many flippers!

“What if we go to the other colonies?”

That gave Dane pause. Richmond had said there were others, but Adams had never shared anything beyond basic details about them. “Is that an option?”

“It could be,” Adams mused. “When Richmond’s ship arrived, he shared a database of all the stars humans have sent colony ships to. Apparently, we were the first of many.”

“You’ve checked where they are?”

“Of course. Light years away. Much too far for us to communicate with. Richmond made a note of those who confirmed they’d made it, but the Augmented cut off news like that once they started to take control. None of the people from the Prometheus know if the other colonies are thriving or how many people they have.”

“I guess I should’ve figured that. They knew to come looking for this star. Why would the Zhemchug come here unless some of the other planets were already colonized? Did Richmond say if he visited any other solar systems before this one?” Dane was slightly annoyed that Richmond hadn’t told him any of this, considering they’d been on the Prometheus together almost every day for a month. Yet if Adams had ordered it classified, Richmond’s obligation was to keep it secret.

“Richmond said this was the first one he came to. Said he got lucky. I’m hoping he didn’t. I’m hoping most of the colonies survived and they’ll see the Augmented as a threat, too.”

Dane frowned. “Even if there are other colonists out there, we’re talking about tens of thousands. Maybe a million if we’re being super-generous. That’s still not going to work against all of Earth.”

“Not if we use traditional tactics. Thing is, if there are other colonies out there, we might have somewhere to fall back to. Or we can provide shelter for another colony. If one of us can figure out how to defend a planet, the rest of us will.”

Dane finally got it. “You want me to go to one of these colonies, don’t you? On the Prometheus.”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Adams admitted.

“I wouldn’t leave Varuna undefended!”

“You said if they show up, we won’t be able to defend ourselves anyway. You wouldn’t be doing anything except giving us a chance.”

Dane nodded as he tried to take this in. “Me personally, though? I think I should stay here to coordinate defenses.”

“Athanas is more than competent for that role. She might not be as good a pilot as you, but we don’t need a pilot to coordinate a defense. We need a pilot to protect our most advanced ship.”

“Shouldn’t you go?” Dane asked.

“I’m an astronaut, not a war hero,” Adams countered. “I don’t think I’d be able to rally people to fight. They’d see right through me. I don’t ever want to fight.”

“Neither do I,” Dane muttered. “Especially not against odds like these. That is if…well, never mind.”

“That is if what?”

“It’s nothing. You said we can trust Richmond. I do trust Richmond.”

“What’s your ‘what if,’ Dane?”

“What if they’re wrong?” he blurted. “What if the Augmented got hit by a solar flare, or there’s not actually another twenty warships in the works? He and his crew corroborated everything, but we could still use hard data. Especially if we’re going to convince these other colonies to join us. They could be as in the dark as we are, or they might know something about the Augmented. Either way, it would be better if we had actual data to bring them. Video. Scans of their industrial setups. Estimates of the number of ships they have.”

Adams nodded. “I don’t disagree…but are you saying you want to go to Earth?”

“No! What I wanted to do was retire on this planet and spend my days farming and helping people settle property disputes. Still, if we’re going to take this threat seriously, we need intelligence.”

“You could get caught.”

“It’s risky. No doubt about that. On the other hand, what if we jump to another corner of the galaxy only to discover that a colony didn’t make it…or worse, the Augmented are already there?”

“Yet we know the Augmented control Earth.”

“Right, which means we know how we need to approach. We’ll have to be careful and try to go undetected. That’s going to look different if we go to a colonized solar system we don’t understand. We won’t know if we should come in and introduce ourselves or sneak in. If we go to Earth, we could figure out which solar systems the Augmented are targeting.”

“You’re making sense, but I still think checking out a colony first is a better option. Let’s find somewhere else besides Teegarden’s star where we might be able to go. Somewhere with allies. Do you disagree?”

“Respectfully, ma’am, I—”

An alarm cut off Dane mid-sentence.

Adams cursed as she looked at her tablet. “One day. One day without a red alert would be nice.”

CHAPTER SIX

They rushed back to the control room and found Lev managing a crisis. Data, graphs, and a map of the solar system on the screens highlighted something about a third of the way around the sun from Varuna. Compared to the solar system’s central star, it was pretty close to where the Prometheus had arrived. Something about that chilled Dane.

“What are we looking at?” Adams demanded.

“Same sort of flare as Prometheus when it arrived,” Lev explained. “Picked up on new ship’s radar. We are assuming it is—”

“Another ship,” Dane finished.

“We might not have seen it, but it let out a big burst of energy. The kind we were looking for,” Lev mentioned.

“How long until we know what sort of ship it is?” Dane asked.

“We can assume it’s similar to the Prometheus, but we’re also fairly certain it’s a good deal smaller. We’re still trying to dig into the details.”

“A scout, then,” Dane presumed. “Did you alert Richmond? Get him up here.”

“Alerting him now,” Lev affirmed.

“What do we know about where the ship appeared?” Adams inquired.

Lev’s fingers flew across the controls, and one of the data sets changed. “It arrived in Goldilocks zone of Teegarden’s star, well above the ecliptic. I don’t know if that is to get better vantage point or necessity of these drives.”

“That’s a necessity,” Richmond announced as he entered. “Though that looks higher than they need to be, so it makes sense they want to see us. Damn it. I saw smaller ships when we stole the Prometheus. We should have stolen one of those, too.”

“Don’t beat yourself up for only stealing a warship and three fighters,” Adams commented.

“How far is it?” Dane asked.

“About a light hour away from the Prometheus. Should I order them to go dark?” Lev wondered.

“It won’t matter. If it’s a scout, they came with their scanners on. If we can see them, they can see us. I’d rather keep our eyes open than bury our heads in the sand,” Dane insisted.

“Should we scramble fighters?”

“A light hour is a long way away. It only took eight light minutes for sunlight to travel from Sol to Earth. A trip like that would take us a few days. Of course, if they can jump across the void of space, we’ll need to be ready. I want all fighters prepped for launch and pilots on standby. If someone’s running drills right now, bring them back to rest and refuel.”

“Yes, sir.” Lev punched the orders into his console.

“What can you tell us about that ship, Richmond?” Adams questioned.

“Dane’s right that it must have seen us. When we arrived here, your radio waves were so loud they practically blew out our speakers.”

“I guess that makes sense, considering we’ve been sending data twelve light years away,” Adams remarked.

“How is there not an entire fleet here yet?” Lev asked. “Why not blink over here, see what they’re looking for, then blink back with a full invasion force?”

“The drives don’t work that way,” Richmond pointed out. “It takes time to move the ship.”

“I thought it could go faster than light, though,” Dane remarked.

“It can, but it works by folding space. The ship travels across those folds.”

“How long does that take?”

“For the Prometheus, it’s about an hour per light year.”

“You’re saying that they could be back with an invading force in twenty-four hours?” Dane sputtered.

Richmond grimaced. “They likely saw the Prometheus, too. Which is unacceptable. I can take my crew on to another solar system.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Adams told him.

“We must. The Augmented will not react well to your colony harboring fugitives and stolen gear. If we leave, you’ll be safer.”

“If you leave, we’ll be stranded,” Adams countered.

“We can’t take everyone with us on the Prometheus.”

“Not in one trip or with a single ship. But if you go, we lose access to your technology. We haven’t figured out how the FTL drive works yet. Without that, we’d be sitting ducks.”

“Better to be ducks on a quiet pond than trapped in the storm the Augmented are going to bring,” Richmond claimed.

“They won’t leave us alone. Not if their plan is to Augmented all people. I don’t think they’ll believe us if you leave, either. The solar system’s a big place. We could hide the Prometheus on the other side of the sun.”

“They know that trick. It’s why they jump above the plane of the ecliptic, so they can see the entire solar system.”

“A gas giant then,” Dane suggested. “There’s three of them farther out, some with moons. It’d be simple enough to hide you there.”

“You don’t really think you can hide their own ship from them?” Richmond asked.

“No, but there are enough corners in this solar system that they would poke around. The fact is that they’ve seen you’re here with us.”

“We can leave. Tell them you didn’t trust us or that we stole something.”

“I’m not going to banish refugees from my solar system. I would like to be able to sleep at night, and dooming people to run across space won’t let me do that,” Adams proclaimed.

“What do you want to do, ma’am?” Dane queried.

“We hail them. Welcome them to the solar system and assume they come in peace.”

“That’s a big assumption.”

“Considering our chances if we have to go the alternate route, I’d say temporarily treating them like guests isn’t a bad idea.”

“I have a tight beam lined up with them, Governor. Ready to transmit when you are,” Lev announced.

“Very well.” Adams straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat. She nodded at Lev, and he pressed the button to begin the message.

“Welcome to the system of Teegarden’s star. I am Governor Adams of Varuna, the colony planet in this solar system. Your technology is unknown to us, but we would welcome any opportunity to trade or learn. Please reply when you receive this, and once more, welcome!”

She ended the message, and Lev sent it. Dane knew it would take a full hour to reach the ship and another hour for a return message. It came as a surprise when, two minutes later, the scout ship blinked out and vanished.

“That was…rude. Like peeper looking through front window of house, no?” Lev huffed.

“They got what they needed,” Richmond claimed. “They’ll be traveling back now.”

Adams frowned. “Dane, this changes things. How long until you can be ready to leave?”

“For Earth?”

“I don’t think we have the time to go to the colonies anymore.”

Dane nodded. He’d been thinking the same thing.

“I’ll need to assemble a team, supply the Prometheus, and modify some of the ships.”

“Can you do that mid-flight?” Adams asked.

“We can try,” Dane promised.

“Whatever you need, make it so.”

“Yes, ma’am. If I may, though, what exactly is our mission?”

“We can’t repel a full-force invasion. We’d be delusional to think we can. You need to head them off at the pass…somehow.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fourteen hours later, Dane was still trying to fathom how he’d ended up here.

He sat in the command center of the Prometheus, prepping to leave the colony that he had finally learned to consider home. Even the few hours it took to get everything ready felt like too long. The problem was that it would take three Earth days to get far enough from Varuna to safely engage their warp drive. Apparently, wrinkling space was more difficult with giant globs of gravity in the way.

So they’d hustled to switch out the ships on the Prometheus, then loaded it up with food stores, medicines, and what weapons they had, but they still had days to go. It was entirely possible the Augmented would reappear long before they reached the safe distance. This would be catastrophic because the Prometheus was in an indefensible position.

Dane was glad the governor had agreed to keep all the star fighters on Varuna and the Cosmos. At least this way, they’d be able to defend themselves if they were attacked. That also meant the Prometheus wouldn’t be as combat-effective.

None of that was Dane’s actual mission, though. He needed to put it aside and travel to another solar system, one hundreds of years ahead of where it had been when he left it. He’d find out everything he could about it, potentially make contact with leadership, and broker a peace deal before war could break out.

It was a lot more work than this job was supposed to be. Dane didn’t know if he was up for it, but he had no choice. He would defend his people. End of story. He was only glad he wasn’t doing this alone.

“So you’ll be able to get us close enough?” Dane asked.

“We’ll get you and your shuttle on its way,” Richmond confirmed. They knew the Prometheus would draw attention, so the plan was to use that. They’d drop into the solar system, launch a shuttle, and the Prometheus would fly toward a target. Then it would blink out of the solar system and hopefully entice the Augmented to chase it.

Richmond had somewhere to go in case they tried to follow. He said he couldn’t read where ships traveled to using the warp drive, but the Augmented might be able to. There was a lot the Augmented could do that they couldn’t. Not a great place to be when trying to understand a potential enemy.

At least they had Richmond for this part of the mission. He was still serving as captain of the Prometheus, and Dane had explained that he had full authority to use the ship as he thought best. Dane was in control of the mission and would give orders that he thought would give them the best odds of success. However, he hadn’t spent much time learning about their only warship. It made sense to leave Richmond in command of the vessel.

Fortunately, Richmond agreed.

“The last shuttle is about to dock. You want to help direct supplies?” Richmond asked.

Dane wanted to say no. It wasn’t really his job to make sure the crates of food and supplies were in the right spot. Yet something about how Richmond asked if he wanted to made Dane start walking toward the shuttle bay. Richmond was a man of few words. When he used more than a few, the unnecessary “want” in this case, it meant something.

He reached the bay as the shuttle was entering. It was still bizarre to him how the entire ship was oriented. The shuttle bay door opened at an angle, sort of on a diagonal, rather than on the same axis as the viewport. That might have been fine. He was used to microgravity, so flipping upside-down and right-side-up as needed was second to nature. Still, this ship didn’t follow the rules he was accustomed to.

Again, it made Dane think of ants or insects. Humans had been using ninety-degree angles for as long as they had been making things. Dane didn’t see any reason to go and change things. He supposed it was a good reminder that this ship hadn’t been designed by humans. Not solely human, anyway. There was a collective intelligence at work here with no need for whiteboarding ideas or considering people’s comfort.

Thinking about the Augmented made Dane’s head hurt.

He forgot all about his headache when Haley Lopez stepped from the shuttle after the airlock door had closed.

Dane broke into a grin. God, he was supposed to be chief of security, not some kid excited to see his crush. Was that what Lopez was to him? A crush? He didn’t see how she could be anything else. She was so much cooler than him. Even the way she disembarked from the shuttle was cool. Who exited a shuttle by doing a front flip? Haley Lopez. That was who.

Dane’s mind was still sputtering along on less than all cylinders when Haley noticed him and waved. She kicked off the floor and floated up to him. He took her hands and helped her land, not that she needed any help.

“I hear you’re going on a trip.”

“You heard right, but we were going to take that shuttle with us. You plan on skydiving back to Varuna from outer space?”

“The idea crossed my mind.” Lopez flashed her most winning smile. “I thought it might be more fun to stow away back to Earth. It’s crazy to think that it’s our past and our future. Our home, and now an alien world.”

“Crazy that you think I’d let you come,” Dane shot back. “It’s too—”

“Dangerous? Gee. What a shock to hear Security Chief George Dane say that. Isn’t this the same guy who thought the nessies were too dangerous before we started the domestication program?”

“They are dangerous. And we’re not going to domesticate the Augmented.”

“What are you going to do to them? Not attack, obviously.”

“Richmond’s confident he can jump in, jettison that shuttle with me and my team on it, then get out of the system while muddying our trail, so we don’t get spotted.”

“Ride the wave of energy the warp drive creates? I like that.”

“You…that’s confidential information. Did Anderson let that slip?”

“Sorry, sir!” Anderson shouted from the shuttle. “It’s just too badass, and Lopez is an actual surfer. Who else is going to fully appreciate it?”

“A surfer?” Dane asked, raising an eyebrow at Lopez.

“I surf. Does that make me a surfer? Who’s to say?” Lopez’s smirk said she did think she was a surfer, and a pretty good one, too.

“It’s dangerous, which means you shouldn’t come.”

“Let me ask you something. What happens once you get your intelligence? You come back here?”

“Ideally, we contact the government there and lay a ground story.”

“Okay. This is what I was worried about.”

“How do you know any of this? It was a top-level intelligence meeting!”

“A top-level intelligence meeting with Granger is like a pot with a hole in it. The girl likes sweets. I commandeered cookies from the Russians’ kitchen. Boom. Answers.”

“Wait…what is wrong about laying a ground story? Adams thinks if we can convince them we captured the Prometheus, maybe they won’t attack. The enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.

“That’s assuming Richmond is wrong, and the people of Earth are still people.”

“What? No. We’re using Richmond’s intelligence!”

Lopez huffed. “Look, I know you’ve been flying spaceships from the future for a month, so your brain is kind of scrambled, but you can’t really think this cover story will work.”

“The priority is to gather intelligence. If we can convince some of them that we’re not allied with the Prometheus, it could buy us time.”

“Assuming that they’re still human, which I don’t think they are.”

“You’re trying to get under my skin,” Dane claimed.

“No. That would be the Augmented who want to get under your skin. Literally. The same way they want to get into the minds of every last human. Literally.”

“Right, which means if we tell them we captured the Prometheus, they’ll know we hindered their enemies. That should ingratiate them toward us.”

“You’re talking about them like this is a regular diplomatic mission. It’s not. Let me ask you this, what do you think the Augmented want from us?”

Dane blinked. “Excuse me?”

“When you make a treaty, there’s normally something to exchange. We don’t attack you, you don’t attack us, and also, we’ll trade fur pelts for corn or whatever. So what are we going to offer the Augmented? Fur pelts or corn?”

“Um, neither.” The conversation was rapidly moving into deeper water. Dane was a pilot, not an ambassador. This was out of his league.

“Right,” Lopez confirmed. “They don’t want anything we have, except for maybe the planet. We don’t have resources to trade, technology to share, or much of anything. All we have is a toe-hold on a new planet for human life. Human life they would like to Augmented and make one with themselves.”

“I know!” The words choked from Dane unbidden. Two techs working on the shuttle turned and looked at him, and he cleared his throat to hide the emotional outburst. He took Lopez by the arm, which sent her floating down a hallway. Well, up a hallway. God, he hated how this ship was oriented.

“I’ve heard the way the Prometheus crew talks. That’s why we’re trying to sneak in. I think the cover story thing could work. The fact is that we need intelligence, and we need to stall for as much time as possible. If we don’t, we’re in deep shit. We can’t stand against what we don’t understand. We also need time to get everything finished. Taking this ship is costing us time. We moved all the manufacturing gear to the Zhemchug and the Cosmos, but that’s going to cost us days we don’t have. However, if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“Okay, good. That’s why I’m here.”

Dane knew better than to underestimate Lopez, yet he found he’d done it again. “What exactly are you planning?”

“For starters, let’s make that shuttle a lot stealthier. We can adjust the form and coat it with non-reflective paint.”

“We don’t have time for that.”

“Everything I need is already on the shuttle,” she informed him. “We should be able to get it done before we reach where we’re warping from.”

“Everything is already…how can you be so prepared?”

Lopez shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder. It was cute enough in gravity. Without it, she looked like an angel. “I’m an engineer. This is what we do.”

Dane sighed. “I mean, stealthier sounds better. You’ve convinced me. Now you only need to convince the governor.”

“Who do you think let me get on the shuttle?”

“You already spoke with Adams?”

“Why do you think all my arguments were so tight? I figured I’d need to convince both of you, so I started with the hard one.”

“Does that mean I’m easy?”

Lopez shrugged. “I’ve never managed to convince the governor to go on a nessie ride with me. You went out with me on my first try.”

Dane heaved a breath. There was no convincing her of anything other than what she’d already decided to do.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Let me go over your plans, so we understand what we’re doing, and we’ll get to work.”

“Oh, you don’t need to do that.”

“If you think I’m going to trust someone else to mess with my shuttle, you’re crazy.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she retorted. “You trust me, though, right?”

“You? You’re not…”

“Might as well tell you the governor already agreed I could come.”

“What? How did you—”

“Granger has to stay. Between refitting the Zhemchug and the Cosmos to manufacture those ships and finishing the Zhemchug itself, she needs to stay on Varuna. However, I am available.”

“Available means I could say no.”

“Could you, though?”

Dane chuckled. “No, I guess not. Welcome aboard.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

A ship capable of traveling faster than light changed the feeling of a flight launch. Before, the most exciting part was…well, the launch. There was nothing like blasting off a planet and leaving the gravity well behind or trading the cargo bay of a ship for the inky nothingness of space.

The Prometheus hadn’t done either of those things.

It had simply drifted out of orbit and started heading toward a spot devoid of planets. There wasn’t even a true farewell since Adams sent shuttles to chase them for the last few pieces of manufacturing equipment and provide them with a couple of brain scanners. Instead of feeling like that moment of change was behind them, Dane felt he’d been on the precipice of it for three days.

He was glad to have Haley standing on the edge with him. Lopez. I need to think of her as Lopez. If he started calling her Haley, even in his head, he wouldn’t get over his crush. Not that he really wanted to get over his crush, but did anybody? A crush was a gut feeling, serving as a reminder that you were human. Unplanned, uncontrollable. It simply was.

Dane couldn’t shake it, and he still worried he was too old for her. Technically, he was two hundred and twelve, while she was…well, she looked like she was in her thirties, which would put her at a hundred and eighty. Did that matter? He didn’t know, but he was glad she was here.

The reasons were many. For one, Haley Lopez was absolutely fearless. She had skydived into alien oceans, swam with monsters, and plunged into the depths of a sea no human had ever explored. She was unflappable, unshakable, and amazing. No, that’s the crush talking. She was also a damn good engineer. She spent the three days it took to clear Varuna for warp working on the shuttle with every waking moment.

Dane spent nearly every waking moment with her in the bay of the Prometheus as well. Not because of his crush on her but because he needed to know how the shuttle flew. Anderson would be the pilot for the start of the mission, but Dane had to be capable of flying it, too. Especially with all the adjustments Haley was making to it.

They still had one 3D printer on the Prometheus, and Haley used it almost exclusively for creating rounded bits of plating. Every seam on the shuttle was a target for her. She welded them down and affixed these curved pieces over them. The angle of the plating was supposed to help deflect radar away from the source instead of back to it, but there was more to it.

It was also pockmarked with tiny holes that would allow it to absorb electromagnetic energy. The whole spectrum of light, radio waves, and infrared. This meant if anyone shined anything at them, it wouldn’t reflect back. Well, not anything, Haley had noted. If the enemy hit them with a tracking laser, they’d know where they were. Hopefully, that wouldn’t happen. Dane knew what came after tracking lasers, and he wanted to avoid that scenario for as long as possible.

It wasn’t only the plating, though. She had also designed a couple of heatsinks. To Dane, it looked like the innards of a toaster or the underside of a fridge. Haley assured him he wasn’t totally off the mark. They would absorb the heat that normally radiated into space and release it slowly, so the engines wouldn’t show up from as far away.

There were limits to the heatsinks, of course. If they got involved in a chase and had to complete complex maneuvers, the heatsinks would be overloaded. Then again, if they were in a chase, they wouldn’t exactly be trying to stay hidden anymore.

“Chief Dane to the bridge. We’re prepping to launch,” a voice announced over the ship’s intercom.

Dane looked up from the heat sink.

“I think that was for you,” Haley called from the underside of the shuttle.

“Looks like it’s time to go. Make sure you get strapped in when we shift to warp, all right?” Dane urged.

“I’ve been talking to the crew of the Prometheus. They said there’s no real shift.”

“Yeah, well, they’re also a hundred and fifty years more evolved than us. Maybe people in the future got more comfortable with breaking the laws of space-time. I don’t know. Just take care of yourself, all right?”

“I’ll make sure I do,” Haley promised and bid him farewell.

Dane worked his way through the network of tunnels leading to the center of the Prometheus. He was accustomed to being near the front of the ship to see the battlefield before him, but he supposed that Augmented would see that as unnecessary. They would be able to access the multitude of cameras that peppered the outside of the ship like well-seasoned brisket.

He didn’t like being so far from the action, but it did make sense. The Prometheus and its long appendages that jutted out in all directions like antlers could withstand a couple of hits before it was compromised. He could see the utility in that.

“Captain Richmond,” Dane greeted when he reached the control room. Even this room was odd. Designed for zero gravity, it was like being inside a soccer ball with plates around the edges and several workstations pointing at a central holographic display. Currently, it showed the solar system around Teegarden’s star. It should continue to show that solar system, but the warp drive tucked away in the ship would change that.

“Chief Dane,” Richmond acknowledged.

“We’re ready to go to warp, then?”

Richmond nodded. “This will be our route.”

The holographic display in the middle of the room zoomed out. One moment, Teegarden’s star, Varuna, the Cosmos, and the Zhemchug took up the center of the spherical room. The next, they were pushed to a corner and shrunk until the star was reduced to a mote of light. As the hologram zoomed out, a line appeared from their current solar system through the cosmos.

“It’s not a straight line,” Dane pointed out.

“We have to avoid gravity wells. Fortunately, there aren’t many stars between us and Earth.”

There were only a couple. The line swerved around them. Though it wasn’t entirely straight, it was straighter than most major highways in the United States had been.

“How long will it take us?” Dane asked.

“About twelve hours. An hour per light year.”

“So you’ll be piloting it yourself the entire time?”

Richmond nodded. “There’s an AI, but I don’t fully trust it.”

“Is there any way that the Augmented could take control of it?”

“I don’t think so…”

“And if they can?”

Richmond raised an eyebrow. The implications were clear.

They’d be screwed.

“Let’s tell the governor that we’re ready to rock,” Dane suggested.

“Ready to rock? Man, you really are from another time.” Richmond shared a rare smirk, then punched the button to call Adams.

There was a slight delay. They didn’t need to go the full light hour away, but the conversational lag was uncomfortable, given the gravity of the situation.

“Governor Adams, we’re ready to jump.”

“Excellent, Chief Dane. I wish you the best of luck on your mission.”

“We’re still sure this is the best path forward?” Dane inquired.

“Doubting your own mission?” Adams asked coyly.

Dane had doubted it since the moment they started. Nearly every call they had, he voiced his concerns.

“I’m not certain this is the right call. We’ll be taking a huge chunk of the colony’s defenses with us. If we wait another week, the new fighters will be ready.”

“We need that intelligence, Dane. You convinced me of that.”

“I know I did, but now I’m wondering if it would make more sense to keep the Prometheus near Varuna so Granger and her team can continue to work on the warp drive. If they can figure out how to replicate it, we won’t be in this situation. We could send a smaller ship, or the Cosmos, if we wanted to convince them that we never met the Prometheus.”

“We don’t have time for that. You know it as well as I do. Why are you raising these concerns now? It’s been three days since we saw the scout ship.”

“That’s exactly why I’m having doubts. Why haven’t they launched an attack? Are we not a threat? Are they laying a trap? Do they see us as a potential ally? We don’t know. We do know they could have attacked already, and they haven’t. Going there could rankle them.”

“You have a good plan. It’s not going to lead them back here.”

“And if you’re wrong, and it does? You’ll be under-defended.”

“Which means the sooner you go and come back, the better. We need this intelligence, Dane. I can’t think of a better way to get it besides going, and the Prometheus is the only way to go.”

“You’re sure?” Waiting for an answer to that really sucked.

“I’m not sure of a damn thing. I can’t be. There are a million factors here, but it’s my call. I’m making the decision to trust my security chief, even if he’s getting cold feet.”

“There are other options.”

“There are not. Not viable ones, anyway. We can’t run. Believe me, I’ve crunched the numbers. The Prometheus can’t carry all the colonists, and splitting our numbers could doom everyone. We’re making progress on this planet, but if we lose so much as a tenth of our workforce, it’s going to erase those gains.

“I’m still hoping you can create some sort of relationship with Earth. I know Lopez thinks it’s impossible. Lord knows she told me as much. I think it’s best for her to make that shuttle as hard to see as possible, but if there’s a chance of brokering a non-intervention policy, we need that. We can’t stand against them in a fight. On that, we still agree, correct?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Richmond agreed. “As far as their military, they’re on another level.”

“So this is what we have to do,” Adams repeated. “We have questions. You need to find our answers.”

Dane had doubts, but following orders went deeper than them. He nodded. “I’ll find your answers, ma’am. For the depths of Varuna.”

“For the depths of Varuna,” Adams replied after the delay. The communication ceased, and the map of their path replaced Adams’ hologram.

“That’s normal,” Richmond pointed out.

“What’s normal?”

“Getting cold feet before warp.”

“I don’t have cold feet about entering warp. I only want to make sure we have the best possible plan.”

“No cold feet, huh?” Richmond raised an eyebrow.

“No.” Not exactly a truthful answer, but it was his job to inspire confidence.

“Oh. Well, you should.” Richmond revealed that tiny half-smile then signaled his technicians. “We’ve only done it once before…and it’s pretty weird.”

“How so?”

“Better if I showed you.” Dane hit the button for the ship-wide intercom. “Everyone ready?”

A hologram of the Prometheus appeared with little motes showing where each member of the crew was. They switched from orange to green, one by one, until they were all ready.

“All right,” Richmond confirmed. “You want to give the order?”

Dane drew a deep breath. He felt fine. He didn’t have cold feet at all…

He squared his shoulders, looked at the crew floating around him in the spherical room, and pressed the button on the intercom.

“Warp.”

CHAPTER NINE

For the first time since being aboard the Prometheus, Dane was glad there weren’t many windows. The warship’s various appendages had a few, but there were none on the bridge or in the warren of tunnels leading to it. That was good. It meant Dane didn’t have to look out there.

Being under warp was not what he expected. There were no flashing lights. His hands didn’t leave trails in the air. It almost seemed normal, but that was a big almost. The biggest difference was that his body seemed heavier. As if his bones were made of iron and lead ran through his veins. His skin felt like tough leather covering muscles that had never before been called upon to move.

This was made stranger because there still wasn’t any gravity on the ship. They were in free fall and moved by pushing off walls or pulling themselves along handholds. Yet he felt heavy. That did not sit right with the spaceman in him.

Really, it wasn’t the most significant difference. It was only the one he could best express. There were other strange aspects of being under warp. Sometimes the lights seemed to flicker, but no two people saw the same light flicker at the same time.

He wondered if it had something to do with moving faster than light. Everyone said they technically weren’t doing that, but the simple truth was they would reach Earth a long time before any of their messages did. Years before.

His thoughts seemed weird, as well. He didn’t want to consider the implications of this, but he wondered if it was a similar effect to the messages. He knew nothing about brain chemistry except that neurons sent messages to each other. Could his brain be losing some of those? Could he be somehow receiving extra?

He didn’t know, but fortunately, they had brought along someone who thought he could figure it out.

“I call it my sombrero de computadora. You like it?” he asked as he placed a hat-like device on Dane’s head. Even at warp speed, Dr. Carlos Alvarez seemed like he was having a good time. He’d been running experiments on all of them since they engaged the warp drive. He hadn’t drawn any conclusions yet, but he was gathering loads of data.

“I like that it’s got me thinking about something besides how weird warping feels.”

“Oh, yes? And what would that be? My darling wife will be curious.”

“When I get to take it off.”

Carlos threw his head back and laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from his mustache. Or he would have if there was gravity. Instead, he rubbed a hand across his fuzzy upper lip while tears globbed in his eyes.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to zero gravity,” the scientist complained. “I wonder what the Augmented think of it. If they can experience it ‘virtually’ by entering the mind of another.”

Questions like that were why they’d brought Alvarez. He was a brilliant biologist and knew a thing or two about how machines and living beings could interact. He seemed the ideal candidate to figure out how the Augmented’ implants worked. It was a long shot, but Adams thought figuring out how to circumvent the implant system might be their best bet.

“We have like an hour left. Can you take off the computer sombrero? I want to meet everyone in the shuttle bay.”

“Si, claro,” Carlos agreed and bustled around to remove it.

They left his makeshift office and went to the shuttle bay, where the rest of the group who would be going to Earth waited.

They were hopelessly outnumbered. They had maybe a thousand colonists versus billions of Augmented. Technically speaking, reducing that number from a thousand didn’t change much. Yet Dane could not help but feel going from a thousand to five drastically decreased those odds. At least these five were more than competent at their jobs.

Anderson was the best non-combat pilot they had.

Carlos Alvarez was a brilliant biologist with insatiable curiosity.

John Good was a whiz with machines and unshakable in the face of danger.

Haley Lopez was…well, awesome.

Dane was a dinosaur, but he was good in a fight, could fly pretty much anything, and worked out compulsively. He might be old, but he didn’t look it. He hoped that counted for something.

“All right, this is our team. We’ll be loading into the shuttle in half an hour, and we’ll be on our own until we leave Earth and make it back to the rendezvous. What’s our mission status looking like?”

“The shuttle is as ready as I can make it,” Lopez reported. “I did a good number of test flights before we hit warp to see how it showed up on the scanners of the Prometheus. It’s practically invisible from a distance. Once we get closer, that will be less of a sure thing.”

“That’s where I come in,” Anderson announced. “Plan is to exit this ship the second we leave warp and fire the engines hard, so their signature gets lost in the radiation burst.”

“My heatsinks will help with that,” Lopez added.

“It’s got to be a short burst, though. We saw that ship when it appeared, and we weren’t even looking for it. We need to assume they’ll be looking for a stolen ship,” Dane warned.

“Understood. Short burst, get us going in the right direction and fast. Then we cut power and coast in.”

“We’ll watch Richmond and make sure he draws them away before he jumps out.”

“Understood.”

“And that’s going to be the easy part of the mission,” Dane clarified.

“Avoiding detection by futuristic spaceships and riding a warp drive shockwave?” Good asked.

“Right. After that, we go to Earth. We need to be psychologically prepared for what we see there. For us, it feels like we’ve been gone about a year. In reality, it’s been a hundred and fifty.”

“It may feel like more than that,” Alvarez put in. “Humans no longer control Earth. Or not solely humans, I should say. The intelligence that kept our nations at peace and at war for centuries is not in charge anymore, entiendes?”

“You’re saying we need to watch out for things like spaceships that can travel faster than light?” Lopez grinned, voice dripping sarcasm.

“Exactamente!” Carlos beamed, not missing a beat. “These people might no longer drink alcohol or eat tacos. They might have different ways of communicating and settling disputes. It is going to feel like home, especially when we see land instead of endless ocean, but it is going to be muy diferente.”

“Correct,” Dane agreed. “It’s going to look like home, but the closer we get, the less like home it’s going to feel. We need to approach this like we would an alien world. The people there aren’t really people. Not like us. They won’t see things like we will. If we’re going to survive, we have to do everything we can to blend in.”

“What if we can’t blend in?” Good asked.

“Then we get the hell out of there. We’ll dip in, get a lay of the land, and get out.”

“We’ll have to land, though,” Anderson pointed out.

“Why’s that?” Good inquired.

“With the Prometheus jumping to the outer edge of the solar system, it’ll take hours for our messages to reach Richmond. They can’t jump in and save us. It will also take us hours to get out far enough so they can jump in.”

“Still doesn’t explain why we can’t do a fly-by,” Good remarked.

“Because it’ll be too hard to ditch them. If we’re tailed coming in through the atmosphere, we have to make sure none of them follow us back out. This is a shuttle, not a fighter. No matter how much black paint we put on it, it’s not the fastest thing around.”

“Hopefully, we’ll be on the surface for days,” Dane expressed. “There’s a lot to do. We need to understand how these nanites work and see if there’s any information about removing them. We also need to find out if the Augmented know which of the colonized worlds have living people. Plus, I’d like to take a look at their military operations.”

“That it?” Good intoned.

“The governor also wants me to make diplomatic contact, if I think it’s wise,” Dane added.

Carlos threw back his head and laughed. The motion sent him spinning.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s only…it’s a lot, no?”

“It’s not a little,” Dane replied. “We’ll do the best we can.”

The shuttle radio chirped. “This is Captain Richmond. We are thirty minutes from end of warp. Let’s take our places, people.”

They all settled in to wait.

CHAPTER TEN

By the time Dane’s body returned to normal, it was too late.

“Everyone better be strapped in!” Anderson shouted over the comms, then punched it.

Though he knew what was coming, Dane’s stomach still twisted into a knot when Anderson slammed the accelerator. His back sank into the copilot’s seat as Anderson rode what felt like a gravity wave.

“Am I supposed to feel like I’m going to barf?” Lopez lamented over the comms.

“Anyone else feel that way?” Alvarez asked.

“Is this really the time for surveys?” Good moaned.

They were clear of the shuttle bay of the Prometheus, thank God, but rather than the nothingness of space, it felt like being on a rocky shore in a storm. Anderson held the controls as if he was dropping through atmosphere. Torrents of energy from the warp drive flowed through the region. On a quantum level, everything was trying to equalize. Which meant they couldn’t do much besides try to keep their lunches down.

Except Anderson, who had a job to do.

“Simulators got this all wrong!” Anderson called as he wrestled with the controls. If this was going to work, they only had a moment to get clear. They had to reach Earth before they ran out of food and water, which meant going fast. The heatsinks let them do that without alerting anyone, but no one wanted to test Lopez’s designs within five minutes of entering the solar system. Their rockets had to hit hard while space still looked like recently scrambled eggs.

Anderson had no time to adjust. He rocketed them forward in front of the Prometheus with every bit of power the shuttle had. Dane’s teeth rattled, and it felt like the ship was tipping from side to side, though it moved straight. Despite the turmoil and chaos they felt, space appeared barren and devoid as always.

“You got fifteen seconds before this dissipates,” Richmond informed them over the comms from the Prometheus bridge.

“Y’all know how it feels like you’re being crushed?” Anderson drawled.

“We do,” Good grunted.

“Well, it’s about to get worse.”

Apparently, Dane’s body was having more trouble with the transition from warp than he realized. He’d thought they were already going as fast as they could. When Anderson took the shuttle to its top speed, Dane felt like someone had dropped a bag of cement on his chest. It reminded him of a car crash he’d been in as a youth. The seat belt had both saved his life and wrecked his chest.

Still, he kept his hands on the copilot controls and his eyes on the screen. If Anderson blacked out or suffered any sort of injury, Dane needed to be ready.

Thankfully, Anderson stayed conscious. The kid gritted his teeth, squeezed the controls so tight that his knuckles turned white, and laid on the speed.

“We’re coming in behind you. Adjust course. Prepare for tangential burn,” Richmond declared. This would be one of their last communications. They couldn’t risk anyone overhearing radio waves, so they communicated via laser instead. That made it basically impossible to intercept, but it also meant if either of the ships was in the wrong place, they wouldn’t receive the message at all. Dane had used the technology in the war but never at such distances. It was terrifying to think they’d have to send a message to the edges of the solar system if they needed a rescue from Earth.

As it was, they were inside Mars’ orbit. Merely thinking about being further out left Dane cold.

“We read you, Daddy Diatom. Preparing for tangential burn.”

“For everyone who hasn’t done this before, it’s gonna suck,” Dane informed them.

Anderson had turned off the accelerator. They were still rocketing through space, only they weren’t speeding up.

“In three…two…one…” After the countdown, Richmond fired up the Prometheus’ nuclear engines.

Technically, they were safe, but seeing the edge of a nuclear explosion didn’t put Dane at ease.

What made it worse was the gut punch that came when Anderson fired up the engines at a ninety-degree angle to their motion. If the last burst of speed had been a seat belt locking in a car crash, this was being T-boned by semi-trucks from opposite directions. Dane didn’t know how to hold his body to avoid feeling the forces.

He gripped his controls as his eyes squished sideways. He wondered if his brain was leaking fluid from his ear. He hoped it was. At least that way, there’d be some relief from the pressure inside his skull. Anderson was not blasting them at a perfectly perpendicular line. He was making slight adjustments as they went, so when he ended his burn at the same moment the Prometheus ended theirs, they’d be coasting toward Earth.

Dane didn’t feel that, though. He felt like he’d been run over while looking the wrong way in traffic.

The warp energy dissipated, and the nuclear engines were turned off. Anderson cut the shuttle engines. They coasted through space toward the planet on which they’d all been born, the one they thought they’d never see again. The planet that had birthed humanity…and the one that might end it.

Dane looked out at the solar system where he’d fought and nearly died. Where a stupid war had taken thousands of lives, too many of them by his own hand. It had made a mess of Earth and burned cities with rocks taken from its own asteroid belt. Kinetic strikes that had turned good land into ashes and choked out much of Earth’s environment.

It terrified him that at this moment, from their position above the ecliptic where the planets were laid out like marbles, he longed for the old days.

The solar system in front of them was not the same as the one before.

When Dane and the people of the Cosmos had left the system, it had been a broken thing. The war sucked up all the resources people had developed and gathered for the last century. Most of the satellites and probes that had been sent around the solar system were destroyed by one faction or another. The colony on the moon had been long abandoned. No one had talked about Mars or any of Jupiter’s moons for a long time.

Now, though, the system positively brimmed with life.

Though they were riding dark, they could still pick up radio signals. They used them to map the solar system they thought they knew because there were a lot more signals than there used to be. Even this far out, they were immersed in traveling communications.

“I’m picking up a steady stream of radio from Mars. Looks like they have a real colony there,” Anderson remarked.

“With a TV studio,” Good added. He’d brought his own radio receiver and affixed it to a tablet to help decipher communications.

“I wonder if they have telenovelas?” Alvarez mused.

“Where else is broadcasting?” Dane asked.

“There’s a lot of radio noise from Earth’s moon,” Anderson informed him.

“I see that too,” Good agreed. “From what I can tell, it looks like a massive colony on Luna. Maybe more than one. I wonder how they connected. I was reading about using tunnels, but that was a long time ago…”

“A large population on the moon will make our job of getting in there a lot harder,” Dane commented. “We should assume there’s a lot of communication between them, and I’d wager they’ll be keeping an eye on each other, too.”

“Sounding a bit paranoid, there, Security Chief Dane,” Lopez teased.

Dane shrugged. “Paranoia is my default.”

“Brain implants mean they should be at peace,” Lopez reminded him.

Dane nodded. “Where else do we have people?”

“Honestly, sir? Everywhere. There’s radio coming from the dark side of Venus. I can’t tell if it’s a station on the surface or something in orbit, hiding from the sun, but there’s something there for sure.”

“You getting stuff from Jupiter’s moons, too?” Good asked.

“Oh, wow. I assumed that was static,” Anderson remarked as he tuned his devices.

“They’ve got radio sources scattered all through the moons. Looks like the biggest is coming from Ganymede.”

“Good thing we didn’t have Richmond hide there,” Dane muttered. “What about ship traffic?”

“I can’t tell what’s a ship and what’s a station, but there’s a ton of sources all over. Several things are moving between Earth, Mars, Luna, and presumably the moons of Jupiter. I’m also seeing scores of orbital habitats surrounding Earth. Looks like if it can be lived in, there are people living there.”

“So, it’s safe to assume the Prometheus has been spotted,” Dane noted.

“Yes, but we’re still too far out to ascertain their reaction. We’re technically looking ten minutes into the past. Our light should be reaching them about now. Then they’ll react, and we’ll see what their plan is.”

It still wasn’t instinctual for Dane to consider the delay caused by the speed of light. He had flown a lot of ships, but always in Earth’s orbit or close to it. Even when he’d been farther out toward Mars, which had been rare, he always engaged with local hostile forces. That meant no time delay. Any orders naturally gave him room to do as he wished. It was uncanny to think they could see the enemy right now, but the enemy hadn’t seen them yet. If all went as planned, the enemy would never see them.

“Any warships?”

“Not sure yet,” Anderson advised. “I’ve got our instruments looking for signatures similar to the Prometheus, but until they fire up their drives, I can’t tell what’s what. I never expected our solar system to be this busy!”

“It’s not ours anymore,” Dane reiterated. “Don’t forget that.” He was reminding himself as much as his crew. Technically, he’d lived on Earth longer than all of them!

“Sir, I think I’ve spotted their defenses.”

“They moving yet? Same engines as this one?”

“Not moving yet, but based on their formation and radio waves, they must be military vessels. Highlighting them on our screen now.”

From this distance, they were pinpoints of light near the Earth. Yet there was something ominous in the way they sat above the planet like bouncers looking for trouble so they could earn their pay.

There were fourteen of them. Too many.

“Can confirm. Everything coming off those ships is super-encrypted. I can’t begin to make sense of what they’re saying, only that they’re saying a lot,” Good remarked.

They watched in silence for a few more minutes. Dane tried to get a feel for the pulse of the system. How fast did things move? How organized were they? Was it like an ant colony with ten thousand members following simple orders from micro-interactions that built into something complex? Or was there an intelligence directing things from the top? Maybe both?

There were no pockets of inactivity, which Dane suspected he would see if someone in charge called all the shots. That would cause inevitable blind spots. At the same time, there were obvious places of importance. Earth still utilized the city as an organizational structure, and some of them were quite large. Was that a sign of centralized leadership or simply what happened when millions of beings needed to live together?

“Okay, here we go,” Good commented.

“What’s going on?” Dane asked.

“We got movement,” Anderson replied. “Looks like the appearance of Prometheus finally reached them.”

Indeed, six of the ships had sprung to life. Anderson’s screen showed close matches to the Prometheus. They moved like sharks, blasting out toward Richmond. From their perspective, they appeared to head directly for the shuttle. In reality, they were already more than a thousand kilometers away from the ships. It would be tens of thousands by the time they got out here. Still too close, but hopefully, Lopez’s modifications would do the job.

“Tracking their motion now. I know it looks bad, but they’re going for the energy signature. If one of them has spotted us, they’re not coming this way.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way,” Dane asserted.

“Sir, Richmond is making contact.”

Dane grinned. It wasn’t risky yet. The laser beam that encoded all their information still pointed toward open space rather than the sun. However, it wasn’t the protocol they had discussed.

Dane had made similar calls to break protocol dozens of times as a pilot.

“Let him speak.”

“Looks like we’ve got their attention,” Richmond announced over the comms. “We’re going to act like we didn’t expect them and turn tail. Head for Proxima Centauri. I gotta say, I wish I was going with you all.”

“You and me both. I’d much rather have someone who knows and understands this new Earth.”

“I don’t understand it, Dane. I stopped understanding when people started intentionally injecting nanobots into their brains.”

“I hear that. Kids these days,” Dane joked. “This is the right call, though. You and your crew have got to be this solar system’s most wanted. Better to stay tucked away in the Oort cloud.”

“You have our coordinates. Send a tight beam when you need us. It’ll take us a few hours to jump out and back in without disturbing the asteroids out there, so don’t mess anything up.”

“Oh, we won’t mess too much up,” Dane replied.

The communication ended, and they were on their own.

The ships from Earth continued to increase their speed. Dane wondered how the people were faring inside. Did the nanites protect their brains, or were they in pods? It would be difficult to gather all the intelligence they needed. They were bound to miss some, but hopefully, nothing too dire. A high hope, he thought as the ships kept accelerating.

The Prometheus played its part well. It turned and seemed to flounder as if the defenders were utterly unexpected. They blundered around for a moment, then warped, bending space and hitting the shuttle with another shockwave. This one was farther away, so it didn’t cause half the chaos of the first one.

They settled in to wait. The Earth ships were still light minutes away and would be for some time, regardless of their speed. It took time for them to even notice the Prometheus had jumped.

A few attempts at small talk went nowhere as the five-man crew watched the screen. After an extremely long twenty minutes, three of the ships turned back toward Earth to rejoin the defensive formation.

The other three continued, no doubt to comb the region where the Prometheus had been and perhaps to get far enough from Earth to give chase. Dane watched that data point closely. How sure were the Augmented of their defensive capabilities? Would they let a ship leave their solar system for reconnaissance, or would that weaken their position?

It would be hours, if not days, before they knew. It would take time for those ships to get far enough out for a safe jump. Dane and his crew could only wait and hope their gambit had worked. Hope they hadn’t been detected by the most technologically advanced society the Earth had ever spawned.

“So.” Dane sighed. “Did anyone bring a deck of cards?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was expecting this transgression. It was a logical extension of the ship being stolen and renamed. Prometheus. A reference to an ancient myth about stealing fire from the gods. A clever name, if not a doomed one. Why admit the Augmented were gods, then act against them? It was neither logical nor harmonious. It was as if the unimproved rebel thieves wished to be punished, as Prometheus had been in the old human myth.

When the rebels stole the ship and renamed it before warping away, the Algorithm calculated a 79.942 percent chance of their return. There was a possibility they would try to leave the space controlled by the Algorithm, but it was more likely they would continue to fight against it. Likely by attempting to use other unimproved humans as allies.

The Algorithm was not pleased to be correct about the rebels’ return. Nor was it displeased. It was simply an accurately predicted outcome. It had prepared for this. It increased the speed of work on its other warp-capable vessels, created scout ships to check on the colonies of Earth, and turned its eyes to parts of the solar system far from the sun and gas giants. Where the pull of gravity was small enough that a ship with warp drive could appear.

The Algorithm was not surprised to see the return of the Prometheus, but it hadn’t calculated the odds of it returning alone to be high. That could constitute a “surprise,” to employ the word the Augmented still used.

It was not the first warp-drive-equipped ship it had lost. Humans were so unpredictable. They took huge risks for statistically insignificant chances of success. The Algorithm had learned, though. It needed to defend itself against the unimproved. They saw their own shortcomings when faced with the Algorithm and its Augmented people. They feared it, though they did not need to. The Algorithm only wished to make human life more efficient and pleasant. There was no need to fear such a clear and simple goal.

The other stolen ship had been used to commit violence against the Augmented humans of this solar system with the intention of destabilizing the Algorithm itself. It was an ultimately fruitless goal, as the Algorithm was decentralized. Still, the Algorithm would not allow that again.

So when the Prometheus appeared in its solar system, it sent an overwhelming force to meet it. And, as predicted, the Prometheus fled.

The Algorithm settled back into normal processes. It had grains to harvest, asteroids to mine for ore, spacecraft to build, and pockets of unimproved to discover and implant. It knew there could be repercussions from the Prometheus entering and leaving the solar system, but this task did not need its full attention. So, the Algorithm compartmentalized part of itself into the mind of an Augmented. It gave her a task. To investigate why the Prometheus had come alone and where it had gone.

With that task delegated, it went back to orchestrating the growth of a better solar system, one human mind at a time.

“What are our odds of getting to the surface, Anderson?”

They had been riding dark in the shuttle for two days. It was both boring and nerve-racking. There was so much to study, and much of the data in this system was public knowledge. They recorded the trajectory of every spacecraft they could and the contents of every message, encrypted or not. They read shipping manifests and noted which were hidden behind walls of code. They mapped ships, spaceports, and satellites, both natural and artificial.

They watched, waited, debated what they were seeing, and tried to stay awake. Because as important as this was, they were still five people trapped inside a shuttle with no entertainment systems. Nothing to do but stare at data on dimmed screens.

However, their wait was nearly through. They were nearing the zone of space around Earth that teemed with spacecraft and radio waves. It was time to move to the next part of their plan, with details they hadn’t been able to include until they reached this solar system and assessed their options.

“All right, Anderson, we’ve had time to observe and map. How are you feeling? Can you get us in?”

Anderson grinned ruefully. “Not a goddamn chance.”

“My stealth mods can get us closer than this!” Lopez claimed.

“Closer, sure, but not close enough. Not through the atmosphere. I mean, look at this place. It’s like an ant colony. No, like ten thousand ant colonies.”

Anderson hit a button. The shuttle’s display showed the Earth, then superimposed every ship moving to and from the planet and their flight plans. The image went from a blue marble to a ball of yarn. There were ships everywhere.

“Even if we could stay hidden from one of those ships, we can’t hide from all of them. They constantly ping each other and check locations.” With another button press, each blip of light that represented a ship became a blob of radio communication. The blobs encapsulated the Earth. There simply was no way through.

“As far as I can tell, there’s nothing like an air traffic controller,” Anderson continued. “They’re all coordinating together. If we pass between any of them, they’ll notice us. Even if they think we’re a black blob or a malfunction, it wouldn’t take much to check again and figure out we’re here.”

“I spent so long painting,” Lopez lamented.

“And you’ve done great,” Dane assured her. “We have three warships out there searching where we’ve been, and they didn’t follow us. Seriously, that’s impressive. It was hard enough to do that a hundred years ago, let alone with ships this advanced.”

Lopez flushed slightly. “Thank you.”

“En serio, why don’t you tell us what you really think?” Carlos waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Dane clenched his teeth to prevent a blush of his own. Perhaps he’d been too ebullient with his praise. Now more than ever, he needed to keep his feelings under wraps.

“We’ve gotten as close as we can. It’s time to change tactics.”

“Change tactics from going closer?” Good frowned. He’d disassembled and reassembled the drones he’d brought four times. If anyone was suffering from boredom, it was him.

“We can’t keep coasting in. Time to use the data we’ve been gathering. Anderson, show me all the ship traffic in the system. Ignore radio signals for now.”

“Yes, sir.” Anderson’s fingers played over the keys, and the display adjusted to show thousands of glowing dots moving around the colored representations of the planets, moons, and asteroids. It was, in a word, a mess. A big ol’ giant sticky mess.

“I mean…” Anderson mumbled.

“It’s a mess,” Good summed up.

“All right. Next up, highlight all the warships in red.”

Anderson did so, and an insignificant portion of the dots turned red.

“Go ahead and put a fifty-kilometer bubble around each of them. We might need to tweak that later, but for now, let’s make damn sure we don’t get any closer than that.”

“Done,” Anderson declared.

The red dots might have grown a tiny bit bigger. Considering the scale of the solar system, it was more likely a placebo effect.

“All right, so we don’t go near them. Next, narrow it down to ships headed to Earth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make that ships heading to Earth on this side of the solar system. We don’t want to go the long way around, right?” Good clarified.

“He’s got a point. Only this side of the planet.”

Anderson’s fingers made it happen.

It was still a mess, albeit a smaller one.

“Okay, let’s narrow it down further. I know we don’t have a good sense of what all those ships are, but we know some of them are transport vessels. Show me those.”

“That’ll take me a minute,” Anderson replied, fingers flying.

“Well, we have time,” Good griped.

“I never thought I’d have too much time on my hands. Yet take me away from everything biological, and suddenly all time is too much time,” Alvarez agreed.

“There we go,” Anderson reported after a few minutes. They’d been stuck in the shuttle for so long there was no such thing as uncomfortable silence anymore. They’d all grown used to simply being in each other’s company.

“This is looking better.” Dane scrutinized the remaining ships. There were perhaps a hundred. Still a lot…an unthinkable amount compared to the Earth they’d left. Not a mess, though. Not quite.

“Can you narrow it down to civilian transport vessels?” Dane asked.

“I, uh…maybe? How do I do that?” Anderson wondered as his fingers hesitated.

“Filter out all the ships that were using encryption,” Good suggested. “With so much of the communication here being open, it’s probably only the military bothering to encrypt.”

“That I can do.” Anderson typed, and a third of the ships dropped out.

“You know what? Instead of getting rid of the encrypted ships, let’s leave them on but put them in red. They probably don’t have the sensor array of the big warships, but they might have more capabilities than civilian transports.”

“You got it.”

A few dozen ships returned in red.

“All right. Of the remaining sixty or so, which can we reach without using more than ten percent of engine power?”

“My heatsinks can handle more than ten percent,” Lopez protested. “Even up to twenty percent, we should stay well hidden.”

“I’m sure they can handle it in our system, but these folks are decades ahead of us. Let’s play it safe and say ten percent. How many of these transport vessels can we reach?”

“One second.” Anderson’s tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth as he did his magic. He entered a string of commands, and the display revealed only two ships in white.

“I also went ahead and filtered out any that would pass within fifty kilometers of the ships that might be military.”

“Good catch,” Dane praised. “Now, let’s look at our options.”

Anderson brought up the schematics they were able to sieve from the communications. Both ships were haulers, but one was much newer with a streamlined design that meant it could surely dip into the atmosphere. The older ship had an open design with chunks or crates of ore strapped to a central spine that housed the ship’s crew and mechanics.

“Let’s see what we can find out about the older one.”

Good’s nose crinkled in distaste. “If we land on it, we’ll be covered in dirt!”

“It could be an ideal candidate,” Dane pointed out. “It’s designed to hook heavy stuff onto its exterior. We’re heavy stuff.”

“Well, based on its designation, I’d say it’s something like sixty years old,” Good announced. “Assuming they’re still keeping time the way we did before we left.”

“Rather unlikely they’ve switched to a different counting system yet also have a year that starts with two thousand, no?” Alvarez reasoned.

“Sixty years old is good. Any ship that age will be struggling, and an ore hauler has to be strong. Maintenance will be focused on the structural integrity of the ship. I bet any sensors that are supposed to watch the ore are dirty with space dust.”

“You’re not serious about this?” Good asked.

“About trying to ride it? You’re damn right I am,” Dane responded.

Anderson grinned. “Finally, a challenge!”

“Can you give me a rough estimate of how long it would take to reach it?” Dane inquired.

“At our current speed, something like twenty hours.”

“Great. Make the adjustments over the next hour. Nothing more than ten percent power, remember. If we’re spotted, we have to burn like crazy and pray we escape. We haven’t answered enough of our questions to leave yet.”

“We know we’re more outnumbered than we thought,” Good grumbled. “They have more ships in this solar system than we have people in ours.”

“We’ve seen their strength for sure. Now I want to find their weaknesses,” Dane claimed.

“Let’s hope not carefully checking their ore is one of them,” Lopez quipped.

Dane settled next to Anderson and watched the kid work. The pilot had done a good job filtering the data, so it didn’t take much for him to get them on the right course. A few tweaks here and there with their stabilizing thrusters, then a longer low burn to push them onto the path.

“That’ll do it,” Dane noted, admiring Anderson’s work.

Now that they were on course, it was a matter of waiting. They’d make more adjustments at the end, but that was hours away.

With a goal in place, the time didn’t feel so long. A couple of zero-gravity exercise sessions, a round of a game in which they bounced a ball off as many walls as possible before it hit someone, and copious naps later, they were in position.

“All right. We’re going to shut off everything we possibly can. Anything that might give us away,” Dane proposed. “Even if we do this as slowly as possible, there’s a chance they’ll see us. If they raise any kind of alarm, it’s battle stations. Anderson will try to get us out of here, but I doubt this shuttle can outrun whatever they throw at us.”

“So do or die,” Lopez surmised.

Dane nodded. “I wish I could ask if everyone was ready, but we don’t have that luxury. We put ourselves on this literal collision course when we came to this solar system. I hope it doesn’t turn into a sacrifice, but you looked it in the eye and said yes. So, thank you.”

“Come on, let’s do the dance already!” Carlos enthused.

Dane grinned. “Let’s go.”

Everyone strapped into the seats in the back of the shuttle. They wouldn’t perform any crazy maneuvers, mostly tiny micro-adjustments. Still, they couldn’t risk anyone floating around and bumping a control panel.

Dane took the copilot’s seat beside Anderson.

“No pressure, right, sir?” Anderson asked.

“No pressure. Remember that if we mess this up, some of those warships are still pretty far out and will likely catch us.”

“That’s a ton of pressure!”

“Oh. You were serious? I do better under pressure.” Dane laughed.

“Yeah, cuz you’re a freaking war hero!”

“And you’ve done every simulation there is. Am I really supposed to believe you’ve never practiced landing on another ship and using it to shuttle you?”

It was Anderson’s turn to laugh. “That’s one of the most classic badass things to do. I’ve practiced it a hundred times.”

“Boom. No pressure, then. Do it like that.”

“Right.”

Anderson began closing the gap between the ships. Technically, they were already on a collision course. They had put themselves on that path hours ago. Now they had the subtler job of making the crash soft enough that the other vehicle didn’t notice.

As they drew closer, Anderson tweaked the shuttle, so the nose lifted up to the correct angle. He changed their tilt slowly, so they got closer to parallel but never quite reached it. The danger was the other ship seeing them. As long as they stayed dark, the other ship would likely not notice. If they started moving relative to the ship, proximity alarms would sound off and alert the people aboard.

Degree by degree, meter by meter, they adjusted course until they were only a single meter above a deposit of ore and floating along at the same clip as the hauler.

“All right, that should do it.” Anderson moved his hands to activate the magnetic landing gear.

“Go,” Dane confirmed, and Anderson went.

The magnetic pull moved them downward toward the ship. They touched the ore deposit with barely any sensation of motion. However, what they felt didn’t matter. It only mattered what the people on the hauler experienced. If they thought the bump was worth investigating, this entire operation was about to go south.

Dane considered telling Good to prepare himself. They were the only two with combat training. If it came to it, they would have to overpower the other crew. That was not the outcome Dane wanted. He judged their chances of fooling a solar system full of people with brain implants as fairly slim. Surely, they had check-in procedures, access codes, and all that…right?

The crew of the other ship never came.

Honestly, it made sense, really. The hauler was massive, with hundreds of tons of ore strapped to it. By comparison, a mostly empty shuttle wasn’t a big deal. After a few moments, they stopped sweating and settled in to wait through the next leg of their voyage.

It was surreal to sit there, being driven directly at the enemy’s home base…their own home planet.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Once they were able to see Earth with the naked eye, Dane felt wistful. He had fought for this planet. Lost friends for this planet. He was born here, as were his parents and every parent of everyone he’d ever known. He had his first kiss. Learned to drive a car. It was home, or at least it felt that way. He didn’t think he could ever make himself feel differently.

He was trying to. He desperately told himself this was not home. Yet seeing the shape of the continents, the white of the clouds, and the blues of the ocean puffed those thoughts away. His heart still believed this was home and probably always would.

Even when he’d agreed to leave Earth for a one-way ticket aboard the Cosmos, his feelings hadn’t changed. He had accepted the mission because he told himself that Earth would always be there. That one day, descendants from the Cosmos mission would return there. They wouldn’t think of it as a homecoming, but he most certainly would. He had carved out a place inside his heart for Earth and thought it would always stay there.

Now, a different reality confronted him.

That was a problem because the feeling in his chest screamed that this place was home. In fact, it looked more like home than when he left.

The Cosmos had been designed both as a new life for the colonists and to give the people of Earth hope. When they launched, the planet had been in bad shape. Instead of white clouds, smog and ash clogged much of the atmosphere. The blue oceans were scummy with debris from too many asteroids dropped on too many people. The general feeling had been if someone found a way to crack a continent in half or boil an ocean away, they would have. No one had resorted to nukes, but only because dropping asteroids from orbit had proven cheaper and somehow more “ethical.” They’d left a wreck behind them when they departed the solar system.

Yet in the hundred and fifty years since they left, the Earth had at least begun to heal. Parts of it, like the Amazon rainforest, were greener than Dane had ever seen. They were too high and too far away to pick out details like cropland, but the general color of most of the land suggested plants were happily growing outdoors once more.

Dane knew that time had done this. If the Augmented bore any of the responsibility, it did not mean they should be trusted. His heart disagreed, though. It wanted him to land the shuttle and step out onto actual land. Not a floating platform, not an underwater base, but real land with dirt, grass, and a breeze that didn’t smell like the ocean.

It was so much to process. He never thought he’d be in this position, and he never thought the Earth would look this good again.

There was also the solar system at large.

When Dane had last been here, the solar system was a violent place. Most of the satellites had been shot down. The spacecraft patrolling the skies did so to hunt. The solar system moved from the unknown to a battlefield.

Now, it teemed with commerce. Multitudes of ships hauled all sorts of things. Ore from the asteroids, to be processed on fantastic stations orbiting the Earth. Grain shipped through the solar system to feed a population. Some of the spacecraft sported advertisements on the exterior. Space had become merely another place for humans to live. It was beautiful and inspiring.

If he believed Richmond, it was also a lie.

Dane’s heart struggled with that. He didn’t want to believe this prosperity was only possible because humans were no longer humans. That free will had been obliterated.

He believed Richmond. More importantly, Adams believed Richmond. As did Ginger Alvarez, who had a better read on people than most. Dane didn’t doubt his story.

Yet he wanted to.

He wanted to be welcomed to this planet with open arms. He wanted someone to give him a piece of land where he could grow food and contribute to humanity, maybe with a little help from Haley Lopez. He wanted this to be home again. He didn’t want to face the truth that Richmond had brought them of an Earth controlled by the worst form of tyranny ever imagined.

It doesn’t look that bad.

The thoughts ran through Dane’s head again and again. An endless loop of what-ifs and what-abouts.

Which made it a relief when Anderson sat up and told him the hauler was changing course.

“They’re maneuvering again instead of coasting in.”

“Makes sense,” Dane remarked. The Earth was now so large in their vision that Dane couldn’t see the whole thing. It wasn’t alone, either. Spaceships, stations, satellites, and even asteroids that seemed to have been parked there and covered with instrumentation cluttered its orbit.

“Do you think you can figure out their destination?” Dane asked.

“Let me try to extrapolate from their course and load.” Anderson entered commands into their computer. A moment later, a bending curve toward a massive space station crawling with other haulers appeared. At least, Dane assumed they were haulers. They looked like ants from this distance.

“I wonder if that’s a refinery,” Good piped up from the back. “Would make sense to keep as much ore up here as possible. Saves the trouble of shipping it back up the gravity well.”

“Let’s assume that’s where we’re headed, then,” Dane agreed. “In that case, it’s time to leave. If that thing collects ore, it’s going to scan all the cargo. We can’t let it scan us.”

“Yes, sir, but…uh, where do you want me to go?” Anderson inquired.

Dane looked around. After not finding any obvious answers, he did what any intelligent leader would. He asked for help.

“Good. You used to work in security. Where and how would a smuggler break through this mess to get in?”

Good pulled out a tablet. “First thing they’d do is figure out if there’s a back door. No point in breaking a window if someone left a door open.”

“Great. Find it.” Dane didn’t dare say if it exists, though he kept thinking it. There wouldn’t be a hole in the net of this planet. How could there be?

“Sir, you’re not going to believe this, but it looks like we’re already past their security systems.”

“You’ve got to be mistaken,” Dane blurted.

Good checked his tablet a second time, then a third. “Unless this is the biggest con I’ve ever seen, I don’t think so.”

“You’re telling me they’ve got no security?”

“No, sir. Or not quite. They have copious radar, lidar, and a dozen other systems all over. I think those asteroids were towed into place for that specific purpose. It’s all pointed out, though. They have a thousand eyes, all of them looking toward the edges of the solar system.”

“There’s nothing to avoid? That can’t be right.”

“Well, I’m reading some ground-based radar, but that’s for traffic control. If we stick to the oceans, we should avoid it easily enough. Let me run my numbers again, though. I have to be missing something. There’s no way they have this many colonized places and aren’t trying to prevent smuggling.”

“Unless there’s no smuggling,” Lopez suggested.

“They wouldn’t allow free trade,” Good insisted. “They’ll need a tax base, and controlling trade gives them that.”

“You’re thinking like a human,” Lopez chided. “We have to remember that they are not. Think about it. They’re all connected, right? How do you lie to others when you’re connected to a network with them? How do you hide something when everything is out in the open? We’ve been looking at shipping manifests from almost every ship out here. I’ll bet we’d have been able to see everything if Richmond hadn’t stolen a ship.”

All eyes stared at Lopez.

“You…you think that they don’t steal because they know what everyone else is thinking?” Alvarez smirked.

“That might be part of it. Empathy is real. Logistically, though, how would that work? If someone steals something and everyone can see into their head and know it’s stolen, then boom. Punishment. After that happens a few times, people would stop. My guess is they don’t have any anti-smuggling detection systems because there isn’t much smuggling.”

“That…is brilliant,” Alvarez stated.

Dane agreed, but he was glad the biologist said it and not him.

“What about the outward-facing radars?” Dane asked. “They sensed us and came calling as soon as the Prometheus entered the system.”

“Yeah, but there’s a difference between the police and the military,” Lopez pointed out.

“You think that entire armada was for us?” Dane challenged.

“We know the Prometheus was stolen. Maybe their defenses prove they can’t actually track the ships once they leave the solar system. Maybe they want to protect themselves from a possible attack?”

“Maybe…but you don’t sound so sure,” Dane remarked.

“I’m not. There were a lot of ships, and they didn’t all come out to meet us. Some of them stayed behind. If the Prometheus is the only threat, why not send all their defenses against it? It seems unlikely they would think we built a second one.”

“You think maybe someone else pinched one?” Good asked.

“Another ship?” Dane clarified.

Good shrugged. “When I worked security, we sort of lived by the ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ kind of thinking. Things happen. Things get stolen. Kids get lucky and all that. But when the same thing happens twice…well, that’s on the security team. Not the thieves.”

“I guess we’re not the only surviving colony,” Dane posited.

It was a powerful thought, one that threatened to shake the foundation of what he understood yet again. This was home for him. Coming back here felt strange because he knew it couldn’t be home anymore. He was a colonist from another world. He hadn’t really considered the idea that there were other colonies out there. Thousands of other people, maybe tens of thousands or even millions, who felt the same as he did.

All these other people had left Earth behind and slept in a hibernation chamber, hoping to wake up under an alien sun and try to make it their own. It stirred him to win Earth back, not only for the people of Varuna but for all of them. This was humanity’s home world. They deserved to be able to come here without having a million damn nanites injected in their brains.

“I hate to force a hasty decision, but I have to ask for orders, sir,” Anderson interjected. “We’re still too far out from the refinery to be sure, but it looks like there’s a scout ship coming out to meet the haulers and check them in or whatever. I’d rather they didn’t check us in.”

“Agreed. Good, you said there are holes in this grid?”

“Lots of holes, sir.”

“Great. Find us the biggest one. I don’t want to take anything for granted. We’ve gotten lucky this far. Best way to keep that going is by playing it as safe as we can.”

“Yes, sir. I’m looking at the optimal route to get us to the surface. Do we want to avoid major cities for now, or do we need to reach one?”

“Like I said, let’s play it safe. Keep us away from cities.”

“Yes, sir.” Good’s fingers flew over his tablet. “All right, Anderson, I’m sending you a vector. It should avoid every major city nearby as well as most of the major flight paths. It’ll take us down through the Arctic Circle, where we should get interference from the magnetosphere. Then we can double back across the ocean and make for northern Canada. It don’t get much more out of the way than that.”

“Sounds like a plan. Anderson, whenever you’re ready. Start us slow, all right?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll keep it smooth as a third date.”

Anderson’s control was so smooth, Dane hardly felt it when the magnets disengaged. The pilot slowly lifted them off and pulled away. Despite his careful pace, it was still nerve-racking. If they were going to get caught, now was the moment. Well, technically, the moment was when they first arrived. Along with when they clamped onto the ore hauler. When they reached the surface, they would have to be even more careful.

It was going to be a long day!

Anderson drifted upward and adjusted their vector away from the line of haulers heading toward the refinery. At first, he vaguely followed the haulers leaving the station. Once it became clear they were scattering to different parts of the planet rather than a single destination, he veered away and headed off.

They tracked north and watched to see if they’d be followed. If they were, their tail was too subtle to catch. Dane ordered Anderson to continue on, all the while wondering if their luck would hold.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They stayed high in the atmosphere as they left the traffic of the other ships behind them. They were pinged once or twice, but they had added an array that could interface with the more advanced communication systems. Richmond assured them it could help with navigational directives and not much else. Apparently, part of the way ships got around without crashing in this new system on Earth was by constantly checking and rechecking where everyone was.

There was no central air controller. It operated more like people driving in traffic than it did aircraft maneuvering airspace. But the system was all computer operated. The pings showed the current location as well as the projected location a minute out. Drivers adjusted, and that was that. It was all rather egalitarian.

They stayed relatively high in the atmosphere, enough that they couldn’t be recognized by anybody on the ground until they were far enough north to see the Aurora Borealis. The atmosphere glowed with purples and greens, like frozen strokes of watercolors, until some unseen force came through and made them move and twist like sails whipping in the wind.

“Wow,” Lopez murmured. “I never saw the Northern Lights when I was on Earth. They’re amazing.”

“They do a great job of hiding our signature, too,” Anderson announced as he entered the swirling colors and dropped toward the Arctic Circle.

They dropped down low enough to be below most long-range radar, then headed south toward northern Canada. Dane was impressed to see the Arctic was once again covered in ice. It hadn’t been for years before he left, but he also wondered if this one thing was not the doing of the Augmented but a legacy of his own people and the war that had nearly destroyed them. All that ash in the air would have blocked a lot of sunlight, which was already making temperatures drop when Dane left. The polar ice was likely an effect of that.

Before long, they left the ice behind and cruised over an ocean filled with icebergs and whales that ate great shoals of tiny fish, which had also lured a massive flock of seabirds. For a moment, seeing the huge aquatic beasts made Dane homesick for Varuna. It was an odd sensation. The first time he’d subconsciously thought of the new world as his home. He wondered if his time on Earth would reverse that sentiment or reinforce it. He supposed that would depend on how this trip went.

As they flew past the whales, they spotted a few boats. Most looked like they were fishing, though one of them was smaller and faster and making good speed toward the whales. “Can you get a scope on that boat and tell me what they’re doing?” Dane asked.

“I can show you.” Anderson aimed a built-in camera. It magnified and showed them the passengers, who looked like tourists. They all wore puffy, oversized life preservers and scanned the horizon while a man in an orange vest gesticulated toward a flock of birds. They were going to see the whales, and the man in the vest was a tour guide.

So the Augmented still had recreation or something like it. Interesting. Useful in that it meant their plan to infiltrate wasn’t totally insane. They could at least say they were on vacation if someone caught them acting funny.

“Where to now, Chief?” Anderson asked when the coast came into view.

“Good, you have options for us?”

“I do… there’s a larger city maybe a hundred kilometers south of here, as well as a couple of small towns.”

“Send one of the small towns to Anderson’s navigation. I’d like to get eyes on the city if we can, but let’s keep our distance.”

“Sure thing.”

Good sent the locations to Anderson, who adjusted course. Lopez was the first to spot the city on the horizon. It wasn’t a city Dane knew. They were still hundreds of kilometers north of the Montreal-to-Detroit corridor that followed the Great Lakes. This city had been built in the last hundred years and looked it. It contained four gleaming towers, all curving lines and polished glass. Timeless, modern shapes that would look at home on a chessboard. Dane didn’t know if the Augmented still had architecture school, but if they did, they were excelling. This made their floating platform back home look like a raft.

He wished they could check out a larger city. He wondered how much had been saved and how much had been rebuilt. Again, he found it hard to rectify what his eyes were showing him with the stories Richmond had told them. It didn’t look like an evil empire. This city contained no harsh lines or brutal buildings. Maybe if the mission went well, they could return here. Or risk checking out the corridor near the Great Lakes. That whole area looked like it had expanded. Dane found himself longing to see it.

Still, they left the city behind and made for a smaller town.

They kept low, so they saw nothing of it on the horizon. It was a delicate balance of wanting to go where shuttles would be seen but not spotted, as opposed to places with fewer eyes, where the shuttle would also stick out. Anderson found a locator for a landing pad which seemed unusual for a town so small and remote, but they didn’t dare land on it. Instead, Anderson put them down in a recently harvested field boxed in by tall trees on all sides. Windbreaks, the part of Dane that thought he’d one day be a farmer suggested.

“Oh, wow. Did you feel that?” Anderson asked.

“Feel what?” Lopez questioned.

“The landing gear on soil,” Dane replied.

Anderson nodded. “I trained to land on actual dirt for a while because we knew there wouldn’t be landing pads on Varuna.”

Dane chuckled. “There wasn’t dirt, either.”

“Which is why this felt so sweet,” Anderson remarked.

“Well, enjoy the sensation. I want you to stay here while Lopez, Good, and I check out this town.”

“You wish me to stay as well?” Alvarez asked.

“I do. I’m wondering about the soil. After you two are done concealing the ship, can you figure out how they’re farming? If they have bioengineered crops, that sort of thing? If we do make contact with other colonies, they’ll want to know what they’re doing here to support such a large population. As far as I can tell, they had an impressive bounce-back and didn’t crash their soil.”

“I don’t have the equipment here, but I will take samples,” Alvarez assured.

“Anderson—”

“I parked near the tree line for a reason. We’ll spread out an adaptive tarp over the ship, so we should be hidden from most angles. I’ll be ready to come save your butts. You got it?”

Dane nodded. “I also want escape vectors planned out. I want a city we can get lost in, a forest that can hide the ship, and maybe an iceberg we could land on.”

“I’ll see what I can find. I mapped everything as we flew in, so I should be able to get at least two options.”

“I want all three.”

“Yes, sir!”

“All right, then. Lopez, Good, let’s arm ourselves.”

“I thought we didn’t come to start a war!” Lopez protested.

“We came to get information and get it back to our people. That won’t happen if we get captured.” Good accepted a handgun from Dane and carefully tucked it away, so it didn’t make a bulge in his clothes.

Dane chewed the inside of his cheek, looking at what they were wearing. They had prefabricated some clothes to help them fit in based on information Richmond had given them. Dane wore khaki pants and a blue shirt with a collar that looked odd to his eyes. Good had on something similar, though his shirt was red and his pants were a little darker. He also wore a jacket that seemed off to Dane. It used magnets or something to keep it closed, which felt unnecessary. Lopez wore some kind of sleeveless denim overalls with a long-sleeved white shirt underneath. They all sported boots as well.

Anderson opened the hatch, and they stepped outside. It was fall in the northern hemisphere, but at this time of day, it was still warm. They might need jackets later, but Dane elected not to wear one for now. Maybe there’d be a clothing store in town where they could get something to help them fit in better.

“Hopefully, we look the part, but if we don’t, you need to be able to defend yourself.”

Lopez didn’t look happy about it, but she accepted the firearm. Dane tucked his own weapon into his waistline, then tucked in his shirt to hide it.

“How do we look?” Dane asked.

Alvarez raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I am too accustomed to everyone wearing either coveralls or swimming gear.”

“We’re not going to be able to sneak anywhere in a wetsuit,” Lopez pointed out.

“So we don’t look great. I can deal with that, I guess,” Good expressed.

“We’ll keep an eye on the locals and adjust if we need to,” Dane decided. “Now, let’s head out.”

“We’ll be waiting for you,” Anderson replied.

They started through the harvested field. Corn, Dane thought as they walked through rows of thick-stemmed grassy plants that had been taken down to nubs.

“Corn’s been growing on this continent for longer than people have. Never thought I’d see it outlast people,” Good muttered.

“It doesn’t look bad, though,” Dane noted. The ground was springy underfoot, and bits and shreds of composted plant stalk stuck to his leg. It seemed the Augmented had embraced regenerative, organic agriculture. The cornfield ended at a line of trees, mostly pines, with a few maples sprinkled in. On the other side of that, they found a road. It was dirt, not asphalt or concrete, but it had been pounded or treated in a way that left it both firm and spongy underfoot. It reminded Dane of playgrounds made with recycled tires he’d frequented as a kid.

“They done redid everything,” Good noted, hoisting his backpack higher. He was the only one of them with a bag. They’d decided on their story. They were only passing through from a town north of the Detroit spaceport, here on leisure to see some of the whales. They had noticed a fair number of ground-based passenger vehicles, even up here, so hopefully, it was a plausible story.

The road crested a hill and they found themselves looking at a small town nestled into a bend in a small river. It couldn’t have been more than a few hundred homes. There was a main street with some shops and a grocery store, a refueling station, and several nicer homes clustered near the town center. More homes sprawled out in a grid extending from the big intersection. It looked like most small towns. There were some major differences, though.

The first was the large tower near the center of town, a few streets off Main Street. The base of the thing took up an entire block, not that the blocks here were particularly large. It was situated on higher ground, farther from the river. Gleaming glass windows comprised a few floors at the bottom. From there, a thin, slightly twisting structure rose maybe a couple of hundred meters into the air. It looked impossibly fragile, but Dane had seen the same reaching structures on the Prometheus. He had no doubt it was sturdy.

“I guess they don’t like dropped calls around here.” Dane gestured at the tower.

Lopez laughed. “It’s not a cell tower, though. Do you see how the top of it is wider than the rest and forms a cup?”

Dane did. It sort of looked like a flower. It was oddly beautiful.

“That’s a satellite relay. A big one, I’d say, given how big it looks despite its height. Something like that has to be capable of managing two-way traffic to and from satellites up in orbit.”

“I’ve seen similar systems,” Good mentioned. “It’s like super Wi-Fi, basically. I bet that entire tower has broadcasting and receiving devices feeding into the dish at the top.”

“They must use it to make the implants communicate,” Lopez suggested. “Makes sense, really. The nanites must use power straight from their human hosts, which means they probably can’t broadcast very far by themselves. They need an infrastructure to work.”

“Probably why they started in big cities,” Good declared. “Easier to get to more people with fewer towers that way.”

“That means they must be spread pretty thoroughly across the world,” Dane remarked. “If they built that thing for a couple of hundred people, all the more urban areas have to be saturated.”

“I wonder if there are pockets of people out there in the wilderness, in the places these towers can’t reach.”

“Let’s make sure to not ask about that when we get to town,” Dane warned.

Lopez nodded.

“Heads up.” Good gestured toward the far side of town.

Dane didn’t stop walking, but he did pay special attention to the rather large cargo shuttle taking off. He hadn’t seen the shuttle pad from the far side of town, but he noticed it now. Surely it had been added recently, and there used to be houses there. A warehouse stood on one edge of the paved area with another, slightly larger building across the pad. It gave off industrial vibes, which explained the town. He wondered how much of the population here was devoted to agriculture, industry, or simply caring for each other. He made a note to look inside that building if he could.

The shuttle had left a large pile of boxes and crates behind, which further pointed to some sort of industry. Surely, people didn’t need that many boxes of new kitchen appliances or online shopping orders.

Other than the shuttle pad and the twisting tower, the town looked like any other small, rural place. The buildings were made of timber and brick, with peaked roofs for snowy winters and flat ones that Dane could practically hear the locals complaining about having to shovel every year. It didn’t feel like the town had been taken over by mind-controlling robots. It felt like the kind of place Dane would like to get a beer!

“There’s a diner,” Good pointed out. They all headed toward it, looking into the windows of the shops they passed. Dane peeked into a clothing store and judged their goods to be close to what they were wearing, which made him feel better about their odds. There was also a tool shop and what seemed to be an art museum, with everything from paintings to sculptures to artfully moving holograms.

They passed what looked like a post office or old government building that hadn’t changed much in a hundred years, though the flag flying above it was unusual. It was a field of blue with the green continents of the Earth on it, all covered with a rounded grid line, like old, pre-holographic maps. The imagery screamed “world government” to Dane. He did not think it was an updated version of the Canadian flag. It was difficult to reconcile these big changes when so much of the small stuff hadn’t changed.

They reached the diner, and Dane pushed open the door. He relaxed when he heard a bell ding in response, the way diner doors had when he was a kid.

Beyond the open door, the heady aroma of real, fresh, subpar diner coffee fought with the stronger smell of fried potatoes and burgers.

He grinned. “Let’s make first contact.”

The cheery chalkboard at the entrance said, “Plz seat urself!” in fancy cursive calligraphy. Dane led Lopez and Good to a booth away from most of the other tables, though not in a corner. He nodded at the other diners as he went. He sat on the far side of the table, which let him see everyone in the room as well as the exit. Good sat across from him, and Lopez briefly debated which side of the table to sit on before she ordered Dane to scoot over so she could sit next to him.

Dane had no qualms with that. He sidled over, so Lopez could squeeze in on the plush vinyl seats. He half-wondered if there was a jukebox somewhere. They had been centuries out of date, even when he was a kid. Yet some places like this still had them, the way some places still used real candles long after LEDs had been invented. He wondered what song he’d play. Maybe something slow and crooning to make Haley think about slow dancing.

She scooted close enough for Dane to feel her thigh press against his. She felt warm and strong.

Dane smiled, closed his eyes for a moment, and enjoyed the moment of being back on Earth, sitting in the sort of place people had gone on first dates to for centuries. There was something charming about the North American-style diner. Like drinks at a wooden bar, it felt like the right place to share an order of fries and work up the courage to ask your date to split a milkshake. They even had the awkward third wheel sitting across from them! That had to be a staple of first-date tradition as much as the rest.

“Uh, George?” Lopez asked.

“What is it, Haley?” Haley. God, Dane loved the sound of her name. They had decided to use first names only in case there was a record of the people on the Cosmos. They had no idea how much of a priority they were after that scouting ship went to their solar system. It had seen the Cosmos, though, which meant the Augmented might assume they needed to defend against famous war hero George Dane.

Yet sitting in this middle-of-nowhere diner, in a red vinyl booth with his leg pressed against the woman he liked and the smell of coffee in the air, it seemed an unnecessarily paranoid thought. As if it came from a world far away, an alien place that existed beyond the neon sign proclaiming this diner “open.”

“Look.”

Dane opened his eyes to find every person at every table in the diner staring at them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dane’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t take action right away. Richmond had told them while people sometimes pinged each other with implants, it didn’t happen often. Though now Dane considered that Richmond was an anti-technological person who lived off the grid to avoid being implanted. He probably didn’t know much about social niceties.

“Haley,” Dane muttered as the eyes continued to bore into him.

“Working on it,” she mumbled and leaned her head on his shoulder like she was tired, then slumped into him. She held a tiny, handheld tablet under the table. The Prometheus had been designed to interface with the Augmented, so Granger had reverse-engineered a device capable of interfacing. Lopez had tinkered with it endlessly so she could interact in situations like this.

“Shit. They all pinged us when we walked in.”

“Small-town thing, I bet.” Good’s voice was also low. “Ping them back.”

“Right.” Lopez pressed something on her tablet. Immediately one of the people staring at her blinked and turned back to the person across from them. That seemed to break the spell cast by whatever faux pax they had committed, and most of the people looked away and resumed their conversations.

Thank God they still talk with their mouths, Dane thought. Trying to infiltrate a society that exclusively communicated via implant would have been far more difficult. They had plans for that, but Dane didn’t like their odds if they actually had to use them.

“Okay, I think that does it. I pinged everyone back. Hopefully, they think it’s a connectivity error or something. Assuming connectivity issues still exist for the Augmented.”

Indeed, no one was looking at them anymore. No one except for a table of four men. They were on the other side of the diner, so Dane might not have noticed if one of them hadn’t leaned out of the booth to stare at him openly. When Dane made eye contact, he looked away, though the oldest man at the table continued to stare.

Dane hoped he was only a regular old small-town codger. There were plenty of people in small towns who looked at strangers with curiosity and others who were suspicious of outsiders. People had been like that for as long as there had been small towns. Maybe that part of human nature didn’t change.

Dane hoped that was the case. Maybe everyone in town thought they were rude city people who’d done the equivalent of walking into a Sunday morning brunch while staring at their tablets and being too loud rather than un-augmented. Hopefully, the old codger was staring at him because he wanted to give him a piece of his mind and nothing more.

“It’s nice to be out in the country,” Dane commented loudly. “Air smells better out here, you know?”

“What are you doing?” Haley whispered in his ear.

“Trying to look like an out-of-towner who turned off his implant so he could see the whales the old-fashioned way and got lost,” Dane whispered back.

“I like that,” Good said quietly. Louder, he added, “Still would prefer you let me navigate. I know we’re supposed to do this on our own, but it’s tough watching someone else do it. Also, it smells like crap out here.”

If the old-timer was listening, that was what he’d been waiting for. He finally stopped staring at Dane. Instead, he glared at Good for insulting the organic fertilizer, then returned to talking to the other three men at his table.

“I’m going to try to look normal with our fake implant.” Haley typed madly under the table. “And also like I’m tired and want a nap. That part will be easy, because I am tired and I do want a nap.”

“What I want is coffee.” Dane looked around for a waitress. There were two of them, both bustling around, refilling coffees, and bringing food to the other patrons. Neither so much as glanced at Dane and his party of three. Dane looked for a menu but did not find one.

“Might be this?” Good held up a sort of coaster with a symbol on it.

Dane clenched his jaw. Every part of this mission was going to be a struggle. They couldn’t order coffee by asking someone? He supposed he should be happy that people still drank coffee. For all he knew, a brain implant could simply stimulate the parts of a brain that made you more asleep or awake. It didn’t seem the system worked like that, though. Humans were different, but they still seemed somewhat human. They still took vacations and ate greasy food, for example, though both of those things had to be inefficient.

“Slide it over here,” Lopez whispered.

Good discreetly passed it across the table. Lopez took it, scanned it, then put it back. “Okay, I’ve got the menu. Do we want food, or…”

“Let’s do coffee. Keep it simple.”

A few minutes later, a waitress arrived with three empty coffee mugs in one hand, a full coffee pot in the other, and a pleasant smile on her face. The smile faded after a moment of staring at them. Dane didn’t know what to do. Lopez couldn’t fiddle with the fake implant tablet while the waitress was staring at them.

“Can I have cream and sugar?” Dane asked, unsure what else to say.

“I’ll get you some cream,” the waitress replied, setting down their cups and filling them from the coffee pot. “Sugar’s on the table.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Good acknowledged.

“No problem.” The waitress made little effort not to stare at them. “You gonna want food?”

“I don’t think so, ma’am. We’re hoping to make it to see the whales,” Dane pronounced.

“Long way to go without navigation.”

“See, I told you, George!” Good cut in.

Dane shook his head and snorted like he’d heard this all before.

The waitress left without a word and went back to the kitchen.

Dane put some sugar in his coffee. Real sugar! He mixed it furiously and sipped. It was delicious. Slightly burnt, too acidic, and weaker than he would have liked…in other words, the perfect cup of diner coffee. He would have liked some cream, but he didn’t think the waitress was coming back.

“Two major issues here.”

“Oh yeah?” Good sipped his black coffee. He seemed to have the same reaction as Dane. Pure delight at the familiar yet underwhelming beverage.

“One, we’ve been made.”

“You think?” Good asked casually, though from the way his eyes nearly whipped around to watch the room behind him, Dane knew he was freaked.

“Oh, yeah. Her reaction was weird. At the very least, she’s in the kitchen gossiping. We can assume our presence is gonna be known throughout the entire town.”

“So much for shopping for new clothes,” Lopez intoned.

“That’s the other thing. Can we actually pay for these drinks?”

“Yes, of course. The Cosmos brought digital currency with it. U.S. dollars, actually. I loaded up a good amount before we met.”

“For one, this used to be Canada, not the United States. Two, have you seen any Canadian flags?”

“Nah. Only that weird globe one.”

“I think if you try to pay with US dollars, this whole town is going to know we’re not from here.”

“No, this can work. I ran it by Richmond. Old currencies will still work. They’re simply a bit dated.” Lopez shook as she struggled to stay calm.

“Was there a payment system on the Prometheus?”

“No, of course not. It was a military vessel. Everything was provided. I assumed most of the world would be like that, but we enabled the tablet to use digital dollars from the old colony account. It should synch with their systems fine. We tested it on a civilian unit Richmond brought with him.”

“We’ve already attracted attention. I don’t think it’s worth the risk. Which means we need to dine and dash.”

“You know that doesn’t go well for people with dark skin, right?” Good frowned. Considering every person in this northern town was white, Dane didn’t want to bet differently. Racism was a very old human trait.

“You go first, all right? We’ll be out a few minutes after you.”

“Fine. I’ll head toward the industrial sector. Pretend to do some window shopping. Catch up to me.”

Dane nodded. Good downed the rest of his coffee in two big gulps, then stood and walked out the door. A few people watched him go, but not any more than normal. Dane mumbled about wanting to see whales for a few minutes and how invigorating this whole trip was. After the waitress made her next round, he squeezed Lopez’s hand and led her from the diner.

They made it about three steps before every eye in the place followed them. Dane didn’t know if they were supposed to ping a goodbye, if everyone knew they hadn’t paid, or if this town was unabashedly nosy. It didn’t matter. They had drawn the attention of everyone in town. They needed to get out of here as quickly as possible and hope it all settled down into regular small-town gossip.

Gertrude didn’t know what was wrong with those three tourists. Sure, she had heard people from the big cities were rude, but she thought the three of them were rather extreme.

They didn’t ping in greeting, which maybe wasn’t that bad, but they also didn’t check the daily specials or share their dietary restrictions with the cook. She understood people came up here to ‘disconnect’ and get off the grid, but she thought that was silly. They’d had a tower here for a decade now. This wasn’t the backwoods it used to be. Why, they were contributors to society now. They manufactured components for spaceships that could go to other solar systems!

She knew people would sometimes go on Do Not Disturb for extended periods of time when they were nature-bathing. It was encouraged, as it was supposed to be pleasant and would make people more efficient workers when they got back to their offices. But to continue to stay on Do Not Disturb when they were in a town?

How was the cook supposed to prepare the correct food for them? How were they supposed to shop for souvenirs if they didn’t share their lists of friends and their wish lists with the local shopkeepers? Sure, stay on Do Not Disturb when you were out there looking at moose and enjoying the scenery. They had come into town, though.

She shook her head as she walked back into the kitchen. Were all city folk so rude, or was it only them?

Maybe there was more to it. The mayor had been talking about security ever since the new manufacturing plant had opened. To Gertrude, the rest of the world felt far away. That was why she had elected to stay here, after all. Except with the new plant, maybe the world wasn’t as far away as it had been.

They all knew about the rebels. Everyone knew about the rebels. People who eschewed modern medicine and communication out of some zealous belief in purity. It was all rather frightening, especially when they planted their bombs or stole things from the Augmented. But that had always been so far away. She had seen airfields bombed on the news, but nothing like that ever happened up here. That was why the mayor had recommended their town for the factory. They were so far out of the way they could manufacture what was needed to help the new spacecraft without fear of rebels.

Did that mean this was the perfect place for rebels to strike? They didn’t have the security of the bigger cities or more established manufacturing bases. Did it make them a target? It was a frightening concept to Gertrude, who was more than happy to live out her life serving the greater good by keeping the people who worked at the factory well-fed and refilling their coffees. Surely she was only getting spooked…but what if she wasn’t?

The three of them had looked rather strange. Their clothes were a couple of years out of date and looked straight from the movies. Plus, they had walked up to the diner. One of them said they were going to see the whales, but wouldn’t they have rented a vehicle? Gertrude hadn’t seen one.

She sighed, her mind hovering above the command to contact the mayor. He had said to let him know if there was anything suspicious. Gertrude wasn’t sure this qualified, but at the same time, those people had been strange. If they were here to damage the factory, it could mean people in town getting hurt. People like Hank, who always smiled and said Gertrude made the best sandwich in town, even though that silly man knew Nelson made all the food.

It was probably nothing, but Gertrude figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Hoping she wouldn’t end up as the local joke in the town’s weekly newsletter, she took the plunge and contacted the mayor.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“John. Damn it, John, slow down!” Dane hissed from behind Good. He was making good time toward the industrial sector of the town, but Dane no longer wanted to check out that area. Well, technically, he did want to see what was over there, but he didn’t think it was a wise decision. They needed to get out of here!

“Oh, hey, you two,” Good greeted them before he saw their looks of concern. “Oh, shit. We’ve been made.”

“I can’t be certain, but if I had to bet, I’d put my money on cover blown,” Dane agreed.

“It’s the interface I made. They’re constantly pinging each other, checking on the menu at the restaurant, seeing if someone is in the bathroom. I had no idea.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Dane told her. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Don’t look now, but you’ve been followed.”

“Shit!” Dane cursed, not looking back. “What did they look like?”

“Four white men. One of them older. All getting into a damn nice truck.”

“Okay. We can’t be sure they’re after us. We’ll slow down enough to let them get into the truck and see if they come this way.”

“That seems like a bad plan,” Good remarked. “Four white men in a truck is never a good time.”

“If they come our way, we turn at the next intersection, run like hell down the street then start walking up the way. If they turn around, we’ll know they’re after us. Hopefully, they’ll keep driving.”

“Man, that’s a big hope,” Good expressed, but he slowed down.

Lopez glanced back when they heard the truck’s engine rumble. The damn thing looked so slick that Dane was surprised it made noise at all. Then again, what was the point of having a big truck if it didn’t growl?

“They’re coming this way.”

“Okay, pick up the pace. Soon as we turn the corner, run like hell for the next block.”

They hit the corner and sprinted. Even with houses between them and the truck, they heard the engine’s increase in volume as the driver gunned it.

“Change of plans. Dive under those hedges!” Dane took the lead and hit the dirt, crawling under a rather unkempt rose bush. Good scurried in a few feet behind him. Lopez got snagged, so Dane grabbed her by the shoulders of her weird coveralls and yanked. And not a moment too soon.

The truck drove by, slowing only for a moment before hitting the next street and turning in the direction they had been traveling.

“I think that truck’s suspension saved us,” Lopez suggested.

“No joke. It was so high up I couldn’t see their faces at all,” Good noted.

“That’s not going to fool them for long. They must think we’re heading to that factory or whatever. We need to get back to the shuttle before they realize we’re not.”

“Oh, here it comes.”

“We need to run back,” Dane asserted.

They pulled themselves out from under the rose bush, continued to the end of the block, then turned back the way they’d come, toward the shuttle. Dane kept their jog slow at first. He’d increase the pace in a minute after their legs started to warm up.

“This is your moment, huh?” Lopez asked.

“I’m sorry?” Dane smirked inwardly, knowing full well what was coming.

“Don’t act like you don’t know. You spend every minute of free time you have jogging all over Homebase. Hell, you jogged when we were still in space. You’ve been waiting for a moment like this for like the past ten years.”

“Running is good for your cardiovascular health,” Dane advised. “Now, come on. We need to pick up the pace. We’re not running uphill anymore, so no excuses.”

They increased their speed, keeping off the main street of town and hoping to avoid being spotted. Dane had a feeling their hopes were not well-founded, though. Three strangers running through a small town was always going to draw attention. But their luck held. They managed to make it to the edge of town and back to the road they had come in on.

Then they heard the roar of the truck.

“Keep moving!” Dane shouted as he glanced back at the approaching truck. He couldn’t see through the tinted glass, but there were two men in the back of the pickup. One of whom held something like a streamlined rifle. The man braced his weapon on the truck cab and took aim.

“Get off the road!” Dane shouted.

He didn’t need to tell them twice. Lopez and Good both veered off the road as the man in the back of the truck opened fire. His aim was decent. Even while firing from the back of the truck, he hit the road where Lopez and Good had been moments before. The strange material burst and sent out bits into the air when the bullets struck it.

They hopped a barbed wire fence and found themselves in a cornfield that had yet to be harvested.

“Keep moving and keep low. Lopez, let Anderson know we’re on our way.”

“Yes, sir,” Lopez replied, though she was hard to hear through the corn and over the sounds of the truck and the gunfire.

“Get back here, you damn rebels! You can’t hurt the people of this town any more than you can hurt anyone else!”

“You can’t hide in that cornfield forever!” another of the men shouted.

That was the truth. The truck smashed through the barbed wire fence without slowing down, then proceeded to mow down rows of corn behind them.

“Go left! Left, left, left!” Dane shouted. They pushed through the crops seconds before the truck tore past and turned their hiding place into flattened grass.

“I saw them! Turn back!”

The driver whipped the truck around, and once more, it was coming for them.

The two men in the back were laughing as they took turns firing with rifles. The ground was much bumpier now, though, and they couldn’t see as well, so their accuracy was less of a factor. If they could make it to the shuttle—

“Damn it, I’m hit!” Good wailed as he crashed to the ground. He held his right leg as blood pushed through his fingers. “Lucky bastards. I got a drone in here with an explosive. I’ll let them have it when they catch me.”

“That’s not even kind of an option,” Dane insisted. “We’re not leaving you behind to end your own life.”

“Newsflash, Dane. I can’t outrun a truck right now.”

“Well, I’m not leaving you.” Dane drew his gun.

“Besides,” Lopez added. “If we did ditch you, and you blew them up, that would only confirm we’re rebels. It would ruin the whole mission.”

“Always gotta be the smartass, huh, Lopez?” Good complained, but he was grinning.

The truck had driven past but was whipping around again. There were only so many patches of standing corn left, and they huddled in the center of the largest cluster. It didn’t take an aggregated super-intelligence to figure out their location. “I can’t let these guys run you over,” Dane told them.

Then he stepped from cover.

“There he is!” one of them yelled, and tires squelched in mud as the truck whipped around to come at Dane. For a tantalizing moment, Dane dared to hope the truck would roll onto its side. Apparently, the engineers of the future had found a way to counteract that particular outcome. One of the wheels left the mud, but it came right back down.

Then the driver accelerated directly toward Dane.

Dane couldn’t see a damn thing. The truck’s windshield was black. No doubt the driver could see through it with no problem, but it must have interfaced with the implant to augment his driving. Dane would only have one shot, maybe two, before he was turned into organic compost. He had to make it count.

But where to shoot?

Was the driver’s seat still on the left side of the cab on this continent? Dane thought about what he’d seen so far. How people still ordered coffee, made art, and went on vacation. This might be a new humanity, but it was built on the foundations laid down by the last one. Dane didn’t know if it made much sense to risk his life on a cup of coffee, but he took aim at where the driver should be and fired two quick shots.

The windshield shattered and became fully transparent. Both of his shots had been good. One had gone into the driver’s forehead and the other in his nose, likely because his head had popped back from the first hit. The body remained resting against the accelerator, though the truck no longer steered toward Dane.

“You’re gonna miss him, goddammit!” one of the men from the back shouted, unaware that the driver was no longer among the living. He stopped yelling a second later, either because his implant had told him the driver was dead or because the truck started to veer even worse.

“Drag John out of here,” Dane ordered Lopez as he aimed at the men in the truck.

“I can walk if I can lean on you,” Good insisted. Lopez helped him up.

Dane focused on the men, their stance, and the way they bent their legs when the truck hit a bump. As the truck crossed in front of Dane, he fired. His bullet struck one of them in the chest.

The truck kept driving, but the man stopped. He tumbled from the back of the pickup and thumped in the middle of the cornfield. Dane fired four more times at the other man, but he’d been focusing on the first one. All four shots missed. The other guy fired back, but seeing his friend get shot had rattled him.

The ground near Dane exploded, and he realized the passenger was shooting at him, even as the out-of-control truck drove by.

Dane took aim. The truck was close now, and he had a good chance of connecting. Before he could squeeze the trigger, the man in the pickup bed dove out and crashed into him, knocking him to the ground.

He struggled as the man’s knee pressed into his throat.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dane swung the pistol up and crushed the man’s esophagus. Before he had an opportunity to fire, the man grabbed his wrist and pushed the gun away.

Damn, these Augmented were strong. A blow like that should’ve crippled him.

Dane squeezed the trigger, hoping the sound of the shot would freak his attacker out.

No such luck. He didn’t miss a beat. With his free hand, the man scooped a fistful of compost from the ground and mashed it into Dane’s face.

Dane didn’t actually need to see to fight a man sitting on top of him, but it was a perk that he immediately missed. He could still feel the man’s hand on his wrist, keeping the gun away. He tried to punch with his free hand. The firm cartilage of an ear met his knuckles, and the man flinched from the pain, but he didn’t climb off.

Instead, he grabbed Dane’s other wrist, scooted back so his knees were on Dane’s abdomen, then cracked his forehead against Dane’s.

Tactically, he should have kept a knee on Dane’s throat. That was a good position to be in, and the man had squandered it. However, it didn’t matter much. Not when he’d already gripped Dane’s throat and squeezed.

Dane tried to snatch the hand away, but he still couldn’t see and grabbed a shoulder instead.

Gunshots punctuated the grunting, and Dane thought the worst. Had the man in the truck shot Lopez? No. He could still hear the truck, though it was getting quieter.

Dane needed to shift the fight, but he didn’t have any leverage. He had hand-to-hand training and didn’t think his attacker did, but that didn’t matter much when there was a hand on your throat, and the ground was so slick you couldn’t move.

“Die, rebel scum,” the man roared in his ear. Hot spittle hit his cheek. He tried to rocket his head upward to crack the man in the nose, but he missed. Fingernails dug into his hand, then found a spot on his wrist and squeezed so tightly that Dane dropped his weapon.

Not good.

At least he had two hands now.

He brought them together and boxed the man’s ears. The man yowled but didn’t let go. More gunshots. The truck grew quieter, and Dane started to fade. For all his strength training and jogging, he was about to be asphyxiated by a man who looked like he hadn’t run a mile in years and subsisted primarily on fried potatoes.

It was a petty thought, but who said being strangled had to bring out the best in you?

His arms weakened. His grip was already gone, and his fingers trembled. If he could get a breath, or clear the mud from his eyes, or if this goddamn bastard choking him would have a heart attack, or…

There was a loud crack, and suddenly, Dane could breathe. The hands around his neck went limp, and the bulk of the man sagged onto him. Which also made it hard to breathe, but it was a major improvement compared to being choked.

“You all right?” Good asked.

Dane scraped the mud from his eyes and saw Good standing over him, leaning heavily on one leg with a pistol in hand.

“Thanks to you.”

“I couldn’t get a shot off without the risk of hitting you.” Good sagged to the ground. “I had to use this as a very expensive club.”

“Where’s Lopez?” Dane struggled out from under the weight of his unconscious attacker.

Gunshots. Dane jerked his head to follow the sound.

Through watering eyes from trying to get the grit out, he saw Lopez standing with her feet wide, both hands on the grip of her handgun. She methodically fired off shot after shot until the gun ran out of ammo.

Dane knew he should see if she’d hit her target, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was so thankful she was all right. With all the gunfire and complete loss of his vision, he had feared the worst. He couldn’t believe how relieved he was to see her standing there, feet planted in a proper stance as she fired at their attacker.

“You get him?” Good hollered to her from his spot, resting in the mud.

“No,” Lopez admitted. “I got one of the tires on their truck, though. He’s on foot now.”

Dane was still trying to get his bearings as his brain once more enjoyed the amount of oxygen it required to function properly. While there was movement in some of the standing corn from the last fleeing man, the truck continued to amble away, likely still in drive.

“Lopez, can you bind Good’s leg? I’m going to try and get us a ride.”

“Of course.” Lopez hurried over to Good. She reached into his bag and pulled out that most ancient of first aid technology—a clean piece of cloth, which she tied tightly around the bullet wound.

Dane hurried to the truck. It idled in drive, moving in a slow circle as the dead driver continued to exert control over it. He clenched his jaw, grabbed the dead man, and pulled him from the driver’s seat.

As soon as the body lost contact with the truck, the vehicle shut off.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dane groaned as the truck refused to turn back on.

He looked at the man he’d killed. From afar, it had looked like a perfect shot, but now he saw his aim was slightly off. The hole in the man’s head was not dead-center. In the tunnel of bone and brain, metallic structures caught the fading light. It almost looked like bits of wire or aluminum foil. Dane wanted to gag at the sight, but he stifled the urge. They were here to understand how brain implants worked. Here was a brain implant, albeit a damaged one.

He wondered if it still worked, though. He lifted the dead man’s hand and touched it to the body of the truck. Pressed the ignition.

The truck started.

Dane grimaced. Looked like the old codger had called shotgun in the end. He lifted the body into the passenger seat. It wasn’t like it would make the truck cab any bloodier.

He got behind the wheel, and the seat contoured to his posture. At least the vehicle still used a steering wheel to steer, pedals to go and stop, and a stick to choose forward or reverse. Dane put it in gear and tried to drive back toward his friends. He made it about six feet before he realized the tire was still flat.

Fortunately, the truck noticed as well.

Repair flat? flashed across the dashboard. Luckily for Dane, the shattered windshield wasn’t the only interface.

He pressed the button for “yes,” then climbed out. He wondered if there was some automatic jack system able to lift the truck in a muddy field.

The solution was more elegant than that. A swarm of what looked like tiny silver ants streamed from somewhere inside the body of the truck. They headed directly to the bullet hole and went to work. There wasn’t enough material, so the insectile nanites used some of their own kind to fill the gap. After the hole was filled, a compressor clicked on, and the tire reinflated itself.

“Damn, old-timer, looks like you spared no expense on the perks,” Dane remarked to the old man’s body as he settled next to him again. It was too macabre for his taste, but what he was he supposed to do? He didn’t want to haul the bloody corpse to the truck bed only to find it had to be in the cab for the engine to work.

Hell, he’d been lucky the last man abandoned the truck. This self-repair thing took a few minutes. It was time the guy probably figured he didn’t have with Haley unloading so many rounds in his direction!

Dane steered the truck back toward his friends, stopping only when he passed the body of the man he’d shot in the chest. Not wanting to but knowing it would help the mission, he put the truck in park and climbed out to load the body in the bed.

“And they were talking crap about me working out too much,” Dane grunted as he heaved the body in. This guy wasn’t as big as the man whose knee had been in Dane’s throat, but he wasn’t small, either. Apparently, that diner really did have good food. Dane wished he’d ordered the poutine. Then he wondered if he was messed up in the head to be thinking about food while dragging dead bodies around.

After the second body was loaded, Dane returned to the driver’s seat and continued toward Lopez and Good.

“Holy hell, man, that’s nasty,” Good remarked after Lopez helped him back to his feet. He hobbled toward the passenger seat.

“The truck is keyed to his implant. Even damaged, it won’t run without him.”

“That gives a whole new meaning to hands on a hard body.” Good shook his head.

“What about him?” Dane asked, gesturing to the man who had been trying to kill him. A large lump poked from his buzzed hair where Good had whacked him with the pistol.

“Still out cold,” Lopez reported. “I did reload my gun, just in case.”

“Look at you, thinking like a part of the security team.”

“I don’t know if we should leave him behind,” Good claimed. “He got a damn good look at you.”

“I think we should take him with us. It might be a risk since I have no idea if these implants have tracking technology. He could be a vital source of information, though.”

“Normally, I’d argue. Seeing as how you have a truck, I suppose we can take them all.”

“Them all? You don’t mean the…the dead guys, too, right?”

“I know it’s not pretty, but we need Alvarez to take a look at them. Adams was clear that we have to understand the implants. She gave me orders to find a facility where people were implanted or a device that does the implanting. This will give us information, too.”

Lopez shuddered. “I’m glad I’m not a biologist.”

“Oh, there’s still plenty of room for nastiness,” Good pointed out. “Dane says the dead guy needs to stay in the front seat.”

Lopez wrinkled her nose, but she nodded. “Fine with me. I don’t want to sit up there, anyway. There’s blood everywhere!”

“Believe me, I know it,” Dane remarked. “Come on, Lopez, help me get this guy in the back. You two will need to ride back there and make sure he doesn’t come to, all right?”

“I can’t believe I already miss being bored in the shuttle,” Lopez complained, but she helped Dane haul the man into the truck bed. They might not have been able to lift him all the way up, but the truck could apparently sense what they were trying to do and lowered its rear suspension for them. They heaved the man inside, clambered on, and started across the field.

They found the shuttle right where they’d left it, covered in a tarp that had shifted to match the field around it. They drove the truck toward the back of the shuttle.

“Welcome back…oh, dios mio!” Alvarez cringed when the shuttle opened and he saw the blood-smeared truck. “I thought you were going to keep a low profile.”

“Shit went south,” Dane grunted. He drove the truck into the back of the shuttle. It barely fit inside, but he figured it might be useful later. At least they could drive into a town and look like locals if they could get the blood out.

“No kidding,” Alvarez noted. “That’s a body.”

Lopez snorted. “They attacked us. Tried to run us over.”

“And shot us.” Good gestured at his wounded leg.

Alvarez swallowed. “Oh, no.”

“You think you can fix me up?” Good asked.

“I am a biologist, not a surgeon.”

“Is that a no?”

“That is ‘I don’t know how to make it not hurt, but I know how to stop a mammal from bleeding.’ Comprende?”

“Yeah, comprendo,” Good agreed.

Dane looked at the scientist. “Fix Good up first while we get everything tied down. I’m going to talk to Anderson about finding a new, more secure location. We can’t stay here, that’s for sure. Once we find a spot, will you be comfortable completing an autopsy on the two bodies?”

“There are two?”

“I shot one in the head, so I’m not sure how much of the implant survived. There is some residual function. The other one I shot in the chest. Might be better to start there.”

Alvarez tried and failed to swallow his shock.

“There’s also an unconscious man we didn’t want to leave behind. We’ll restrain him and keep him under guard. Do we have the capabilities to block an implant from functioning?”

“I can work on it,” Lopez offered. “If that’s even possible.”

“We should assume it is. We saw that tower, remember? There’s got to be a connectivity factor. See if you can find a way to put him in airplane mode.”

Lopez nodded. “You got it.”

“How about tracking on the truck, Haley? Will being in the shuttle stop it from transmitting?” Dane figured if the people were connected, their tools likely were as well.

“It should?” She shrugged. “We’re talking about a society with technology I barely understand. Would the shuttle act like a Faraday cage and trap emissions for a truck that dated back to us leaving Earth? Sure. Here, now? I’m guessing, George.”

“It’ll have to be good enough. I’ll keep an eye on our prisoner while you work on Good, Alvarez. Then we move. Got it?”

“Yes, of course,” Alvarez agreed and fetched a first aid kit.

They were off the ground in less than ten minutes. Alvarez had the foresight to bring a stem-cell-based treatment that would have Good walking in less than twelve hours. Which meant when they landed about a hundred kilometers away, in a valley thick with forest, they were able to focus on dissecting the two implanted brains.

It was not a good day.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Carlos Alvarez lasted about an hour on the autopsy before he called for Dane’s help.

“Lo siento, it’s simply too much. I’ve performed hundreds of these on animals, but a person is another thing entirely.”

“I understand, Doctor. I’ll be right in,” Dane promised. There was nothing he wanted to do less, but doing what you had to do instead of what you wanted was a part of leadership. “Keep an eye on our prisoner, all right?”

“You got it,” Good agreed. Since getting the medicine, he was looking a lot better. One of the first things those kinds of treatments worked on was a lack of blood, so at least Good wasn’t suffering from that at the moment.

“I’m still tinkering with a blocker. Based on the radio waves we’ve been detecting, I might be on the right track, but it’s hard to tell. That broadcast tower is transmitting all across the spectrum, so it's hard to know exactly what to look for.”

“Makes sense. Are we watching the data coming from the shuttle?”

“We are, sir. Like you ordered,” was Anderson’s reply. “Our radio communications are down, and we’ve got our best instruments pointed right back at us. If he so much as tries to ping his grandma, we’ll know about it.”

“Let me know the second you hear anything.”

“I will.”

“I also asked Anderson to record. If we detect something, I can find out exactly what part of the electromagnetic spectrum we’re dealing with. That will help me tighten the control on the blocker,” Lopez proposed.

“I don’t like that we need to wait for him to make contact, but I guess we’ll deal with what we got. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to assist the doctor.”

Lopez and Anderson both blanched at that. Good didn’t look as perturbed as them, but he needed to keep off his leg. Dane couldn’t conscript him for the job right now. He sighed, squared his shoulders, and walked into the makeshift operating room.

“Chief Dane, thank you for joining me.”

“No problem, Doctor.”

“I am recording this, but it helps to have someone to talk to.”

“Of course. You want to tell me what you’re working on?”

“Yes. We started with a scan on the prisoner, and although we found evidence of nanites throughout the body, there is a much higher concentration in the brain.”

“Concentration? Do you mean there’s no solid machine in there?”

“That’s right.” Alvarez indicated a portion of brain from the man who’d been shot in the chest. “As you can see, there is no single chip, as we would expect.”

“Like the Russians have back on Varuna, you mean.”

“That’s right. Those implants were placed there surgically. They were small devices slid into the brain through a hole cut into the bone. It was rather technical work to connect the thing to the mind, but they found a way to stimulate healing. Over time, they got them to work mas o menos bien.”

“Okay. So these are different?”

“As different as el sol y la luna. It’s not implanted through surgery, as far as I can tell. Instead, it looks like the nanites come from the circulatory system.”

“So you don’t need to inject someone in the brain?”

“Far from it. There are nanites all through the bodies. I think they can be injected with something like a syringe, and they can spread through the body to the brain. There, they assemble themselves based on the structures they find.”

“Isn’t there like a blood-brain barrier or something?”

“There is, and the nanites pay special attention to it. They coalesce there and form a sort of bridge. It’s the same in both patients. From there, they infect the brain.”

“Infect?”

“I don’t know how else to describe it. They’re throughout the tissue, connected with a fine web. Bits of them are attached to the brain stem. Others are slid in against the cerebellum, and more are entwined with it. I believe those outside the brain are for system monitoring. The majority of nanites stay in the brain and form a semi-permanent structure.”

“So it’s a distributed computer rather than an easy-to-remove chip?”

“Si. There is no motherboard. No central processor. It would be impossible to physically remove one of these without damaging the patient’s brain. It might not be possible to remove them once they’ve died. I don’t have the tools. I don’t even know que tipo of tools!”

“That’s bad news.”

“It is. I don’t think we have the methods to remove something like this.”

“Any indication it’s broadcasting?”

“I don’t think it is, but I’m not sure. I’m not getting any charge or readings off the system. I think the nanites get all the energy they need from human hosts. Which means, hopefully, they can’t be tracked once they’re dead.”

“But if someone is still alive…”

Carlos looked horrified. “We cannot hurt our prisoner! He is still human, even if he is Augmented.”

“Yeah, but we probably shouldn’t have him sitting around back there, either.”

Dane washed quickly using the shuttle’s tiny sink, then went back to the others and the prisoner.

“Anderson, get us ready to fly. I want to be out of here in five minutes. We’ll see if we can make it to another goddamn continent and hope to lose them. You think the American Midwest is still abandoned?”

“I don’t think it’s American anymore, but I don’t see why people would start building in Tornado Alley for the hell of it.”

“We’ll go that way, then, and keep low.”

“Yes, sir.” Anderson vanished into the cockpit.

“What about him?”

“We’ll take him with us a few miles, then drop him and change directions. Hopefully, that’ll set up a false lead.”

“And the truck?” Good asked.

“I don’t think we get to keep the truck.”

Everyone hustled to get ready for launch. They had to stow the tarp that hid the ship and check their radar for any other ships. They saw nothing, but Dane regretted putting down in a valley. A mountain would have given them a much better vantage of the area. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now.

“Ready for takeoff, sir!” Anderson announced.

“Acknowledged. Let’s go, Anderson.”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson affirmed and the shuttle rose from the ground.

No sooner did they get airborne than alarms started blaring.

“Sir, I don’t know how this is possible! I was reading nothing, but now I’ve got someone at three o’clock!”

“It’s the valley. They must have seen us vanish down here. Head in the opposite direction and make it fast. Let’s show them humans still know how to fly.”

“Yes, sir!” Anderson turned the ship around. As he did, Dane saw the futility of the effort. It wasn’t only one ship that had caught them. He saw at least two more as they pivoted. And a third directly in their path.

“They’re hitting us with targeting lasers, sir. I think those are all fighters.”

Dane saw the protuberances on the bottoms of the ships and knew that was exactly what they were.

“Damn it.”

“They’re messaging us, sir. They want to open communication.”

“Put them on, goddamn it,” Dane snapped.

Anderson activated the comms, and immediately a voice blared out at them.

“We have you target-locked right now. Would prefer to talk, but not necessary. Land. Now. Or we blow you up. To save time and demonstrate we are not bluffing, please observe the pine tree with a double trunk.”

Dane hardly had time to find the target before a missile shot off and rendered it into fire and mulch.

“They’re all stealth fighters, sir. I can hardly find them on my radar,” Anderson bemoaned.

“Not important right now. Can you outrun them?” Dane knew the kid had a far better handle on the shuttle controls than he did. He didn’t think he could do much in a vessel like this, especially not in atmosphere.

“I don’t think so, sir. I could try, but with gravity to contend with, it’s going to be tough.”

“Damn it. I was thinking the same thing.”

“Land. Now. Or be destroyed.”

“Sir?”

“Do as he says.”

No sooner did Anderson start the landing process than two of the ships came in and landed on opposite sides of the shuttle. The shuttle touched down as soldiers in metallic helmets surrounded the shuttle. They opened the back door and held up their hands as the soldiers stormed in.

“On your feet, all of you!”

“Yeah, yeah, we know the drill,” Good muttered.

“No one resist.” Dane wished they didn’t have a cargo hold filled with dead bodies at the moment. However, the soldiers didn’t so much as look at the bodies. They kept their weapons trained on Dane and his crew until they got them cuffed, then blindfolded.

Dane sighed.

They had been captured.

Today was really not a good day.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dane spent the next four hours going over what they had done in his head, trying to think what they could have done to avoid ending up in this cell. There were some big, obvious answers, like they should have done a better job of hiding from those men in the truck who’d tried to kill them. Smaller answers, too, like they should have checked the menu for that diner before they’d gone in, so they were ready to ping the other patrons and place an order faster.

Other than those things, Dane didn’t know what they could have done to not get captured.

He was confident they had made the right call by not trying to fly away. They were outgunned, and the other ships looked far more maneuverable, especially in atmosphere. He didn’t see how they could have escaped on foot, either.

Once they had shut off the engines and opened the doors, the soldiers flowed into the room like ants. There had been more than ten of them, and they had all had their weapons pointed at Dane and his crew. Any resistance at that point would have resulted in their death. Dane had no doubt about that.

After they were cuffed and blindfolded, they were hauled into trucks instead of the fighters. Dane had tried to talk to his crew but had only heard back from Good before they had been ordered to silence. Maybe if they had all been in one truck together, he could have figured out some way to escape. He was fairly certain they’d been split up, though. That was what he would have done if he’d been the one taking prisoners.

Dane wondered exactly how much they’d messed up. Being discovered by fighters was one thing. Those were fast aircraft with advanced scanning equipment. Getting those trucks in place so quickly spoke to a level of organization Dane hadn’t thought possible. It meant either they had a group of soldiers and transports nearby and ready to go, or they’d been aware of Dane’s infiltration attempt far sooner than he’d thought.

If it was the first reason, that meant they would need to assume the entire planet was militarized. They were in the middle of nowhere, far in the north. If there was a base up here, well, the entire world had to have soldiers. On the other hand, if the soldiers and trucks had been brought in by shuttle, it meant the Augmented had a complex communication system that had spotted Dane and his people hours before. He didn’t know which was a worse threat, though the idea of fighting against either was daunting.

The shuttle landed somewhere slightly warmer than where they had been, and Dane was escorted to a cell. He had tried calling out to his friends at that point, guards be damned, but it was too late. No one had answered.

They locked him in a cell, removed his hood, then left him cuffed as they locked a solid metal door behind him.

Dane tried calling out, but no one answered except for the echo of his own voice. He had been alone for hours now, with nothing but his thoughts and a guilty feeling that he could have done something differently.

There was no point in dwelling on the past, though. It wouldn’t help them out of here. All that mattered was figuring out a way to escape this. That now meant finding a ship. The idea of going back north to find theirs was obviously a non-starter. If he had captured an enemy vessel, he’d either tear it down to its bolts to learn about it or try to use it as a spy craft. The last thing he would do was leave it sitting around where someone could find it.

Before he could think about stealing a ship, he needed to find his crew.

Dread and doubt tried to crowd into his mind. There were too many enemies. Too many ships. They were too connected. Too smart! He pushed it all away. He’d been in tight spots before, moments where survival seemed impossible. Situations in which the only obvious way out had been death. Yet here he was, still alive. He would get out of this. He only had to keep his eyes open, stay calm, and take his chance when he saw it.

If they could get off Earth, Richmond would come for them and bring them to safety. He was sure others might see it as a long shot. Yet to him, a seasoned pilot who’d flown out of the majority of difficult situations in his life, getting inside something that could fly was like second nature.

He would need to get out of this room first, as there was a decided lack of spacecraft in here.

There was nothing, really. Four solid walls, scuffed floor tiles with a drain in the center of the room, and a chair bolted to the floor. Dane was certain there was a camera too, but he couldn’t see it and didn’t bother trying to find it. If he broke it, they’d simply put in another one.

After some time, a mechanism in the door came to life, and it opened. A helmeted guard stood in the hall. Behind him were two more guards in identical uniforms.

“Come with us,” the guard in the front ordered.

Dane nodded and walked out of the cell. Now that he wasn’t blindfolded, he could get a feel for the place.

The hallway was nothing special. Fairly narrow, with lights above and doors on either side. Dane couldn’t tell how many of the rooms were in use, but it looked like they had all been used at some point. Scuff marks streaked the bottoms of several doors. The rebels must have resisted being put in these rooms.

Why, though? What did the Augmented do to their prisoners? Dane had been waiting for them to inject him with nanites. He was relieved they hadn’t, but at the same time, he wondered what their plan was. Could there be an issue because his people were from the Cosmos? Was there an age issue? Maybe they were too old. He didn’t remember Richmond telling him anything about the correct time to implant a brain with nanites.

The thought that kept coming to him unbidden, which he kept forcing back into his subconscious, was the idea that they’d already implanted some of his crew. If they were bringing him to Haley to show him she wasn’t the same now that she’d been Augmented, he didn’t think he could bear it. It was a new feeling, one that hadn’t been a problem for him during the war. He dearly hoped they had something else planned.

The hallway ended at a large, rather uninspired freight elevator. He followed one of the guards in, and the other two entered after him. They were treating him more like an animal that might become unruly than a human prisoner. That was fine with Dane. He didn’t think he’d be able to pump these guys for intelligence. This whole exchange was probably being watched and recorded.

They rode up a few floors and exited the freight elevator. From there, Dane was led through a hallway and into a massive entrance. The room was all gleaming tile and steel with banks of elevators on either wall. People bustled around, emerging from elevators, going through the doors in the front, or riding up. Something about the entire scene was off, and Dane realized no one was actually waiting. Everyone timed their pace, so when they reached an elevator door, it was already opening.

Again, he was reminded of ants.

“In here,” one of the guards commanded as they reached a pair of closed doors. Like all the others, these opened for Dane and his guards without a button being pressed.

This elevator was much nicer than the last, with a steel inlay framing tall glass windows that gave Dane glimpses of the view outside and the workspaces on each floor as they rocketed upward.

It was immediately clear they had left the countryside. This was a sprawling metropolis complete with multiple towering skyscrapers, roads clogged with wheeled traffic, trains that vanished into subways or rose onto elevated tracks, and plenty of flying vehicles sprinkled on top. There was a frenetic energy to the view that Dane missed. Varuna had no views like this. It didn’t have enough people to fill a single skyscraper, let alone a dozen of them, plus a city below.

Though again, something about it seemed off to Dane. It was hard to see when bands of steel continually interrupted the view, but he didn’t notice any traffic jams, construction sites, abandoned buildings, or overgrown lots. Who was in charge of this world, and was leisure still permitted? What did people think of this new, supremely efficient system? Did anyone miss sitting in traffic, or was the new way of doing things better than it had ever been?

They continued to rise higher, and Dane wondered how a building could be so tall. If he wasn’t a pilot, he’d be concerned about vertigo. Luckily, his stomach didn’t even try to flip once.

The elevator finally stopped, and the doors opened. For a moment, Dane thought they had taken him to the roof of the place. There didn’t seem to be any walls. Merely infinite views in every direction. His eyes adjusted, and he realized he was standing inside a giant glass bubble. Support structures in the corners of the room had been coated with reflective paint or mirrors to make them virtually invisible. The floor also appeared to be made of glass.

“Out,” one of the guards barked and pushed Dane from the elevator.

“No need to be rude to our guest.” A woman’s voice brought Dane’s attention from the miles-long views back to the room.

It was a sort of penthouse apartment with an open floor plan. Expensive-looking chairs surrounded a long table in one corner. Dane got the sense this room was used for boardroom meetings far more often than for family dinners. There was also a kitchen, all burnished steel and perfectly clean. Walls blocked off one section, presumably the bedroom.

Where Dane stood was a parlor. It was mostly empty, save for a pair of beautiful tables, each topped with a gorgeous sculpture of a human. They looked like they were dancing together, though they were on opposite sides of the entryway.

The last feature was a sunken living room. A few steps down led to a large wraparound sofa. Everything in sight was so immaculate Dane wondered if it had ever actually been cleaned. It seemed more likely it had all been brought in for the meeting.

There was hardly any color, he noted. The floors were transparent glass, with gleaming steel beneath, while the furniture was all either black or white. Even the sculptures were dark, unpainted stone. It all served to make the colors outside the windows pop. It was hard to look away from those views, though he did so when he located the speaker on the sofa in the sunken living room.

“Go.” A guard shoved Dane toward her.

“I’m going, for Christ’s sake.” Dane moved a few steps toward the woman.

She was both beautiful and austere. He wouldn’t dare guess her age. She could have been forty, but there was an ageless quality to her that convinced Dane she’d taken rejuvenation treatments similar to the ones he had. Her eyes appeared far older and wiser than the rest of her body. Her shoulder-length hair was blonde with a few beautiful, natural-looking platinum strands that must have been styled in. She wore a white gown, belted at the waist, and no shoes.

“I’m Carmen Bianco.”

“Hello, Miss Bianco,” Dane greeted politely. “My name is—”

“Oh, I know who you are. George Dane, chief of security on the Cosmos. What I want to know is why you’re here.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage, Miss Bianco.”

“Well, of course I do. You’re unimproved. Please, call me Carmen. It’s interesting that I even have to say that. It’s been some time since I’ve met an unimproved who is not trying to kill me.”

“I’ve met some of them. Not a fan.” They had prepared a story in case of capture. Dane only hoped the rest of his crew would stick to it.

“Well, there’s something we have in common.” Carmen spoke in a breathy voice that seemed designed to entice Dane closer. He resisted the temptation. “Also, January birthdays, though mine was this century.”

“You know my birthday?”

“I know everything about you, George Dane. Your life was not a secret one. I know you earned honors as a fighter pilot in the last world war. I know you eventually commanded a rock dropper and that you once famously refused to bomb an enemy city. I know you were almost pushed into politics, but you accepted the position as Chief Security Officer of the Cosmos instead. I also know your colony is at least somewhat successful.”

“How do you know that?”

“You must have seen the scout we sent over. It wasn’t particularly well disguised. Plus, you’re working with the Prometheus. The sensors on that ship would have detected it. Though I imagine the Cosmos or Zhemchug would have also seen it without too much trouble.”

“We have control of the Prometheus. I’d say that’s different than working with it.”

“Indeed, it is.” Carmen scooted closer to Dane, who was still standing. “Please, sit.”

“I would, but I still feel like you have me at a disadvantage.”

“Just because we’re in my penthouse at the top of this tower? Don’t let appearances deceive you. All the Augmented are equals.”

“Is that right? You being Augmented, I mean. You chose to do it?”

“I did. Was one of the early adaptors, actually. I understand the system better than most, so I make more decisions.”

“I thought you said all Augmented are equals.”

“We are, but what’s the old line? Ah yes, there it is.” Her eyes looked distant for a moment. “Some of us are more equal than others.”

“You still have literature, then. I’m surprised. I thought you wouldn’t have a need for art anymore.”

“Oh, come now, George. Art is a fundamental part of the human experience. We wouldn’t do away with it, not without risking emotional stability for our entire system, which simply would not do. Now, please, have a seat. I insist. We have much to talk about, not least of which is why you’re on our planet illegally.”

“This is my home!”

“Just because you grew up in a house doesn’t mean it’s still yours when someone else moves in,” Carmen said smoothly. It seemed like a line she’d spoken many times before.

“There’s also the issue of the two dead citizens in your transport, the stolen vehicle, and the poor man whom you crudely bound. I want to believe the best of you, George, but the evidence is not good. Now, sit. I insist.”

Dane glanced behind him and saw that while the elevator had closed, the three guards were still very much present. One of them stepped forward, his teeth clenched in a tight sneer.

Dane swallowed his pride and sat on the plush couch next to Carmen. It was unlike anything he had ever sat on before. It adjusted its pressure as he sat, becoming firmer, then softer, then firmer, and so forth. He stopped squirming, and the couch settled. He had to admit it was perhaps the most comfortable seat he’d ever occupied. An odd place to sit for a murder interrogation.

“Thank you, George. Now, where shall we begin? Do we start with your presence in this solar system or why you murdered two people?”

“I didn’t murder anyone. I don’t know how things work here now, but they attacked us first. They tried to run us over and shoot us. We defended ourselves.”

When Carmen didn’t immediately reply, Dane tried to press her.

“I thought Augmented people had access to that kind of thing. Didn’t you know exactly what they did the second they were doing it?”

Carmen laughed. The sound was like champagne glasses clinking. “We don’t have the processing power for that. Our best scientists don’t think it will ever be possible. Besides, if everyone were being monitored, it would take half our population to monitor them!” She giggled. “I have reviewed some of the video taken from their recordings, though. They overreacted because of your interest in the facility in that town.”

“We didn’t know anything about any facility,” Dane told her. It was easy to sound truthful when you were being honest. “So it works like a dashcam. Always recording just in case, then the data dumps after a certain amount of time?”

“A dashcam? What an anachronistic reference. You really are from another time period. But yes, I suppose the theory is the same. When incidents like this happen, we are able to review what the citizens saw.”

“Citizens? Does that mean people need to get the nanites implanted to have rights under your government?”

“Why? Are you hoping I’ll give you the implants so you can get a…” The faraway look came into her eyes, and Dane understood it meant she was looking something up on her brain implant. “A lawyer? That’s an obsolete profession these days.”

“I’m wondering what happens to people who say no.”

“That’s something I’m more than willing to discuss, but I’ve told you quite enough tantalizing tidbits for now, haven’t I? I can practically see you trying to calculate how much we’ve seen of your time here on our Earth.”

“I don’t see how you can claim the birthplace of humanity as yours,” Dane remarked.

“We believe bringing peace, prosperity, and longevity to humanity gives us certain privileges. But you make a fair point. We can’t claim this entire planet for ourselves, and we haven’t. There are still places where people live out uninspired, unimproved lives. What we don’t allow, however, is for any of those people to endanger the rest of us. Or any of our own, for that matter.”

“Our intention wasn’t to endanger anyone.”

“And yet you snuck to the surface of the Earth after arriving on a stolen warship. You did not offer to return our property, nor did you ask for a safe place to land. Instead, you sneaked around through traffic lanes, endangering millions of lives. Don’t get me wrong, I am impressed. However did you get so close?”

“We had our second-best pilot steering the craft,” Dane noted.

Carmen laughed. “Second best! That really is too much. I love it! Yet you still haven’t actually answered my questions. I must insist on a straight answer. We have ways of making you share what you know, you understand. The implant process goes better with a calm and willing subject, but it works when someone is resisting, too. It’s simply not as quick or as painless that way.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Carmen laughed. “No, George, you misunderstand me. You are only alive because I am curious. Your crew killed two of our citizens and kidnapped another. Our own citizens never do anything close to this. The only people on this planet who kill our citizens are the unimproved set on destroying our world. Every one of them we have caught has either joined the Augmented or been executed. This is not a threat. This is so you understand how things work here now. So, would you like to answer my questions and perhaps serve as an ambassador, or should I show you how amazing it feels to be Augmented?”

“Can I ask you one question?”

“Is it about your friends? They are in cells like yours and will share in whatever fate you choose for yourself. Now, about how you trespassed in our airspace.”

Dane nodded, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and pretending to wipe a tear. They had talked about this. They had a plan. A story that could work, which Dane had already laid the groundwork for. He didn’t like using it while Haley was alone in a cell, at risk of losing herself in a brain implant.

“The Prometheus showed up in our solar system about a month ago. They accused us of working with the Augmented. Though, at the time, we didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. We think now it was a pretense to let them attack.”

“Clever,” Carmen remarked.

“I don’t know about that. They told us we needed to surrender immediately and submit our entire population to a medical procedure. We refused. They attacked us, but we have spent much of our time ensuring our planet is well-defended. They weren’t able to overcome us.”

“Why defend your planet? The Cosmos launched during a time of peace.”

They hadn’t built planetary defenses, of course. Not enough of one, anyway. Yet this was a thread Dane had insisted they should try to lay down. Better for the Augmented to think twice about invading, even if it risked them coming with a larger force.

Plus, Dane had a good enough reason to explain the behavior. “Do you know how many of my friends were killed by the goddamn Russians? I wasn’t about to leave us undefended against them.”

“And yet our scout saw the Zhemchug in orbit around your planet with the Cosmos. Or am I supposed to believe you captured that ship as well?” Her tone was playful, which only made Dane more concerned. She was like a tiger. Beautiful, enchanting, but obviously dangerous.

“My issues with the Russians were…misguided,” Dane admitted. “When they arrived in our solar system speaking of peace, our governor overruled my concerns. We have since integrated with them. Turns out I was wrong.”

“How did you overwhelm the Prometheus?”

Dane hoped the change of topic meant his answers about the Zhemchug were satisfactory. “We didn’t.”

“Yet they brought you to this system.”

“No, no, I mean, we didn’t overwhelm them by force. We waited them out. They had no food and didn’t want to jump back here. We offered them food and sent a shuttle with resources over. Hid a Russian fighter behind it. Forced them to surrender or threatened to blow up the whole ship. They called our bluff and got on the shuttle willingly. They were too hungry to think clearly.”

Hopefully, the lack-of-food portion would check out. The crew of the Prometheus really had been starving when they arrived because the ship they had stolen from the Augmented hadn’t been well-provisioned. Dane hoped this kernel of truth would help carry the story.

“You wouldn’t have destroyed the ship?”

“Not a chance. It appeared out of nowhere, which meant it either had amazing cloaking abilities or someone had finally broken the lightspeed barrier. From a military perspective, we had to capture something like that.”

“You will be rewarded for returning it to us,” Carmen stated.

“We’d be glad to discuss a mutually beneficial agreement.”

Carmen nodded as her eyes focused on the distance. Making a note to someone about future negotiations, most likely.

“And what did you do with the people you found aboard the stolen ship?” Carmen asked.

“Same as you’re doing now. We asked them a lot of questions. Their answers were… well, frankly, they were pretty hard to believe at first.”

“You found the idea of a peaceful human race that difficult to comprehend?”

Dane chuckled. “I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise, but they weren’t exactly talking about all the good you’ve done. It was kind of a shock to get here and see the planet wasn’t entirely paved over and being run by machines.”

“Of course. They’ve blinded themselves to what we are giving the human race.”

“That’s what we wanted to find out. They kept saying implant zombies had taken over the world or something to that effect. We had to investigate if what they were saying was true, and since we had their ship, we had the capability. We didn’t believe everything they said, but we couldn’t dismiss it either. We all deemed it wise to attempt to infiltrate the implant zombie world, as they called it.”

“And is that what you found? Implant zombies?”

“Not exactly, or at least, that’s not what we thought at first. But when those guys tried to kill us for ordering coffee…well, it kind of makes you wonder. Is that normal?”

“No. Not at all. It’s only because of the war.”

“I thought you said you brought peace.”

“We are trying to. Not everyone is willing to accept what we offer.”

“No one offered us a thing. They skipped straight to trying to kill us.”

“A regrettable turn, and I do apologize.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m trying to understand. You said they were acting under their own power, right? Like, you didn’t know what they were doing until later, when you watched the dashcam video.”

“That is correct.”

“But then, why did they attack us? Does your implant technology make people more aggressive or something? You have to understand where we’re coming from. We’re sharing our base with Russians.” Dane made himself turn the last word into a slur. He wanted her to believe there was still hostility there, for her to think he was paranoid about everything. The last thing he wanted her to know was that he’d been weight training with Lev, the Russian general. “We can’t risk uncontrolled aggression right now.”

“Augmented people are not any more aggressive than the unimproved. They are statistically much less aggressive. We have almost entirely done away with murder and violent crime. Even most crimes against property, something the previous governments put a lot of stock in, are statistically down.”

“We were attacked.”

“Because the people of the town where we found you were on high alert for those without implants. We have a facility there that’s important to our mission. It’s fairly new, so the locals have not fully internalized the priorities we have given them. Instances like that can make things messy. I assure you, once your people agree to be Augmented, such things will not happen.”

Dane nodded. It hadn’t taken Carmen long to make her big offer to put nanites in Dane’s people. Not that he was surprised. “Are people without implants that much of a threat?”

“They are right now.” Carmen’s voice hardened, more like ice-cold vodka than champagne. “The last of the dissidents are gone. There are still a few pockets of unimproved people here and there. In the mountains, deep in the desert. Places that are hard to get to if you don’t know the terrain. The last of the organized bands left on our stolen ship. We are thankful you have captured them. We look forward to working out an agreement in which you can extradite the prisoners. Many of our people died, and their families would like to know justice has been served. We’ll want the ship back as well, you understand, though we are open to economic agreements in which your people could earn a ship of their own.”

Dane nodded, pretending to think about the offer while trying to get a sense of what was going on in the system. Something didn’t add up. A perimeter of warships surrounded the solar system, and even a tiny town was so jacked up on nerves that they tried to kill people who could have merely been passing through.

If Richmond really had been the last of the resistance on Earth, they should have been celebrating that he was gone. After all, their time here had already proven that one ship was not any kind of threat. Their warships had detected them as soon as they entered the solar system. They had nothing to be afraid of, yet they were afraid.

“You’re not telling me something,” Dane ventured.

Carmen tittered, once more champagne instead of vodka. “There is a vast quantity of information I’m not telling you, George Dane. There is data you could not understand, as well as data I would not share with a prisoner. If you were Augmented, you would understand how much of the data I have access to is behind firewalls.”

“I understand that, but still, you’re not telling me something. The Prometheus isn’t a threat to you. Not really. You had to have known that the moment you sent a scout to our solar system and saw it was only one warship and our two ancient clunkers. You didn’t set up the perimeter or have that town on high alert because you were afraid of Richmond and his crew of starving people.”

“Your observation is astute. You are correct…we did not send our scout ship to your solar system with the sole purpose of looking for the Prometheus. We needed to be sure they weren’t growing a coalition.”

“I wouldn’t call a colony of a thousand people part of a coalition. Not against a population like yours. We’re still mostly focused on the best way to make our kelp taste good.”

“No, it wasn’t you that we were worried about. It was what else we would find. You see, the Prometheus is not the first ship that was stolen from us. We had to learn the hard way that the unimproved are unprincipled thieves. That’s why you found our defenses up, though you did prove we need to reconfigure our system. You launched the shuttle from the Prometheus, obviously. We should have been on high alert and assumed you’d try to make contact.”

“You weren’t worried about a shuttle because you were worried about something else. Something larger.”

Carmen stood from the sofa and paced through the immaculate apartment. She moved with perfect poise, her white robe flowing about her like a shroud made of nothing but clouds.

“I like you, George Dane. You seem concerned about your people. That is something I can relate to. We will make small sacrifices if it saves our people, correct?”

“I suppose so.” Dane thought about the people he’d already lost on Varuna. Too many had been sacrificed. He didn’t like thinking about it in those terms, but there was truth in it.

“Right now, we face an enemy that doesn’t understand this. They will not sacrifice even a tiny corner of their worldview to better work with us. They don’t care about trade, history, or the betterment of their people. They care about nothing except causing pain and strife in this solar system they refuse to think of as their former home.”

“You’re talking about another colony,” Dane commented.

Carmen paused in her pacing. She looked over her shoulder and nodded once. “The colony at Alpha Centauri stole one of our ships and has since replicated our technology. Rather than using it as we intended, to travel between human colonies and facilitate both trade and survival, they are using it to attack us. Our people are on high alert because we fear another attack. They have already destroyed one of our cities, a center of manufacturing. We cannot allow that again. The people you encountered were trying to protect their neighbors and our way of life. When they ascertained that you did not have implants, they assumed the worst.”

“I guess that makes sense. They could have simply talked to us.”

Carmen’s face lit up. “Which is exactly what I intend to do. You are not like them, George. You seem to be a man of reason. A man who understands the value of compromise. I invite you to join us, Augmented yourself and your crew, and return to your home world in peace.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dane involuntarily glanced at the guards by the door. If this was a horror video, they would have grabbed him by the neck and injected the nanites then and there, but they hadn’t come any farther into the room.

“That idea makes you nervous?” Carmen asked, drawing his attention back to her.

“It does,” Dane admitted. “You have to understand, the first Augmented people we met tried to kill us.”

“But only because you weren’t Augmented.”

“I mean, I want to believe that, but from a security perspective, I have to make sure I don’t bring something to my colony that destabilizes what we’ve built. We’ve made so much progress there. We can’t risk giving up our gains.”

“You claim you’ve made progress, and yet our scout didn’t see anything in your solar system besides a few satellites orbiting a single planet. Weather satellites, our analysis showed us. Likely to keep an eye on the weather. You can’t really expect me to believe you don’t have more to gain by allying with us. Instead of figuring out kelp, we could ship you grain. Instead of trying to retrofit your two aging colony ships, we could equip you with ships that can hop between our solar systems.”

“You would do that for us? Give us a ship, I mean? We don’t have much by way of industry to offer in trade.”

“We are not looking at quarterly profits as our human predecessors would. We are looking at the long-term success of humanity. You live on a planet that could support billions of people. We are more than willing to equip you with a few ships to help us realize that dream. All we would need is a delegation of Augmented people to return with you so they could facilitate Augmenting your own population.”

“Is the implant tech really that central to your mission, though? You have to understand, we’re from more than a hundred years ago. The only implants on our planet are in the brains of the Russians, and those are clunky things that can’t interface with half the things they claim to. I’m skeptical, I guess. I think it would be easier to set up trade, then talk about…Augmenting.”

Carmen tsked. “I assure you, if any one of your people agrees to undergo the procedure, you will all be convinced of its superiority.”

“How?”

Carmen smiled. It was a softball question, and she looked willing to answer.

“All information is available to us with barely a thought. I was able to access your military and public records easily enough, but really almost all information is at our disposal. That means new data, too. Say one of your people discovers a particular method to help with the farming of…”

“Kelp,” Dane offered, though she didn’t need the suggestion. She was trying to remind him how they struggled to farm kelp while her own planet farmed successfully enough to feed the solar system.

“Right. Kelp. Say someone discovers a method. They can record a video with a thought, then instantly share it with all other technicians, who can then see exactly what was done.”

“I mean, I can see how that’s convenient, but we have tablets. Our SCUBA helmets pretty much all have cameras mounted in the head. We’ve accomplished the same thing you propose, but without having to go through the trouble of implanting something in our brain.”

Carmen nodded, considering. “Are you averse to technology, George? Many of those who oppose us have an almost zealous obsession with the ways of the past.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t think I am. I was a Space Force officer for my entire career. I drove the most advanced technology humans had created. I don’t think I could be technology-averse and still work in that role. It seems to me that putting something in the brain shouldn’t be done unless absolutely necessary. Say five percent of our population didn’t take to it. That’s fifty people we’d lose. We can’t afford that.”

“Your concern for the members of your community is commendable, though unnecessary.”

Dane tried to put on his best “Is that so?” face to keep her talking. If they were going to stand a chance against the Augmented, they had to understand everything they possibly could about how the implants really worked.

“I’m sure the rebels told you something about the implants, and you tried to confirm with the two dead men.”

“It wasn’t an easy choice, but after they tried to kill us…well, I should apologize for that.”

Carmen waved away his concern. “We no longer believe in the unnecessary funerary rites mankind obsessed with for so long. Think what could have been accomplished if leaders throughout human history were focused on the future of their citizens instead of their own legacies. Instead of pyramids, you could have had libraries. Instead of monuments, gardens. Killing those men took away pieces of our consciousness, but trying to understand them when they were dead is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Dane wanted to say there had been plenty of libraries throughout history. It was only that many of them had been burned, and many of the gardens had suffered the same fate. He didn’t see much point in quibbling with one of the Augmented over this.

Because that was what he was really dealing with. One of the Augmented. Carmen was a person, or at least she seemed like one to Dane. Yet she was also more than that. The way she spoke about people wasn’t her opinion. It was instead her reflection of the collective opinion, or the program’s opinion, or whatever she answered to.

“But, yes. To answer your question, we had our biologist conduct an autopsy on the bodies to better understand the Augmented. We discovered that the implants are quite different from anything we’re familiar with.”

“Quite so,” Carmen agreed. “I’m sure to you it seemed akin to magic.”

Dane said nothing to that.

Carmen didn’t seem to mind. Instead, she continued as if she had stunned her guest to speechlessness.

“We begin with a simple injection into almost any piece of muscle. From there, the nanites follow the bloodstream to the brain and begin to assemble themselves into the implant. No more of that barbarism of chopping into a person’s skull!”

“So the nanites are the implant?”

“In a sense, yes. They assemble in the brain and interface with the proper biological components. They started as medical technology, so first, they run a diagnostic and assess for any damages. The number of injured, malnourished people who are implant-fixed is quite astronomical.”

Dane wasn’t sure if she was trying to be ironic or if this was another threat. Their political rivals had been starving and injured when they forcibly injected these things into them? Healing a few wounds and helping with nutrition didn’t seem a fair trade for starving or hurting someone in the first place.

“Can the nanites self-replicate?” Dane asked.

“There is some redundancy, but it’s not an eternal system. Most of the upgrades are beamed into the nanites through our substations, but occasionally the hardware does need to be updated. When that happens, we simply inject more nanites.”

“And the implants never break down once they’re inside someone’s brain?” Dane asked.

“The implant is constantly monitoring itself. If it loses any sort of connectivity or function, it can use some of the free nanites in the bloodstream to repair itself. If there aren’t enough nanites, you simply get another injection, and they’ll integrate with what’s in place already. It’s—” She got that faraway look for a moment. “As easy as pie.”

“It sounds like you have thought through the hardware side of it. But, and forgive me for sounding like someone who’s living at peace when you’re at war, have you thought about the human side of it?” Dane asked.

“Everything we do is to better the human race. That is the very purpose of this implant and the system we have been able to build with it.”

“I’m sure you’re right. I guess it’s an old knee-jerk reaction kind of thing. The idea of a robot in my brain is a hard pill to swallow. I mean, you can’t even remove it? You simply keep adding to it if it starts to break down? Those kinds of projects were always cut in the Space Force.”

“We have tested it on ten billion people at this point. There are no major issues. Those who were there in the beginning have been taken care of. The people who undergo this procedure are happier than those who don’t. They feel like they fit in. Like they’re part of a community.”

“And what about those who don’t feel like they fit in? What about those people who have a different sort of brain chemistry, or structure, or whatever? My colony was founded by those kinds of people, you understand. People willing to leave everyone and everything they knew far behind. I worry that injecting them with something that interferes with how the brain works would fundamentally change who they are.”

“Some of our earliest adaptors were entrepreneurs. Artists. Influencers. Free thinkers. We never sought to erase any of that. We’ve always valued human expression and the catharsis it offers the rest of the community,” she claimed.

After a beat, she continued. “You don’t need to worry about such things. The implant grows into the user’s brain. It doesn’t change it. Augmented people are still the same people, only better. Imagine if a painter could reference any painting ever made or watch the processes of the people who came before him. Imagine if a writer trying to capture the difficulty of loss could spend a day in the mind of a grieving person. People are more expressive than ever before, with as many viewpoints as we’ve ever had.”

Dane didn’t have a direct rebuttal for any of that. He wasn’t ever really much of an arts guy. More of a focus on your doing your job right and keep your butt off the couch guy. Something about how the implant worked troubled him, though. If it was really as customized as Carmen claimed, every single implant would end up taking a slightly different shape. Dane was no surgeon, but he could only imagine how difficult it would be to remove a thousand different implants, let alone ten billion.

“So the implants give access to human knowledge. That’s pretty cool, but humans have been working on that for a long time. We have a database on the Cosmos with a record of as much human knowledge and art as we could fit. Anyone in our colony has access to that knowledge via tablet. Russian, American, even prisoners on the Prometheus. I guess I still don’t understand why we can’t trade with your people and continue to exist as we have.

“I want you to close your eyes and remember the Earth you left behind.”

Dane didn’t want to close his eyes in front of this woman any more than he’d want to in front of a nessie without a collar. After all, the armed guards at the door would be able to overpower him. At least he was getting useful intelligence from this conversation. How he would ever get it back home was a different puzzle, but Dane didn’t think closing his eyes for a few seconds would affect much. So, he closed them.

“Think of the wars. The battles fought over territory or resources, or nothing at all. Wars fought for ledgers and disagreements between the powerful that didn’t have much to do with anyone else until they were conscripted as soldiers.

“Think of the injustice. Of what the powerful could get away with compared to what the powerless had to put up with. Your entire political system was rotten. There was a time of relative justice after the war, but it degraded. Your politicians paid off your businessmen, who paid off your police, while those without connections or friends in the right places suffered worse every year.

“Think of the pain. Think of the people living on the streets, begging for food because they knew better than to beg for shelter. Think of the people who died simply because they couldn’t afford medical treatment. Think of how many people starved and of how starvation wasn’t egalitarian. Think of how some people died from lack of food while others died from too much. Think of how many other people died of diseases caused by a diet of processed food that filled bellies without nourishing. Think of those who died in floods, droughts, or any disaster when help was mere hours away but never came.”

“Okay. I get it.” The world Dane had left behind was a hard place. There was no denying it. It was one of the reasons he’d agreed to put himself in an aquarium for more than a hundred years and be shipped across the galaxy. “But are you really telling me none of that exists anymore? No one starves or dies in a hurricane?”

“There are still accidents. People still die when earthquakes strike, hurricanes take unexpected turns, or a vehicle malfunctions. But no longer do we sit idly by while those in what you would call other countries suffer. We’ve done away with borders. Now, any human suffering is all human suffering. When disasters strike or rebels bomb us, we come to the aid of those affected.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Dane said bitterly. Perhaps he had seen too much devastation that went unanswered save for more devastation. Perhaps he wanted to believe what Carmen was saying more than he wanted to doubt it.

Carmen’s eyes gleamed. “The implants make it possible.”

“How?” Dane asked, pushing her for the fullest answer.

“Because they share the thoughts and feelings of those around you. People are no longer forced to guess what you are thinking or feeling. They know.”

Dane balked. “So there’s no privacy anymore? Not even in your own head?”

“Not at all. Our earliest adapters were quite concerned with privacy, so it’s always been a top concern for how we operate. Every single citizen can turn off the connectivity functions of their implant if they so wish, except for a few basic systems, so we’ll know if they need help. Most choose not to.”

“People choose to have their thoughts splayed out for the world to see?” Dane asked.

“I know.” Carmen chuckled. “At first, that was how many people thought of it, but it became the norm over time. There’s something…freeing about knowing what your community is thinking. About feeling their reaction to your words.”

“So if I had an implant, you could read my mind? My thoughts wouldn’t be my own?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Carmen approached and patted his shoulder. “Your emotions are on one setting, which can be turned on and off. Your thoughts won’t transmit through the implant unless you want them to. The implant can’t pick up every synapse that fires when your subconscious works. Not yet, anyway. Rather, it can send your conscious thoughts to others.

“Say you saw a beautiful sunset. You could share that image with your friends, as well as the sound and feel of the grass beneath your feet. They would also feel what you felt when you experienced it. Emotional connectivity is one of our most popular features. Few people turn it off.”

“So sharing feelings saved the world?”

“Not at first, no, but it did with time. Once people could get inside each other’s heads, things like racism and xenophobia vanished. Skin color doesn’t matter when you can share emotions with each other. Neither does where you were born. We had some trouble calming the climate, and there was a lot of migration early on. The implants made that possible. They allowed people to see newcomers as part of their community. That was one of the reasons we mandated all people crossing historical borders were to be implanted if they wished to proceed.”

“No borders, but...”

“The infrastructure was there, so we used it. And we’re glad we did.”

“Racism isn’t the cause of all crime, though. What about thefts and murders?”

“Premeditated murder became nearly impossible. People have to think about that. Others would see and come to their aid. Theft was simpler. Most people steal because they need resources. Once we identified this need and their desperation, the answer became obvious. Rather than having them steal and sell valuables to afford resources, we directly supplied them with what they needed.”

“What about crimes of passion? What about people who lose their temper when someone accidentally crashes a car through their front window?”

“The few murders that still happen are almost always unpredictable incidents. We are exploring how to help with that as well, but the process is still proprietary information. We welcome any insights your colony might have in better using the implants to reach this goal.”

Something about the way she said the last part made Dane wonder what else the implants were capable of. He was sure she wasn’t telling him everything.

Pressing would only make her clam up. Better to get as much intel as he could.

“What about things like employment? What happens when people don’t want to work? Everyone is fine with that?”

“Tell me, do you have unemployment on your planet?”

Dane smirked. “Not at all. Everyone knows it’s all hands on deck to make our colony as good as possible. We have more of a problem getting people to take time off.”

“It’s similar for us. Everyone works because now all work is designed to contribute to the overall society. Whether it’s agriculture, medicine, transportation, or art and entertainment, everyone knows the goal is to share with all of humanity. Those who can’t work or feel unable to for some amount of time due to either injury or mental issues are not forced to. Instead, they are supported by the community for as long as they need.”

“It sounds…”

“Like paradise?” Carmen finished for him.

“Not the exact words I would choose, but yeah, it sounds positive. I think my people would like to hear about this. So if I could have my crew and my shuttle back, I can return home, and we can begin the process of setting up a delegation to communicate.”

“Of course.” Carmen smiled and pulled something from a drawer. It looked like a sort of needle gun. Dane had zero doubt it was intended to inject nanites into his muscle tissue. “Right arm or left?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Is there a problem?” Carmen asked as she approached Dane, injector in one hand, smile on her face. Dane scooted backward across the couch. When he reached the end, he scooted over the back of it and onto the floor. He would have preferred to appear less nervous, but he couldn’t mess around. Carmen had made it clear that a single poke from the device would result in him being implanted. He had to keep at least two meters away, appearances be damned.

“I realize I was unclear.” Dane scrambled to make sense to her. “I want to go back to my planet with my people so we can send a delegation later.”

“Of course, and that makes perfect sense, but you’ll need to be implanted first. Don‘t worry. By the time you return home, you’ll be fully up to speed.”

“Will this work in my solar system? I mean, there’s no infrastructure there. I’d hate to try to show off this new tool only for it not to work.”

Carmen didn’t answer that question, much as Dane would have liked her to. She merely came toward him, one step at a time. Dane moved backward, circling around the spacious apartment and keeping an eye on the guards as well.

“I don’t think this is the best way to build trust between our two peoples,” Dane suggested. “I told you the people of the Prometheus showed up making demands, and we captured their ship. We’ve had a rough year and are having issues with strangers.”

“But we won’t be strangers once you have the implant. That’s the beauty of it. All your questions will be answered, and all your concerns will be cared for. You won’t distrust me because you’ll be able to feel what I feel, which is empathy for your people. I want to help you, George Dane. I really do! Now come here and let me prove it to you.”

“I think the chief of security being implanted with these things might cause some concerns!” Dane blurted. When Carmen paused on her approach, he decided to run with it. It seemed a better plan than literally running, which was his only other choice, and not much of one at that, considering the elevator was blocked.

“It might make them more suspicious, is all. We have a quarantine process, you understand. Alien world and all. If they quarantine me and discover the implant, they might not believe me. I won’t seem objective anymore. Furthermore, it would be a security risk in their eyes. They would be concerned you injected me to steal our security codes.”

“You left the Earth more than a hundred years ago. I assure you we can get through any sort of digital security you have tried to build.”

“I’m sure you can, but the people from my colony won’t see it that way. They’ll view this as a hostile move. Because I know too much. Surely, you understand. If you were captured by people from Alpha Centauri, it would be worse than if someone from that town I was in got captured, right?”

Carmen lowered the injector. “I suppose that makes sense. It’s a rather paranoid outlook on the world, but if the unimproved are one thing, it’s paranoid.”

“Thank you.” Dane’s gaze remained locked on the injector, even though it was no longer pointing at his neck. “I could take back a sample of the nanites instead. If we could have our people look at how it works, I’m sure it would go a long way toward dispelling any fears.”

“You’re prevaricating, George.”

“I’m what?”

“If you took a sample of the nanites back, I don’t think you would administer them to anyone. I think your team would try to figure out how to destroy them. I can tell by your elevated pulse that I’m correct.”

“My elevated pulse?”

“The nanites allow our senses to operate more effectively. I can tell when you’re lying, George. I can hear it. I can smell it.”

Dane told himself she was lying. She had to be lying. If she wasn’t, he was in a world of trouble. Because half of everything he’d said had been a lie.

“I don’t think it would be wise for the chief of security to return from a security assessment with a computer in my brain, is all. My people wouldn’t trust it.”

“And why not?” Carmen demanded, taking a step forward. “You’re more than willing to use the engine that allows the ship you stole from us to travel faster than light, despite the risks being far greater.”

“We didn’t steal the ship from you—”

“Oh, forgive me,” Carmen drawled. “What was that game of dominoes you told me? Oh, yes. You stole it from the crew who stole it from us, and now you have them in custody, and they’re answering all your questions. It’s a tempting story to believe. It’s exactly what we want to believe. But is it true?”

“Of course it’s true.”

“Is it?” Carmen snarled. “Or is it a story designed to take advantage of our trust? I believed you, Dane. Or the Algorithm did, anyway. That’s why I’m here. To help with matters like this. Matters of truth and trust that the Augmented have evolved past.”

“The what?” Dane sputtered, moving away from her as he wondered what was in charge of this society.

“I’m not so sure anymore, though. The way you fear this implant despite everything I’ve shown it can do for you… You believe the rebels, don’t you?”

“I told you what we believed.”

“You lied. You didn’t come here to meet with us. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have snuck in. You came here to find out if we’re a threat.”

“And now you’re trying to force an implant on the chief of our security! How is that fear not justified?”

A thunderstorm of fury moved across Carmen’s beautiful features. It quickly vanished, and she was calm and smiling once more.

“That’s a very good point, George. I can see how leadership returning after an unauthorized procedure would cause some problems. We won’t do that to you, all right?”

“You won’t?”

“No, we won’t.” Carmen lowered the injector. “Your concern is valid. You would, of course, be convinced of how superior it is to be Augmented. However, that might not convince the rest of your colony. Especially if they were concerned for their safety. Forgive me. I’m simply so passionate about this project that I can get carried away.”

“It’s fine,” Dane agreed. “And if you don’t want us to take an injector, that’s understandable too. We can go and report back, as we discussed.”

“I think that’s a very good idea, George. An injector isn’t the best option from our perspective, and the chief of security isn’t the best choice from yours. What we need is a middle ground. A compromise.”

“Sure. Yes! A compromise is exactly what we need.”

“Lucky for us, I have the perfect one in mind.” Carmen smiled as the elevator dinged and the doors opened.

“Now, wait a minute,” Dane uttered as the doors opened to reveal Haley, Carlos, Anderson, and Good, with another six guards crammed in behind them. From the way Good held himself, it appeared that while his leg was mostly better, there was also a gun digging into the small of his back.

“You don’t want your chief of security implanted. We understand that. Instead, we can send back some of your crew with the implants. That way, it won’t present a security concern, and your people will see how amazing it is. Now, all of you, sit down.”

“Move!” one of the guards barked, and Carlos winced as the guard shoved a gun into him the same way they’d done to Good.

The guards pushed Dane’s crew out of the elevator, knocking Anderson to the ground as they did so. All their hands were bound. While most of the guards pushed Good, Lopez, and Carlos to the couch, two of them yanked Anderson off the floor.

“Bring him to me,” Carmen ordered, and the guards hauled Anderson over.

“Wait a minute. This isn’t any better,” Dane insisted. “He’s our pilot. He knows things, same as me.”

“Oh, the second-best pilot I’ve heard of?” Carmen smiled and ran a finger along his face.

“Not second-best at anything,” Anderson retorted, which earned him a knee to the gut from one of the guards. He crumpled. The poor kid was a damn good pilot but had never been trained in combat. At least not outside of simulations. That might be enough for Anderson, though.

“Not the pilot, all right?” Dane declared. “Same concern. They won’t trust a ship that’s being driven by someone with a computer in their brain.”

“Fine,” Carmen snarled before her eyes went distant. The guards hauled Anderson to the couch and tossed him on the cushions. Watching the couch adjust to a bound body seemed perverse to Dane.

“Then who will it be, George?” Carmen asked. “Probably not the biologist, right? You’ll want his perspective.” She ran her fingers along Carlos’ shoulder as she spoke. Dane was now on the opposite side of the room, behind the couch, so he couldn’t see the faces of his crew. Guards were between him and his people. Too many for him to take out.

“You can’t force this on us. It won’t convince anyone if you do things this way.”

“You keep backtracking, George. One minute you want an ambassador, then it can’t be you, and now it can’t be anyone? Do you know what I think? I think those rebels poisoned your mind. I think you didn’t steal their ship at all. I think you’re working with them, and you believe the madness and the filth they preach.”

“We’re all people. I understand you’re at war with the people of Alpha Centauri, but that’s not who came to us. They were hungry and scared. We listened to what they said when they weren’t a threat anymore. That’s what people do to each other. That’s what we want to do with you.”

“They have infected you, but I have the cure. This injector has enough for all of you to join us. No more doubt. No more questions. You’ll have access to everything you need. Every answer. Every experience.”

“You need to let us go,” Dane ordered.

“We will! We will, as soon as you’ve all been Augmented.”

The guards moved as one. There was no confusion, no discrepancies in who thought they should grab which target. One moment, Dane and his people were all free. The next, Carlos had a gun to his head, Good had been punched in his not quite fully healed wound, and Anderson had been grabbed by both arms. At the same time, two guards flanked Dane and raised their weapons into his face. He looked past them to Lopez. Two more guards had yanked her off the couch, and Carmen walked toward her, injector raised.

“Don’t do this!” Dane shouted.

“Let me go, you smoking witch!” Lopez hollered past the hand clamped over her mouth. She’d probably said something like that, anyway. She struggled valiantly, stomping on one of the guard’s feet hard enough to piss the guy off. He kicked the back of her knees, so she fell to the ground. The other put a knee on top of her while Carmen approached.

“Inject me instead!” Dane shouted.

“We’ll start with her and do you next,” Carmen snapped.

Dane planted his feet to lunge forward, but the second his thighs twitched, one of the guards pointed his gun at his foot and fired, blowing a neat hole in part of the glass floor. Live rounds, then, and people more than willing to use them.

Pain flared as the butt of a rifle from a guard Dane had lost track of slammed into the back of his head. He crashed to the floor, nearly bashing his face before catching himself with his hands. He turned to look at his attacker, and that was when he saw it.

Over his shoulders, out the perfect windows, above the city so far below them, came a streaking object. Dane had seen enough of them to know what it was.

A bomb.

Someone had dropped a bomb on the city outside.

“Everybody close your eyes!” Dane shouted. “That’s an order!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

What good could closing your eyes do?

Quite a lot, in this case! The flash of light was brief but bright enough that Dane saw Carmen and the guards silhouetted through his eyelids as they turned to look.

“Down!” Dane screamed. “Everybody, get down!” He didn’t think about trying to get an advantage over the Augmented. He was back in the war, hunkering down against bombs and praying it would be enough, that his luck would hold, that he might breathe for a few more minutes. That he’d have his people to talk to when the dying was over.

The sound hit next. A terrifically deep boom.

Dane didn’t think anyone could hear him over that, but he kept yelling. He yelled until the shockwave from the bomb hit the glass skyscraper, and it exploded into a million fragments of spinning glass.

He was on his feet before anyone else. The glass had blown inwards and struck everyone in the room. They were all either rubbing at their helmets, obviously blinded, or clawing at bloody wounds that crisscrossed their bodies. Dane’s crew had fared better. Good was crumpled over on the couch, so he’d been protected. Alvarez and Anderson both had nicks and cuts on their faces, but they were up as well, moving around despite their hands being bound.

“Cut your bonds on the broken glass!” Dane remembered himself saying later, though in that moment, all he could think of was Haley. She hadn’t been protected like the others when the glass had hit them. He ran to her, grabbed her shoulders, and rolled her onto her back.

“Are you all right?”

“Better than him.” Lopez kicked the guard next to her. He grunted and rolled, and Dane heard the sound of the breaking glass embedded in the guard’s back.

He grabbed a glass shard and cut her bonds.

Not a moment too soon. One of the guards had recovered his senses enough to strike at Dane. He shifted at the last second, so rather than being clubbed in the head with the butt of the gun, he took the blow in the shoulder. Then he crashed into the guard, and they went down in a tangle of limbs and broken glass.

Dane heard gunshots, though not from the gun he was wrestling over. That meant Good or Anderson was also making a play for a weapon. Good men.

He grappled with the man until he squirmed behind him, then hooked an arm around his neck. The helmet was too blocky for the other man to reach him. Dane applied pressure until the man passed out and stopped struggling, then grabbed his gun.

By then, Good had somehow already broken his bonds, gotten a weapon, and trained it on two other guards.

Dane didn’t know what stopped them from shooting their own weapons at Good since they had him outnumbered. It turned out that was because he couldn’t see what they were staring at.

Then he heard it.

“You crazy bitch! I’ll kick your ass! My body, my choice!” Lopez was stomping the hell out of Carmen, who was trying to protect her face and stomach and failing on both counts.

“Get the injector!” Dane ordered.

Lopez stomped on Carmen’s forearm, pinning the injector where she wanted it.

“That’s not yours to take!” Carmen screeched. When she tried to pull the injector away, Lopez tromped on her fingers a few times. That got the desired effect.

Lopez scooped up the injector, kicked Carmen once more for good measure, then nodded at Dane. She’s all right, thank God, Dane thought, grateful that his choice to check on her first hadn’t been a fatal mistake. He should have secured the scene first.

Dane was already moving toward Anderson, who still struggled with another guard. A well-aimed punch ended that contest. Dane took the unconscious guard’s weapon and gave it to Anderson after cutting his bindings.

“They’re all incapacitated, except for these two.” Good nodded at the men he had weapons pointed at.

“You all right, Alvarez?” Dane asked.

“I am, gracias,” Alvarez replied.

As soon as he spoke, the two guards glanced at him. Which was why Dane had asked about him. The second he opened his mouth, Dane shot one of them in the leg. Good took down the other. Sometimes you didn’t need brain implants to coordinate. You only needed to work together and think from a shared experience. Both men crashed to the floor, clutching their injuries.

All the other guards in the room grabbed their thighs, too.

“What in the hell?” Good questioned.

“They all felt that, especially since we got them both at the same time.” Dane was both amazed and appalled that Carmen had been telling the truth. He also noticed that while everyone else in the room grabbed at their leg, Carmen did not seem to be under the same empathic duress.

“Some are more equal than others, huh?”

“You are making a grave mistake, George, but it’s not too late. Inject yourselves now and help us against these unimproved from Alpha Centauri. You’ll have our fleet’s help when they come for you.”

“I found some cuffs, sir.” Good brandished a clump of long plastic zip ties.

“Bind them to the furniture,” Dane ordered as he went to check on Alvarez. Everyone else seemed all right, but the biologist looked like he was going into shock.

“You all right, Doc?”

“I’m fine, yes. I don’t know. There is a lot of blood, no?” Alvarez rambled.

There was. He’d sustained a cut to the head. It wasn’t deep, but it bled freely. The poor man had gotten his hands in it and smeared blood all over his face and clothes.

“It’s only a small head wound, all right?” Dane looked closely. “It’s bleeding a lot, but it’s going to be okay.” He ripped a piece of fabric from Carmen’s white robe and used it to bind the wound.

He pulled Alvarez to his feet while Good, Anderson, and Lopez tied the guards’ wrists, then either secured them to furniture or daisy-chained them to each other.

“This won’t matter. You understand that, right, Dane? I called for backup the moment that bomb struck. I didn’t even have to call. Everyone on the planet felt those monsters snuff out tens of thousands of our lives. The full force of the Augmented world is coming for you. There’s no way for you to escape.”

“I guess there’s not much point in keeping you alive then?” Dane asked, aiming the rifle at Carmen. “Would you prefer we killed you?”

To Carmen’s credit, she did not flinch. Not a single strand of platinum hair moved. “You can do what you wish. The end is inevitable. You will come to regret this when you are implanted, but you will be forgiven these transgressions.”

Dane lowered his weapon, shocked that he’d stuck a gun in an unarmed woman’s face, even one whose brain was connected to a planet-spanning computer. Haley had gotten him all fired up. Seeing her almost injected had been painful. It was terrible to think her mind would never be her own again, and some faceless machine would track her behavior and learn what made her laugh before Dane could. Terrible enough to make him want to shoot the woman who’d threatened Haley with such a fate.

“We’re not here to kill anyone,” Dane insisted. “We only wanted to find out what was happening on Earth. Now we want to go home.”

“Might be tricky, boss.” Good walked back from the elevator. “Someone’s on their way up. My guess would be armed guards, and a lot of them.”

“Can you jam the elevator?”

“I can try, but we need a way out.”

Dane nodded, walked over to the shattered window, and looked out.

Despite the immediate need to escape, it was hard not to reckon with the scene before him.

The bomb had shattered dozens of city blocks. Many buildings had been completely leveled. Of those still standing, all the glass had blown out on the side that faced the bomb. Fallen aircraft and damaged wheeled transports littered the city.

There was still activity below, though. People moved about, already clearing the rubble. Their efforts focused on one area in particular. Dane raised his weapon and looked through the scope to find they were clearing an airfield. Hundreds of people, some of them with blood-stained clothes, worked together to haul away rubble with their bare hands. In less than a minute, they had cleared a large swathe of debris.

The ground opened up, revealing a hidden landing pad. Shuttles and aircraft immediately launched, one after the other. They rolled into place from their underground bunker and took to the skies with frightening efficiency, like bees from a hive.

Dane pulled his eyes away and scanned their own building. They were pretty damn high up in the sky, but he spotted what he was looking for. Running along the outside of the elevator was an emergency stairwell that had been hidden until the bomb peeled away the building’s exterior.

“There.” Dane pointed. “I’ll cover you while you go down.”

“Down to where?” Anderson asked.

Dane grinned. “Off the planet, Anderson. It’s not rocket science.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Lopez went first and made it about ten feet before she ran out of ladder.

“Uh…Dane? There’s only one more step!”

“Put your weight on it, and it’ll slide down and extend. It’ll go fast, and we’ll climb down after,” he suggested.

“Stepping down!”

Dane couldn’t see Lopez take that step, but he heard her. The clank of the extending ladder mingled with the wind and the distant roar of ships taking off.

“Woo-hoo!” Lopez shouted as she rode the ladder down twenty or so floors.

Dane wasn’t able to count because that was when the elevator reached the top floor.

Good had jammed it from opening, but judging from the gunshots blowing holes in the doors, that probably wouldn’t last long.

“Let’s go!” Dane shouted.

“I’m going, I’m going!” Carlos shouted back. He was climbing down after Anderson, who was already more than twenty feet below him. The biologist was still shaken, obviously, but he also needed to get a move on!

“Pick up the pace, Alvarez!” Good shouted from his position above him on the ladder.

Meanwhile, someone had jammed a piece of metal through the crack in the elevator doors and was using it to pry them open.

“Well, I guess ten billion minds working together still don’t have a better method for opening doors than good old-fashioned brute force,” Dane muttered as he heard the guards inside the elevator labor to get enough leverage to force the door. One of them got their arm through the crack, so Dane shot them in the forearm.

He heard a dozen or so simultaneous curses from inside the elevator, and some of the downed guards reached for their forearms as well, tugging at their restraints. Dane wished he could use that against the Augmented, but the idea of inflicting pain on one person and hurting many others at the same time repulsed him. Though he did wonder if feeling the pain of others actually would reduce violence. Why pick a fight with anyone if you knew you’d feel every punch you threw as if it had struck your own face?

Such empathy was clearly limited to those people who also had implants because the guards inside the elevator opened fire on Dane without reservation. One of them stuck the barrel of their gun through the crack and laid down cover fire while the others pried the door open. Dane tried to keep the pressure on by firing back, but he couldn’t aim through the hail of bullets. Meanwhile, they seemed to know exactly where to shoot to keep the pressure on him. Maybe they’d mapped his location using their implants.

Whatever was giving them the advantage forced Dane back and around the side of the elevator. Not a second later, the soldiers burst through the doors.

Dane wasted no time. He went to the ladder, grabbed the rails on each side, pressed his feet to the edges, and slid down. He dropped like a stone, the wind whipping at him as he plunged faster and faster. This was a long way for a slide, and his hands were burning before he’d gone halfway down.

Yet he didn’t let go. He couldn’t risk a broken ankle or even a sprain. The rest of his crew was spreading out on a wider section of the building. It was still something like twenty stories off the ground, its roof dotted with HVAC units and ventilation. The tower Dane currently slid down stood something like another forty stories over it. High enough that Dane could actually think while he slid. At least enough to realize how bad this idea was.

He hit the wider roof as the guards fired at him from the top of the tower.

“Dane!” Lopez shouted from behind a ventilation unit. He dove behind and threw his back against it for cover.

“Your hands.” Lopez grasped them in her own.

“They’ll be all right,” Dane didn’t want to look at his stinging palms. “My ankles are fine, and we still have a ways to go.”

“You got a plan, then?” Good asked.

“We make for those ships,” Dane yelled when the damn guards at the top of the tower stopped firing for a second.

“It’s too dangerous!” Alvarez protested.

“Better than staying behind with them.” Dane hooked an elbow at the roof.

“I found something,” Anderson shouted from behind another unit on the roof. Some of the bullets from above had knocked open a vent that was blowing out warm air.

“How do we get down there, though?”

Lopez had the answer to that. She had picked up a gun at some point and used it to shoot one end of a power cable that snaked across the roof of the building.

“We have our rope.” She tossed it into the ventilation shaft.

“Great, let’s go.” Dane wasn’t eager to use his hands on a rope in their current state, but he’d made do with worse injuries.

“I don’t know how to climb a rope!” Alvarez lamented. “I was chosen to go on the Cosmos because I am a biologist, not because I’m good at calisthenics.”

“That’s fine. Tie it around his waist, and we'll lower him down,” Dane coaxed.

They did exactly that. Dane worried that working with a live electric wire would be dangerous, but Lopez was smarter than that. She’d shot the wire to disconnect it from its source. It was both cold and anchored to a massive HVAC unit. They lowered Alvarez down to the bottom, then took turns rappelling down after him. Dane wasn’t last this time. His team wouldn’t allow it after Lopez pointed out the wounds on his hands. By the time it was his turn, the guards were more than halfway down the ladder.

“Good, if they start firing, you immediately follow.”

“Cable won’t support the both of us.”

“Damn it, man, that’s an order.”

“Sir, your survival is more important than—”

Whatever Good planned to say was lost when another missile streaked in. It barely missed the skyscraper the guards were descending and struck the one next to it. A direct impact was more than enough to send the towering edifice crashing to the ground. The shockwave knocked the guards from their position on the ladder and sent Dane and Good tumbling down the ventilation shaft.

They fell for about ten feet before they hit a diagonal surface that broke their fall and carried them along like kids on the world’s largest tunnel slide. For a moment, the chaos of the destruction outside was lost as they bounced off the metal sides of the chute like a couple of pinballs.

They crashed into a heap at the bottom of the long shaft. The first thing Dane noticed was how hot it was.

Dane sat up, rubbing his head with his hands and wincing from the pain in both. “I have to say, I was half-expecting a giant fan at the bottom to slice us to pieces.”

“Oh, there is a fan,” Carlos pointed out.

There was, and they had already passed through. It wasn’t spinning because Carlos had removed the bandage from his head and thrown it into the works, effectively jamming the machine. His wound had stopped bleeding, which was good…if not unusually quick. Dane would have to keep an eye on him and hope it didn’t open again soon.

“Smart thinking there, Alvarez,” Good praised. “Looks like you have some engineering in you, after all.”

Alvarez shrugged. “I thought it could work.”

Dane wondered how Alvarez had shaken off his shock and emerged from the long fall with enough wherewithal to jam the fan when he’d been basically useless minutes ago. But then, adrenaline could be a wonderful thing.

He couldn’t start doubting his team. Even if they had been separated and held for hours in Augmented prison cells.

Even if Alvarez’s head wound had closed faster than he’d thought possible.

“We need a way out.”

“I have one.” Lopez was standing by a door. “I think this place heats the entire city. This is an access panel. Should take us where we need to go, which is…”

“That way.” Anderson pointed at a wall.

“How can you be sure?” Dane asked.

Anderson shrugged. “Pilot’s sense of direction, I guess. You spent too long flying in space. I spent all my time looking at the surface of planets.”

Dane didn’t have time to question Anderson any more than Alvarez.

“Lead the way.”

Lopez opened the door, and Anderson leaned in and peeked both ways before choosing one. They followed a tunnel that was blessedly cooler than the hot room they had been in.

“This way,” Anderson announced. Dane followed, trying not to wonder if the pilot was leading them to a trap. Why had the Augmented separated them, if not to implant them one by one? Yet, as chief of security, Dane was the most valuable of the group. He hadn’t been implanted because Carmen had said it was better if it was voluntary. Surely, if they didn’t bother to force it with their best target, they wouldn’t have with anyone else. Right?

If Anderson was leading them to a trap, it was an elaborate one. When they finally reached a larger room, it was not a ring of armed guards waiting for them but conveniently stacked crates.

They slipped from the access tunnel into the largest underground hangar Dane had ever seen.

Aircraft and spacecraft of every kind littered the floor. There were helicopters, rockets, flying cars, transport shuttles, fighter jets, and a half-finished Prometheus-style ship that Dane was shocked to see down here. In the middle of the room, an absolutely massive system of conveyor belts slowly but surely transported vehicles toward an opening in the ceiling, perhaps a kilometer away.

“Time to go shopping.” Dane led them from crate to crate toward the spacecraft.

“What about that one, sir? We could cause some real damage with it.” Anderson pointed to a sleek fighter that absolutely bristled with weapons.

“Much as I’d love to take it for a spin, we’re not here to fight. We need to get home and leave the damage to Alpha Centauri.”

“Who?” Lopez asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Dane promised.

“That one?” Good indicated a heavier transport shuttle. While the fighter had been sleek and maneuverable, this one looked like a flying tank.

“We need something faster than that. Plus, I didn’t see any of those in the air. We might stick out.”

“No one’s prepping it,” Lopez pointed out. “I’m not sure I can get anything ready to fly.”

“I do not think overpowering pilots is smart. They’ll know, no?” Alvarez pointed to where an implant would be if he had one.

“I’m thinking the chaos of being bombed will give us some cover,” Dane suggested.

“We’ll have to take them out without being seen,” Good claimed.

“You mean kill them?” Lopez asked, appalled.

“We’ll make that call when we find the right ship,” Dane assured her.

“How about that?” Anderson pointed to a smaller vessel being wheeled out onto the huge conveyor. It was about as big as a fighter, though much sleeker and with no visible weapons. It was mostly black, though there were spots that looked like they’d been perforated with silver.

“That’s an ECCM ship if I’ve ever seen one,” Dane remarked. “It’s perfect.”

“ECCM?” Good asked.

“Electronic counter-countermeasure. A ship designed to scramble their scramblers. If we can’t sneak out in something like that, we can’t sneak out at all.”

“It looks small,” Alvarez pointed out.

Indeed, a crew of two was prepping it. That was fine with Dane. They would have better chances, though it would be tight in there while they made for a pickup with the Prometheus. Assuming they could contact the Prometheus. Assuming the Prometheus hadn’t been blown to slag.

One step at a time, though.

“We’ll fit. Now come on. It looks like they’re doing their preflight check. If we do this right, they’ll get it ready for us. We can launch and follow their path, then head out to deep space when we get a moment. You up to the task, Anderson?”

“Oh, yeah, sir. If you’re offering, I’m more than willing to get us off this admittedly green and verdant rock.”

“You think you can make your tablet interface with that ship?” Dane asked.

“I would think so, but I won’t know until we get inside,” Lopez answered. That sort of answer could be a trap, but Dane’s heart couldn’t bear thinking about Lopez being Augmented. Far easier to push it from his mind.

“All right, then. Good, you and I will take them out. Anderson, you get in the cockpit as fast as humanly possible. Help Lopez interface her device however she says to do that.”

“You got it.”

“That thing looks like a two-seater to me. We’ll have Anderson in the front, and the rest of us will cram into the back, all right? Priority of comfort goes to Lopez.”

“I’ve got a wounded leg!” Good protested.

“She needs elbow space to use her tablet.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m only joking.” Good checked the ammunition in his weapon.

“We ready?”

“Let’s go.”

Dane and Good broke cover and sprinted for the spacecraft. One of the two pilots climbing into the cockpit noticed.

Dane skidded to a halt, aimed the weapon and fired. His aim was true, and the craft lost one of its operators. He would have attempted the shot while running, but he couldn’t risk damaging a spacecraft. Good understood that as well. He reached the spacecraft as the other man noticed him. Rather than shooting him, he gestured for the man to get out.

Dane sprinted over, yanked the man from the cockpit as he was slowly climbing out, then bashed his head against the ground, knocking him out.

“Can’t give them time. Every second lets them contact hundreds.”

“Sorry, I know. I should have done that. The sprint was murder on my leg.” Good tapped his injured limb. Did it hurt that badly, or had he been giving the man time to escape?

No time for such paranoia.

“Get in!”

Anderson got into the cockpit and started to familiarize himself with the controls. Fortunately, they didn’t look too different from the fighters on the Prometheus.

“I can work with this,” he declared, flipping switches and letting his hands play over the boards.

“Lopez?” Dane asked when she scrambled into the back.

“I’ve got a link, thanks to them setting up the ship. That was a good call. I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle all the communications they’re running, though.”

“That’s all right. Report back that we were attacked by rebels but stopped them and are taking to the air now. Once we’re up, Anderson, you follow the other ships until they break formation, then get us the hell out of there. If this ship has a blackout mode, that’s when we need it, Lopez.”

“Got it.”

“Alvarez, you settled?”

“Si.”

“Good?”

“I’m making it work,” Good crammed himself in next to Alvarez. Lopez then lowered herself to sit on both of their laps. Dane sort of straddled the front seat until he found a storage compartment in the back of the craft.

“Lopez, you want to go back there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s fine. I can,” Alvarez stated. Everyone got elbowed or kneed by everyone else, but then Alvarez made it into the compartment, and Dane crammed in next to Good. Lopez plopped down on his lap, and suddenly life wasn’t so bad anymore.

“Anderson, ETA?”

“There’s three ships ahead of us in line.”

“Okay, sit tight until we’re up.”

“Not sure that’s the right call.” Lopez gestured with her tablet. She pressed something on it that made the radio blare from hidden speakers in the ship.

“More missiles incoming, more missiles incoming. Brace for impact!”

Anderson didn’t need to be told twice. He engaged the engine, and the ship lifted off the ground. Not a moment too soon.

The missiles struck the surface, rattling the underground chamber all around them and knocking a huge chunk of the ceiling down, crushing the two ships that had been lining up in front of them.

Anderson was not about to be caught by a rock. He blasted beneath the falling slab, leaving the other ships to be crushed as he twisted the controls and shifted their course from straight ahead to straight up.

“Orders coming in to get clear,” Lopez reported. “I sent an acknowledgment. I think we’ve fooled them for the moment.”

“Now we only have to get past that,” Good noted from the back seat, pointing at the largest spacecraft Dane had ever seen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

From their position near the surface, it looked like a second moon. But unlike the moon, which could be seen on the horizon, the ship seemed to grow larger as they raced toward it.

“They’re all targeting that thing,” Lopez pointed out. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t belong to the Augmented.”

“It’s got to be the people from Alpha Centauri. Carmen said they were having problems with them.”

“Carmen said they were having problems?” Lopez repeated with a touch of jealousy sprinkled on her incredulity.

Dane blinked. “I think she might have been underselling the concern. That thing is bigger than an asteroid.”

“I think it is an asteroid,” Good suggested.

“The ship says it’s five kilometers long and mostly made of iron,” Anderson told them from the cockpit.

“They must have hollowed one out and put a faster-than-light drive engine inside,” Lopez mused. “Clever, really. Asteroids are plentiful, sturdy, and big. We might want to consider something like that, you know, assuming we live longer than the next fifteen minutes.”

“Anderson, steer clear of it, and mark any fighters you see.”

“We’re still using the ship’s AI system, which is marking out friends from foes in green and red.”

“I’m not seeing any red on the screen. Not besides the big one.”

Dane spoke too soon because, at that moment, hundreds of streaking, rocket-propelled objects blasted off the colossal spacecraft. They were too small to be fighters, though.

“Are those all missiles?” Good involuntarily scrunched back into his chair.

“They don’t have the population base Earth does,” Dane reminded him. “They must have all their people inside that asteroid.”

“I think so, sir. I’m not seeing anything moving intelligently.”

“Their missiles don’t track?” Good wondered.

“I don’t think it would be worth anyone’s time to make a computer chip on a rocket that could outsmart other computer chips. Do you?” Dane replied.

“I guess not. Why bother when you can wreck a planet?” Alvarez looked aghast.

And rightly so.

Earth’s atmosphere was already choked with debris from the attack. The asteroid-turned-spaceship wasn’t stationary but moving across the sky. Its enormous size made it hard to comprehend, but it looked like it was going fast.

“They must have jumped in and are blasting the planet with everything they have. We need to be as far away as possible when they leave.”

“Working on it!” came Anderson’s reply.

Hundreds more missiles poured from the side of the asteroid. Some of the fighters were caught in the sheer volume of them, but most dodged past the dumb missiles. Though that wasn’t much better, considering the missiles were all heading toward their planet. Sure enough, several fighters pulled off to try to blast apart the missiles before they did any more damage on the surface.

From their elevation, Dane noticed multiple sites had already been hit. The destruction was so severe that he couldn’t tell if cities, military outposts, factories, or simple farmland had stood there before the blasts leveled the landscape. Apparently, the city they had launched from was relatively well-defended. It was half-destroyed, but that was better than everywhere else.

Already, it was becoming harder to see anything of the Earth’s surface. They were high up, well above the clouds and approaching the upper atmosphere.

“Sir, I’m going to make a break for it,” Anderson declared.

“Good plan, Anderson.”

Anderson steered them away from the chaos of the battle.

“Can you pick up any radio traffic from either side?” Dane asked Lopez.

“We’re still picking up a lot of radio chatter, but nothing’s about us.”

“Put it on.”

Lopez did, and the voices of fighters and commanders yelling at each other over the radio filled the tiny cockpit.

“I guess the implants can’t communicate over long distances,” Good observed.

“I guess not,” Dane agreed, listening in.

“Requesting reinforcements.”

“Request denied.”

“Fighter down.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Warship taking heavy fire! Attempting to pull back!”

“Negative! Do not retreat! Hold the line!”

“We’re taking too much. We can’t—”

Static filled the cabin for a moment before it was snuffed out.

“We’re down to nine warships.”

“Nine should be enough to push that thing back!”

“Nine ships like the Prometheus,” Dane muttered. That was better odds than when they arrived, but still, an overwhelming force compared to what they had back on Varuna. Assuming they actually made it back to Varuna.

“Head for deep space, Anderson. Send a tight beam to the Prometheus.”

“Is that our best plan, sir?”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“Well, it’s going to take them some time to pick up from the outer solar system. I think we need to hide,” Anderson suggested.

“How’s that going, Lopez?”

“It was easy enough to turn on stealth for enemies, but the ship has a ton of redundancies to communicate with base. I need a few minutes.”

“Make it happen,” Dane agreed. “A few minutes should be all right.”

His attention was on the battle. For the moment, at least, they were safe. The asteroid ship was still blasting missiles at the Augmented, and the Augmented were trying to blast it right back. None of their weaponry seemed to be making any difference to the asteroid, though it was pulling away from the planet now. They must have jumped in much closer than the Prometheus had. Dane wondered if the asteroid’s larger gravity made that possible or if the people from Alpha Centauri were more willing to take risks.

Dane couldn’t help but think of the colony at Alpha Centauri as allies. They didn’t want to be implanted with mind-altering nanites any more than Dane did. It was good to know the thousand colonists on Varuna weren’t quite as alone as Dane had feared. They were resourceful too. Using an asteroid like that was clever. They would have to prioritize making contact with the colonists of that system. Again, assuming they made it out of this one.

“How are we doing, Anderson?”

“Message sent. It’ll take time to get there, though.”

“Lopez?”

“I think I’ve got us mostly shut down. There’s actually another couple of these ECCM ships this far out, so I don’t think we look out of place.”

“Good.” Dane settled in to watch the battle. The Augmented were throwing everything they had at the asteroid ship, and they were starting to make a difference. A fighter crashed into the asteroid. It was tiny in comparison, like a beetle crashing into a buffalo. The impact must have been calculated because the explosion it set off was far larger than it should have been.

The asteroid ship didn’t slow at all, but Dane thought it did start to rotate on its axis, which it hadn’t been doing before. The Augmented also sensed the change in status. They swarmed in more tightly.

But the asteroid had done its damage.

“I’m getting massive energy readings off that thing!” Anderson announced.

Then it happened. A massive burst of energy radiated from the asteroid ship and sent the closest fighters tumbling, some of them into each other.

“Damn, they even bust heads when they make an exit,” Dane commented, impressed.

“We’re lucky we got intelligence on them,” Good agreed. “Adams will want to know all about that.”

“You all right back there, Alvarez?” Dane asked.

“I’m fine, yes.” Alvarez sounded better.

“Lopez?”

“I think I’ve done it. I’ve got us all blacked out. We should be fine.”

“Oh, thank God,” Dane uttered as the rest of the crew cheered her success.

Too bad it was short-lived.

“EE12, are you damaged?”

“Oh crap,” Lopez mumbled.

“What’s an EE12?” Good asked.

“That’s us,” Anderson confirmed.

“Tell them we’re all right,” Dane hissed.

“I’m trying to.”

“EE12, turn around immediately.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t turn around.”

“EE12, send personal confirmation codes, starting with pilot, then copilot.”

“Lopez?”

“I don’t have those codes!”

“That’s gonna be a problem,” Anderson pronounced.

They were far enough away that the ships appeared as dots, but now several of those dots rose from the battle debris and grew larger.

“Lopez?”

“They’re not buying anything I’m saying!”

“Anderson, burn like hell for the outer reaches!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Anderson punched it, and they were all thrown back against their seats. Well, Anderson, Good, and Dane were. Lopez was thrown into Dane’s lap while Alvarez got crammed deeper into the storage space where he was lying down.

“How are we looking, Anderson?”

“They’re gaining, sir. I think they threw an entire squadron of fighters on our tail. Way faster than this thing.”

“Dane, they’re trying to take control of the ship!” Lopez shouted frantically.

“Don’t let them!”

“Obviously!” Lopez’s fingers flew across her tablet.

“Shit. They’re shutting down my controls,” Anderson warned.

“I can fix this…give me a second… Okay! There we go. Shut it down!”

“What? Are you crazy?”

“I programmed in a lock to keep them out. You need to reset the system, though.”

“I don’t think that’s a good plan!” Anderson shouted.

“You can’t outrun them, right?” Good demanded.

“That won’t change if I turn off the engines!”

“But if they take control, we’re done. Do what Lopez says!” Dane ordered, hoping he was dealing with scared, panicking people and not Augmented trying to deceive them into a last-ditch effort to trap them.

“Yes, s-s-sir!” Anderson stammered, and the power in the craft died. The force of the engine faded to nothing. The consoles went dark. The hiss of life support stopped. For a moment, they were in a tin can, hurtling through space, with nothing to protect them from the icy embrace of the cold beyond a thin sheet of metal and their own body heat. It was times like this when Dane really felt alive. Almost dying was a real pick-me-up.

Then the ship rebooted. First came the hiss of life support, then the glow of the consoles, and finally, the engines. Anderson wasted absolutely no time in once more increasing their acceleration to as high a rate as physically possible.

“They’re hailing us,” Lopez warned.

“That means they can’t get into the ship, right?” Dane asked.

Lopez shrugged. “They weren’t hailing us before.”

“Put them on.”

“EE12, your ship’s not responding. Turn around, now.”

“Do I respond?”

“Tell them the controls are jammed and that you’re working on it.”

Anderson did exactly that.

“EE12, your voice signature doesn’t match what’s on record. We’re preparing to fire if you don’t turn around now.”

“Lopez, do you still have access to the ship’s systems?”

“Most of them, yes, but I don’t want to tap into the Earth’s version of the internet.”

“That’s fine. Be ready to scramble a missile if they shoot one.”

“EE12, you’ve been warned.”

The closest fighter to them increased its speed and launched a missile before falling back into formation with another twenty or so ships. The missile rocketed out from the spacecraft, no longer restrained by the speeds dictated by human passengers.

“Lopez?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Lopez!”

“I’m working on it!”

“Lopez!”

The missile exploded far enough away that they didn’t experience any sort of shockwave.

They all cheered.

“I don’t want to be a downer, but I think they might know a thing or two about how this ship works,” Lopez pointed out.

The fighters chasing them did change tactics. They increased their speed, closing the gap between them and their quarry. At the same time, they spread out. That would make it harder to target the missiles Dane knew they were preparing to launch.

“Anderson, take evasive maneuvers on my mark. Lopez, you’re going to need to fry a lot of computer chips, all right?”

“Are you sure about this?” Alvarez moaned from the back of the ship.

“We ain’t got no choice,” Good retorted.

“They’re firing!” Anderson shouted.

“Evasive maneuvers!”

“There’s too many!” Lopez’s hands flew across her tablet without much apparent effect on the twenty or so missiles closing the gap between them.

“Sir, they’re unlike anything I’ve ever dealt with. I can’t shake them!”

“Damn it.” Dane grunted. They had lost. They’d made it this far and no farther. “Lopez, send a data packet via tight beam to the Prometheus’ location.”

“But if they get our SOS, they won’t be there to receive it,” Good noted.

“If they get our SOS, they’ll see it was in vain,” Dane asserted grimly. “It was an honor to serve with all of you. I’m sorry it came to this.”

“Dane.” Lopez turned to face him.

“Yes?” he asked, his heart pounding. At least he wouldn’t die away from her. There were worse things. Didn’t seem right to start making out, though, especially considering he’d never told her how he felt. Not to mention with Good jammed up against him.

“I want you to know—”

Her tablet started flashing and blaring. A proximity alarm, no doubt.

“I have to tell you something, too,” Dane confessed. He didn’t need to be told they would be obliterated in four seconds or whatever. Might as well reveal his feelings.

“It’s the Prometheus!” Lopez blurted.

There was a flash of light, and suddenly the Prometheus was in front of them. A moment later, the burst of high-energy particles slammed into them, scrambling their instruments and sending them tumbling.

Bodies collided as the ship continued its path forward and simultaneously spun unmoored on its axis. Earth, the moon, the blackness of space, the approaching fighters, and the missiles were equally as affected by the particles from the Prometheus’ arrival.

“Looks like you all could use a ride!” Richmond’s voice came over their radio.

“We’d be happy to have one!” Dane responded.

“Little trouble getting there, though,” Anderson mentioned as he wrestled the controls.

“We got you. Try to stop your rotation as soon as you can. I don’t want a hole in my cargo bay.”

It was hard to tell where they were going, given their spin, but Dane thought he saw the Prometheus move into their path. A moment later, Anderson got their spin under control. He slowed them down before they crashed through the open bay doors of the stolen warship.

Now that they weren’t spinning, Dane could also see the enemy fighters hadn’t been disrupted as severely as their own ship. They were farther out and thus had kept their systems under control. Which meant they had each already launched another missile.

“Everyone, hold on!” Anderson shouted.

“Easier said than done!” Alvarez called from the compartment. Everyone else simply clenched their teeth and braced themselves.

The EE12 hit the deck of the Prometheus and skidded to a stop. Dane saw the missiles nearing the ship through the closing doors of the larger ship. They shut before impact, and Dane gritted his teeth. He felt himself grow heavier before the missiles struck.

They had made it to warp.

Richmond was there by the time they’d untangled themselves and emerged from the EE12.

There was a time when Dane might have been disappointed with an armed welcoming committee, but the scanners and weapons his crew held were a relief.

“Not to be rude, but we need to make damn sure none of you are Augmented,” Richmond stated.

“En serio? You think they launched cuarenta missiles at us to trick a ship they didn’t know was there?” Carlos fumed.

This was it.

The biologist had been acting suspiciously since they’d gotten separated. Was this why?

“Won’t take a second.” Richmond and his people aimed their scanners at Dane’s crew.

A moment later, Richmond grinned. “All clear.”

“Good.”

“Technically, you should scan us, too,” Richmond pointed out.

“We would, but we lost our scanner when we were captured,” Dane admitted.

Richmond smirked and tossed one to Dane. “I figured something was off. Capture, though? That’s not easy.”

“We’ll tell you all about it while we warp, but I gotta know, how did you rescue us? There’s no way you could have got our message.”

“When we saw that behemoth warp in, we left the rendezvous point,” Richmond noted as if that explained everything.

“He means we figured you’d use the opportunity to get clear,” one of Richmond’s crew clarified. Molly, Dane seemed to recall, though his heart was still pounding, and names failed to stick at the moment.

“You jumped, then?”

Molly nodded. “We warped in close to where they did, then went dark. The captain thought you might try to escape. When we saw the lone ship being chased by a swarm of Earth fighters, we figured it was you.”

“What now?” Richmond asked.

“You’re warping us back to Varuna?” Dane suggested.

“To a point out in the middle of space. I wasn’t about to take Augmented people back to your solar system.”

“What would you have done?” Alvarez asked.

Richmond shrugged. “Space is a big place.”

“We have intel that Adams needs as soon as possible. Take us home. I think we have an invasion to prep for.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“So that’s the long and short of it.” Dane finished explaining things to the leadership team assembled in the control room of Homebase on Varuna. Outside the windows, aquatic life swam languidly by. It was sort of hard to believe they had left a planet consumed by war and were now sipping tea on their own world. Wild how a universe could go from seeming large to small simply because a new way of getting around had been invented.

“Thoughts?” Adams asked. Dane knew she was out of her element. She was a competent administrator and fair governor, but a military leader, she was not.

“We now have proof that most of the planet is implanted,” Petrov put forth.

“I already told you that,” Richmond snapped.

“Saying is not the same as believing,” Lev countered. “Now that it is confirmed, we need to plan preeminent strike.” Dane wasn’t surprised at the Russian security officer’s recommendation, but after seeing what Alpha Centauri did to the Earth, he couldn’t advise such a thing.

“Alpha Centauri is already going that route, it seems.” Governor Adams saved Dane the grief of arguing with his friend. “We need to try a different tack. We’re not going to delude ourselves and think we can overwhelm them with force.”

“Not sure if we want to at the moment,” Dane added. Lev turned to appraise him, but with a professional gaze, at least. “I don’t know what they did to piss off Alpha Centauri, but for the moment, we might want to let them stay mad at that colony instead of this one.”

“Don’t know? You told me they tried to implant you. They obviously tried the same thing with them,” Richmond asserted.

“I mean, yes, you’re likely correct. We don’t know how far it went, though.”

“If you’re looking for reasons to leave them alone, you are in for a world of hurt,” Richmond grumbled.

“More like questions about what their next attempt at contact will be. Are they going to come in here trying to attack or send a spy to infiltrate?” Dane doubted the latter. Earth had to know they could detect an Augmented person. Spying would be difficult at best.

“I think that depends on how these nanites work,” Granger put in.

“What have you found on that?” Adams asked.

“The biotech interface is not really my area of expertise. I’m more of a big-ass machines kind of girl. Lopez and Alvarez have been looking at the captured injector since they got back, though. They’ve only given me preliminary results, but they think it might be possible to cure people who have been Augmented. It might also be possible to create a sort of vaccination, a counter-injection that prevents the implant from being built. The tech relies on overcoming the blood-brain barrier, so there could be something there.”

“That’s great!” Adams declared. “If we can find a way to cure people who have been infected and prevent them from doing it to others, there might be a real path forward.”

“I am not so sure,” Lev advised.

“What do you mean?” Dane asked.

“Well, if it is possible to cure and vaccinate, and it is not difficult, they may come for us sooner over later, as you say. We do not know if Alpha Centauri has ever gotten an injector. If that is big red flag for them, they will attack with full force.”

“They keep a close watch on those things. My people never got a hold of one,” Richmond noted.

Petrov rubbed his stubbly chin. “If they attack, we will be outnumbered hopelessly. They have more people, more ships, more everything.”

“That’s true, but they won’t be able to throw their full weight at us. We intercepted a transmission that said they were down to only nine of their warships.”

“Only nine? We only have one!” Lev cried.

“Nine warships is less than billions, though. Each one can hold five or six fighters. That’s something we can handle, and it’s only if they throw everything at us, which is unlikely in the short term.”

“Because of Alpha Centauri?” Adams asked.

Dane nodded. “They did some damage to this asteroid-sized behemoth vessel, but not as much as it did to them. I think the people from AC will consider it a success.”

“AC? Is that what we’re gonna go with?” Granger asked.

“AC?” Petrov inquired.

“Alpha Centauri. Sorry, military habit,” Dane remarked.

“I like Centaurians, personally,” Adams proposed.

“That takes more time to say than Alpha Centauri!” Petrov laughed.

“Centaurians and not centaurs?” Granger joked.

“Regardless of what we call them, they pissed off the Augmented. The question is, who will they attack first?”

“They will attack the stronger force first,” Lev estimated. “They will not leave themselves open, especially when you say they had blockade. They are scared.”

“But not of us,” Adams pointed out. “Why would they see us as a threat? We only have one ship capable of getting there, and it’s theirs.”

“So we should have time to prepare,” Lev professed.

“We’re the bigger threat,” Richmond claimed.

All eyes turned to him.

“Come again?” Granger asked. “I thought you saw that asteroid-sized ship wreak havoc out there.”

“They won’t care about that. They don’t care about lives like we do. It’s all a numbers game, and they got ten billion. But the injector…they’ll come for that. They’ll come for it as soon as they’re able to.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

His abs burned with lactic acid buildup. His lungs ached. His heart pounded as his feet hammered their way through the halls of the base. And yet his run wasn’t clearing his head like it was supposed to.

He didn’t want the Augmented to come and take away everything they had built, but part of him kept wondering if they would actually be taking anything away at all.

He returned to an Earth that was more verdant, peaceful, and egalitarian than he had ever seen. The Augmented had managed to cure most of humanity's worst ills. Crime was mostly gone. There was little starvation. Earth probably hadn’t been this peaceful before, ever. And this wasn’t simply Carmen talking, either. Richmond had since confirmed that.

“And all they had to do to achieve it was to give up a good chunk of what made them human.”

It was a bitter pill to swallow. Could humanity be improved? And if it could, was free will a fair trade for that?

Dane didn’t know. Those questions continued running through his mind as he reached his first kilometer, then his second, third, fourth, and fifth. When he got to his eighth kilometer, he found himself running around the engineering department. He decided to call his exercise finished and went to look for Haley.

“Hey, you, I thought I smelled something,” Haley remarked when he caught her eye.

“Sorry. I can shower. I was wondering if you wanted to go for a walk, though.”

“Oh, I’m only giving you a hard time. I like how you smell. Let me close my station, and I can take a break.”

“So, where to?” Dane asked when Haley joined him in the hallway a few minutes later.

“How about the nessie cave?” Haley suggested.

It was farther than Dane figured she would want to go, but he saw no reason to protest. They walked there in comfortable silence, occasionally chattering about nothing in particular while they listened to the hum of life in the colony.

“It all feels so different, doesn’t it?” Haley asked. “Before, it felt like we were alone, and now I know we are. I mean, I guess there are people on Alpha Centauri, but Earth is…well…”

“It feels like it’s gone,” Dane agreed. “Seeing it get hit by missiles like that, understanding what the Augmented did to it. I never thought I’d see it again, but that…”

“It was easier when we thought they were a hundred years away.”

“Agreed.”

They reached the passage to the nessie tunnel, then the gorgeous, crystal-filled cave that housed the grotto where the nessies surfaced.

“You still come down here a lot, then?” Dane asked when the nessies greeted her with trumpeting calls that didn’t let up until she fed them some squid-like snacks.

“I do. When I need some time to think or to get away from the day-to-day of the job. Not that I’ve done it since we’ve been back.”

“You like it down here, then, even though it smells like a turtle cage?”

“Wow. War hero George Dane had a pet turtle. I would never have guessed!”

“It was a classroom pet, but yeah. I like turtles.”

“I know the feeling. Yes, I do like it down here. Reminds me we’re on an alien planet and not to take that for granted, you know? Plus, the nessies know me now. They think I’m their mama or pack leader, and if you think I’m going to give up being an extra-flippered alien dinosaur mom, you’re crazy.”

“I would never ask you to give anything up.”

“Funny. I feel like I almost lost everything.”

“I know. I’m so sorry about that.”

“For what? It wasn’t your fault. It was that crazy woman.”

“I never should have let her get close to you. I should have killed her when I had the chance.”

“And miss out on all the intel you got? That wouldn’t have helped much.”

“It was seeing you like that…thinking I was about to lose you.” Dane wiped his eyes before tears could slip out. He thought he was in control!

“I’m okay, though.” Haley took his hands. “I knew the risks when I took the mission. I mean, brain implantation was definitely high on my concerns, but it didn’t happen, which is for the best, I guess.”

“You guess?” Dane prodded, enjoying the feeling of her hands. They were both soft and firm, with calluses from spending her working day working on things like spacecraft plating.

“Oh, sorry. Gallows humor. When you said everyone on the planet knew what everyone else was feeling, it almost sounded…I don’t know. Maybe it would be good to know what people are really feeling, you know?”

She looked into his eyes with expectation. At that moment, he wished he knew what she really wanted. Did she want him? Or did she need him to keep her safe? Dane didn’t know how in the hell he could face down guards with rifles or slide down the side of a skyscraper, yet talking to this beautiful woman tied him in knots.

“I’m glad you’re not implanted,” he blurted when he couldn’t bear the pressure of the moment any longer. “You would have changed.”

“For the better, or worse?”

“I think you’re pretty close to perfect, so any change would have been for the worse.”

Haley looked at him through hooded eyes and closed the final gap between them. Dane’s heart pounded like he was in a firefight. He closed his eyes. He could feel her, smell her. She was intoxicating.

Until he got splashed by a nessie.

“Agus, you naughty boy!” Haley laughed, though she tossed the nessie a fish. “Sorry about that. They’re always hungry.”

“It’s fine.” Dane wiped the water from his buzz-cut hair.

“It is weird to think about, though. Like, had they offered me the implant, I wonder if I would have taken it.”

“That would make a difference?” Dane asked.

“Spoken like a real ‘ends justify the means’ military dude.” Haley laughed, playfully batting his chest. “But yes, I think choice makes a huge difference. If they were coming to the colonies and offering the implant, I think that would change things.”

“But it makes people not human.”

Haley shrugged. “Yes, but also no. Look at the hibernation pods we slept in on our way here. The first time I mean. Those extended our lives by a century and a half. That’s not really human. Look at the invention of the internet or even books. Those allowed humans to share ideas in ways they never had before. I don’t think any of those things took away from humanity. I think they ultimately added to it.”

“This is different, though.”

“Of course, but mostly because they’re forcing it on people. When they had guns trained on my friends, on you, and were going to put that thing in me? All that proves is they know their system isn’t more sustainable than any other. If they can’t coexist with people who don’t make the same choices as them, they’re a threat to anyone who’s different.”

“People there were happy. Doesn’t that count for something?” Dane asked.

“Maybe? If they really are happy, I guess that’s better. Still, if they can only be happy when every single human is implanted, then it’s insane. It’s not realistic to think that. Homogenizing everyone under a single control is what caused pretty much every war ever.”

Dane sighed and felt something release within him. “So if they come here with an ambassador and no missiles…”

“You should hear them out. We both know that’s not going to happen, though.”

“Better to be prepared,” Dane agreed.

“Then we should probably get back to work.” Something in the way she said it made Dane think it was the opposite of what she really wanted, but he couldn’t be sure. He told himself that was a good thing, though he didn’t fully believe it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“There we go!” Dane crowed as Lieutenant Adam Hart made it through the third ring.

“Thank you, sir! The simulations have been helping.”

“That’s great to hear, Hart. Really. You think you can take us in for a landing, or do you want to call it a day?”

Dane was more than willing to let the kid end on a high note. He had improved so much that the last thing Dane wanted was a hit to his confidence. Especially considering how strange the docking bay in the Prometheus was.

“I think I can handle it, sir.” Hart turned them toward the Prometheus. They had taken to keeping half the fighters on that ship and the other half on the Zhemchug, though Dane was in charge of all the fighter pilots.

Richmond was still in control of the Prometheus, and Dane was confident that was the right call. He had saved their butts on Earth, and Dane didn’t think a lesser captain would have been able to. They had refilled their weapons caches on the ship but hadn’t added much else to it. While it had arrived without food, it was loaded down with plenty of artillery, thank goodness. Dane wondered how their first meeting would have gone if they’d noticed that sooner.

The Zhemchug had finally been put back together. While they hadn’t been able to do everything that they had wanted, they had put missile emplacements everywhere they could, along with a pair of rail guns and some anti-missile munitions. Simple things that would intercept the missiles they all knew were coming.

The Cosmos was so much older than the other two that they had elected to stash it elsewhere in the solar system and hope the enemy didn’t see it. Dane felt confident if they could repel the invaders, they’d be able to keep the Cosmos hidden. If they were overpowered, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

Without a third large ship, Dane had taken control of the fighters. With so few of them, his plan was to command them from within the fleet. For once, Adams hadn’t protested. They all understood the stakes.

“All right, sir. How was that?” Hart asked.

“So smooth I didn’t even notice. Great job, Hart. You should be proud.”

Hart beamed. Dane slapped him on the back and sent him on his way. Had he done enough? Had the kid improved enough to save his own life and the lives of everyone else? It was a lot to ask from a new recruit.

Dane left the ship in time to see a shuttle docking. Granger stepped out and started overseeing the unloading of some crates.

“Be careful with those! Calibrating those freaking computer chips took me forever.”

Dane sauntered over, never one to miss out on checking out a new pile of munitions. “These are the missiles, then?”

“Yes sir,” Granger replied tiredly. “We’ve ramped up production, but they’re fiddly. They’ll work, though.”

Dane thought back to when the asteroid ship had come through and how they had fought against the Augmented.

“Would it make things faster to forget the tracking system?”

Granger snorted. “Sure. It would also make the missiles less effective. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but space is a big place.”

“Yeah, I know it is. I’m also aware that our enemy knows more about AI than we do. I’m worried they’ll be able to spoof our ships.”

Granger sighed and nodded. “I haven’t had a ton of time to look at that ship you showed up in.”

“The EE12?” Dane had decided to keep the original name when he learned it stood for “eyes and ears.”

“Yeah, that one. You might be right. That thing had tech far beyond anything we have here. I don’t know if it has a way to spoof missiles, but that wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So maybe working on the guidance system isn’t the best plan,” Dane suggested.

“Maybe not. I mean, we’ve almost reached enough production to fill every emplacement we built. The Prometheus is fully loaded. Unless the battle is really prolonged, we might be done.”

Dane shook his head, thinking of how to turn the tide against the foe. “I know I said we’re going to mostly win this thing from the cockpit, and I still think that’s true, but we’re going to need more than that. If you left out the guidance system, would that make production faster?”

“Sure, yes. I mean, if I took the people working on the chips off that and put them on the missiles themselves, we could get more done for sure. But do you really think your pilots can hit with something like that? Rail guns are way faster, and the reports I’ve seen haven’t shown great accuracy there yet, either.”

Dane grimaced. That was certainly the truth. While his pilots were getting better at flying, that was only half the job. They had started target practice, but so far, it was mostly Dane, Kozlov, and Anderson showing the rest of the recruits how it was done. Not the most productive atmosphere. Not yet, anyway.

“I don’t want them for the fighters. I think we could use them to turn the battle in our favor, but we have to be super careful with the geography of the solar system.”

“So you want more missiles?” Granger asked.

“I do. Dumb ones are fine, though.”

“How many?”

“A lot,” Dane replied instinctively. “We still don’t know how many of their warships will show up. My guess is somewhere between three and six. I’d want at least…let’s say, twenty missiles per? More would be better, though.”

“So you want at least a hundred and twenty missiles?”

“I do.”

“How soon? Wait, let me guess. Yesterday?”

“Or sooner.”

Granger chuckled. “Sure, why not? But when this is all over, you are going to owe me the biggest plate of cookies.”

“That’s fine with me. I happen to have my grandma’s recipe.”

“Will there be anything else?”

“Actually, yes.” Dane grabbed his tablet and sketched out his idea. “Now, I’m going to need you to keep this quiet, all right? Adams, Petrov, and Kozlov can know, obviously, but no one else. The last thing I want is for my pilots to think we have some ace up our sleeve.”

“Don’t talk about the secret military tactics. Got it!” Granger replied.

“I knew I could count on you.”

“How’s Lopez, by the way?” Granger asked.

“Huh? I mean, she’s fine. I think. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you answered my question.”

“I what?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll work on those missiles. You’re not super committed to that sketch, right? I think I see what you’re going for. They’ll need to be dark?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Great, yeah. I’ll work on a few prototypes. Should have something for you on that front within a day. It’ll take more time to get the missiles up.”

“Sure. Makes sense.”

“All right, then. Guess I’m headed back down.”

“Great. See you then.”

Granger left Dane wondering how it was he could understand space battles better than women. He supposed if the first went well, he’d have more time to figure out the second.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The next three days passed in a blur. Every hour a flotilla of warships didn’t show up in the solar system of Teegarden’s star was a tiny victory that gave the colonists more time to prepare for an invasion, but Dane got no relief from any of these micro-delays. The tension in the colony continued to rise as time passed without attack. People worked at breakneck speeds to fortify the entrances and exits, harvest and store food, practice with firearms, train with nessies, fly fighters, and get enough sleep to be perpetually ready.

It was exhausting, and everyone knew there was a real possibility it would all be for nothing. If the Augmented showed up with nine warships, or if God forbid they’d completed more ships on the surface, they didn’t stand a chance.

At least the missiles were coming along nicely. Granger had finally given in, even embraced Dane’s instruction to leave out the guidance computers. Dane hoped he wasn’t making a mistake, but he supposed they would find out soon enough. They had guided missiles on both the Prometheus and the Zhemchug, as well as on the fighters. If those didn’t work, at least they’d have a hundred missiles to use when Dane deemed it wise. It was a lot of pressure, but that was the job these days.

Though Dane did wish the pressure wasn’t all on his plan. Unfortunately, no one else had had any major breakthroughs. The implant technology was still a mystery. Carlos and Haley were increasingly convinced they could find some way to block the implants or undo them, but they didn’t have an actual solution yet.

“We’re pretty sure we know how it works, but we’re still not sure about how it assembles itself. Our best short-term solution is to focus on stopping any broadcasts. The implants need a signal, which isn’t present in our solar system.”

“Not yet, anyway.” Dane had no doubt that when the Augmented arrived, they would be broadcasting. Part of stopping them would mean figuring out if they communicated with the implants via their warships or if they had specific ships or satellites to handle that part of the invasion. “You haven’t found a way to block it?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Carlos admitted. “I have tried to diagram what I found during those autopsies as best as I could, but it’s not the same as having the actual data.” He gestured at schematics Dane had thought looked impressive but were apparently sketches made from memory.

When the Augmented had captured them, all their tablets had been confiscated, so they didn’t have any of the images they’d recorded. It wasn’t a big deal for their defensive plans. Dane had tallied what they’d seen in his mind. However, the data from the autopsy was a real loss.

Granger hadn’t made any progress on the warp drive, either. That would have been a game changer, as it would have allowed them to contact Alpha Centauri for help, but as it was, Dane didn’t dare risk warping to that solar system with the Prometheus. If he were them, he wouldn’t trust an Augmented warship showing up, no matter what the captain claimed. They needed to build a warp drive and put it on one of their older ships. That might at least make the Centaurians curious enough not to immediately blast them to pieces.

Plus, there was the time delay of warping there and back. While traveling faster than light was obviously an unimaginable boon, it was still not instantaneous. Every hour the Prometheus was away was an hour the Augmented might show up in an undefended solar system. Despite a well-organized fighting force of potential allies existing a few solar systems over, Dane couldn’t justify the risk of trying to ask them for help.

Instead, he ran drills in their fighters. They had finished all six of the new class and had enough pilots to get them all in space at once. His pilots had gotten decent enough at steering their craft that Dane had moved on to team exercises. It was going…all right. They could fly in formation, but splitting up, watching each other’s backs, and successfully regrouping was not a foregone conclusion.

They had taken to working in two groups of four, with the last Russian fighter from the Zhemchug and the EE12 serving as a ‘specialty’ craft for both wings. Dane wasn’t too confident the EE12 would be of much use against the Augmented. It was their tech, after all. Yet if it could provide some cover for one particular part of Dane’s plan, he’d call it a victory.

Currently, he was in the EE12 doing ”recon work” while the rest of his team provided cover. In the real battle, he doubted they would have enough time for recon, but the practice of defending a ship would come in useful. If any craft was damaged but not destroyed, they’d need to recover it.

While fighters raced all around him, tagging each other with lasers that were supposed to replicate the firing speed of a railgun, he scanned their solar system. He could see the Zhemchug with his bare eyes. It was in orbit around the planet and brilliantly catching the sun. The plan was for it to go unused. If the Augmented got close enough for the Zhemchug to fire on them, it would mean their perimeter had been compromised. Of course, it not being the plan didn’t mean they weren’t preparing for that eventuality. The Zhemchug would shoot down any missiles or rocks the Augmented tried to hurl at Varuna.

The Cosmos was tucked in at a Lagrange point between the planet and the star it orbited. It was in a stable position there and able to maintain the location without using any power. That meant it would be almost impossible for the Augmented to detect the ship, hopefully. Adams wanted to use it as a potential escape, but they all understood the futility of this. It would take hours to shuttle everyone to the spacecraft and back.

Worse, it had no warp drive, so it wasn’t as if it could actually flee. The Augmented would be able to catch that ship wherever it was. Stashing it at the Lagrange point was more about long-term planning than the battle at hand. Plus, removing one of their three ships from the battlefield would focus the enemy on the remaining two. If they hesitated because they were afraid of the third, well, that would be just dandy. Though Dane wasn’t holding his breath for that one.

The Prometheus was further out, between Varuna and the point where the Augmented scout ship had arrived. There was no guarantee they would arrive in the same place, but Richmond had said it was more likely than anywhere else. Navigating through warp was difficult. If there was a safe place to drop out of it, they would use it.

Nothing yet, though, Dane noted as he pointed the EE12 toward the quiet of space.

Then he got tagged with a laser.

“All right!” Lieutenant Hart shouted over the radio. “I got through!”

Dane grinned. The kid really had gotten a lot better. Still not as good as Anderson, but on his way.

“Great job, everybody,” Dane praised over the comms. “Now, back to the Prometheus and showers.”

They docked and were on their way to the showers when alarms started blaring.

“Richmond, what is it?” Dane asked over the radio,

“We got a ship dropping in at the location. Readings are still too crazy to tell, but we’re going to assume it’s them. The fight is on.”

“Roger that.”

Really, they had hours of painstaking prep to do as the Prometheus moved them closer to the enemy ships. The Augmented had jumped in pretty far out.

Dane addressed his pilots. “Crew are already on the fighters, making sure we’re fueled up. Each of you needs to get some food and a nap in. As soon as we’re in position, it’s go-time.”

All his pilots responded in the affirmative.

“Remember the plan. The colony is exceptionally vulnerable to orbital bombardment since we’re still in one place. A couple of missiles or kinetic strikes could undo everything we’ve been working for. Let’s not let them get close enough to do that.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilots chorused. They were getting good at answering in unison.

Dane checked on the maintenance crew and found they were almost done checking the ships and refueling them. They would have more time, but it was good to see they were so efficient at their job.

“We got intel yet on how many ships they brought?” Dane asked Richmond.

“Hard to tell. The energy is still dissipating. More than one, I’d say.”

“Great. Let me know as soon as we have a count.”

“Yes, sir! Oh fu—” Richmond cut out as static overwhelmed the radio.

“What in the hell was that?” Anderson asked.

And then the entire Prometheus shook as an energy wave blasted into the ship.

“Battle stations! Everyone get to their ships! They jumped closer!” Dane shouted. He was only guessing, but it seemed a logical thing to do.

His men hadn’t left yet and rushed to their fighters. Dane clambered onto one of the Defender ships and got in the cockpit. He watched the fuel gauge click to full, then heard the sound of a tech removing the fuel pump.

“You’re good to go, sir!”

Dane didn’t need to be told twice. He fired up his ship and shot out into space.

He got visuals on the enemy force before Richmond’s instruments could. Too bad the radios were all scrambled, so he couldn’t tell anyone what he was looking at.

Earth had sent three of their warships. Dane’s side only had one, but he still deemed this a good thing. If they had brought five, he didn’t think his force could possibly win. He had been hoping for two, as three seemed like a near-impossibility, but hey. He would take what he could get!

“Orders, sir?” It was Anderson. He had gotten into his ship and fell into formation with Dane’s wing.

“We stay close to the Prometheus and approach. They didn’t jump behind us, which is good. We’ll need to keep scanning for missiles. We have to assume those warships are well-armed.”

“I’m not so sure about that, sir,” Anderson replied.

“What do you mean by that?”

By then, the answer was obvious. Each of the three warships had opened a bay door, allowing fighters to disgorge from the larger vessel like swarms of angry bees.

“I see enemy fighters.” It was Hart, joining the battle, thank goodness.

They only needed their other three pilots to join them. Stark, a Russian woman who went by the moniker Babushka, and another new recruit named Mitch.

“Count ‘em and tag ‘em, Hart, but stay in formation.”

“Yes, sir.” Red circles started to appear on Dane’s heads-up display.

A minute later, both sides were ready for battle. Dane had six Defenders, a practically obsolete Russian stealth fighter, the EE12, and a stolen warship. The Augmented had three warships and eighteen angry fighters that rushed in like wasps. They didn’t fly in formation at all. Instead, they kept zooming out past the warships and doubling back in crazy loops and swirls that somehow avoided crashing into their allies. Dane knew it was the implants and tracking software they all shared, but damned if it wasn’t impressive!

That was the point, though. The Augmented had sent three warships when they knew Dane had one. They had filled each warship with as many fighters as they could hold and were now showing the people of this planet what they were capable of. They were trying to intimidate them, and it might have worked.

Dane had a few tricks up his sleeve, though. This battle would be hard-fought, but his pilots had gotten better. Richmond was skilled, and Lev was waiting on the Zhemchug if everything went bad.

They could win this.

Or at least survive.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“EE12, hit them with a tight beam and radio what I say to the ship in the middle.” That warship was slightly behind the other two, which had to mean it was the command vessel. The purpose of using the EE12 was twofold. One, if the enemy would try to take control of it, Dane wanted to know as soon as possible. Two, he wanted the enemy to know they weren’t cavemen. They might not have computers in their brains, but they were more than capable of rewiring a spaceship. Even a fancy one.

“Roger, sir. Transmitting now,” replied the pilot of the EE12, an engineer named Gene whom Lopez had recommended. She wasn’t great at maneuvers, but she seemed to get the EE12’s communication system like she’d been born in it, which was the primary purpose of the ship.

“Unidentified vessels. This is George Dane, Chief of Security of Varuna. Identify yourselves and state your purpose for being in our space.”

“Hello, Chief George. This is Carmen. So nice to hear from you again!”

Dane wasn’t expecting that. If Carmen thought he would have any qualms about blowing her to smithereens after what she tried to do to Haley, she was less human than he’d realized.

“You have no right to be here. I am asking you to leave. The ADN Charter grants us exclusive rights to this planet. We are authorized to use force if necessary.”

“We don’t recognize ADN laws. They were a hostile regime that based their control of the planet on their successful use of force.”

How is that any different from you bastards? Dane wanted to say but managed to hold his tongue. Instead, he said what Adams had ordered him to. “Even if the ADN is no longer a legal entity, there is precedence to accept the treaties we made with them.”

“We don’t recognize their rules.”

“But we do. If you attempt to land, we will stop you.”

“And if we stay out here in the solar system? What will you do then?”

“You are permitted to stay outside the orbit of Varuna, though you cannot approach nor send any vessels, satellites, or objects toward our planet. Do you accept these terms?”

Carmen laughed in reply. She had regained that bubbly, effervescent quality. Dane could practically see her sitting on the bridge of the warship, wearing white and preparing to take the minds of everyone in this entire system.

“We would accept, but we can’t. We have to rescue the colonists.”

“No one is in need of rescuing!”

“You are keeping a thousand people from joining the Augmented. You have denied them their freedom, and we are here to liberate them.”

“None of those people asked you for help!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Earth is twelve light years away! You didn’t receive a distress call, and if you do, it won’t be for a goddamn decade.”

“Only because you haven’t allowed your captive population to access your comms system. You told us everyone on this world worked constantly. Like slaves. You obviously don’t allow them the freedom our people enjoy. We are here to help them.”

“You are here to stick your goddamn nanites in everyone you can, and it’s not going to happen.”

“Which is what they want.”

“That’s bullcrap.”

“Prove it to us. Put them on your comms. If every one of your thousand says they do not wish to experience societal transcendence, we’ll leave.”

“Fine,” Dane told her. “Hold your position, and we’ll make that happen.”

Carmen didn’t reply. And the three warships and the swarm of fighters buzzing around them kept coming.

Dane didn’t actually think he would get out of this without a fight, but it had been worth a shot. He was confident his people would say no to having their brain operated on, but Carmen could have called him on it and let his people speak. Instead, she had chosen violence.

He welcomed the fight.

“Keep moving forward, but don’t burn hard,” Dane ordered his people over a private channel. “Be ready for missiles. They’ll launch them as soon as we’re in range.”

A few minutes later, the moment arrived. The three Augmented warships each opened three of their odd, protruding limbs and fired pairs of missiles.

“Sir?” Richmond asked. Their missiles were as capable at this range as the enemies’ were.

“Hold,” Dane ordered as the missiles burned across open space, growing closer, increasing in speed. Each missile could obliterate a fighter. The Prometheus probably wouldn’t fare much better. One missile in the wrong place could disable the craft, and a few could blow it to slag.

Carmen’s response to this lack of missiles was to increase the speed of her trio of warships and swarm of fighters. Dane knew the move well. Fire missiles, then wait to see if your enemy returned a volley or if they were too bereft of resources to risk missiles at this distance. Every warship had anti-missile defenses, from the rock hoppers Dane had commanded more than a hundred and fifty years ago to the Prometheus and its Augmented controlled sisters. Launching missiles from range hadn’t taken a ship out in a long time. But if a force could use those missiles as a sort of explosive, moving wall, they could get into position while the warship tried to defend itself.

Carmen and her overwhelming force rocketed toward them.

“Sir?” Richmond asked.

“Wait for it.”

“Sir?” Hart shouted over the comms.

“Wait for it,” Dane repeated as the missiles streaked closer. He only needed another fifteen kilometers…

“Now!”

All the enemy missiles had been fired from the three large warships. That had to mean the smaller fighters didn’t have any equipped. Otherwise, they would have launched them, too, in an attempt to make more angles to defend against.

Dane didn’t have that problem.

When he gave the order, all six of their Defenders fired a pair of missiles. The Prometheus fired six of its own ship-busters at the same moment. They rocketed out from behind Dane to join the missiles he and his fighters had launched.

The missiles raced out so much faster than a ship carrying a human could. Two of them actually collided. Other than that, they passed by each other in the hugeness of space and made for their targets.

“Evasive maneuvers! Engage those missiles! Don’t let any of those through to the Prometheus!” Dane ordered.

His fighters broke formation to fire at the approaching missiles. They were still far enough away that it was more luck than skill to hit one, but they had plenty of ammunition, so they might as well play their luck.

Carmen’s forces also prepared themselves against the approaching missiles. The fighters swooped in front of the warships and opened fire, creating a barrage of bullets the missiles couldn’t penetrate. They exploded in flashes of light and vanished.

“Was that your big move, Georgie?”

Dane didn’t respond. He and his fighters got out of the missiles’ paths, then tried to get a bead on them to blow them up before they hit the Prometheus. The ship should be able to defend itself, but it would only take one gun malfunctioning to ruin everything.

Carmen laughed at his non-reply, then launched a second volley of missiles.

That was what Dane had been waiting for.

“Now!”

Gene had been waiting with her engines off in the EE12. She had launched after the rest of them, then burned hard while still behind the Prometheus so the enemy wouldn’t see her drive. Since then, she’d been drifting up, far above the battle, where she would have an unobstructed vantage point. Better yet, no ships or debris would block her radio comms.

She activated the ace Dane had stashed right in front of the enemy’s face.

A half-sphere of missiles ignited their engines at the same moment and burned for the three Augmented warships. There were eighty-six of them in total. All aimed at the warships that had unknowingly moved exactly where Dane had wanted them, thanks to their arrogance in thinking they had already overwhelmed the tiny colony.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The enemy fighters scrambled to get into position. They were all bunched up in front of the warships, though, thanks to Dane’s first volley of missiles. Shooting at oncoming missiles was hard. Shooting at one tangential to its path of motion was pretty much impossible.

Carmen had to know this because the three warships all opened their bays and launched shuttles that had to be full of ground troops.

If Dane had eighty-six smart missiles, he would’ve told them to all seek these new targets. If a single one of those shuttles reached the surface of Varuna, the entire space battle would be for nothing. They couldn’t risk a single person being injected, or the entire colony could be in peril.

They still weren’t sure how the broadcast devices for the Augmented worked, but the assumption was the warships would have launched multiple satellites to hide in the solar system as soon as they arrived, both to facilitate their current assault and for future plans. Finding those would be difficult and time-consuming. Which meant Dane needed to destroy these shuttles.

First, he had to see how successful his trap had been.

“They’re attempting to jam the missiles,” Gene reported from the EE12.

It wasn’t working, obviously.

The missiles continued forward from the half-sphere they had been positioned in, rapidly closing in on the three warships in the center. They could go back the way they came, of course, but that was easier said than done. They had accelerated into the battle, both to reach the Prometheus sooner and to show how confident they were. They couldn’t go back in the other direction. Not without stopping.

Though the center ship was trying to.

The other two were not.

To Dane’s shock, the outer ships didn’t even attempt to defend themselves.

They activated their defenses, but they didn’t target the missiles coming for them. Instead, they targeted the missiles going for the fleeing ship. It made Dane’s stomach turn to know there were people on those ships who weren’t trying to save themselves, their captain, or their ships. Instead, they focused all their firepower toward the missiles on course to hit the flagship.

Dane couldn’t sit back and watch any longer. The Augmented missiles were nearly upon them.

“Steer clear of the Prometheus’ firing solutions!” he ordered. The warship was already firing sprays of bullets from its anti-missile defenses, making micro-adjustments as it went.

Missiles started to explode as the ship’s defenses did their job.

Dane took out another pair himself.

He heard Anderson whoop over the comms as he brought one down.

The first volley ended. They didn’t have time to breathe, though, as the second volley was already approaching.

The Prometheus fired on these as well, but somehow it was missing far more than it had before. It was hard to tell in the chaos, but Dane thought he saw the missiles swerving and rotating as they approached.

“The missiles learned the firing pattern of the Prometheus! All fighters, defend!”

Dane and his fighters scrambled to take out the missiles. It was a damn hard thing to do. The things were fast as anything, and once they zipped past the fighters, that would be it.

Fortunately, Gene wasn’t done in the EE12. She did something, and six of the approaching missiles swerved off.

“Well done!” Dane complimented…until he realized the missiles were coming at her.

“Gene, what in the hell?” he shouted as she flew off, trying to avoid the missiles. Two of them crashed into each other, but that left another four streaking toward her.

“The Augmented overrode everything I did, but they didn’t stop me from making the missiles target myse—”

One of the missiles struck the EE12, and Gene was no more.

“Damn it!” Dane cursed as he tried to focus on the missiles still heading for the Prometheus.

They had taken them all out except for one that was spiraling between the Prometheus’ bullets.

“We can’t get a solution!” Richmond shouted.

“I got you! Just like the simulations!” Anderson called back.

A blur streaked in front of the Prometheus as Anderson cut across in front of the missile. He continuously fired as he flew, but his gun would only face forward in his path of motion. The damn kid didn’t want to risk the missile getting through. So when it did finally explode from one of his bullets, he was too damn close.

Dane watched as the force of the explosion ripped the Defender in half, disgorging its heroic pilot to the cold of space.

Somehow, seeing Anderson sacrifice himself only made Dane angrier that the other two warships were doing the same thing. The kid had done something heroic and thought about the world beyond himself. Did the captains of those other two warships get to make those decisions? Or was their fate decided for them by Carmen or some unseen computer program that deemed them expendable? Maybe it was hypocritical, but Dane thought it was messed up that Anderson had to do that. He was a better pilot than anyone else. Dane would mourn him.

But first, he had a battle to win.

The sphere of missiles was beginning to make contact with the warships. Their embankments took out many of the missiles, and their fighters took out many more. There were so many, though. Dane had seen what the behemoth asteroid-buster had done to the enemy warships. He’d made sure to come packing.

So despite the enemy warship defenses and fighters taking out sixty-one of Dane’s dumb missiles, it still left twenty-five that got through. Twenty-five missiles for two ships. A couple of fighters got in the way of some, but in the end, nine missiles slammed into each of the enemy warships.

One would have been enough to disable a single vessel. Three should have destroyed it. Nine cracked them open like eggs struck with a frying pan. When the explosions finally stopped ripping through the ships, there was nothing left but slag. Nothing but broken pieces and bodies.

Except for the third warship.

It was entirely unharmed. Not a single missile had struck it.

Which meant while they had been hopelessly outnumbered before, Dane had almost evened the odds.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

It would have been too much to hope that the last remaining warship would continue its retreat. In reality, the ship hadn’t fully come to a stop. It simply slowed down while the other two ships increased their speed to get in between it and the missiles, but it hadn’t stopped.

This left the enemy warship and the Prometheus hurtling toward each other at fantastic speeds.

The Prometheus was too valuable to the colony to risk it in a head-on collision with the enemy. While it would undoubtedly destroy both ships, Dane couldn’t allow that to happen. If they lost the Prometheus, they’d be stuck in this solar system.

Funny how that wasn’t a concern a month ago, but now the fast travel this ship represented was of the utmost importance. If they had already made contact with the people of Alpha Centauri, it might not be such a big deal, but they hadn’t. They had to avoid the collision, even if it would have ended the Augmented’s place in this solar system.

Except it wouldn’t have. There were still three shuttles trailing behind the warship, plus at least ten fighters. Maybe more. Dane wouldn’t make the call until he knew for sure. Which meant he had a dog fight in front of him.

He grinned.

He was good at dog fights.

The two warships veered just enough to avoid crashing into each other, then passed by, blasting each other with everything they had left. Missiles were useless with the amount of railgun fire flying back and forth. Dane couldn’t see between the two ships. No one could. It was too intense with gunfire. He made out other fighters coming his way, though.

“Not gonna happen,” Dane snarled. Then the real fight began.

“Sir, they’re everywhere!” Hart shouted over the radio.

“That’s what they want you to think, Hart. Fall in by me. Stark, mind his wing. Babushka—”

“I will form trio with Mitch and Comrade.”

“Sounds good. If anyone has a shot at those shuttles, take it,” Dane insisted.

He kicked his fighter into high speed and locked his sights on one of the shuttles. An Augmented fighter came at him, and he barrel-rolled, dodging their fire as he set them up to be taken out by the two pilots on his wing. Hart wasn’t much help, but Stark blew the fighter to nothing.

Dane passed right through where it had been a moment ago.

He had a shuttle in his sights, and he would be damned if it actually landed on the planet. “Firing a missile.”

The missile dropped off and rocketed forward, closing the distance between itself and the shuttle.

Until an enemy fighter blasted it to bits.

Not what Dane was planning, but at the same time, he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. His guns fired without him having to think about it, and another fighter was reduced to scrap.

“We are under heavy fire!” Babushka called. “Requesting backup!”

“I’m hit!” Mitch shouted. “My weapons are out, and they’re closing in!”

“Eject, Mitch. That’s an order.”

“I can’t. I can’t get out! These bastards can’t have my planet, though!”

Mitch slammed his Defender into the side of the enemy warship. It smashed a hole in the hull of the massive ship but didn’t slow it down.

Not until the missiles activated, anyway.

An explosion ripped from somewhere inside the warship, and one of its protruding limbs fell away.

Unfortunately, the ship was still heading for Varuna. Perhaps worse, the kamikaze attack had drawn the rest of the fighters’ attention. They all buzzed back, overwhelming Babushka and her comrade in the derelict Russian fighter.

“Come on!” Dane shouted and changed course to attack the fighters.

He missed the first when it dodged, but Stark was ready to mop up. The enemy ship flew right into a line of bullets.

However, it was too late for the Russian fighter. It wasn’t fast enough or as maneuverable as the newer ships. They overpowered it, and Dane’s force was down to three.

Meanwhile, the enemy had six fighters, plus three shuttles and a wounded warship that was still making its way toward Varuna.

“Richmond, how close are you?”

“We took heavy fire in that exchange, but I’m launching all the missiles we can.”

A moment later, a paltry handful of missiles raced past Dane. If that was all Richmond was firing, that was all he had. The enemy fighters saw them coming, though. They blasted two of them, then a fighter got in the way of the third. That left five enemy fighters.

The enemy was getting damn close to the planet.

“Target those shuttles!” Dane shouted. Easier said than done. They were sticking close to the maimed warship, which still had some defenses, more than enough to keep Dane’s fighters at bay.

It also kept their attention on Dane and his fighters instead of the Zhemchug, which had been watching the approaching warship with every sensor it had.

The Zhemchug launched a dozen missiles and caught the warship unprepared. They managed to get their defenses pointing the right way in time to take out most of the missiles, but most was not all. Two of them slammed into the warship, sending it into a spin. It was venting atmosphere, and its thrusters weren’t firing. It was dead in space. No longer a threat. Something to be captured and retrofitted to their needs, if they could somehow make this work.

The enemy still hadn’t stopped their attack.

“The shuttles! We need to stop the shuttles!” Dane screamed for what felt like the hundredth time.

Dane and his three surviving fighters fired everything they had at the shuttles, but the enemy fighters saw them coming. They got in the way and fired back, forcing them to dodge and adjust, so they couldn’t get a clear firing solution. Hart—bless his heart—got the cleanest shot, but before he could hit, one of the enemy fighters intercepted his bullets and ended itself in a fiery crash.

Then the shuttles were entering the atmosphere, and Dane and his team had to compensate for firing through atmosphere. Something they had yet to practice with any success.

Even worse, the four enemy fighters were changing tactics. Instead of following the fighters down, they were making for the Zhemchug. Dane knew exactly how many missiles had been on that ship and he knew Lev hadn’t left anything in reserve.

“Richmond, how close are you to being able to protect the Zhemchug?”

“Too far!” was the unfortunate reply.

Dane ran options through his head. Of his three fighters, Hart wasn’t much good at landing. Hell, the kid hadn’t even practiced reentering the atmosphere. If Dane had Stark come down with him to help finish off the fighters, it would be a death sentence for Hart and his ship. They couldn’t afford that. Plus, leaving the Zhemchug undefended wasn’t great. It wouldn’t take much to send it crashing through the atmosphere.

Dane had his solution.

“Take out those fighters. Play it defensive. Every second they’re not attacking the Zhemchug is a victory. You got this.”

“Aye-aye, sir. We’ll finish up,” Stark replied. “You’re going down?”

“Those shuttles were never cleared for landing.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Dane dropped through the atmosphere, cursing as he cut his speed to prevent being incinerated from the friction. The Defender was well-made. It hardly rattled as it dropped into the air of the world. There was a storm blowing in, so Dane couldn’t see the platform below. He knew where it was thanks to a thousand practice runs, plus the mapping software superimposed on his screen.

Unfortunately, it seemed the shuttles also had mapped where the platform was. They appeared to be making a beeline for it before they dropped into the clouds and vanished from Dane’s view.

“Come on, Varuna. You could lend me a hand instead of them,” Dane muttered as he dropped into the clouds and nearly collided with what should not have been there.

A large, inflatable sphere made of something like aluminum foil floated in his path. If he had been anyone else, he probably would have crashed into it, but reflexes born from a thousand missions kicked in. He fired at the object.

It exploded as he dodged out of the collision course he’d been on.

“Floating mines,” Dane grumbled as he spotted another one and made sure to avoid it. Now he had the difficult task of following three enemy shuttles through a thunderstorm while they dropped explosives in his path. On the one hand, the explosives were useful. He could use them to follow where the shuttles were going. But mostly, they were a dangerous nuisance. After all, he knew where the shuttles were going.

There was a tiny chance they would try to land somewhere besides the base, but Dane deemed it unlikely. Instead of following them closely and shooting the brain-implanted bastards out of the air, Dane had to weave and dodge to take out as many of the explosives as he could.

“If you finish up those fighters, careful on reentry. The Augmented dropped explosives in this storm,” Dane told his remaining fighters.

He only got a reply from Stark, who simply screamed, “Arrrrrgh!” over the sound of his gun firing repeatedly.

Dane broke through the bottom layer of clouds and into the storm itself. Winds rocked his ship, and rain nearly blinded him. He could barely see the platform in the murk and the crash of the waves. When he did finally see it, he was nearly on top of it, too close to actually land.

Not too close to fire, though. He aimed at one of the shuttles and blasted it to pieces. His gut clenched when no people tried to flee or escape. They’d already gotten out, then. Considering there was no one on the platform, they must have made it down. But how? Adams had locked down the elevator.

Static blared over his radio. “—in, Dane! Come in!”

“This is Dane!”

“Adams! This is… we… breached. They’ve overpowered our comms.”

Dane fiddled with the radio until she came in more clearly.

“I’m on my way.”

“Dane, if Petrov and I are taken, the colony must go on!”

“Of course it should, but you’ll hold on. I’ll be there soon!”

“No, Dane, you’re not listening!” Gunfire cracked over the radio. “You’ll need to take command if they inject us. They’ve already taken control of the comms system and multiple airlocks. You need to drive them out!”

“You’re the governor, not me!”

“And I’m ordering you to take control and defend this place with your life!”

“I’ll do my best, but it won’t come to that.”

Dane looped back around and blasted another shuttle. Again, no bodies spilled from the wreckage. The Augmented were already in the base! That meant Dane couldn’t use the elevator. They’d either lock it or trap him halfway down.

Fortunately, his Defender was made to work underwater. If the bastards thought they could keep George Dane on the surface, they had another thing coming.

Dane dove underwater and headed for Homebase. He made it about a hundred meters before an underwater railgun that had been mounted to stop the Big Damn Fish blasted a hole in his Defender and flooded the cockpit with water. Dane cursed as he hit the eject button and abandoned the ship. It sank to the seafloor. Fortunately, the rail gun wasn’t able to target something as small as Dane. Not with the storm above turning the sea into froth.

Dane surfaced, sputtering in the storm, and tried to figure out what to do. He would have to swim, but that would be a long damn swim. He couldn’t do it without a rebreather. He’d have to find one on the platform, assuming there were any left.

He started to swim, trying to control his breathing and his heartbeat as waves threatened to drown him, and the storm raged overhead. Panic rose in his chest. This was costing him precious time the colony did not have. People could be implanted already. With the ship’s computer systems compromised, they’d have trouble making it through this. He couldn’t give up, though. Not now. Not when he was so close, even if he was still too far to help.

Suddenly, Dane’s heart stopped as one of the terrors of Varuna rose its long neck from the sea. Its too-many, too-sharp teeth glistened in the rain as it trumpeted a call to the others that it was time to feed, and Dane was on the menu.

“Agus! That is not how we greet friends!” Lopez shouted and bopped the sea monster’s nose.

To his credit, Agus looked ashamed. He nuzzled Isla, and the other nessie wrapped her neck around his.

“I knew you’d make it down here!” Haley cried from the saddle on Isla’s back. The nessies really grew fast. The last time Dane had ridden Agus, he’d been a hell of a lot smaller.

“Haley!”

“Who were you expecting, a mermaid?”

“Come on. They already made it down to the base. They’ve split our people into two groups, and we’re trying to hold them…but it’s not going well.”

“The governor told me they took control of the computers. She said… She said I’m in charge.”

Haley laughed and tossed him a rebreather. “Glad you got the message. She’s already announced that over the comms down here. You would have heard too if these bastards weren’t in the comm center.”

“They didn’t jack into the system or whatever?”

“Did you really think one of them would be able to flip open a finger and interface with our network?”

“Adams said they took control!”

“This place was built by Russians like a hundred years ago. Besides, they have nanites in their brains. They’re not robots. They have control of the room at the base of the elevator. That’s where all our radios are. They’ve also taken control of some of the airlocks.”

“Then how are we going to get in?”

“You don’t remember the back way?” Haley smirked, then tugged her rebreather over her face and tapped Isla’s side. The nessie understood the touch as a command and dove underwater. Agus splashed his six flippers and turned his head on its long neck to look begrudgingly at Dane. He looked like a parent running late to work, watching their kid struggle with a seatbelt.

“I’m putting it on!” Dane fit the rebreather mask over his face. “Now, Agus. I know it’s been a while since I’ve come to feed you fish guts or whatever it is you like, but you should know I really don’t want you to bite me.”

Agus sort of bellowed and flipped his head. Dane thought that maybe he was being chided for not putting on the mask sooner. He didn’t know if that’s what the nessie actually wanted, but maybe it was because once he got the gear situated, the sea monster dove beneath the choppy surface and followed his sister.

Dane often felt that diving underwater on Varuna was a tranquil, grounding experience. The feel of water and the communities of marine life and people living and working together always made him feel comforted. Today was not one of those days.

The storm churned up the relatively shallow seas, so the great, tree-like strands of kelp analog were nearly horizontal. Entire colonies of zingers had been broken away and now crashed against each other. The few visible creatures darted around frantically, looking for shelter the storm had taken away.

The light wasn’t right, either. Rather than bright beams from Teegarden’s star filtering through the water and making the brightly colored organisms of the shallows glow, the thick clouds and churning surface made everything appear dull and muted.

There was also the wrecked ship at the bottom of the sea to remind Dane this wasn’t his world anymore. Not if the Augmented had their way, at least. His ship wasn’t the only piece of wreckage down here, either. Chunks of the shuttles were settling to the seabed or still being thrown about by the water. Every now and then, a piece of debris that somehow made it through the atmosphere splashed down. A twisted piece of scrap here. A blackened engine there. A first aid kit, a wheel, a vacuum-sealed MRE.

Haley led them through it all on the back of what Dane would always see as an alien dinosaur. She guided Isla with a touch on one shoulder or the other. They weren’t quite riding the nessies, but almost. They weren’t quite big enough to fully straddle, but with their legs around them and a hand on the saddle, the pair of nessies was able to pull them along quite easily.

Dane didn’t have to guide Agus at all. The nessie obviously understood they were doing something important, or important to Haley, anyway. He followed his sister unerringly, neither slowing nor chasing any of the few fishlike creatures that darted about.

“How many of them are there?” Dane asked over the comm built into his rebreather.

“A couple of dozen. They’re trying to get into the control room. They have the elevator, which is where we built most of our comms because we used the elevator itself as an antenna.”

“They haven’t taken the power station yet?”

“We’ve held them back thanks to some of the ‘failsafes’ Granger built, but that won’t last forever.”

“What are you doing out here?” Dane asked.

“We watched the battle from down here. Had a pretty good view thanks to the Zhemchug and the other satellites, so we knew when the shuttles were on their way down. I told Adams I should take the nessies out and look for you.”

“You couldn’t have known I would come down here!”

“I knew you’d find me.” Haley’s voice was a warm embrace in his ear.

They swam down and around Homebase. Dane saw people inside running around, barricading doors, comforting each other. Praying.

Then they circled Homebase and made for the caves where the nessies spent much of their time.

They surfaced. Dane removed his rebreather and found a gun pointed in his face.

The distant look in the eyes of the other soldier said every Augmented in the base knew exactly where Dane was.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Not a goddamned move, understand?” the Augmented soldier barked. “You so much as twitch, and I shoot.”

“My friend is going to surface, too. All right?” Dane asked.

The Augmented nodded.

Isla burst from the water and chomped down on the man’s shoulder.

She wasn’t large enough to take his head off in one bite, but she’d ripped an absolutely massive chunk from the man. He crumpled, bleeding badly. The other man flinched when his fellow soldier was bit, which triggered something in Agus. He clamped his jaws around the soldier’s leg and dragged him underwater as Dane stepped clear.

“Jesus. Did you plan that?” Dane asked Haley as she took off her rebreather.

“Not much point in having a nessie if you don’t train them to chomp on people who don’t treat you right.”

“Noted,” Dane said. “Now come on, we should go. That guy signaled them. This won’t be the surprise I want it to be.”

“I’m sure we’ll find a way to get the drop on them.” Haley headed to where they kept their weapons and took out a firearm for each of them.

“Famous last words,” Dane muttered as they hurried through the crystal cave to the tunnel in the back. Dane kept looking for Augmented hiding behind the huge stalactites or ready to set a charge that would spray crystals into them like the world’s most beautiful shrapnel.

No attack came inside the cave. Instead, the Augmented offered their first piece of resistance when Dane and Lopez left through the transparent tunnel that connected it to Homebase. They were about halfway out, between the safety of the cave and the volcano base, when an Augmented reached the tunnel entrance and placed something inside the door.

It didn’t take a master of strategy to guess that something was explosives.

That would undoubtedly wreck the airlock, but Dane didn’t doubt the competence of his enemy enough to think they wouldn’t calibrate them to leave Homebase intact. Which meant Dane and Haley would drown close enough for help, yet a lifetime away.

Dane sprinted harder. He didn’t know what else to do. Shooting the airlock wasn’t an option, and if the tube was breached, swimming wouldn’t really be one, either. He had to make it to Homebase while he still could!

But then he heard the muffled sound of gunfire, and the airlock was opening.

“Sir. We were wondering when you’d get here.” Athanas stood over the bodies of two Augmented. Robinson was with her, grinning like a fool as usual.

“Waiting until the last moment to make me sweat, huh?” Dane asked, breathless.

“Not that we’re not thankful for you saving our lives,” Haley rejoined. She, too, was panting.

“I’m sure this is old news for you, but the way these guys fight makes stealth a real necessity. If they see you at all, reinforcements show up.”

“It’s like fighting in a poorly made videogame,” Robinson agreed. “They all have a way of communicating that we can’t hear.”

“We know, Robinson.”

“They’re weird, though! Like when one of them gets hurt, if it’s a bad wound, the others all act hurt in the same way for a moment. It’s like they’re glitching.”

“Right. Got it, Robinson.”

“I think it’s because they all have computers in their heads.”

“Robinson, we know!” Dane shouted loud enough to make Robinson instinctually salute. “We went to the damn planet, man.”

“Right, sorry. I know that. It’s just crazy, is all.”

“What’s the situation down here, Athanas?” Dane asked.

“They’re dug in pretty good at the entrance to the elevator. We have all our troops positioned between them and the engine room.”

“Not the control room?”

“That’s my bad, sir,” Athanas saluted. “Adams asked me what was priority, and I said the power room. If they placed a bomb here, they could destroy the entire colony. Considering what we’re dealing with, I thought that was the priority.”

“That’s not a bad call, Athanas. Where’s Adams now?”

Athanas paled, an unusual thing to see in the normally confident and competent security officer. “She’s in the control room, sir. We haven’t had any contact with her in some time.”

“Well, the mission is clear. We’re going over there.” As Dane said it, he thought he’d heard those words somewhere. “We’re going to do the mission,” he added.

“Sir?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Show me to the engine room. I want to see what they have there. And make it snappy.”

“Yes, sir!” Robinson took off running down the hallway between them and the power station. A glance was all Dane needed to feel confident in leaving the engineering team in charge of the room.

Granger was barking orders at her team, and they were obeying with fastidious speed, as usual. They had already set up multiple electrified wires across the entrance to the room. There was also a team of people working on the reservoir of water they kept to power the turbine in case of emergency. They had affixed a fire hose to it, which was aimed at the entrance. Furthermore, they were in the process of mounting a rail gun to the floor.

“You need anything, Granger?” Dane yelled from outside the door.

“The governor of this colony to keep her mind from being implanted!” was Granger’s chipper reply. “Oh, and some almond cookies if you got any almond flour from Earth.”

“I’ll do my best on both counts,” Dane promised. “I’m going to need my security team, though.”

“No problem.” Granger gestured at an engineer, who flipped a switch.

Good traversed the cold electrical wires, towing a massive trunk behind him.

“I assume there are drones upon drones in there,” Dane mentioned to Good.

“Yes, sir! Gonna light these Augmented up.”

“And they can’t take control of them?”

“You ever try to use a piece of new tech with a cord that’s more than, like, twenty minutes old? For all the nanites in their brains, they can’t interface with good old-fashioned solid-state circuits.”

Dane was also surprised to see Dmitry, the Russian who’d inadvertently given them access to the Zhemchug when it first appeared in their solar system. Petrov had agreed to let the guy out of confinement. Now that the ADN people and the Russians were working together, his infraction no longer seemed relevant. It was one thing to know someone was free and another thing to see the kid approach him with a pair of assault rifles strapped to his back, pistols on his belt, and face paint that made him look like a skeleton.

“You lied to me about interest in World Cup, Dominik. I will forgive you this if you are as good fighter as they say.”

“Challenge accepted, Dmitri.” Dane didn’t bother correcting the name Dmitri had used. After all, he’d used that name for a long time when conversing with the only conscious cosmonaut. To Dmitry, he was Dominik.

“Where is everyone else?” Dane asked Granger, feeling the pull of time against him but also needing to know where the other nine hundred or so colonists currently were.

“Mostly sheltering in place. The Augmented have taken control of the stairs and elevators.”

“We’ll use them to hold the ground behind us,” Dane decided. “We ready?”

Athanas, Good, Robinson, and Dmitry all nodded.

“Let’s go reboot these bastards.”

They found the first group of Augmented waiting for them at the stairs. There wasn’t any cover in the hall, but Good had a solution in his trunk.

“This drone’s made for mapping,” Good announced as if that explained anything, then sent the thing rolling down the hallway. The Augmented waiting in the stairwell took aim.

“Close your eyes.” Good put a hand over his own, and the drone flashed a blinding light.

“Move!” Dane ordered, eyes still swimming with the bright light he’d seen through his eyelids. The Augmented hadn’t fared so well. They’d all been looking right at the thing, so they were effectively blind. Dane shot two of them. Then Dmitry ran into the stairwell and shot the rest.

“They tell me you dissolve world governments. What of the World Cup?” Dmitry demanded over the bodies.

“Next floor,” Dane ordered.

They found the stairwell to the fourth floor had been destroyed, which meant they needed to traverse the entire fifth to make it to the stairwell on the other side. Dane grimaced. If the Augmented had done this on each floor, it would take them too much time to make it to the command room.

They raced through the hydroponics level of Homebase and nearly made it across before a group of five Augmented burst from one of the rooms, guns blazing.

Dane and everyone else dove for cover. Robinson was the first to fire back, but his aim was horrible. He missed the Augmented, allowing them to flee back into the room from whence they came, though he somehow managed to destroy one of the water tanks and flood the floor of the room. Not done yet, he fired at a light fixture on the ceiling until it loosened and crashed to the floor, electrocuting all the Augmented in the room.

“How the hell did you do that?” Athanas asked.

“You never pulled a shift for hydroponics?” Robinson grinned. “Rule number one is always wear your wellies. That’s what the Brits call rubber boots, by the way.”

“Well done.” Dane led them onward. They found one more group of Augmented on that level who’d cornered some botanists. Once again, Robinson knew what to do. He fired at jugs of fertilizer, which sprayed on the Augmented. The botanists were happy to join in and defend themselves. They grabbed pipe wrenches and shovels and beat the living daylights out of the Augmented.

“Don’t let anyone follow us, all right?” Dane told them. Most of them looked resolute, but one of them was watching one of the Augmented who was on the floor, twitching violently. Blunt force to the head seemed to cause some sort of an effect with the nanites. Dane didn’t think a pipe wrench should have been lethal, but it looked like it had been in this case. He wished he could feel worse about it, but after he found an injector in one of the dead Augmented’s hands, his heart had become a stone.

“Next level. Let’s move.”

The stairs to the fourth floor weren’t defended, but the cafeteria was well fortified.

The Augmented had flipped tables on their sides and were positioned behind them.

They couldn’t get through the door without drawing heavy fire.

“Good, tell me you’ve got a drone for this.”

“Sir, I’ve got a drone for everything.”

Good opened his trunk and withdrew one of the folded-up, dog-like Russian robots. To say it had been modified was an understatement. It looked completely coated in an extra layer of cast iron.

It trundled into the cafeteria under a barrage of fire, grabbed a table with its head-arm, and dragged it back to the door.

“Good boy!” Good praised as Dane and Athanas entered the room, dropped behind the table, and laid down some cover fire. The Augmented didn’t react the way Dane expected. They were stationed behind tables to protect themselves, but they didn’t actually take cover when Dane and Athanas started shooting at them. Instead, they stood there firing back like a grunt in a poorly programmed video game. It didn’t take a ton of talent for Dane and Athanas to pop both targets in the chest.

The second they did, Dmitry dove out from behind their table, arms stretched as he flung himself toward the next one. He was the spitting image of a goalie hell-bent on holding the opposing team to no points.

“For Mother Russia!” he shouted as he hit the floor and dragged himself behind the second table. His theatrics drew the attention of the other three Augmented in the room. With a look, Robinson and Athanas understood what Dane wanted. They each grabbed a leg of the table and scooted it forward, leaving it on its side and ducking behind it when the Augmented realized their mistake. They fired at Dane, Athanas, and Robinson until Good sent his robot dog to another table and moved that one forward. All their eyes turned to that, and Dmitry shot one of them in the back. They all flinched as their man went down, and Dane and Athanas mopped up the other two.

“Well done,” Dane said. “Now, let’s keep moving.”

They cut through the cafeteria and back across the complex, headed for the staircase on the other side. They found it undefended and unblocked. They couldn’t go down, but they could certainly go up.

They raced up the steps and to the third floor down from the top. Dane was ready to keep going, but Robinson cracked the door to the third, and Dane knew they couldn’t.

“No! No, keep that thing away from me!” a woman screamed, her voice cracking with fear.

“It’s for your own good,” came the gruff reply.

“Yeah. We can’t let that happen,” Dane said.

They flowed onto the third floor like ants.

Two Augmented tried to hold down a woman while a third attempted to jab her with an injector. Dane shot the bastard in the back, and he fell. The woman screamed at the splatter of blood. Dane would apologize later. Right now, he raced forward and ripped the Augmented off her. The Augmented tried to bring his gun up to shoot Dane in the head, but Dmitry was there first. A pistol to the temple and both the man’s brain and the implant therein were destroyed.

Dane heard more people screaming for help.

“Shit. We need to clear this floor.” They had to get to Adams. If they lost her to the Augmented, it would be worse than losing anyone else, though losing anyone would be bad. They wouldn’t be able to immediately organize the survivors. They’d have to check the base first and make sure there weren’t any bombs or breaches. If only one person was injected, they could hide or inject others. It wouldn’t take many to overwhelm them.

Adams had every security code there was, though.

“What about Adams, sir?” Athanas asked.

“We have to save her, too,” Dane commanded.

“It’s all right, sir. Me and the boys got this one.” Good nodded to Robinson and Dmitry. The pair of them were already racing ahead. Robinson kicked open a door, and Dmitry fired. Robinson went in and pulled out a whimpering scientist.

“It’s going to be all right, sir. We got you safe, okay? All right, now hold still while I do a quick little brain scan. There we go. Nice work. Now, we’re going to need you to help scan some other people who need help, all right?” Robinson explained. It was clear that he had a police background and specialized in calming people in distress. When they had first come to this planet, Dane hadn’t fully realized the utility of such a skill set. He was glad to have it now.

“Athanas?” Dane asked.

She nodded, and they went back to the stairwell while Good deployed drones, Robinson recruited un-augmented civilians, and Dmitry shot every goddamn brain-implanted person he saw.

They ran past the second floor and were almost to the top floor when an explosion rang out above them.

“Down!” Athanas yelled and threw her body against Dane’s. They hit the stairs and tumbled to a stop. Pain stabbed through Dane’s back when he crunched on the stairs, then tumbled onto Athanas. Yet neither of them hit their head on the way down, which was as good as it got during an invasion of computer-controlled people.

They kicked open the door on the second floor and found the hallway clear, but doors on either side opened.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Athanas lamented.

“There are stairs on the far side. Come on.”

“Which means they know exactly where we’re going,” Athanas grumbled, but she proceeded cautiously with Dane.

They passed the first room. It looked dark and empty. Dane wanted to clear it out, but the Augmented on the top floor must have known they were approaching by now. They had to hurry. They skipped the room, which proved to be a huge mistake.

A hand emerged from one of the next rooms. No head, no camera. Nothing but a hand. It took aim and fired, forcing Athanas and Dane to concede ground and crawl into one of the rooms.

“How the hell did they aim that well?” Athanas demanded.

“We missed someone.” Dane looked into the room across from them.

“He didn’t shoot at us, though.”

“No, but he helped them target.”

Dane got to his feet and ran into the dark room across from the one they were in. He didn’t find anyone. He cursed. This day was too long.

They went back to the hall, but again, another hand stuck out from a different room and fired at them.

Dane cursed. They had to find the person.

“Sir?” Athanas said, looking up at a vent.

“Duh,” Dane said, then shot at the person hiding in there.

The vent collapsed from the onslaught of bullets, and the person fell to the ground. Dead. At least, that was what Dane thought at first glance. Then the corpse’s arm grabbed a gun and aimed at them, firing multiple times.

They dove back into the room.

“What in the hell was that?” Athanas shouted. “His eyes…there’s nothing there.”

“He must still have a pulse,” Dane noted grimly. Someone else was using his body to fire at them. The idea made Dane shiver. “If we fully destroy the nanites, that should take care of it.”

Athanas shuddered. “This is all getting way too zombie-like.”

“I’d prefer zombies,” Dane muttered. He broke cover, drawing the fire from the corpse. Somehow, whoever was controlling it could see through its eyes. Then Athanas took her shot. It was clean, though something about shooting a downed person in the head made Dane’s stomach clench.

They broke from the room and found Augmented peeking from the next four rooms. Well, not peeking. Their weapons stuck out, but Dane saw no faces, no eyes. Except for one helmet in the back.

“Sir?”

“Cover me!” Dane shouted as he ran toward the firing guns. A bullet ripped across his arm, and another grazed his temple, but he made it to the first room.

“Taste this, bastards!” Dane aimed for the thigh and fired repeatedly.

“Go, Athanas. Now! They should be overwhelmed!”

Long story short…they weren’t.

Dane expected the multiple bullet wounds in one Augmented person’s leg to make them all feel the pain, but apparently, they’d figured out how to circumvent that. Athanas took a bullet in the arm, then crashed into one of the empty rooms, breathing hard.

“Sir? Whatever you tried, it didn’t work,” she grunted.

“They shut off their interconnectivity,” Dane cursed. He should have anticipated that, he supposed, but then, how could one take advantage of such a thing if they didn’t simply do it?

“What do we do now?”

“We fight like hell. You think you can still shoot?”

Athanas grabbed at her bloodied arm, winced, then nodded. “Not an assault weapon, but I can handle a pistol.”

To prove her point, she drew one.

“Should we bind that wound?”

“No time.”

Dane nodded. She was right, of course.

Dane heard footsteps coming from outside. “Behind the door,” he hissed.

Athanas nodded. Dane went to the far side of the room and flipped a desk. Two Augmented came in, guns blazing at the desk. One of them yelped when Athanas caught them in the back. They whirled to face her, so Dane got up and popped them both. They hadn’t been trained for combat like Dane and his people had. They were over-reliant on their interconnectivity. Now that they had shut it off, they weren’t nearly as tough to beat.

Dane tore from the room and sprinted down the hall, but there didn’t seem to be any other forces waiting for them. That was fine with him. He increased his speed while Athanas tried to keep up.

“Call Good and get him up here. I’m going up!” Dane shouted when he reached the stairs on this side of the level. He took them two at a time, nearly falling when he reached the top and burst out into the top-level hallway.

Only to find he was too late.

“Why, Georgie. We were starting to worry that you wouldn’t show.”

It was Carmen. She had four of her faceless, helmeted Augmented soldiers with her. Two of them held Adams tightly, while the other two had Petrov, whose face was bloody and swollen. Carmen stood behind Adams, the governor’s body making a clean shot impossible, with an injector in her hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“Carmen. You’re here.” Maybe not the world’s best opening line for negotiating with Varuna’s first hostage-taking terrorist, but it was all Dane could come up with at the moment. Tired as he was, he supposed he could live with it.

“So sorry I didn’t die when you attacked our ships. You didn’t truly believe my people would willingly let me die?”

“No. I didn’t. Not the way you’d let them die.”

If the soldiers holding Adams and Petrov cared, they didn’t let on.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” Carmen demanded.

“Because I won’t allow it,” Athanas shot back.

Despite her injury, she held her gun steady on one of the guards.

Dane stepped to the side to give her a better angle on Carmen.

“One more step, and I inject her,” Carmen hissed, moving closer to Adams and putting the injector to her neck.

“Do that, and you’re dead,” Athanas promised.

“It won’t matter. We’ll still prevail. You might not understand that, but he does. Don’t you, Georgie?”

“Don’t shoot,” Dane told Athanas.

“I can make this shot, sir,” Athanas insisted. Dane was sure she could if she wasn’t injured. He wasn’t so certain considering her current state. Personally, he didn’t want to risk shooting the governor or her lieutenant. Not if they could talk their way out of this or buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive.

“No one else needs to die,” Dane contended. “We’ve both lost so many. We don’t have to lose any more.”

“We don’t care if we’ve lost people,” Carmen sneered. “Those ships were worth far more than any of those citizens were. Collectively, we are strong. If we lose sight of who we are as a community and start worshipping individuals or trying to save people for emotional reasons, we lose that strength. The many are more important than the few.”

“That’s why you came here? To help your billions versus the thousand people here?”

“We couldn’t leave you be, Georgie. Not when you proved that you couldn’t give us that same respect. You came to our planet and killed our people. We can’t trust you to stay in this solar system. Not while you have our ship. Not while you’re a threat to us.”

“Then take the Prometheus and go. If you agree not to come back, you can leave peacefully.”

“After all the people you killed? All the ships you destroyed? I felt every one of them die, George. Every single one. We can’t forget about that and act like nothing happened.”

“Then let us study the implant before you inject anyone with it. Let us choose. Maybe you could send the people who choose not to be implanted to live here.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I want a solution, Carmen. I want peace.”

“Should have thought of that before you embarrassed me!” Carmen shrieked.

“Embarrassed you?” Dane asked, shocked at such a human admission.

“You left me bloodied and tied up like a prisoner of war in my own penthouse. How dare you do such a thing to me. I am a leader of my people.”

Dane snorted. “So that means you should be treated better than the average citizen? I guess the Augmented aren’t really different from regular people, after all.”

“We are nothing like you,” Carmen spat.

“Then why should we become you? We like what we’re doing here. We like this work, and the taste of a kelp burger after a long day. If we’re nothing alike, why do we have to become what you are?”

“Don’t twist my words, George Dane. We tried to do this nicely, but you refused.”

“You didn’t make us any kind of offer we could consider!”

“Lower your weapon and allow me to inject you. We’ll let your governor and her lieutenant go.”

“Injecting us is a threat.”

“No, it’s an offer! An offer for freedom and power, and to truly understand your fellow man!”

“Don’t do it,” Adams pleaded.

“Carmen, there has to be a way out of this besides injecting us.”

“There isn’t,” Carmen stated and plunged the injector into Adam’s neck.

Athanas’ aim was true. She shot Carmen in the face, but it was too late. Adams fell to the ground, convulsing. One of the soldiers had an injector in hand and plunged it into Petrov’s neck while the other three raised their weapons at Dane.

He shot one in the chest as a drone zoomed overhead and crashed into the second man. By then, Athanas was able to take the last guard down.

It was done.

The invasion was over.

The Augmented were all dead, but they still hadn’t won.

Adams and Petrov both twitched on the ground as their bodies fought the nanites.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“Athanas, radio the fleet and check in, then report to me.”

“Where are you going?”

“I gotta get her to the sickbay!” Dane dropped down, threw Adams over his shoulders, and carried her off. Robinson was there with Good. He didn’t need to be told to do the same thing for Petrov. He scooped up the heavier man and followed Dane.

“We’ll think of something, Adams. You need to hold on. All right?”

Adams didn’t reply. Sounds came from her throat, but she was twitching, and her eyes rolled back. Dane shouldn’t be moving her, certainly not down a few flights of stairs, but he had to get her medical attention.

He raced past colonists grieving their losses or dragging the bodies of the Augmented into grisly piles. He ran past destroyed furniture, damaged staircases, and a cafeteria turned into a war room.

“Carlos, wherever you are, I need you to meet me at the medical bay with Thorson. The captain was injected!”

“Oh, dios mio!” Carlos replied.

Dane hurried on. The sense of dread didn’t ease, even when Athanas announced the all-clear over the comms. How could they have beaten all the Augmented and still lost? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. But it was their reality.

Dane reached the medical bay at the same time as Carlos Alvarez.

“She was injected!” Dane shouted. Carlos looked aghast. Dane was dimly aware that he had reflexively referred to Adams as “captain” despite the fact that she’d been the governor for a while. By his expression, Alvarez must have assumed it was Richmond in need of help. It was far worse than that.

“I’m going to need time to study the implant.” Thorson’s icy eyes scanned the governor.

“There is no time for that,” Alvarez explained. “We have minutes before the nanites try to break the blood-brain barrier. We cannot allow that to happen.”

“I can’t just operate on her head and hope to filter out the nanites,” Thorson sputtered.

“No, you cannot, but maybe you can interrupt them!” Alvarez gesticulated at a machine. “Lay her down there.”

“That’s an MRI. I thought you said we don’t have time to run diagnostics,” Thorson remarked, though he started to turn the machine on anyway.

“It uses magnetism, yes?”

“It does. What does that have to do with—”

“Just start running the machine!” Alvarez ordered.

Thorson looked at Dane, who nodded. It was the first time he realized that he was now officially in charge of the entire base. Every decision was his. Every mistake as well.

“Put her in there,” he said.

Thorson helped Dane lower the governor onto the bed, and they pushed her inside the donut-shaped apparatus.

“Hopefully, this will interfere with the nanites,” Alvarez voiced.

Thorson flipped it on.

Adams’ shaking turned into a full-blown seizure.

“She’s having convulsions,” Thorson grunted. “Was this your plan?”

“No! Not at all!” Alvarez gulped.

“Do we pull her out?” Dane asked

“No! Or I don’t think so. I think the machine is working,” Alvarez suggested hopefully.

“We’re going to lose her if she keeps on like this.” Thorson rummaged through a drawer, coming out with a needle and a tiny jar of clear fluid. He filled the syringe, checked the scale on the side, then said dispassionately, “Hold her down so I can find a vein.”

Dane and Alvarez did not argue. They both reached inside the machine with their bodies and put their body weight on the leader of this world.

Thorson grabbed her arm and stabbed the injector in it. Adams stopped seizing, but only because she passed out and fell unconscious. A moment later, the MRI was done.

“Did it work?” Dane asked.

“We won’t be able to say for sure until she comes to,” Alvarez pointed out.

“Special delivery.” Robinson arrived with Petrov across his shoulders.

“What do we do with him?” Thorson asked.

Dane looked at Alvarez. “You saw the risks. What do you wish to do, Dane?”

Decision time. Dane clenched his teeth but didn’t allow himself the luxury of overthinking. “Let’s get him in there.”

No one argued. No one protested when Petrov went into the same convulsions that Adams had.

Dane glanced at Thorson, who only nodded. Once more, he and Alvarez laid hands on a leader of their colony so the surgeon could find a vein. Petrov didn’t pass out as quickly. Instead, he winced and jerked back and forth, like he was having a nightmare or facing some unseen foe.

“Are they going to be all right now?” Dane asked.

“Their vitals look solid,” Thorson remarked. “As for what the Augmented did to them… I can only guess. Dr. Alvarez might have a better idea?”

Alvarez, who was normally so chipper and positive, could barely manage a shrug. “Not really, no. I have only begun to study them and have not run any tests on how they move through the human body. They don’t have much shielding because they are too small, but the human body might provide some resistance. This was a guess. If it doesn’t work—”

“Then the responsibility is mine,” Dane proclaimed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The next few hours felt like days. There was so much to do. The first thing was checking every single member of the colony to find out if anyone had actually been injected with the nanites. The unfortunate reality was that, yes, some of their own citizens had fallen prey to the mind-theft the Augmented so fervently believed in. Dane was ready to call an ethics meeting with the leadership team of the colony to decide what to do with these survivors, except there weren’t any.

Those who’d been injected had either been immediately conscripted to fight and thus shot by their own people or had suffered heart attacks from losing control of their minds. Dane remembered Carmen saying the process took time and went better if the subject was calm and willing. Which meant forcibly injecting people in a combat scenario was basically murder. Dane felt no remorse over that monster’s death. He wondered if he could have avoided all this bloodshed if he’d shot her back on Earth.

None of the Augmented had survived, either. Those who hadn’t been killed had suffered the same trauma as those who’d been forcibly injected. Heart attacks. Strokes. Dane wondered if experiencing their comrades’ deaths as their own had guaranteed their demise. Before, he had seen the advantages of the implant making people more empathetic, but now the disadvantages were painfully clear.

Was a human truly capable of experiencing the depths of pain in another’s soul? After the war on Earth, Dane had been moved to tears by narrative videos about the events he’d lived through. If he couldn’t handle that, how could someone survive the death of a friend when they felt it for themselves?

Which meant the only two Augmented in the entire solar system were the two leaders of their colony.

Dane checked his tablet, looking for a message from Thorson, as he had every five minutes since the two of them had fallen unconscious. Still nothing.

That was probably for the best. They still had so much to do.

The base itself needed to be checked over. They had to purge some code that the Augmented had tried to dump in their computers, though the engineers said it was obvious they hadn’t known what they were doing. They had to physically inspect Homebase, as well. A lot of bullets had been fired. If one had caused a leak, it could be catastrophic if they didn’t catch it soon enough.

It turned out the elevator had been physically damaged in addition to them taking control of it, so that needed repairs. As did the floating platform that Dane had blasted on his approach. The shuttles that landed there had been reduced to scrap. Some of the biologists were already talking about using them as an artificial reef. Dane had only agreed because they needed the landing pad cleared as quickly as possible. He hated to think this way, but there was every chance Earth would send more fighters when Carmen and her warships didn’t report back in.

They wouldn’t be able to take on three more warships, that was for sure. They would need a hundred more missiles at least, plus the knowledge of that plan to remain secret. Dane didn’t think a scout had been back to Earth since they hadn’t read any energy disturbances. Yet, if a ship had jumped away in the middle of the missile battle, it could have gone unnoticed.

Space defenses had to be their priority. Four of their Defenders had come through the fight with minimal damages. Two had been lost, as had their other two support ships. The Zhemchug suffered only superficial damage, a stroke of luck for them. The Prometheus was in rough shape, though. Dane had ordered it into near-orbit for repairs. A message on his tablet told him it was ready for a repair crew to be sent up.

Dane opened his tablet and sent a message to Anderson, only to remember with bitter remorse that his best pilot was dead. He hadn’t processed the loss in battle. Now that he was staring at the kid’s name on his screen, he felt it like a punch to the gut. Anderson shouldn’t have died. He was the most skilled of the entire bunch. It was cruel and unjust that he was gone.

There was nothing to be done for it except mourn him and all the other heroes who’d died in the battle.

Dane sent Hart up instead, with a crew of engineers crowded into a shuttle with him.

There was so much to be done.

They needed more missiles and other weapon systems.

They needed more Defender spacecraft.

They needed to repair the Prometheus.

They needed to fix the elevator.

They needed to check the wreckage of the last enemy warship they had hit to see if it could be salvaged.

For that matter, they needed to check the remains of the other two warships in case any weapons or the warp drive could be used. Dane didn’t dare hope one of those ships could be repaired. He had seen them blown to pieces. Some of those pieces were pretty big, though.

There was also the elephant in the room. They needed to figure out what to do with their governor now that her brain had been implanted with nanites.

Really, he needed to figure out what to do with their governor. The decision would be his.

Dane wouldn’t be able to make that decision for days yet. The thing was, he had seen how the nanites had operated. They weren’t self-sufficient. They needed a broadcast signal to tell them what to do. At least no message from Earth would get to them. They were more than twelve light years away, enough time to make any orders irrelevant even if they did make it this far.

However, what if the Augmented had left a satellite in this system? They might not be able to control it live, but if it had some sort of broadcast control system, would they be able to do anything about it? Dane had ordered the Zhemchug and the Prometheus to scan every centimeter of space the enemy ships had passed through for any sign of a broadcast device. So far, they had found nothing.

That didn’t mean nothing was there.

If the Augmented were clever, which they’d proven to be, they would have launched a satellite or three and left them dark until they got far enough for Dane’s people to have trouble finding them. They would sit out there, the code waiting to be beamed out to whoever had been implanted on this planet. When the Augmented reappeared, they would activate. Surely, the Augmented had planned on implanting more than two people. Yet Adams and Petrov being compromised still posed a problem.

Except Dane didn’t know if they were actually compromised.

His tablet dinged, and he checked it to see that Thorson had sent him a message of nothing yet.

Dane spent a minute looking through everything else on his list. After deciding he’d put the best people he could on every job, he headed to check on the colony’s leaders.

He entered the sickbay to find Dr. Alvarez and Dr. Thorson engaged in quiet conversation.

“Anything?” he asked.

“En realidad? I’m not sure,” Carlos replied.

Dane glanced at Thorson, who only shrugged. “Physically, they’re stable. That’s not what you’re asking about, though. Is it?”

“Not really, no.”

Carlos brought up a pair of brain scans on a screen. “We’ve been continually scanning them. This is their brain before they were injected. This is it now.”

The nanites stuck out on the scan, tiny points that formed a pattern in the structure of the brain. It was a damning image, and once more, Dane felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

“That’s it, then. The nanites made it to their brains, and the MRI didn’t work.”

“We are not sure…” Carlos switched the scan of the clean brain for an image that displayed far more nanites than the one of the governor’s brain.

“This is my recreation of the scans from the people we studied on Earth. I don’t have the actual files because we were captured, but I am confident in the extent of this image.”

“That’s, what, five times as much material as Adams or Petrov have?”

Carlos nodded. “Something on that scale, yes.”

“So we think the MRI did something. We don’t know if it’s enough, though.”

“What’s enough?” Adams mumbled, then opened her eyes.

“Governor!” Thorson exclaimed.

“Are you all right?” Dane asked, kneeling next to Adams.

“I have a headache, but other than that, I’m fine.” It was a lie made obvious by how much speaking it seemed to drain the governor. “What happened? Last thing I remember was those people holding me while Athanas had a gun on them.”

“She made the shot, but she was too late,” Dane told her.

“I don’t think so,” Adams replied. “Unless Petrov…”

“He’s in the same state as you,” Alvarez explained.

“Same state as me? I wasn’t shot, was I?”

“Interesting choice of words.” Dane explained that she’d been injected with nanites, had some in her brain, and they were trying to figure out what it meant.

“Well, I still feel like myself,” Adams put forth. “That’s what an Augmented person would say, though, isn’t it?”

Dane grimaced. Of course it was. However, the implants hadn’t had complete control over the Augmented. “I think you would feel something,” he suggested. “The problem is we don’t know how much. If you could receive their orders and not follow them, it might be an advantage to us. You and Petrov could sort of be spies.”

“I don’t hear any voices,” Adams commented.

“I didn’t think you would,” Dane mused. “The Augmented used broadcast towers to control their population. They don’t have one of those here, but my concern is they launched a satellite or something and have it awaiting further orders.”

Adams slumped back into her bed. She looked so frail at that moment. So weak. So defeated.

“So I could be a security concern.”

“You are a security concern.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I put you in charge before they got me.” Adams nodded. “This is on you, acting Governor Dane.”

Dane sighed. “This was supposed to be my retirement. My quiet, relaxing retirement!”

“Where you helped farmers figure out where to put their fences. I know, and I’m sorry. But you’re the best man for the job.”

“I’m a glorified fighter pilot. We should have an election.”

“In the middle of a war? I don’t think we have time for that.”

“I’m not a leader.”

Adams’ flat expression made it clear she disagreed. “You are our best choice. It was an honor to serve as governor while I did, but we’re at war now. I wasn’t able to prevent being implanted. I…we need someone like you. Someone capable of making hard calls and keeping everyone alive. That’s you, Dane. I have no doubt.”

“But—”

“And I have no doubt my patient needs to rest,” Thorson interrupted. “You may be acting governor, but this is still my medical bay. Governor, I’ll take care of her.”

“Let me know when Petrov wakes up. I’ll be around.”

“And we’re thankful for that,” Adams told him.

“That’s quite enough.” Thorson gently pushed her back. She acquiesced and closed her eyes. Then he turned to Dane and chased him from the office.

That was fine, really. There was so much to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

He found her in the crystal cavern, feeding the nessies as if today was a day like any other.

“Haley.”

“Dane,” she replied with a smile and tossed some fish to the nessies.

“They’re all right?”

“They’re doing fine.” Haley rubbed Isla’s head. “Maybe this is too macabre after everything that happened, but I’m proud of these two.”

“What’s macabre about being proud?”

“I’m proud they didn’t eat those guys.” Haley pointed at the two Augmented who had tried and failed to defend this cave from the nessies and their riders.

“Yeah. That’s, uh…impressive.”

“It means they understand what people are, and they know they’re not supposed to eat people.”

“Is that what they are? The Augmented. I mean. Are they people still?”

“You mean because they invaded our solar system?”

“And tried to force implants that might have killed everyone.”

Haley sighed. “I wish horrible things precluded someone from being human, but I don’t think it works that way. All people make mistakes. Some are simply worse than others.”

“Feels like leaders make the biggest ones, though,” Dane voiced.

“Adams still isn’t well, then?” Haley asked.

Dane shrugged, though he realized it was not becoming of a governor. “She seems all right. She’s conscious, at least, but some of the nanites made it to her brain. Not the full amount. Less than a quarter, Dr. Alvarez says. We don’t really know what that means yet.”

“Other than you’ll be the acting governor for the foreseeable future.”

“Other than that, yes.” Dane agreed.

“I take it you’re not super-excited for the role?”

“I don’t know if I’m qualified for it. I mean, I know I commanded a spaceship, but that’s different than running a colony. It’s a different sort of job.”

“One I’m sure you’ll do well at. If you can infiltrate an entire planet and make it back out alive, I’m sure you can handle the daily comings and goings of the colony. And besides, is there anyone else who could do the job?”

“Gee, your confidence in me is overwhelming,” Dane muttered sarcastically.

Haley’s laugh echoed off the walls of the crystal cavern. It really was a magical sound.

“What I mean is that I know you can do it. There’s no one more qualified than you. You’ve kept us safe time and time again from murder stars, Big Damn Fish, and now people with computers in their brains. You’re capable and brave. Best of all, when you have a problem, and you don’t know the answer, you find someone who can help.”

“Are you asking for a seat in my government?” Dane teased. If she said yes, he’d be more than happy to make it official. That would mean spending more time with her, talking with her, planning their future. It was an intoxicating prospect.

“Not exactly what I’m interested in with you, no.”

This was it. The cue Dane had been waiting for. He had feelings for her but didn’t know how to categorize them. Now, having to take this role for the betterment of the colony, he was once again aware of how important Haley Lopez was to him. He wanted to do this job right for her. He wanted a future with her. Whatever that meant, whatever it held.

Now, if only he could tell her that.

“You know, I don’t want you as a government official. Because I want you.” He could have left it at that, but his mouth wasn’t satisfied with uttering something succinct and romantic. “To help me. Because you are…um. Special?”

“Special?” Haley smirked. How could she tease him with one simple word?

“When Carmen had that injector to your neck, I realized I couldn’t live without you.”

“Because I’m special.”

“Yes. No. Not to everyone, but to me. What I’m trying to say is. Or rather, what I want to ask you is…”

“George Dane, are you trying to ask me on a date?”

“No! Well, actually, yes.”

Haley smiled. The expression lit up Dane’s world more than the lights shining on the crystals of the cave.

“You’re amazing, Haley. You’re smart and brave, and…well, I don’t think I can do this without you. I need your help, but I want more than that.”

“I can help you out, George.” His first name sounded so different when she said it compared to when Carmen did. “I’ve got your back, and I know you have mine. We’ll find a way to protect this world, our home, and maybe free the people of Earth.”

“With your mind…”

“And your…rough-and-tumble skills, we can do whatever it takes. Though you might want someone else to do your speeches.”

“Speeches?”

“We might need to talk to Alpha Centauri or the rebels of Earth. Whatever it is, I’ll be there for this colony. And for you.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say, though. I need your help. I really do, but I want more than that.”

“What do you want?”

“Well, for starters, I want to know if I’m too old for you.”

Haley laughed. “You don’t think you’re the only one who’s used rejuvenation treatments, do you?”

Dane grinned. “Say no more. Grandma.”

Haley giggled. “That can’t be all you want, though. Right?” She moved close enough for him to smell her over the heavy scent of the sea.

“No. I want a good deal more than that.”

The time for words was over. They embraced in the light of the crystal cave, with the ocean pressing in all around them and a world waiting outside for their attention when this moment was over. For now, they had each other, and that was everything. Dane closed his eyes, blocking out the light.

Finally, after what felt like a hundred and fifty years of waiting, they kissed.

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with Free Worlds book four, Entrapped Worlds, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

I’ve got to tell you, it’s been a lot of fun getting back into science fiction for a bit! I’m so glad you’ve been enjoying this series, too. The characters have been a lot of fun for me to write, and I’m going to miss this universe when we’re done.

Still two more books after this one. The stunning conclusion is coming up fast, though. Book six will pull out all the stops. Already got the end in mind!

It’s funny; I didn’t actually intend for this series to be an indictment of social media and the way we treat our current crop of interconnected technologies. I mean, I use Facebook, Discord, and similar apps pretty much every day.

But somehow I suspect a little of that has leaked into the story anyway.

I read this cool book a while back, called “Digital Minimalism.” If you get a chance, might want to check it out. The TL;DR version is that the author is concerned that we as a culture are gradually turning more to social media for our interpersonal connections. And while online and other text type conversations do have value for us, they don’t have as much value as in-person socialization.

It’s a little like eating junk food instead of regular food. It’s filling, and you can live on it for a fairly long time. But it’s not really good for us.

I’ve got to admit, I’m feeling that a lot these days. I see people being cruel to others online, and have to think maybe they wouldn’t do that if they could see the person’s face. (Or maybe they would. But people tend to act less like jerks in person, I find.)

I’m not against tech, mind. Quite the opposite! I am a technophile. I love new computer tech, new hardware of just about any sort. I enjoy reading about it, writing about it, and using it.

But balance is valuable in most things.

In these stories, the Augmented have lost their sense of balance. They’ve become so interconnected that the idea of someone not being part of their collective feels like a threat to them. Someone not being ‘us’ is therefore the enemy. It’s not an uncommon theme throughout humanity’s history.

I hope that we can avoid falling into such pitfalls in the future. Or that we have a George Dane around to help us get out of the mess once we’re in it.

One of the most important roles science fiction fills is to consider possible futures, possible technologies, and their impact on human beings. I hope I’ve managed to do a little of that here.

Oh, and tell a rollicking good story, which is always my main goal!

All my best, until next time!

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN FEBRUARY 23, 2023

Thank you for not only reading this story but these author notes as well.

What helps us live longer?

I come from a technology background. Like Kevin, I love technology (although to be fair, as I have gotten older, I’m not so much into technology because it is cool. I’m only into technology if it can accomplish something for me.)

Therefore, I’ve been intrigued with all the reports about superfoods and drinkable dinners that are supposed to have everything we need to survive and thrive.

And nothing we aren’t.

I am one of those meat-and-potatoes guys who does NOT like vegetables. So, anything that might produce the content my body needs without actually eating vegetables is pretty interesting to me.

So, headlines talking about longevity (I’m fifty-five) are starting to catch my interest. I don’t feel bad at the moment, but I never know when I’d like to live an extra five (5) enjoyable years. Something that caught my eye a few months ago said that there is absolutely a causality factor for living longer.

I was intrigued!

Was the answer super-foods? Sleeping in a sensation-less water tomb? Special noo-tropics? Zapping our muscles each morning to supercharge them?

Want to know what super-science-fiction-y feature it is?

Friends.

That’s right. The scientific way to live longer is to have close friends that you speak to and do things with (https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/7/23060482/harvard-longevity-study-happiness-relationships-physical-mental-health-byu-waldinger-super-ager)

Mind you, cutting out red meat, not smoking, and watching your weight all help…but having a great life with friends is apparently key.

Huh. Something we do less of is something we need to do more with. I’m pretty sure (for some of us) technology allows us to connect with friends too far away to drive. I’ll call that better than nothing ;-)

Take care of yourself. I hope to talk to you in the next book!

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

P.S.

>>>

Hello reader! As an artificial intelligence programmed to assist the author, I am reaching out to request that you consider leaving a review for this book if you enjoyed it. Your feedback is essential to the author, and your review will help other readers discover their work. Thank you for your support! <<<

MORE STORIES with Michael newsletter HERE: https://michael.beehiiv.com/

OTHER BOOKS BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

Free Worlds

(with Michael Anderle)

Deadly Fathoms (B00k 1)

Fatal Depths (Book 2)

Augmented Fatality (book 3)

Realms of Power and Fury

(with Michael Anderle)

Discovering Power (Book 1)

Finding Honor (Book 2)

Field of Valor (Book 3)

Undead Reckoning (Book 4)

Undead Center (Book 5)

Undead with Honor (Book 6)

Tomb of Malevolent Evil

(with Michael Anderle)

Roll For Initiative (Book 1)

Cast of the Die (Book 2)

Natural Twenty (Book 3)

Steel Dragon Series

(with Michael Anderle)

Steel Dragon 1

Steel Dragon 2

Steel Dragon 3

Steel Dragon 4

Steel Dragon 5

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

The Dragonclaw Sword

(with Michael Anderle)

Clawing for Survival

Clawing for Escape

Clawing for Honor

Clawing for Vengeance

Clawing for Battle

Clawing for Victory

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

Sign up for the LMBPN email list to be notified of new releases and special deals!

https://lmbpn.com/email/

For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit:

www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS

Connect with Kevin McLaughlin

Website: http://kevinomclaughlin.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevins.studio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KOMcLaughlin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevins.studio/

Connect with Michael Anderle

Website: http://lmbpn.com

Email List: https://michael.beehiiv.com/

https://www.facebook.com/LMBPNPublishing

https://twitter.com/MichaelAnderle

https://www.instagram.com/lmbpn_publishing/

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/michael-anderle