ENTRAPPED WORLDS

FREE WORLDS™ BOOK FOUR

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

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Version 1.00, March 2023

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CHAPTER ONE

Barely a day had passed since Dane and the people of Varuna managed to stave off the Augmented invasion. Dane would have liked to spend more of it on the actual planet they had worked so hard to defend.

Yet as acting governor and the most experienced pilot they had, he knew the best place for him was not below the surface of the watery world. Instead, he was up in space, somewhere between the planet he called home and the sun that made it habitable, in the cockpit of one of the four remaining Defender-class fighters.

He was the only person he trusted to navigate the wreckage of the Augmented warship. He had hoped Lieutenant Hart might be up to the task, but that was before they had gotten close enough to the warship to fully assess the damage. It was worse than he’d expected, though he should have anticipated worse. The ship had been hit by multiple warheads at close range. Logic dictated it was nothing but scrap at this point. However, the desperate were not always the most logical.

The colony survived an attack from a foe that had jumped here from another system. Dane did not think they could do that again. Not without more ships. Ideally, ships that could warp space and thus allow what amounted to faster-than-light travel. Hence, his current position sitting in a fighter outside the mess of a broken enemy warship.

“Haley, tell me you’re close.”

“I told you we have days before this thing gets close enough to the sun to cause a problem.”

“And weeks before it gets whipped around and hurled out into space, I know. Yet I don’t want to spend days or weeks out here.”

“You’re just lonely because I’m not in the cockpit with you.”

Dane’s face reddened. He was pleased to finally be in a relationship with Lopez, but with everything going on, this hardly seemed the time to flirt.

“This is an open channel, Lopez.”

“It’s all right, Chief. I think it’s creepy too, and I’m way farther out than you,” Hart told him.

Dane saw Hart’s ship well clear of the scrap heap that was once the Augmented warship. They had agreed that Hart maneuvering closer wasn’t worth the risk to the fighter. Haley would have to remove the warp drive without help from the engineer in the back of Hart’s fighter.

This operation would have made more sense with a shuttle that had an actual team inside, but they didn’t have any more shuttles. It was one of the dozens of priorities Dane had sent to the engineering team. He wasn’t actually sure if Granger had slept since the invasion ended, but he wasn’t about to ask. They were behind in a hundred ways, and as long as she could do her job, Dane wouldn’t complain.

“See, Hart understands it’s okay to show emotions. You could learn a thing or two from him.”

Hart laughed nervously into the radio until he realized it was on, then shut it off. Dane could practically feel the engineer in the cockpit behind him cringing.

“I’ve got no problem with emotions. I told you I don’t want to be out here any longer than necessary,” Dane informed Lopez, though he knew he sounded gruff. “What’s the status of the warp drive? Have you located it?”

“I have… And it looks intact. It’s basically in the center of the ship, so it looks in decent shape.”

“Can you remove it?”

“By myself? No way in hell. But we might be able to get a team out here and do it in shifts. If they aren’t as superstitious as you.”

“I’m not superstitious. I don’t want to be away from the colony. These two Defenders are nearly half of our defensive capabilities, with the Prometheus being as damaged as it is. If we’re attacked—”

“Two ships won’t make a difference, and you know it. We need this warp drive if we’re going to stand any chance against the Augmented.”

“Does the drive work?” the other engineer asked.

“Give me two minutes to figure that out. The rest of the ship was dead. No power, no life support. There are some running lights in here, though. They must have put in redundancies.”

“Let us know. We’ll be close,” Dane promised. They’d scanned for survivors when they first approached the warship but found no sign of any. Dane blamed himself for that. It had been a scramble on the surface to ensure no one had been implanted other than the freaking governor herself and her lieutenant. By the time they got ships out here, it had been more than forty hours. Nearly an entire day on Varuna. That was a long time for someone to survive in space. Even if they’d gotten a spacesuit on, with the way the ship was ripped open, they could have frozen to death. If Dane had gotten up here sooner, lives could have been saved.

Would that have been a good thing, though? he wondered.

The Augmented were not like regular people. They were networked together via implants in their brain. More beholden to outside orders than their own thoughts. Would Dane have even been able to hold them as prisoners? The soldier in him said yes, of course he could. Dane had fought in a war. He knew the stakes. Once you destroyed or disabled someone’s spacecraft, the human inside wasn’t a threat.

Dane had saved many a Russian pilot from the void of space by taking them back to his rock dropper. The Russians and the Alliance of Democratic Nations had even conducted regular prisoner swaps. Would the Augmented have been interested in such a thing? Would they have freed people from the sway of the implants in their brains in exchange for some of their own people back?

Dane doubted it. The way the Augmented fought defied anything he’d seen on the battlefield. They willingly sacrificed themselves for the slightest advantage in completing the mission. Dane had never seen a general on either the ADN or the Russian side command their soldiers to do what he’d seen the Augmented do in battle. It wasn’t heroics but dangerously blind loyalty. If you could call obeying orders forced into your brain “loyalty.”

Still…if Dane had gotten out here sooner, lives could have been saved. Watching the video feed from the camera on Haley’s suit confirmed the suspicion. As she had passed through the halls of the warship, she had to pick her way around too many bodies floating listlessly in the freefall of space.

Dane had not asked her to linger over any of the bodies. Her job was already too time-consuming and too macabre. He’d been making notes of what he had seen in passing, though. Many of the dead had obviously been casualties of the missiles striking the ship. Rips in their space suits and limbs twisted the wrong way made that clear. Yet plenty of others seemed undamaged. They could have suffered trauma, though Dane wondered if they had died slowly of hypothermia or asphyxiation. Not a pleasant way to go.

For all he knew, they could have died when the other people on their ship did simply because their minds had been linked together. The implants made the Augmented empathic in a way humans had never been before. They could literally feel each other’s pain.

What would that feel like when a hundred of your fellow soldiers all died in an explosion? Would your own heart go into cardiac arrest in sympathy? Would the brain cease to function in solidarity? And what about the signal that kept the Augmented implants working? Had losing that connection carried lethal consequences for the people of this ship?

So many questions. There were always so many questions. Now that Dane was governor, it seemed like there were more than ever before.

“What’s that?” Hart asked from his Defender.

More questions, Dane thought, but he turned his scanners to the blip Hart had pointed out.

More heat showed on the scan than there had been a minute ago. A lot more heat.

“Oh, shit,” Dane blurted. “Lopez, you need to get out of there!”

“What? No way. I just activated the warp drive. I think it works!”

“Haley, the fusion drive kicked back on. I want you out, now.”

“It kicked on because the warp drive uses it for power,” Haley pointed out.

“Sir, the temperature is increasing fast,” the other engineer reported.

“Haley. Leave. Now!”

“Fine, fine. I’m packing up my tools.”

Then a radiation alarm blared in Dane’s cockpit.

“Forget your tools! We can replace them, but we can’t replace you! Now move!”

Thankfully, Haley turned away from the warp drive she had been tinkering with and started back through the twisting hallways of the warship. She was less comfortable in zero gravity than Dane, but she still made good time. Only the bodies of the dead slowed her down.

“I’ll have you know that crescent wrench came all the way from Earth. It was my grandfather’s.”

“I’m sure he’d prefer it was vaporized instead of you,” Dane replied over the radio. Haley still hadn’t made it to what was left of the docking bay. Meanwhile, both the heat and radiation spilling from the engine were growing.

“Hart, get clear, then get your scanners on that engine. I need to know when it’s going to blow.”

“Any minute!” the engineer called. Dane appreciated the enthusiasm, but at the same time, he would have preferred actionable information. Although…

“Haley, I won’t be able to see you when you get to the cargo bay. Holler at me, and I’ll open the hatch, all right?”

“Make some noise or get left behind. Got it.”

Dane turned his Defender around and pointed it out toward empty space. Only it wasn’t empty. Wreckage from the warship filled it, either still connected by wires or twisted bits of metal, or simply floating in space. On their way in, he’d dodged warheads, equipment of all sorts, and scraps of rare metals they’d cataloged on the off chance they found something to salvage.

Now, all those resources were nothing but obstacles.

“Hart?”

“It’s getting hotter, sir! I can see it glowing from the heat.”

That confirmed the need for speed. Dane opened fire on the debris, blasting it from his path and clearing a way out as quickly as possible.

“Dane! If you’re done with your target practice, I’d like to get the hell out of here!” Haley shouted over the radio.

Dane didn’t need to be told again. He opened the hatch and twisted his body around to catch Haley. She was already floating toward him, though her line was slightly off. She was going to float off into open space.

Not if Dane had anything to say about it.

His hands coaxed the ship up and into a barrel roll. Once he was in motion, he let go of the controls and unbuckled himself. He gripped the seat between his calves then stretched up as the ship rotated around. The slow rotation amidst the floating wreckage wreaked havoc on his inner ear. Had he not trained a lifetime for this kind of thing, he surely would have vomited. He held it down if only to not gross out Haley.

He caught her, and the glass of their helmets clunked.

“My hero,” Haley murmured, not through the radio but through the vibration of her face plate touching his.

It was sweet, but Dane didn’t have time for it.

He shoved her into the backseat of the Defender, then pulled himself down and closed the hatch.

“Hold on. I’m not buckled!” Haley shouted as Dane threw the Defender into full speed.

He wasn’t strapped in, either. Not that he cared at the moment. They had to get out of here, which meant going fast. Seatbelts were mostly for keeping people safe when stopping motion, which was the last thing Dane wanted to do.

“Sir, the temperature spiked!”

Dane pushed the Defender harder. Haley yelped from the backseat, clearly not ready for the increased g-forces. Dane would apologize later if they lived to tell the tale.

Then the warship exploded. The Defender’s sensors showed the sphere of deadly particles expanding at a terrifying pace, but Dane was faster. He was far enough out to be clear by the time the ship blew. A few bits of scrap plinked off the fighter. A screw, a coffee cup. Someone’s finger. However, he avoided any debris large enough to be a threat.

“Oh, my God,” Lopez rasped.

Dane knew the feeling. You could see a dozen bodies and it would feel like nothing, then something like a severed finger could bring it all home.

“You’ll need to talk to Ginger when we get back. Make sure you’re all right. Right now, though, I need you to strap in. You have no idea how fast that coffee cup was going. We need to slow down, but if I try that now, you’ll bang against the back of my seat.”

Lopez nodded an affirmative and strapped in. Dane did the same.

“Hart, you all right?” Dane asked when the static from the nuclear blast finally faded back down. Dane didn’t want to think about the medicines they would need for the radiation exposure they had all suffered, but at least they had medicines. One did not travel twelve lightyears through space without a plan to combat radiation.

“Sir, that was amazing!” Hart sputtered. “The explosion… It seemed like it totally engulfed your ship! It looked like you literally blasted out of a fireball.”

“We’ll need to report to the medical bay when we get back,” Dane muttered. He hadn’t realized it had been that close. “Hart, let’s head back to the planet, all right? Nothing left out here.”

“Because they blew themselves up?” Lopez asked, obviously stunned.

“There wasn’t any of them left,” Dane noted.

“I know that, but they destroyed the ship? Who does that?”

Dane shrugged before realizing Lopez couldn’t see the gesture as she was strapped into the seat behind him.

“I’ve seen it before, especially when there’s proprietary technology involved. They’ll set charges that explode when there’s a risk of the ship being captured.”

“But the nuclear fusion drive?” Lopez asked, dumbfounded.

“They understand how valuable that warp drive is. They must have set the only thing that would make a big enough boom to ensure none of it survived.”

“You got that right,” Lopez muttered.

“It would have been nice to have another one, but I’m sure Granger will figure it out. Let’s head home.”

CHAPTER TWO

The anti-radiation drugs always gave Dane flu-like symptoms, but after two days, he was feeling like himself again. Which meant he no longer had any sort of excuse to sneak away for a couple of minutes’ privacy. He never thought he’d actually miss feeling ill, but then, he’d never thought he’d be the governor of this colony, either.

Dane would have been completely underwater, as opposed to underwater in their base, if not for Adams’ assistant. One Walter Perkins.

“What’s on the docket for today, Perkins?” Dane asked.

Perkins was an older man with a mustache so thin it was practically a single hair. He flicked through the tablet in his hand with a practiced motion.

“You have a meeting with leadership in fifteen minutes, but of course, you know that.”

Dane had not known that, but he knew better than to correct Perkins when he was trying to be polite. “What else?”

“The hydroponics floor is almost back up and operational. They want to know your thoughts about a new strain of lettuce.”

“Jesus.”

“No, lettuce,”

“What else?”

“The engineering team is working on a proposal to reconfigure the wreckage from the battle.”

“Into what?”

“An artificial reef.”

“I think we can go ahead and give them the okay on that.”

“They want to know what sort of zingers should be planted first.”

“And they think I know?”

“Adams always had an eye for this kind of thing.”

“Fine. Have them send me… Swatches of whatever.”

“Very well, sir.”

“What else?”

“Weather and climate thinks they have the yearly temperature fluctuation figured out. They have prepared a presentation.”

And on and on and on.

Dane practically jumped for joy when Adams showed up at the door to his office. However, that enthusiasm was tamped right back down when he saw the tracking anklet on her leg.

He stood to greet her. “I’m so sorry about the tracking.”

Adams waved off his concern. “If our roles were reversed, I’d have done precisely the same thing. The anklet is a necessary precaution, and I completely understand. I think I’m myself, but, well… I don’t know, Dane. I feel normal enough, but at the same time, I feel my mind wandering to places it hasn’t in the last year.”

“Are you thinking about access codes and schematics? Because that might be a problem.”

Adams laughed. “Nothing like that, no. Honestly, it might be that as governor, I was so busy I didn’t have time to think. Now I have too much time.”

“What brought you here to spend some of it with me?” Dane asked.

“Well, I know you have a meeting, and I was wondering if I should join.”

“I thought I mentioned that I wanted you there.” Dane glanced at Perkins, who nodded. He might have forgotten the meeting was this morning, but he definitely remembered asking Adams to be part of it.

“You did, but I don’t know if that’s wise.”

“You mean—”

“Because of this.” Adams tapped the side of her head.

“You said you felt normal.”

“I do, mostly. Except for the headaches. And the way I sometimes find myself somewhere and don’t remember how I got there. Then there’s the fear they might…activate me.”

“We’ve been looking for any sign of a drone or satellite they left behind. I promise you there’s nothing here. We’ve looked everywhere and found nothing.”

“How can you be sure?”

“If you’d seen the equations Granger used to figure out where we should look, you wouldn’t worry.”

“That’s the thing, Dane. I can’t look at stuff like that! I don’t know what will happen if the Augmented show up and turn this implant on.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Dane told her. “It’s not the full size. Not even half. Whatever they can do to you won’t be much, if they can do anything at all. They didn’t even have full control of Earth. You’re still you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re right, but I still want you at the meeting, okay?”

“Sir,” Perkins stated pointedly.

“Goddamn it, we’re late. Let’s go.”

“You’re sure you want me to come?”

“I am. You won’t have a vote right now, and Lev is going to give you the side-eye the entire time, but we need your experience.”

Adams nodded and followed Dane out.

CHAPTER THREE

Dane and Adams were the last to arrive at the meeting. The rest of the planet’s leadership was already at the table. Carlos and Ginger Alvarez, head of biology and social services, respectively, sat beside each other. Ginger was pregnant and looked like she’d give birth any day now.

Thorson’s icy gaze pointed out the windows into the Varuna sea. Granger sat behind a plate of cookies someone had baked for her. She looked ready to pass out. Dane hoped she would if she needed it. Richmond stared at a tablet that no doubt displayed the current repair status of the Prometheus.

Lev was the only person not seated. When Dane entered, he pulled him aside.

“You sure you want her here for this? From a security perspective, might be better if she’s not in the room where decisions happen.” Lev’s Russian accent made him sound more suspicious than usual.

Dane looked at the other people in the room, trying to judge what their sense of the situation was. Ginger Alvarez looked concerned, but then, she always looked concerned. She was likely thinking Adams might feel put out and wondering how to help her feel better. There was a time when Dane didn’t see the point of Ginger’s position in the colony, but that was long past. When the Russians and later the crew of the Prometheus arrived, she had been absolutely instrumental in helping everyone integrate. Dane would make sure she spoke with Adams when this was all over.

Richmond eyed Adams, but that made sense given his history with the Augmented. It was Thorson and Carlos who shifted Dane’s opinion. They both looked as if they wanted to protest, even though they couldn’t have overheard Lev.

“Dr. Alvarez, Dr. Thorson. What can you tell me about the implant in Adams’ head?” He would have preferred to keep this conversation private, but there was no time for such propriety. Besides, every person in this room needed to consider whatever Thorson and Alvarez said. Dane could give Adams the appearance of privacy but nothing more. She would know that. So what was the point in dancing around the issue? Besides, from Alvarez’s and Thorson’s expressions, Dane had an idea of what their recommendations would be.

“It’s not fully formed,” Thorson reported. “We’ve looked at some of the Augmented who died in the invasion and tried to get a scan of them. Her implant—”

“And Petrov’s,” Carlos added.

“Isn’t nearly as advanced as theirs. It’s not in the prefrontal cortex at all, for example,” Thorson finished.

Dane turned to Carlos.

“Her anklet is also a detector for the electromagnetic spectrum. We are not entirely certain yet, but we are fairly confident we’ve found the part of the spectrum the Augmented have been using to communicate with the implants. The anklet is monitoring that as well as the adjacent wavelengths. We have found nothing.”

“Could a drone or satellite be hiding somewhere in the star system, waiting to activate?” Dane asked Granger and Richmond.

“That is irrelevant,” Carlos put in. “The nanites have hardly any charge. They cannot work with a signal from so far away. It would be too weak. They would need something down here on the surface to transmit.”

Dane nodded but still looked at Richmond. “Anything out there that could have landed, maybe?”

“No way,” Richmond stated. “We’ve looked around the battlefield. There’s nothing.”

“Granger?”

“It’s possible we missed it… but I don’t think we did. Plus, I reconfigured the orbital satellites around Varuna. Half of them are now facing outward, looking for radio waves. If anything starts broadcasting out there, we’ll know.”

“Then Adams can stay,” Dane decided. “Now, let’s get started.”

He settled into a seat at the round table and waited for Adams to do the same.

“First off, let’s get a rundown of the attack. I want to know casualties, equipment losses, and status of repairs.”

“We lost fifty-seven people,” Perkins pointed out. Dane hadn’t heard him come in, but he was hardly surprised. Perkins was always where he needed to be.

“Fifty-seven? Yesterday it was forty-five.”

“It was a rough day in the medical bay,” Thorson explained. “Serious injuries, and we were short-staffed from our own losses. I don’t think we’ll lose any more, though. Almost everyone is stabilized at this point.”

“Almost everyone?”

Thorson shrugged tiredly. “Someone was in the elevator when they disabled it. Water got into their lungs. We might be able to repair the damage, but I really don’t know yet.”

Dane nodded. He knew he should be thankful they only lost fifty-seven people after their star system was invaded, but it was like five percent of their entire population. Everyone on Varuna was important to the colonization efforts, which were now war efforts. They would feel those losses for a long time yet.

“What’s going on with the elevator?” Dane asked.

“The Augmented scrambled the controls and damaged some of the machinery that makes it…err, elevate,” Granger explained. “The tube’s also broken in one spot, though we already repaired that. We’re working on pumping the water out now and replacing the machinery.”

“Replacing instead of repairing?” Dane asked.

“My thinking is we should have backup components for the elevator if it breaks again, so I’m making those now, yes,” Granger confirmed. “After they’re done, we’ll put those in, then repair the damaged pieces. I’m hoping we’ll be able to recover from this sort of thing more quickly in the future.”

“Sounds good. Keep at it.”

They did need a faster solution for repairing the elevator. Everyone had been taking it for granted, including Dane. He even complained sometimes about how it would take minutes to get from the surface platform down to Homebase. Now, their only options were a submarine, a nessie ride, or a solo scuba trip. All those took much longer than the paltry few minutes the elevator had.

“What’s the status of the fleet?” Dane asked Richmond.

“Prometheus is in good shape, considering. All systems are functional. The warp drive is undamaged. Though we’re out of missiles. The four Defenders are all functional, as you know.”

“And the Zhemchug?” Dane asked Lev.

“Minimal damage. They didn’t think it was armed, so they didn’t hit us nearly as hard as we hit them. Speaking of, did you find another warp drive?” Lev inquired.

“That’s a negative,” Dane replied. “The damn warship was set to blow.”

“That was the light in the sky, then?” Ginger asked.

“Jesus, you saw that from here?”

Everyone nodded.

“Sorry. Yeah. As soon as Haley started messing with the warp drive, the fusion drive went, well, nuclear.”

“Haley?” Adams asked with a coy smile.

“Err, Lopez,” Dane corrected. To keep them on task, he added, “And the Cosmos?”

“I’ve touched in with the skeleton crew up there, and they’re fine. They were far enough from the battle that the ship suffered no damage. I’d like to swap them out for mental health when we can,” Granger suggested.

“That is not easy. We only have Defenders, which can carry one passenger each,” Lev pointed out.

“About that,” Granger put in.

Dane frowned. “Please tell me this is good news.”

“It can be? Before we switched over to maximizing missile and warship production, I was working on another shuttle since we only had the one.”

She did not need to clarify that at the moment, they had none. Everyone in the damn colony knew that.

“How much work needs to be done on it?”

“Not a lot,” Granger assured him. “If I pull people off working on missiles, I could probably get it done in a day or two.”

Dane had ordered the engineering team to keep working on missile production since they had been so instrumental in defending the colony, so he was reluctant to cancel that request.

“How many missiles do we have right now?”

“On the ships, or total?”

Dane could use a dose of optimism. “Total.”

“Six.”

“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “How long until… Never mind. Let’s get that shuttle done. We need to be able to move our people around. After that’s done, and the elevator’s done, I want missiles, though. Oh, except what’s going on with the warp drive? Can we make one yet?”

Granger sighed. “Sir, you’ve asked me about that, and I haven’t had the time to figure it out. We built a smaller mockup based on the one on the Prometheus that should work, but something isn’t right. We can’t get it to fire up.”

“Can you build one that’s the right size?”

Granger shrugged. “I mean, yes? But they’re big. Like, too big for a Defender. If we built one to scale, we’d have to put it on the Zhemchug. I’m not sure even that ship can handle the stresses.”

“The Zhemchug is strong. It can handle much,” Lev claimed.

“I can get a team on that, but there’s no guarantee. I think the issue is controlling exactly how much space is warped, if you get my meaning. We’re going to need to do tests away from the gravity of Varuna and tweak it a lot. Honestly, it’s going to be a risky enterprise. I would assume it will cost us at least one ship.”

She didn’t say and a pilot, but she didn’t need to. Dane was more than aware of the risks of developing experimental spacecraft. It was not for the faint of heart.

“We can’t build one and test it with the Zhemchug. We’re only alive because that ship was ready to defend us.”

“Yes, sir,” Granger and Lev chorused. Granger looked relieved. Lev looked disappointed.

“Frankly, I don’t want to risk a smaller ship, either. Especially if you’re uncertain if it will work.”

“Uncertain is putting it lightly, so yes. It would be quite the risk,” Granger confirmed. “If I had some actual schematics, things would be different, but the Augmented didn’t load up the blueprints for bending the laws of physics on the Prometheus before it was stolen.”

“We could go to Earth and try to steal another one,” Lev suggested.

“That’s insanity. We barely made it out of there,” Richmond shot back.

“Gentlemen, please table your thoughts for a minute. Granger, let’s make that shuttle the priority. Once that’s done, I want a few more Defenders built. Ideally, ten total. Can you have your teams prioritize the elevator, the shuttle, Defenders, then missiles, in that order?”

“Of course. I’ll tinker with the warp drive, too.”

“I want you to prioritize sleep over the warp drive for now.”

“I can try that.” Granger rested her head on her tattooed arms and sighed.

“Okay, we have a sense of our current capabilities. Now I want to know what people think we should do next. Obviously, we can’t attack the Augmented, and I don’t want to risk the Prometheus by sending it there, either. Richmond’s right. We barely made it out of there. We probably wouldn’t be as lucky if we tried again.”

“Unless they weren’t our enemy,” Lev remarked.

“Excuse me?” Richmond snarled.

“If we surrender, they might give us a warp drive. Not to mention shuttles.”

“You are loco.”

“Out of line,” Dane snapped.

“I don’t think that would be best for our people.”

Lev held up his hands against the chorus of disagreement. “I am not saying we should surrender. I am saying that it is bear in room. We need to discuss. They are overwhelming in power. Billions strong. If we will not make peace with them, why not?”

“Because it’s not peace to have one of their machines in your brain,” Adams told him. “I know my implant isn’t fully built and isn’t transmitting, but it already doesn’t feel right. It feels like there’s something else inside me. Right now, it seems like it’s sleeping or lying in wait, but I still feel it. That’s not even talking about the fear, the headaches, and paranoia.”

“But will they implant us?” Lev asked.

“Of that, we can be certain,” Dane replied. “It’s their idea of an alliance. They see it as a gift or as evolution. Any peace with them means we all get nanites in our brains. Period.”

“And none of us should want that,” Adams chimed in.

“What about running?” Ginger asked.

“I can attest it’s better than surrender,” Richmond informed them.

Lev huffed. “I don’t want to run.”

“Me neither, but if we can’t fight and we won’t surrender, then maybe it makes sense. Granger, do you have thoughts on that? Is running even an option?”

“If I could get the Zhemchug outfitted with a working warp drive…maybe? But that’s a big if, and it won’t carry all our people. Which means multiple trips.”

“How many people fit on the Prometheus?” Ginger asked.

“A hundred at most.”

“That’s only ten trips,” Dane surmised. “That’s doable.”

Lev frowned. “It would take weeks for each trip, which means something like half a year for entire colony to leave. That is very slow evacuation. Besides, where would we go? We see same space as them. If we find a habitable planet, the Augmented could find it too.”

“Technologically, they’re going to beat us every time,” Granger noted. “I can’t even figure out one warp drive, and they presumably have dozens. I don’t think trying to outrun them is a good idea.”

“They’ll find us, eventually,” Richmond insisted. “They see regular people as a threat. They’re going to comb the galaxy for us.”

Dane nodded. “Because it’s not only us, right? We saw that firsthand on Earth. There are other colonies.”

“You’re talking about Alpha Centauri,” Richmond clarified.

“I think we should talk to them,” Dane suggested. “We know they have no love for the Augmented, and they have multiple ships capable of warp. I mean, they warped in a freaking asteroid. If anyone can help us, it’s them.”

“That’s a big risk,” Adams claimed.

No one protested her comment, but all eyes regarded her with open suspicion. Adams understood this and cleared her throat. “If you’re going to pursue this, I think I should excuse myself.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Dane told her.

“No, I think it makes sense. If the Augmented come here and…activate me, they’ll know where the Prometheus is and the details of the plan. Even if they can’t control me and only get access to my memories, it could be bad.”

“I’ll come, too,” Ginger offered. “This baby is kicking my bladder something fierce. Adams, maybe we could have a word in a few minutes?”

Ginger and Adams walked out together. Dane was very thankful for Ginger at that moment.

After they were gone, it was back to business.

Lev began. “I think this is good idea, getting allies. We could use firepower and ships. They should have them.”

“We can’t assume they will give us resources, though,” Thorson reminded them.

“No. I’ll need to fully explain the situation and offer what we’ve learned as barter.”

“You?” Granger sputtered. “You should probably stay here.”

“Obviously, the governor misspoke,” Thorson said.

“I don’t think he did,” Richmond uttered.

“Are we arguing about whether we should make contact with Alpha Centauri or about who should do it?” Dane asked the room in his most commanding tone of voice.

For a moment, everyone looked from one person to the other, then all eyes turned back to him.

“I agree with the governor that we need to make ally of them,” Lev chimed in. “We cannot run. We do not wish to surrender. We cannot fight by ourselves. What other choice is there?”

“If they have schematics on how these drives work, that will change everything,” Granger admitted.

“The Prometheus can make it there,” Richmond noted. “I almost ran there instead of here when we left Earth.”

The only three who hadn’t spoken were Alvarez, Thorson, and Perkins.

Alvarez spoke first. “They might have made breakthroughs with the nanites.”

“I can see that, but I strongly disagree with the notion of sending our governor,” Thorson put forth.

“But the mission itself?”

“I’m a doctor, not an ambassador!” Thorson grumped. “I don’t see why this would hurt, though. We’re facing long odds as it is.”

“If you are gone, I should be able to handle many of your administrative duties.” Perkins spoke up in an uncharacteristic show of opinion. “The only issue will be security. Running a colony makes sense to me, but preventing someone from destroying one is not something I often consider.”

“I can stay and maintain security here,” Lev volunteered. “I agree with your priorities, Dane. We need a shuttle so we can increase our repair speeds and better protect ourselves from space. Who knows? Maybe when you get back, you’ll find this system in better shape than you left it.”

“That better be the case,” Dane joked. “I want Adams and Petrov cured, a fleet of Defenders…oh, and if you could tame another few dozen nessies, that’d be great too.”

“Yes, sir!” Lev grinned.

“We’ll do what we can,” Granger agreed.

Dane dismissed the meeting, confident the colony would be in good hands. Even if his choice proved to be the wrong one.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dane left the meeting and made it through one whole doorway before Lopez appeared. She had been leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, and she simply stepped forward and matched his stride. If it was anyone else, he might have found it annoying. With her, it was adorable.

“You miss me?” he asked.

“Not yet, but I’m worried I will.”

“Worried you will?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Governor. Word’s already spread that you’re leaving.”

“What? We decided on that like fifteen minutes ago! How can you possibly know I’m the one going to Alpha Centauri?”

“I didn’t actually know it was you, but now I do. So thanks for that.”

“But you figured out there’s a mission there?”

Haley winked. “Of course I did. I’m smart as a whip, remember?”

“How?”

“Granger shifted her orders to focus on a shuttle. That means you’re thinking about something besides planetary defense. Otherwise, it would be missiles, missiles, missiles. Plus, Richmond sent a request through for full reprovisioning. Not only weapons but food, air, and water. I can’t see how that would be a priority considering how tight everything is unless they were going somewhere. That somewhere would obviously be Alpha Centauri to try to make nice with the locals.”

“And how did you guess I planned to go?”

“You’re George Dane. Pilot extraordinaire, defender of Varuna, rider of nessies, the living legend. Of course you’re going. And of course I’m going with you.”

“You can be ready to leave tomorrow?”

“Oh? No arguing that I need to stay here because it’s safer?”

“Are you complaining that I let you have your way without arguing?”

“Fair point.” Haley giggled. “Not complaining. I’m only wondering if you’ve figured me out as much as I’ve been trying to figure you out.”

“I certainly know you well enough to know that if I didn’t let you come with us, you’d stow away.”

“Another fair point!” Haley announced, and they both laughed.

“Seriously, Haley, I want you to come. You’re smart, savvy, and adaptable, and you handle yourself decently in a fight. I want you to be safe, now more than ever—”

“But you can’t.”

“No. I damn well can,” Dane insisted, interrupting her interruption. “Not by leaving you here, though. Nowhere is really safe anymore. I’m hoping the Augmented don’t strike while I’m away—”

“While we’re away, but go on.”

“I can’t know what will happen, but I want you with me.”

“I want to be with you too. Even if it means going to visit a potentially hostile star system.”

Dane wanted to linger on Haley saying she wanted to be with him. Their relationship was still so new that when either of them said something like this, it felt like an admission of something special. He couldn’t resist hearing her thoughts on the Centauri system, though.

“Potentially hostile? What are you talking about? They fought against the Augmented.”

“I know, but that’s pretty much all we know, isn’t it?”

“Carmen said it was an unimproved colony.”

“And you’re going to take the Augmented war general who wore white robes and no bra at her word?”

“I… uh, of course not.” Dane realized that was exactly what he’d been about to do. “I was going to go with Richmond and try to talk mutual defense with them.”

“In the Prometheus?”

“Well, yes, of course. It’s the only ship we have that can go.”

“So your plan is to jump into their star system in an Augmented ship and hope for the best?”

“I… I planned to work on the details while we flew there.”

“For starters, you warp there, not fly. Secondly, I’m glad I’m going. Best-case scenario is they treat us as Augmented, and the worst case is they’re Augmented themselves!”

“But they fought against the Augmented.”

“Could be different versions of the same software, for all we know,” Haley pointed out. Dane really didn’t like how much sense she was making.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t go.”

“Now, now. Don’t get your governor’s panties in a knot. I think it still makes sense to contact them. Chances are they’re not Augmented, considering they bombed Earth, but we can’t take anything for granted.”

“I don’t want to take you for granted.”

“Oh? You’re not concerned about flirting on the job?”

“We’re not on an open channel,” Dane countered.

Haley smiled. At least Dane was doing something right.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dane hardly slept that night, so when his alarm rang, he was already up, doing push-ups and telling himself everything would be fine. It turned out Granger was a lot further along with the shuttle than she had let on, so it would be done by mid-morning. That meant they could get the Prometheus supplied in a reasonable time and be on their way.

This was too fast and taking too long at the same time. He’d barely been governor for a few days. He felt like the colony needed stability, which meant he should stay. At the same time, they needed security, which was most likely to come from Alpha Centauri. He didn’t know how to balance these conflicting concerns. Therefore, push-ups.

Worst was the lingering feeling that he only wanted to go to Alpha Centauri to escape the already relentless grind of leading the colony. Every day, he woke up way too early, yet there were already messages waiting for him. There was so much to be done that stepping away almost sounded like a vacation.

Even if the destination was likely a planet armed to the teeth that would obliterate them if they so much as introduced themselves wrong.

Which was why Dane had to go.

Or so he told himself between reps.

His chest was burning. It was time for breakfast. He found the cafeteria mostly empty, so he got a tray of kelp, sausage, and Russian potato bread, then sat down to enjoy his last fresh breakfast for several weeks.

After that, there was nothing to be done except head up to the platform and board the shuttle for the first part of his journey to another star system. Well, technically, there were a thousand things to do, but Perkins would handle all that. Or so Dane hoped.

He headed to the moon pool room and found Lopez there, getting a submarine ready.

“Good morning, sunshine! I thought I’d see you running laps this morning.”

Dane snorted. “I went on a run yesterday. Worked out my chest today.”

“Not that it needs it,” Lopez remarked.

“Oh, I like the chemistry!” Robinson poked his head out of the submarine. “Pay no attention to me. I’m only getting us ready to go up.”

It was Lopez who blushed this time. Dane was oddly thankful for that. He didn’t want to be the only one in their relationship uncomfortable around public displays of affection.

“I could use a hand with this kelp.”

“More kelp?” Dane asked, looking at the little kelp plant growing inside a tank, complete with its own little aerator and filter.

Lopez shrugged. “It was Perkins’ idea. Said we should take something to trade.”

“And all we have is kelp?”

“That kelp is nutritionally dense, high in protein and dietary fiber. Also, there’s some stuck in your teeth,” Robinson pointed out.

Dane shoved his tongue into the front of his teeth while he loaded up the little portable aquariums filled with kelp.

Then Robinson piloted the submarine to the surface.

They disembarked on the platform. The wrecked chunks of the landing shuttles from Earth had been cleared. Mostly cleared, anyway. Bits of metal sprinkled the surface, and it was pockmarked with bullet holes in a few spots. That was Dane’s fault, not that he’d had much choice in the matter. Not that it mattered, Dane thought. They had done well against the Augmented invasion, and yet they’d still allowed shuttles down to the surface. Their base had been invaded.

Dane couldn’t help but think if he’d been more proactive in anticipating the shuttles, they might have managed to stop the Augmented from putting nanites into Adams. Hell, he could have scuttled the elevator himself.

Instead, the enemy had done that. There was a crew up here working on the elevator, hoping to bring that convenience back.

As ordered, Good and Athanas were waiting for Dane on the platform. He had elected to keep the Prometheus crewed by the same team who’d handled it during the invasion. They had done well and were a mix of ADN people, Russians, and the original crew from the warship. Dane hoped the people from Alpha Centauri would see they worked well with others. They simply drew the line at Augmented.

“You ready?” Dane asked Athanas and Good.

“Yes, sir.” Athanas saluted crisply. Always so professional. Always so reliable. Dane was lucky to have her.

Dane turned to Good. “How about you, John?”

“You mentioned away missions, so I brought some drones to help us map out territories and whatnot, but what are the odds of that? I mean, how many people live on Alpha Centauri?”

“Enough to build the biggest damn ship I’ve ever seen,” Dane remarked. “Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.”

Good nodded. “I brought some of those Russian robot dogs, too, complete with weapons. Though I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Leave ‘em plugged in and fully charged. We’ll hope you’re only being as paranoid as I feel.”

“Yes, sir.” Good saluted.

“If there are no other battery-operated devices, let’s get up there,” Dane expressed.

They all loaded up the shuttle. Dane was about to order the hatch closed when a nessie head appeared from the water. His first reflex was to reach for the weapon on his hip, but he stopped himself before he drew the weapon. The nessie wore a collar, and after most of its long neck emerged from the water, he noticed the rider on its back.

“Dr. Alvarez,” Dane greeted. “Going for a morning nessie ride?”

Alvarez stepped onto the platform and pulled off his rebreather mask. “Si, but what I really want to do is take a shuttle ride to a warp ship.”

“You want to come with us?” Dane asked, surprised this was the first he’d heard about it.

“I think it makes the most sense, yes.”

“I was assuming you’d stay here and monitor Adams and Petrov. Plus…well, don’t you have a baby that’s going to be here any day now?”

“That’s why I need to come,” Alvarez claimed.

“To get away from your wife?” Robinson asked.

“No! Because the baby will be here soon. She is not as close as you think. Still six weeks out, so hopefully, we can make it there and back before the baby comes. I cannot sit by in a world where the Augmented could take my daughter’s mind from her. I have to come!”

“What about Adams and Petrov?”

“I’ve done everything I can for them,” Carlos told him. “I cannot remove their implants without more information. All I can do is monitor, and Dr. Thorson is better for that job. Really, he is better for all the medical bay jobs. He is a surgeon. I am a scientist.”

“So you wish to come to study their planet?” Dane asked.

“Planetary ecology fascinates me, yes, but that is not why. If these Alpha Centauri are battling the Augmented, they might know some way to help. I can learn from them.”

“And if they haven’t?”

Carlos held up a briefcase in response. “This has some of the nanites they tried to inject us with. They fundamentally change when they interact with a biological system. They fuse together and become different than they are in this state. If the people there do not have any samples, this could be what they need to make a breakthrough!”

“You don’t want to just send us with the briefcase, do you?” Lopez asked pointedly.

Carlos reddened as his mustache twitched. “I do not want to sit back while our star system faces a threat I can do something about. Going to Earth was more than I had hoped for. It was a bloody mess, and hard, and horrifying, but I would face it again for my unborn daughter. Please, let me come. My brains, this sample, and their tech? It’s possible that we will find a cure!”

Dane nodded. “Let me check with Richmond to make sure he’s got the room and is comfortable with that, but sure, you can come. If you can show me written permission from your wife!”

Carlos laughed. “That might be harder to come by. But here, I will call her while you call Richmond.”

Richmond was enthusiastic about having Carlos along, so no issue there. Ginger was less excited, but she couldn’t argue against her husband trying to fight for the freedom of their unborn daughter. She went along with Alvarez’s last-minute plan. Dane could have overridden the idea, but he didn’t want to. It was optimistic to think Alpha Centauri only needed this one sample to complete some anti-Augmented weapon, but he could also see the value of bringing optimism along on a mission like this.

They launched, and Hart shuttled them up to the Prometheus. To Dane’s eyes, it was obvious the warship no longer belonged to Earth. It had suffered some serious damage in the battle, and the patches were not the same material the Augmented had used to build the ship. It created a sort of patchwork effect that made it look like something human hands had spent time on. He hoped the people in Alpha Centauri would notice that, but he wouldn’t hold his breath. This would take careful planning and communication to get right. Dane hoped they were up to the job.

He found Richmond waiting for him on the bridge.

“How goes preparations, Captain?”

“They go well, sir. The ship is fully loaded with food and munitions, though hopefully, we won’t need either.”

“Very good.”

“Did you make a final decision on which ships we’ll bring with us? The shuttle could come in handy.”

“We can’t spare it, though, so it will need to stay here. If they’re the military power I believe they are, they won’t have any shortage of shuttles. We’ll bring a fighter in case they want to keep the Prometheus farther out, but I’m fully expecting to let one of their shuttles dock with us.”

“Very good, sir. We already have a fighter loaded, so we’re ready.”

“Great. Have your crew complete their last checks, and let me know.”

“Of course, sir.”

Ten minutes later, all stations had reported in. It was time.

“Sir?” Richmond asked, his normally stoic tone eager.

“Ship out, Captain. Destination, Alpha Centauri.”

CHAPTER SIX

The trip under warp was rather uneventful. Richmond had them drop from warp a few times to check his bearings, but it seemed his navigational skills were fairly solid because they never needed to make more than a few micro-adjustments to their speed and direction.

That gave Dane a lot of time to worry about Earth. Too much time. He had run the numbers on how long it would take the Augmented to get from Earth to Teegarden’s star, and he didn’t think it likely they would send more ships yet. More likely, they would still be waiting for Carmen’s invasion to be successful and for her to return home. Yet by the time he got to Alpha Centauri’s star, it might be possible for Earth to have figured out their failure.

They would likely send a scout first. When they found none of their beacons or warships, that scout would have to return home and decide whether to send another fleet. Dane thought it unlikely they would attack with a small force a second time. That might be a good thing, as it would give the people of Varuna time to build their defenses. But only if the Augmented considered Alpha Centauri a threat and didn’t see some strategic value in Varuna. Many of their ships had been destroyed when the behemoth asteroid ship attacked, but there was still enough left to capture Varuna if they committed their entire force.

Would he return home to Varuna only to find his people implanted? He had told them to destroy the elevator if they were attacked and focus all efforts on blocking the shuttles from landing, but how could they do that with only three fighters and a refitted colony ship?

It was stressful to think Dane was going all this way, trying to save his people, but he might have only succeeded in abandoning them when they most needed him.

The weeks-long voyage did let him get to know Lopez better. She still wouldn’t reveal her true age, though now Dane knew she’d taken rejuvenation treatments. She had a few telltale signs of age reversal. Her complete lack of gray hairs, for one. Dane’s treatments had been too late in life to avoid that, but Lopez seemed to have managed. Though it could have been her youthful energy. Dane loved how enthusiastic she was about everything. Even going as ambassadors to make allies in a war seemed like a fun challenge to Lopez.

Time passed, day by day, and soon it was time to exit warp.

“We’re about half a light year out,” Richmond reported as they prepared to re-enter regular space.

“Good. That’ll give us a sense of their star system,” Dane commented.

“That’s correct, but remember how all this works. We’ll be a half light year out, which means we’ll be looking into the past.”

“Six months into the past, right?” Dane asked.

“That’s right, which is technically before we went to Earth, and before Alpha Centauri serendipitously saved this ship when they attacked Earth.” That was Molly, one of Richmond’s senior crew members. Dane was glad to have her along, if only because she was a better communicator than stone-faced Richmond.

“So that means we might see the asteroid ship?”

“Assuming they keep it in this star system, we’ll almost surely see it, but that doesn’t mean they still have it. We’ll be looking at a version of it that existed before they jumped to Earth and attacked. That means it won’t have any damage or need any repairs. The entire planet could look that way. It might seem shiny, fresh, and wonderful, but when we get closer, it could all be destroyed.”

“I think I understand.” That might have been putting it optimistically. “I still want to take a peek from the distance, though. It’ll tell us if that ship was all they had or if they have more in their arsenal.”

“If they had more in the arsenal,” Richmond corrected.

Dane nodded.

Then Richmond ordered them to drop from warp.

The first thing they noticed about the star system was that it had three stars. Two of them were massive and white-hot. Proper stars. The other was smaller and duller, a red dwarf that orbited the white giants. Dane was glad they had a team calculating how to navigate the gravity in this system. It would be a hot mess.

They also found a pair of inhabited planets, though it took some sniffing with their sensors. One appeared to be a rocky world without much water. Distant atmospheric readings indicated it was hot and mostly desert. Nevertheless, there were cities on the surface and an impressive number of orbital structures. Dane thought it was a good sign, though he knew they were looking six months into the past. All those orbital platforms might have already been shredded to nothing.

Deeper in the system was another inhabited world. This one was reading more water on it and had more structures and cities than the desert world. Dane didn’t know how the people lived there, though. The planet was about midway between the two larger stars. Obviously, the radiation wasn’t that bad, or else no one would live there, but what did that mean for the night sky? Was there always a sun up, so it was always daytime on this world?

Dane wondered if he would miss the night more than he missed the land that Varuna so lacked. If they couldn’t win this war against the Augmented, would this be their existence? Constantly looking for Earth-like planets and never finding one as good as Earth?

He hoped it didn’t come to that, though he also didn’t think the Alpha Centauri of six months ago had anything like the population needed to stand against Earth. So maybe they would become galactic nomads, always running.

The soldier in Dane wouldn’t allow that.

“I want full scans of both planets and every structure we see. I want to compare this data to what we see when we get closer in. If they’re expanding, we might have a truly powerful ally. If some of this stuff is missing? Well, at least we have a world with plenty of water. Maybe they’ll want to come visit.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

They were barely out of warp for a few hours before they left again. This time, they were only about eight light minutes from the Proxima Centauri world. Richmond explained they could have gone closer without risking the warp drive’s energy disturbance damaging either of the planets, but he cautioned against it.

Dane agreed with his assessment. Eight light minutes was the distance from the Earth to the sun. One astronomical unit seemed a reasonable distance to arrive. It was familiar enough to scream “human” to anyone watching. Not that anyone had encountered sentient aliens in the galaxy yet. Plus, it was still relatively far from the planet and would make it clear they came in peace. The eight-minute communication delay would give each side time to prepare their answers but not so much that they’d have to wait hours for replies.

They dropped from warp, and Dane immediately began to broadcast a “we come in peace” message via the radio.

“Greetings, people of Alpha Centauri. This is George Dane, acting governor of Varuna, the colony world orbiting Teegarden’s star. We come in peace and in search of aid. We have been attacked by the Augmented and have seen your own ship fight back against them. We have stolen this ship from them. We wish to discuss how to avoid our people becoming Augmented and perhaps strike an alliance if you would like. Please send us a flight plan to follow, and a landing solution, if that works for you.”

He nodded to Molly, and the message was sent.

“Now…we wait,” Lopez announced.

“Eight minutes, right?” Dane checked.

“Sixteen. They’ll have to send a message back over the same distance.”

“Might be twenty if we caught them by surprise,” Good commented.

“Let’s hope that’s not the case,” Richmond grumbled.

Then they all settled in to wait.

While they did, they scanned the Centauri system. The differences were substantial. The orbiting platforms around both of the planets were both more extensive and looked more heavily armed, at least at first glance. It was not hard to recognize the giant cannons poking from the nearest one. They prickled the surface even from this distance. There were also far more ships than they had been able to see at six light months away. The system was alive with them, bustling about, moving from planet to station or from planet to planet.

“Anyone see that asteroid dreadnought they took to Earth?” Dane asked.

“Could be one of these?” Dane highlighted three large asteroids orbiting the planet between the two suns, as well as another one orbiting the desert world farther out. To Dane, they simply looked like asteroids, even under magnification. Though he supposed that was the point.

“Are we getting readings from any of them?” he asked.

“No, sir, not yet,” Richmond replied.

“They were all almost undoubtedly dragged into orbit around the planets,” Molly explained. “A closer scan revealed artificial structures on all four of them, though I’m still not seeing weapons or thrusters. Only some evidence of being worked.”

“They must have started the process on all four, either as a deception or to finish more of them later,” Dane mused. “Clever, really. Now we don’t know which way to defend ourselves.”

“Those things are so damn big I don’t think it would much matter what we tried to do against one of them. All we could do is warp away.”

“See if we can figure anything out on those, I guess.”

Dane turned his attention back to the star system. It was clear to him they had not been attacked by the Augmented in the last six months. He hoped that was because their attack on the Augmented was so devastating that it knocked back their offensive capabilities. He tried not to think how the lack of an attack here meant a higher chance of another attack on Varuna.

Surely that wouldn’t be the case. Compared to this system, Varuna was a glorified backwater. This star system had multiple planets with multiple orbital stations above each one. They had even started pulling asteroids around. Dane didn’t see how taking control of Varuna would give the Augmented any advantage over this world. Unless the people on this world were super-thirsty, he supposed.

He spent the next five minutes trying to understand the current situation.

It had barely been six when all hell broke loose.

A huge flux in energy scrambled their sensors, but Dane could still see through the camera feeds. Warships were dropping into space around them.

“This can’t be possible!” Lopez shouted. “Our message hasn’t even reached them yet. Hell, the light reflecting off our ship hasn’t reached them yet!”

“Maybe they have sensors out here,” Good suggested.

“Those sensors would have to send their information faster than light!” Lopez protested.

Dane knew how they had been detected was important, but not right now. At this moment, all that mattered was not being obliterated by the six warships surrounding them.

“Energy levels stabilizing, sir. Do you want me to resend that message?” Richmond asked.

“Do that! Then try to open a channel to all of them.”

“On it, sir,” Molly confirmed.

After ten seconds, alarms blared.

“What in the hell does that mean?” Dane asked.

“They’ve launched missiles.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“How long until those missiles impact?” Dane demanded of Richmond.

“Four minutes.”

“Goddamn it. Get the engines warmed up. When those missiles are a minute out, I want us to warp the hell out of here.”

“Molly—”

“On it, sir!”

“Is there a reason you want to wait three minutes before we’re destroyed?” Molly asked.

“If we warp out without making contact, we can’t come back. They’ll assume this ship is from the Augmented and will destroy it the next time they see it. I need to get on the radio, now!”

“Opening a channel,” Richmond confirmed.

“This is George Dane from Varuna. Please redirect your missiles. We come in peace! We are not Augmented. I repeat. We are not Augmented. We will submit to any security protocols you have. We only ask that you let us scan you to prove you’re not Augmented either! Please, redirect your missiles. We come in peace!”

An immediate answer was not forthcoming.

“We need to warp,” Richmond urged.

“Not yet,” Dane cautioned. “They won’t trust us.”

“They don’t trust us now!”

“We’re letting ourselves be at their mercy. What would the Augmented gain from this?”

A call came in when the missiles were two minutes out.

“Shut down your drives and prepare to be boarded.”

Dane had to give them points for being succinct.

“Kill the engines,” Dane ordered.

“Sir, if we do that, there’s no way to avoid these missiles.”

“They’ll redirect them,” Dane assured him.

“We can’t know that!” Richmond sputtered.

“We have to take a risk. They’re probably scared shitless right now. We have to show we’re not a threat. Kill the engines.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Your disagreement with my order will be noted in the log. Now, shut this ship down!”

Richmond obviously didn’t like it, but he gave the order, and his crew turned off both the warp drive and the maneuvering engines.

Another minute later, the missiles were still streaking toward the Prometheus.

“Sir,” Richmond prompted.

“Nothing to be done for it now,” Dane uttered, though he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t regretting his decision. The missiles were close now, and there were a lot of them. A full dozen, if their sensors could be believed. It would only take one to crack the hull and vent their air into space. Two would all but guarantee their death. Three would leave the ship unsalvageable. But twelve? Twelve missiles was enough to blow them all into their constituent pieces.

When the missiles were thirty seconds from impact, they all veered off into open space.

Another message came. “We are moving closer and will be sending over a shuttle. Do not turn on your engines. We have five separate firing solutions, and we will use them if your ship changes direction in any way.”

“We welcome your landing party and will submit to any inspection you require. As long as it doesn’t damage the health of our people.”

“Very well. We’ll let you scan us too, after we are satisfied with what we find.”

“We look forward to meeting you,” Dane told them.

“Why five firing solutions and not six?” Richmond asked when the radio fell silent.

“Because one of their ships is going to collect the missiles they fired at us.” Molly showed the map of the near-space around them.

“I guess they weren’t duds, then,” Dane remarked.

“What now, sir?” Richmond asked.

“Are they really sending a shuttle?”

“Yes, sir. They’re sending two.”

“Then I guess I’m off to the shuttle bay to welcome our new guests.”

CHAPTER NINE

Good and Lopez followed Dane out of the command room and through the twisting halls of the Prometheus toward the shuttle bay.

“You have a scanner, Good?” Dane asked.

“I do,” he admitted.

“Do you really think they’re going to let us use it?” Lopez asked as she pulled herself along the hallway, hand over hand.

“I think if we don’t scan them, it would be worse,” Dane suggested. “They’ve obviously spent far more time thinking about the threat of the Augmented. If we take them at their word, that would be a red flag. Besides, we’d be idiots to take them at their word. This place obviously has not been attacked. That means that it’s entirely possible the Augmented have simply taken over. With them, it would make more sense to infiltrate and steal than it would to destroy.”

“Spoken like a true corporate saboteur,” Good opined.

“Let’s hope that my paranoia calms their paranoia,” Dane asserted.

They pulled themselves along the hallways until they reached the docking bay.

They opened the door to find Athanas waiting for them behind a line of security forces, all armed and pointing weapons at the bay doors that had yet to open.

“Thought you might want to dress up for the occasion.” Athanas gestured to a couple of armored space suits.

“Richmond, how much time do we have?” Dane asked over the radio.

“If they maintain current speed, four minutes, but they’ll likely slow for the final approach.”

“Let’s get dressed, then,” Dane agreed.

The three of them stripped the regular suits they wore on the ship to don the more heavily armored version. If Dane had thought seeing Haley in her undergarments would give him a pang in his chest, this was not the moment to find out. He wanted to see her covered in armor. Really, he wished she’d stayed on the bridge of the ship. He’d all but given up on keeping her out of danger, though. Plus, she’d probably figure things out nine steps ahead of him.

After they’d dressed, Athanas gave each of them a holstered pistol. They strapped them to their suits.

“Are you sure we should be armed like this?” Haley asked.

“They didn’t tell us to come unarmed,” Dane told her. “If they had, we could have discussed it, but they didn’t. Therefore, guns.”

“Isn’t that a threat?”

“Not to military people, which they most certainly are. Being armed only means safety. If they come off their ship without guns, I’d be more surprised. Plus, I’d worry they have something else up their sleeve.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Good muttered.

Dane didn’t, either. “Richmond, we’re ready. Open the doors to the shuttle bay?”

“Opening them now, sir.”

The doors irised open, and a chunky, decently armored shuttle came in. It had a swivel-mounted gun beneath the front window. Obviously an anti-personnel weapon. Which meant Dane’s people were in more peril than he would have liked.

But they were well-trained and well positioned. In the lack of gravity, they spread out along the shuttle and the entrances to the Prometheus. The shuttle could likely shoot through their armor, but it wouldn’t be able to take them all out at once, anyway.

“I’ve assigned individual tasks to each person we have on duty,” Athanas reported. “Some weapons will stay trained on the shuttle, aiming for the weapon and the window, while the rest will target the people who come out. If they start something, we’ll be able to sting them at least.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but thank you for your preparedness,” Dane told her.

“Of course, sir.”

“That might complicate things, though.” Dane gestured at a second shuttle.

Athanas grimaced. “We’ll do what we can, but like you said, hopefully it won’t come to that.”

The second shuttle entered the bay, then spun to land on a different wall. Dane’s head hurt slightly from the architecture of the Prometheus. It was very much a zero-gravity ship with the appropriate clamps on the “wall” that the shuttle landed on, but it still made Dane’s stomach churn to look at it. Worse when he thought about his people having to fight off the soldiers that surely were inside. He had spent so much of his life in zero gravity, but that was almost always in the cockpit of a fighter, where he could strap himself in and use the massive acceleration of thrusters to make him feel like gravity was stronger.

He knew his security forces would have already oriented themselves so whatever surface was beneath their feet felt like the “ground.” He wondered what the Alpha Centauri thought about being inside this ship. They had faced Augmented warships in battle. Had they ever been in one?

If they hadn’t, they must have worked with a simulation. After the shuttles touched down, the soldiers spilled out with perfect efficiency. They showed no discomfort with the lack of gravity and pushed themselves around the shuttles using handholds Dane had not noticed. It took seconds for them to position on the shuttle’s exterior, using it as cover while their weapons bristled outward. Dane didn’t want to think about their chances of forcing out the Centauri with gunfire. The odds did not seem great.

His security team seemed to feel the same way. One by one, they tensed. Even Athanas looked uncomfortable, and she never appeared shaken. Dane understood. If they managed to shoot out one of the shuttles, there was still another. Plus all the soldiers, plus the five warships waiting outside. There was a slim chance they could keep these soldiers from taking the Prometheus. Even if they managed that, the forces outside would utterly obliterate them.

They were in this position because of Dane. He was the one who thought the people of this star system might be interested in an alliance. He was the reason they were here. Hell, he was the reason they had turned off their warp drive instead of jumping away.

Which meant it was up to him to make sure this entire operation didn’t go pear-shaped. So, with a protest of “what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” from Haley, Dane pushed off the wall and floated out into the middle of the docking bay.

He kept his arms outstretched and his hands raised as he drifted into every soldier’s line of fire.

“My name is George Dane,” he announced over all channels. Since the door was still open to the void of space, there was no air in the room. “I’m the leader of this mission. We come in peace.”

None of the enemy soldiers so much as flinched. Dane wasn’t surprised. They were obviously well-trained. If one of them shot him, it would happen because of an order. Not because they had jumped at the wrong moment.

A figure in slightly different colored armor floated from one of the shuttles and landed on the roof with the help of magnetic locking boots.

He raised a hand at Dane, and a slightly accented voice came over his radio.

“This is Captain MacTaggart of the battlecruiser ACN Wallace. We see that you are unarmed and hear that you come in peace. I am sending a soldier to intercept you and scan. Please tell your soldiers to remain calm.”

Dane told his people exactly that as he continued to float. Then a soldier kicked off and intercepted Dane. They all had armor on, though most of it was whitish, while Captain MacTaggart’s was a slight blue.

The soldier held up a device to Dane’s head, then activated it. “Clear, sir,” he called over the open channel. He had an accent, too, though not quite as strong as MacTaggart’s. Dane realized they both sounded Scottish.

“For the record, all my people are clear. We’re not allied with the Augmented, and we’re not looking to be.”

“You don’t mind if I send my soldier to scan your security, then?” MacTaggart asked.

“Not at all, though I would like to send one of mine to scan you and yours.”

“Very well. But try anything, and we open fire.”

“Believe me, MacTaggart. The last thing we want you to do is open fire.”

Dane signaled for Athanas to head for the shuttles with a scanner. They had brought plenty on the off chance the people of Alpha Centauri didn’t have the tech.

She kicked off without hesitation and floated up.

Dane activated his armor jets and flew back to the ground, where he clicked his magnets on and waited for both sides to finish their inspections.

Athanas’ low, calm voice repeated “clear” in his ear while presumably, the soldier told MacTaggart the same thing about his own security forces.

It took five painfully long minutes, but finally, it was done.

“Well, it looks like you’re as good as your word,” MacTaggart stated. “What say you close the hatch to your docking bay so we can properly meet each other?”

Dane ordered Richmond to close the door and repressurize the docking bay. Then he waited for MacTaggart to float down and land before him.

MacTaggart landed and removed his helmet to reveal a shock of red hair and an impressive mustache-sideburns combo. He grinned as he stuck his hand out.

“Samuel MacTaggart. Welcome to Alpha Centauri.”

“George Dane. It’s a pleasure to be here.” Dane accepted the other man’s handshake.

CHAPTER TEN

Dane had expected the people from Alpha Centauri to be paranoid, so it hadn’t come as a total surprise when they asked to scan every person aboard the Prometheus. Though it had been less than thrilling when they’d asked to conduct a room-by-room search of the ship to make sure there was nothing that could damage their colonies. Dane asked what they were looking for, but of course, they didn’t have an answer. Eventually, he allowed it, though he insisted on sending an escort, so nothing untoward was done to the ship.

“Fair’s fair an’ all that!” MacTaggart had laughed and clapped Dane on the shoulder.

Which meant Dane had neither Good nor Athanas with him now, as they were both escorting people around the Prometheus. That was fine, really. He had a good feeling about MacTaggart, and the conference room was crowded enough as it was.

Dane had asked Lopez to come with him, which had earned him the biggest damn grin he had ever seen. He also wanted Richmond there, as well as Carlos Alvarez, in case they wanted to talk about the specifics of the Augmented. Also because Carlos was good with a crowd.

MacTaggart had his second in command, Commander Joanna Campbell, who had black hair and pinched features that made Dane worry she was in a perpetual bad mood. There was also Staff Sergeant James Blair, who was head of MacTaggart’s security and looked it. Dane wasn’t intimidated by Blair’s shaved head, but the tattoo reaching up his neck and onto his skull must have been painful.

They’d been in the conference room long enough for Dane to recount their story and for MacTaggart to ask enough questions to believe it, though he still eyed Richmond rather suspiciously. Apparently, they’d tried and failed to steal a ship from the Augmented, and he didn’t see how Richmond had pulled it off. Dane understood the feeling. After going to Earth and barely making it out alive, he knew it was a miracle Richmond had managed to get a functioning ship away from them.

“And so, even though we held them off, they got our governor and her lieutenant. We came here hoping for intelligence on how to help them, as well as information about the warp drives. We don’t have a ton of material goods to trade right now because of the attack, but we are also willing to trade resources if that’s something you’re interested in.”

“Quite the tale. And to think the Loch Ness monster’s cousins play a role in it!” MacTaggart chuckled. “Well, I can rightly see how you’d come here requesting assistance, and we’d be happy to give it to you. An exchange of information is good and proper, and it’d be better for you to understand where we’re coming from. My people will send yours the basics of the warp drive, though. Don’t see much point in making you work it out yerselves.”

“That would be greatly appreciated, thank you. And yes, I am curious about your colony here. How long have you been here? Did you grow up on Earth?”

“Ach? The way I speak proper, ye mean?” MacTaggart grinned beneath his mustache, his accent thicker than it had ever been at any point.

“I, uh…”

“A veces Americans think they are the only ones without acentos, when theirs are the easiest to hear across a room, no?” Alvarez commented.

MacTaggart laughed. “I was born and raised here. A bunch of Scots originally colonized this planet. They saw the writing on the wall, as it were, and knew Alpha Centauri would be millions strong before too long. Earth was crowded and getting better too slowly, plus the people here, well, you don’t get on a colony ship and head across space unless ye want a bunch of littles, ye ken?”

Dane could not help but glance at Lopez when MacTaggart said that and found her staring right back at him. She flushed and looked away.

“Oh, si. We have only been there a year, but already my Ginger is pregnant with our second child. She will be one of the first people born on our planet!”

“Ach, congratulations on that, then. Nothing more joyful than new life an’ all.” MacTaggart gave an amenable nod. “As I was saying, our founders knew we’d have plenty of kids before too long. One of their first orders of business was setting up a place for schooling. When the new colonists showed up, well, we put their kids in school so they could work.” MacTaggart chuckled. “Wasn’t no conspiracy to make us all sound so fine, ya ken. We wanted the kids to be educated proper and the parents to work. But all your teachers are proper Scots and teach grammar and maths and everything else, well, the way of speaking stuck. We’ve met a few other colonies and are right proud of it, too.”

“So you’ve had a regular influx of people since your founding?” Dane asked.

“That’s right, yeah. Alpha Centauri is closer than Teegarden’s star, ya ken, of course. Ships got faster and hibernation more reliable after you lot left. We had a steady stream for a good while there. Most of them are in Alpha Central now. That’s the central planet, and the accent’s not as strong there anymore. Though you can still hear it on the streets, which is good and proper.”

“How many is most of them, if you don’t mind me asking? Your infrastructure is impressive.”

“More than a thousand folks could build, I’d wager.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dane agreed.

“We got almost four million now, spread between the two planets, and a baker’s dozen in space habitats. That’s the infrastructure you see.”

“People live on those?” Haley asked.

“In shifts, yeah. That’s where all our manufacturing is done. You saw the asteroids in orbit, of course. We mine those for ores, then build up here in space. Saves a ton of resources, fuel, and labor. We have people staying up there in shifts for months, then they come down for some proper food and to strengthen their bones back up.”

“And that’s working for you? There are no long-term health side effects?” Alvarez asked.

“Ach, that I don’t know,” MacTaggart snorted. “We haven’t had the stations up there too long. We was hoping to build a space elevator instead, ya ken, but then Earth went full weirdo, and everything changed.”

“Full weirdo?” Alvarez asked.

“That’s all we knew at first. Instead of settlers, we was getting refugees. You know how odd it is to get refugees from our home solar system?”

“What do you mean refugees? How did you know they were different than the people before?”

“They wouldn’t all be in hibernation, for starters. You see one parent arrive fifteen years older than their kid remembering them being when they woke from hibernation, it’s odd. It happens, of course. Someone had to run the ships as they fly between the stars, and the ticket is cheaper for those who stay awake to work, but shifts like that? No one wants to spend that much of their life on a road trip.

“We started seeing dozens of them. Hundreds. You want to know why our people still sound like proper Scots, it's because of them. We had kids arrive to find their parents had died during travel. Ran out of food. Or killed themselves cuz they couldn’t handle the journey. Well, we took them as our own and raised them in our schools. Three of me sons are like that. Refugees from Earth.”

“This has been going on for a while, then?” Alvarez asked.

“Oh yeah, years and years. All that changed a few years back, though. After one of the ships showed up filled with desperate, hungry people, some of them crammed two to a pod, we started having problems. Crime stuff, reports of gangs. Strange for us because we operate at full employment. Like yourselves, I’m sure. No one needs to look for a job, all they need to do is tell someone what they want to do to help, be it food, medicine, manufacturing, or arts, and we get them what they need to do it. Can’t spare no empty hands on a colony world.

“We was surprised to be hearing about gangs in our inner cities. Abducting people, apparently, though the funny thing was the abducted never reported it. Was always a concerned mum. A friend. That kind of thing.”

“The abducted people were Augmented,” Dane surmised.

MacTaggart nodded. “Wish we’d figured it out quick as that. Took us a mite longer. Might not have found out at all, except there was some sort of incident. Fifty or so of these Augmented folk all had seizures at once. Well, that got our medical people’s attention, and they started poking around in the few who died. Right surprised to find metal in their heads!”

“That must have been a nightmare,” Haley offered.

“At first, we was relieved to know what had caused the seizures, but then we started interviewing those who hadn’t died and realized something was wrong. They acted like themselves, mostly. Yet if you kept asking questions about what they wanted, what their hopes were, you’d get funny answers. Not interested in making Alpha Centauri so great anymore. All about working with Earth. Now, as you can imagine, we was rather suspicious of all this. Years of refugees arriving made us suspicious of anyone wanting to go back to Earth. Everyone was in such a hurry to leave!”

“You never sent a ship to find out what was going on?”

“Until then? No. The people from Earth was all too pleased to be here. We asked them what made them flee, and they said the same old, same old. Wars. Droughts. Environmental degradation. Politicians filling pockets with cash for empty promises. Looking back, there was people talking about how there were chips in brains, but we had seen those. Militaries had been using them for years!

“We thought those complaining were the religious sort. Believe me, we got plenty of them. You ever seen a sheep in the desert? You shouldn’t have, but the Scots found a way to raise sheep there. Only because Scots are supposed to raise sheep. So, yeah, we was accustomed to strange beliefs. Being displeased with a computer in your head was nothing new to us.”

“But after that?” Alvarez asked.

“Oh, yeah. We didn’t understand how a refugee who had half-starved for years of travel because they was fleeing Earth would want to go back because they was attacked by a gang at night, and something was in their brain now.”

“And you knew they had the implants?”

“We developed a scanner early on. Some of the refugees had them, actually, and we improved on that design. Should have realized the importance sooner, but drinking Saturday always seems a bad idea come Sunday morning.”

“So then you sent a mission back to Earth?”

“We did. Went horribly. Tried to get them implanted and all that. Barely escaped. Well, it was a chase for years, as they was fleeing all the way from Sol to Alpha Centauri. We think that’s what inspired the Augmented to develop their warp drive, actually. Though o’ course, Scots think we had a hand in inspiring everyone to develop everything, so I can’t fully speak to the veracity of that claim.

“Anyway, our people came back, and we saw a ship pursuing them from Earth with obvious ill intent. Sent cease and desist messages and built a fleet to stop them from coming in. We stopped that first ship, sure enough, but we was rightly surprised when another showed up hot on its heels, out of nowhere, as it seemed. By luck, we managed to scuttle it and figure out the warp drive. We started building those fast as we could after that. Using the platforms. Been about five years, I’d say. Going all out against them.”

“And no refugees have come since then?”

“Besides yourselves? No. Not one. There were some en route, but when the Augmented figured out the warp drive, they took care of them before they could get here.”

“Have they attacked your star system?”

“Besides that first warp ship? Yes. They attacked one other time, but we were ready for them. Fought them back with every ship we had but suffered some losses. Then we took the attack to them.”

“We were there for that,” Dane told him. “Honestly, the only reason we’re not already Augmented is that your huge asteroid ship showed up at the right moment. We were able to escape the solar system thanks to the chaos you caused.”

“That right? You saw our monster in action?”

“We did, sir.” Richmond hadn’t spoken up since explaining he’d stolen the ship. “We watched that thing warp in and took our chances to save Dane, who was down on the surface. I gotta say, it was quite the sight, seeing you rain holy hell down on them.”

“Hurt our souls, to be honest, seeing what they’d done with the old place and having to wreck it like that, but war’s war, and we won’t stand and have any of our people lose their minds because some computer says it’s the best way to go.”

“And have you found a way to cure your Augmented people?” Carlos asked, making no effort to conceal his eagerness for a positive answer.

“Alas, your governor’s in a bad way. We don’t know how to remove the nanites. They’re tricky little buggers. Once they’re in the body, they latch onto pretty much everything, which means taking them out harms the person. We’ve never seen them in the raw, as it were. Like trying to make a sweater without having any wool, you see.”

Carlos glanced at Dane, who didn’t see any reason to do anything but nod. This was the moment they were waiting for, a true chance at a useful, working alliance against the Augmented. If they could help MacTaggart and his people unravel how the nanites worked, maybe they could take back Earth.

“Lucky for us all, we have exactly that.” Carlos produced the locked case of samples. Dane had ordered him to keep it with him, so no one would find it during the search of the ship.

“What’s that, then?” MacTaggart asked, not believing Carlos.

“It’s like he said. We have a sample,” Dane reiterated.

“Pardon me for sounding disbelieving, but how in the hell did you get one of those?”

“We went to Earth. Nearly got implanted when your asteroid ship struck. Managed to get it out with us. Like I said, we wouldn’t have got it without you.”

“It wasn’t the only time we came close,” Richmond put in. “We had some on the Prometheus but were worried about a spy, so we dumped it all in space.”

“When we were invaded, they brought more injectors with them, but we weren’t able to recover any of those.”

“Aye. That’s what we’re familiar with. Once whoever had them loses contact with the injector, it ruins the nanites. You have some in their raw state. That could be a game changer, ya ken. I’m in space force, so more of a ‘shooting ships and trying to figure people out’ sort of position, but I know we have eyes on those nanites. Might be what we need to make a breakthrough.”

“Dr. Alvarez has been tirelessly working on the same solution. We brought him with us on the chance you would be interested in solving this problem. Perhaps he could accompany your researchers while we’re here?”

“Aye, that’d be perfect. And where are my manners? You all seem trustworthy enough. More importantly, you passed your scans and don’t have any hidden broadcast equipment on your ship, so I trust that even more. Ha! We’d like you all to come to Alpha Central. We’ll get to work on figuring out terms there.”

“That would be great,” Dane said and meant it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MacTaggart did not seem the type to ride around in someone else’s ship when he had his own to command. Sure enough, he insisted on returning to the ACN Wallace before they got underway. He did ask if Campbell could stay aboard the Prometheus, though. To Dane, the implications were clear. Yes, we “trust” you, but we’re not going to leave you alone on your ship in our star system either. Dane had no issue with that. Some things simply made sense from a security perspective, and leaving people on the Prometheus was one of them.

They got underway quickly. The Prometheus followed the Wallace, while two of the other ships followed them. The other three went back to watching the perimeter. Dane couldn’t be certain, but he’d heard Campbell say something about “quantum entanglement” over her radio. That explained how they’d been spotted so quickly upon coming into the system.

Dane tried not to let himself get carried away, but he was becoming more optimistic about this alliance. The Centauri seemed to take the Augmented seriously and were committed to preserving their intellectual independence. Dane wanted to form the tightest alliance he could. It was too soon to talk about such things, but he was also wondering about what a relocation to this system would look like. With four million people, they could surely absorb a thousand without much issue. Would that be better than life on Varuna?

From a security perspective, the answer was an obvious and resounding yes. They could not hope to defend themselves in the way these people could. If their primary goal was to avoid being implanted by the Augmented, moving here made the most sense.

Dane’s heart didn’t tolerate the thought well. He liked the oceans of Varuna, the way they teemed with life, both familiar and alien. He liked their underwater home and the nessies, the crystal cave, how every horizon held limitless potential. However, those were all dreams that would not stand up to a security perspective.

What mattered now was to learn as much as he could about this star system and the people who called it home.

Though Campbell didn’t seem the most obliging teacher. She was MacTaggart’s opposite in nearly every way. He was broad, and she was thin. His hair was light red, hers was black. He was gregarious. She was reserved. He spoke at length about anything, while her words were few and far between.

Dane considered dumping her with Richmond, so at least the two of them could understand the meaning of uncomfortable silence, but he decided against it. Better to learn what he could, even if it felt like looking for fish in a colony of zingers.

“So, Alpha Central orbits the two big stars farther in?” Dane asked.

“It looks that way, but no,” Campbell replied.

“It orbits them both.” Richmond indicated a map of the system.

“Right now, from this angle, it looks like it’s between them. It actually traverses outside them,” Molly explained. She had obviously been studying the maps. “The two stars are twenty-seven AU apart. Give or take.”

“Twenty-seven?” Dane asked, flabbergasted.

Campbell nodded and gave them the barest of smirks.

“And the planet goes around the outside?” Dane asked.

“Yes.”

“Then a year must be…”

“Much longer than one on Earth,” Molly offered, which was technically the truth.

“How do you keep time here?” Dane asked, well aware of how sticky their own ‘day’ on Varuna was. It was close to fifty hours, so the people of Varuna measured time in both that day and the more familiar day of Earth, though he wondered how long that would last. Would it make sense to use the 24 hours of Earth if no one could ever return to the home planet?

Dane supposed they had been using it before the warp drive had been discovered when there was literally zero chance of them going home. Now they could return to the Sol system, but not safely. Did that mean their cultures would shift? Would Alpha Centauri’s calendar become the new galactic standard, or would they enter a period where there was no standard? Questions like these were beyond Dane’s pay grade as security chief, but as governor, they were important. How else would you schedule shipments, visits, or security details without an agreed-upon method of keeping time?

“We use hours, the same as Earth, but instead of years, we keep ‘seasons.’ There’s a slight variation in the planet’s weather based on which star we’re closer to.”

“Have you experienced a year yet?” Molly asked.

“Since we’ve been here, Alpha Central has experienced one and a half years,” Campbell revealed without further elaboration.

“How many seasons is that?” Molly asked, completely undeterred by her less-than-stellar conversation partner.

“One hundred and six. Though it does get tricky because the suns are also orbiting each other, so our position in relation to them changes, too,” Campbell stated in a true outpouring of emotion.

“Are we going to cruise all the way in?” Richmond asked.

“We don’t have time for that,” Campbell countered. “We’re waiting for MacTaggart to get far enough ahead of us so our warps don’t interfere with each other.”

“Does that concern you with the drives you use? When you appeared around us, it was pretty close,” Dane pointed out.

“We prefer not to warp close enough to feel each other’s wakes. It could damage the instruments. But when there is a potential enemy in the system, we view warping close as a tactic. It disrupts instruments, as you surely experienced, which we are prepared for while the enemy will not necessarily be. Our fleets will need to work that out if we begin to travel between the two systems regularly.”

While Dane appreciated that Campbell was thinking toward the future, he didn’t want to mention their entire fleet was currently in this system. There were a few fighters, colony vessels, and a shuttle back home, but that hardly seemed to count compared to what they had here.

“Sir, Wallace is signaling us.”

“Put it on screen,” Dane requested.

It wasn’t video or audio but a simple code.

“That means he’s readying to jump,” Campbell explained.

“Great. Do we signal back?”

“Only if there’s an issue. We want to make the warp as quickly as possible in case of combat operations.”

“Very well. Richmond…do nothing.’

“On it, sir,” Richmond confirmed.

Then the ACN Wallace winked out in front of them.

“Make a note of its last location. We’ll jump when we get there. These will be your final coordinates,” Campbell imparted.

Molly accepted them and put them into their piloting software.

“So you still use Earth’s hours. Is that convenient on Alpha Central?”

“Luckily enough, it is. On the Desert, the days are long, which makes it hot on one side and cold on the other, but on Alpha Central, the spin is close to Earth’s. Only twenty hours. That’s what we use for our standard, even though we didn’t settle it until after the Desert.”

“Is that what you call the world? The Desert?” Molly asked.

Campbell shrugged. “Technically, it’s Proxima Centauri Freedom, but literally no one calls it that,” she informed them. Dane thought she’d almost let some emotion through. She must have thought that mouthful of a name was hilarious to dare betray any feelings. If Dane hadn’t scanned her, he might think she was a robot. She made Richmond look like a muppet.

“Approaching warp point,” Molly announced.

“Ready the drive.”

“Up to speed.”

“At warp point.”

“Warp!”

Outside faded to nothing as their instruments tried to make sense of the space that wasn’t space, the space that was wrinkled and folded like fabric, which their ship passed through like a needle.

Not much later, regular space appeared once more, and they were much closer to Alpha Central.

From out here, Dane saw why people had chosen to populate this planet more than the Desert. It was not quite the blue marble that was Earth, but it was damn close. It had oceans, clouds, and continents ranging in color from brown to yellow to green to a vibrant orange that reminded him of MacTaggart’s hair. However, unlike Earth, most of the world’s surface showed no signs of habitation.

That did make sense. Earth had ten billion in its solar system, billions of which lived on the planet itself. Alpha Central had to have something more like three million tops, many of whom had to be in the orbital stations that crowded the orbit of the planet. There were surely cities down there, but Dane could not see them from space.

Though, in truth, he wasn’t looking that hard. The signs of civilization were much closer. From their perspective, Dane saw not one, not two, but three massive space stations. Each of them incorporated an asteroid caged at its core, connected at two points to a network of scaffolding. The closest of these had windows built into much of the lumpy stone, so people could look out. Long, spindly arms peppered with dozens of docked or drifting spacecraft extended from them. Industrial centers manufactured what his trained eyes told him were either space craft or missiles.

Among these larger stations were smaller ones that didn’t benefit from the addition of a massive asteroid at their center. Some of them were delicate, beautiful things, like spun glass or cut crystal. They must have been communication centers or relays for whatever security system lay at the edges of this unusual star system. There were chunkier, heavy stations that had to be heavily armed and could be used as physical blocks during an invasion.

It didn’t look like they would get a closer look, though. Campbell had given Molly another destination. It was one of the farthest tips, the longest arm on one of the asteroid stations. It was hard to see at first, but Dane noticed some of the heavier ships slowly and subtly working their way over there as well. They were being placed far from the other docked ships, then, and the security system was being optimized to contain them.

It would make a last-minute escape more difficult, but Dane found this did not bother him. They were in “trust but verify” mode, and he didn’t blame them for it. Their enemy was a powerful and deceptive one. It only made sense to be cautious.

Docking procedures went smoothly. MacTaggart must have forewarned the station of their guests.

“Orders, sir?” Richmond asked.

“I would like you to stay with the ship. They’re welcome to do inspections since it might be an opportunity for them to see enemy technology, but I don’t want them poking around without your people making sure nothing is damaged. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“No, sir. That’s reasonable, and we appreciate it. We will want to send a team to inspect the craft, but first, there are some…formalities to be observed. If you have formal dress, I would recommend it at this juncture.”

“Formal dress?” Dane tried not to let his jaw hang too far open.

Lopez smirked. “I was afraid of this. Don’t worry. I got you.”

She led him to their quarters, where Dane found a tuxedo waiting for him.

“Is this a bow tie?” he asked, shocked.

“Of course it is. You want to wear the long one in zero gravity? It would float up and get in your face. Now be a dear and turn around while I dress.”

The temptation to peek was mighty, but things were still so new between them that Dane resisted. He was rewarded when Lopez told him to turn around.

“Oh, wow,” he managed to say.

“It’s a little revealing, maybe, but any longer fabric would just float around!” The dress showed off Haley’s amazingly toned legs and arms, and it hugged her tightly enough that it would not float in zero gravity.

“I like it,” Dane murmured.

“Oh, come on. You’ve seen me in swimsuits. This doesn’t show nearly as much as those do!”

“I’m not checking you out when you’re harvesting kelp or riding a nessie.” That was a lie, but Lopez only laughed, so Dane counted it as a white one.

They arrived back on the bridge looking better than either of them had in years. Dane was both pleased and surprised to find Good waiting for them, also decked out in a tuxedo. Two of the newer security guards, Linda Evans and Paul Simmons, accompanied him. They were dressed in the more typical jumpsuits.

“Didn’t think to have your staff bring formal wear?” Dane asked.

“We didn’t want to go all out with it,” Good admitted. “Believe it or not, I packed an outfit like this when we went to Earth. Didn’t see the point in telling them, though.”

“You look amazing, sir.” Paul Simmons saluted sharply.

Alvarez came out, though he was not nearly as well-dressed as the others.

“A lab coat doesn’t count as a coat,” Lopez chided.

“If there is a chance I can slip away to talk to the other scientists, I will take it.”

“But we could use your…sense of humor at a welcome reception!” Dane protested.

Carlos shrugged. “This is more important. Plus, well, I never liked Scottish food. No spice!”

Dane rolled his eyes but could certainly understand where Carlos was coming from, at least in regards to wanting to meet the science team.

“Let’s go meet the locals, huh?” Dane offered.

They left the Prometheus and found a welcome party waiting for them. Not a bunch of soldiers, not some bureaucrats who needed to check their documents, but a proper welcome party. There were soldiers in dress uniforms standing in two neat rows and a group of very well-dressed people at the end of the line. Dane was surprised to see MacTaggart there, hair slicked back as if he had run through a waterfall of grease. He couldn’t believe it, but he thought his hair looked better as a big, poofy mess than like this!

MacTaggart and the other dignitaries all wore tuxedo tops, but instead of pants, they wore kilts. Most of them hung perfectly in zero gravity. There had to be magnets involved. Yet MacTaggart’s was floating up, revealing a pair of the thickest, hairiest thighs Dane had ever seen. He could have gone his entire life without glimpsing something like that…

The soldiers all saluted in perfect unison when Dane and his people entered the row between them. When they reached the end, MacTaggart bowed low, then turned to introduce the other dignitaries.

“Gentlemen, this is acting governor of Varuna, the planet that orbits Teegarden’s star, George Dane. This is Haley Lopez, Dr. Carlos Alvarez, and his security detail, headed by Mr. Good. Mr. Dane, this is Alexander Douglas, a senior member of the House of Lords. Lord Douglas is very involved with the military budget, so any expenditures ye are hoping to request would come through him.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Governor Dane, and I assure you we are interested in working together. MacTaggart tells me you have managed to procure a sample of the nanites in their unimplanted form. We are already working on a value for such a contribution to give us some sort of a budget.”

“If that’s what’s best, by all means.” Dane felt more out of his depth than he had facing down six battle cruisers.

Alexander Douglas was a good deal older than the other dignitary.

“This is Ron Bell, also a member of the House of Lords and, more importantly, the station manager.”

“I think our constituents might feel differently,” Bell intoned.

“Pah. Your constituents like resources coming in from the station, which means your role as manager is an important one.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Bell. If there’s anything we should do to make our time on your station easier for you, please let us know.”

“You’ve already submitted to the scans?” Bell asked.

“They have, sir, yes. That was the first thing we did.” MacTaggart’s ruddy complexion reddened.

“And the nanites are safe? If they escaped, it could end us,” Bell pointed out.

“We’ve had them stored all the way from Earth securely with no incidents,” Alvarez revealed. “They’re safe.”

Bell looked visibly relieved. “I certainly hope they stay that way. The chances of them being able to undo the Augmentation process…well, I won’t lie. That would be quite the accomplishment. I do worry, though.”

“We all worry,” Douglas commiserated. “That is part of being at war.”

“If it would suit you, I could have my head biologist get started sooner rather than later,” Dane volunteered.

“We’ve prepared a feast!” MacTaggart blurted.

“And I’m certain we can send a plate with Mr. Alvarez. If he wishes to get started, I will not argue. Time is more valuable than money, as we all know,” Douglas quipped.

“I want everything in a quarantined section of the station. Will that be a problem?” Bell asked.

“Of course not,” Carlos confirmed.

“Very well.” Bell punched some commands into a pocket-sized tablet.

“Now, we are sure you are tired from your journey. We have prepared a welcome reception and meal for you and your crew. Those who stayed on your ship are welcome to join, though we understand if you don’t want your ship emptied, so food will be delivered to them as well. We can discuss our future plans and goals over a meal, if it suits you.”

“Uh, that—”

“That would be lovely.” Lopez cut Dane off before he could say it wasn’t necessary.

“Very good. Would you care to accompany me to the central asteroid, where we have some spin gravity?” Douglas asked Haley. “I assure you I can actually move there. Out here, I always feel as if I’m starting to float away.”

“I would be honored, Lord Douglas.” Haley smiled and squeezed Dane’s hand before walking with Douglas down the long arm of the station toward the central asteroid.

Dane fell in beside Bell, who still seemed uncomfortable but was more than willing to discuss the space port. It really was an amazing structure. They were moving through a hollow, rectangular section with glass walls and a metal ceiling and floor. People walked on the ceiling and floor with the aid of magnetic boots, while the glass provided unobstructed views of outer space and the comings and goings of this arm of the space station.

Dane suspected there was normally more activity, but this section had been cleared out with their arrival. Still, ships came and went, though they all looked like military craft rather than civilian.

“That’s what the cage around the asteroid is for? So you can spin it for artificial gravity?”

“Simulated gravity, we’re supposed to say,” Bell clarified. “Only because our researchers think true artificial gravity might be the next big breakthrough. But yes, we affixed the asteroid on an axis and set it to spin after we carved it out. That way, people can move around inside.”

“Clever.”

“It was not my idea, but I will thank the appropriate people. Would you believe we actually looked at doing the same thing to the planet? We wondered if it was possible to make the day match the day of Earth.”

“Is it?”

“Not in the middle of a war. The resources required are too high.”

“I hope we can get past this and start working on improving our three planets,” Dane replied.

“Yes, quite,” Bell agreed.

Dane wasn’t sure what the lord was asking for, but it didn’t seem like he had responded the right way. “Your people have been working on the nanites issue, then?”

“We have been, with little results,” Bell remarked. “I hope your presence here proves to be a herald of progress in that regard.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

I have eyes on them now. Though I don’t have access to the central asteroid this time of day.

The dockworker flushed with pleasure in response. The Augmented were happy, and he literally felt their pleasure as his own. It was a wonderful, joyous sensation.

That’s acceptable. We have a waitress for that meeting. Stay close for now, and listen to as much as you can.

That wouldn’t be difficult. The station manager had ordered the entire walkway cleared from the stolen Augmented ship to the station’s central asteroid. However, he had not given any orders about the walkway on the opposite side of the tunnel. So while the dockworker was not walking with these people he’d dared to hope were allies from Earth with updates or new orders, he was walking above them. He might not have been able to hear their conversation on a normal day. However, half the regular traffic had been cleared away, and most of the berths were empty. He could hear them fine.

So could all the other Augmented there on the station and down on Alpha Central, thanks to the implant in the dockworker’s head. He felt them listening in, using his ears. The way he would use theirs when these people from another star system passed beyond where the dockworker was supposed to be.

There weren’t many of the Augmented in this system. So many had been caught in the Centauri’s nets. Yet there were enough to accomplish their goals, which were coming close to fruition.

The dockworker worried that these people from Varuna—the first colony world, one of the other Augmented told him—would upset those plans. The other Augmented calmed him. They were not here to hunt the Augmented, which meant they could continue with their plan.

Not that they didn’t need to adapt.

Of particular interest to both the two House of Lords members and to the Augmented was the case of unimplanted nanites the scientist carried. Every Augmented knew how important it was to keep them out of the unimproved’s hands.

The unimproved weren’t as intelligent as the Augmented. They had not even been able to figure out how to create a warp drive themselves. However, they were tenacious in their zealous beliefs that improving the human condition via implants and a collective mind was somehow bad. They could not be trusted with the nanites in their raw form.

So it was with great concern that the dockworker highlighted the dialogue about the case of nanites the scientist had brought with him.

There was a flurry of discussion from the various Augmented about what to do.

Attack now and destroy them!

Can you create a hole in the glass to kill all these people?

The negative aspect of this suggestion, that he would die as well, did not occur to the dockworker. He would gladly die if it meant protecting the Augmented and the better future they represented. Every Augmented understood their role was only to protect the home world and the Algorithm whose programming was based there.

No! That would leave the nanites with no one to gather them.

Ah. That would be a problem. Even if he somehow succeeded in killing those present, surely someone else from the station would spacewalk to get the case of nanites. The Centauri had all but certainly told each other about it. They were organized in that regard.

I will be able to listen in the next meeting. Perhaps we should wait?

That was the waitress. She was the next part of this plan and surely wanted to fulfill her role like the dockworker wanted to fill his.

I can attempt to follow the scientist when he departs from the rest. I am scheduled to leave soon.

There came a flurry of replies to this, but eventually, it was agreed upon to follow this course of action. If they could somehow damage the facility where the nanites would be taken and either release them or destroy them, that would be ideal for most of the Augmented. They had plans in the works that would make all this irrelevant. What was most important was getting to that point. Bringing those plans to their completion.

At least, that was what the majority of the Augmented thought.

It was hard being an Augmented on this planet, or so said the Augmented from Earth, who sometimes communicated with them and gave them orders. The Augmented of Earth never needed to debate courses of action. Sometimes the Algorithm would ask people to give their opinions or suggestions but never to make a decision. That was the role of the Algorithm. Yet here, far from the relay towers that carried the will to help guide them all, the Augmented had to pool their minds together and do their best to complete their tasks in a way that would help Earth.

That process was not always easy, but then, no part of their existence here was easy. It could be! If the unimproved of this world would simply accept Augmentation, the entire system could be optimized for human efficiency and pleasure. Until then, the Augmented had to take the best actions they could with limited resources.

Are the nanites the most dangerous part of this, though?

What could be worse than that?

An alliance. If there are two worlds against us, it will present more dangers that are more difficult to anticipate.

That could indeed be dangerous, especially if they find other colonies.

So much of our mission depends on deception and sowing chaos at the right time. Should we not pursue something along this same path?

That was the plumber. They had come here most recently, disguised as refugees like most of the Augmented. The dockworker knew there was a time when a lack of experience would make someone’s opinion less valuable, but that was not the case with the plumber. They were the Augmented with the most up-to-date understanding of the Algorithm. Therefore, their opinion was always worth considering.

Everyone paused to consider this. The dockworker continued along until he reached the gate as he, too, considered their best plan of action. He didn’t see any reason to disagree with the plumber. Multiple paths could be followed, and multiple strategies pursued. Indeed, that was the strength of the Augmented. They were both many and one, all at once. It was an advantage they shared over the unimproved.

The welcome party and the people from the Prometheus entered the inner asteroid. Dane, Lopez, Good, Carlos, Alvarez, and two others whose names had not been used but were obviously soldiers because they carried weapons. The dockworker made no attempt to follow.

The waitress was already watching them approach, a tray of drinks in hand. The simulated gravity balanced her in a way that simply could not be done where the dockworker was. There was no point in him following because the Augmented were already following. They would only miss the briefest part of the interchange. The moment for the dockworker to strike or try something rash was gone.

Now it was time for him to discreetly follow the scientist and the group of people who came to meet him. He would discover the location of the raw nanites, and the collective of Augmented would use that data to speed up their victory. He thought all this himself, yet the ideas also came from the other Augmented. They came from the plumber and the waitress and the custodian. He did not doubt they were his ideas. No Augmented ever doubted their independence. However, everyone else checked over, reconfigured, and approved of all ideas.

The plumber said that on Earth, this process was not necessary. On Earth, there were always a specific number of minds devoted to this task of thinking. Tens of thousands working in shifts, so there was no hesitation. There was simply putting one’s opinion against the group and being confirmed or given another path. Here, they worked with the resources they had, which were all their combined minds and the relatively weak distributed network that facilitated their implants.

“Hey, lad, you getting off on this floor?”

The dockworker nodded and disembarked. That happened sometimes. When one of them was adding their input to a decision while doing something else, they occasionally hesitated like that. Froze. They knew it was dangerous, yet no one knew how to prevent it. Making decisions as a collective was far too important with so few of them.

“Long day,” the dockworker commented, which earned a nod from the person still on the elevator.

I agree with the plumber. If we can find a way to destabilize this relationship before it starts, that will aid Earth.

I have contacts who might be able to help us with this.

You are sure they will not suspect you? Your contacts are essential to the success of the mission. None of us have the access they do.

I think we can arrange something that feels organic to them. Something they feel they already agree with. They are sympathetic, after all.

Well, of course they are!

Who wouldn’t be?

There are those who resist us.

They are blind.

Like we were.

In the before.

When we were apart.

Soon, our work will bring the people of this world together.

This system will benefit.

The galaxy will benefit.

Of course it will.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The interior of the asteroid was more comfortable only because it was spinning and thus had the sensation of gravity. Other than this one convenience, there was little attention paid to any niceties. The halls were either slick metal or the raw stone of the asteroid. The lights were bright and unforgiving. There were plants regularly spaced which helped soften the utilitarian feel somewhat, though Dane was certain they were only there to help with air purification. They didn’t pass anyone in the hall who was not encumbered in some way with cleaning supplies, building materials, or a tablet in hand.

Dane wondered if the people on the surface of the actual planet had this same sense of urgency. He got the sense that every person on the station was actively engaged in the war effort. People were walking faster and carrying heavier loads on the off chance that the extra ten percent would save their home.

Really, it might have been off-putting if the walls here were ostentatious. Or if the pair of lords who had come to greet them did not move with the same hurried fervor as everyone else. As it was, Dane felt there was a purpose here. A reason for all these people to work so hard.

He found it inspiring, in a way. Like being in the military had been. Although back then, he had been constantly conflicted about directing a spacecraft to more or less obliterate things. It had not been easy to drop rocks on some of the targets, though Dane supposed if they ever went on the offensive against Earth, he’d be in the same situation. Dropping bombs on beautiful, useful things built on the backs of people who’d gotten a bad deal.

To think he’d actually expected to retire when he left Earth.

Their escorts led them into a room that was more decorated than the halls. There was a large “U” made of three long tables put together, with chairs all around the outsides of the U and a cart with a holographic display apparatus in the middle. A table in the corner held a coffee pot and a few bottles of what looked like Scotch, which hardly surprised Dane, and nothing else.

Douglas and Bell sat on one side of the table with MacTaggart. Dane and Lopez settled on the other side while Good stood at the door, and his two people waited outside.

Once they were seated, a young woman brought them all water and asked which of the three options they wished to eat.

“You’re our first foreign dignitary, so you’ll have to forgive us the food up here. Everything is grown, processed, cooked, and packaged down on the surface, so the people up here don’t have to waste time performing food prep or cleaning dishes.”

“I’m sure it’s delicious,” Lopez demurred politely. Douglas and Bell shared a look. Dane couldn’t quite read the men’s faces yet, but if he had to guess, he’d say they were amused by this assertion.

Dane ended up choosing the Swedish meatballs, while Lopez decided on the lasagna. MacTaggart also asked for meatballs, while both of the lords went for the third option, a burrito. The waitress did not ask Good what he wanted, which Dane did not appreciate. Before he could say anything, Lopez elbowed him to silence.

Dane looked at Good, who only shrugged and nodded. House of Lords, indeed.

While they waited for their food, Dane once more recounted the mission to Earth and how they had acquired the nanites.

MacTaggart, warming to them apparently, chimed in at this point of the story to add that his Astrocarrier provided cover for Dane’s escape and that when the House of Lords reconvened, they ought to consider the funding request to start work on the second one.

“We will consider it in due time,” Douglas asserted.

“Oh, aye. Spoken like a true lord,” MacTaggart sneered.

Douglas’ already austere features grew pinched at that, but Bell laughed. “You know he doesn’t mean nothing by it, Lord Douglas.” Bell over-enunciated the title, which only made Douglas pinch tighter.

"Is that the form of government you have here?” Lopez asked when MacTaggart stopped laughing.

“Oh, hardly.” Bell grinned. “We came here still technically under the power of the British government and thus had a Parliament and House of Lords. That lasted for all of twenty minutes before we did away with British rule.”

“Scotland’s always been split on whether or not to split with the king, ya ken. Made sense that those who wished to leave Earth were those sick o’ smelling the Brits on the wind.”

“But then, why do you have a House of Lords?” Lopez asked politely, though Dane knew her well enough to hear the ‘are you freaking crazy?’ mixed in.

“We don’t, officially,” Bell explained.

“We call it that because we love complaining about the decisions Parliament makes. Been doing it for hundreds of years. No reason to change that now!” MacTaggart leaned back in his chair and laughed hard. Bell openly grinned while Douglas smoldered.

“Then why were you introduced as Lord Douglas and Lord Bell?” Dane asked.

“That’s the thing of it!” MacTaggart was in stitches now. “Everyone razzed ‘em for so long that it stuck. Even though they’re not lords of anything, every lad and lassie in Alpha Centauri calls ‘em that. It’s the greatest joke of our entire star system!”

Bell smiled. “It’s true.”

“It is aggravating at times,” Douglas admitted.

“Ach, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Your constituents know ye can do things with money that no one else can. You’ll win reelection like you always do. No one else wants to do the math.”

“Nor do they wish to be teased about being a public servant, I’m sure,” Douglas commented witheringly.

That was when the server…or waitress? Dane didn’t know what to call her. Anyway, she returned with their meals. Lopez looked unimpressed with the five matching plastic containers that had obviously been microwaved, but Dane was thrilled to eat this planet’s version of rations. Dane had little doubt the Swedish meatballs, lasagna, and burritos were all made of the same meat and grains and were almost nutritionally identical. That didn’t bother him, though. MacTaggart, the other military man, also dug in with gusto.

Douglas earned the table’s ire once more when he ate his burrito with a fork and knife rather than his hands. He was quick to redirect the conversation back to the Augmented.

“MacTaggart tells us your colony at Varuna was attacked and that you actually managed to stave off the invasion. Do you think a similar strategy to what you used there would work here?”

“Frankly, sir, seeing your Astrocarrier in action gave us the idea. We noticed that when you attacked, you didn’t bother with guided missiles. At least, it didn’t look like you bothered with them from our vantage point. So we did away with the guidance part of our missiles to increase production speed.”

“From too fast to breakneck,” Lopez chimed in, which earned a snort from Bell. Obviously, the station manager could relate.

“We placed missiles in position, then put our ship where we thought they would jump in. I think something similar could work here, though it might be more difficult considering how large your system is.”

“And yours is smaller?” Douglas asked.

“Yes, sir, in nearly every way. We only have one inhabited planet with a single underwater base and a fraction of the population you have. Plus, we don’t have two suns.”

“None of that’s a guarantee they’d come where you wanted, though,” MacTaggart grumbled with meatballs in his mouth.

“That’s absolutely correct, and we were concerned that we’d guessed wrong. Fortunately, they ran right into our trap. Otherwise…well, I would probably still be here, only in an Augmented warship with nanites in my brain.”

“You all avoided implantation, then?” Douglas asked.

Dane doubted MacTaggart had left that part of what happened out of his retelling, which meant this was a test. How did the governor of Varuna respond to an intentionally misleading statement?

He decided to go with the blunt truth.

“Unfortunately, that’s incorrect. I’m acting governor only because our governor was partially implanted, as well as her second in command. It was a serious failure from a security standpoint, for which I take responsibility. We should have better anticipated how dangerous shuttles could be and left more of our fighters closer in.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, lad. It sounds like a lucky thing your people lived to tell the tale of the invasion at all. Two people is hardly something to worry about, even if they are yer leaders,” MacTaggart noted.

Bell shot him a sharp look that Dane wished he could decipher. Until then, MacTaggart and Bell seemed to be on the same page, but something about that last comment didn’t sit right with Bell.

“What do you mean by partial implantation?” Bell asked, not giving Dane the opportunity to press further into what had bothered him.

“We got them into an MRI, which destroyed some of the nanites before they fully formed the brain implant,” Lopez explained.

“That can’t be right. We’ve tried it,” Bell imparted.

“Could it be that our MRI is older than yours and thus uses more magnetism?” Lopez wondered.

"I suppose,” Bell allowed, though he did not seem convinced.

“The implant didn’t work. Either because of the MRI or because the Augmented don’t have any sort of broadcast device in our star system. We checked. Our governor and her lieutenant still seem to be operating under their own faculties, but of course, we couldn’t risk being incorrect. They are currently under guard, which is awkward, but we think it best.”

Douglas looked at Bell, who stared back with an expression of unmistakable devastation.

“I’m sorry, did the governor offend in some way?” Lopez asked. It was perhaps forward, but Dane didn’t mind. They needed to know what these people were thinking about sooner rather than later.

“The situation is secure. I can tell you that,” Dane assured them. “She no longer has security access, and we’ve changed all codes and passwords.”

“It’s not that.” Bell looked pained. “It’s my brother. He’s…he’s Augmented.”

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” Lopez blurted. Which Dane loved because he knew she had totally intended to pry.

“When we heard you had partially implanted people…well, we hoped you had something like a cure. I’d like my brother back. He was a good influence on me, and especially on my son since my wife passed.”

“We’re sorry for your loss, truly,” Dane proclaimed.

“I’m luckier than many, really.” Bell tamped his emotions down. “My son is a grown man, and healthy, even though he never has time for me. My brother…well, there’s still hope.”

“How did he get implanted?” Dane asked.

“He worked in healthcare. Was tending to some of the refugees, and one of them got him with an injector. That was when we first learned the injectors are keyed to an Augmented and will self-destruct.”

“Could I please get some water?” Douglas asked the waitress.

“Just because he didn’t get the nanites doesn’t mean he’s not a hero,” MacTaggart noted.

“He’s still alive, though?” Lopez asked.

“He’s in a facility for the Augmented. We have them all contained in the hopes of finding a cure.”

“And that’s safe?”

“It’s radio dark, so they can’t communicate with anyone on the outside. It’s also kept under constant surveillance, so yes, we think it’s safe.”

“How many people do you have in this facility?” Dane asked.

“A lot, but perhaps soon fewer, thanks to you,” Douglas remarked. “These nanites should change everything. Water, please?”

Dane had not noticed that the waitress had not made any move to refill Douglas’ water. She stood there staring at them until Douglas cleared his throat, and she snapped out of it and went to refill their waters.

“What is it you want in exchange for these samples? We could certainly talk about an exchange of currency, though that may be less than useful in our current situation. It’s not as if you use our currency, and I doubt you want to be paid in Earth money. Were you interested in materials, ships, weapons, or a more open-ended mutual defense pact?”

Dane did not fail to see Douglas bulldozing his way out of the conversation about the imprisoned Augmented, but he couldn’t turn away from a discussion of resources. He wondered why the waitress had frozen up like that, though. Did she know someone who was Augmented and in the facility? Did she have an opinion on it?

Now was not the time for such questions.

“We came seeking a mutual defense pact. We were hoping to view any attack on us as an attack on you and vice versa, but…frankly, I didn’t expect all this.” He gestured to the space station. “Your civilization is decidedly more advanced than ours.”

“Decades not spent in hibernation will do that,” Bell replied.

“I guess what I’m saying is I’m not sure what we can offer. The nanites, of course, and anything else you can think of. We don’t have any ships that could come to your aid other than the Prometheus.”

“We’ll share the schematics we have on warp drives, of course. We could possibly part with a few ships if it meant you could come to our aid, I would think. Though Parliament actually makes all these decisions.”

“I’m wondering if that’s the best option,” Bell mused.

“What could be better than a mutual defense pact?” Dane asked.

Bell shrugged. “I don’t mean to be rude, but Varuna sounds like a much smaller population and manufacturing base than this one.”

“It really is,” Lopez confirmed.

Bell continued. “Even if it wasn’t, we’re looking at a two-week travel window?”

“That’s what it took us to get here, yes,” Dane confirmed.

“It’s actually longer than that because we can’t communicate without sending a scout ship between us. At least not yet.”

“Sure,” Dane allowed.

“What I’m wondering is if it might be easier to bring your people here to Alpha Centauri. Together we’d have our fleet plus yours, more collective experience, and it’s just plain easier to defend one location instead of two.”

Dane tried not to nod, but he’d been thinking along the same lines. It did make sense for his people to come here.

“It would open up the possibility of setting a trap on Varuna, as well.” MacTaggart grinned. “If we lured part of their fleet there, only to find it empty, it could buy us some time. Shouldn’t be hard, either. Warp in that ship of yours and warp out. They’ll come sniffing at your system for sure.”

Dane hated to admit it, but it was a good idea. The Prometheus would never lead an assault on Earth. It was their own ship, already obsolete. It would be far more useful as bait. Plus, the Augmented were familiar with the ship and knew where it had gone. If they saw it again, they would assume Varuna was involved.

“I think that could make a lot of sense, yes,” Dane agreed. “All provisional, of course, but certainly something I’ll talk about with my people.”

“Potential to be a lord, with an answer like that.” MacTaggart chuckled. “Though you did say yes. The lords try never to say yes or no, if they can help it.”

“Were you going to clear away the trays, or…” Douglas gestured to the waitress, who was once again staring at them.

“Apologies.” She stepped over to clear their trays and bustle them away. Douglas watched her pointedly, obviously not wanting to resume the conversation until she was gone. Dane thought it rude, but then, they were discussing the security of three worlds.

After she left, Douglas spoke up again. “It is definitely something worth bringing to Parliament. We have called a special session tomorrow because of your arrival. Those always take place on the planet, so we’ll get you down there for the meeting. In the meantime, we have prepared a section of quarters inside the asteroid for you and your people.”

“Though of course you can stay on your ship, if you prefer,” Bell suggested.

“They got you sleeping inside the asteroid, though,” MacTaggart remarked with a grin. “I always take the chance to sleep under gravity. Better for the bowels and all that.”

“We’d be honored to stay here,” Dane professed. “Though we’ll leave some people on our ship to mind it. Would it be possible to have dinner delivered to them? It’s been ages since any of us have had a burrito.”

“Of course. We’ll have burritos for all.”

It was an odd note to end the meeting on, but Dane thought it a good sign. Certainly better than a “burritos for none” policy.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The quarters weren’t any more glamorous than anything else in the station, but they were clean and surprisingly spacious, so Dane found them more than adequate. There was a larger central room with a “kitchen,” which was only a sink and a microwave, as well as six bedrooms and two bathrooms attached.

Dinner got there not long after they did. Dane and Lopez set the table for the security people who were with them.

“You’re the governor. You don’t have to do that,” Good mentioned.

“I don’t like that ‘staff eats separate’ crap. But if you feel uncomfortable, you can give me your gun while you eat.”

Good and his two security people sat. After they’d started to eat, someone knocked at the door.

“I can get that,” Good tried to say around a mouthful of burrito.

“It’s fine. I’ve got it.” Dane headed over.

“It could be a security concern, though!”

“Good thing I’m the security chief. Or was, anyway. Besides, there are two Centauri guards out there. They should have it covered. If they were overpowered, or this whole thing is an elaborate ruse to get us, you might as well have some food in you before it all goes down.”

It was neither an attacking army nor Augmented spies at the door. It was Carlos Alvarez, bubbling with excitement.

“They have amazing facilities here, and so many people! It took an hour simply to meet all the different departamentos!” Carlos gushed.

“Do you think the nanites will be helpful?”

“I do, yes. They have been trying to get them in their raw state for some time. They have even tried to reverse engineer them based on what they have found in dead Augmented, or based on the health implants they use, but no suerte.”

“They tried to engineer them?” Dane asked in disgust.

“That is how these things must work sometimes,” Carlos clarified. “Now, the entire department is going to shift over to studying what passages these things use and how they assemble themselves. The hope is that we can build some to do the opposite.”

“Where are the nanites now?” Dane asked.

“They are in the lab, por supuesto,” Carlos stated as if it were so obvious.

“So they kept them?” Dane asked.

“It is a safety concern. They do not want the nanites getting out any more than we do. Did you know they can use almost any pathway to get into the blood? Even the digestive lining of the stomach.”

“I guess that explains why Douglas was so willing to offer a ship or three. He must have known the nanites were already locked up,” Lopez commented.

Dane tried to push away his feelings of annoyance. He had assumed they would be splitting the nanites or, better yet, would study them under Alvarez’s watchful eye. Instead, they had been taken in the name of security.

“And the lab was secure?” Dane asked.

“Oh yes. No one got in without a keycard and fingerprint scan, not even the head researchers. There are guards outside and security cameras everywhere. I think they are safer there than they were on the Prometheus.”

That mollified Dane somewhat, which made him realize he was more concerned about the security logistics than about them taking the nanites. He found he trusted the Centauri’s intentions. They didn’t want to become Augmented any more than he did. What he didn’t fully trust was Alvarez’s assessment of the security. The damn biologist didn’t lock his own doors unless someone made him do it. Dane would have to send someone over there to make sure Carlos had not been exaggerating.

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow then?” Good asked.

“We’re going down to talk to Parliament. I’m pretty sure I could get us a few ships with warp, but the bigger thing is going to be a debate about us moving here.”

“You mean like the entire colony?” Alvarez asked.

“That’s the idea,” Lopez confirmed. “I don’t like it because I’d miss the nessies…but it could make sense.”

“It wouldn’t have to be permanent,” Dane agreed. “As it stands, we can’t really defend each other. Not with two weeks of travel in between us. I don’t want to abandon our planet, but moving here might be safest.”

“There is certainly a lot to learn,” Carlos added. “They have made amazing leaps forward in medical technology. Some of it surely is stolen from the Augmented, but still, they are capable of things we simply cannot do on Varuna.”

“Like what?” Lopez asked.

“They have medical nanites that looked impressive. They have used them for models of the brain versions. Really, we need Granger here. They have made breakthroughs in all sorts of things. They even have basic quantum entanglement figured out. I could hardly understand it since math was never mi fuerte. That is how they saw us coming, though. Their receivers sent a message instantaneously. If we could make a device that allowed our two colonies to communicate faster than light…well.” Carlos grinned, rendered speechless by his own recounting.

“What about their culture? Do we have any beads on that? I met their House of Lords, but sometimes the powerful aren’t like the regular folk,” Dane pointed out.

“I can tell you they’re all-in on this war,” Good reported.

“How do you know that?”

“When we were giving them a tour of the Prometheus, we got to talking. I might have let slip that I’d been to Earth and made it out of there and that we’d fought off an invasion.”

“Bragging, you mean,” Lopez corrected.

Good only grinned before continuing. “I could be wrong, but I get the sense that everything is militarized here. It’s like every friend they had, every partner, and even their kids are helping the effort. All this talk about the war effort and doing their part and everyone chipping in. Right now, anyway, I’d say the invasion has brought them together.”

“Then us showing up with these nanites might be the game changer they’re all waiting for.”

“I certainly think it’ll help us seem friendly to them. Every man, woman, and child on this planet is trying to end these Augmented, and we show up with a real shot? I think your visit to Parliament tomorrow could go well.”

“Does anyone have opinions on us moving here?” Dane asked the room.

Silence at first. Lopez was the only one brave enough to break it. “We all trust you as a governor, Dane. We know you want us all to be safe and successful. If you think us moving here is best…that’s what’s best. Period.”

“Well, I appreciate that, Lopez. Even if we are sharing a bedroom.”

Everyone laughed before digging in for more food. It was a good moment on a new world. Dane went to sleep pleased with the day’s work and ready for an even longer one tomorrow.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

For a moment, when Dane woke up, he thought he was still dreaming. Why else would he be in a bed with Haley Lopez? Then the events of the last few days and weeks came back to him, and he realized, in this case, reality was better than dreaming. They were together, on another planet, meeting other colonists who understood the challenges they were facing. Yes, there were difficulties ahead, but they were facing them together.

Though he could fix coffee by himself.

He wandered into the kitchen and did indeed find a coffee maker. He put the coffee on and went back to bed, only to find Haley already getting dressed.

“I was hoping to catch you earlier than this.” Dane pointed at her clothes.

Haley winked. “Let’s see how your meeting with Parliament goes before we get ahead of ourselves. Is that coffee I smell?”

The coffee had lured not only Haley out of bed but the whole security team. They gathered around the sputtering machine, smiling as it dripped and filled the pitcher with rich brew.

They had barely finished the first cup of coffee when breakfast was delivered. Some sort of reconstituted egg substitute with potatoes and sheep’s cheese inside a tortilla. Haley was not impressed, but Dane was more than happy with it.

MacTaggart arrived not long after, in military uniform once more, thank goodness. The only thighs Dane wanted to see were Haley’s.

“We’ll be taking a shuttle down as soon as you’re ready.”

“No time like the present,” Dane remarked.

“Alvarez, would you care to join us?”

“I think I should stay with the lab,” Carlos replied, which was hardly a surprise.

“That’s fine with me. I want a security detail with you, though.”

“Yes, sir.” Good typed commands into his tablet.

“Lopez, you’ll come with me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of missing this.”

“My team and I will come too, sir,” Good affirmed.

“Sounds great. Shall we?”

MacTaggart led them to a shuttle bay, and they were off.

They came through the atmosphere without too much trouble. Then they were through the cloud layer and above the planet itself.

Dane had thought after all his time on Varuna, he would not see a world more beautiful, but that first view proved him wrong. Alpha Central was absolutely gorgeous. The land below them was all rolling hills, many of which were planted with wheat or barley, while in others, the aforementioned sheep grazed. There were also orchards full of trees laden with fruit Dane didn’t recognize, as well as wide expanses of natural space.

They occasionally passed what had to be industrial substations. Mills, granaries, or processing plants. Even these fit into the landscape. Surely, they had been built before the entire planet became militarized.

The capital city appeared on the horizon, and even this was a thing of beauty. There were tall, gleaming towers, yes, and broad paved roads. However, there were also beautiful green spaces with immaculately trimmed gardens, though many of the topiaries were cut into soldiers with weapons rather than whimsical animals. There was even a river running through the middle of town. People were fishing in it.

“I was under the impression that everyone was working full-speed for the military?” Dane asked MacTaggart.

“Oh, ye mean the fishermen? They’re feeding people, believe it or not. The water treatment plant is high in the city center. Those are catfish from below it. They’re clean as anything, and they populate like mad. Those folks’re working to take down their numbers and feed our people.”

“It’s beautiful,” Lopez praised.

“Oh, aye. We saw what had happened to Earth after hundreds of years of industry not giving a wet one. We decided to do things differently here from the start. The nature spaces help with mental health and ease congestion. We have autos, of course, but we also have public transit beneath the city, so it keeps people up and walking in the sunshine. If you moved here, you’d have to decide where to go. There are worse places than the capital, though. Very desirable. Half a million live here. That’s a good chunk of the whole system’s population.”

“And the rest live in what, idyllic towns?”

MacTaggart laughed. “The rest work with giant machines farming the planet. We have grain harvesters going constantly and drones to help with animals. We have restaurants in the city, but since the war, lots of our food is prepared out there in factories and brought in here. Most of the people not in the city are involved in large-scale industry. You saw a few smaller ones, but those are there mostly to keep the countryside looking proper. Rest of the planet ain’t so bonny as all that.”

Dane thought MacTaggart was being falsely modest, but he wouldn’t tell him that during their tour.

“Is that the Parliament building?” Lopez pointed to a gorgeous structure made of stone.

“The top of it, aye. Reinforced concrete and steel, that is, though of course it’s the underground that’s really safe. That was one of the first things we did when the war started. Excavate a place for our people in case we got bombed from above.”

“Is that an issue? I thought the Augmented mostly wanted to Augment.”

“We think so, too, but we’re never sure of them. If we prove too tough a sheep to shear, they may decide to have the mutton.”

“And those people in front?” Dane asked. There was a rather substantial crowd of people holding signs.

“Goddamn protesters. They were supposed to be cleaned out!” MacTaggart spoke to the pilot, who shrugged.

“What are they protesting?”

“I don’t know.” MacTaggart was obviously annoyed.

“Can we go in for a closer look?” Haley asked.

“You want ‘em to feel our engines? Why not. Take ‘em in closer,” MacTaggart ordered, and the pilot obeyed.

It was a diverse group of people, though mostly younger. Many had signs, and all were marching in a loose circle in front of the Parliament building. To Dane, they looked like students from protests back on Earth.

Before the wind from the ship’s propulsion system caught their signs, Dane read phrases like “OUR star system OUR people” and “We can NOT trust them!”

“Oh, come on. Pull up. Don’t blow all their signs away,” Lopez urged.

“You seen enough?” MacTaggart asked Dane. He didn’t seem in any hurry to pull up. In fact, he seemed to enjoy watching the protesters try to hang onto their signs.

“I have, yeah.” Dane didn’t know what he was expecting, but the signs had simply been a bunch of xenophobic nonsense. Maybe it was too much to think a cardboard sign, or whatever material it was, would have a fully reasoned and well-explained argument. He’d been hoping for more than the old “immigrants are bad” kind of thing.

He wondered who put them up to it, though. Normally, college kids were the ones fighting for immigrants or whoever was having their rights denied. Dane found it interesting and more than a little unusual that this group of people was arguing the opposite.

He tried to look through the group as they flew away to see if any of them seemed like leaders. All the college kids looked the same to him. Young people without enough clothing, and what clothing they did have, looked too big. However, a few of the protesters appeared familiar. He swore he’d seen one of those people in the docks when they first arrived, and was that their awkward waitress?

“It can’t be,” Dane muttered.

“Can’t be what?” Lopez asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

“What’s nothing?” MacTaggart asked.

The simplest way out of this was to explain the comment, even though it felt like a waste of time.

“I thought I recognized the waitress, or server or whatever, from last night. She wouldn’t have had time to make it down here to a protest, right?”

MacTaggart shrugged. “We have a near-constant stream of shuttles going up and down, but I don’t know why the person working the dinner would be opposed to immigrants. I mean, she met you.”

“Maybe she was offended that I didn’t like the lasagna more,” Lopez suggested.

“I’m sure it wasn’t her,” MacTaggart commented. “Probably some project for the school. A way to show what protests used to be like or something. I don’t know. They wouldn’t be there if they understood how important this alliance could be.”

Unless they don’t want an alliance, Dane thought. But maybe assuming a group of protesters actually supported the Augmented was paranoid, even for their current situation.

The pilot flew around the Parliament building and maybe a kilometer out to a tiny airport that had to be solely for Parliament’s use. They landed, disembarked, and were immediately taken underground, where they found a lift car waiting inside a tube.

“Whoa. Tube technology,” Lopez uttered.

“This is the easiest way to get to Parliament now that they meet underground,” MacTaggart explained. He seemed sheepish about it.

“It used to be different?”

“We founded this Parliament on the idea of an open democratic government. We even made our ‘lords’ have visiting hours! Any of their constituents can go into their offices at the right hours and bug them about whatever’s on their mind. It was wonderful. But it’s not so safe anymore, ya ken?”

“Because of the risk of Augmented people in your population?” Lopez asked.

“What? No, of course not. We screen them,” MacTaggart insisted. “People like those protesters worry everyone, though. Say one of them gets bent out of shape and decides to do something.”

“How is that different now?” Dane asked.

“It’s wartime,” MacTaggart said matter-of-factly. “Before, if a lord was stabbed in his office, we held a special election. Now we don’t have time for that!” MacTaggart laughed at the joke, but Dane found it troubling. He had thought they’d moved the entire Parliament building underground to protect it from aerial bombardment, but now he was learning they feared their own citizens. How secure was this place?

The tunnel certainly was. As they stepped into the car, the electromagnetic system activated and sent them hurtling down the tube. Dane felt the weight of the earth and city above them.

The car came to a stop, and they disembarked to find Lord Douglas waiting for them.

“Good morning, Governor Dane. I trust you slept well?”

“We did, yes. Are they ready for us in there?”

“They are, indeed. We have the entire Parliament in assembly, something that is not always easily done, especially in these trying times. I will introduce you, then you can make a plea for their votes.”

“What exactly do I want a vote for?”

“A vote of confidence would give you access to funds, and we can work out the details from there. If you have something more specific in mind, you can also propose that. Though our hands will be tied if it gets voted down.”

“Vote of confidence it is, then,” Dane remarked, and Douglas nodded.

The older Parliamentarian then turned and led them into the chamber.

It was a long hall lined with tiered seats on both sides, like bleachers but made of leather and with little desks. Paintings of imperious-looking men with impressive mustaches and women with perfectly curled red hair adorned the walls. In the middle of the hall was a small table with three chairs. Dane and Lopez sat there with MacTaggart. There was no actual air flow in the spot, making it a hot seat in every sense of the word. Once they were seated, Douglas took his place at one of the little desks and cleared his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Parliament, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to George Dane, a war hero from the history of old Earth, as well as the colony world Varuna. He was instrumental in pushing back the Augmented when they arrived in his system, and…”

Douglas went on through Dane’s bonafides before finally turning the floor over to him.

Dane wasn’t sure what to say after that. Going over his own history didn’t seem prudent.

Though his hesitation cost him any chance of a quick vote of confidence.

“And what is your purpose here?” an older man whose medals or pins on his lapel surely meant something asked. “What do you want from us, exactly?”

“We want an alliance.” Dane hoped that was straightforward enough.

“What do you bring to this alliance?”

“We are both threatened by the Augmented. We’ll be stronger together and can improve our odds of survival.”

“Having two worlds at one’s disposal is advantageous,” another Parliamentarian piped up, a woman with not a single hair out of place in her tightly wrapped bun. “But we already have that.”

Her statement elicited mingled cheers and boos. This was getting off the rails quickly.

“We fended off an attack once. We can do it again.”

“I’ve read the report on that battle. It was more luck than anything else!”

“And the asteroid ship working wasn’t luck?”

“Regardless of the battle particulars, you have one ship capable of interstellar travel, correct?” the older, bossy man asked.

“That is correct. I have been in discussions to get us more, though, so we could come to your defense,” Dane clarified.

“Two weeks too late. That is how far away your system is, is it not?”

“It is, but—”

“And what about weapons capabilities? The report says you hardly had enough missiles for the last battle. Can we seriously expect you to provide us with anything of substantive value?”

“We got the nanites. Something your people have been unable to do.”

There were plenty of cheers for that.

“I think that is worth the price of a few ships, at least,” Douglas commented.

“Then grant them the ships, and we’ll be done with it.”

“If we agree to defend them, we could leave ourselves exposed!”

“They won’t be able to help us like we can help them!”

“I move to vote to provide them with three ships equipped with warp drives and fully armed in exchange for the nanites. As well as an agreement that we will fully share any developments from work on the nanites.”

“Seconded!”

“Move for a vote?”

“Wait a minute!” It was Bell. His booming voice echoed through the Parliament building. He sounded like he was yelling at a mechanic, not addressing the duly elected political leaders of this world. Dane liked him all the more for it.

“Sending them away with nothing but three ships is akin to a death sentence. We can’t do that.”

“What other option is there?”

“A vote of confidence!” Douglas sputtered.

“Oh, and give the man with all the purse strings even more power? I think not.”

“They could relocate here,” Bell suggested. “We could help them evacuate their world, and they could come here. They have proven themselves to be tough and tenacious people. Resourceful people. They would be stronger allies on this world than theirs.”

“You can’t possibly think that’s a good idea.”

“It’s the only good idea we’ve heard so far!”

“I like it!”

“Where would they go?”

“That would be up to them.”

“So one of us will have an entirely new segment of their constituency while everyone else remains the same?”

“It could work!” Bell insisted. “I have an idea how to get them here as quickly as possible.”

“Of course you do.”

“If the lords could redirect their attention to the hologram…”

“We can go, if ye’d like,” MacTaggart whispered to Dane and Lopez.

“Aren’t they going to make up their minds?” Lopez inquired.

“In a few hours, yes. It will take every one of these bags of hot air a couple of minutes to say their piece, then they’ll all pretend like they’re going to listen to each other before they vote.”

“This is important. We can stay,” Dane stated.

“What if I told you I had something more important that you are uniquely qualified to help us with?” MacTaggart waggled a bushy eyebrow.

Dane watched the heated debate for a moment.

“Precinct seventeen would be a good place.”

“There are agricultural concerns there.”

“Agricultural concerns that I have been advocating to turn into industrial ones for months! They could help with that!”

“What about precinct thirty-eight? It’s on a coast, so they might feel more at home.”

“They’re colonists, not kelpies!”

“That right? Last I heard, they have monsters from Loch Ness on their side!”

“You know, maybe it would make sense for us to get some air,” Dane hastily agreed.

“Very good, sir.” MacTaggart spoke in a falsely formal voice, then waved at Bell, who nodded. MacTaggart stood and led them out, leaving Dane to wonder how much of Bell’s speech had been planned in advance.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“How do you think they’ll vote?” Dane asked MacTaggart after the doors closed behind them.

“I give the House of Lords a hard time, but God knows they do their best and do care about our people. I’d guess you’ll get that vote of confidence, though it’ll take a while to get there.”

“And the plan to move our population to this world?” Lopez asked.

MacTaggart shrugged. “Depends how hard Bell pushes for it. If he’s already got Douglas on his side, and therefore the checkbook, it could be the plan they vote for.”

“How will that work? Will I have the autonomy to say no?”

“To Parliament?” MacTaggart grinned.

“Why do I feel like I’m asking the wrong person?”

MacTaggart chuckled. “No, no, you have every right to say no. We voted for these lords, but you didn’t. Is that what you want, though?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I think I got something to help you make up your mind,” MacTaggart informed him.

“Why don’t I believe you?” Lopez asked.

“Sometimes, the best decisions are made when not thinking.” MacTaggart led them back to where they had gotten off the train car, though into a different tunnel this time.

“What did you have in mind?” Dane asked.

“Everyone’s heard you were a hot pilot,” MacTaggart explained. “We got a hot new ship. I thought it might make sense to put two and two together, if ya ken?”

Dane grinned. “You want me to test-pilot a fighter instead of listen to a bunch of people argue about precincts? No problem!”

“Excellent.” MacTaggart led them toward a train.

“Wait a minute, though. I have my security team with me and Lopez. I can’t have them sitting around while I go up.”

“Sir, I’ve seen you in a space fighter. You’ll be safer in one than with us,” Good pointed out.

“And you’re crazy if you think I’m not going up with you,” Lopez rejoined.

MacTaggart laughed. “We have two-seaters, so she can go up with ya. But might not do for you to chuck all over the cabin, not to mention your governor!”

Dane chuckled. “Lopez can handle it. I promise you.”

MacTaggart appraised her but only shrugged. “Very well. We have suits on the train. You two want to get suited up?”

It took nearly the entire train ride for Dane and Lopez to get dressed and to get the suits calibrated properly. They were a lot more advanced than the suits he was accustomed to! Those had tech as well. They could monitor his heartbeat and oxygen levels. Yet compared to these, they might as well have been nothing but fabric.

MacTaggart explained the entire suit was filled with micro-tech to monitor his vitals as well as adjust itself to keep him functioning at peak performance levels. It could apply pressure to his legs to keep the blood from pooling there and making him black out. It had injectors in the wrist that could dose him with painkillers, adrenaline, tranquilizers, or caffeine, depending on what he needed. It was designed to protect pilots in high-gravity situations, and MacTaggart assured Dane that he could take risks and the suit would stop him if it was lethal. Other than that, it would compensate.

It didn’t look too bad, either. Dane was in good shape. He either ran or worked out every day, even when in microgravity. However, flight suits didn’t always make that apparent. They were usually designed to keep a pilot safe in the event of a decompression, which meant they had a pocket of air around the body. That made them look rather baggy. This suit had tiny air pockets sewn into the material, kept at the appropriate temperature using microfilaments that ran through the suit and could be used to heat and cool it. It also meant the suit needed less air to breathe because the air pockets weren’t part of the life support system required to keep Dane’s lungs functioning.

MacTaggart noticed Dane admiring his own physique. “It’s the lack of air that does it. Added bonus is that if ye fart, ye won’t smell it. Well, not until you take the suit off. Then it’ll be stale as anything.”

“Good to know,” Dane remarked.

“I leave you boys alone for five minutes, and you’re discussing the smell of farts? I wish I was surprised.”

Dane had nothing to say because seeing Lopez in the suit left him speechless. He had seen her in bed this morning, which had left little to the imagination, but seeing her in the suit was something else entirely. It perfectly fit her athletic body, like it had been painted on or made custom for her. It showed off her toned legs and core but also showed the curve of her bosom quite plainly. Dane thought it was quite a good look.

“Oh, stop staring,” Lopez chided him. “It’s pressure sensing, is all.”

“That’s right!” MacTaggart confirmed. “As is the hood you pull up and put under your helmet. All for peace of mind, you understand.”

“Peace of mind?” Dane asked, not sure how form-fitting clothing was supposed to let anyone think clearly.

“What I’m trying to say is let your mind fly. No need to worry about flying too fast or turning too sharp. None of that.”

“That’s a big promise. My mind is pretty obsessed with flight.”

“Well, then. What do you think of a ship like this?” MacTaggart opened the doors and showed them a dozen or so of the most beautiful ships Dane had ever seen.

It was love at first sight. The birds were sleek and deadly-looking, with hard points at the nose and the tips of the wings, and smooth, sinuous curves everywhere else. The wings looked like they were covered in feathers. It only took Dane a moment to realize those were actually hatches with countless weapons waiting underneath.

“These are amazing,” Dane gushed, well aware his words were woefully inadequate.

“They’re designed for both atmospheric and space flight. Fast as anything and with more stingers and claws than you could imagine. For this flight, all those stingers are training munitions. Some of them don’t work as well as others, but we can’t have our test pilots accidentally tearing each other to pieces.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Dane pronounced. It also meant if he was test-flying one of these, he could actually fire the weapons!

“I’m not the biggest fan of keeping these filled with anything but our best ammunition, but pilots got to train, ya ken?”

“Sure. Of course. How many of these do you have?” He gestured around the hangar.

“This is it. Fourteen, currently. We’re working on getting more built. Should have another six or so done within two weeks, then we’ll start on a fresh batch and get these out of here. We’re having an issue with calibrating the controls.”

“I’d be more than happy to take a look at it,” Dane offered.

“Right this way.”

MacTaggart led them to a fighter with a little ladder beside it and gestured for Dane to climb up it. Dane did so gladly, then settled into the cockpit.

“I can explain the controls.”

“I’m sure I’ll need it, but give me a minute here.” Dane let his hands move over the control stick, throttle, weapons controls, targeting system, life support, and a dozen others he could only guess at. It felt familiar to him, like something he could fly…or had flown.

“I think I get the basics, but I’m sure I’ll need to know about how the weapons work. It feels wonderful, honestly.”

“We can brief you on the weapons when you get up there. Keep in mind that they won’t be quite as responsive as they would with live rounds. You throw a paintball too fast, and it either breaks or does as much damage as a bullet, ya ken?”

“Surely you have more interesting weapons than bullets?” Lopez suggested.

“We do, aye. In fact, some of them are best operated by the copilot. So if ye really are the hotshot your governor seems to think you are, you might as well climb in there and give it a try.”

Dane agreed.

“Very good, then!” MacTaggart announced when they were both settled. “I’ll get into mine, and up we’ll go.”

“Moving to radio contact.” Dane lowered the smoky glass cockpit over him and Lopez. It had integrated targeting and systems controls, of course. Lopez went through a few pre-flight checklist items simply by moving her hands around the cockpit. The ship was smart enough to track her motions and show her what she asked to see.

“Not too shabby,” Lopez remarked.

“Yeah, but let’s see how it handles,” Dane uttered.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The first thing Dane had to do was link up with a heavy launch vessel.

“It uses a cheaper fuel, easier to refine, so it saves us money when we launch this way,” MacTaggart explained, landing his fighter beside the rocket.

Dane had never done such a procedure, but the heads-up display built into the glass cockpit made it simple enough. He followed the prompts that highlighted the rocket’s magnetic tracks, then steered the ship to where it could lock-in. It clicked into place, then the rocket fired up and they were on their way to space. The ship did an admirable job of dampening out the forces that normally accompanied a rocket launch.

“I think the seats have built-in gyroscopes to keep them from moving too much,” Lopez voiced.

“The suits are helping, too.” Dane felt it increase the pressure on his torso and thighs to keep the blood from pooling there instead of in his eyes and brain. The suit even enhanced his pulse to keep the blood out of his feet and calves. Or maybe that was the excitement.

They blasted through the atmosphere and into outer space.

“All right, follow my lead. We’ll start with some basics in open space and move on to an obstacle course.”

“Yes, sir,” Dane replied to MacTaggart.

Then he disconnected the magnetic clamps, and his fighter floated off the rocket.

“First things first. Let’s make sure you understand how to keep up.”

The rear of MacTaggart’s fighter flared with light as he threw his engines to full power and blasted away from Dane.

“You ready?” Dane asked Lopez.

“If you ask me that again, I’m going to throttle yoooooooouuuuuuuuu!” Lopez whooped with excitement as Dane kicked them up to speed.

He was slammed against the seat. His senses started to go as his brain tried to keep up, then his head cleared.

“Did you feel that little prick on your forearm?” Lopez asked.

“Must be the drugs he was talking about,” Dane expressed.

“I wonder if they thicken the blood and super-oxygenate it,” Lopez mused.

Paranoia seized Dane, and he wondered if he should have had Alvarez look at the suits and the stimulants they had in them. Then the sheer thrill of the ride took over, and Dane brushed away his concerns. They had been greeted by six warships and God only knew how many missiles.

Yet if they wanted Dane and his people dead, they’d be dead. Besides, there had to be cheaper ways to do it than putting him behind the controls of a cutting-edge fighter. Good had been there when they got the suits on. He couldn’t have been blinded to the risk in the same way Dane had been by his excitement.

“Ah, so you can keep up!” MacTaggart teased when Dane had closed some of the gap between them.

“Not so hard to fly in a straight line,” Dane challenged the other pilot.

MacTaggart was more than willing to show what he was worth. He banked to starboard, and Dane followed. He banked to port, and Dane did the same. He pulled up into a backflip, and Dane followed, trying to tighten the gap between them all the while. MacTaggart corkscrewed off, and Dane did as well, though the corkscrew was so tight, he got a status warning that it might cause issues for his brain.

“Stupid brains. Always slowing us down,” Lopez exclaimed giddily.

MacTaggart led Dane around, back and forth through empty space. Dane could not believe the ship’s responsiveness. It was better than the old fighters of Earth by miles. It made them feel like submarines in syrup, really. Better than the fighters on the Prometheus as well, and even the Defenders that Nat had designed for Varuna. Maybe that was less surprising, as those had been made specifically to handle underwater while this vessel was designed to repel interstellar invaders. Still…

“Your team has made one hell of an amazing fighter plane!” Dane whooped when MacTaggart stopped doing backflips and front flips, corkscrews and barrel rolls, and everything else they could think of.

“You think you can handle yourself, then?” MacTaggart asked.

“I haven’t proven that I can?”

“You can follow along well enough, but can you beat me somewhere?” MacTaggart asked.

“Try me.”

“Sending you coordinates now. Your HUD screen should paint a target. You need to pass through that region of space before I do, but you can’t let me paint you with my laser for more than half a second. That’s long enough for a rail gun to hit you.”

“Beat you to the finish line, don’t let you touch me. Got it.”

“All right, then. Ready, set—”

Dane was already gone.

He blasted forward toward the spot his screen showed him. It was hard to position himself in open space like this, but fortunately, the ship showed him the distance. He was closing in rapidly when an alarm blared.

“That’s MacTaggart!” Lopez cried, but Dane was already moving out of the way, pulling into a backflip that would force MacTaggart to follow if he wanted to paint Dane with his laser.

But he didn’t! The Scottish commander blasted forward, making for the target and forcing Dane to try his hand at the weapons.

“Is there a targeting system?”

“The guns have some maneuverability. Ten degrees each way, with an automatic targeting system.”

“That explains how he got me at all. Bring it up, and let’s take his ass down.”

Three targeting points appeared on the screen. As Dane tried to get MacTaggart in his sights, each of the points tried to find a firing solution.

“Eat my lack of Scottish undergarments,” MacTaggart crowed over the radio as he jiggled his fighter back and forth, constantly avoiding Dane’s scopes. Obviously, he had an understanding of how their systems worked. Dane fired at him a few times when the targeting system gave him the green light, but he missed each time. The paint-filled rounds were too slow.

“Now keep in mind that in a fight, some of those might have hit,” MacTaggart pointed out. “You’re lucky they didn’t. If you tag another of these fighters with paint, you gotta scrub it yourself.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Dane complained.

“I didn’t say ye couldn’t do it. Only that you had to clean it off if ye did!” MacTaggart pulled up and around Dane. Dane was fast to the controls, but he overcompensated and nearly crashed into MacTaggart on the loop.

“Whoa!” Lopez whooped as MacTaggart used the near-miss to fire at Dane, smearing two globs of paint on his wing.

“Loser has to clean both jets?” MacTaggart asked.

“If you don’t mind cleaning, who am I to deny you?” Dane came around and made for MacTaggart, but the Scot was already passing through the target at the end of the field, headed toward a clump of space that was dirty with debris from asteroids.

“Ye seem to have warmed up well. On to the next challenge.”

“And what’s that?”

“We’ve got targets in this chunk of asteroids. Some big, some small. Some read like a ship to your scanners, and some don’t. This is what the paint is for.”

“Is that necessary?” Lopez wondered. “Couldn’t you have done the entire course with laser aiming and devices to read hits?”

“Aye, we could have, and some of the pilots will practice speed runs without any ammunition at all—”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Dane finished, looking at the paint on his wings. Light blue. He had a feeling his would be a different color.

“Precisely, my lad!” MacTaggart dove his craft between two asteroids and twisted through, blasting away as he went.

Dane was behind him, so he had plenty of time to make the turn. He noted MacTaggart’s paint had already splattered the first sensor—a piece of junk that looked more or less like an automated targeting cannon. Dane shot it as well, adding a splotch of orange to the blue. There were other colors as well. It looked like whoever lime green was had to be a particularly proficient fighter.

“The paint also forces pilots to really aim if they want to get it right. Slower solutions than with real weapons. We think the training makes them better in a fight with the Augmented because they’re used to fighting with gloves on.”

“Interesting.” Dane pulled out of the space between the two asteroids, pleased to feel the ship’s proximity sensors kick in and sound an alarm. He thought he had a decent handle on the size of the ship, and he wanted to win. So he ignored them and came tighter around a curve.

The spacecraft pushed back against him, and he went too wide.

MacTaggart was already nearing the next target, and Dane was way off. He fired and managed to splatter MacTaggart with a shot.

“There’s autocorrection?”

“For rookies, aye.”

“Looks like I can turn it off from back here,” Lopez announced.

“Leave it on for now.” Dane spattered the target that MacTaggart had been forced away from.

“I think I have a read on the next one. This scanning system is amazing. It can also give you a nudge in that direction if you want.”

“Let’s try that.”

Dane felt the controls firm up in his hands. Then he was banking wide around another asteroid.

“Lovely autopilot, ain’t it?” MacTaggart asked after a paintball spattered on the nose of his ship. “But predictable though when ye have seen it a few times. We change up the angles and vectors on a regular basis, so the Augmented don’t get ahead of us on this kind of thing. They recognize patterns like that.”

“And people can’t fly themselves?” Despite having been hit, Dane remained on course and spattered the next target. Then he moved toward the next one Lopez had found for him. He pushed the ship faster than its autopilot wanted it to go and was rewarded with a curse from MacTaggart as he missed.

Dane then dropped his nose down and shot three rounds into the underside of MacTaggart’s ship.

“Oh, beginner’s luck, that was!” MacTaggart blubbered.

“I’m old enough to be your father. Nothing beginner about that!” Dane kept firing, forcing MacTaggart up unless he wanted to get hit more times. He hit the target and went on to the next. Or tried to.

“It should be right there,” Lopez advised. The ship’s system agreed with her, highlighting a chunk of asteroid like it was something besides another chunk of asteroid. Dane fired at it, but the paint balls only splattered.

“Oh, that last one’s a real trick. Might want to let me get it for ya. It’d be easier for you to do the scrubbing than it would be to find a way in there.”

Then Dane saw the unusually round hole in the asteroid. Not the remains of a collision but a drilled-out core. He knew this entire system was filled with repurposed asteroids. Finding a drilled one in this obstacle course shouldn’t surprise him, yet it did. The people in this system were capable of so much more than Varuna merely because they were many. People had strength in numbers. They always had. Hell, the Augmented were trying to take that simple concept to its furthest possible conclusion.

Maybe it did make the most sense to move here.

Dane thought all that in the moment it took him to dive his ship inside the asteroid.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Lopez yelped from the back seat as the walls closed in all around them. The autopilot screamed at Dane to turn around. It couldn’t find a path forward. Clever, forcing pilots to use their own hands so they’d know the autopilot wasn’t always there for them.

“Kill the autopilot!”

“I don’t think that’s wise!”

“You want to scrub MacTaggart’s ship while he checks you out?”

“I think he has his eyes on you more than me, but I get your point,” Lopez confirmed, then turned off the autopilot. The ship still yelped at Dane, showing red on the screen where they were closest to collision and orange everywhere else.

Dane wrestled with the controls, guiding the ship through the twisting tunnels, slowing down only enough to make sure he didn’t destroy this amazing machine. Then it was in front of him, and he blasted it and was past it, still twisting and turning through the asteroid’s maze-like interior until he burst out the other side and back into open space.

And into the path of MacTaggart’s guns.

A dozen or so paint balls spattered the bottom of Dane’s craft.

“Oh, come on!” Dane protested.

“All’s fair when going against a rookie,” MacTaggart joked, but there was something hollow in his voice.

“You all right?” Dane asked. “If you’re worried about me not cleaning the ship, you don’t need to.”

“No, no. It’s just that goal…no one has ever made it at that speed before. Ye really know your way around a fighter!”

“It’s not so hard when they’re as well made as these,” Dane returned.

“I’m starting to get messages asking where you are,” MacTaggart told him. “Should probably bring you back down to get on with it. I’ll guide you through the reentry process, ya ken?”

“Sure thing.”

Reentry was simple enough. The ship handled the shakes and jostles as smoothly as it handled everything. They were back on the planet in no time.

They parked in the same hangar from which they had taken off, spending some time working with the spacecraft’s zero-runway feature so Dane would be familiar with it.

“Ye are as good with that as ye are with the rest of it!” MacTaggart enthused after they had successfully parked.

“I used to fly helicopters, too. They said it was training for being in zero gravity, but they were full of crap. Did help with this, though.”

“Still, I’m impressed. Ye have my respect.”

“I’d better have done well! I have thousands of hours of experience. Your ships handle nicely, though. Easy to pick up. Now, you got some rags for us to clean these up with, or do you have a laser system to handle that as well?”

“Pah, the paint we use won’t bond to the fighters’ exterior. It’ll come off easy enough. I got some people doing it for us.”

“A deal’s a deal. I can clean the ships.”

“Ye are our first dignitary from another world. We’re not about to make you scrub the ships.”

“It’d be easier just to let him,” Lopez remarked. “He can be quite hard-headed.”

“You can help them then, eh?” MacTaggart pointed to a crew coming over to inspect the craft.

MacTaggart was right. Cleaning off the paint didn’t take much effort. Still, by the time Dane finished, he was swamped with sweat. Most of it was from the flight. Flying was hard work and could be absolutely exhausting. However, the suit had kept his funk at bay inside the ship.

“MacTaggart, I know we’re supposed to meet back with Parliament, but uh, would there be any facilities where I could…”

“Wash off yer stink?” MacTaggart laughed. “Aye. We can do that. There’s a men’s and women’s for that.”

“Great. Lopez, let’s get ready, so we can go meet Parliament.”

“It’s a date.”

“Sir, you mind if I stay behind to look at that fighter? It’s got systems I’ve only dreamed of,” Good proposed.

“And leave your governor undefended?”

“Sir, I am up for the task of ensuring you have a pleasant shower, sir!” Paul chimed in.

“That’ll work. Get as deep under the hood as you can, Good.”

“Consider it done, sir. See you soon.”

Dane saluted and hit the showers.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The shower was hot, and the water pressure was strong enough to strip paint.

“Damn. Varuna’s a water planet, and we can’t even beat their showers?”

Dane turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the stack of them. He dried his face, enjoying the detergent’s unfamiliar scent, then toweled off his short hair. He pulled the towel away when he heard footsteps.

“Paul?” he called, and the footsteps stopped. “Let me get my pants on. I’ll be right out.”

He pulled on his pants and grabbed his shirt. He was slightly irritated when Paul drew closer. “Dude, let me get dressed.”

He turned to find not Paul but a man he’d never seen before.

The stranger held a gun.

“Shit!” Dane lunged out of the way as the man raised his gun. He dropped to a low crouch, then pushed off hard with his legs and dove for a pile of towels.

Time seemed to slow as he flew. The assailant followed him with the barrel of the gun, and Dane took in every detail.

The gun wielder was male. Wearing nondescript clothing that looked like anyone off the streets of Alpha Central. He appeared to be young, no more than thirty. That could be the result of rejuvenation, but there was a fervor in his eyes Dane usually equated with youth. He was clean-shaven, with well-trimmed hair in the “short on the sides, longer on top” style men had been wearing for centuries. His clothes were well-kept. Not dirty or torn. He didn’t look desperate, only determined.

And his aim was true.

A bullet tore into Dane’s abdomen. Then another punched into his upper right chest. A third grazed his shoulder. More shots echoed off the tiled bathroom, but by then, Dane had crashed into the pile of towels.

His body tried to shut down to protect him from the pain. His senses were heightened. He smelled the bleach in the towels mixing with the salty metallic tang of his blood. Saw the crimson on the white fabric.

He gritted his teeth and pulled the towels to the wounds as he clung to consciousness. If he couldn’t stop the bleeding, he would die. His blood would flow down the drains into the city’s water treatment plant. Varuna would fall.

No. No, he couldn’t let that happen.

“Why…” Dane grated, trying to ask more, trying to demand answers, trying to understand but unable to do anything beyond forming that one syllable.

The man raised his gun and pointed it at Dane’s face.

Then his eyebrows shot up at the sound of approaching footsteps. A shot rang out, the round pinging off the tile wall beside the man.

“For Earth,” the stranger intoned, then jacked the handgun under his own chin and fired.

Dane flinched as the blood spattered the ceiling, which made the towels he had been holding to his abdomen slip away. Hot, viscous blood covered his hands. Then Good was there, running toward him as he called for help.

Dane couldn’t hold on any longer. He passed out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dane woke in what was clearly a hospital bed. The uncomfortable mattress, scratchy sheets, and angrily beeping machines must have been universal. He knew he had been shot, but at first, he didn’t know when. Was it a lucky Russian bullet in the upper atmosphere? Or had an Augmented goon caught him on Earth?

He noticed Haley in a chair beside him, her head lolling back as she gently snored. A line of saliva dribbled from her mouth. The sight of her reshuffled his brain, and his immediate memories returned.

“Shot in a bathroom? Good thing they saved me. Hardly a fitting end for a war hero,” Dane whispered to himself, not wanting to wake Haley as he tried to push himself up to sit before realizing what he was doing. He would tear his stitches, or worse!

Except it didn’t hurt all that bad.

His right shoulder hurt, as did his upper chest and his abdomen, but it wasn’t the screaming pain he expected. Tenderly, he touched each of the three spots with his left hand. They were at least nominally all right, even while being prodded.

“That must be one hell of a pain killer they got in me,” he muttered as he regarded the single IV bag connected to a vein in his left arm. That alone was impressive. After three gunshot wounds, one to the gut, he expected to be hooked up to all kinds of machines. Yet it was only one bag filled with milky, grayish fluid, slowly dripping and traveling through a tube into his vein, plus clean bandages covering the wounds.

“Dane?” Lopez asked, snorting herself awake and wiping away her drool.

“Hey, you all right?” he asked.

Haley grinned, and he knew she was. “I’m supposed to be asking you that. You’re the one who was shot!”

“Was I, though?” Dane asked. “I mean, I remember being shot, but I don’t feel like I’m being held together with fishing line right now. Which is how it usually feels after something like this.”

“You were definitely shot,” Haley confirmed.

“And no one came for you?”

“Seems like they knew enough to target the governor rather than his mistress.”

“You’re not my mistress!”

“Pardon me. Am I interrupting?” a doctor asked as he entered with a tablet in hand.

“Yes,” Dane grumped.

“No, you are not.” Haley nearly gave Dane’s arm a playful slap before she stopped herself. It seemed he wasn’t the only one having trouble rectifying his current state with being shot. Then it dawned on him how that could be possible.

“Doctor, how long have I been out?”

“Let’s see how you’re feeling first. Any pain?”

“Some, yes, but honestly, it’s not so bad,” Dane claimed, trying to be patient. “I did take three bullets, right?”

“You did, yes. The one in your shoulder went straight through, but we had to pull the others out. Luckily, they all missed the bones.”

“And my abdomen?”

“Your intestine was punctured in two spots, but we got that fixed up. Any fatigue or confusion?”

“You do know who I am, right?” Haley asked.

Dane grinned. “You ride Loch Ness monsters.”

The doctor frowned while Haley laughed.

“Inside joke?” the doctor asked after a moment.

Haley nodded.

“Very good. Inside jokes mean you should be OK mentally.”

“Does that mean you can tell me how long I’ve been out?” Dane knew it couldn’t be that long, or the Augmented would have attacked, surely. If his stitches were already solid, it had to be a few days, at least. If not a week or two. God, the people on Varuna must be so worried.

“We had you in a medically induced coma for the last thirteen hours.”

“Excuse me? Oh…right. Standard hours. Sixty Earth minutes. Not sure what your clock looks like compared to Varuna’s. But thirteen hours? That’s not enough time to heal.”

“Is that right?” the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. “You don’t mind if I check your wounds and make sure?”

“Of course. That’s fine. You’re the doctor,” Haley invited.

“Right. Um, yeah. Go ahead.” Dane struggled to believe, to even understand what the doctor was saying.

The doctor peeled away the bandage on his shoulder first. Dane had to crane his neck to look. Instead of a mess of stitches, he found the bright pink flesh of fresh scar tissue.

“That looks about done.” The doctor made notes on his tablets as if performing miracles was standard practice for him. “Now, the chest?”

“Sure.”

The doctor slowly lifted this one, peeked underneath, then nodded. “Not quite as far along, but still looking great. We’ll take these off and get fresh bandages on here, all right? We can let it breathe for a few minutes, though. Unless you’re squeamish around open wounds.”

“No. I mean, that’s fine,” Dane corrected.

“Very good.” The doctor pulled away the bandages to reveal a wound almost as healed as the last one. The center was scabby and tender, but the edges were the same pink scar tissue as his arm.

“You said it’s been thirteen hours. I don’t understand.”

A machine on the wall beeped aggressively.

“You need to calm down, Mr. Dane,” the doctor told him. “Stress is going to close down your blood vessels and keep the medicines from doing their work.”

“But medicines can’t do this,” Dane stressed, not doing much to get his heart rate back down.

“Your wounds were serious, and we obviously could not risk losing the governor of a potential ally. We used the best techniques and the best surgeons available.”

“I get that, and thank you, but surgeons can’t make wounds heal any faster!”

“That’s true. The medical nanites did that.”

The machine beeped even louder as Dane’s heart hammered.

“Nanites? You mean…you Augmented me?”

“No, Dane. That’s not what happened.” Haley put a hand on Dane’s good shoulder to keep him in the bed.

“He said nanites! He said there’s goddamn nanites in my blood!” He was going to be sick, but first, he would throttle this goddamned doctor who was probably working with the damn Augmented.

“Dane, it’s not like that. They explained it all to me. It’s fine. I promise, all right?”

“You need to calm down, Mr. Dane. High blood pressure is not good for you right now.”

“Don’t say you injected me with those freaking things, then tell me to calm down! You have no right—”

“You need to calm down, or I’ll have to sedate you again,” the doctor explained calmly. Dane was suddenly aware that the tablet in the doctor’s hand was effectively a weapon, given it was connected to the IV in his arm. He grabbed for the needle sticking into his vein.

Haley put a hand on top of his and stopped him from yanking it out.

“George, please. Take a deep breath and calm down. I’m sorry you didn’t get to make this decision, but we thought about this.”

“You and Dr. Cyborg here, you mean?”

“No. Me and your head of security, Good, who didn’t like it any more than you did until he got his questions answered. Athanas signed off on it, too. So did Richmond.”

“Rich…mond?” Dane asked. Thinking about the man who hated the Augmented more than ANY other worked like a salve on his temper. “Richmond said this was all right? Grant Richmond?”

Haley pulled out a tablet and played a video.

“Hey, Dane. I know you’re not, uh…gonna like this, so Lopez told me to record this.”

“Don’t say that!” Lopez protested from off-screen in the recording.

Richmond shrugged. “This is the best way, man. We can’t lose you. Your brain is yours. These things they use, they can’t make it past the blood-brain barrier. I’ve used ‘em too.”

“Deep breaths, Mr. Dane,” the doctor ordered. Dane tried to obey. Tried to get his temper under control.

The machine stopped beeping about his pulse.

“Okay…so there are robots in me?”

“There are. Temporarily,” the doctor told him.

“Temporarily?” Dane echoed.

The doctor tapped something on the side of the bed, and Dane felt a tug at his crotch.

“You’ll pee them out before too long.”

A catheter, Dane realized.

“I’ll pee out robots?”

The doctor nodded. “It’s standard with this kind of nanite. We inject them intravenously, along with a solution rich in what they need to work. The proteins that build muscle tissue, in your case. Then they do their job.”

“And they won’t go to my brain?”

“No, sir. They technically don’t know your brain exists. They only understand what we tell them. At first, they were best for things like cancer or removing plaque from blocked arteries. But once we understood muscle fibers, we could use them for trauma or things like gunshot wounds. They’ll pass out through your kidneys when they’re done, which they should be before too long.”

“We couldn’t have you here healing for a month, Dane. I’m sorry, but with the Augmented coming, we had to do this.”

“Sure. Yeah, this makes sense, I guess. Has Alvarez—”

“He’s already demanded a sample, and they gave it to him. They’ve also shared the software they used to control the nanites. This is good technology. We can use it back on Varuna. It’ll save a lot of lives,” Haley contended.

“And we’ll send you with whatever samples you need. Parliament has already made that announcement publicly.”

“Parliament?” Dane asked, dreading his return there.

“Oh, they can’t wait to talk to you,” Haley reported. “The attack’s been all over the news. They want you up as soon as possible to help salvage the optics.”

Dane groaned. “I think I prefer being shot.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The doctor left after a few minutes, telling Dane he had a few hours of treatment left, at least.

"You feeling all right?” Haley asked.

“I’m trying to, yeah. I mean, I thought we came all this way to avoid being injected with robots, and now I had it done to me in my sleep.”

“I know, but you’ll get used to the idea. It’s like the nessies.”

“How is it like the nessies?”

“They seemed bad at first, but after you learned more about them, it turned out they were super-useful to the colony?”

Dane tried to keep a scowl on his face, but he couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s actually a good comparison.”

“Thanks. I’ve been working on it for like nine hours.”

“What else have you been working on? Jesus, how’s Good? He’s got to be pissed about all this. And what about Paul? Is he all right?”

“Good’s pissed, yes. He put Paul on medical leave, he said for his own health, and Athanas said that’s technically true. She’s worried if he stayed down here, Good would have murdered him.”

Dane would have to check on that later. He couldn’t have those feelings fester in a team that had to be as tight as his security people on this planet. “Paul was hurt, then? Was he shot?”

“No. Clubbed in the back of the head.”

“Did he see anything?”

“He said a woman asked him for directions to the bathroom, and he told her. Then he got knocked out.”

“An accomplice?”

“We don’t know. Linda says no one tried to get in, but they could have heard the gunshots and vanished.”

“And the guy who shot me? Was he implanted?”

Lopez rolled her eyes. “We finally got MacTaggart to check. It doesn’t look like it.”

“Finally? They didn’t want to do that first thing?”

“MacTaggart is convinced there’s no way an Augmented could have slipped through their system.”

“That’s asinine.”

“That’s what Athanas wanted to tell him after she cracked his jaw.”

“She didn’t.”

“No. Thankfully not. She let me handle the ambassadorial duties and talk MacTaggart into having his people look. They didn’t find anything, but it was pretty messy.”

“Oh, Jesus. You saw it?”

“You think I hear gunshots coming from where my boyfriend is butt-ass naked, and I’m going to sit back and wait for someone to send me a text about it?”

“Glad to know I can count on you.”

“I didn’t do much. By the time I got there, the gunshots had already triggered an emergency response team. They bundled you up in the towels you had fallen on. You were so pale…and they wouldn’t let me ride in the aircar with you. I might have lost some ambassadorial points over that. When I got here, you were already out of surgery.

“I’ve been here ever since. I only stepped out to make a few calls. Well, more than a few, but we haven’t left you alone. Athanas is outside, as is Good, who is probably dying to come in and apologize right now. He’s also been running our investigation into the shooter.”

“The Centauri haven’t been?”

Haley snorted. “Oh, they definitely have. It’s a national priority and all, but that’s not good enough for Good. He’s…not good.”

“Well, let’s send him in, then.”

“I’ll get him. But first…” Haley came over and kissed his forehead, then pulled his head against her breast and held him. She squeezed so tight that it hurt, but Dane didn’t mind. Her body shivered, and a warm tear landed on his head. “Don’t do that again, all right?”

“I’ll do my damnedest not to.”

“That better be enough.” Haley let him go. “I’ll only be a second.”

She had hardly opened the door before Good came in, already apologizing.

“Sir, it’s all my fault. I knew Paul was new. Shouldn’t have left him alone like that.”

“It happens.”

“It shouldn’t have. Not on my watch.”

“John.”

“I’ve let you down and disgraced our mission.”

“Oh, come on, John. Shit happens. Now, Lopez has been telling me you’re running an investigation into what happened. What do we know about the shooter?”

Good grinned. Dane could tell he was glad to have him back and ready to make his chief proud.

“Name’s Seamus Mitchell. Worked there in the hangar as a custodian. Cleaned and folded the towels, so even if he hadn’t gotten Paul, he could have walked right in.”

“He have a history?”

“Not a bad one. He was a university student studying engineering, which is hardly unusual here. No history of violence, drug abuse, or much of anything else.”

“Was he implanted?”

“I told you, we had MacTaggart check!” Lopez called from the door.

“And?” Dane asked.

“I don’t think he was implanted. They are especially thorough about security near the hangar, and I didn’t find any traces in the remains.”

“You looked?” Dane asked.

“With my own eyes,” Good assured him, looking into Dane’s. “There wasn’t anything there. He wasn’t implanted.”

“Then he must have been…what, a partisan for the Augmented?”

Haley and Good shared a look that made it clear they did not agree.

“What else makes sense?” Dane asked.

“That he was a student, maybe one of those protesters we saw, or at least friends with them. And he thinks we should stay on our own planet,” Good announced as if it were obvious. Dane had to admit it was a compelling narrative, considering they had seen the protest that morning. He didn’t think the well-kept Seamus Mitchell fit, though. Plus, there were the shooter’s words to consider.

“If he was against immigration, why did he say ‘For Earth’ before he shot himself?” Dane asked.

“He said what?” Good’s jaw practically hit the floor.

“‘For Earth.’ Those were his last words. If he wasn’t Augmented, he had to be a sympathizer to their cause, at least.”

“MacTaggart is going to need to know this,” Haley declared.

“He won’t believe it,” Good replied.

“What makes you say that?”

“He’s got a blind spot to all this. He can’t make sense of someone not being part of the war effort.”

“Of course there are dissenters,” Dane pointed out. “There are always dissenters.”

Good put up his hands in surrender as if he’d been through all this before.

“We need to tell MacTaggart,” Lopez asserted. “Maybe he’ll be more receptive if he hears it from Dane.”

“Call him up.” Dane nodded toward the tablet in Lopez’s hand.

Lopez connected and gave it to Dane.

“Governor Dane! Good to see you back among the living!”

“It’s good to be back. Though I gotta say, I kind of wish you would have mentioned the medical nanites sooner. That came as a bit of a surprise.”

“Ha! A true soldier, more worried about the risk of Augmentation than about the man who shot him! I’m sure you’ve already spoken with the doctor and Lopez, but our medical nanites are safe. Ye will pass them out soon enough.”

“So I’ve heard. I have some information about the shooter.”

“Do you now? And before you ask, yes, we checked. No, he’s not implanted. Must be a xenophobe, ‘fraid of losing our accent to a couple of your selkies.”

“I believe you about the implants,” Dane didn’t mention that Good had already verified it. “I don’t think he was an isolationist or a xenophobe, though. I think he was an Augmented sympathizer.”

“That’s not possible.”

“The last thing he said before blowing his brains out was ‘For Earth.’ I don’t know why he would have said that unless he believed in Augmentation.”

MacTaggart sucked his mustache. An unusual thing to witness, to be sure. “I know you’re under a lot of stress, and much of that is my fault. My people should have been watching better. It was our facility, our planet, so the fault is ours.”

“I don’t hold you responsible.”

“It’s not your place to hold us one way or the other. We didn’t do as fine a job as we could have.”

“My concern is that Mitchell is probably linked to others,” Dane articulated.

“See, I know you’re stressed, and you just woke up, but I assure you that’s not possible. We’ve scanned our entire population. We do random checks for every work position we have. We check everyone who comes in and out of a ship. He wasn’t Augmented, nor was he working with anyone. All our Augmented are in a prison camp where they can’t cause trouble until this is all over.”

“I understand that, but surely there are people with emotional connections to those prisoners? Or people who feel like they’ve gotten a bad deal here or think the grass is greener over there?”

“None of our citizens would betray their fellow Centauri like that!” MacTaggart scoffed.

“Not to be disrespectful, sir, but one of them did,” Lopez uttered.

“Aye, but he was a lone nutcase!”

“A lone nutcase who managed to get into that position and was ready to act the same day there were protests out front?” Dane asked.

“Coincidence.”

“If that was a coincidence, why did you tell me he was a xenophobe?”

“Now ye’re twisting my words. No reason for all that. I know you need to rest. Parliament’s all in a tizzy, so hopefully, you’ll get your vote of confidence tomorrow, all right?”

“Sure. Thanks, MacTaggart.”

“Right. Glad to see you back and up again.” MacTaggart hung up.

“You weren’t kidding. He doesn’t want to consider the idea that someone is less than happy with this place,” Dane observed.

“Which is obviously at least part of what’s going on here.”

“Mitchell wasn’t a refugee longing for Earth or someone disguised as one. That means he became motivated to carry out the attack on this planet.”

“Of course,” Good agreed. “That’s how it goes, isn’t it? There’s always someone who wants what the other side has.”

“Do you think he could have been working alone?” Dane asked.

“Not a chance, sir. I think we need to be careful, keep moving forward.”

“Me too, but especially you, Good. I want you to do some digging on this shooter.”

“Oh, I’ve already started down that rabbit hole, sir. I’ll let you know when I find the snakes.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

By the next morning, Dane had received a clean bill of health and checked out of the hospital. He almost wanted to protest. He’d been shot three times. But his wounds were closed, if tender. The medical nanites really were an amazing technology. They could use them on Varuna, though the idea still gave him pause.

“You’re sure there’s none left inside me?”

“Only a negligible amount,” the doctor assured him, which was not all that reassuring. “You won’t even notice them when you pass them.”

Dane nodded, trying to believe it. For all their medical prowess, they had still removed his catheter the old-fashioned way by pulling it out. He would be the judge of what bothered him.

No sooner had he checked out than an aircar arrived to take him to Parliament.

“Well, they don’t waste much time here, do they?” Dane quipped to Lopez. She smiled, while Athanas only glowered at the driver. Dane dared anyone on this planet to try something again while Athanas was watching. They’d be lucky to live to regret it.

They arrived at Parliament to find a massive crowd waiting outside. No protesters this time, or if there were, they had been pushed back so far that Dane couldn’t see them. Instead, there were news cameras and people hoping to catch a glimpse of Dane.

“You were the only thing on the news here. I’m surprised there’s not more people, to be honest,” Lopez professed.

Dane swallowed and told himself not to mess this up. Obviously, the people of this world had good will toward him after he’d been hurt. He hoped Parliament felt the same.

It turned out they did.

Apparently, letting your brand-new ally get shot in your own military hangar was not a good look. Every member of Parliament practically bowed or prostrated themselves with apologies when Dane entered.

He didn’t even need to make another speech. All he had to do was wear the short-sleeved shirt that Lopez had brought for him. The sleeves showed the bandages on his shoulder that the doctor said he should wear ‘just to be cautious.’ That was enough.

The meeting lasted thirty minutes, and Dane got his vote of confidence. It might have lasted longer, as every member seemed to want to offer a personal apology, but Douglas called for a vote. It was nearly unanimous. The only people who voted against it filed notes that they had other, more effective plans than a simple vote of confidence.

Dane was escorted back into Bell’s capable hands to work on the logistical details of their treaty.

“I want you to know that I’m—”

“Sorry. Yeah, I know,” Dane remarked once he and Bell were seated in a much smaller office with Lopez and one of Bell’s aides.

“I was going to say ready to work with you, but if you need another apology…”

“I really don’t!” Dane laughed.

“Well, then, let’s get right to it. What do you want?”

Dane appreciated the directness. He wasn’t a politician. He was someone who got things done. Hopefully, as the station manager, Bell would be the same way.

“The most important thing is my people’s survival. I had a lot of time to think in the hospital, and that’s what this comes down to. Your people have technology we could use, manufacturing facilities we would like to take advantage of, and an economy we would like to trade with. Right now, the threat of the Augmented supersedes all that. We barely held them off last time, and I don’t think we can do it again without a substantial hardware investment from your people. Maybe more than I can rightly ask for.”

Bell nodded. “How many people do you have? You have to understand our people are our most valuable asset, and even if we send ships, we can’t send pilots. They’re too essential to the mission here.”

Dane took a deep breath. He’d made it clear that it wasn’t many, but he hadn’t talked numbers yet. “Assuming no one has given birth yet, we’re sitting at nine hundred and eighty-six.”

“Okay. Not bad. And what’s your smallest settlement? A few hundred, or are you keeping people together more than that?”

“No, sir. Nine hundred and eighty-six. Total.”

Bell looked up from his tablet. “You have…nine hundred. Eighty-six people. Total?”

“We had more, but…”

“But you said you repelled an Augmented invasion!”

“We did.”

“How?”

“We were lucky with our torpedo placement. Wouldn’t have thought of it if we hadn’t seen your asteroid ship in action.”

“But that’s… You’re serious?”

Dane nodded. “Unfortunately, I don’t think the tactics we used will work again. From a security perspective, we can’t do the same thing and expect the same results.”

“No, I would think not. A thousand people on an entire planet… I hate to say it, but I think that makes the case for merging the colonies even stronger.”

Dane nodded. He’d been afraid it would come to this. “Would we be able to stick together here?”

Bell nodded. “You kidding? We’ll put you wherever you want and give you whatever ships you ask for with numbers like that.”

“How would we go about it?” Dane asked.

“We’d send a couple of ships, pick up some of your decision makers and engineers, then come back here and pick out a spot. I’m sure everyone in Parliament would have feelings about that, but we’d figure something out. Then send them back for more of your people.”

“Makes sense. You understand, of course, that I need to talk to my people before deciding something like this.”

“I do. What’s your sense? Would they go for this?”

“You’re much better equipped to hold off the Augmented than we are. I think they would go for it, though with a provision that Varuna would still be ours to return to when the time is right.”

“We’d want first choice of emigration status since some of our Scots are rather sick of the Desert. I think everyone would see the logic in that, though.”

“Okay, then. I guess… I guess we have a tentative plan.”

With the basics laid out, they got down to the minutiae of paperwork. Unfortunately, Lopez was less adept at this than at everything else, so Dane had to muddle his way through as best as he could. There were ship quotas, immigration quotas, tariff rates, export bans, and all sorts of other things Dane thought wildly optimistic, considering they were waiting to be invaded by a vastly superior force.

The hardest part was that he didn’t want this. Not in his heart, anyway. He knew it was the right choice. Doing this would give his people the best shot at long-term survival. Yet he could not help but feel he was abandoning Varuna and all the work they had done there. He loved that planet. In a weird sort of way, but he loved it all the same. He loved its depths and its alien but familiar seafood. He loved the way storms could be seen for hours out on the horizon yet barely felt beneath the water.

What he loved most of all was the people. Their spirit and the work they had done. Leaving the planet wouldn’t take that away from them, but staying could.

So Dane signed the documents, the tax forms, the citizenship process paperwork…all of it.

Bell assured him his people would have a place here, and if they wished to fight, they would be armed with every piece of technology the Centauri had.

He left the meeting feeling wrung out. He knew he was doing the right thing, and yet his heart was aching from the decision. It was almost a relief when he got a message from Good asking him to meet back in their rooms. Attempted murder was easier to think about than leaving Varuna to be taken back by the waves.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dane reached their rooms and found Good there, a finger pressed to his lips.

“Everything all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Good drawled casually while vehemently shaking his head. “But man, oh man, did they get the public spaces right around here. You wanna go for a walk? I’d love to show you some of what I saw.” He gestured all around the room like there were ears.

“I’d love to, yeah,” Dane replied.

Good led the way to a school garden. It was beautiful, brimming with vegetables and herbs that were gorgeous both for their utility and for being so lush and green. Good prattled on about this and that, all the while leading Dane and Lopez closer to a waterfall at the end of the garden.

They got close enough to feel the spray against their faces and only then did Good drop the act.

“Rooms are bugged. I can’t tell for sure because the Centauri tech is so goddamn good, but I found a super-obvious one.” He held up the offending electric eye. “It’s got to be a decoy to make our people feel like they cleared the room. It’s barely ahead of the stuff I have. They must have way more advanced tech than this.”

“Why would they bug our room?” Lopez asked.

Good shrugged. “Standard practice. If they were coming to visit us, I’d bug their rooms.”

“Security is all about what you know,” Dane imparted. “So, what is it you don’t want them to know?”

“It’s about your shooter. Seamus Mitchell.”

“What did you find?”

“Quite a bit. He was a student at a local university, studying civil engineering.”

“Isn’t that like city planning?” Dane asked.

Good nodded. “Seemed odd for a gunman and potential revolutionary wannabe, but this planet is heavy on building new stuff, so there’s a lot of people studying fields like that. Anyway. I tracked down some of his friends both online and in person. They said he was normal as normal could be. Never would have thought it would be him. That kind of thing.”

“Dead end, then?” Lopez asked.

“Almost. One of them, the roommate, said he started doing way better a couple of months ago. Started working out. Stopped with the junk food. All that good stuff.”

“Self-improvement is hardly a prerequisite for being a shooter,” Dane pointed out.

“Yeah, until the roommate said he learned it all from these videos online. Said they totally changed him.”

“Changed him how?”

“He started bringing people back to his room at odd hours. They’d have heated discussions, where before, Mitchell didn’t care if his burger had cheese on it or not.”

“Discussions about what?”

“Roommate said that at first, he didn’t ask. That he was proud of the guy for finally starting to get his life in gear.”

“Then he did ask.”

“Curiosity’s a hell of a thing.” Good raised an eyebrow. “Mitchell wouldn’t say, though. Said his roomie could check out these workout videos if he wanted. Start improving himself like he did. He never followed up on it, though.”

“I take it you did?”

Good nodded. “Not only do I know how to activate my body’s ability to finally use protein effectively, but I also found some of the people he’s been talking to. It’s an organization that looks like they want to help people better themselves, but I think they’re a front looking for down and desperate folks.”

“Cults did that back on Earth,” Lopez mentioned.

“Same sort of thing here. Looks like Mitchell was poking around in dark corners, looking for someone to blame besides himself, and he found someone. Nothing is super clear yet, there’s a code I can’t figure out, but I think someone else put him up to this.”

“How can you know that?”

“Well, honestly, his security was crap. I hacked his accounts without really having to try. The passwords were the name of his roommate’s pet and the year he set the passwords. I don’t even know if that counts as hacking, really. So I have some of his contacts. I’ve reached out, but I can’t push these things too fast, or they’ll drop out and go underground. If they are involved—hell, even if they’re not—this shooting must have everyone on high alert.”

“No, no. That makes sense. Don’t spook them if you can help it. I take it the Centauri know none of this?”

“No, sir. I wanted to come to you first. I’m still concerned they’re not going to take this seriously, but even if they do, it’s not like I have physical locations for any of these contacts yet. If they came in all fire and brimstone, we’d lose everything in a puff of smoke.”

“We can’t keep this secret, though, right? If they want an alliance, we should tell them,” Lopez opined.

Dane shrugged. “The details of the treaty were pretty damn exacting, and none mentioned anything about sharing open investigations. I didn’t bring it up, but it wouldn’t make sense except for this one particular time.”

“So you’re going to keep this from them?” Lopez asked.

“I want to tell them, but we don’t have a lot to go on yet, do we? Good, I think you’ve done as much as you can at this point without spooking them, correct?”

“I made a couple of fake accounts and came at them from different angles. I’m a young kid who’s proud to see the Varuna people pushed back, but that already got buried. Said they didn’t condone this and wanted no part of it. I expected that. Waiting to hear back now about an identity as a kid who lost his parents to the Augmented, has gained weight, and is looking for help. Fits the MO more, but we’ll see. The Augmented angle might screw us on it. I’d be more direct, but—”

“No, you’re doing the right thing. If we’re going to unravel this, it’s got to be piece by piece. I don’t want them stopping you, either. MacTaggart and everyone else seem to think they only have one crazy person. We know better now. Or we’re starting to. Let’s get some hard evidence, and we’ll bring it to them.”

“I don’t like this,” Lopez told him.

“And I don’t like that I peed robots for an entire day, but this is what we’re dealing with now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The time was close, if the plumber could be believed. There was some debate over that, but ultimately, the Augmented decided to trust his information. It would be a risk, but then, the rewards were great. The dockworker dreamed of losing himself in the sprawling connectivity that was a fully Augmented system. If they could complete their mission, he could join the ocean of knowledge all the Augmented had access to instead of the piddling stream they had to maintain themselves.

He was nervous, despite having no place in this part of the operation, or at least not this first part. He was up above, in the docks that orbited the planet, doing his job until such a time as they called for him to do otherwise. Dockworkers had access codes. They had to. It was part of their job.

One thing could be said about the plumber and his plan. He was committed. He was not asking others to risk themselves in a way he wouldn’t. He was not asking for anything he himself would not do. Self-sacrifice was natural to the Augmented, or it was back on Earth. Here, each of them was well aware of their value to the mission. Risking any of them was a danger to all of them. Unfortunately, this commitment to the mission manifested in a feeling of personal self-preservation that the dockworker could not shake.

Is everything ready?

I am in position. That was the plumber, brave soul. There was a very real chance his information would be wrong, in which case he would be the one caught in the open, doing work where he should not have been. If his information was wrong or simply had been changed, he would have to do the right thing and destroy his implant. With luck, the Centauri media would think it some sort of copycat act, like the student who had tried to kill Dane.

Another part of their plan had gotten out of control. The plumber had thought working with the students was a worthy endeavor, but they were so unpredictable! Without being Augmented, they could not be fully understood and thus took actions that would prove irrelevant. All the student had accomplished was compromising the network that the custodian had worked so hard to build.

Only time would tell how the rest of the work they had put into the students would go. They had a part to play in this. A major part.

The dockworker did not trust them. He had made his opinion clear in that regard. Yet the others said their role was too important not to take the risk. If everything went right, they would deliver a star system. And if everything went wrong? The students might be the key that allowed the Augmented to stay for a second shot.

I have just clocked in. The alien is still with the manager.

That was the guard.

The final piece of the puzzle was in place.

The dockworker looked to the stars, knowing the time was finally nigh.

Dane thought he might die in this office with Bell. It seemed no matter what he was doing, and the Centauri had a lot for them to do, Bell always needed to see him in order to hammer out more details.

Dane understood the importance of the agreement, of course, and wanted the transfer of people to go as smoothly as possible. He had not fully anticipated the sheer scale of bureaucracy that the government had achieved here already. There were public comment periods, concerns about where to settle or where not to settle, and quotas for everything. Between these endless meetings, Bell and MacTaggart also wished to discuss how Dane would defend this system.

He wished he had more than “use your massive impregnable asteroid spaceship to hold them off,” but when you had a massive impregnable asteroid spaceship, it made sense to lead with that. He was able to offer a few training tips, at least, and showed some of the pilots how to fly better without using autopilot. Seeing him fly as he did convinced MacTaggart that too many of their pilots were using the automated system, and he wanted them to become more self-reliant.

Those moments were few and far between, though. It had been three days since Dane checked out of the hospital, and he’d only been up in a ship once. He’d given a few pep talks and gone through a few simulations, but that didn’t feel the same for him.

As they worked, Dane became ever more certain of his decision to move the colony here. They all knew Earth was building a fleet as rapidly as it could, and with a workforce of billions, that would be quite rapid indeed. There was no way the Centauri could defend both systems. It would be difficult enough to defend this one.

Though Dane still worried about issues from within.

Despite telling MacTaggart what the shooter had said, the assumption still seemed to be that he was a lone gunman and not part of anything larger. They couldn’t prove otherwise. Despite Good trying a few different accounts and playing it safe, none of the underground contacts wanted anything to do with him. Dane supposed it had been wishful thinking to assume they would have found anything so soon after the shooting. Surely whoever had helped Mitchell was hiding out, waiting for this to all blow over so they could decide if they wanted to try anything again. Not the best time to be taking on new recruits.

That still nagged at Dane. They needed to find out about these people, and soon. The idea of moving his people here only to get attacked by some economic terrorist was a painful thought. And if MacTaggart was right, and the shooter was connected to the people protesting Dane’s presence, they were dealing with isolationists willing to kill to get what they wanted. Dane didn’t like it, but he’d rather face disgruntled civilians than Augmented warships.

That was an issue for the future. As it was, they were nearly ready to head home.

“So, three ships plus the Prometheus should be enough to get more than half of your colony here. Will the rest be able to last the month while we shuttle back and forth?” Bell asked.

“It might take us some time to prep them and make sure they have enough food and medical supplies, but yes. Assuming the Augmented don’t come for us in that time period, my people should be able to make it for six weeks.”

“It should take two weeks there and two weeks back. Four should be sufficient.”

Dane raised an eyebrow at Bell. “You needed approval from Parliament to even arm these warships before they come to pick us up while being driven by your own pilots. I am not going to pretend showing up here with five hundred people will be simple.”

Bell flushed and nodded. “There will be some immigration paperwork, to be sure.”

“But if it takes more than two weeks—”

“It won’t. We’d rather have all your people here as soon as possible to make defending Varuna unnecessary.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Dane stated.

“You feeling all right about this?” Bell asked.

Dane clenched his teeth. He hadn’t meant to sound wistful.

“Yeah. I mean, I’m worried about the shooter’s allies coming for my people.”

“MacTaggart has assured me he’s taken every precaution.”

“I know, and I’m sure he has. I’m still worried, though. Plus, the idea of leaving Varuna undefended…”

“The Augmented won’t bomb it to nothing if that’s what you’re worried about. They value infrastructure and will want your base intact.”

“You’ve said as much, and I believe you, but there’s more to it than that.” Dane wasn’t sure if he could fully express himself, but he felt like he should try. “There’s kelp farms that will be overgrown if we leave the place. Nessies we’ll have to release and hope they remember us. The hydroponic level will have to be scrubbed and restarted. All that’s assuming the murder stars don’t get in and ruin everything.”

“Murder stars?”

“A local life form. They’re problematic in large numbers, but the nessies love to eat them, so they’re manageable.”

Bell shook his head and smiled. “It sounds like an amazing place. Truly. When we got here, neither of these planets had much life. Some single-celled organisms. Some mycelium and super-basic plants, some insect-like organisms, and that was it. No fish, no squids, no giant, long-necked, swimming reptiles.”

“They’re not reptiles. Not technically,” Dane refuted, knowing both Lopez and Alvarez would be proud of him making the distinction.

“You’ll get to go back. We can’t let the Augmented win. We can’t. I feel in my bones that it’s wrong. What they’re doing to people.”

“I agree, but we can’t beat them in a fight, either.”

“Which is why your doctor’s nanites are key. We are going to win this war and make everything right.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

“We’ll get this done. In six weeks, your people will join us, and we’ll start a new age together. Both of our colonies have already accomplished so much. Think what we can do together!”

Dane smiled and nodded at Bell’s infectious enthusiasm. He had to admit, despite all the hurdles and literally being shot, things were progressing well. His people would be safe if they came here, and if Alvarez made a breakthrough, they would finally be able to do something about the Augmented.

“All right. That’s everything,” Bell announced as he filled out the last bit of paperwork. “The ships are loaded and should be getting crewed as we speak. I know you have to work all this out with your people back home, but I hope this day will live in history.”

That was when the klaxons started blaring.

“Fire drill?” Dane asked as Bell pulled out a tablet and went pale.

“Not a drill. It’s… Holy shit. I knew it was possible, but I never thought it would happen.”

“Never thought what would happen?”

Bell looked up with panic in his eyes.

“Earth’s fleet has arrived.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Dane followed Bell into the hallway and past dozens of bustling people. Pilots ran one way, followed by technicians and mechanics. Office staff of every profession scattered in all directions. Bell cut through them like a ship through a storm.

“Every ship needs to be topped off with fuel before they launch! Make sure the ammunition is fully loaded. For God’s sake, don’t engage any torpedo auto-targeting without orders!”

They reached the exit Dane normally took and found it flooded.

“What the hell is this?” Bell demanded.

“Sorry, sir. Pipe burst. I’ve got the leak stopped, and we’ll have all this water cleaned up in ten minutes,” the plumber promised.

“Make it five!”

“Yes, sir!”

Bell scowled but kept moving. Dane didn’t know the exact way out, so he stuck by Bell. They reached a sort of command center that was even more chaotic than the hallways. People were yelling at each other from different monitors, arguing about who needed to launch first and where everyone was supposed to go from there.

“I need every ship on the stations overhead launched immediately. Let’s clear those berths so we can get everybody up and out of the gravity well.”

“Particular orders on that, sir?”

“We’ve practiced this. Make sure the pilots check in with the ships on either side of them, so there are no collisions near the platforms, and get them launched. We’ll go into defensive positions once they’re a kilometer out from the station. Someone get me eyes on what the hell the Augmented have brought.”

Like a lighthouse in a storm, Bell’s presence calmed and guided the chaotic room. Those communicating with the stations up above pulled on headphones and coordinated those launches. Those working with ground crews had questions about what needed to be done before launches, not realizing Bell had already ordered everyone in the hall to check weapons and ammunition before they launched. Once he relayed this and put someone in charge of making sure each ship was fully loaded before they launched, it started to feel like a command room.

“Sir, we have the Augmented fleet’s location, as well as eyes and estimates.”

“Get me an image up here so we can all see what we’re working with.”

A hologram in the middle of the room flickered to life. It showed the Desert world. Dane only knew this because of the lack of oceans. The hologram then “zoomed out” by shrinking the planet, moving it to an edge, and placing the Augmented fleet on the other side. A line appeared between the two, marking the distance between the planet and the fleet from Earth as one light minute.

“They’re moving toward the Desert?” Bell asked.

“Yes, sir. They have warships in the front, which we have to assume are all fully loaded with fighters.”

“How many?”

“So far, there are twelve, but more are still coming in as the ships advance.”

“We don’t have a reading on them yet?”

“No, sir. The warp drives are making it impossible to read the area.”

“Using it as cover. The bastards,” Bell spat. “What’s with the big one? Is that a glitch in our scans, or are we looking at a new class of spacecraft?”

A technician entered some commands, and the hologram zoomed in on the largest object in the Augmented fleet. Obviously, they hadn’t gotten a full scan yet. They had the rough shape of the thing, but unlike the Desert, which had been rendered in excruciating detail, this spacecraft was simple polygons put together.

Still, the shape of it made Dane wonder what in the hell the thing was. It appeared to be a row of massive rings with three spines joining them, like five onion rings connected by three French fries.

“It’s hollow?” Bell asked.

“Yes, sir. The mass is low for its volume, which indicates the center is hollow. It’s not an aircraft carrier.”

“Just what we need,” Bell griped. “Let me know the minute it does anything.”

“Yes, sir. We have high-speed drones headed there now. We’ll update our scans and let you know when we have an answer.”

“Good. I don’t want anyone to engage until we know what the damn thing does. Maintain defensive perimeter on Alpha Central. How is the evacuation of the Desert going?”

“Twenty-seven percent of the ships on the surface have already launched, fully laden with people,” a technician reported. “Sixty-eight percent are still being loaded. They should be launched within five minutes.”

“We don’t have the ships there to evacuate the entire population, do we?”

“No, sir. All the ships account for thirty-six percent of the population. They will head to Alpha Central. The rest are heading for the bunkers.”

So many. Dane thought but wasn’t about to say. Evacuating a third of the planet was impressive. Tragic that it wasn’t enough, and Dane wondered how useful bunkers would be against a foe like the Augmented. Dane didn’t know if they would bomb the surface or send down people with implants. If it was the latter, all those people in the bunkers would be crammed tight. Essentially sitting ducks.

Though maybe that wasn’t giving them a fair shake. This was the moment the Centauri system had been waiting for. Dane wouldn’t want to be the first Augmented to come after one of the children that the teachers here had worked so hard to gift with a Scottish accent.

“And the platform?”

“Transport vessels are already on their way to the surface to help load people up. Do you have orders for the warships and fighters?”

“Get them launched but don’t engage. Not yet. If they have warp capabilities, get them to a spot where they can join the fleet.”

“We only have two ships over there capable of warp. That’s not enough to bring all the fighters over. Do you want us to send any battleships via warp?”

“That’s a negative. Too chaotic, and we can’t risk the energy discharge. Those are civilian ships. They’re going to be unorganized, not to mention poorly shielded. We stick with the plan. Make it look like we’re falling back here. Show me the fleet around Alpha Central.”

The hologram zoomed out from the Desert and the approaching wave of Augmented ships until it showed both planets in the system, then it zoomed in on Alpha Central. Dane couldn’t help but smile at what he saw.

Alpha Central’s fleet was assembling in and around the orbital plane of their home world. There were dozens of ships of different classes and sizes, grouped in formations that looked more tightly drilled than any Dane had managed to train.

There were also the platforms themselves, which bristled with weapons. That apparently not being enough, the platforms were also activating the weapon satellites positioned around the planet.

The message seemed clear. Take the Desert. Fine. But try to come to Alpha Central and get wrecked.

“Sir, the unidentified ring ship appears to be powering up.”

“Its warp drive?”

“We assume so, sir. The other Augmented ships are clearing away from it.”

“Shit,” Bell remarked. “It must be a long-distance, high-resolution telescope system. They probably got a read of every ship we have in the system. If they retreat, we’ll need a different strategy when they come back.”

“I don’t think it’s a scanner.” Dane looked at the model. A drone had gotten close enough for a better reading. They could now see the lights lining the rings’ interior. Dozens on every one, all of them turning toward the Desert. “Get your people out of there!”

There was no time. One light from each of the five rings painted the orbital station above the Desert.

Then every light activated, and a massive blast of energy pulsed out. The hologram didn’t know how to render the massive beam of energy. Dane wondered if his brain would have been able to do any better.

The various sensors, cameras, and scanners on the orbital platform hardly did any better. They showed the intricate platform one moment and a bunch of polygons scattering apart the next.

“What in the hell is happening out there?” Bell railed. “Get me actual video! This freaking model doesn’t know what’s happening.”

Except that it did.

The view from the orbital platform’s cameras was even worse than the model made it appear.

The blast of energy ripped apart the station. It sheared off plating, knocked ships off their moorings, and burned the humans on the station to crisps. The last thing they saw was the lens on the camera start to melt before the entire platform tore away like it was a tin shed in the path of a tornado.

“What in the hell was that?” Bell shouted. “I need eyes on that damn thing!”

“The energy reading is gone, sir,” a technician announced, switching back to a view of the model that the drone was still improving. “Wait a minute. It’s back, but it’s much smaller. I think it’s recharging.”

“How long is that going to take?”

“We have energy readings of its final output. Give us some time, and we’ll be able to estimate—”

ERROR flashed across the hologram. Then it zoomed back out to show the planet and the approaching fleet of ships.

“Drone’s been compromised, sir.”

“Can we get another out there?”

“We had another one headed that way, but it’s been taken out as well.”

“It’s like the bastards wanted us to see what they could do to us,” Bell muttered.

“Much of our fleet had launched. Do you want them to attack?”

“Negative. Defensive positions. They think they can bully us with a big ship? They forgot who they’re messing with.”

“Orders, sir?” The technician was grinning now.

“Send the asteroid!”

The entire room cheered. The model of the Desert showed one of the two massive asteroids in orbit around the planet come to life, break orbit, and burn toward the Augmented. Dane grinned. Of course the Centauri had kept that one fully staffed and ready for action.

“Um, excuse me, sir? Are you supposed to be here?”

Dane chuckled. “Oh, uh. Not exactly, no.”

The aide signaled to a senior staff member who didn’t look like they wanted to bother with Dane but came over all the same. “No disrespect, sir, but—”

“You don't want the leader of a foreign nation in your command center while your planet is under attack?"

“That’s the long and short of it, sir.”

Dane understood. He was an officer himself. He allowed the aide who’d so nervously approached him to escort him clear of the room.

“You might want to contact MacTaggart about getting up to the Prometheus!” Bell shouted after him as he left. That was what Dane had been thinking, though he didn’t know if the Prometheus should try to fight or send a warning to Varuna. He wanted to save his people, but the best way to do that was to stop the invasion here.

“This way, sir.” The aide led Dane past an exit.

“Doesn’t that take us outside?” Dane asked.

“Usually it does, sir, but there’s a leak right now. The plumber is working on it.”

“I need to get to a hangar and up to the orbital platform.”

“Yes, sir.” The aide led him down a hall he had not been in before, then through a door. Dane stepped outside into the night air and looked at the sky. From down here, there was hardly any evidence of the impending battle, besides the sky having more stars in it than the night before. Those were ships, of course. Waiting for battle.

But the city continued to function. People rushed about, making deliveries, cooking food, going about their jobs, and making sure the war machine of Alpha Central continued to run. It made Dane proud to see everyone working together like this.

It was time for him and his people to figure out the best way to help.

He pulled out his tablet and dialed MacTaggart. It rang once before Dane felt a sharp pain in his neck. He slapped at it, wondering if the Scots had brought hornets with them. He found not an insect but a thin metal barb. A dart.

“Oh, shit,” Dane slurred as the strength left his legs, and he collapsed. The last thing he saw was the aide canceling the call to MacTaggart, then helping to lay his head on the ground. Then all the stars in the sky went dark, and Dane slid into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Lopez was boarding a shuttle up to the station when a call came in from MacTaggart. She breathed a sigh of relief. She knew Dane was in a meeting with Bell, and he would, in theory, be safe at the command center. Still, she would be happier with some confirmation before they went up to the Prometheus.

Unfortunately, MacTaggart was not calling to assuage her concerns.

“Lopez speaking.”

“Lopez. Have you heard from Dane?”

Lopez’s heart clawed itself into her throat.

“I thought he was with Bell.”

“I don’t know about that. I’m on my way to a shuttle up to my ship, but I got a call from him.”

“What did he say?” Lopez’s heart pounded so hard she thought her tongue might fall out.

“Nothing. Disconnected before we could talk. I called him back, but he didn’t answer. Whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait. Tell him I’ll be on my ship and out of contact thanks to these damn Augmented!”

“Sure. Of course,” Lopez rushed out.

She was dialing Dane’s number before the line dropped. There was no answer. She tried again with the same result.

“Crap. Crap, crap, crap!”

“Everything all right?” Good asked, getting up from his spot on the shuttle.

“No. Maybe? I don’t know. Dane’s not answering.”

“That’s not like him.”

“No, Especially not in those deliberation meetings. I guess he’s not in one of those anymore, but he should—”

“We need to take off!” the pilot shouted from the front of the shuttle.

“Just let me get off first.” Good scrambled off the shuttle and took Lopez’s hand to pull her free of the launch site.

“I might be overreacting.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a trace on all your comm devices. I’ll find his, and we’ll find him.”

Good entered a few commands on a tablet, then showed it to Lopez. “See, we have him. He’s in a courtyard. Not moving. That…that doesn’t make sense.”

Lopez called MacTaggart back. “You got fifteen seconds before we launch!”

“Dane’s in a courtyard somewhere, not answering his phone. We think something’s wrong. I’m sending you his coordinates.”

MacTaggart cursed colorfully and creatively before shouting, “Scrub the launch. I need to check something. That’s close to where I am, Miss Lopez. If I find him out having a smoke, I won’t be happy, lass.”

“Dane obsesses about cardiovascular fitness. Smoking would be like torture to him.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll report back. Get up to your ship.”

Lopez and Good looked at the shuttle, already high in the sky above them, then back at each other. “Even if we could, I wouldn’t want to leave Dane down here alone.”

“That makes two of us,” Good agreed.

“It’s not far, right?” Lopez inquired.

“No, not at all. It’s at the base where he’s been meeting with Bell. We can be there in five minutes.”

“Worth it to make sure we’re overreacting, right?”

“I hope you’re overreacting,” Good claimed, though he did not sound hopeful.

They found their way into the courtyard to find a distressed MacTaggart, looking around and finding nothing. They could not fix this situation, of course, as Dane was not there.

“I got his signal.” Good dropped to hands and knees and dug around under a bush. He came out with Dane’s tablet.

“That’s not good,” Lopez declared.

“Aye, it’s not,” MacTaggart confirmed. “I don’t know what we can do about it right now, though.”

“He’s been taken!” Lopez cried. “We have to find him.”

“Aye, but how? I don’t know who would take him.”

Lopez and Good shared a look that MacTaggart did not fail to notice.

“Ye have a guess, then?”

Lopez looked at Good, who only raised an eyebrow as if to say it was her call, not his.

“We’ve been doing some snooping,” she told MacTaggart, which was quite the understatement.

“Snooping?”

“In regards to Mitchell, Dane’s shooter.”

“I’ve told ye, there’s nothing there!”

“With respect, sir, we have evidence that says otherwise,” Good said, taking out his tablet with a record of what they had unraveled.

“Mitchell was part of a small underground group of young people with more free time than sense.” Good showed MacTaggart their site.

“It’s an ultra-private chat where they mostly complain about things they don’t like. Mitchell didn’t want to study civil engineering, for example, or fold towels for pilots.”

“None of us do what we want. We do what we must!” MacTaggart sputtered.

“Sure, but these kids don’t see it that way. They’ve grown up under the military system you have here and are rebelling against it. I’d say it’s mostly harmless. They’re late teens, early twenties, trying to figure out how systems of governance work. These kinds of conversations are common,” Good pointed out.

“How many of them are there?” MacTaggart asked, scrolling through user names.

“A few hundred, at least.”

“Oh, sweet baby of the fields.”

“Most of them are only expressing discontent, looking for a place in the world, but some of them talk bigger. They’ve been super-interested in something they call the ‘lock.’ I don’t know what it means, but it seems significant. I got into this by sneaking in with Mitchell’s credentials. I can’t actually post or anything. But there’s a countdown, see? It coincides with when the Augmented arrived.”

“And were you planning on sharing this with us?” MacTaggart asked.

“We tried, but you didn’t want to hear it!” Lopez exclaimed, hoping it didn’t sound too much like an accusation.

“So you think they took Dane?” MacTaggart asked.

“The timing fits too well for it to be a coincidence. But I don’t know where.”

“You said there’s a lock? Anything about a key?” MacTaggart asked.

“No, nothing like that. They talk about time to spread, time to recruit, to quench, and all this, but they never actually talk about how or where.”

“Wait, how do they spell lock?”

“L-o-c-h. I’m not sure that matters. They misspell everything. I think it’s one of the ways they know who has seniority.”

“But I know where the Loch is!” MacTaggart took out his tablet. “That’s what we call the water reservoir.”

“You think they took Dane there?” Lopez asked.

“It fits,” Good noted. “A reservoir would spread. Would quench.”

“Aye, and if they target it during an invasion, it could be a disaster. They won’t need to attack at all. They can wait for us to get sick from bad water.”

MacTaggart’s tablet connected. “I need an immediate raid on the Loch. Top priority. We have a man kidnapped, and the entire facility could be destroyed. I need a bomb team as well as a negotiator.”

“Where is this Loch?” Lopez asked when he had hung up.

“It’s far. Other side of town.”

“Good, let’s go!”

“Wait!” MacTaggart declared.

“If you’re going to tell us not to go, you should know that’s wishful thinking.”

“No. I was going to offer you a ride.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dane came to and found his hands cuffed behind his back. Despite there being a crick in his neck and one of his legs being asleep, he held very still. He didn’t want his captors to know he was awake for as long as possible. Better to get a sense of where he was first.

With his eyes closed, he reached out his senses. The first thing he noticed was the cold and damp. The floor was hard, concrete or something similar, and wet. In fact, water seemed to be the biggest part of the environment. He heard it flowing, sloshing, splashing, dripping, and echoing back. He could also hear a mechanical hum that had to be water pumps. The echo told him he was in an enclosed space. He stayed still a moment longer but heard no footsteps. No voices.

He opened his eyes the slightest bit. The room was dim. What light there was came from long panels overhead that glowed blue, almost purple. Dane knew that color…it was ultraviolet. They used it in the hydroponics lab to sterilize water. Was this place some sort of water treatment plant?

Dane wrenched his eyes open. He was on a concrete slab near a huge pool of water. It was flowing in from a couple of pipes and being sucked out by pumps and aqueducts at the other end of the room, most of which were lost to the dimness. Something floated out there in the water. Some sort of monitor? He couldn’t be sure.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position, frustrated by how tight the cuffs were on his wrists. He looked around the concrete slab where he’d been placed. This had to be some sort of water treatment facility. There were pipes and gauges everywhere, hallways that must have led to the surface. Before he could figure out which hall led to the surface, he heard voices.

He couldn’t make out what they were saying, only their nervous, excited tone. They chattered and spoke over each other. They didn’t sound like kidnappers to Dane. Not the kind interested in money, anyway. They sounded like kids. Or young men, he supposed. Three or four of them.

They were coming toward him.

Dane’s reflexes kicked in, and he pushed himself to his feet. He could try to make a run for it, but he was curious. They had to be part of the cell the man who’d shot him had belonged to. Now, they’d captured him right after the Augmented attacked. It couldn’t be a coincidence, which had to mean these people had some sort of advanced indication that the Augmented were coming. Which meant they were in league with the enemy and likely up to no good.

Which meant Dane had to stop them.

He felt confident he could do that if his hands were not cuffed behind his back. Oh, and if he had a weapon or two, as well. He had no tablet on him. He vaguely remembered someone tossing it under a bush before he passed out. Which meant he couldn’t call for help. Would Lopez know he was in trouble? She was probably trying to get up to the Prometheus but wouldn’t want to launch without him. She would know he knew that. Haley would be out there looking for him.

The best thing he could do was stall and try to find out as much information as he could from these kidnappers.

So before they came around the corner, he leaned against a wall, let himself slide to the ground, and plastered a look of confusion on his face, like he’d just woke up.

“He’s awake,” the first of three young men commented. Each of them held a flashlight and a handgun, though they seemed about as skilled with the gun as they were with the flashlight, which was not much.

“I know he’s awake. I told you the drug would wear off.”

“Don’t talk to Liam that way, Josh.”

“Oh, whatever, Martin.”

“You’re awake,” the first one, Liam, remarked. It was hard to make out his features in the gloom, but he looked familiar. Something about his chin…

“I am, yes,” Dane replied. “Do I have the three of you to thank for knocking me out?”

“Not us, but some of our associates,” Liam confirmed.

“And who are you and your associates?”

Liam’s eyes gleamed in the low light. “We are the soul of the pro-Earth movement! Our numbers may be small, but we’re devoted to a better future for this world than the endless obsession with war!”

“You know Earth is attacking right now, right?”

“They are here to liberate this planet from the tyrannical stranglehold of Parliament!”

“Hear, hear!” Martin and Josh chimed in.

“Is this supposed to be a peaceful liberation?” Dane asked.

Martin and Josh both looked at Liam, who bit his lip. “We, uh, we know people will get hurt today, but it’s the only way to ensure a better future for everyone.”

“Do you know when we were first drafted?” Josh asked. “When we were six. That’s how old we were when the military came for us and told us we would have to give our lives for them, no matter what. We never got to dream of anything except what kind of a fighter we’d die in. Well, except for the son of Lord Bell, here.”

That was it! Liam looked exactly like Bell.

“You lost your uncle to the Augmented, didn’t you?” Dane said to Liam.

“My father told you that.” Liam wasn’t shaken by the revelation.

“He did. He told me you two have grown apart as well.”

“We’ve grown apart because all he cares about is war,” Liam rebuked.

“He wants to defend this planet.”

“Defend us from a better way of life,” Martin spat.

“Is that what you think the Augmented bring?” Dane asked. “Did they tell you that?”

“They did,” Liam admitted. “We don’t live in fear like most people of this world. We speak with our ‘enemy.’ We find out about them. We learn from them.”

“Commendable. I did that, too. Went to Earth.”

“You did not!” Martin sounded excited.

“It’s a trick. He’ll say anything to make us release him.”

“Why did you capture me, anyway?” Dane inquired, assuming the kids would not be able to resist asking him about Earth, and it would be better if it came from them.

“You’ve been all over the media, talking about an alliance between your world and ours against the Augmented. We need you to stay here so you can see the Augmented aren’t bad.”

“Have you really been to Earth, though?” Martin asked.

“I did. I saw what they are…and what they’re not. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but if it’s peace, I’d look elsewhere. They have quite a few warships.”

“They only had warships because Alpha Centauri has warships.”

“I’m not sure that’s true. Did Alpha Centauri develop the warp drive themselves, or did the Augmented?”

“The Augmented did,” Liam claimed arrogantly. “By linking their minds, they are able to achieve more than regular people. That’s why we want our world to join theirs.”

“I mean, you’re right. They are capable of doing things I can’t. But if the Augmented invented the warp drive, how did your people get it?” Dane asked, knowing the answer to the question.

“Who knows, man? Whatever,” Josh muttered.

Liam chewed his lip. “My dad said we captured one of their ships and reverse-engineered the drive from it.”

“Is that right? Because that’s what happened on my world, too. Refugees from Earth showed up with a stolen warship capable of warp.”

“So the refugees stole it?” Josh voiced. He seemed to be the most mentally entrenched with the Augmented. Dane made a mental note not to try to change his mind. Better to focus on Liam and Martin. Though Martin seemed the most excitable in regards to the Augmented.

“They did. It was either that or be forcibly implanted.”

“They should have picked that option. I would have,” Liam claimed.

“Wait, so you’re not implanted?” Dane asked.

Liam grinned. “Not yet, but that’s all going to change soon.” Dane followed his gaze to the object floating in the reservoir.

“Why is that?” Dane asked, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

“Because that package has enough nanites to Augment this whole damn city,” Josh announced.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Where did you get that?” Dane asked, not doing a great job of keeping the panic from his voice.

Josh smiled, triumphant. “We’re valued allies.”

“It was a risk, but we made it happen,” Liam added.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Liam. We couldn’t have gotten it without you.”

“But the security in this system is so tight. How did you get that down here?” Dane asked, hoping the wannabe revolutionaries’ pride would loosen their tongues.

“This system’s not as secure as you think it is,” Josh insisted.

“There’s a tiny network of Augmented who haven’t been locked in the camps.” Liam spoke the last word with disdain. “They live in constant fear. Constantly persecuted because they want to help bring this world to the next level of consciousness.”

“But you met them?”

“Not in person, no.” Liam warmed to his grand reveal. They’d probably had this discussion a thousand times, but this was their first time in front of a captive audience. “We figured out some of the people in the revolutionary chatrooms knew more than others. They only needed a few access codes to turn off the right satellites. They jumped in, sent this package toward a rendezvous point, and got it through. Another team got it down here.”

“Again, thanks to Liam,” Martin claimed proudly.

“We had to keep it hidden. Keep it moving. Until the right time.”

“It must have been very difficult,” Dane mentioned.

All three confederates grinned.

“It was worth it for what we could gain,” Liam expressed. “All this world’s resources are going into spacecraft to shoot up other spacecraft. We could accomplish so much more if we weren’t at war. We could be happier, healthier, more creative, and a million other things. We could have better food, better art, and true innovation. Instead, our people are building weapon after weapon with no real thought for the future.”

“How does putting nanites in everyone’s brain give them more options? They’ll be beholden to the Augmented if they do that.”

“That’s not how it works,” Liam told him. “I wish I could show you! I would inject you myself if I could, but the nanites are specially designed to work in water.”

“So you brought them here to infect the entire planet?”

“Ugh, you sound like his dad,” Josh grumbled.

“Your dad is fighting for the sovereignty of this world!”

“But what is sovereignty?” Liam asked, obviously meaning the question to be rhetorical. “For most of Earth’s history, it simply means having your own army to fight against other countries. We don’t want to wallow in the past anymore. We want a future that moves beyond war.”

“And you think the Augmented can give you this?”

“We know they can,” Liam commented. “They can share feelings in a way we can’t. They can share thoughts. They’ve moved past the primitive part of our brains and are the next step of human evolution.”

“Maybe. Except when I went to Earth, they tried to kill me.”

“Probably because you attacked them first,” Josh suggested.

“We most definitely did not,” Dane asserted. “We wanted to take a look around. They tried to run us over, then shoot us.”

“They knew you were a threat,” Martin countered.

“I guess. We had one shuttle with no weapons against ten billion. We could have dropped an asteroid, I suppose, but we didn’t. All we did was go to a diner. And when we didn’t interact with them the way they wanted us to, they attacked us. We’d barely had coffee before they came for us.”

“They were afraid,” Liam asserted, though his voice sounded shaky.

“Of what? Of us not wanting to take the implant? Is that why they told you to put these nanites in the water supply instead of offering them to people?”

“We couldn’t offer them to people.” Josh sneered. “We would have been shut down by this fascist government.”

“Really? Because you somehow managed to kidnap me and take me here without them stopping you. We found your secret chatrooms. They’re impressive, but I have to say I’m surprised you didn’t use that network to administer the nanites to yourself or your allies yet.”

Liam glanced at Martin and Josh, who both shrugged.

“Is that something you considered?” Dane asked.

“Of course it was,” Josh snapped back.

“But you haven’t implanted yourself?” Dane prodded.

“We would have if we could,” Liam explained. “These nanites are specialized, though. We couldn’t open the package early. We needed it to be in the reservoir so it can reach the entire city. After the pumps cycle on, it’ll trigger. Then everyone will be implanted.”

“I’m sorry. Not trying to be obstinate, but why didn’t they let you three try the nanites first? Wouldn’t that be better?”

“They said the Augmented on this planet aren’t the same as on Earth. They don’t have full access,” Martin revealed.

“It could create a separate population that would oppose the first,” Josh stated as if it were obvious.

“Because this second population, the population of this world, would be able to think for themselves before they asserted their broadcast signal over all your minds. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

“Of course not!” Martin blustered.

“What…what do you mean?” Liam asked.

“Nothing. I think it’s odd they didn’t actually give you a choice.” Dane spoke slowly. “It’s amazing that you got this entire package through security, but they couldn’t provide a way for you three to actually join them? Why not? Are they worried you’d communicate with the people of this world and go against them? For that matter, why did they have you put this in the reservoir? Couldn’t you have just told people and let them choose for themselves?”

“They might have chosen wrong,” Josh countered.

“Isn’t that their choice? Isn’t that what it means to be human? To have the right to make choices?”

“That’s not what this is about,” Liam insisted. “This is about a better future, a future without war.”

“That makes sense,” Dane agreed, even though it didn’t. “But can I ask one more thing? Why wait for the invasion, then? If this is about a future without war, why do this during the onset of a battle? Couldn’t you have done this a week ago, gotten a hundred thousand people Augmented and gone from there?”

“The invasion is a distraction,” Liam claimed.

“A distraction that’s going to cost thousands of lives. Maybe hundreds of thousands. They already shredded the entire orbital platform around the Desert. How many people worked up there? How many people are already dead?”

“Everyone up there was a soldier,” Josh suggested.

“Were they? Sorry, not to sound ignorant, but I never went to that platform. Are they all soldiers on the stations around your worlds? Because it looked like a bunch of dockworkers to me. Repair people, electricians, technicians. People like your father.”

Liam flinched but said nothing.

“They’re all complicit, though.” Josh started talking faster. “They’re building machines of war, refueling them, making them more deadly.”

“Sure. But that’s true of the Augmented as well, isn’t it? They came here with more than a dozen warships, plus fighters, and a ship big enough to destroy an orbital station in a single shot. It must have taken millions of people to build all that. Billions, if what you’re telling me about the Augmented is true and they’re all on the same page.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Isn’t it how you said it works here? Everyone who so much as feeds one of the people who work on a weapon is complicit, right? Doesn’t that make the ten billion Augmented all complicit in building these war machines and invading here?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Liam asserted, though he didn’t sound nearly as sure of himself as he had when he had first started speaking. “They’re not here to invade. They’re only here to look like they’re invading. Then we release these nanites, and the entire invasion can stop.”

“If that was true, why did they destroy the orbital station around the Desert?”

Liam didn’t have an answer. Martin looked aghast with his tablet in hand. He must have checked what Dane had said about the orbital platform and confirmed it was true. Thousands of lives had been snuffed out in a single shot from the devastating weapon.

Dane couldn’t believe how badly these kids had been duped. They thought they were part of a revolution, equal members or key players, but they were pawns. Dane wasn’t surprised they hadn’t thought about the broader implications of what was happening.

The Augmented had probably kept them in the dark on purpose. He didn’t even think they knew the motivation for the attempt on his life. Surely they would have killed him if that was the plan, but instead, the Augmented were keeping all the parts of their conspiracy separate. They knew if they mingled, they might share ideas and start to poke holes in the entire “distraction” theory.

The Augmented had outsmarted these kids. They had outsmarted this entire system. Dane knew he shouldn’t be surprised. There were four million here. Four million different opinions, ideologies, and histories against ten billion minds on the exact same page, whether they wanted to be or not. Ten billion minds pushed one way or the other based on the whims of whatever actually controlled them. They wouldn’t risk the Centauri getting even a fraction of that. It wasn’t about linking together but about control. These kids were being played like puppets, despite not having implants themselves.

“They had to. They had to destroy the station. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to release these nanites.”

“Is that true? Or are they not being honest with you? You said yourself the Augmented can share thoughts and feelings. So why didn’t they let you have this gift? Could it be because they are withholding something from you? They’re trying to manipulate you?”

“That’s not what’s happening,” Martin proclaimed.

“They want to help us,” Josh added.

“I don’t know,” Liam stated. “Why couldn’t we have done this a week ago? No one would have noticed, and we’d all be Augmented and able to share our feelings. That would change minds, wouldn’t it?”

“It might,” Martin admitted.

“It wouldn’t. And we can’t wait any longer. I know we’re waiting for a signal, but we have to go for it.” Josh jumped into the reservoir and started wading out toward the barrel.

“Don’t!” Dane shouted too forcefully.

When he yelled, Martin drew a weapon and pointed it at his head.

Then the gunshots rang out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Dane tackled Liam to the ground and covered his body while bullets flew overhead. He had been close to changing the kid’s mind! He didn’t want him killed in a barrage of gunfire, especially when his knowledge might be useful in finding the Augmented he’d worked with.

Dane looked up. Martin wildly fired back, unable to see whether they were rescuers or attackers. The return fire might have been excessive if a war were not being fought outside. No one had any patience for all this. Still, he felt horror and revulsion as bullets punched through Martin’s body. Martin crashed to the ground, and a pool of blood spread from his lifeless body.

“You have to tell your friend to stop,” Dane told Liam, who was still pinned under his body.

“We have to do this. It’s the only way to get my uncle free!”

“No, Liam, it’s not. Tell your friend to stop.”

Liam didn’t, so Dane tried.

“Josh. Don’t do this!”

The sound of pumps kicking in drowned out his words. Water poured into the closer side of the pool, forcing the water already there to flow across and out of the outlets at the end. It also carried Josh to the barrel.

“For a better world!” Josh shouted, then activated some kind of a charge on the barrel-shaped package that made it burst open. It looked like it was filled with silver slime. The second it hit the water, it spread out, and the surge of water carried it to the outlets.

“Oh my God, Josh, no!” Liam shouted.

The bursting barrel clunked Josh. He lost his footing and slipped underwater.

“We have to save him.” Tears ran freely down Liam’s face. “With Martin gone, he’s all I have left. Please…we didn’t want anyone to die. Please!”

Dane wanted to say that of course he wouldn’t let Josh die. It was probably the only way to convince Liam that Dane and his dad were on the right side of this conflict. Before he could, Dane’s security got to them.

Good pulled him up and away while Athanas pinned Liam, got him rolled over and cuffed.

“You all right, Dane?”

“I’m fine.”

“You need to sit still, all right?” Good insisted.

“Good, I’m fine. Really.”

“Do it for me, Dane,” Lopez coaxed.

Dane furrowed his brow. What were they going on about? Lopez brought out a scanner, and Dane understood. They thought he was implanted.

“No, you’ve got the wrong idea! We have to stop that stuff from flowing out of here!” Dane cried.

“Cut off the pumps!” Good shouted.

Lopez didn’t let him go, though. She scanned him twice to be sure, then kissed him when the second scan came back negative.

“I’m me! Now cut me loose!” Dane ordered.

Good complied, and Dane could once more use his arms.

He promptly pushed past his friends and dove into the water after Josh.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Dane swam hard toward Josh. He saw him at the bottom of the reservoir, illuminated by UV light. The water wasn’t too deep, so the light could penetrate. Which meant Dane still saw the nanites in the water, like silt in a river. There had to be billions of the things, if not trillions. There were so many that they didn’t even look like things. They looked like murk, a silvery scum being sucked past the outlets at the end of the room and sent all over the city.

They needed to stop this, but Dane couldn’t do anything about the nanites. All he could do was save this misguided youth and hope it would be enough to show him and Liam the regular people had not started this war.

Dane reached Josh, wrapped an arm under one of his armpits, then hauled him to the surface. They breached the surface, and Dane gasped for air. In the glow of the UV light, he saw nanites all around Josh’s mouth. Like the kid had tried to drink them. He was unconscious now, either from lack of oxygen or the nanites going to work.

“Stay out of the water!” Dane shouted as he kicked his legs and swam for the edge of the reservoir. He had never thought himself a particularly strong swimmer, but living on Varuna turned even the most average of swimmers into someone far more competent. His strong kicks easily closed the distance between himself and the edge.

“The water is infected with nanites!” Dane barked when he reached solid ground. “Make sure you have gloves on.”

“Josh! Josh! Is he okay? Please, tell me he’s okay!” Liam blubbered, hands behind his back while two guards kept him near the wall.

“What do ye mean the water is infected?” MacTaggart’s brogue cut through the room. “Are ye saying the Augmented have already made it down here?”

“They’ve been here the entire time,” Dane revealed. “They were manipulating these kids into getting access to the docks and this reservoir. They released nanites in the water. Billions of them. The attack is a distraction.”

MacTaggart flinched at that. “I can assure ye, this attack is not a mere distraction. No way. But this…this is bad. I need to make some calls. Get this man contained!”

MacTaggart stumbled away, tablet in hand, already barking orders.

“Did you swallow any water?” Lopez asked.

“No. No, I don’t think so. I’m fine.”

“We’ll be the judge of that, sir,” a guard with a face mask and gloves asserted as he came forward with a device.

“They already scanned me,” Dane told him.

“There are nanites in the clothes,” the guard reported, and Dane realized he was actually a medic. It seemed like everyone on this planet wore at least two hats.

Dane did not hesitate to strip naked.

“Any nanites in this part of the water?” he asked.

Flabbergasted by the suddenly naked man in front of him, the medic scanned the water and stammered, “N-n-no, sir.”

Dane dove back in and pulled himself out. Got a clean bill of health from the medic.

The medic brought out a device and put it over Josh’s mouth, then performed chest compressions. Dane was glad to see the people of Alpha Centauri felt the same as he did about these kids. They didn’t deserve to die like this. Not when they could be saved. Though it was too late for Martin.

The medic’s intervention worked, and Josh sputtered out some water and began to cough. They promptly scanned him and cuffed him after finding he was Augmented. That worried Dane. He hadn’t been unconscious as long as he thought the Augmented had to be. Had this update worked faster than the last version? Could the Augmented create custom nanites now? The idea of them sprinkling nanites on the oceans of Varuna flashed through his head. A nightmare of an idea if there ever was one.

“You look like you need a blanket,” Lopez commented. She seemed shaken, and rightly so. For all any of them knew, he could fall to the ground convulsing at any second.

Now that Josh was restrained, the medic returned to Dane with a device that looked sort of like a metal wand.

“Just need some more readings, sir. You understand.”

Dane did. If he had gotten himself infected with the damn things by playing the hero, he needed to know.

“Lopez, if this comes back bad, you’re in command, all right?”

“It’s not going to come to that.”

“Haley, you have to promise me you’ll—”

He fell to his knees as the worst headache he had ever imagined struck. It was like a pair of eagles were fighting over his skull. An anaconda was trying to pop him like an egg. Ants were digging tunnels inside his cranium.

“Don’t touch him!” the medic shouted, and Lopez stepped away, though she was crying now.

The medic moved the metal wand closer to Dane’s skull and clicked disapprovingly. “Some of the nanites got inside him. They’re trying to make it to his brain.”

“Is there something we can do? We can’t just stand here!” Lopez pleaded.

The pain was so bad. Dane only wanted it to go away.

“Does it normally happen like this?” Athanas demanded.

“No. Normally, they pass out first. I don’t know why this is happening,” the medic stated. He didn’t sound troubled, though. He sounded…hopeful?

Dane was not the only person to notice this.

“Did you hear that, Dane? Something’s different. You can fight it! You have to fight it, all right?”

Dane heard the feeling in her voice, how she cared about him. He resolved to do everything in his power to never let this woman down. He wasn’t sure how, but he resisted. He refused to succumb to the pain. He gritted his teeth and pushed back against it.

Suddenly, the pain subsided.

“The nanites,” the medic gasped. “They’re retreating!”

“But how?”

“I got robots in my pee,” Dane blurted, hardly able to think past the pain. That had to be it, didn’t it? He already had nanites in him. The ones from the Centauri. What else could resist the Augmented nanites except those?

“You can do it, chief!” Good encouraged.

“Come on, Dane!”

“I. Got. Robots. In. My. Pee!” Dane exclaimed. His pulse sped, and his muscles flexed as he willed the implant back. He knew he couldn’t actually control the robots inside him, but placebo was a powerful force in medicine, and there were strange connections between the mind and body. Food was healthier when people believed it was healthier. Bodybuilders saw bigger gains when they believed their workout would make a difference. People had cured themselves of all sorts of things simply by believing it would work.

Dane had more than that. He had Centauri nanites in his blood. He had Haley’s love, Good’s smarts, and Athanas’ loyalty. He had an entire planet rooting for his success and the free will of billions who needed him to fight back more than he had ever fought before riding on it.

Something loosened, and the headache vanished. He sneezed out blood and wiped it away to discover specks of silver in it.

“Holy hell. What in the hell was that?” he asked.

“You did it!” Lopez cried when the medic scanned him and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Did what?”

“Did nothing. The medical nanites in your system treated the foreign nanites as invading pathogens and removed them,” the medic explained. “You got lucky, sir.”

Dane didn’t fully understand, but he didn’t have to. Lopez was wrapping him in an emergency blanket, and he was still himself. His thoughts were his own. His feelings belonged to no one but him. He was his own man.

“We need to get off this planet,” Dane insisted.

Lopez nodded.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Good stated.

“I can help with that,” MacTaggart chimed in. “My ship is near yours in the space port. I’d like to get up there as soon as possible. I have a shuttle.”

“Let’s go, then,” Dane proposed.

“Aye…but maybe we’ll grab ye something to wear on the way.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Dane was perplexed to find the only thing MacTaggart had in his vehicle for him to wear was a kilt. It was better than a coverall crawling with nanites, so he donned it without complaint. Lopez did not seem to mind nearly as much as Dane did, though she kept making comments along the lines of “so that’s what Scots wear under those things.” Dane had not borrowed any undergarments from MacTaggart. He had on a shirt, at least, though it was sleeveless. He felt like the cover of a romance novel.

Dane had barely gotten used to his naked thighs rubbing against each other when he settled into the front passenger seat beside MacTaggart, who was behind the wheel. Lopez, Good, and Athanas climbed into the back. They’d left Bell and Josh in the capable hands of MacTaggart’s Centauri guard.

At first, Dane felt a surge of relief as the workers scurried around the water treatment plant. They were obviously taking the job seriously. Then he heard them yelling at each other, and the fear crept back in.

“We have to purge the system!”

“We can’t purge it from here. We need to clear out all the end points!”

“You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of faucets.”

“I know, Chuck. Goddamn it, I know.”

The nanites had already gotten into the system, and there was no simple way to get them out. Especially since the water was pumped up to the reservoir and gravity did the work from there.

“How are we going to stop everyone from drinking the water?” Haley asked.

“I told everyone I could,” MacTaggart reported.

Indeed, he had.

While Dane had dressed, MacTaggart shouted into his comms to everyone who would listen. He had called heads of military, hospitals, and media outlets. He’d yelled the same thing at all of them, then emphasized that yes, he knew there was an invasion going on, and yes, they still needed to listen to him.

Dane hoped it would be enough as MacTaggart put the vehicle in drive and screeched the tires as he left the water treatment facility. It was situated high above the town, so as they drove toward the spaceport on the other side of town, Dane saw the capital city laid out below them.

The damage to MacTaggart’s vocal cords had not been in vain. There were warnings projected on the sides of buildings. Digital placards along the roadsides. All radio channels carried the same information. Don’t Drink the Water! The Water is Contaminated!

It didn’t look as if enough people had heeded the warnings, though.

How could they? Up above, the invasion had come to its next stage. The stars appeared to be trying to kill each other. Bright motes of light fired sparks that snuffed other motes out. For a planet obsessed with preparing for years, Dane was certain everyone down here on the ground could read how the battle was going as well as he could, which was not well.

That left little mental bandwidth for people to heed the warnings plastered down here on the planet.

The first indication of this was a traffic jam.

“Oh, come on. What in the name of the kelpies is this?” MacTaggart complained before popping into an emergency lane and putting the sirens on. They drove past a car that had crashed into a water access point, an old-fashioned fire hydrant. It had been cracked at the base and was spraying everywhere. All the cars behind the wreck were still. There were people near the hydrant. Trying to help the driver of the wrecked car, Dane assumed. They weren’t doing that now, though. Instead, they were convulsing on the ground.

“It’s already begun,” Good warned.

“We have containment methods. We’ll get this cleared up.” MacTaggart grunted as they drove past.

Dane wasn’t so sure.

One of the people blinked and stood in the fountain spraying from the fire hydrant. They stumbled to one of the many cars stuck in the traffic jam, one with its windows rolled up. They tapped on the window. The driver lowered it, only to be sprayed with water. The driver fell back against their seat, eyes flickering as they lost consciousness forever to the Augmented.

They drove past that wreck to another, and another. Most of them hadn’t crashed into fire hydrants like the first, but a few others had. Was that the work of the Augmented who had been hiding out here? Or was it the newly Augmented’s first order? The effect was the same, Dane supposed. People came to help or try to clear the wrecks, only to become Augmented themselves. One man sipped from a jug of water and spat in people’s faces as he walked up the street. A line of fifteen people stretched behind him, twitching on the ground, though the person at the far end was already starting to get up.

“I can put a bullet through that implant,” Good offered.

“No! I…we can help him. He’s one of our own, ya ken?” MacTaggart gripped the steering wheel and nervously looked around.

Not everyone was accepting these attacks. Dane saw flashes in an apartment building that could only be gunfire. Someone crashed out the window and fell six stories to the ground. The people above leaned out and watched, then hugged each other. Those people had been forced to kill someone from their community. A neighbor, an acquaintance, maybe even a family member. Merely because they had taken a sip of water.

Some people had gotten the message. MacTaggart had not only told people not to drink the water but also empowered the water treatment plant workers to take action. Dane saw people in hazmat suits open a fire hydrant and empty it into a storm water drain while they kept people back. That would help clear the nanites from the pipes but at the cost of the river that ran through town.

They were drawing inexorably closer to that river, and Dane could not help but think of all this contaminated water running across the street, through the drains, and into the river itself.

Sure enough, when they reached it, the river was the worst place of all. The traffic was at a standstill. MacTaggart was only able to make progress because he was driving a large, armored military vehicle. He pushed a car out of the way, then another, as they slowly worked their way across the bridge.

“No one cracks their windows,” Dane ordered.

It was chaos outside.

An Augmented must have gotten control of a boat down on the river because there was a great fountain of water spraying up onto the cars on the bridge, splashing back and forth. Many people in the cars were already twitching and shaking as the nanites moved into their brains. This batch of nanites had to be more powerful than any they had previously seen because surely there weren’t more than a few dozen individual machines getting inside any one person.

“How can all these people be falling to the nanites?” he asked. “It was only one barrel.”

“They’re effective machines.” Lopez sounded as tired as Dane felt. “They’re made of iron, which is what’s in our blood. This new variety must be able to use the materials in our body to self-replicate.”

“Aye, either that or they’ve gotten better at understanding the brain. Some of the implants are damn hard to see with the naked eye, ya ken. They know which synapses in the brain do what far better than we do.” MacTaggart sounded awful. All the yelling had obviously wrecked his throat, but he also sounded…defeated.

Dane understood. He kept thinking about how they needed to get up to space, then to the Prometheus, and warp back home. It was a short-term solution, and he didn’t want to do it. He wanted to fight. Yet knowing Varuna was out there, presumably still safe from the Augmented, given the sheer size of the force here, kept part of him calm.

MacTaggart had none of that. He was trying to get through his own home, his own people, while watching this nightmare unfold. Dane felt the tension growing, but there was nothing to be done. MacTaggart was a warrior, a pilot, and a commander. He wasn’t qualified to handle the water problem any more than Dane was. All he could do was continue to push people’s vehicles aside, one by one.

Though even that got harder when a group of people came from the side of the bridge and started ripping car doors open.

“Holy crap, they’re tossing them off the bridge,” Good blurted. “Permission to open fire?”

“And break our windows? Absolutely not.” Dane hated himself for giving the answer he knew he had to. “We need to keep moving. If we can destroy whatever the source of their signal is, all this will stop.”

He didn’t want to mention that if there had been Augmented on this planet for some time, there could be a signal being broadcast from one of their own towers. By now, the truth of that was painfully obvious.

“The people. They’re going to hit the water and get Augmented. They’ll drown!” Lopez cried.

“If they’re smart, they’ll fish them all out and let them fully convert on a boat down there before turning them back on the bridge to get more people. The Augmented understand the utility of human bodies, that’s for sure.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Athanas called from the back of the van. Everyone groaned when she quietly vomited in the back, but Dane understood. None of them had expected this. There was a battle being fought for the stars, while the homeland looked like it was already lost.

Someone jumped in front of the van and started banging on the windshield. MacTaggart pressed something on the dash, and the person leapt back, shaking their hands as if they had touched a hot wire.

“Bastard made me do it,” MacTaggart muttered, driving into the space the person had vacated.

“You need to drive faster,” Dane insisted. “We can’t let too many of them get in front of us, or we’ll get stuck.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” MacTaggart groaned, but he pushed harder on the accelerator, and their speed increased. The next car they hit was not with a gentle bump. Dane’s body lurched forward as the van smashed a car out of the way and kept going, only slightly slowing with the collision.

“I think someone was in there,” Haley murmured in Dane’s ear.

Dane gritted his teeth. MacTaggart was doing the right thing. He couldn’t stop. They couldn’t help if they got stuck on this bridge. Still, telling MacTaggart to keep driving hurt. Were these the kinds of decisions Adams had been making as governor?

He’d once had the luxury of looking at everything through the lens of minimizing risk and little else. Now he had to think about the future well-being of all these people plus his own, and even the people of Earth. Compared to all that, a few concussions from collisions was a reasonable sacrifice. Anybody would agree.

Yet when an actual person jumped in front of the van, and MacTaggart drove over them, Dane’s resolution wavered.

MacTaggart no longer needed to be told what to do. He understood the stakes as well as Dane. More profoundly, perhaps. He pushed the van faster through a lane between the cars that was starting to open up. The wreck that caused the original traffic stoppage was closer to the other side of the bridge. They were in the clear now. Moving too fast for anyone to stop them.

Another person jumped in their way, then another.

Dane glanced at MacTaggart, who was openly weeping now. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he began to sing. It was a sad, slow melody, made more tragic by the accompaniment of the vehicle’s roaring engine and the bumps of running over debris on the bridge. Or the occasional person who kept jumping into their path.

Dane had no doubt they were all Augmented. Every one of them approached the van in the same way, running at it from an angle that made the headlights reflect off them and gave MacTaggart plenty of time to hit the brakes. They all wore the same fierce expression on their faces as they tried to put their bodies in front of the van when MacTaggart would not slow down. None of them called for help. None of them stopped at the last moment. They ran directly at the vehicle, arms flailing overhead.

Whenever MacTaggart struck one of them, his voice cracked, but he sang louder until finally, they were past the bridge and the Augmented stopped trying to mob them.

They didn’t see as many Augmented on this side of the river. Maybe because the water hadn’t reached this far, or maybe because people had heeded the warnings.

They drove past downtown, and it dwindled behind them as they approached the space port. Unfortunately, even out here, there were signs of contaminated water. They passed three wrecked cars on the roadside. One of them held a passenger with their face against the steering wheel, surely dead, but the others were empty. Had their drivers been infected en route? Perhaps they’d sipped a bottle of tap water and lost control, only to return as an Augmented and receive orders on how to spread the mind virus.

“We’re going to get this under control,” MacTaggart muttered, no longer singing but reaffirming himself in a different way.

“We will. We’re going to get up there and knock out their broadcast signal, and all these people will come back. We know this system doesn’t work without a signal to give them orders. We’ll figure this out.”

Dane didn’t much believe that after everything they had seen, but they could not give in to despair. They had to keep moving, keep trying, whatever that meant. They had to find a way to fight back. To Dane, that had always meant getting behind something he could fly.

They came into view of the spaceport, and MacTaggart radioed to be let in.

The guards emerged from the guard station. Rather than opening the gate, they raised their weapons.

“Shit! The guards are infected! Step on it!”

MacTaggart hit the accelerator to the floor, and the van lurched forward. Dane crouched as bullets thumped into the windshield. It was a military vehicle designed for this kind of thing, so the windshield didn’t shatter. Still, Dane couldn’t help but yell at Haley to get down. He didn’t have to tell Good or Athanas, who knew from experience that bulletproofing was always a temporary situation.

“That’s Murphy up there, that is,” MacTaggart moaned. “I taught that idiot how to play cards.” He picked up the radio and yelled into it, “Stop shooting, Murphy, ya damn fool!”

Murphy did not stop. He fired three more bullets that would have nailed MacTaggart in the middle of the forehead if the glass were a lesser material. As it was, the third bullet sent long fracture lines through the windshield.

By then, MacTaggart had covered the distance between them and the gate. The van crashed into Murphy and his partner, then through the gate. Dane looked back and noticed a few cars had smashed through the fence itself. The entire airfield was already compromised, then.

MacTaggart kept driving around the central control tower and out onto the airfield. He worked the radio as he drove, unabashedly letting tears flow down his cheeks and into his red mustache.

“MacTaggart? Oh my God, MacTaggart, is that really you?”

“Aye, it’s me,” MacTaggart responded as he finally reached someone in the tower.

“The base has been overrun, sir. A group of soldiers showed up in a van and started spraying people with water. We locked down, but almost everyone has gone over. For that matter, you might be on the other side.”

“I’m not on the other side, lad. And I don’t think you are, either. You have my shuttle waiting?”

“No, sir. The Augmented took it and tried to launch. We…that is, I had the automated defenses shoot it down, sir. I couldn’t let Augmented land on the orbiting platform! It’s the only place still safe from the contaminated water!”

“The smaller towns have their own supply, lad. We’ll work this out, but I need to get up there.”

The kid on the radio screamed. “Someone slammed into the door. I… There it is again! They’re going to break through!”

“Are there any ships, lad? Are there any ships?”

But the kid only screamed as the sounds of metal rending and broken glass filled the background.

“Two fighters. There’s still two fighters fully loaded in—”

The connection dropped.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to hold them up above. We could have held them up above. Even with their huge fleet, we could have held up there. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” MacTaggart muttered as he drove past one hangar, then another.

He turned into the third. Dane hadn’t seen them from the outside, but there were three fighters inside the hangar. MacTaggart must have recognized them from their silhouette. Dane doubted he ever would have found the sleek craft.

MacTaggart pulled into the hangar, and they all climbed from the van.

“There are three fighters, but only two are armed,” MacTaggart observed.

“I can fly the third one,” Athanas volunteered.

“I’m the better pilot. I can fly without guns,” Dane insisted.

“Negative, sir. That doesn’t make any sense. You and MacTaggart should pilot and take out as many of those bastards as you can. I’ll ride by myself and go straight to the platform, make sure Dr. Alvarez is on the Prometheus, and help out there. We’ll stay in contact and rendezvous when this is all over.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Athanas. Let’s do what she said.”

MacTaggart didn’t argue, even though they were his ships. He pulled the chocks from their landing gear, disengaged the magnetic locks, and climbed into the cockpit of one of them.

“I assume you two want to ride together,” Good remarked, following MacTaggart to his fighter.

“The couple who flies together, dies together,” Lopez quipped, though neither she nor Dane laughed at the gallows humor.

They raced through the pre-flight checklist and got into the air.

It was time to save a planet.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Eight minutes until we reach the orbital platform,” Lopez announced from the copilot’s seat behind Dane.

“MacTaggart, can you bring us up to speed on what happened up there?”

“I don’t have any more idea than ye do, ya ken, but the defensive network in orbit should have a recording.”

“Is it still safe to link up to it?” Good asked.

“Trying to figure that out now,” MacTaggart replied.

“I reached out to Richmond on the Prometheus. He says the orbital platform isn’t suffering any of the chaos that’s going on down here,” Athanas chimed in from her ship.

“Then we should be fine. The defensive network is based up here.”

“Make it so, Haley.”

Haley connected, and the shield around the cockpit lit up with options. Dane only had to look at one for it to activate and give them a rundown of the information he sought. The first thing he did was check the battle they had seen in the sky.

Animated representations of the orbital platform, the Centauri warships, and the invading force flitted across the screen. From the city, it had looked like the stars were at war, but now Dane saw these were only skirmishes. Most of the two fleets were still intact. The stars shooting toward each other and winking out were missiles that had been shot and blasted down, as well as a couple of Augmented fighters testing the orbital platform’s defenses.

“Looks like the battle has yet to properly begin,” Dane commented to MacTaggart.

“Aye, thank God. They’re going to need us up there. Don’t think I’ll have time to make it to my warship, though.”

“I’ve seen you fly. Your skills will be needed on the battlefield.”

“Aye, that’s what I’m afraid of,” MacTaggart confirmed.

“Lopez, can you find out what happened on the Desert?” Dane asked.

Lopez entered some commands, and another option appeared for Dane to activate when he saw fit. They still had a couple of minutes before they joined with the fleet, so Dane looked at the icon, and a replay of the battle for the Desert appeared.

Though maybe decimation was a better description.

The first thing the Augmented had done was blast the orbital platform to smithereens. The ship had shredded the platform with a beam, then recharged for six minutes and finished the job. The replay told him this, though it skipped through like the highlights reel from hell.

Dane held his breath as the deadly ship turned toward the planet, but it didn’t actually blast the surface. He had no idea what such a weapon could do to a planet, but he knew how bad simply dropping a large rock could be. Hitting the surface with a beam like that wouldn’t be enough to destroy a planet, but it could surely kick up enough ash to send the world into an ice age. Depending on where it hit, it could even trigger volcanic eruptions.

That did not come to pass. Instead, another ship came forward. The animation showed it as a warship slightly larger than the Prometheus, though there were copious notes around it, as well as a video file and a 3D render.

Dane looked at the render. It showed what appeared to be a poorly finished cube. It was studded with landing gear on all sides but didn’t seem to have any actual weapons on it.

“It looks like there’s an animation,” Haley advised.

Dane activated it, and the 3D render shifted. The clunky cube’s walls unfolded flat, revealing a bevy of weapons, including a massive one at the center as well as tons of relay satellite dishes.

“How is that any use in space?” Haley asked.

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be used in space,” Dane suggested.

Then the Centauri reinforcements came. One of the massive asteroids in orbit around the planet fired up its engines and moved to intercept the Augmented fleet and their strange ships. It fired missiles at the cube but did no damage. They weren’t watching video but an animated simulation. Still, Dane understood the cube not taking damage could only mean it had not yet unfolded.

A regular Augmented warship moved to engage the asteroid and was blasted to nothing. The asteroid ship moved closer to the Augmented fleet.

Then the ring ship activated its beam weapon and fired on the asteroid. The animation showed the asteroid continuing to advance as the Augmented warship moved around it like a school of fish avoiding a predator.

“Why aren’t they chasing that thing down? It survived the beam attack, right?” Dane wondered.

“Here’s a report on it.”

Dane activated the link and found photos and videos of what had happened to the asteroid. The beam had not been able to destroy the entire thing since asteroids were far more durable than delicate orbital platforms. It had been able to punch a hole in it, though. Surely this had to be the true purpose of the ring ship. The beam had hit the asteroid with enough precision to destroy its power supply and render it useless. Its crew could still fire weapons at the Augmented, but they simply flew around it, giving it a wide berth as they blasted down any missiles that came at them.

“That’s not good,” Dane commented.

The asteroid continued to float away from the Desert. A slave to its own momentum, a player in this battle no more.

But rather than turning their full fury on the Desert, the Augmented sent down only a single ship. Again, a video clip from the video appeared, and Dane checked it after making sure they had enough time. Still two minutes to go. Enough to satiate his curiosity.

The video showed the cube slamming down just outside the Desert’s major city. By the time the shockwave and dust cloud had settled, the thing had already unfolded and turned its weapons at the approaching Centauri ground-based vehicles. There weren’t any more spaceships, of course. They had all fled.

So when the Augmented poured from the cube and three more ground assault shuttles came down into orbit, the Centauri were overwhelmed. Dane wondered if those soldiers would be armed with injectors or if they would simply contaminate the water like they had on Alpha Central. On a desert world, such a move would be even more effective.

There were plenty of videos to choose from that showed what was happening on the Desert, but Dane had no time to watch them. Instead, he checked back in on the remaining Augmented fleet, which all proceeded to wink out with their warp drives. One pair of warships stayed behind, no doubt to provide orbital support for the Augmented on the surface.

Unfortunately, Dane already knew the rest were not fleeing back to Earth. They were in front of him, positioned to attack the orbital platforms around Alpha Central.

“We can’t let that big blaster get too close to the station,” Dane told MacTaggart.

“But if we send our fighters, they’ll be outside the range of the platform’s defenses.”

“If we let the ship get too close, there won’t be any defenses.”

“Aye. Damn it, but aye.” MacTaggart hit the button for an open channel. “All fighters, prepare for combat. Don’t let that beam blaster get too close. Knocking out the offensive capabilities of that ship is the priority.”

“We’re outnumbered, though, sir. Nearly two to one, by our estimates. Without the platform, we won’t have any advantage.”

“Which is why we can’t lose it. Now come on! None of you wanted to die of old age, did you?”

In response, fifty fighters shot forward, followed by ten warships.

Dane moved forward as well, though he contacted Richmond as he did.

“Dane, good to hear your voice!”

“Let’s not make this the last time you do. Athanas is inbound for Alvarez. As soon as he’s on board, I want you to launch.”

“What about you?”

“I found my way into a fighter.”

“Big surprise.”

“I’ll find you out there, but if you have to, get Alvarez back to Varuna. We have to preserve his research at all costs.”

“I understand,” Richmond professed. “Athanas was already in contact, but I’m not leaving you here. The second they’re aboard, I’m blasting some Augmented. You all may be part of this war, but I’ve been there since the goddamn beginning.”

Dane thought about arguing, but then the connection dropped. He wouldn’t begrudge Richmond wanting to take down a few Augmented. He and his people were the only ones in this fight who’d actually been forced from their home world.

Then the preliminaries of the battle were upon them.

Weapons spun up and fired to life as missiles blasted out and crashed into the anti-missile fire from the Augmented. Balls of flame and loose shrapnel filled space as Dane slammed into the back of his seat, rocketing himself forward. The fighter’s AI was almost instantly overwhelmed by the sheer chaos of the moment. But Dane was far more experienced than some new-fangled computer.

The enemy line was still far ahead, holding close to the warships and protecting the ring ship with everyone they had.

“You need to take out that ring ship!” Dane shouted to MacTaggart.

“Aye, ye heard the man! Take out the big one!” MacTaggart ordered, and the orbital defense station opened fire with an absolutely massive rail gun.

The enemy had anticipated this. They launched missiles, hunks of asteroid taken from God knew where, and even their own fighters. The orbital defense station was too far to be of any use. The Augmented were more than willing to sacrifice themselves to save their ring ship, and when it got close enough and was fully charged, it would shred the platform here like it had the one on the Desert.

The Augmented were not about to let the Centauri keep up with such a strategy, though. They launched more missiles at the platform, forcing the Centauri to shoot them down instead of keeping pressure on the ring ship. This allowed the Augmented to move ever closer.

The warships opened up, and fighters poured out of them.

“There’s so many!” Lopez shouted.

“Aye. Two to one. We knew each of these warships would hold a bunch of these smaller ones inside. But who likes to sit at a desk for a job, ya ken? Better to get out there and make a difference!”

Dane grabbed the controls and sunk into his seat, glad he had one of the futuristic flight suits on to keep him alert and prevent him from blacking out.

The Augmented ships raced toward them, dodging missiles with grace and speed.

It was about to become a very target-rich environment!

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Dane was firing even before he had a target lock. There wasn’t time to rely on those systems, not with the missiles and fighters and bullets flying every which way. He made the ship dive and loop, thankful he had raced MacTaggart earlier and hoping they’d both still be alive to race again later.

All around him, missiles were exploding, fighters were destroyed, and warships were firing anti-missile guns that left space messy with debris.

Dane dodged beneath an enemy fighter, blasted another one, then pulled up before he crashed into someone on his own side.

“Shouldn’t you double back?” Haley shouted after another near-miss.

“We have to disable that main ship. If it gets close enough to hit the station, we’re all screwed.”

“If you say so!” Lopez yelped as they dove around yet another enemy. Dane was close to a warship now. The missiles it fired obviously knew his proverbial scent. They twisted and gave chase as he tried to shake them.

“Haley, would you be a dear and do something about those damn missiles on our tail?”

“Let’s see what they have in here.” A menu appeared on the screen above their heads, and Haley flew through it until she found something called “scrambler.” She activated it, and it did its job. The missiles veered off into empty space.

Dane grinned. They were getting close now. If they could hit one of the rings, surely that ship wouldn’t be able to power up, and the battle might be won.

But the Augmented seemed quite aware of these stakes. There were fifteen or so fighters circling around the ring ship, goalies minding the net.

Dane grimaced at the odds but headed straight toward them, firing every chance he had. He didn’t bother to aim for the fighters. He knew how the Augmented would fight. Instead, he kept focused on the ring ship, firing everything he had, only pausing to dodge again and again as the other ships tried to get a firing solution on him.

The Augmented didn’t let his shots through, of course. The vessels guarding the ring ship seemed to be heavily reinforced. None of them exploded when he struck them, and often they kept flying as if Dane had fired nothing more than a paintball.

He managed to hit an enemy fighter with a missile, and it half-exploded. Before the wreckage could crash into the ring ship, another of the fighters smashed into it. That was enough to destroy the pair of them and leave the ring ship unscathed.

And now Dane had gotten the attention of a trio of warships. They came in from multiple angles, firing rail guns not at him but in front of him and the ring ship. He couldn’t get through.

“Ye look like ye might be in need of some assistance!” MacTaggart shouted, coming up behind one of the warships and dropping a missile right into its engines. It exploded in spectacular fashion, another point for experience. Obviously, MacTaggart knew right where to hit.

Yet two fighters were no match for two warships. They turned all their weapons on the pair of fighters, forcing them to retreat without doing any damage to the ring ship. All they had managed to do was waste time. The ship was getting closer to the orbital platform. It had to be fully charged by now. If it got too close and fired, they wouldn’t be able to resupply or retreat into the zone covered by the platform’s defenses. The battle for this world would be lost like the other one had.

That time had not come yet, though.

“Come on. We need to get more fighters and make another run!”

“Aye, let’s round ‘em up,” MacTaggart agreed.

They doubled back through a flurry of fighters. Lopez found firing solutions but considering they were flying into oncoming traffic, Dane didn’t want to risk firing his weapons. They were outnumbered and needed every fighter they had!

They punched out of the battle chaos and neared the orbital platform.

“All fighters in the area, converge on my signal,” MacTaggart ordered. “We’re going to make a run at the cannon of theirs. We leave in ninety seconds.”

But ninety seconds was a long time in a fight like this. Dane held formation with MacTaggart for about twelve of them before he saw Augmented fighters approaching the ship berths. Toward where the Prometheus was docked.

“Oh, hell no!” Dane broke off from MacTaggart’s side to hunt down those who would kill his friends.

He caught the first fighter unawares and blasted it to nothing. Too bad four more were already filling in behind it. They flew in low over the orbital platform, no doubt looking for a key connection to blast with a missile. Dane couldn’t allow that.

Dane shot down an enemy fighter before it could drop its payload on the orbital station. It flew off into space, careening out of control instead of exploding in place. Dane considered that a stroke of good luck. The pilot could have tried to crash into the orbital platform. That would have been devastating.

Still three more fighters, though.

Well, two.

MacTaggart zipped past, putting his ship between the platform and one of the fighters, forcing it to pull up and expose its belly to him.

“Boom, boom!” Good crowed from the copilot’s seat as the fighter’s guns blew the enemy ship to spinning shards of scrap.

There were two left but more fighters coming in from both sides. Now that the fight was happening near the platform, the Augmented weren’t being pushed back as hard. They were slowly encroaching, bringing their massive weapon into range.

“Let ‘em get in close! Our defenses should handle them!”

Indeed, the defenses were trying. They blasted away at the Augmented fighters, but they kept missing. The Augmented understood the patterns too well and dodged. It made for a less-than-effective bombing run, but Dane needed the defenses of this place to do something more than make the enemy “less than effective.”

“Why the hell aren’t the defenses hitting them?” Dane demanded.

“The system might have too many targets! Fighters, defend the platform!” MacTaggart ordered.

It was an unnecessary command, really. The fighters were doing their damnedest to keep the Augmented at bay, but with only middling results.

“Oh no,” Lopez lamented as the Augmented shot a Centauri fighter, and it crashed into the orbital platform, taking out a cannon.

Dane had seen enough. He pushed the throttle even faster and caught up to the Augmented who had killed a Centauri. He fired once, forcing them to go in a different direction. Again, and they flew through MacTaggart’s rail gun into obliteration.

“We’ve taken out six of them!” Lopez reported from the back.

That was great, except the Centauri had already lost four. They couldn’t afford margins like that. If they weren’t winning two to one, they were losing.

“Richmond’s calling.”

“Put him on.”

“Dane! We’re launching. We got Alvarez and Athanas onboard.”

“We’d be happy to have you in the battle.”

“Looking forward to it, sir!”

The Prometheus pushed free of the station and into the battle. It took out three fighters within a minute of being launched. Richmond must have had his people at the weapons, ready to go, ready to do their part.

The other warships were farther out still, hurling heavy artillery at each other and the beam ship in equal parts. An Augmented ship exploded, then another.

They were doing well! Better than they had any right to. If only the orbital platform’s defenses had worked better, they might actually have a shot. But it was costing their fighters everything they had merely to keep the Augmented from touching the platform. They were fighting a battle on two fronts, and their defensive cannons weren’t pulling their weight.

There was nothing Dane could do about that. Instead, he looped around into a backflip and dropped behind an enemy who’d been trying to kill him and Haley a second ago.

“No hard feelings. I know your boss sucks,” Dane muttered, then blasted the ship to nothing.

His view screen flashed a red alert. “Incoming message. Should I play it?”

“Yes, do,” Dane requested as he took out another fighter.

“Red alert. Red alert. There are Augmented on the station!”

“No,” Dane gasped and turned his ship around.

This was the part the dockworker least looked forward to. He didn’t doubt he had to do it, as this was the only way to finally join with the intelligence of a fully Augmented system, but he could not shake his fear.

While everyone else on the station raced around replenishing ammunition in the massive cannons they thought were keeping the station safe, the dockworker headed toward one of the many berths that had been left vacant. They had already introduced a virus to the auto-targeting system here. Nothing too egregious, nothing that would be noticed right away. All they had done was cause the system to not dump its memory as often as it was supposed to. So instead of looking at this battle with fresh eyes, the AI was bogged down with practice targets from the last month eating away at its processing power.

It was the kind of thing that happened. The kind of thing that wouldn’t be noticed until it was too late. It didn’t make the cannons not fire or aim at the wrong targets. It only made them hesitate slightly, which was enough. The Augmented knew about this virus and knew that if they avoided flying in straight paths, the orbital platform shouldn’t be able to touch them.

Sometimes, the dockworker wondered if the pilots would have still been willing to risk their lives if they had actually been able to decide whether they wanted to fly or not. Those feelings were fading now that the Augmented had a broadcast signal in this system coming from multiple warships. Soon, it would be coming from both planets, as well.

If anyone saw the dockworker going toward the empty berth, they would have known something was amiss. There was no ship in need of assistance, no grand cannon in need of replenishment. No one noticed, though. No one had time for a single dockworker on the station, not with a battle in the stars and the chaos on the surface below.

The dockworker almost lamented what was happening. He had been here a long time, and the people of this world had fed and housed him. Yet he reminded himself his actions would not doom them but save them. What he did today would prevent the deaths of everyone on this station and more. His actions would bring an entire world into the fold of the Augmented mind.

He reached the docking bay, then punched in the commands for it to open to the outside world. He watched dispassionately as the fighting grew even more intense around the huge energy beam weapon the Augmented had brought. The people of Centauri thought the big weapon would undo them, but in reality, they had already been undone by a small band of people working behind the scenes.

The beam fired, and one of the Centauri warships was no more.

Now, the smartest of them would be thinking, why did they blast that ship and not the platform? Why waste the time needed to recharge on such a small target? It was too late, though. One of the Augmented warships had made it through and was drawing close.

The dockworker sensed the thoughts of the people aboard that ship. It was soothing to be connected to so many once more. To be lost in the flow of thoughts, to touch the wisdom of the Algorithm itself. The dockworker did not linger on this ecstasy. Instead, he retrieved the necessary identification codes and entered them into the orbital station’s defenses.

Now this place would think the approaching ship was an ally in need of refueling. Someone personally manning a cannon could shoot it down, but this part of the station was abandoned. Only automated defenses worked here. Everyone else was fighting closer to the battle.

A ship dropped from warp close enough for the energy discharge to make the dockworker feel ill. That set off all sorts of alarms in the station, but he shut them all down. Told the station this was nothing to be concerned about. This was only possible because he and his compatriots had been feeding the station code, bit by bit, byte by byte, for months. Readying it for this moment.

The station opened its berth to the craft that the dockworker had noted as “not a threat,” and the ship came in to land within a massive berth usually reserved for ships needing major repairs and therefore empty for the moment.

It opened its doors after the dockworker closed the airlock.

And over a hundred heavily armed Augmented in body armor were on Alpha Central’s orbital defense station.

Dane raced back in the direction he had come, hardly flinching when the beam cannon obliterated a Centauri warship. A warship. Not the station. Not the planet. A single warship.

The Augmented had always understood the value of infrastructure.

They had always valued human capital.

They also understood how people thought.

They had built this weapon not necessarily for its destructive power but for the appearance of its power. They had known the Centauri would see it as a threat and focus on it, but they had to be certain.

So they had blown up the orbital platform around the Desert and made it look like getting a base on the surface was their primary goal.

But there was only one of those landing ships. They had not brought a second for this world because there had been no need. They had already infected the water supply. Now, all they needed to do was take control of the orbital station and, thus, the planet’s defense. They had done it by making the Centauri fear their largest weapon, but it had all been a distraction, a decoy, a ploy. Their greatest weapon was what it had always been. The nanites in the minds of their people.

Dane and everyone else in this system had been outplayed.

That didn’t mean he was going to lose…or go down without a fight.

“Richmond, I need you clear now.”

“I’m clear. We’re off the platform.”

Dane was fully expecting the platform to open fire on the Prometheus, but it didn’t. Instead, its cannons went quiet. Its rail guns went still.

“What’s happening down there!” MacTaggart roared.

“We’re holed up, sir! In the command center, but they’ve cut the fiber optics to the weapons.”

Dane didn’t know what to do any more than MacTaggart did.

The Augmented had obviously planned for this. Their fighters fell back to their warships. No doubt they needed to refuel and rearm themselves as badly as Dane and his people did. Only they had planned for this moment to do it, while Dane had not.

“MacTaggart, I’m returning to the Prometheus to refuel.”

“I’ll… I’ll do the same. Looks like my crew has done all right without me, but I’ll go dock with them,” MacTaggart imparted, though he sounded broken by what had happened. Their orbital platform had been castrated. It could still serve as a place to refuel and rearm, but for how long? How many Augmented were on the station? Would they be able to take control of it?

These were questions Dane did not particularly want the answers to.

“Dane, we got an incoming call. Priority class. I think it’s Parliament.”

“Put them on,” Dane ordered as he flew back toward the Prometheus through the wreckage of the first part of this battle.

It wasn’t Parliament but Bell.

“Dane, you’re alive.”

“For now, sir.”

“Things are as bad up there as they are down here, then?”

“Worse, maybe.”

“Then I need to thank you now, while I still can. The police… They contacted me and told me about what Liam did. I…he’s an embarrassment to me and to everything we’ve built here, but I still love him. They told me you saved his life. That you put your body in the way of live rounds to protect his. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“How about by giving me some good news?” Dane hoped as they pulled close to the Prometheus and initiated docking procedures. They entered the bay to a team of workers ready to give the ship a once over. Dane was relieved to see they had at least been given the proper munitions for the ship. At the least, it meant he would take out a few more Augmented before this was all over.

“That’s a big ask. Things are bad down here.”

“How bad?”

“Bad and getting worse. We have no idea how many people are Augmented at this point, but there have to be thousands in the capital city, and more coming.”

“Can you isolate them?” Merely asking the question seemed ridiculous after what Dane had seen while trying to cross the bridge.

“Unfortunately, that time has passed. We aren’t sure if the military or Parliament were affected, but we know many of them are now Augmented. We think… That is, I think there must have been some Augmented among us. It’s the only way to explain it. They must have served water to a few others, and everything spiraled out of control from there.”

“The scanners?”

“We don’t have enough to scan everyone. I… I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Dane didn’t know either. He looked out into space as he left the Prometheus and flew back into the battle. To say they were losing was putting it kindly. Half the Centauri fighters were destroyed or damaged so badly that they couldn’t fight. They had taken out more Earth ships than they had lost, but that didn’t matter with odds like this. It was uneven to start with, but now it was far worse.

And that wasn’t even considering they had already lost an entire planet, and the orbital platform could no longer aid the defense. Dane tried to think back to the time he had spent up there. Would they be able to drive off heavily armed Augmented? Would they be able to retake the station, or was it a lost cause?

It was painful to think about, knowing how much effort he had expended on protecting the damn thing, only to find out the Augmented did not actually want to destroy it. They had wanted to capture it from the onset. If they had known, they could have fought harder against the ring ship. Of course, the ring ship could have simply blasted the platform, and they’d be screwed in another way entirely.

The Augmented fighters started to rejoin the battle. They poured from the warships like angry wasps. Had they actually destroyed any? Had there been extra in reserves? Dane knew it had to be the latter, but he didn’t think it mattered. They couldn’t keep fighting this enemy. Not here. Not like this.

“Bell. We can’t win this fight. The Desert already fell, and Alpha Central…”

“We’re going to lose the entire system, aren’t we?” Bell sighed. “We can’t contain them down here. There’s already too many. We should have done everything differently. We should have done it all differently. I…you should make a run for it. Maybe they’ll forget all about you and your system.”

Dane didn’t want to do that, but what choice was there? Then he saw the three ships Bell planned to send with them. They were all miraculously intact, no doubt because he and MacTaggart had worked so hard to defend the station.

“Those ships you approved for us to use are intact. Fill them with personnel from the space station. We know they won’t be infected by the water from the reservoir. I know it’s not much, but it’s something.”

“I’ll give the order to evacuate the station. Is it true there are Augmented there?”

“It is. They’ve shut down the weapons. My guess is they’re securing berths for their own ships. I don’t know if they’re going to fire on us or not.”

“Then I’ll order the evacuation to be quick.”

“That would probably be for the best, sir. We’ll have to scan everyone once we’re clear, but we’ll rendezvous on the edges of this star system before we go, get as many people to safety as we can.”

Neither of them said how they would have to sacrifice millions to save thousands at most. They would lose inventors, engineers, mechanics, and farmers, not to mention fathers, daughters, mothers, and sons. The entire system would be ceded to the Augmented. What else could they do, though? Fight until they were obliterated and there was nothing left to defend?

Dane couldn’t allow that to happen. So he would help save what people he could. It was the only way.

“We’ll see if we can get any—”

Bell’s communication cut out as the ring ship opened fire with its massive weapon. The beam of energy cut through a Centauri warship, splitting it in half before causing the weapons and fuel to explode. The entire warship went up in a massive fireball. Such a waste. All the people on that ship snuffed out. Like they were nothing.

“Come on. We need to set up a rendezvous and get the hell out of here.”

“Where will we go?” Lopez asked.

It was a big question. “For now, we’ll focus on who we can go with.”

“I can do that for now.”

Good, because it’s our only goddamned choice, Dane thought bitterly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A fighter came in hot behind Dane. He accelerated, letting them get as close as he dared. He knew they would gladly crash into him and take them both out. He didn’t know if they knew who he was or if they cared. At this point in the battle, the Augmented could easily win by sacrificing one for one.

So Dane dove closer to the orbital platform, hating that it worked. The Augmented pilot behind him pulled up, not wanting to risk damaging the platform. Their platform, or it would be soon enough. From this close, Dane saw the Augmented had already secured the far end. They hadn’t made progress on capturing the rotating asteroid at the center, but it was only a matter of time. Instead of trying to force their way in, they used the malfunctioning platform defenses to land multiple ships and unload more troops.

Dane thought the Augmented had a lot of ships, but more overwhelming was the sheer number of people they brought for this invasion. Still, the thousands Dane had seen, the tens if not hundreds of thousands who’d come to the system, were a tiny fraction of the population back on Earth. It staggered him to face such a foe. The whole of humanity was set against them. Their knowledge, their skills, and their numbers.

But the Centauri had people and skills of their own. When the fighter pulled up from tailing Dane, a battle cruiser fired, and it exploded.

“Bastards won’t risk hurting the station,” MacTaggart called over the radio. He had retaken control of the ACN Wallace, then.

“We should bomb it,” Richmond chimed in. “The end where they’re landing their ships is only connected to the main area by the walkway. We can take it out.”

“No!” MacTaggart called. “Not yet. It has automatic airlocks that would shut down, of course, but people would die.”

“I agree with MacTaggart. We need to wait on that if we do it at all. They’re all wearing armor. We have to assume those suits double as protection from lack of atmosphere. They’d be inconvenienced at best.”

Richmond acknowledged the order. He didn’t sound happy about it, but Dane knew he wouldn’t attack the platform against orders. He might have a grudge against the Augmented, but he knew the Centauri were his only allies against them.

“MacTaggart, we could use support getting people off the station,” Dane noted.

Bell’s orders must have gone through because people were surging from the central asteroid, moving toward the three ships that were supposed to be the salvation of Dane’s people. It was hard to see his best hope for the people of Varuna turned into what was essentially way too few lifeboats. Those three ships should have been enough to bring all the people from Varuna here in two, maybe three trips. But for the four million Centauri, it would be a tiny fraction of their population, and there would not be multiple trips.

Still, Dane would fight for those people.

“We have enemy fighters coming in hot. MacTaggart, Richmond, let’s provide some cover while they load those ships.”

The two captains acknowledged, and the larger ships moved away from the three ships to create a perimeter. Dane flew between them, engaging any Augmented fighter that dared come close enough to try to fire on the evacuation. With two captains he trusted nearby and the control of an advanced fighter at his fingertips, it was easy to fall into the flow of the battle.

Target incoming.

Give chase.

Fire at them.

Drive them into the two battleships’ weapons.

Repeat.

But after doing this a couple of times, no more enemy fighters came to their position.

“We scared them all off, then?” MacTaggart asked.

“Or they don’t want to inadvertently damage the station,” Richmond suggested. “One of those three is already fully loaded. If they simply wait, all three will get clear. Maybe that’s what they’re doing.”

Indeed, the first of the three vessels had pushed off from its place on the platform and was coming to join the other two ships. It was armed, though not nearly as heavily as the other two.

If they came under heavy fire, it would not be able to fully defend itself.

But it looked like the Augmented had other ideas.

There were heavier vessels launching from their warships now. Clunky, heavily armored boxy vessels that could only be troop transports.

“They had all this planned out,” MacTaggart remarked. “The platform can’t fire on them, and at this point, our ground defenses are a mess.”

“We can try to thin their numbers, at least.” Richmond fired at one of the shuttles that was barely in range. An Augmented fighter blasted the missile to pieces long before it came anywhere near the armored transports.

The Augmented reacted to the attack, though. Many of the swarming fighters peeled off to escort the shuttles down to the surface. Like a swarm of ants, it only took one poke to reconfigure the entire colony’s priorities.

A few of them were still coming at the three ships, though.

“We focus on those fighters,” Dane decided. “They’re probably the most heavily armed.”

Indeed, the fighters launched missiles with abandon, making no effort to conserve their resources. They knew Dane and his people would need to shoot down every missile. Letting even one through would be disastrous.

After a few minutes, long enough for them to fall into a rhythm of who focused on which missiles, the Augmented came at them with a dozen fighters.

“They’re toying with us!” MacTaggart cursed as the fighters darted in and out of range of his ship’s defenses.

Dane was the only one of the three able to take down any of the fighters. He had the experience to anticipate what their ships could do, so he knocked a few out, but the Prometheus and the Wallace were too clunky. They could only stick close to the evacuee ship.

The second rescue ship launched, and not a moment too soon. The Augmented had landed enough of their people on the platform to move to the next stage of their goal. They formed up and marched toward the central asteroid, ready to take full control of the platform.

“We blast it now!” Richmond shouted, but the Prometheus was too busy with the swarm of Augmented fighters for him to make good on his threat.

“There’s not enough time to fill that third ship,” Dane pointed out. “MacTaggart, can you order everyone to get on whatever shuttle or emergency escape vessel is closest and launch? We’ll scoop them up out here.”

“Aye. I can do that, goddamn it. Then we’ll blow the platform.”

“I have coordinates for a rendezvous on the edges of this system,” Richmond informed them. “We need to get farther from the planet’s gravity well, though, or our warp drives might not fire up right.”

“Let’s start the procession, then.” Dane zipped in front of the Prometheus to clear the way. He was able to catch two Augmented fighters before they understood the pair of ships was no longer attempting to protect the orbital platform.

Rather than the Augmented attacking them directly, more fighters flew toward the platform and landed in the now-undefended berths. They were all still on one side of the asteroid. It was the central point in the platform, with Augmented on one side and Centauri on the other. Unfortunately, the Augmented side was the one swelling in numbers while the Centauri side was evacuating.

A dozen or so shuttles and cargo ships pushed off, leaving the platform behind.

“And now, we destroy that which we worked so hard to build,” MacTaggart announced, sounding resolute.

The Wallace painted the platform with its targeting laser. Yet before it could fire the missiles that would destroy the Centauri legacy, the platform turned its cannons on MacTaggart.

“Evasive maneuvers!” MacTaggart bellowed over the radio as the Wallace took a shot that spilled atmosphere and three unfortunate souls into the cold of space.

Dane fell back, blasting at missiles coming from the orbital platform with the malicious intent of destroying the refugee vessels. He barely managed to shoot them all down, a fighter pilot’s version of a hat trick, before he watched in horror as an Augmented fighter attacked from the other side of their procession and obliterated one of the shuttles fleeing the station.

“We need to get everyone in tighter so we can actually defend them!” Dane shouted. “All fighters, converge on the Wallace. We have two ships equipped with warp drive and filled with civilians and a third still trying to load. Repeat, all available fighters converge on the Wallace. We need all the help we can get!”

Fighters came to join Dane, but that was about all the support they would get. The warships were still in the thick of it with their Augmented counterparts. They were at the stage in the battle where they were beginning to run low on missiles. They edged closer to each other, hoping to punch holes in the enemy ship with simple, more straightforward weapons.

The beam cannon on the massive ring ship threw its weight around in that battle, sitting on the sidelines until its monstrous power was once more fully charged. At that point, it disgorged an unimaginable amount of energy, which tore through whatever it struck like a fire hose through aluminum foil.

Dane hated pushing all that from his mind as he focused on their ragged little procession. They needed to get the last refugee ship loaded before they could jump. The ships equipped with warp drive would be fine, but if they jumped before the shuttles were loaded, the people on board could be ripped to shreds from the energy and gravitational distortions.

They could spread out, of course, but that would make defending them harder.

He knew they’d be dead already if the Augmented hadn’t seen them as a lower priority. The Augmented were keeping pressure on them, but not much more. They were focused on sending their shuttles down to Alpha Central, fully taking control of the defensive platform, and wiping out the last of the Centauri warships that were still fighting back. Compared to all that, Dane and his paltry handful of refugees weren’t worth much.

Which all made Dane pay attention when he noticed a shuttle coming up from Alpha Central under heavy fire. The Augmented were all but ignoring Dane and his refugee ships. Why bother with this single shuttle?

It could only mean there weren’t any Augmented on board, and perhaps more than that. Perhaps it was someone from the Centauri government or someone who had information about how to stop the Augmented. A scientist who’d captured more nanites, perhaps, or gotten a sample of the nanites in the water.

“You see that shuttle coming up?” Dane asked.

“Aye. That’s a Parliamentarian craft. Heavily armored and maneuverable. Looks like someone from the government got out. We have an obligation to them.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Dane broke away from the procession of fleeing vessels and made for the lone shuttle. Whoever was piloting understood their goal and not much else. They made for the refugee ships without doing much to dodge the fighters that were blasting at them with their mounted guns.

Dane caught the first enemy fighter with a head-on missile that sent pieces scattering in all directions while he and Lopez flew through the spot where the fighter had been.

He was going the wrong way now, but fortunately for the people on the shuttle, the fighters pulled off their attack to come for Dane and Lopez.

They flew in perfect synchronization, their engines leaving condensation trails in the thinnest edge of the upper atmosphere. That synchronization cost them. Like watching a pair of ribbon dancers, their contrails let Dane anticipate their path, and he filled it with bullets.

By the time the first ship exploded, Dane was already firing on the second one. It lasted a few seconds longer as it tried to dodge, but Dane caught it, and it was no more.

“Looks like you needed some help there!” Dane remarked.

“That’s twice you’ve saved the life of my son!” the shuttle answered.

“Lord Bell?”

“When the Augmented overwhelmed our base, I ran for the prison. I know. I should have saved others, but I can’t lose my son like I lost my brother.”

“It’s fine,” Dane told him. They could unwrap the intersection of privilege and survivor’s guilt later.

They needed to save Bell. He was likely the head of state now. And Liam? Dane supposed there would have to be a trial or something, but for now, it only mattered that he wasn’t Augmented.

“You’ve scanned your son?”

“And everyone else on the shuttle as well, yes. I didn’t get any other Parliamentarians. They tried to hide in our bunker, but someone activated the sprinkler system. It was contaminated and, well…”

“I get it. It’s good that you scanned everyone. We’ll have to scan them all again when they dock. Make for the Prometheus, all right? I’ll keep an eye on your tail.”

“I already sent a docking request to Richmond, and he acknowledged,” Lopez stated.

“Great. Thank you. Now, we need to make sure we actually get to go through with it.”

Fortunately, the ground defense system was not yet firing on them. Instead, the Augmented sent up another few fighters to harrass the shuttle. Dane could hardly believe this was what this battle had been reduced to. He’d told himself it was fortunate the Augmented had not taken full control of the surface of this planet? None of them had expected the battle to go like this. They had been prepared for an invasion from the edges of the star system, then overwhelmed the moment their assumptions had been incorrect.

Dane dropped back to handle the fighters. He let one of them think they might actually hit him before swerving around and spearing them with a line of railgun fire. They saw it coming and veered out of the way, directly into another Augmented.

Except the second pilot dodged, no doubt because he could see into the mind of the pilot who had been doing the veering.

“These bastards even make flying difficult.” Dane pulled ahead and drew their fire away from the shuttle. He dodged their weapons without breaking a sweat. Then they were in range of the Prometheus’ defenses, and the fighters were blasted to pieces.

“Richmond, we’re following the shuttle in. Get us out of here!”

“With pleasure, sir!”

Dane zipped in and had his magnetic landing gear locked in before the shuttle door had fully closed. He helped Lopez unbuckle, then kicked off from his fighter and floated across the strangely configured docking bay to a hallway that led to the bridge. Now that he was back on the Prometheus, he was technically in command of the vessel and, by extension, responsible for the refugee ships they were escorting. The bridge was where he needed to be.

He saw Athanas with a group of soldiers advancing toward Bell’s shuttle, scanners in one hand and guns in the other.

“Tell Bell they need to stay in there and strap in until we warp out of here. We’ll scan them once we’re clear!”

“You want me to tell that to a ‘Lord?’” Athanas retorted.

Lord of the Refugees, Dane thought bitterly. “He’ll understand.”

He rotated his body, so instead of diving through the air, he was going feet-first. He hit the deck and pushed off, catching a handhold and using it to correct his course through the hall.

He reached the bridge.

“Status update?” Dane asked.

“Bell’s officially asked for sanctuary for him and his people in our system.”

“Yeah, duh, but I meant about the warships! Are we being followed?”

“It doesn’t look like it, sir. Most of the fighting is focused on Centauri vessels still near the platform. It’s…maybe better to focus on the future, sir.”

“But we can get away?” Dane asked.

“We’re coordinating a rendezvous point now and trying to get far enough away from each other to not have an adverse effect.”

Dane forced himself to breathe.

“Oh, thank God. And Alvarez?”

“He’s aboard, sir. He wants to scan all the refugees and has already set up some secondary tests as well, simply to be sure.”

Dane let himself breathe. They had done it. They had gotten away. Not with nearly enough Centauri, but at least he had his people with him. At least they would be able to help some of the people of this world who had been so generous with their vast supply of military resources that had amounted to so little. Three ships wasn’t enough, but it could still be thousands. Maybe tens of thousands, depending on how tightly they’d been filled.

He was telling himself this litany, that he had done enough, that it would be all right, when a brilliant flash of light blew out all the cameras and turned the viewscreens white.

“What in the hell was that?” Dane asked. He could distantly hear objects clanking against the Prometheus’ exterior. But he knew. Even before the technicians read the reports from their secondary sensors and before the engineers got the cameras back up, he knew.

The Augmented had fired their ring cannon and destroyed a ship full of refugees.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“We need to go to warp!” Dane ordered.

“Working on it. We have a solution. We only need to get far enough out,” Richmond replied coolly.

“The bastards killed whoever they couldn’t convert! We can’t let them get away with it, the monsters!” MacTaggart roared over the radio, loud enough to make the sound blare over the speakers on the bridge.

“MacTaggart, we need to warp out of here. You have Richmond’s destination?”

“Aye, I have it, but that ring ship will take more than four minutes to recharge. That’s enough time to blast it with everything we have!”

“MacTaggart, there are Augmented warships and fighters between us and that ship. We can’t hope to beat those odds. Two of our vessels are hardly capable of combat.”

“But we can’t let them do this. We can’t let our men and women in those ships die above a world that’s not even theirs anymore.”

Dane signaled to turn off the mic, then motioned to one of the people on the bridge. “Get me Bell on the radio.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, Governor Dane?” Bell asked from the cabin of his shuttle a moment later.

“MacTaggart wants to fight, but we can’t do anything against these odds. You need to tell him to stand down.”

“But MacTaggart outranks—oh. Right,” Bell sighed. “Put me on.”

“MacTaggart, we have Lord Bell with us. He’s…he’s all that’s left of your government, as far as we can tell.”

“My Lord?” MacTaggart asked, for once not sounding like he was trying to be pithy or sarcastic.

“MacTaggart. We need to leave. We can’t win the war with this battle. We’ll have to find another way. The only way to do that is to make sure the Prometheus gets back to Varuna. These people, they’re our only hope. We have to save as many refugees as we can, so our people can help win back this system from the Augmented.”

“Yes, sir,” MacTaggart choked out, though acknowledging the command sounded like it broke what little was left of the man.

“Thank you both,” Dane offered. “Thank you for your help when we arrived, and all you promised, and for both of you continuing to fight. We’re going to warp after we’re far enough apart. Richmond, ETA?”

“One of the refugee ships is far enough away now. They can warp.”

“Then warp,” Dane ordered, and one ship winked out in a burst of energy that was far enough away not to blow out their cameras or sensors.

A moment later, Richmond declared the Prometheus was far enough to warp. Dane had him wait until the second refugee ship was also ready. After it was, it warped, and the Prometheus joined them. Dane thought he owed MacTaggart the responsibility and honor of being the last ship on the battlefield, though he knew MacTaggart might not see it as an honor until years afterward.

“How long until we reach the rendezvous?” Dane asked.

“Less than an hour.”

“Is there any way to be sure MacTaggart followed?”

“No, sir. Not until we leave warp.”

“Very well, then.” Dane steeled himself. He hoped MacTaggart would follow orders, but there were other things to focus on now. “Where’s Alvarez?”

“Waiting to come on the bridge, sir.”

“Well, by all means.”

Richmond nodded, and a technician unlocked the door to the bridge, and Alvarez floated in.

“I found her in the hallway. I hope that’s all right,” Alvarez joked, revealing that Haley was with him.

“Except he scanned me!” Haley cried with mock outrage.

“We have to be vigilant,” Alvarez insisted. “The Augmented have shown they are capable of deception. We cannot take anything for granted. Not when our enemy can hide inside our loved ones.”

“And you’re clear?” Dane teased Lopez. He knew she had to be. He’d been with her the entire time since the Augmented sympathizers kidnapped him. One of whom was now on their ship…an insane thought.

“She is. Though there are secondary tests I would like to run as well. We’ll have to scan all the refugees first.”

“I’m not sure Lord Bell will like that,” Haley surmised.

“He’ll accept it when we tell him we’ve all been scanned, too. Alvarez, can one of Richmond’s people scan you to make sure?”

“They have, but they can again. Porque no?”

Richmond nodded, and a technician pointed a scanner at Alvarez. It came back green.

“Great. Now, Alvarez, if you could scan Richmond and myself. Unless there’s an issue with that?”

“Of course not. We’ve been up here the entire time, but that scanner tech is ours. We know it’s safe and apparently works better than what the Centauri had.”

Dane wanted to rebuke him, and he would, but later. For now, none of the Centauri people were on the bridge, so the little barb wasn’t hurting anyone. Soon enough, they would be overwhelmed with refugees from Centauri, and jokes about their ineffectiveness wouldn’t help anybody.

“I want everyone to fully cooperate with Dr. Alvarez for the duration of our mission. Right now, he’s our best bet at figuring out this entire thing. If he asks you to do something, please do it.”

“Gracias for your support, but that is not quite true.” Alvarez scanned someone and got a green light before moving on. “I am not our best hope.”

“Sure you are. Now’s not the time for self-doubt.”

Alvarez shook his head as he worked his way toward Dane. “No, you misunderstand me. When we needed to evacuate, I told some of the Centauri scientists to come with me. They did not want to listen, but I convinced them the station was no longer safe.”

“You were right,” Richmond stated bluntly.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Alvarez agreed. “They assured me the station was safe, but I used that beam cannon ship to help with my argument. We did not think the station would still be in one piece. I wonder now if they should have stayed. Perhaps we could have found a cure before—”

“There’s no point in talking that way,” Dane admonished. “You got out. You saved their lives, and now you can all work on saving everyone we had to leave behind. None of this is going to be easy, but we all need to understand this was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. There may not be glory in retreat, but there will be. This day will be looked back on as a day of darkness, but also the day a spark was lit.”

Some applauded that, which wasn’t what Dane was going for. Though he supposed he should have expected it, considering he was acting governor.

“We will find a way. We were already making progress. We’re close. I can feel it.”

Alvarez scanned Dane and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Dane. You…you are Augmented,” he stammered.

At first, Dane thought it was a joke.

“I’m what?”

Alvarez turned the scanner’s screen to show Dane a red light. “There are nanites inside you…”

“That’s impossible! I killed more than a dozen of them. If they could control me, they wouldn’t have let me do that! I could have turned my weapons on the refugee ships or the shuttle with Bell.”

“Still,” Lopez murmured, coming up to Dane and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You did take a swim in the same water that infected the entire city. Might be better to let Dr. Alvarez check you out. Especially since everyone should fully cooperate with Dr. Alvarez for the duration of the mission.” She spoke the last words with a lower voice that was obviously supposed to be an impression of Dane, though he normally didn’t sound that grumpy.

“Of course.” Dane followed Alvarez off the bridge.

Thirty minutes later, they were still in warp, and Alvarez was bubbling with so much energy he might as well be powering their bending of space-time.

“I cannot believe we did not see this sooner!” he exclaimed.

“You didn’t? It’s our technology!” one of the Centauri scientists remarked.

“Can someone just tell me if I’m Augmented or not?” Dane asked. He had let the scientists talk their jargon, run their tests, and speak six steps ahead of what he could actually understand, but he needed an answer.

“You are!”

“You’re not!”

“You were!”

“Not technically. Not ever!”

“Please, one at a time,” Dane pleaded.

“The test was clear.”

“Which one?”

“Blood sample.”

“MRI.”

“Active brain imaging.”

“Okay. Tell me in English, please. Not nerd speak.”

Alvarez looked at the other scientists, who all enthusiastically nodded for him to continue.

“It’s the health implants. Which should have been obvious!”

“Please skip the obviousness and tell me what the heck is going on.”

“The health implants you had after you were shot.”

“The ones that healed me?”

“Yes and no. The ones that healed your wounds are long gone.”

“Peed them out. I remember.”

“They gave you other implants as well. Some are specifically built to fight viral and bacterial infections! When you were exposed to the nanites in the reservoir, those implants recognized the new implants as a foreign threat and kept them out of your brain. They would not let them past the blood-brain barrier.”

“So…there’s nanites in me?”

Carlos nodded as if this were the best news ever. “Si! Exactamente! Except they cannot get to your brain, thanks to the Centauri nanites!”

“How can we only be discovering this now?” Dane asked. “Surely you tried this before?”

That set off a round of fierce argument, apologies, and obfuscation from the Centauri scientists.

“We should have!”

“I told you this could work!”

“We’ve never intentionally exposed someone to Augmented nanites after they got a health treatment. For one thing, it would be unethical. More importantly, we never had a sample of the pure nanites until you arrived.”

“It might not work for someone who is fully Augmented, of course.”

“But if we can program them to see the implant as a tumor, then why won’t it?”

“I know! This could be the breakthrough we need!”

“This is the breakthrough!”

“Okay, okay. I get it. You’ve made some progress, so now you have to see what else you can do. But for now, I’m not implanted?”

“No, not even kind of,” Alvarez told him. “Their nanites cannot get to your brain because ours are in place. Plus, they’ve already lost functionality since there is no broadcast signal out here in warp. You are fine, Governor Dane.”

“Well, thank goodness for that. I’m assuming you have a lot of work to do, though?”

“So much. We need to find a way to turn this into as many treatments as possible. It might be that a sort of Augmented vaccine is possible. That would prevent all of us from ever being one of them. We know it can be cured, but we’re not sure about a full implant. We’ll be working on that as we fly, though it will take testing on biological systems to be sure. I have our nanite sample, but we will not be doing these trials on this ship, no?”

“No. Do what you can, but we’ll wait until Varuna to fully develop this thing if you’re going to need to test it on people.”

“Yes. Yes, of course!”

Dane thanked them all once more and left, not sure how to feel about the robots in his blood protecting him from the other robots.

But his actions spoke for themselves. Like he’d said, he destroyed tons of Augmented, saved the last of the free Centauri. His thoughts were his own. He had seen the Augmented, and he knew he was not one of them.

Which meant Carlos Alvarez really had found a way to stop the Augmented, or at least the start of a way. Now it would be a race against time. Would they be able to improve their “cure” enough to repair someone who’d been Augmented before the warships of Earth showed up?

Time would tell. First, they had to make it back home.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Prometheus, the Wallace, and the two ships loaded with refugees all arrived safely within the parameters of the rendezvous location. They didn’t all arrive in precisely the same spot, of course. That would have been disastrous, even if it were possible. But it wasn’t, not with the way the warp drives worked. It was next to impossible to arrive at a precise location when navigating yourself there faster than you could see.

The captains of all the ships were well aware of this, though, so when they dropped out of warp, they all knew to make for a central location.

“How soon until the Prometheus will be ready to travel home?” Dane asked.

“We need to do a few repairs and check our fuel lines. We took some fire out there, and not sure how bad it is. We’re about six light hours out from the center of the system. I want us underway before then.”

“Before the Augmented pick up the energy released from our arrival and know where we are, you mean?” Dane wondered.

Richmond nodded. “In six hours, we’ll need to move. We could jump another couple of light hours away if we need to, but I’d rather get my repairs done and get us going home.”

“Make that happen, and check in with the other captains and make sure everyone gets the repairs they need to be able to go to warp for two weeks done.”

“Will do, sir. I guess I might be too busy to make the honorary dinner.”

“I’m sure you’re real broken up about that, huh, Richmond?” Dane teased, knowing the captain preferred combat and tactics to small talk over multiple courses.

“I’ll try to survive.”

Dane waved farewell and headed to what counted as a dining room on the Prometheus. It was nothing more than a conference room, but these were war times. Surely Lord Bell, MacTaggart, and Captain Gordon, the captain of one of the refugee ships, would understand. The other ship didn’t technically have a captain. He had been off the ship when they’d been attacked and had ordered his copilot to launch. They were voting on a leader and would send one over soon.

Dane already had Alvarez and his team scan everyone on the ships, and they looked clean. Lord Bell had also asked if Liam could come to the dinner, and Dane couldn’t think of a polite way to say no, though he wished he would have, as it seemed a somber reminder for MacTaggart about what had happened. Haley rounded out the dinner and sat at Dane’s side when he settled in at the head of the conference table.

“Thanks for coming, everyone. We have a few hours before the Augmented see where we are. I know your crews are working on getting your vessels ready for the voyage, and I thank you for that. It’s been a long, hard day, but we need to see it to its conclusion. I would like to talk about next steps over dinner.”

“A lovely gesture, thank you,” Bell returned. It was funny how before, Bell had acted very much the station manager. Now, he seemed to be rising to his new role and forcing himself to behave more formally. Dane supposed he had lost the station but still had his people. Maybe, in his mind, the Parliamentarian part of his life was finally more important than the station manager part.

Someone from the Prometheus brought around rations of kelp, rice, and fish from Varuna, and they dug in. Even this felt different to Dane. Not so long ago, he had balked at eating separately from his crew, but now it was a necessity. They needed to talk strategy, and the place for that was not the mess hall.

“The first thing I should report is that we have a tentative cure. Nothing certain yet, you understand, but it seems your scientists have found a way to use antimicrobial nanites to counteract the Augmented. They’ll be working on it on the Prometheus while we travel to Varuna.”

“Is that the best strategy, though?” MacTaggart asked. “If we go back to Alpha Central now, we can get a few more warships on our side. Maybe rally the people on the platform. You could get back on there, Lord Bell. I’m sure you could convince people to fight!”

“If they haven’t been implanted yet, which might be wishful thinking at this point,” Lopez pointed out.

“I don’t think that’s our best plan of action, Sam. If there’s a cure, let’s focus on that. Then we’ll come back and rescue our people,” Bell suggested.

“And if they come to Varuna? You told me about your system. I hate to be lightning on a clear day, but how are ye supposed to stand against them if we could not?” MacTaggart demanded.

No one had an answer because there was none. The Augmented had overwhelmed the Centauri, both strategically and with force. More and more, Dane felt it was simple luck that had let them survive their own assault on their home world.

“I’ll follow orders, but we’re in no position to fight,” Captain Gordon noted. She was soft-spoken for a captain, though her eyes were hard. “We have hardly any weapons and barely enough food for the two-week voyage. We weren’t expecting so many people, you understand. If we fought and rescued anyone…well, they’d starve before we reached our destination.”

“There’s also the risk of giving intelligence to the Augmented,” Lord Bell pointed out. “We have to assume every security system, every defensive tactic and backdoor on that planet is compromised. Fortunately, the Augmented didn’t get anyone from Varuna, so at least they could face this next battle without having to play open-faced. We can’t risk it.”

“We can fight.”

“We will,” Dane asserted. “When we have a chance, but right now, losing any of us would only be weakening our side. Frankly, we can’t afford that right now.”

The dinner was somber after that. They spoke about what to do when they reached Varuna and how to make sure they weren’t tailed, as well as updating their scanners and methods for detecting the Augmented. The weight of the loss was the elephant in the room, and no one knew what to do about it.

“We should at least watch how the battle went,” MacTaggart proposed an hour later.

Sure enough, the damn captain had timed it right, so they could watch the battle from their ships’ scanners. It was delayed six hours, which meant they were able to watch each initial foray.

“Goddamn beam cannon. We should have destroyed that thing when we had the chance,” MacTaggart snarled when it opened fire and shredded the platform around the Desert.

“Did you suspect it was a weapon?” Dane asked. “I thought it was a scanner or perhaps something to broadcast their beam.”

“No, I didn’t think anyone would ever make a weapon so big,” MacTaggart admitted. “I was more worried about the ship that landed.”

“They didn’t bring two. We should have noticed that sooner,” Bell remarked.

“Would that really have made you think there were Augmented on your world, though?” Lopez asked, which silenced the conversation rather effectively, despite not being her intention.

They watched the ships warp from the Desert to Alpha Central, then watched themselves from six hours past try to fight. Dane had been proud of the work he had done, but seeing it from this angle, he had done very little. They had effectively contained him and all the other competent fighters while they got into position. God, it was an embarrassment how they had been taken advantage of.

They watched their own ships warp out a few minutes too slowly after losing too many refugees. Then they watched the aftermath. The last of the warships kept fighting. Dane wasn’t sure if they’d be able to see them boarded from this distance, but they weren’t. The explosions made that clear.

“Fought to the very end.” MacTaggart’s tone was mournful. “They’re heroes, all of them, yet I don’t know what we can do against such a force. They’re too big, ya ken. More than I could imagine.”

“We keep fighting,” Dane told him. “That’s the only thing anyone can do when faced with a threat like this. We oppose it. For men like you and me, this is the hard part, but we will come back. We will free your people. This isn’t over.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

They returned to the Varuna system to fanfare and celebration. Dane barely had time to tell the colony leaders the bad news and that the celebrations would need to be tamped down, if not outright canceled, before the ships filled with refugees dropped out of warp.

Dane knew there wasn’t enough room for the refugees in the colony. Not yet, anyway. He gave orders to have the Cosmos and Zhemchug temporarily take on people while they prepared an area for them down below. Both ships were built for hundreds in cryogenic-induced sleep. They were less than ideal but better than the tight quarters that thousands from Centauri had lived in for the last two weeks.

Ginger Alvarez ordered all the food they had prepared in celebration to be sent up to the refugees. Dane saw the first of it arriving. It was surreal to see these Scots from Alpha Central eating fish sticks and seaweed salads on Varuna.

He introduced MacTaggart to Lev, his current chief of security and captain of the Zhemchug. MacTaggart had been obsessively watching the videos and models of how the Augmented had overwhelmed their defenses on Alpha Central. Better to have him do that with the man in charge of defending this system.

Dane excused himself and took the fighter down to the surface with Lopez. He radioed ahead to Nat so she could check it out and start making her own versions based on the tech. He didn’t know when the Augmented were going to come, but the more fighters they had when that moment arrived, the better.

“We just got the elevator fixed,” Granger reported. "Though not sure how well it’s going to handle all of them…”

Dane had invited Lord Bell down to the station, and the leader of the Centauri people had loaded up his shuttle before he had dropped down into the gravity well. There were close to fifty people standing on the platform. The first of many such shuttles back and forth to the ships up above, Dane knew.

“That’s fine,” Dane agreed. “We’re going to need to scan everybody anyway to make sure.”

“You didn’t do that already?” Nat looked suspiciously at the refugees.

“We did. Multiple times, but we’re going to need to normalize safety checks. That also means updating what we’re scanning for. I’ll tell this to everyone at the council, but Alpha Central was infiltrated by the Augmented. We can’t take anything for granted anymore.”

“Oh wow. That’s why these people are here, then? Because we lost?”

“Alvarez has made some amazing breakthroughs, so we haven’t lost yet, but we’re going to have to proceed with extreme caution.”

“I understand,” Nat confirmed.

Dane left Nat with the fighter while he, Lopez, Lord Bell, and Richmond all took the elevator to the council meeting.

Dane was ready to deliver the depressing news, blow by savage blow, but there was a moment of brightness before all that.

“Oh, Ginger, the baby came!”

“Meet Carlita,” Ginger announced to her husband as they embraced around the tiny bundle in her arms.

“You should not be out of bed yet, no?” Carlos wiped tears from his eyes as he gazed upon the baby. “She is so beautiful, is she not? Such beautiful hair!”

Dane thought the baby looked like a wrinkly gremlin with male pattern baldness, but he kept his opinions to himself.

“She came almost a week ago.” Ginger answered his first question and wisely not the second. “Everything went well, though Thorson nearly fainted.”

“I am a surgeon, not a midwife. I deal with what to do when the body is broken, not with what it can do under its own power.”

“Miracle of life was too much?” Lopez asked Thorson, whose pale complexion went crimson.

“So, how did it all go?” Adams asked. Dane had specifically invited her to this meeting because he wanted to see the look on her face when he told her about Alvarez’s breakthrough. He wished he could jump to that, but he had to go through the rough part first…

“I think I have found a way to cure the Augmented!” Carlos proclaimed.

The entire room erupted. Ginger was kissing him on his cheeks and thanking him for saving their baby. Thorson had apparently forgotten his prior embarrassment and was whooping in Icelandic. Lopez grinned from ear to ear. Nat, who’d come in late, said she would bake enough cookies to feed every person in the star system. Which was not as easy a feat as it had been a few hours ago.

It was Adams who’d needed that news the most. She didn’t say anything, only wiped tears from her coffee-colored cheeks and hugged Carlos when Ginger finally let him go. “I knew you could do it,” she whispered to him, or something to that effect, because Carlos grinned and nodded.

“If you cured it, why the refugees?” Mikael asked.

“May I introduce you all to Lord Bell, last free-willed leader of the Centauri government.”

Bell nodded. “It is a great honor to meet you. I owe you my life, the life of my son, and the lives of all my people. I hope we can work together to defeat this threat.”

“Bell was a station manager on Alpha Central. That’s what they call their center planet. We’ll be using him to help us with the logistics of what we need to do next. But before we get there, you need to understand why we came back like we did.”

Dane told them about what happened. He told them about the invasion and how overwhelming the enemy force had been. He told them of the ship that could cut orbital platforms to pieces and the one that had landed and become a fully defended base in no time. He told them how the Augmented fought together and about how dangerous they could be. He told them how he’d been shot, healed with nanites, then kidnapped. How he should have been Augmented, but the antimicrobial nanites had saved him, and this was part of Alavarez’s solution. He also told them how the Centauri had been too confident in their security systems and how it had cost them.

MacTaggart might have protested at the last part, but he wasn’t here. Lord Bell did not attempt to dissuade any of them of the notion that the Centauri had messed it up.

Dane told them how they had been outmaneuvered in nearly every way. How the Augmented were not only terribly powerful but also capable of understanding the psyche of a people in a way none of them had anticipated.

All in all, it was one of the worst reports Dane had ever had to present.

Yet the council took it all in stride. When he finally finished, they asked Bell a few questions about logistics and details of the planet’s defenses or how the water system worked. He knew plenty about the first and little about the second. Yet they threw no accusations, no blame.

When it was all over, they fawned over Carlos’ baby and congratulated him again on his breakthrough.

“I will need to run some tests, you understand. Governor Dane was not fully implanted, so it will take time to unravel that part of it.”

“But you’ll get it, mi amor!” Ginger encouraged.

“I will, and much as I would love to snuggle up with Carlita, I want to get some tests started and reconfigure one of our engineering bays to make the nanites.”

“We can do that?” Granger asked.

Carlos held up a drive. “I have all the schematics here. If there are questions, I also brought some of the scientists from Alpha Central. We will beat this thing. I promise you all. It’s only a matter of time.”

Dane did not point out that time might be the one thing they did not have.

He didn’t need to. Sometime later—long enough for Dane to go on a run around Homebase under the blissful pull of gravity, shower, and sleep—he received a message on his tablet asking him to come to Alvarez’s lab.

He hopped up and was down in the lab in no time.

“You’ve made progress?”

“I would say so, yes.” Alvarez’s smirk was as big as his mustache. He pulled back a curtain to reveal Adams in a bed. She was propped up, terribly pale and washed out, with an IV in her arm and a rueful smile on her face.

“What’s going on here?” Dane asked.

“I pulled a George Dane. Figured I’d ask for forgiveness rather than permission,” Adams informed him.

“I know I got shot on an alien planet, but that was not the part of the story I wanted you to take away!”

Alvarez handed Dane a scanner.

“Why is that IV hooked up?” Dane pointed the scanner at Adams and pressed the button.

It blinked green.

“We had some of the antimicrobial nanites aboard. They sent a full set to the Prometheus after the attack.”

“I know all that. What I’m wondering is how in the hell you thought doing this was a good idea!”

“Adams twisted my arm.” Alvarez grinned.

“I did. Literally!”

“Well, then, I guess I should be yelling at you! This was wildly reckless and ridiculously dangerous. You shouldn’t have done this without proper safety procedures in place.”

Adams actually batted her eyelashes before answering. “See, this is what it’s like being governor with George Dane on staff. I did what you would have done. I took a risk that I couldn’t have asked anyone else to. And it worked!”

Dane scanned her again. Again, it blinked green.

“How?”

“The nanites are programmable,” Alvarez explained in a rush. “They can be told to destroy bacteria, cancers, or even viruses. It was simply a matter of identifying the brain implant as a tumor. They broke it down and flushed it out of her system.”

“So you had robots doing surgery on your brain?” Dane asked.

“And it worked, Dane. It worked! My headaches are gone. I feel like myself again.”

“Well, you look like you saw a ghost,” Dane pointed out.

“We’ve been running her blood through a filter,” Alvarez told him. “We are not sure if that will be necessary moving forward, but we wanted to get as many of the nanites out of her as possible quickly. That will be one of many tweaks. Ideally, this won’t need an IV or filter system. We think an injection gun system could work.”

“What about via water, like they did?”

“We can look into it!” Alvarez beamed.

Dane couldn’t stay angry at them. They had cured Adams. They had found a way to save Alpha Central, the Desert, and Earth itself!

“How long will it take to make more?”

“Do you mean thousands of doses, millions, or billions?” Alvarez asked. “Billions will take a while, but thousands? Not so long, I think.”

“We’ll shoot for millions, then.”

“Of course!”

“What are you going to do once you have your millions of cures?” Adams asked.

Dane wondered how much of this was a test. Now that she was cured, she was once more the governor of this colony. Or she would be once Dane reinstated her based on his best judgment. As much as he wanted to do that right now, he couldn’t put this pale, bedridden person in command while she still had an IV hooked to her arm and was having her blood filtered.

“We will cure the people of Centauri and Earth. We’ll wipe out this scourge and leave it behind us. I don’t know the best way to accomplish that yet. I don’t know if we go for Earth itself, or Centauri, or some other avenue. We’ll have to plan the best we can, then scramble when it all goes to hell like it always does. But now that we have a cure, we can do this. We can give humanity back to themselves.”

Enveloped in the minds and feelings of his fellows, the dockworker was once more complete. No longer was he plagued with doubts, with questions, with worries that his choices were not the right ones. Once more, he was part of the many, part of the Augmented, a small piece of the force that would unite the entire galaxy.

The implantation proceeded on the surface, so this world had not yet fully embraced the Augmented. It was only a matter of time, though. They would not be able to resist, and once enough of them had been implanted, they would not want to.

The dockworker no longer wanted things. Or dreamed of other choices. His thoughts were provided for him, his intentions given to him by the Algorithm itself.

He had played an important role in what happened here on Alpha Central. This was not something he would think for himself. Too arrogant, and after so much time trying to keep his head down and stay hidden, too dangerous. Yet the Algorithm said he was important, so he knew it must be so.

He understood how the orbital platform worked and what it was capable of. He understood how it could be turned on the planet below if they dared resist that which they did not yet understand they needed. The dockworker would have once felt compunctions about this plan, even thinking about it. Surely, the people on the surface of this world would not wish to accept the implants if the Augmented fired upon their cities? But he didn’t need to have such thoughts anymore. The Algorithm would tell him when it was his turn to think. Until then, there was no need.

He would enjoy the honors of being a savior of this planet, of being one of the brave few who had lived out their time here, separate from the Algorithm. The plumber had died in the invasion, but the Algorithm assured him that did not matter. One life could never matter in the face of millions. That was the old way of thinking. Now the Augmented knew better.

Nothing mattered. Nothing except every human mind joining together to propel the Augmented and the programming that helped them into a preeminent position in the galaxy. After they fully implanted these planets, they would turn their attention to Varuna and the last few colonies.

Then they would all be part of the Augmented, leaving the galaxy at peace. Forever.

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with Free Worlds book five, Savage Stars, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

MARCH 20, 2023

Hello, dear readers!

Here we are at the fourth installment of Free Worlds, and I couldn't be more thrilled to have you along for the ride. These characters and their universe have become like a second home to me, and I hope you've come to love them just as much as I do. (I have to admit, I’m partial to our Nessie friends, myself, in terms of favorites!)

With only two more books to go, it's hard not to feel a little bittersweet. But rest assured, the culmination of our journey will be as exhilarating as the adventure thus far. I've got the ending in mind, and I promise it'll be one to remember!

Now, as I've been crafting this story, I've found myself increasingly drawn to the theme of freedom. It's been fascinating to explore the ways in which our characters must defend their autonomy, even as forces around them seek to suppress it. In writing this series, I've come to realize that freedom is a precious and fragile thing – one that requires our constant vigilance and investment.

In today's world, we are constantly faced with challenges to our liberties, whether they be political, social, or technological. As much as I love technology and its potential for progress, I recognize that it can also pose risks to our freedoms. It's crucial that we remain mindful of this balance and commit to protecting what we hold dear.

In Book 4, our heroes grappled with the responsibility of safeguarding their own freedom, as well as that of those they care about. We also saw the dangers of what happens when people give up freedom for security; as a wise man once said, they tend to end up with neither. Dane’s struggles serve as a reminder that we, too, must take an active role in preserving our liberties.

One of the many joys of science fiction is the opportunity to speculate on the future, to imagine how our choices today might shape the world of tomorrow. My hope is that this series not only entertains but also encourages you to reflect on the importance of freedom and the role each of us plays in preserving it.

As always, I am deeply grateful for your support and enthusiasm. Your continued interest in this story makes the journey all the more rewarding. Here's to the next thrilling chapter – and the continued pursuit of freedom!

All my best, until next time!

Kevin

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN MARCH 23, 2023

Thank you for not only reading this story about but these author notes as well.

As an author, you think you are the god of your stories.

Today, I want to share a little secret with you. Sometimes, as authors, we aren't as free to write what we want as you might think, especially when dealing with bossy characters. Bossy characters are both the boon and bane of any story. Often, fans love them. And often, fans love them, the bossy little bastards.

Why is this a problem? Oh, let me count the ways.

First, their personalities are so strong that these characters come alive on the page. You might think that is a good thing since it makes for an engaging and realistic character, but it can be a double-edged sword.

Also known as a pain in the ass.

When a character is so vivid and dominating, it can be difficult to keep them in check, and they might end up overshadowing the other characters or even hijacking the plot.

Second, when a bossy character's actions and dialogue flow naturally from your fingertips to the page, it's as if your subconscious is channeling them.

If you try to override the process and force the character to act against their nature, it can create internal conflict within you as the author. This struggle can lead to writer's block or other creative issues, making it challenging to move the story forward.

Third (and I'm stopping with three, promise!), readers are incredibly perceptive, and they can sense when something is "off" with a character. If an author forces a bossy character to act contrary to their established personality, it will be noticeable to readers, and you (yes, you!) might lose your suspension of disbelief. That can result in readers disengaging from the story and potentially losing trust in the author’s ability to tell a consistent, compelling tale.

So, as much as we authors might wish to have complete control over our characters and stories, sometimes we have to let our bossy characters take the reins and follow their lead. It might not always be the easiest path, but it often leads to a more authentic, engaging story that resonates with readers.

At least, we authors hope so!

Take care of yourself. I hope to talk to you in the next book!

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

P.S.

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)

Entrapped Worlds (Book 4)

Savage Stars (Book 5)

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

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For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit:

www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

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