FREEDOM DAWNS

FREE WORLDS™ BOOK SIX

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

DON’T MISS OUR NEW RELEASES

Join the LMBPN email list to be notified of new releases and special promotions (which happen often) by following this link:

http://lmbpn.com/email/

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

Copyright © 2023 LMBPN Publishing

Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

A Michael Anderle Production

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

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

LMBPN Publishing

PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

Las Vegas, NV 89109

Version 1.00, May 2023

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-841-6

Print ISBN: 979-8-88878-391-7

THE FREEDOM DAWNS TEAM

Thanks to our JIT Readers

Dorothy Lloyd

Zacc Pelter

Dave Hicks

Daryl McDaniel

Diane L. Smith

Misty Roa

Paul Westman

Kelly O’Donnell

Angel LaVey

Editor

The SkyFyre Editing Team

CHAPTER ONE

George Dane had always looked forward to the sight that would greet him when this airlock cycled open.

Not anymore.

When the second door clicked open and revealed the transparent tube running along the seafloor of the planet Varuna, Dane’s stomach churned. Mere days ago, this undersea valley had been a lush, thriving garden. A place that both showcased the alien world’s dazzling array of life and provided sustenance for the colonists who called this place home.

Now, it wasn’t.

The tube ran through a valley riddled with the wreckage of the latest Augmented attack. Explosives had done massive damage and destroyed some of the zingers. Damaged amphibious spacecraft had crashed onto many others. The ecosystem probably could have recovered from that. However, Dane’s choices had turned it into a bleak junkyard.

The crashed ships had undeniable value. The Augmented had devised vessels that could fight in space, enter the atmosphere of a planet, and dive underwater. Dane’s people had made ships with similar capabilities, but their means of production was limited, while their enemy’s was not. They couldn’t afford to let all these ships rust and rot.

Plus, there were the Augmented themselves to keep in mind.

After Dr. Carlos Alvarez had uploaded his vaccine, and it had spread throughout the linked minds of the Augmented, they had all lost consciousness. Their ships floundered. Their raiding parties collapsed. No one knew how long they’d be out, though. They only knew the vaccine Carlos devised had killed all the rats he had been using as test subjects. That had not stopped the scientist from heroically injecting himself with it, thus turning the linked minds of the Augmented from their greatest asset into their greatest weakness.

They had survived the latest Augmented invasion thanks to that digitally spread vaccine, but neither Dane nor anyone else knew how long those effects would last or if people would suffer the same effects the rats had. Some of the Augmented had died, but plenty more still lingered, unconscious.

That in-between state of the Augmented was what brought Dane out into this transparent tunnel that ran through the wreckage of the battle. All the Augmented subs needed to have their pilots removed. Dane had originally ordered them to be carried up to the Cosmos, but the colony ship had a new job as the engine of the iron sphere defense station Haley Lopez had used to turn the battle for Varuna in their favor. Dane rescinded that order, not wanting to fill their defensive station with enemy soldiers that might wake from a nap at any moment.

So instead, they brought down the cryotubes by the hundreds. It would not have been possible before the battle, but now it was, thanks to the conditions of their victory. They had lost all their warships, but Alvarez’s vaccine had ensured the Augmented lost control of their own minds before they could push their advantage. Dane was now in control of three Augmented warships in near-perfect working order, two more damaged ones undergoing repairs, and a beam cannon ship.

The last one was undoubtedly the most impressive weapon they had, but Nat Granger, their most brilliant engineer, had yet to give any sort of prognosis on whether they could get it to work. Each of those ships had come with multiple shuttles on board, nearly all of which were capable of landing on the surface of the sea, if not diving underneath. It hadn’t been nearly as difficult to bring down all the cryotubes as it would have been a week ago.

They had not wanted to fill the halls of their underwater base with what amounted to cryogenic prison cells, so they had elected to put them all in one place. Namely, the inflatable dome at the end of this transparent tube.

What had once been a place of research was now a holding cell for enemy combatants Dane hoped they could cure and maybe even bring over to their side. It made sense to surround it in the wreckage of the battle they had brought with them.

Dane missed the zingers and the creatures that swam among their stinging arms, but he knew this was the best thing for Varuna as a whole. It would allow his people to salvage as much as they could from these vessels, some of which were hardly damaged and all of which had plenty of parts that could be used to repair the working subs if they broke. It would protect the planet as a whole.

Dane knew Carlos would have wanted that. Carlos Alvarez was first and foremost a biologist and had long been fascinated by the biology of this world. By how similar it was to Earth while simultaneously being so different.

When Dane first surveyed the wreckage scattered around the base, he could practically hear the doctor’s voice in his ear. Complaining about the damage to the environment, telling him how these downed vessels would leak lubricants and fuel, coolants and antifreeze, and a hundred other compounds into the sea. He’d ordered them all taken to this central location and put a team on figuring out the best way to contain the stuff leaking from so many of them. He thought it was the right call, yet he wondered what Carlos would think if he woke up surrounded by all this wreckage.

When he wakes up, Dane corrected himself. Carlos is going to wake up. We need him to figure out why his vaccine killed those rats and if it killed some of the Augmented as well.

That was what had brought Dane out here. The hope of Carlos Alvarez waking up and being able to help them work through everything they needed to work through. It wasn’t as if nothing else was going on.

They had clawed victory from the jaws of defeat only four days ago. It took close to a week to travel from Varuna to Earth via the warp drives on the warships they now controlled. That meant they still had a few days before the Augmented would expect the return of their victorious fleet.

After that, it would become increasingly clear their invading force had failed. It didn’t take a master strategist to figure out what Earth would do then. Send a scout, observe the current state of the solar system of Teegarden’s star, then dispatch another overwhelming force. Dane didn’t think they’d be able to repel a fresh invasion. Not when their greatest asset was a ball of iron with a century-plus-old colony ship stuffed into a hole in the back to make it move. They had the three Augmented warships. Yet the Augmented might be able to take those over remotely. Even if they couldn’t, they would still know all the weaknesses of those ships.

If Dane and the people of Varuna were to somehow turn the tables against the Augmented, a herculean if not impossible task, they needed to figure something out now. Which was why Dane hopped to answer the summons of Dr. Thorson, their head medical doctor.

He reached the airlock at the end of the tunnel and stepped inside, then waited for the door to the tube to seal shut so the door to their prison dome could open. We really have a prison dome, Dane sighed. They’d undertaken their mission to Teegarden’s star to inspire the people of Earth to leave war behind them. Instead, they had spread it across the galaxy.

The door opened, and Dane stepped into the dome.

It was a surreal space. The cryotubes were arranged in concentric circles. Eight in the center ring, then each ring nearly doubling in number as they spread out. Over four hundred cryotubes turned into lifesaving prison cells. At the center of the room was a massive energy regulator. A huge wire, thick as Dane’s bicep, ran through the tube he had walked through and into the machine at the very center of the room. The machine then split the power into more manageable loads and monitored the life support systems and vitals of all their prisoners and patients.

It made Dane think of all the Augmented being caught in a spider web of electrical wires. Though at the same time, the wires kept them alive, so they could also be seen as artificial umbilical cords. To say Dane had conflicted feelings when walking into this room was an understatement.

Though, seeing Thorson standing over one of the tubes closest to the life support machine took away some of those feelings. Thorson was a former military man, like Dane, and a skilled surgeon. He was not a man to waste another’s time when his was so valuable. He would not have called Dane down here unless he had made a breakthrough.

Dane hoped it was the good kind.

“Dr. Thorson.”

“Governor Dane.”

“Please tell me you have good news.”

Thorson ran a hand through his close-cropped blond hair and regarded Dane with icy blue eyes. “Depends on your definition of good.”

“Not off to a great start, Doctor.”

“I have made a major breakthrough, which from a research perspective is very good news indeed, though it is not actionable. Not yet.”

“I don’t see any empty pods,” Dane reported. “Is it safe to say that you haven’t woken anyone up yet?”

“Unfortunately, we have not been able to move that quickly,” Thorson admitted. “There is no guarantee that when the Augmented wake up, they will be on our side. However, even if they stay loyal to the people who put computer chips in their brains, we cannot ethically experiment on them.”

Dane wanted to point out that the Augmented were more than willing to experiment on unwilling subjects, but he said nothing. There were lines that simply should not be crossed, even in times of war. If Thorson could make breakthroughs without any more people having to die, that would be best. If we live long enough to not all become Augmented ourselves, anyway.

“However, the rats and the fallen Augmented have been instrumental.” Thorson filled in the part of the conversation Dane had left empty. “I have done autopsies on the rats, repeat tests, and after we had some preliminary results, autopsies on the Augmented that had already died. The issue is clear. Their brains are demyelinating.”

Dane blinked once, twice, three times, waiting for his brain to process the unknown word and failing to do so.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that I need to explain what’s happening to some laymen who have no clue what that even kind of means. How would you explain it to them?”

Thorson snorted a laugh. “You mean like a five-year-old?”

“I’ve met some pretty smart five-year-olds, so yeah. Explain it like I’m five.”

“Your brain is made of cells.”

“Got it.”

“Most of those cells are nerve cells we call neurons.”

“Still with you.”

“Those neurons have a myelin sheath around them.”

“I have never heard that first word before, but I know what a sheath is. I keep my knife in one.”

“Sure. Maybe think of it more like the rubber coating around a wire. Or better yet, think of myelin as copper wire surrounding fiber optic cable. It protects the inner part of the cell but also aids in transmitting electrical impulses.”

“Impulses?”

“How your brain communicates with itself.”

“’Cuz it’s made of lots of little bits.”

“That’s right, Governor. Very good.”

Dane sighed. “Okay, the cells have a sheath. And the implant is, what…attacking the sheath?”

“Nothing so nefarious, no,” Thorson assured him. “It’s only that the vaccine tells the implant to break apart. When it does, it releases trace amounts of chemicals that break down the myelin.”

“They demyelinate it?”

“Precisely. And when brain cells demyelinate, it slows down brain function, then stops it.”

“So it kills the brain?”

“Yes.”

“Which is bad.” Dane knew he shouldn’t joke, but what the hell else was he supposed to do in this completely unjust situation?

“Exceedingly,” Thorson agreed.

“Well, crap.”

“Without a doubt.”

Dane sighed. What were they supposed to do with this?

Thorson rested a hand on the closest cryotube, and Dane realized Carlos was inside. He couldn’t believe the scientist had developed this amazing cure and dosed himself with it, only to discover it was lethal.

“So we can’t take Carlos out?”

“We can’t. Not yet, anyway.”

“And we can’t go to Earth and spread this, either.”

“Not unless we want to kill ten billion people.”

“Yeah…that’s gonna be a no.”

CHAPTER TWO

“I’m sorry, Doctor, I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that depending on how I looked at this, it might be good news? No part of this is good news. The man who solved this might die from his own medicine, and we can’t save Earth without committing genocide of our own species.”

“Those are the bad parts, yes.”

“So there is good news?”

“Of a fashion.”

“That’s not ominous at all.”

“On Earth, there are a few compounds that can stop demyelination. We even brought some with us, but—”

“None of them worked.”

Thorson nodded. “Not on the specific chemicals that the implant releases. But I got to thinking. On Earth, the compound that kicked off all this research is derived from the dogfish. A kind of shark. It’s found in their cartilage, and it’s an effective treatment for certain diseases of the brain, like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”

“Ah. They were working on cures for those before the war.”

Thorson nodded. “We might already have something more effective had they found one. But we don’t have anything in our lab that worked. I had to go to other sources.”

“You’re talking about the local wildlife?”

“Indeed. Many of the creatures here on Varuna are roughly analogous to some of the creatures back on Earth. I wondered if some of the similar structures would possess similar properties.”

“So what’s similar to a dogfish? And why can’t it be something that doesn’t move like a zinger? Or a murder star? Please tell me you want us to harvest some murder stars.”

“It’s bigger than a murder star.”

Dane swallowed, growing concerned that Thorson would not come out and say it. He felt his stomach twist when he thought of the next step in the food chain above murder stars.

“It’s not the nessies, right? They’re closer to reptiles than sharks, aren’t they?”

“They’re somewhere in between, but no, it’s not the nessies.”

“Then what?”

“The Megicthyosaurs.”

“You mean the Big Damn Fish?”

“That is what they are commonly called, yes.”

“Well, crap.”

“It’s possible that there’s another solution, but if there is, I don’t know it. We’ve taken tissue samples from all the local fauna, and I’ve run tests on them all. The only one I’ve found is in the Megicthyosaurs.”

“So we need to harvest some BDF fins.”

Thorson looked abashed. “Unfortunately, it’s not in their fins.”

“I thought you said it was in the cartilage of the dog shark?”

“Dogfish, and yes, on Earth, that’s where they found the compound. But the enzyme that seems most effective here is located in the brain of the Megicthyosaur.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I wish it were otherwise.”

“We need fish brains to cure Earth?”

Thorson had plastered on a fake smile that grew so brittle it snapped. “Actually, no. We can’t create it artificially with our equipment here, which means we need to harvest it. I think one fish’s brain should be enough to cure everyone here on Varuna, but…”

“One fish to two thousand-ish people means even if we could somehow kill every BDF on Varuna, which would be a tall order, to begin with…there’s not enough fish on this planet to cure Earth.”

“Precisely. Even if we could find a way to administer it to all of Earth—no easy feat, considering there’s so many people—we couldn’t make enough of it here.”

Dane drew a deep breath, trying to find the good in all this. “But you can cure Carlos?”

“I believe so, yes. If we can get some of this enzyme, I should be able to administer it to him and protect his brain while the implant breaks down, is reabsorbed into his bloodstream, and is then passed.”

“And Carlos might be able to come up with something?”

“He is eminently more qualified than I am. I’m a doctor, not a biologist. I don’t know much about how these implants interact with brains. I have his notes, but it’s not the kind of thing I went to school for. Dr. Alvarez is an evolutionary biologist and has shown a real propensity for understanding how this implant works. If anyone can find a way to stop the implant from releasing this chemical or doing so in a safe way, it’s him.”

“Then I guess I need to go fishing.”

“I wish I had another solution, but we’re going to need Alvarez to figure this out, and I don’t know how else to help him.”

Dane waved away Thorson’s apologies. “You need me to catch a fish? I’ll catch a fish.”

Thorson nodded. “Thank you, Governor.”

Dane nodded and turned to go. He walked through the rings of the cryotubes. He saw faces he didn’t know, the Augmented, as well as faces he did. People who had been implanted in the invasion. He felt the weight of leadership on his shoulders. He would do anything to bring back his people. Including harvesting the brain of a fish that had tried to eat them.

Though when he discovered a familiar face behind a pane of glass, he felt more conflicted.

“Winters…” Dane touched the man who’d been the XO of the Cosmos and second in command of the colony until the Russians showed up, and he succumbed to his own paranoia. They were ostensibly fighting for freedom, yet they had imprisoned this man not only in body and mind but in time itself. The world had progressed around Winters while he was stuck. His heart had probably only beat a handful of times since being locked in there. Was that just? Was it fair that Winters was still in there for crimes that seemed insignificant compared to the scale of the atrocities the Augmented had committed?

“We moved him in here when we moved all the other pods,” Thorson explained, following Dane. “We can’t leave him in there forever. He needs a trial and real consequences, not an indeterminate delay.”

“We can lament the things we’ve done in the name of freedom after the war is over,” Dane stated, though the words sounded phony as he said them.

“One crisis at a time,” Thorson agreed. They walked out in silence, both stuck ruminating on how far they were willing to go, and no doubt both worrying that no matter how far they went, it wouldn’t be enough.

CHAPTER THREE

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come here in SCUBA gear,” Dane remarked to the assembled security force.

“Every other job on this planet needs SCUBA gear. At this point, I worry more when you ask us to go somewhere without it,” Stark joked.

Everyone laughed at that. Dane was thankful for the comradery that the security team had fostered. Lev had been a good choice for head of security. He had integrated the Russians and the original Alliance of Democratic Nations colonists well and had even brought on some of the Centauri people and made them feel at home. That was good because Dane had a big ask for the team.

"Dr. Thorson discovered the implants are causing everyone’s brains to demyelinate as they break down.”

The eleven assembled security people lasted about four seconds before they all burst out laughing.

“Are we supposed to know what that means?” Robinson asked.

“I think that’s a dish from the Middle East,” Athanas joked.

“Pretty sure I do that to the hard drives on my drones every now and then,” Good commented.

“Is this American translation for you have no idea what you are talking about?” Lev inquired.

“It’s good to know that you’re all proud of your lack of vocabulary,” a man from Centauri injected. Dane thought his name was Joseph, but he wasn’t sure.

“So you know what it means then, Joseph?” Robinson asked him. Dane made a mental note that he had gotten his name right and to remember the male pattern baldness as a clue to his identity.

“Of course not! But I’m not going to go and broadcast that to you lot!”

Everyone laughed. Dane was glad to see them in such a good mood. If he was in their place, he would be expecting some ridiculous assignment. Considering they had been invaded days ago, it was sort of insane to send any of the security team away. They would know how important this mission had to be, even if they had yet to guess at the specifics of the mission itself.

“So, what’s your ten-thousand-dollar word mean, Governor?” Athanas asked.

“It means when the implants break from our vaccine, they kill the host by destroying the brain.”

“What in the hell?” Stark demanded, affronted.

“That’s pretty sick, right there,” Good mumbled.

“How could they allow themselves to walk around with something in their head that could kill them just like that?” Robinson asked.

“For Augmented, it is likely not issue,” Lev remarked, his Russian accent on proud display compared to the American and Scottish accents. “If someone wishes to become not Augmented, their brain is fried. No loss to these people, because if someone is not Augmented, they do not think about them as people. That is all.”

“I had the same thoughts,” Dane admitted. “Really, what the Augmented do with their people isn’t our business. Not yet. We need to find a way to destroy these implants without actually hurting the people infected with them. And for that, we need Dr. Alvarez, who currently has an implant in his brain. Fortunately, we also have Dr. Thorson, who has identified an enzyme that can prevent this entire process.”

“And you’re telling us it’s in a fish?” Stark asked.

Dane nodded, and everyone groaned.

“Just once, can we go on a mission that doesn’t involve wildlife that wants to eat us?” Robinson lamented.

“I like it,” Athanas stated. “Most of the big predators on Earth went extinct, but here, we’re part of the food chain.”

“Maybe you’re part of the food chain, but I’d rather stay at the top of it,” Good contended.

“That’s the plan. We’re going to do this carefully and not rush more than we need to. Time is important, of course. We need Dr. Alvarez back in action, but I don’t want any mistakes. If you’re in trouble, you get the hell out, and we regroup, all right?”

“You know you only talk this way when it’s bad, right?” Athanas pointed out.

“It’s not that bad,” Dane claimed. “Well, it could be worse, I guess.”

“So it’s worse than bad, but not as bad as possible?” Stark countered. “Not exactly an inspiring mission, I’d say.”

“What kind of fish do you need us to catch?” Lev asked.

Dane appreciated the question. It was refreshingly direct. If Lev had not asked it, Dane might have talked around their goal for another few minutes.

“Dr. Thorson says the enzyme exists in the cranium of the Megicthyosaurs.”

“English?”

“Or Russian?”

“I need you to kill a big damn fish by any means possible, but you can’t destroy its head.”

“Does anyone else think it might be time to hold an election?” Robinson asked, and everyone laughed.

“You’d rather have someone besides war hero George Dane tell us to kill a big damn fish? At least he’ll come with us!” Stark exclaimed. Even after all this time on Varuna, Stark still looked up to Dane.

“I think I might vote for someone else,” Lev admitted slowly. “When your commander is a pilot, he is always finding new ways to make everyone get out there and drive in new ways!”

Everyone laughed at that, but as the humor settled down, hardened expressions replaced their smiles. Like nearly every mission on this planet, they knew this would not be easy. They were already slipping into the state of mind they needed for success. Dane felt himself doing it as well. Pushing the day-to-day worries of the colony, the cleanup effort, and even the threat of the Augmented from his mind. For the next few hours, all that mattered would be catching and killing one of the big damn fish.

Oh, and not being eaten while they were doing it.

CHAPTER FOUR

They finished going over the exact plans then broke up into six groups, a pair of people for each sub. Dane had tried to remain professional during the meeting, but when Haley stood and approached, he was unable to resist wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top of her head.

“You know I don’t want you to come out there with us, right?” Dane asked.

“And you know I don’t care, and I’m not going to sit inside this volcano twiddling my thumbs when I could be out there with you.”

“Yes. I had come to that conclusion.”

“Great! Then who am I going to be with?”

“I’ll have you with the most skilled pilot, who is coincidentally a person of great importance. Someone the security chief has repeatedly told to stay out of direct contact with the BDFs since he’s too important to our mission to risk. If you’re in the sub, he might actually take the chief of security’s advice.”

“Does this skilled pilot of great importance happen to have a girlfriend?”

“He does. And he had a great time with her last night.”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to know his last night before going out to hunt a fish big enough to eat a nessie was boring.”

“It’s never boring with you, Haley.”

Haley smiled and pulled herself closer to him. “That would be a lot sweeter if we didn’t live on an alien planet teeming with predators and had survived not one, not two, but three invasions from people with brain implants trying to make us into zombies.”

Dane chuckled. “True, but you’re the only person who can make me laugh despite all that.”

“Well, that’s because—”

“Governor, if you’re done being in middle school, would you mind joining us for the security briefing?” Lev asked.

“Right. Er, sorry. I was just, uh…” Dane pushed Haley away, nearly knocking her over. Then he grabbed her so she didn’t fall and brought her back to where they started. He had been surprised by the very American reference from the Russian. Now he noticed Granger standing next to him, tattooed arms crossed and face so red that it matched some of the brighter ink. She must have told Lev the reference or maybe simply made the joke, and the Russian had shamelessly picked it up.

“Now, if everyone will pay attention, our engineer has wise words to tell us how to blow things up,” Lev quipped.

“Right,” Granger agreed, then realized that she was the one who was supposed to be speaking and straightened up. “All right, so we have new torpedoes on all your subs, except they’re not new. Torpedoes, that is. They’re the anti-ship missiles we were manufacturing for the invasion. These are the ones that didn’t finish production before the Augmented showed up.”

“So, they are strong?” Lev asked.

“Exceedingly so,” Granger confirmed. “They’re basically the underwater versions of the ones we were using up there. I would say that they should take out the Megicthyosaurs no problem, but—”

“We wouldn’t believe you!” Stark called.

Granger grinned, feeling more comfortable now that the leader of the colony wasn’t snuggling with his girlfriend in the middle of a security briefing.

“That, and the Megicthyosaurs have exceedingly hard scales.”

“Not stronger than a spaceship?” Athanas asked.

“I mean, not technically, but the pressure on a spaceship comes from within. The armor and decking are all built around the fact that the interior of a spaceship is actually denser than the empty space around it. That means one leak and everything inside wants to get out. It’s the opposite with the Mega…the mega-icky.”

“You can call them Big Damn Fish. We all do,” Good offered.

“Right. Well, the Big Damn Fish are in the opposite environment. They live in deep water, where the external pressure is quite substantial. You can’t expect that damage to their armor will work in the same way.”

“So, how many torpedoes do we need to hit them with?” Athanas asked.

“We equipped each of the six submarines with two torpedoes, so hopefully less than twelve?”

“That seems…excessive. Not that I’m complaining,” Good rejoined.

“Hopefully, it is.”

“It probably is,” Granger conceded. “But sometimes the BDFs show up in groups, so when the governor came to me with the mission parameters, we wanted to make sure we had everything covered.”

“Also, it’s not much fun to operate anything that only has one shot,” Dane added.

Everyone agreed with that and seemed reasonably confident that twelve torpedoes would be enough to get the job done. It was an awful lot of work to get one man awake and out of cryo, but Dane didn’t see what other option they had.

He and Haley suited up and climbed into their sub, and the mission was underway.

CHAPTER FIVE

Liam Bell was becoming increasingly wary about what he had agreed to. When Geoff O’Reilly contacted him and told him the base would need looking after when the security team went out on a sub mission, he had agreed without thinking. He still felt ashamed of his actions on Alpha Central. He had tried to help during the invasion and, by many accounts, had been instrumental in getting the last of the missiles fired at the enemy.

However, he still felt he had a lot to prove. Everyone here knew him as the traitor, and he didn’t have the heart to argue against the perception. Better to show what kind of person he wanted to be than try to tell people what he was feeling.

Now he was thinking maybe he should have said no to this and let Geoff think whatever he wanted.

It was too late for that now. Geoff had asked if he wanted to help them secure the base, and he had said yes. If he backed out now, he’d look like a coward. Or worse, the traitor everyone already thought that he was. He only wished the meeting was being held in the cafeteria instead of down in one of the rooms where the Augmented had come in and started firing.

No one had repaired these rooms yet. There were still bullet holes and scorch marks on the walls. And while it did not smell like blood, disinfectant had almost surely been sprayed to help remove the smell of death and bloodshed. It was not the sort of place anyone would hang out, which made Geoff naming it a meeting place odd.

Liam had met with Geoff and his friends two or three times since the battle. At first, it had been cool. They had wanted to know how he had unjammed the missile launcher and what it had been like to crash down to Varuna and swim for the base, but now he was thinking they only asked all those questions to make him feel comfortable. Now that he was a “regular,” they didn’t seem as interested as they had once been.

After they had asked Liam about his involvement in the missile launcher, they had turned the conversation to how poorly run the operation of the base was. They had some really good points, especially about how dangerous the Augmented could be if they decided that they didn’t want to implant the people of Varuna and simply destroyed them, but Liam couldn’t help but think they should bring those concerns to Dane, or someone in leadership, anyway.

They never talked about that, though. Instead, they pointed out all the holes in security.

Liam was starting to feel like he should walk away, but his father had always told him to honor his commitments. And for better or for worse, he had told Geoff O’Reilly that he would come to the meeting they had called today.

Liam found them in the same room where they usually met. It was the same group of people it usually was. Geoff O’Reilly was already there. Geoff was from Alpha Central, like Liam. He had seen him on the defense station a bunch of times and chatted with him a few times over the years, but they had never been close.

Geoff had always been too negative for Liam’s taste. He had preferred hanging out with the wannabe revolutionaries who had ended up allowing the Augmented into the Alpha Centauri system. He had obviously been wrong about them. Their optimism and hope that the Augmented were not interested in war had been wildly misplaced. It had not been grounded in reality, and an entire solar system had paid that price. So Liam tried not to let Geoff’s negativity bother him too much.

Casper Antonov was there too. As usual, his work uniform looked crisp, and his hair was tightly trimmed. He was a medtech from Russia. Today, like most days, he was concerned the people of Varuna weren’t doing enough to protect their own health.

“It’s too crazy, you know?” Casper was saying to Geoff when Liam came in. “They are out fishing when the Augmented could reappear at any time! We should be working on their implants, not doing whatever they are doing.”

Liam wanted to point out that they did not know what the away team was doing because it was a security risk to be telling secret plans to everyone. The only reason they all knew there was an away team was that the colony had so few people practically everyone knew when something unusual was happening. Like retrofitting missiles into torpedoes and putting them on the subs.

“What gets me is the missiles. If, not when, the Augmented reappear, we’re going to be caught with our pants down. Those missiles could make the difference.”

“Those missiles won’t do a thing,” Casper lamented. “Russians have known this for years. When there is an aggressor as strong as the Augmented, you cannot shoot missiles at them and hope for anything good.”

“Then it’s probably good that the governor found another use for them,” Liam put in, not wanting to stand there and eavesdrop when the other two men had obviously seen him come in.

“Nothing that man does is good.” Chris Larsen entered the room with a scowl on his face. He might have been the best-looking of the four of them if he did not have a perpetual scowl. Liam didn’t know him well, but he knew that he had no love for the governor because he had locked one of Chris’ friends in a cryotube on charges of conspiracy.

Liam didn’t know much of the story. It had happened long before he had come to this system. Yet to hear it from Chris, it was totally unfair. Winters had been caught up in something bigger than himself, and rather than unraveling who had done what, Dane had thrown him in a cryotube and left him there indefinitely. Liam didn’t know the other side of the story, but he knew for a fact Winters had been in cryo even before the Augmented had shown up. That didn’t seem right to him.

“It’s messed up that he took those missiles with him,” Geoff pointed out. “The threat is not the fish out there. It’s the Augmented.”

“They don’t have to be, though,” Casper claimed. He often talked this way. “The way to beat them is not to outfight them. We cannot build enough missiles. Instead, we must find a way to make ourselves valuable to them. Economically or otherwise.”

“That’s what you were trying to do back on Alpha Central. Right, Liam?” Geoff asked.

“Sort of,” Liam admitted. “Except they invaded with more firepower than I thought they would have brought.”

“Probably because the network you were part of kept reporting how war-hungry the rest of the Alpha Centauri system was,” Chris sneered.

“Maybe,” Liam allowed when the silence that followed grew uncomfortable.

“It’s getting to be like that here all over again,” Geoff claimed. “On Alpha Central, everything was always about the approaching war. All the decisions that Parliament made were about the upcoming battle. Education was about war. Our economy was all built around the war. All our tech was researched only through the lens of war. It was an obsession that got us nowhere.”

“Sometimes I feel like I should have come forward sooner with the contacts I had made,” Liam stated. “If they had been able to talk to my father or anyone in Parliament, maybe we could have avoided the whole thing.”

“I’m sure we could have,” Geoff agreed.

“They told you about Earth, right? About how it’s been cleaned up?” Casper often asked these sorts of questions. He had been born back on Earth, then traveled between the stars on the Zhemchug in a cryotube. Liam had never been to Earth. Never even thought about it until he had started talking with the Augmented.

As a kid, he had been taught that Earth was the enemy, a place of billions of soldiers all toiling away in factories to bring about the desolation of the Alpha Centauri system. Casper’s Earth was even worse. A world choked with ash and pulverized by too many countries being willing to take too many lives. The Augmented had painted a different picture. One Liam had come to learn was at least partially true. It had been confirmed by none other than Governor George Dane!

“I know they’ve rebuilt all the cities destroyed in the Third World War. They prioritize the environment of the entire planet now. It’s not as dirty as it was, that’s for sure.” Liam didn’t want to point out it was the Augmented invasion polluting this world. Wreckage from their attack choked the seafloor all around Homebase. That wasn’t what Casper wanted to hear, though.

“They look at everything holistically now. And every decision is made by thousands or even millions, instead of a few people.”

“That’s what we should be doing here,” Casper opined. “Instead of secret spy missions to nowhere.”

“It wouldn’t be this way if Winters were out,” Chris claimed. Obviously, the two of them had been quite close before Winters had been locked up.

“You can’t know that, though,” Geoff stated.

“I know Winters, and the man understood the law. He was XO for Adams back when she was still captain, and he understood fairness in a way that Dane doesn’t. We didn’t even elect him! Not really! He was put into power by leadership, and everyone went along with it because we all see him jogging and working out every damn day! Who would want to say no to that?”

The other men grumbled at that. Liam had to admit that it was true. It was weird to see the governor working out so much. Like he had something to prove or he wanted to show everyone how strong he was.

“Winters is under security, though,” Casper pointed out. “It’s not like you can wake him up.”

“I mean, I can,” Chris rejoined. “I was on the Cosmos with him. I have the activation codes and know how to wake someone up.”

“Wouldn’t it be dangerous, though? To Winters,” Liam wondered.

“Not with Casper here. He’s a medtech, right? And the Zhemchug had its own sleeping pods.”

Casper nodded. “It is pretty simple to monitor their vitals. He should be fine, and if he’s not, I would know what to do.”

“Well then, let’s wake him up!” Chris sounded as if the idea was just occurring to him, but Liam thought that it must have at least been kicking around in his head for a while. He talked about Winters so much.

“We can’t. Security,” Geoff pointed out.

“Not today.” A smile grew on Chris’ face. “Today, they’re all out fishing. Hell, even the governor himself decided to go. Not to mention the chief of security and all the old-timers. We could wake Winters before they’re back.”

“I guess so,” Geoff stated, though he looked unsure.

“He might be foggy for a while,” Casper suggested. “It takes time for memories to come back.”

“We could keep him safe while he wakes up. Finally get some answers out of him, figure out why he’s even in there,” Chris proposed.

“Isn’t he in there on charges of conspiracy?” Liam asked.

“What does that even mean, though? What is a conspiracy? Anything that the powers that be don’t like? According to the Augmented, this whole planet is a conspiracy. If we only talk to them, that would be different.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Liam remarked.

“Then don’t worry about it. You can keep watch,” Chris told him.

“You’re sure about this?” Geoff asked.

“Winters will have a fresh perspective on the Augmented. He’ll see things the rest of us have been taking for granted. We have to do this,” Chris insisted.

“If we want to, now is our best shot. I would like to know what Winters will say. He might not want to fight and get obliterated.”

“Or live under martial law for the foreseeable future,” Geoff chimed in.

“Then we’re in agreement. We go wake Winters up now while the governor and his people are out playing fisherman!”

Liam didn’t know what to say, so he followed the men from the room. He bumped against a piece of shrapnel with his foot and bent to pick it up. It was a piece of metal, once functional in some way now unknown to him. Liam couldn’t help but see himself in it.

CHAPTER SIX

It took longer than Dane would have liked to get all the subs underway. The issue was the size of the mission. With so many people and subs in this operation, they had to load up in shifts. In the back of Dane’s mind, he considered how they could design a better hangar for the subs, but it was a long-term goal that might never come to fruition. Their priority in hunting this fish was curing Alvarez, even though it felt like a roundabout way.

Hopefully, when Alvarez was safely awakened, he’d have an answer for them. Then they could bring the fight to the Augmented worlds and free the people there. Maybe then, Dane could start prioritizing infrastructure projects. It sounded relaxing compared to his current duties.

Eventually, all six of the subs were loaded up and underway. While they steered through the underwater mountain range, they practiced different formations. Some of the subs were the reclaimed ones that the Augmented had brought, and Dane wanted to make sure that the pilots of those ships—Good and Stark, two of his most experienced—were comfortable with the instrumentation.

While they traveled, they formed up into a line, fanned out, then covered their flanks. Everyone was pretty familiar with how to work underwater except for some of the Centauri who had only been on Varuna long enough to fight off the Augmented. Dane made sure each of them was paired up with a more experienced person from Varuna.

“How’s our systems looking?” he asked Haley.

“Everything is functioning properly,” Haley replied from the seat right next to him. “Comms are working well, targeting systems are good. Looks like the engineers did a decent job of getting these all ready to go.”

“The engineers? Isn’t that your job too?”

Haley smirked. “I will now be known as the Czarina of the Iron Sphere. But I guess I can moonlight as an engineer if you need me to.”

“For this mission, I think I’d prefer the battle princess.”

“Like I said. Weapons look good.”

They reached the edge of the relatively safe part of the mountain range and looked down into the abyss.

“Everyone line up along the edge here,” Dane ordered. “Remember that visibility is going to drop off dramatically down there. We’ll be running as quietly as we can since we’re still not sure what senses the BDF hunt with.”

“It’s got to be smell,” Robinson proclaimed over the comms. “They smell a nessie fart, and it brings them to the surface.”

“I don’t think this planet’s top predator is using nessie farts to stay at the top of the food chain,” Athanas replied from another sub. Dane did not mind the trash-talking in the least. They all needed to check in to make sure their comms were still functioning. Might as well make each other smile when they did it.

“They must be using sound, like the whales used to,” Stark suggested.

“Ain’t no used to about it,” Good told him. “The Augmented have whales on Earth. I don’t know if they managed to find the last few survivors or if they cloned them or something, but when I went, there were whales on the news.”

“Oh, you saw it on the news, so it must be so,” Lev quipped.

That was the sixth sub, so Dane cut into the chatter. “We know they’re opportunistic hunters. Chances are good that if one of them comes for one of us, they’ll want to keep coming. We can use that.”

“And this a reminder that if we do resort to using one of us as bait, it is not the governor,” Lev insisted.

“Ah, come on. You know I want to see the inside of one of them big damn fish!” Dane joked.

“You should not be here, Dane. You agreed that if you came, you would stay back.”

“I know I did, and I will. Any questions on what we do now?”

“Slow motion dive into the abyss, right? What’s so hard about that?” Stark asked.

“Then let’s take the plunge.” Dane pushed his sub over the edge and into the abyss. The sub was denser than water, so when Dane let it do as it wished, it slowly sank. Normally, part of the pilot’s job was to keep the sub moving forward instead of down and forward. For now, though, Dane allowed hydrodynamics to work. He drifted into the deep, steering only enough to keep them from banging into the cliff face.

“Did you see the mountain face behind us?” Haley asked in a whisper.

“I hadn’t looked at it, no. And you don’t have to whisper. They can’t hear our voices inside the sub from out there.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But it’s fun to whisper in the dark,” Haley stated.

Dane smiled. He loved her so much. They were diving down where the sun could not reach in search of an actual sea monster, and she was still having a good time. “What’s so cool about the mountain face behind us?”

Haley activated a video feed on the smart screen in front of them. It showed the black-and-white night vision view of the camera on the back of the sub.

“Up top, there wasn’t much life on the edge of the mountain. But look there.”

Indeed, there were all sorts of creatures hiding in the crags in the rock on the mountainside. Many of them looked roughly analogous to crabs. They had hard bodies with long, pointed legs that clung to the rock. But there were other creatures, too. Odd, fish-like organisms with fins that could grab the edge and a strange, multi-armed being that seemed to be organizing the rocks into what looked like a totem. No doubt, a way to attract a mate or prey. Actually, Dane supposed it could have been anything.

“Have you noticed there are no zingers?” Haley asked.

“I had not,” Dane admitted as they plunged deeper.

“That must be because there’s not enough light down here for them. Same with the kelp that grows here. It’s so amazing that life on this world is as dependent on the sun as it is back home. I wonder if every alien we find in the galaxy will follow this same basic biology.”

“Oh yeah, exploring one world’s not enough for you?”

Haley giggled. “I’d be more than happy to spend the rest of my life exploring Varuna. We haven’t gotten to do much of that in a while. It would be so much more interesting to compare what we find here to other planets, though.”

“Maybe we’ll get to one day. I’m sure Alvarez would agree with you.”

They continued to drop deeper. Life forms on the mountainside petered out, then suddenly proliferated.

“Look, zingers!” Haley cried.

Dane supposed that was what they must be, though the zingers down here did not look like the ones that flourished up in the sunlight. Rather than brightly colored, branching structures in more shapes and colors than a military man like Dane could describe, these were puny, shrunken things. The night vision did not do a great job of rendering color, but it was still obvious the zingers down here were pale and stumpy.

“They must rely on the detritus that floats down here and nothing else,” Haley stated. “Alvarez will be excited to see this video.”

“That’s the spirit,” Dane urged.

He checked his sonar. Despite not wanting to alert the BDF to their presence, they still were using low-powered sonar to make sure they did not slam into any unexpected boulders or hidden cliff ridges. From what his computer was doing with the sonar data, it looked like they were approaching the bottom of the sea.

Not the actual bottom, of course. They had picked this area because they had found BDF here, and it was still shallow enough that the pressure of the ocean surrounding them wouldn’t crush them. Only about three hundred meters down. Much of the ocean was deeper than this. There was still so much of this world they had yet to explore. He looked forward to the day when they could do that instead of coming down here to hunt a mean fish for its brain slime.

The video screens showed the views from the night vision cameras, but the view through the heads-up display at the front of the sub was the unadulterated blackness of the deep. Though, like the night sky, it was not entirely devoid of motes of light. Here and there, things illuminated in the depths. Most of them were tiny, singular blips of light. A flash of green here, a yellowish orb there. Sometimes, larger formations appeared. Something like a jellyfish dissolved to nothing. It was likely a colony of bioluminescent microorganisms stirred up by a passing fish. Larger things lurked farther out. A line of pink. Something undulating that came in blues and greens.

“It looks like the geothermal disruptions have calmed down.” Haley pointed to a black seam on the ground that could only be seen on the video window in the heads-up display.

“I guess that’s why the BDF chilled out,” Dane proposed.

The last time he had been down here, the seafloor had been hot thanks to geothermal activity. Fortunately, it had cooled back down, but given the invasion of the Augmented, they had not spent much time figuring out what was going on with the mantle of this world. They had all been thankful when the BDF attacks had stopped. But they’d still placed rail guns around their perimeter to dissuade any of the more tenacious Big Damn Fish. Just in case.

Tracks lay among the whitish muck that covered most of the seafloor. Dane guessed there were more crablike creatures down here, though he had no doubt other, even more bizarre organisms called this place home. He found it comforting to think this entire world was going about its business while the barbarians on the surface argued and blasted each other to bits over what freedom really meant.

He supposed, in a way, these creatures had more freedom than he did. They were able to wander the bottom and explore to their hearts’ content. Though even they were limited. If they came to the surface, exercising their freedom to go where they wished, the more robust organisms in the faster-paced environment of the surface world would snatch and eat them.

Dane supposed that freedom really was a human concept. Animals seemed free compared to people, who had to work all week long and cook dinner and pay bills and all the other things that had encompassed life on Earth before he left. They had limits as well, though. The whale could not hang out on the beach any more than the flamingo could decide it wanted to eat a sandwich.

That didn’t mean that freedom wasn’t worth fighting for, however.

Dane only hoped that a BDF was hungry and feeling like it had the freedom to attack one of their subs.

“Should we flash our lights?” Lev asked over the radio. Dane had ordered as much radio silence as possible, but as chief of security, Lev was free to interpret exactly what that meant. It certainly didn’t seem to be too big of a risk. No BDF rose from the muck to accuse them of making too much radio chatter.

“Is everyone in position?” Dane asked.

He received five affirmative replies. They had all reached the same deep-water plane, where the ground leveled out before dropping off again. Dane’s sonar showed the subs all moving forward. It frustrated him that the others were slightly ahead, though he knew it shouldn’t. Lev had been adamant that Dane was to remain in the back and had given the rest of the team orders to make sure that happened.

“Then let’s flash some lights.”

Lev turned on a light that Dane knew wasn’t terribly bright in shallower water. However, down here, there was no sunlight. Only a few flashes of deep-sea creatures communicating about mating intentions, threatening each other, or posting the subaquatic version of memes. Down here, that light was bright as day. It lit up the seafloor, revealing undulating mounds of thick, grayish muck, a hardened seam of lava, and the ocean “snow” that was actually bits of dead creatures and waste drifting down from above. Stumpy, pale zingers poked from the muck here and there. They cast long shadows that clawed at the darkness in the distance.

There was no sign of a big damn fish.

Lev turned his lights back off.

“Well, that was bust,” Lev commented.

“Indeed,” Good added.

“What now?” Athanas asked.

“We could try playing a nessie call. We know the BDFs hunt and eat nessies,” Haley suggested to Dane.

He nodded. It was worth a shot.

“Lev, try playing a nessie call.”

“Will do. And for record, we all know it was Ms. Lopez’s idea, not yours.”

Dane didn’t correct him.

A moment later, the haunting call of a nessie sang out through the depths. Dane knew they were not hearing the full richness of the music. Humans could never hear all of it, and it was especially limited inside the sub. When Isla and Agus, their domesticated nessies, had sung while they were riding them, Dane felt it in the base of his chest. The clicks they released were like having someone snap beside his ears. In the sub, though, their music felt muffled. It was still beautiful, though.

Apparently, it also sounded delicious.

Seconds after the music echoed across the depths of Varuna, one of the mounds on the seafloor rose up, revealing itself as a BDF hungry for nessie!

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hindsight was a wonderfully annoying tool, and their recognition of the BDF’s hiding place was no exception to this. Now that it had risen from the seafloor muck, the growth of fronds on the tip of its snout clearly didn’t look much like the smaller, stumpier zingers dotting the seafloor. Likewise, the mound it had been masquerading as was too large and ringed with an oddly regular line of stones. It was also now clear many of the blips were actually the BDF’s long whiskers, each dotted with a tiny light to lure in the almost unimaginably large amount of food needed to support such a huge creature.

No one had noticed this, of course. That would defeat the fundamental truth of hindsight being annoying.

Instead of recognizing this masterful predator, they had given it time to size them up. Then they’d basically told it that despite their unusual shape, they were, in fact, a snack.

Lev was an experienced pilot, though. When the BDF swam at them, he did what every pilot worth the fuel in their craft was trained to do when a hostile came right at them. He fired a torpedo.

The BDF was scary. The BDF was big. But the BDF was not streamlined. It was covered in barbs and fins, whiskers and protuberances that helped it camouflage. Instead of the powerful, smooth swimming style the nessies favored, it seemed to force itself through the water, almost against the wishes of the liquid around it. Which meant while the torpedo fired true, the BDF wiggled too damn much. Without even meaning to, it twitched out of the way. The torpedo sailed off into the depths of the sea.

Despite being anything but streamlined, the BDF was undoubtedly fast. It closed the distance between itself and Lev in record time. It opened its jaws to reveal row upon row of jagged, messy teeth. Dane was vaguely aware that the shape of a tooth could be used to determine what sort of food animals ate. Sharp, serrated teeth were for tearing flesh. Pointed, curved teeth were for catching slippery fish, while broad, thick teeth were for crushing things with shells.

If that was true of the BDF’s biology, the damn thing must have evolved to eat every creature that called these oceans home. Its teeth looked like they could slice, dice, crush, and render any creature that got in its path.

And it was going to do each and every one of those things to Lev and his copilot. Preferably all at once.

Before it closed its jaws around the sub, Lev’s torpedo exploded. It was much too far away to do any damage to the BDF, but it did make a bright flash of light and send a shockwave through the water that shook the BDF’s whiskers and feelers even before it hit the subs and caused their sonar to go momentarily haywire.

It didn’t seem to hurt the ungodly leviathan, but it distracted it enough for Lev to steer out of the way.

“Two teams. Flank it and take it down!” Lev ordered.

Dane was more than happy to obey. He piloted his sub into position, feeling comfortable in his place in their formation, even with the danger of the BDF. Flying was what he was born to do. Sure, this was technically swimming, but Dane wouldn’t let a little thing like the difference between water and the void of space bum him out.

However, the BDF was calling into question his intention to move into formation with the rest of the subs. It had been temporarily distracted, but that did not mean it had forgotten the six roughly nessie-shaped objects that had so graciously announced themselves after coming down to its proverbial dining hall. Dane would never be able to say how it determined which one of the subs looked the most delicious. Certainly not by sound, because Haley wasn’t playing any nessie calls. Yet apparently, Dane’s sub simply looked yummy to the fish.

“Governor, evasive maneuvers!” Lev ordered, belaboring the obvious. Which was to say Dane was already pushing his sub as fast as he could to get away from the hungry fish.

“So much for not risking the governor’s life!” Good shouted over the comms.

“Plan is the same!” Lev announced. “Form two flanks. We attack from its four of clock and eight of clock so we don’t hit each other or Dane. Stay tight!”

The BDF was fast, but only in short bursts. While it nearly caught up to Dane’s sub when it came for him, after a few seconds’ burst of speed, it had to stop its dash and glide closer to the seafloor. Another torpedo shot over its massive head. But after it had rested for a few seconds, it pumped its stumpy tail and again chased after Dane. Fortunately, he had put some distance between him and the fish.

“It’s like all mouth!” Haley yelped. “It’s twenty percent teeth, twenty percent weird whiskers, forty percent gaping mouth, and the rest is its body.”

“I look forward to the pie chart, but for now, let’s focus on keeping clear of it!” Dane gritted through clenched teeth.

The engine of the sub was no match for the BDF. It furiously pumped its tail as it closed the gap between them. Dane only hoped it would tire before it caught up. He didn’t want to see Haley’s visual breakdown of how much of the fish was teeth and mouth, but as it approached and widened its maw, her estimation of sixty percent seemed frighteningly accurate.

But before it could close its jaws around their sub, a missile slammed into its flank and exploded.

Dane grinned as the fish stopped chasing them. Time to clean up!

Except it wasn’t. The fish was not dead but angry. It turned and snapped at the space where the offending fish should have been. Nothing was there, so its jaws snapped and chewed water.

Whoever had fired the missile fired another one. It exploded when it met the thrashing fins of the BDF. But again, the fish was not killed, nor did it even seem to be particularly injured. Dane saw no blood in the water, though admittedly, the low light made that difficult to see.

Though Dane soon would come to miss the dark water.

Because the BDF, now having been hit multiple times, decided it was time to change the game.

Dane could hardly see the thing since he was steering their sub away from it. Even with the black-and-white video feed, he realized their job was about to get a lot more difficult. The BDF wasn’t swimming away. Instead, it was burrowing back into the thick muck across the seabed. That wouldn’t have been an issue by itself. They could pin exactly where it tried to hide, and Dane saw on his heads-up display that Haley already had done that.

Yet the fish didn’t actually want to hide in the mud. Instead, it was using the action of burrowing to throw great, billowing clouds of murk into the water, obscuring an already pitch-black landscape with deep ocean silt.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Everyone, make sure you bring your map up on heads-up display. All these subs have geo-positioning location devices. Do not forget this!” Lev ordered over the radio.

Indeed, the upper corner of Dane’s viewscreen displayed a map. It already showed the mountain behind them and the seafloor undulating into the unknown distance. There was a dot that represented Dane in the middle and another five dots that represented the other subs. There was a marker for the BDF as well.

“Sir, I got a target lock on the last visible location of that BDF. Permission to fire?” Stark asked.

“Fire!” Lev ordered.

A smaller red dot left the one that represented Stark’s sub and hit the spot where the BDF had been. Dane felt the shockwave shake the sub and throw even more of the silt up into the water.

“Permission to approach and see if I’m a better fisherman than Robinson?” Stark asked.

“Permission granted.”

“Just because I missed with both torpedoes doesn’t mean I’m a bad fisherman! I mean, it doesn’t mean I’m a good fisherman, either, because fishermen don’t use torpedoes to fish!”

“Robinson, rise above this murk. Let us know if you spot any movement from up above,” Lev ordered.

It was a good tactic, something that would have been irrelevant in space. Dane was glad that Lev was thinking about their current environment. Though he didn’t like how the BDF surely knew this place better than any creature had ever known the coldness of space.

Dane watched on his screen as Stark’s dot moved over to where the BDF was supposed to be.

“I’m close. Looking for any sign of this fish…”

“Scanners are showing nothing,” Stark’s copilot reported, his slightly Scottish accent jarring compared to the Russian and American voices of Lev and Stark.

“I think we might have—crap!” Stark cursed and neglected to turn off his microphone when the fish made contact.

Dane didn’t think about what to do. He did not consider his options or carefully create a list of pros and cons that he could carefully weigh and deliberate upon.

He acted.

He slammed the accelerator of the sub. He was already pointed right where Stark and the BDF should be, so he didn’t need to make any course corrections.

“What are you doing?” Haley asked.

“Saving my friend.”

“Fair. That’s totally fair! But you do realize if your sub slams into his, we all die, right?”

“The thought has crossed my mind, yes,” Dane admitted as the silt churned all around them as they increased in speed. Then an idea occurred to him. An idea that was by most accounts terrible, dangerous, and wildly short-sighted.

“You trust me, right?” Dane asked as they closed the gap between him and the wrestling match currently taking place between a submarine and a fish.

“Absolutely,” Haley replied with the same calm grin on her face that Dane had on his.

“Then turn on the nessie music and hang on tight.”

If Haley did not like the suggestion, she did a very good job of hiding her opinion. With the same calm collectedness that Dane was endeavoring to exhibit, she activated the outside speakers and began playing nessie songs.

“The fish let go!” Stark shouted over the radio.

“Dane, turn off that music!” Lev shouted. “Turn it off now!”

“Let me finish this right quick,” Dane responded.

The BDF appeared from the murk, jaws open wide as it swam at Dane.

He fired his torpedo.

It raced toward the BDF’s mouth, which snapped shut at exactly the wrong moment. The torpedo exploded in front of the BDF’s face. Whiskers were torn off, teeth were knocked out, and one of its tiny black eyes was punctured, but the fish survived. And somehow, it was even angrier than before.

It did not turn away from them but kept swimming. Haley realized why before Dane did and turned off the nessie music. But it was too late.

The BDF opened its jaws and attempted to eat Dane and Haley.

The submarine groaned as teeth pushed into the pressurized metal. Dane tried to reverse, but the teeth held fast.

“What the hell is going on in there?” Lev demanded. “Dane, your GPS shows you are in almost the same position as the fish!”

“I would say you can scrap the ‘almost’ in that statement,” Dane countered. “How’s Stark?”

“We’re leaking pretty bad,” Stark replied.

“Get to the surface while you still have buoyancy,” Lev ordered.

“But—”

“Do as your commander says,” Dane insisted, well aware that he was telling one of the people who could help get him out of this fish’s mouth to leave.

“I got eyes on Dane,” Athanas pronounced. “Looks like the BDF took open-mouth kissing to a whole new level.”

“Is it too late to rescind my statement of trust?” Haley asked. She was joking, but she had a point. The BDF squeezed its jaws, and the sub groaned even louder. A patch of ceiling bent inward. It didn’t take a structural engineer to know that was a bad sign.

“How far are we into this thing’s gullet?” Dane asked. Haley’s fingers flew over the controls, and she showed him all the external cameras.

The back of the sub jutted from the BDF’s mouth while the front half was stuck inside. Dane got the sense this was not a problem for the BDF. It seemed the sort of creature that would be more than happy to attack prey larger than itself, let it bleed from its wounds, then eat it over time.

“What about torpedoes?” Dane asked.

Haley brought up the appropriate camera. “One torpedo is lined up with a direct shot down the bastard’s throat,” Haley reported. “Unfortunately, it’s the torpedo we already fired.”

“The other one?”

“Looks like it would hit its teeth and explode. Given the close proximity, I think that would do more damage to the sub than the fish.”

“Dane, you have tried to reverse out of there?” Lev asked.

“I have indeed.”

“What about shooting a torpedo down its throat?” Joseph asked. Dane was glad at least one of the people on the security team was willing to consider methods that might not exactly be the safest but focused on completing the mission.

“We can’t. We only have the one left, and it’s pointed the wrong way,” Haley replied.

“Then sit tight, and we’ll try to distract it,” Lev advised.

A bright flash of light tried to break through the clouds of silt kicked up by the BDF. The fish ignored it. Then a series of strobes followed, but they had the same effect. Next, Lev tried nessie calls. Those had an effect, but not the one that any of them wanted.

The BDF squeezed tighter as if the sound of the snack it so dearly wanted had aroused its appetite. As it squeezed, another panel on the ceiling bent in, and Dane noticed a rivulet of water dripping down the side of the sub.

“We have a leak,” he announced.

“That’s a bad sign.” Haley tightly gripped the arms of her seat. “Once this thing loses pressure…well, you ever see a soda can get crushed underneath a boot?”

“Believe me, that’s the last thing I want.”

“Dane, we’re looking for ideas,” Lev admitted. “We can shoot some of the harpoons with inflation devices into it.”

“Let’s not. Not yet. It might puncture them, and that could cost us the mission.”

“I think I have a shot,” Athanas advised.

“No, Dane’s right. We can’t try a harpoon. They’re designed to help with its dead body, not the full force of the creature.”

“No, I mean, I have a shot with the torpedo,” Athanas clarified. “The silt is starting to drop down. I think I can hit it right in the base of the jaw, by where its gills should be if it was a normal fish.”

“That could destroy Dane’s sub.”

“This fish is going to destroy our sub. I say go for it,” Haley declared.

“You heard the lady. Shoot this Big Damn Fish in the jaw.”

The sub rattled as the BDF tried to shake it like a dog with a toy. That was enough to push any doubts from Lev’s mind. “Shoot the torpedo!” he ordered over the radio.

Dane tried to keep his hands steady on the controls as the BDF shook the sub back and forth. He knew that when the torpedo struck, he would have precious little time. It could release him or bite down harder, or the torpedo itself could undo the remaining structural integrity of the sub. If either of the second two options happened, they were done. So Dane prepared himself for the first.

They felt the explosion of the torpedo in their bones. It sent the BDF into spasms. Its teeth shook the sub with the sound of grinding metal. Yet the responsive controls in Dane’s hands told him they were free.

“Back up!” Haley shouted.

Dane was not about to waste his chance. They’d already spent too many torpedoes on this stupid fish. He only wanted to use one more.

So instead of reversing his engines, he tilted the nose of the sub toward the fish’s throat. Then he fired his last remaining torpedo.

CHAPTER NINE

Dane threw the sub into reverse the second his fingers hit the launch button.

The torpedo shot away from them. Then, in a stroke of luck, it went directly down the BDF’s throat. There was a moment of terrifying silence before the back wall of the BDFs mouth burst, clouding the water with bits of meat and blood.

Dane’s reverse reflexes were not enough to escape the blast of the shockwave. The sub rocked and shuddered as bits of bone and meat pelted it.

“We got another leak!” Haley shouted as a rivet burst loose and a high-pressure stream of water shot into the sub. It took no time for the sub deck to flood.

“Dane! Dane, is the BDF dead?”

“Oh, it’s dead! We’re taking on water, though. Someone needs to tag it before it drops into this cloud.”

Dane tried to peg where the remains of the BDF were. Now that its gut had burst open, it was quickly sinking into the murk. He found it hard to concentrate with water splashing around his boots, too. He didn’t mind getting wet, but at this depth, it was only a matter of time before the sub imploded.

“Get to the surface!” Lev ordered.

“I will. Got to do one thing first.” Dane fired a harpoon into the cloud of gore. He wouldn’t have been able to see it at all if not for the blinking green LED on it. The LED raced away from him before stopping in place. It must have hit something! Dane activated the buoy connected to the harpoon. A small explosion triggered it and released enough gas to fill it up. What had been an invisibly thin harpoon with a tiny blinking LED became a bright yellow buoy, big as a man.

That would have to be enough. Dane hit the controls and rose from the depths, following the orders Lev was still yelling at him over the radio.

“I got one of the leaks plugged,” Haley divulged. “The big one, I guess.”

Dane glanced back and saw she had fastened one of the metal hull patches over where the water had been spraying in. She had activated the chemical glue, and it was releasing steam and a foul smell as it hardened.

Dane knew that the patch should be strong enough to hold the water back. The issue was still going to be the pressure squishing them. And that could only be solved by rising through the water and lessening the pressure on the sub.

Haley plopped down next to Dane, looking queasy.

“You all right?” he asked as she clutched her belly.

“We just turned a fish inside out with a torpedo that nearly destroyed our sub, and you’re asking if I’m all right?”

“Normally, that kind of thing doesn’t get to you.”

“I don’t think you have any idea what normal really means.”

“Fair enough.”

They were still going in reverse, so although they were ascending, Dane was able to watch the mission below. Not that there was anything to see. The silt that the BDF had kicked up was still hanging in the water. The blood and guts of the BDF had not made that water any clearer. Fortunately, Dane’s harpoon and buoy had been enough for the others to target the BDF. Dane saw not one but four of the buoys struggling to float in the murk.

Then the BDF started to rise, and Dane saw why. Three of the subs had shot it with harpoons, but rather than using the buoys, Lev had ordered them to run cables from themselves to the BDF. With them all hauling it and the buoyancy of the buoys, the carcass of the BDF slowly rose through the water.

Dane breathed a sigh of relief and kept ascending through the water until the pressure alarms stopped blaring, and Haley started breathing normally again.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“We’re shallow enough that we won’t necessarily die if we spring another leak, so yeah. I’d say I’m doing better than I was down there, yes,” Haley rejoined.

“Good. Because I want to get a look at this fish before we go any higher.”

As the subs and the BDF rose from the depths, the extent of the damage to the fish became visible.

It was amazing any of it had survived and, at the same time, remarkable it had suffered as little damage as it had. Especially considering how many torpedoes had been fired at it.

It was obviously upside-down. Its paler belly faced the surface, and a single buoy stuck out of the hole in its belly Dane’s torpedo had created. The other harpoons had all stabbed into other parts of its exposed belly. It seemed to be the least heavily armored part of the fish. It made sense that the BDF buried itself in the silt at the bottom of the sea.

In the light, it was also easier to see Haley’s estimation of the creature being all mouth was actually fairly accurate. It looked like it was mostly head. Like a huge mouth covered with whiskers, fins, and tails as an afterthought. It reminded Dane of a scorpion fish from Earth if the proportions of a scorpion fish were exaggerated as much as possible.

Despite the damage that the torpedo had done to its guts, its head still appeared intact. It had to have some serious bone density to protect its head from that explosion, but then again, maybe that made sense if it lived in the deep. It was a lucky thing since Thorson said the enzyme they needed was in its brain.

“I know we had to do it to help Dr. Alvarez so he can free the brains of like everyone, but it still feels kind of messed up to kill an animal like that only to harvest its brain, you know?” Haley mused.

“I guess. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do that to the nessies. They’re too smart. Except this is the survival of the human race we’re talking about, or at least the survival of free will. I think this sacrifice makes sense.”

Haley nodded, though she looked unsure. “How do we know these things aren’t smart, though? We haven’t studied them. Not really.”

“Kind of hard to study creatures that try to eat us.”

Haley chuckled. “True, but we managed to tame the nessies.”

“You managed to tame the nessies. Somehow, I can’t see you riding that thing considering all the spines and thorns sticking from it.”

“Not to mention that it lives in the depths. I guess I wonder about it. It’s so unfair that we haven’t even gotten to explore this world yet. We know from our satellites there are other underwater mountain ranges, but we haven’t been able to so much as look for a place to make a second colony.”

“Kind of hard to think about defending two bases when we can barely keep our own functioning.”

“I know. You’re right. I just…I don’t know.”

“You’re sure you’re feeling all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Feeling moody, and I—oh my God, what is that?”

A huge form rose from the depths. Even after battling one in the deep, it took Dane a moment or two to process that it was another of the BDFs surfacing. It looked like the world’s largest, fastest sea urchin until it opened its mouth. Then Dane’s brain recognized the familiar monster of the deep.

“Lev—”

“We see it. Whichever sub it picks, get ready to fire on it!”

But the BDF was not interested in the subs. Instead of chasing them, it chomped onto the dangling tail of the BDF. It was a stark contrast to the nessies, who mourned their dead. This BDF either didn’t recognize the body as its own species or didn’t care. All it wanted was a meal. Dane made a note to study the damn fish’s teeth. They cut right through the scales that torpedoes had had so much difficulty with.

The Big Damn Fish was too damn strong. It had not completely ripped through the flesh of the one they had killed, so it was trying to drag it back into the depths. And it was working. Despite the three subs and a bunch of buoys attached to the carcass, the BDF’s hunger drove it to go all-out on bringing its meal into the deep.

“I got a shot,” Athanas claimed.

“Take the shot! Take it!” Lev shouted.

A torpedo shot out and slammed into the face of the BDF. It didn’t kill it any more than the other ones had the other BDFs. But it did stun it and make it lose its grip on the carcass.

“Prepare to fire another one!” Lev ordered.

The BDF did not seem to like this battle in the light, but it didn’t want to let its meal go, either. So it swam forward and chomped onto the tail again. This time, its teeth ripped all the way through the scales, flesh, and bones of the carcass, and it tore off a huge chunk. More than happy with the enormous, macabre slab of sushi, the BDF retreated to the depths, leaving a trail of blood in the water.

“Please don’t tell me we need to go back down there,” Joseph pleaded.

“No. The enzyme is supposed to be in its brain. We should have enough to get it back to base,” Dane replied. If we make it there at all.

CHAPTER TEN

Liam, Casper, Geoff, and Chris left their meeting room and made for the dome where the cryopods were being held. At first, it seemed normal enough. Four guys walking through the halls together. Liam started to worry when they paused before they were spotted by a camera. “Just a minute. Just a minute… Now!” Casper hurried forward beneath the camera and past it. They avoided the next two cameras the same way, though when they came to a hallway that had no way to get through without being seen, Casper was ready for that too. He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, tightened the beam, then shined it in the camera’s electric eye.

“Move, move!” Casper shouted. They ran past the camera while Casper kept the beam trained on it. Then he followed, more cautiously, keeping the beam of light on the camera the entire time. “That should mess up its white balance. Make us look like nothing but shadows.”

When they reached the airlock that led to the transparent hall that led out to the dome, Liam felt his heart start to pound in his chest.

“If we go through that tube, anyone who’s looking will see us,” Liam pointed out.

“That’s a good point,” Chris confirmed. “Liam, you stand guard.”

“Um…”

“The diving teams out there should be fine,” Casper contended. “But don’t let anyone come through this door.”

“Are you sure that we should—”

“Of course I’m sure! Winters had been kept there for no good reason. I’m trying to help my friend.”

If that was true, Liam didn’t see why they had to wait for security to be out of their base. It seemed like the sort of reasoning Governor Dane would listen to. “I’m sure Dane would let him out,” Liam protested.

“He could have, but he did not,” Casper stated. “He is a military man. We Russians know his legend from the war. There is no American that killed more of our pilots than George Dane. He doesn’t want Winters out because Winters will tell him what we’re all thinking. That we cannot beat the Augmented in a war. We need to find a way to ally with them, or we are going to be obliterated.”

“But—”

“You have to admit, things are even worse here than Alpha Central,” Geoff imparted. “Every minute of everyone’s day is spent trying to prepare for this war. We can’t sacrifice people’s freedom at the expense of the governor beating his drum.”

“We’re going to talk to him. It’s not like we can hide him for any amount of time. We’re going to ask forgiveness, not permission,” Casper stated.

“All right…I guess that makes sense,” Liam expressed.

The other three nodded, then went through the airlock.

It cycled shut behind them as they walked out through the tube that led to the dome where all the cryotubes were. Liam felt his anxiety start to grow. He couldn’t see where they were going or what they were doing. He knew what they said they were doing, but he couldn’t help but feel foolish for being a lookout when he couldn’t even see what they were doing.

Then an idea occurred to him. He felt foolish that he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He cycled the airlock open, then stepped into the room between the two doors. Then, after the door to the base closed and the other one opened, he placed the piece of metal shrapnel in the door jamb, so the door couldn’t close. The sensors on the airlock were smart enough to know not to close the door and damage it but not smart enough to do anything about it.

Liam headed through the tunnel toward the cryotube. No one could follow him now, not with the shrapnel keeping the airlock open. There was a danger that if this hallway broke, the chamber would be flooded. Homebase itself would be fine, though, since the inner door was intact. After they were done here, Liam could simply remove the piece of metal, and they could all go back into the base.

Plus, this way, he could see what the other three were really doing.

Though maybe it would have been better if he’d never found out.

“What are you doing here?” Dr. Thorson’s voice echoed through the tunnel.

“Step aside,” Chris intoned, his voice raised and threatening.

“Not until you tell me what—”

There was an extremely loud bang, and Liam’s hurried walk transformed into a sprint. He reached the end of the hall and looked into the room. Geoff was standing over Thorson, holding a metal pan. The sort they used for holding sterile instruments when doing surgeries. Thorson was on the ground, not moving. Casper crouched by him, looking as distraught as Liam felt. He put his hand to his neck to check for his pulse. Then he sighed a breath of relief.

“I thought you had—”

“Because of the sound?” Geoff asked. “It was only the metal pan. Look, it even bent.”

“He’s alive, though?” Liam asked.

“What are you doing here?” Chris asked. “You were supposed to stand guard!”

“I heard that noise and thought there was trouble,” Liam stated, not sure why he lied.

“He’s fine.” Geoff was grinning. He looked giddy about what he had done. “It’s like wrestling. The pan made it sound louder than it really was. He’s fine.”

Casper looked much less certain than Geoff did, but he did nod. “He is breathing, and his pulse is regular. I think he will need ice, but…” he shrugged.

“He shouldn’t have been here,” Chris added. “It’s his own fault.” He was already shuffling through the concentric rings of cryotubes, looking for Winters.

“Liam, the door,” Geoff snapped.

Liam nodded and hastened to obey. He didn’t know what else to do. Geoff had struck the doctor hard in the head. What would he do to Liam if he tried to stop them? Did he want to stop them? He wondered this as he went to the door and flicked his attention between looking down the tunnel at people he knew could not get past the airlock and the three men in the room they had no business being in.

He hadn’t been sure about any of this, but he had not been able to think of a solid reason why he should not wake up Winters. He had been held without a trial, and his crimes seemed minuscule compared to what the Augmented had done. Liam had been willing to go along with it, but now? Now that they’d hurt a doctor?

Sure, Thorson wasn’t the nicest person in the base. He was gruff and didn’t have the best bedside manner. That didn’t mean he wasn’t great at his job or that he deserved to be assaulted simply for being in his place of work.

Why did these three want Winters out so badly? Sometimes the way Geoff talked made Liam wonder what he thought about the Augmented. Maybe he wished he’d stayed back on Alpha Central so he wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked. What about Casper? He seemed terrified of the Augmented. Was this about avoiding a conflict with them?

Liam could understand the desire to avoid the conflict. He had conspired to do that on Alpha Central. However, he’d learned that the Augmented wanted to win at any cost. They had killed tens of thousands of people in the Alpha Centauri system on the battle station above the Desert alone. They couldn’t be reasoned with.

Did these three really think Winters could change that?

Liam knew now that he was foolish for trusting the Augmented. He regretted that decision every day of his life. He had liked hanging out with these guys because they had praised him for fighting back, but now it felt like he was on the wrong side. He thought he could trust them, but now he was wondering if that feeling had been manufactured by them to make him feel like he could trust them.

In retrospect, that was what the Augmented had done. They manipulated him into thinking he could trust them, only to take advantage of that trust.

He looked back through the hall but saw no movement besides a diver looking through the damaged subs. He turned back to the room and watched all three men standing around a cryotube. Casper finished entering a command, and the lid of the tube hissed and slowly opened. Liam wasn’t sure how the cryotubes worked exactly, but he didn’t think they could reverse it now that they had opened it up.

Was Liam an idiot for trusting them? Should he have told his father about them, like he should have told his father about the Augmented? But the thing was that he had tried to tell his dad about the Augmented, back on Alpha Central. He had tried to broach the subject multiple times, about how he had friends with unusual perspectives, about how maybe the Augmented were not who his father had thought them to be.

He had been wrong about the Augmented, he knew that, but his dad’s reactions had always been frustrating. He either dismissed Liam or tried to find out too much too fast so he could use the information in Parliament. Liam knew his father’s role had been important, but he couldn’t help feeling like his father had always been trying to manipulate him. That he was always a member of Parliament first and a father second.

Liam hated to admit it, but he didn’t really trust his dad. He knew he should, but he didn’t.

When he thought about trust, the first person that came to mind was George Dane.

When Liam had been on Alpha Central, Dane had risked his own life to save him and his friends. They hadn’t deserved that. They deserved the same fate they brought to their planet. Yet though Dane had been aware they were conspiring, or at least attempting to conspire with the Augmented, he had still tried to save them.

If Liam trusted anyone, it was George Dane.

Chris reached into the cryotube and extended a forearm for Winters. Even from across the room, Liam could tell Winters was groggy and didn’t have much of an idea of what was happening. He wasn’t a threat. Not immediately. Yet Dane had wanted him to stay in the cryotube.

Liam helping these three men wake him up had gone against the wishes of the man he’d realized he trusted most of all. That…that wasn’t right. That wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be. He was ashamed he had let it go this far, but surely he could do something about it now?

He didn’t really know what, but he knew who did.

While the other three conspirators were talking to Winters, Liam pulled out his tablet and wrote a text message for Dane, alerting him to what was going on. He only hoped it wasn’t too late to help.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dane had been hoping that their return to base would look something like a triumph. He didn’t quite pull it off. The BDF was heavier than expected, so even with three subs towing its carcass along, the going was slow. When his tablet dinged with an incoming message, he was more than tempted to answer, especially since he and Haley were not actually doing any of the towing. Their sub had too many leaks and suffered too much damage to risk adding more extra-structural stress. Haley kept underscoring that they were alive at all by mumbling “miracle” under her breath.

“What was that?” Haley asked when his tablet dinged. She was about as bored as him. Dane would never cease to be amazed at how quickly the human condition could adjust. Half an hour ago, they had been battling a fish for their lives. After it took the chunk of its brother back to the depths and they had reached shallower water, it was easy to fall into a state of relaxation. Even boredom. Dane knew part of that was natural. They had burned through all their adrenaline, and the body needed to recharge. Still, it was quite the jump from heart-pounding fight for your life to suddenly being too bored to check your texts.

“Keep an eye on the sonar, and I’ll check.” Dane flicked on the autopilot. Truthfully, he thought the danger had mostly passed. The BDFs preferred to stay in the depths, and they were back in the relatively shallow valleys where they lived. Dane could even see the first of the underwater defensive embankments ahead.

Haley nodded, made the map of what the sonar was showing larger, and Dane pulled out his tablet.

“Oh, jeez, it’s Liam.”

“Liam Bell?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a problem with him?” Haley asked.

Dane raised an eyebrow. “You mean do I have a problem besides that he basically sold out his entire solar system?”

“Yet you saved his life, or so the story goes,” Haley noted.

“Don’t remind me,” Dane muttered, though he almost immediately regretted saying it. “I didn’t mean that. Kids do dumb things. It’s part of being a kid. And I can’t imagine him doing any worse than he already has. I saved his life because… I don’t know. It was the right thing to do at the moment. I know he wants to make amends, and he did provide us with some good intelligence about how they could have gotten their nanites into the water system.”

“So, are you going to look at his text or not?”

“Opening it now,” Dane replied. He was immediately glad that he did.

“Are you going to tell me what it says or what?” Haley asked.

“Yeah, I… Here, look at this and tell me if it could be a prank. Please tell me this is a prank.”

Haley took the tablet while Dane turned the autopilot back off and took the controls of the sub.

“Governor Dane. Some guys are waking up Eric Winters. They think he might be useful and don’t want to have a war with the Augmented. They hurt Dr. Thorson.”

“Does that sound like a prank to you?” Dane asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Why would he even know who Winters is? That was way before his time.”

“I was thinking the exact same thing.” Dane turned on his radio. “Lev, we got a problem.”

“If it’s a third BDF, I say we let it eat us,” Lev joked.

“No fish. You remember Eric Winters?”

“He formed alliance with Sophia when we Russians first arrived, no? Had a bomb in his room. Claimed innocence like most Americans try to do. He made very good coffee.”

“That’s the one. Someone’s waking him up.”

“Who? Why?”

“Liam Bell is part of it, but I don’t think it’s his idea. But whoever’s in charge, I want to get back to base as soon as we can.”

“I would not like to be locked out of our own base, either!” Lev exclaimed. “I will come with you.”

Dane didn’t bother to argue. Lev was on the only still-functional sub not towing the BDF body back to the base.

“All subs, Dane and I are headed back to base. Maintain course and stay alert. If you are attacked, drop the carcass in the shallows and fight back. We’ll be able to recover it more easily now that we’re not in the deep.”

Dane did not want it to come to that, but he didn’t argue over the radio with Lev. Him and Lev heading back earlier shouldn’t affect the success of their mission. The consequences of Winters having the run of the base without them there to stop him could be huge. He might not have the most current access codes, but Winters was smart and competent. If he reached the control room, he could likely barricade himself in there long enough to make any changes he wished.

“Strap in,” Dane told Haley.

She had barely settled back in and buckled up before Dane hit the accelerator, and they surged through the water.

He couldn’t risk losing the base. Not after all the risks they took to obtain it. Carlos’ life depended on their success.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Despite Dane pushing the sub as fast as it could go, it would still take them ten agonizing minutes to get back to the base. It was not the first time he lamented traveling by underwater sub. In space, you could keep going faster. Acceleration was the killer, not speed. Down here, he could only push the sub so fast. Especially since it was damaged. Dane regretted not taking one of the Augmented vessels that could travel above or beneath the water, though those would not have been able to fly with the damage Dane’s sub had suffered any more than their current ride could.

He didn’t want to foist Winters off on anyone else, but he had no choice. He called ahead to the base to alert the security team. “The priority is to find Dr. Thorson and get him medical help. I think he’s in the dome with all the cryotubes, but I’m not sure.”

“Yes sir,” was the reply, though really it was the sound of bootsteps racing across the hall before the radio cut out that let Dane breathe.

“What’s the plan? Too soon to ask if we have a plan?” Haley asked.

“We get there as fast as we can, then kick these idiots’ asses before Winters fully wakes up and decides that he doesn’t like how we’re doing things.”

“Do you really think Winters will still be that adamant against us cooperating with the Russians? They’re the last people without computer chips in their brains in the entire galaxy. Things have changed.”

“You’re right, but Winters doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know about the warp drives, or the Augmented, or the colonies at Alpha Centauri.”

“If you can talk to him, what are you going to say?” Haley asked.

Dane chuckled ruefully. “You know, my to-do list today was pretty full. I wanted to harvest the brain juices of a cannibalistic fish so I could prevent the cure a scientist invented from destroying his own brain as it worked. I hadn’t exactly thought about the speech I’d make to the guy who tried to blow us all up.”

“So you’re in the brainstorming stage.”

Dane snorted a laugh. “I’ll figure it out.”

When they were five minutes out, Haley called the engineers and told a group of them to be ready to meet them in the moon pool room. When they arrived, they didn’t need to go through any of the normal processes of locking down their sub or safety checks. Instead, Dane, Haley, Lev, and the trainee from Alpha Central that had been in Lev’s sub clambered out. They grabbed weapons from a locker kept in the moon pool room and pounded down the stairs, making for the hallway that led to the inflatable dome where the cryotubes were.

The airlock took longer than usual to unlock. A message appeared complaining that it needed to be cleaned and had been malfunctioning previously. Still, open it did. They raced through the transparent hallway. Dane had his gun in hand. He couldn’t help it. However, he kept it low. He didn’t want this to escalate into a full-scale confrontation.

Yet when they reached the room, it was too late. The conspirators were gone. Instead, there were a pair of security guards checking between the cryotubes, trying and failing to find some clue toward the whereabouts of the person in the single open pod. A pair of medtechs stood along one of the walls, working on something Dane couldn’t see.

Dane didn’t need to read the display on the cryotube to know it was Winters’ tube. He had been talking about it with Thorson earlier. He cursed under his breath. He knew it had been wishful thinking to hope he found Winters before the former XO got out of this room. Funny thing about hope, though. It was hard to ignore.

“He’s gone, but at least we know he’s in the base somewhere,” Lev assured. “In Russia, escapees only had to make it to Siberia before they were gone forever. There is not so far to run here.”

Dane knew that Lev was technically correct, but that didn’t calm his nerves. In fact, knowing that Winters was hiding somewhere inside this base only twisted his stomach in knots. He could be doing anything, anywhere. If he got a hold of the security cameras… but that had to wait. Even Winters wasn’t as important as their current mission.

“Where’s Thorson?” Dane asked one of the guards.

“He’s over there, sir.”

Dane had noticed two med techs when he came in but had assumed they were checking one of the tubes. Now that he approached, he saw that they were standing on either side of Dr. Thorson, who had a white bandage wrapped around his head. He looked odd that now that Dane could not see his close-cropped, spiky blond hair.

“How is he?”

“He has a concussion, but he’ll be all right. We used some of the Centauri medical nanites on him. They diagnosed some bleeding in the brain, but we got here soon enough.”

Thank Liam for that, Dane thought ruefully.

“What happened?”

One of the med techs held up a metal tray bent in the middle. “We’re pretty sure someone hit him in the head with this.”

“That gave him a concussion?”

The med tech nodded. “And caused some internal hemorrhaging. If he hadn’t got the medical nanites into him…he might not have gotten back up.”

He’s not up now, Dane wanted to snap, but he held his tongue. It wouldn’t be useful for him to snap at any of these people. They had saved Thorson’s life and were only doing their jobs. “You’re sure he’s going to be okay?”

“As sure as we can be at this point,” one of the med techs affirmed.

“From a pan?”

“Whoever hit him, really hit him,” the other med tech explained.

“Goddamn it,” Dane cursed. “This is the last thing we need with everything else going on.”

“You don’t think Winters is going to turn out to be cooperative?” Haley asked.

“At this point, I’m not that concerned about Winters. It’s the people who thought this was the way to get him out. If they were willing to hurt our head doctor, there’s no saying what they could do. Winters is smart, but waking up out of those cryotubes takes its toll on anyone. There’s no saying what these people want.”

“Whatever they are after, this is at least somewhat premeditated,” Lev pointed out.

“How do you mean?” Dane asked.

“I am looking through the cameras, and I found this.” Lev showed him what appeared to be a blob of light.

“I’m going to need some context here, Lev.”

“Ah, sure. This is a camera from the hall leading to the airlock to the domed room. Someone understood the system enough to trick out the sensor. You can see them here.” Lev froze the frames and zoomed in on what was at least a passably human shape.

“Can you tighten that up for me?”

“It’ll take time, but yes, I can try to figure it out.”

“What about the other cameras?”

“They avoided them.”

“That’s possible?” Dane snapped.

Lev shrugged. “It is possible a few days after an invasion. Many of the cameras were damaged when the Augmented attacked. I would bet whoever came to free Winters made note of which ones.”

“Free Winters?” Dane growled.

Lev shrugged again and grinned. “He was in cryo cage. Now he is not. No hard feelings. In Russia, we hold people for much less than trying to blow up a building.”

“So we have no idea who did this?”

“I thought you said Liam was part of it,” Haley declared.

Dane nodded. “I did. But I don’t think he’s in too deep. He did pass along a warning.”

“But he should know who is, right?” Lev asked.

Dane clenched his jaw but nodded again. “He should. We need to find him. But I don’t want this to turn into a witch hunt for him. We wouldn’t have even known about any of this if not for him coming forward. If we start running through the base looking for him, he might freak out and try to hide.”

“Like cockroach,” Lev remarked.

“He’s only a kid,” Dane professed.

“Cockroaches have children too.”

“Well, his dad is the other issue. I would prefer not to freak out Ron Bell until we know what Liam has actually been up to. Can you see if you can find him on the cameras?”

“Of course.” Lev sank his attention into his tablet, scrolling through various camera feeds while Dane turned his attention back to the room around them.

Why free Winters now? Dane could not help but think that it had something to do with the Augmented. Did these unknown conspirators think that Dane was fighting this war the wrong way? Did they want him to be more aggressive? Dane didn’t see how that was even possible.

They were working as hard as they could around the clock to repair their base and return it to something like defensible shape. They were trying to make breakthroughs on the nanites. They had fought Varuna’s worst-known predator simply to try to get their scientist out of the cryo so he could help them with their mission! Surely whoever these conspirators were, they didn’t think Dane was being too soft.

Which meant they had to think he was being too hard. Suddenly, Liam’s involvement made sense. He had allied himself with the sleeper cell on Alpha Central because he had not liked the way his planet’s government had been doing everything they possibly could to get ready for war. Unlike his father, Liam had seen the Augmented as potential allies. He had heard of their world and knew aspects of it were better than the entire Alpha Centauri system. Especially to a young kid who had only ever known a war prep lifestyle.

Could these hidden conspirators have recruited Liam because they knew he was sympathetic to the Augmented cause? Dane thought the kid had turned over a new leaf, but surely he would try to present himself that way to the governor of the colony and a war hero? Dane remembered being a teenager. That desire to fit in with everyone, to impress everybody. It could be a terrible place to be, especially if you fell in with the wrong people.

Besides, would it be that hard to convince someone that the situation on Varuna was bleak? They had barely held off the Augmented when they invaded. They hadn’t even finished cleaning up the wreckage of that battle. How was anyone supposed to believe they could fight back?

The Augmented had all fallen unconscious, but even Dane knew that was not a weapon they could take to Earth. They could not willingly infect ten billion people with a “cure” that would kill them!

Could the conspirators have recruited Liam to persuade Winters the Augmented could not be trifled with? Would they think Liam had the persuasive abilities to convince the old XO to fight against Dane?

He thought it was imminently likely.

“We need to find Liam as soon as possible,” Dane insisted.

“I don’t think that will be a problem, sir,” Lev told him.

“Why not? You know where he is?”

Lev gestured at the door to the dome.

Liam Bell stepped through the airlock and waved.

“I thought you might be looking for me?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Despite trusting everyone in the room with him, Dane felt like he needed to get Liam out of there for two reasons. The first was simple human nature. People talked about the things that they saw. If they saw him talking to Liam, they might talk about that to others. At that point, there would be no controlling the narrative. The second reason was based on the first, really. Dane wasn’t sure he would be able to keep his voice at a reasonable level while he talked to the kid. He didn’t want to yell at Liam for waking up one of the only men who had actively worked to sabotage the colony on Varuna, but he didn’t know if he could resist.

“Walk with me, Liam.” Dane tried to modulate his tone of voice by clenching his teeth, which was almost assuredly the wrong move but the best that Dane could manage.

“Yes, sir.” Enough gravity edged Liam’s voice to make Dane want to bite his head off slightly less.

Dane led the way up to the control room. People were undoubtedly working there at the moment, but they would give Dane the room if he ordered it. He was careful not to talk to Liam as they walked. Dane used exercise generally and running specifically to help him relieve stress. Moving through the halls of Homebase and talking to the kid might bring out those reduce-stress urges. Which right now would equate to opening an airlock and tossing Liam through it.

That wouldn’t do.

Dane wasn’t about to murder some kid. Even he was prone to making the sort of mistakes that endangered entire populations. He wanted to trust Liam, or at least trust his intentions. The kid had proven he could not be entirely trusted. He was still too young, too impressionable. Yet maybe Dane could use him to help all the same.

Before he could lay any plans or choose a path forward, he needed to get a measure of the kid. Dane didn’t know how else to do that besides sit him down and talk to him.

After a few minutes of walking up the stairs of Homebase, they reached the control room.

Liam looked around and swallowed hard. He had not seen Dane send a message to the people working, so he must have expected them to be at their workstations. Instead, the room was empty. That only served to accentuate the huge windows that lined the walls and ceiling of this room built inside the top of the volcano.

Normally, Varuna’s version of fish and squid swam by outside these windows, idly going about their lives, but not today. Today, still only a few days after the invasion of the Augmented, all that life was gone. The colonies of coral-like zingers they called home were gone. Submarines intent on invading had torn away the kelp forests. Instead of life outside those windows, there was only death. Wreckage could be seen in every direction. The divers picking through it for useful pieces looked like undersea grave robbers.

None of this went unnoticed by the young Liam Bell.

“Take a seat.” Dane gestured to a chair directly across from the worst of the submarine wreckage. If Liam tried to avoid eye contact, he’d be confronted with that.

“Yes, sir.” Liam complied.

Dane needed to sit close to Liam to get as good a read on him as he could. While they talked, he needed to watch his eyes, the muscles in his face, his hands, and every other piece of body language to make sure that Liam was being honest.

He couldn’t sit down yet, though. Instead, he paced around the large round table in the middle of the room. He focused on his breathing and tried to cool his temper. Liam had made mistakes, some of them catastrophically large, but he had contacted Dane about Winters. That had to mean that he was trying to change, right? And if he was trying, then Dane could use his help to find Winters and the other conspirators and put a stop to whatever they had in mind.

Dane knew all this, yet his heart pounded behind his eyes. The muscles in his arms tensed. He wouldn’t lose control like some unevolved ape, but he did suspect Liam watching him struggle to control himself might help his case. He wanted Liam to want to be on his side. At the same time, he needed him to be at least a little afraid of the consequences of attempting to lie or betray him again.

He paced slowly, took deep breaths, and didn’t try too hard to make the muscles in his arms and neck stop twitching. When he finally made it around the table and sat next to Liam, the kid was sweating. Good, Dane thought. Now he needed to demonstrate that he was not a silverback gorilla intent on brutalizing a younger male but instead, an empathetic older human who could use the younger human’s help.

“I guess my first question…” Dane paused to breathe in for four counts, then out for eight. “Is why you didn’t contact me soon enough to stop the conspirators rather than at the last minute when it was already too late?”

Liam looked like he’d swallowed a stick of dynamite and was wondering if the acid in his stomach would be able to extinguish the lit fuse. His eyes went wide, then he looked down.

Dane said nothing and waited for the kid to answer.

Liam drew a deep breath, then looked up, tried to meet Dane’s cool stare, then looked out a window instead. He only saw the wreckage of the battle out there, though, so it didn’t comfort him in any way. Dane could tell because there was sweat beading on Liam’s forehead.

Finally, he met Dane’s eyes. “I didn’t know they were conspirators at first,” he admitted.

Dane watched his face as he spoke. He couldn’t be certain quite yet, but that felt like the truth. At least it was an answer that admitted a level of ignorance. Admitting such a thing was not easy for people Liam’s age, especially men.

“So you’ve been involved with the people who did this for a while?”

“Yes sir,” Liam’s gaze dropped back to the floor, unable to meet Dane’s eyes or look out the window. “But if they were planning this, they never told me about it. They mostly talked about the colony and how it was being run.” He swallowed. “About you.”

Dane nodded. “It’s a normal thing to question leadership. Can you tell me who ‘they’ are?”

“Are you going to arrest them for letting Winters out?”

“Well, that depends on what these conversations were about, doesn’t it? Did they talk to you about being arrested?”

“Not really.”

“They probably noticed we’re in the middle of a goddamn war and don’t have time to babysit prisoners,” Dane snapped, letting his simmering anger through.

“Is that why you locked Winters in a cryopod without a trial and didn’t let him out?”

“Is that what this is about? Are they all friends of Winters or something?”

“Not all of them, no.”

Dane gave the kid a minute to answer the question he had asked. He was proud that Liam met his gaze.

“I think it was all Chris Larsen’s idea. He was friends with Winters. He would talk about how it was messed up that he was locked up and stuff.”

“Who would he talk to Winters about? Was everyone in this group from the Cosmos like Larsen?”

“No. I mean, uh, no, sir. Casper’s Russian, and I don’t think there were any Russians on the Cosmos. Because the ADM had been at war with Russia, right?”

“The ADN, but yeah. No Russians on the Cosmos. Casper what?”

“Oh, uh, Casper Antoinette.”

“Antonov?”

“Oh yeah, sorry. Casper Antonov.”

“Did he talk about Winters?”

“Not really. He was scared. He thought it was crazy we survived both invasions. That it wouldn’t happen again. That it was luck.”

“He’s right. It was crazy, and it’s wildly lucky we survived.”

“Wait, you agree with him?”

Dane allowed himself a small shrug. “I agree that another attack would go badly. But that doesn’t mean I think Winters is the guy to defend us. Is that what they thought?”

“Maybe? But I don’t really think so. Chris—er, Larsen, he thought that Winters was better at diplomacy than you. That you were an, um… a warmonger.”

Dane nodded. He wasn’t surprised by that. Fair enough, really. It seemed like war followed Dane to every damn solar system he went to.

“So the people who freed Winters were Chris Larsen and Casper Antonov?”

“Yeah, and Geoff, from Alpha Central. Oh, sorry. Geoff O’Reilly.”

“I don’t really know him.”

“I didn’t either, but he reached out to me. At first, they wanted to know how I got the guns unstuck when the Augmented last invaded. They treated me like I was a hero. It was…what I always wanted.” Liam wiped at his face before any tears spilled out. “But I… They…”

He struggled to control himself. Dane wanted to both comfort him and slap some sense into him, but he didn’t think either would help much.

“You said they didn’t want Winters to lead the defense. What did they want Winters to do?”

Liam drew a few deep breaths, wiped his face, then looked Dane in the eyes. There was pure terror behind the kid’s gaze.

“They thought he could negotiate with the Augmented.”

Dane clenched his jaw and felt his neck tense up. Unfortunately, this was not exactly a surprise. If these conspirators thought that Dane’s approach was wrong, they wouldn’t want to fight at all. Dane had led two defenses against overwhelming Augmented forces. Who could argue that someone else would be better at defending Varuna? Obviously, the other alternative was to not fight but to try to reach some sort of agreement with the Augmented.

Dane was all but certain that was impossible. The Augmented wanted computer implants in the brains of everyone on Varuna, or they wanted them dead. Dane had pleaded with them to leave them alone. He had tried to reason with Harper, to let him know they didn’t want to go to Earth and could simply stay on Varuna. Instead, Harper had turned his beam weapon against them.

Dane put all that aside, though. He was certain—well, as certain as he could be—there would be no deal with the Augmented. Not without everyone on this planet sacrificing their free will and their humanity.

“Liam, I need you to be honest with me, all right? I know you don’t want to hurt the people here any more than you wanted to hurt the people back on Alpha Central.”

Liam nodded and wiped another tear that squeezed out. “I didn’t want anyone to die.” The words were tight in his throat.

“I understand that, and I want you to be honest with me, all right? I can’t make the best decisions for this colony unless you’re honest.”

“Okay.”

“Liam, do you think Varuna would be better off if we joined the Augmented?”

Liam’s answer was immediate. His brow furrowed, and he shook his head as he sputtered, “No!”

“You’re sure?” Dane asked, wanting him to elaborate, even though he felt confident that the kid’s answer was genuine.

“I did. Back on Alpha Central. I thought the Augmented weren’t a threat, but then they invaded. They had been lying to me about what life could be like if they were in control. The Augmented I had been talking to said they wanted peace, but they didn’t. They only wanted us not to fight back.”

“And you told this to Larsen, Geoff, and Casper?”

“I tried to. They wanted to know how I loaded those missiles, so at first, I thought they didn’t like the Augmented. They always had questions about them, though. And they were always so nice. I… They played me for a fool. I would have contacted you sooner if I realized what was going on. But I thought… I didn’t realize they wanted Winters to…”

Liam sagged and tried to cover his face as he sobbed.

Dane let him stew in his misery, trying to figure out the best way to move forward. He wished Liam had seen what was going on sooner. From Dane’s perspective, it looked obvious. Yet he knew how easy it was to get caught up in something larger than oneself, especially when the stakes were so big.

“We all make mistakes, Liam. And you’re already trying to do the right thing and fix this one. You want to do better, right?”

Liam nodded so quickly that it almost seemed involuntary. “More than anything! That’s why I sent you the message and why I turned myself in.”

“That’s good, Liam. I think you can help us out, all right? Do you know where Winters is?”

Liam shook his head. “We were supposed to split up when we left. They didn’t want to make any more of a scene. I don’t know where he is.”

“That’s all right. That’s not your fault. They obviously had a plan and didn’t include you. But did you tell them any of this? Did you tell them that you were having doubts?”

“I think they could tell I was freaked out when they hurt Dr. Thorson. Is he all right, by the way? Casper had checked his pulse and said he was alive, but is he?”

“He’s going to be all right, thanks to you. You contacted me in time, so he’s got a shot. But Liam, if we’re going to catch them before they do something to harm the colony, I think I’m going to need your help.”

“Yes, sir. Anything I can do, I will!”

Dane nodded. “Do you think they’ll still accept you? Did you say anything that might make them think you can’t be trusted?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so? I wish I had.”

“It’s better if you didn’t, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

‘’Wait for what?”

“This might be dangerous, Liam. You understand that, right? That in war, we all have to do dangerous things.”

Liam nodded. Dane got the sense from the kid’s face that he had thought about this particular problem long and hard. Of course, he must have. He had thought that there was a non-violent solution with a violent enemy, and his assumption had cost his people worlds.

“I’m not afraid to risk my life. That’s not what I wanted when I was talking to the Augmented back on Alpha Centauri. I know you won’t believe me, but I would have gladly sacrificed my own life if it meant that we wouldn’t have gone to war. I had thought that that was what I was doing. Taking a risk to protect people. I know that’s not how it worked out, but I’m not afraid to risk whatever I need to if it means protecting everyone in this base.”

“Do you think that the conspirators are a threat to our colony?”

“I don’t think that they were taking Winters out because they wanted him to plant a bomb. I think they really think that he can cut a deal with the Augmented.”

“They think I can’t?” Dane asked.

“They think you won’t.”

Dane nodded. It was true. He didn’t believe he could trust anything the Augmented offered him. Not anymore. He almost didn’t blame these conspirators for working against him. Almost. If only they had come to him, or to Adams, or to anyone and brought their concerns. Maybe they could have revived Winters and sent him to Earth to make a deal. Honestly, Dane could think of worse ideas. But now the idiots had gone and snuck around behind his back and undermined any trust he might have had in them. They had to be stopped, and their actions needed to be dragged into the light of day. Period.

“Fair enough,” Dane agreed. “That much is correct. I won’t cut a deal with them. What about you?”

“There’s no way to make a deal with them. They proved that already. If they really wanted to talk to us, they could send a scout to our system and talk. But they’re not doing that. That means they still see us as an enemy.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page on this, Liam. What I need you to do is simple, all right? I need you to contact me if they reach out to you again. Do you think you can do that?”

Liam nodded. “Do you want me to try to talk to them if they contact me? I can try to bring them around to your side, maybe?”

“I don’t think that would be a great idea. People who do these kinds of things tend to be paranoid about keeping secrets. If they see you’ve changed your tune too much, they might cut you out. Better to try to be the same person you were with them before. Let me know what’s going on, and my people can handle it.”

Liam nodded.

“All right, then. You go ahead and get out of here, all right? Get back to whatever you were doing before.”

“Okay, I will. Thanks for trusting me, Governor Dane.”

“Sure thing, kid,” Dane patted Liam’s back as he walked out the door and into the hall.

Liam waved and went down a stairwell.

Dane grimaced. He was mostly sure Liam hadn’t noticed the tracking device on his back, but you never could tell. Still, even if Liam did notice, it was worth the risk. It might tarnish his trust in Dane, but Dane couldn’t trust Liam. Not yet. He needed to verify the kid was being honest, and now he could do that.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Eric Winters had no idea where he was.

Well, that wasn’t quite true.

He remembered the shapes of the doors, the angles to the hallways, and the windows that looked out into the sea.

I thought there were creatures out there. Alien creatures that could have been from Earth but weren’t.

Instead of living things, there were the remnants of a battlefield. Winters had never witnessed an underwater battle, or at least he thought not. Yet he still recognized the charred and broken pieces of submarines for what they were. Leftovers from a fight where lives had been lost.

“Where are we?” he asked the stranger leading him along for what felt like the tenth time.

“You’re in Homebase. It’s an underwater base on a planet that orbits Teegarden’s star. We call it Varuna. You were in a cryopod, but we woke you up. Your memories will come back soon.”

Every time, the guy said the same thing. He had a slight Scottish accent, which made absolutely no sense to Winters since the Scots had not wanted to put anyone on the Cosmos. They wanted to save their resources for their own colonization mission.

Winters could remember that sort of thing with no problem. He remembered serving on ships and somehow weathering the war between Russia and the Alliance of Democratic Nations. How he had signed up because he didn’t know what other choice there was when people were raining rocks down on the cities of Earth.

He had always believed that freedom was the single most important thing to mankind. He had grown up believing with all his heart that so long as men were allowed to live free, they’d live well. The war had threatened that ideology. Freedom wasn’t worth quite as much when people were dropping rocks on your head and shooting ash into the air, which made farming a lot more difficult than it used to be.

Winters had been vaguely aware of those who would still call this a facet of freedom. That the Russians who had dropped the rocks were taking away the farmer’s freedom to grow their own food, not to mention the freedom of all the people who had died when the rocks hit the city. However, he wasn’t a philosopher. He didn’t know if that was freedom or stopping oppression or any of that. All he had known was if people didn’t sign up to go into spaceships and fight the Russians off, the whole damn world would be choked in ash.

In the war, he had never been the person who wanted to blow up the enemy flagship or commandeer a Russian rockdropper and turn it to the ADN side. Winters had no problem with those people. Heroes, as most folks called them. He knew that not everyone could be one. Someone had to stay behind and keep the lights on and the ship in orbit while the heroes went off to fight. Winters had been more than happy to take on that role. He had known, day in and day out, that he was helping the war effort. People relied on him. The war wouldn’t go as well without him. That had been enough.

Winters had been vindicated when they won. He had seen so many people die, but somehow he had survived. He couldn’t go back, though. The farmland he had always known had been choked out. The climate was different and would be different for years to come. What had once felt like freedom now felt like being a slave to others’ past choices.

So when a call had gone out for astronauts to climb aboard the Cosmos, sink into cryogenic pods that would let them sleep for a century, and take off across the stars to the nearest inhabitable planet, Winters had not hesitated.

There wouldn’t be a past on that world to lament, he had thought. It might be hard, but it would be freedom. True freedom, the sort that hadn’t been tasted on Earth since all the land had been bought up centuries ago.

Winters remembered all that, but he didn’t remember what happened next.

He remembered getting in the pod. Then he was woken up…wasn’t he?

Not here, though. Not under the sea.

He had been woken up before the Cosmos had reached this planet. He had been the XO for a captain. A beautiful woman by the name of… Of… Much as he tried to remember, her name stayed out of reach.

He had been in space, though. He felt like he had been in space. They had landed and…built this place?

No.

No, they hadn’t built it.

The plan had been to convert the Cosmos into a colony on the surface.

This place was not the Cosmos. Winters felt like he would remember if it was.

This place was something else.

Something that they had not built…but found?

He had spent time here. A long time, he thought, but it hadn’t been easy. Things had attacked. They had been swimming creatures.

No.

Crawling creatures with too many legs.

That wasn’t right, either.

They had been robot dogs.

No.

Yes.

It had been all three.

But not at once.

The swimming creatures had…had done something to the crawling creatures. Eaten them? Then this base was overrun. How had they stopped the crawling creatures if they were inside?

It was like walking through thick fog and finding trees but never knowing if you were in the forest or not.

It was frustrating, to say the least.

Also odd was the accent of one of the two men escorting Winters.

It was Russian.

Winters knew that plenty of Russians had protested against dropping rocks on the cities.

Though plenty more had simply gone ahead and dropped the rocks.

Why had a Russian and a Scot woke him up?

He thought they were still on the planet orbiting Teegarden’s star. That was why this place was underwater. Why the Russians?

“We can wait in here,” the Russian offered. Casper was his name. Winters didn’t think he’d ever met him before, but for all he knew, they used to play hockey together on the surface. He felt like there were huge gaps.

He sighed when Casper led him into what looked like an old maintenance closet. There were a few chairs, a folding table, and shelves with various cleaners and tools on the walls. Winters didn’t remember exactly what this place was, but he didn’t think being woken up and hurried through it so he could hide inside a closet was a good sign.

“Would you like to have a seat?” Casper asked.

“I think I’ll do some stretches if that’s all right.”

“Sure,” the Scot agreed, though he looked annoyed. Perhaps he was right to be annoyed with Winters wanting to do some stretches. There was hardly enough room for the three of them in there. Winters didn’t care, though. His memories weren’t back, and these two hadn’t done a great job of filling him in yet. He hoped moving around might trigger some of those memories to return.

So he rolled his shoulders, reached for the ceiling, then touched his toes.

It didn’t do a damn thing. Winters went through an entire five-minute routine, but still, nothing came back. Or nothing more than snatches of memory. He was listening to a woman. The captain of the Cosmos, maybe. Then another woman, a blonde with a Russian accent. He didn’t know if she was from his time on Varuna or not. He kept getting these glimpses, but he was unable to piece together the entire vista.

Finally, he sat down, disappointed that no more memories had returned and that he had irked the two people who’d given his consciousness back.

Then it got a lot more crowded.

“Hey, I found the kid,” a man who looked vaguely familiar announced as he came into the room. At least he had an American accent like Winters. “How’s he doing?” he asked the Scot while pointing at Winters.

“He did some stretches, but no luck yet with his memories. Still pretty loopy,” the Scot replied.

“You don’t remember Geoff or Casper, do you?” The American stepped away from “the kid” and closer to Winters.

“I don’t remember much,” Winters admitted.

“Do you remember me?”

“I think so? It’s…is it Chris?”

Chris’ face lit up. “That’s right! I knew you’d remember your old buddy. Though honestly, I thought it would take some of this to do the job.”

Winters expected a syringe or an assortment of pills and so was pleasantly surprised when Chris produced a thermos and put it in his hands. Winters cracked the lid, and the bitter, wonderful smell of coffee hit his nostrils.

“It’s not as good as yours, of course. No one can make a cup of coffee like Winters.”

Winters sipped the drink. While he could privately admit that Chris was right and the coffee was slightly more watery than it should be, it was still damn good.

“This is more than all right. Who taught Chris Larsen how to brew?” Winters asked.

Chris grinned even wider, obviously pleased that Winters remembered his first and last name. “I try to make it strong,” Chris told him.

Winters smiled and sipped. Didn’t try hard enough, he thought, but who cared? The coffee was more than good enough. And with it, more memories came back. He remembered making coffee for Captain Adams! That was her name! He had been her XO on the Cosmos but also served in the same role when they had come down to the planet and found the Russian base. That had been an interesting discovery. A fully intact base, built before they had arrived. How had that been possible?

Another sip of coffee, and Winters remembered how they had figured it out. The Russians had simply built a faster drive, so although the Cosmos had been the first colony ship to leave Earth, the Russian vessel had been faster and thus passed the Cosmos in transit. They had built their base only for it to be overrun by some sort of starfish.

He remembered the hordes of things coming for the base, filling the hallways. He had wanted to abandon Homebase, but cooler heads had prevailed, and instead, they had fought the starfish off.

Things had been fine after that. Until the Russians showed up.

“You’re from the Zhemchug?” Winters asked Casper.

The Russian nodded.

“See, I knew the coffee would help with his memories.”

It was helping, but Winters didn’t like what he was remembering. Adams had named a Russian as her second in command, someone whose name Winters couldn’t remember, even though he could remember being furious. He didn’t see why the Russians needed to integrate with them. Sure, the Russians had hollowed out the volcano and built this base, but their complete lack of understanding of the ecology of this planet had been their downfall.

They had no right to the volcano base, but Adams had allowed them to come in and integrated them with the colonists. The security chief had gone along with it, too, the moron. Winters could almost remember his name. He was some washed-up war hero who’d been stuck on the Cosmos at the last minute because he was becoming a political liability back on Earth. What was his name?

“You’ve missed a lot, Winters. Some of it is going to sound pretty unbelievable. You ready?”

Winters sipped his coffee again and felt the most recent memories come back to him. There had been a chance to leave the Russians in cryo. He had liked that option but had been overruled. Ironic that he had been put in cryo later.

Now he remembered why.

There had been a woman. A beautiful woman. Sophia Novikov. Like Winters, she’d held the opinion that the two groups would be better off sharing the planet by living on opposite sides of it. She had concocted a plan. Not to hurt the colonists but to scare them. To make everyone see the benefits of occupying separate sides of their shared world.

Winters didn’t remember much after that, but he remembered it going poorly.

“What happened when I was in the chamber?”

“Major scientific breakthroughs,” the Russian reported.

“We’ve had contact with Earth,” Chris informed him.

Winters blinked. He stared Chris Larsen in the face. Blinked again. He and Chris hadn’t been super-close. They were friends and would share coffee before shifts and stronger drinks afterward, but they didn’t work together and didn’t do much beyond that. Still, Winters felt like he knew Chris well enough to have noticed if the man had aged decades. He knew there were longevity treatments, but there were still signs. Chris looked like he’d hardly aged at all.

“How long was I in there? It couldn’t have been that long. You’re… You’re not telling me it’s been more than twenty years, right?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. You were in there for less than a year, even though you weren’t sentenced for anything.”

Winters wanted to appreciate the note of bitterness in Chris’ voice. This man was looking out for him. He was thankful for that. Yet something in the way the three of them stared at him made him increasingly uncomfortable.

“Teegarden’s star is twelve and a half light years from Earth. The only way contact is possible is to wait for the message to go back and forth.”

“Not anymore,” the Scot revealed. Geoff. Chris had called him Geoff. Winters tried to cling to the names of these people, the details of the messy closet, as he felt increasingly unmoored. His memories were coming back to him, and yet he felt like he had missed a lot more than he remembered.

“What do you mean not anymore? The laws of physics state—”

“We know what the laws of physics say,” Casper interrupted.

“The Augmented found a workaround,” Geoff contended.

Winters didn’t know what the hell an Augment was, nor did he see how you could work around basic physics. Mostly, he didn’t know which one of these questions to ask.

“It turns out you can build a drive that warps space. Shrinks it in front of your ship, stretches it out behind you,” Chris explained. “It doesn’t work if you’re too close to a planet or a sun, or any big gravity well, but it’s now possible for a ship to send a message by radio, then warp and reach a destination before the radio waves get there.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Winters declared.

“It was quite the breakthrough,” Geoff recalled. “Once the Augmented discovered it, we were able to work out how to do it as well.”

“Scotland?”

“Alpha Centauri.”

Winters took another sip of coffee and swallowed. The coffee seemed more bitter now.

“You’re not from Scotland. You’re from…”

“Alpha Centauri.”

“That’s a star.”

“Technically, it's two stars, and really I’m from one of the planets that orbit it. Alpha Central.”

“It was settled by the Scottish. That’s why he talks like that,” Chris revealed.

“And you’re from a planet settled by the Russians?” Winters asked Casper.

“I am from Russia. I came on the Zhemchug. I was loyal to Sophia.”

“Oh, shit,” Winter exclaimed. He felt like his world was being flipped upside down. Like nothing made sense. Like the universe had been broken and could never be fixed. He supposed these men had already gone through that.

“That’s putting it lightly,” Chris told him. “Take a minute, but there’s a whole lot more than that.”

“More than breaking the laws of physics? How the hell did anyone figure that out?”

“New research methods,” Casper remarked. To Winters, his Russian accent made it sound rather ominous.

“You’re referring to the Augmented?”

All three men nodded.

“Someone on Earth made a discovery,” Geoff stated. He seemed most eager about the topic. “They designed a kind of miniature robot that can build an implant in your brain. Those implants are then linked wirelessly, so people can communicate with their minds. It allowed them to tackle problems that people couldn’t solve separately. They devised the warp drive thanks to being Augmented.”

Winters nodded. That sounded…odd. But not that bad.

“You said the Augmented discovered it, but Alpha Centauri figured it out. Does that mean we’re not allies with this group of people?”

“That’s exactly right,” Chris agreed, glancing at the other three men in the room. Winters had all but forgotten about the fourth person in the room, the baby-faced young man that Chris had called “the kid.” Winters noticed him now because he flinched when Chris agreed with Winters’ assessment.

“Are we enemies?” Winters asked.

“We are. Thanks to colony leadership,” Chris insisted.

“Adams doesn’t like them?” Winters asked.

“Adams has been deposed. She had an implant in her brain and was deemed unfit to serve as governor. George Dane took that job over.”

There was the name. George Dane. Washed-up war hero with too much to prove and an obsession with fitness. He had never been mean to Winters, but Winters didn’t understand why an old pilot had been such an essential part of their command structure.

“Dane hates the Augmented,” Chris went on. “Someone showed up here with a stolen ship equipped with a warp drive, and he took their side over the people who built the damn thing. They came here to get it back, and Dane wouldn’t even entertain the notion.”

“Let me guess. He preferred to fight it out.”

Chris and Casper nodded. “It was brutal,” Casper declared. “But we won.”

“He led a mission to Alpha Centauri after that. When the Augmented showed up there, Dane made sure they fought as well.”

“He convinced an entire planet to go to war?” Winters asked.

“There were people like Liam here trying to make peace,” Chris clarified.

“That right?” Winters asked the kid, Liam.

“Some of them had come to our planet as ambassadors. I was trying to work something out, but it all went to hell. The Augmented invaded.” Liam looked nervous as hell, and why not? If Dane really was against these Augmented people, and Liam had tried to cut deals with them, then he might be seen as an enemy. But where did that leave the man they had clandestinely taken out of hibernation?

“After we sent an asteroid filled with missiles to Earth to pummel them,” Geoff added.

Winters gulped coffee, trying to square all this in his head. It was a lot. Too much. He had been imprisoned over a fight only to find those two sides were now not only integrated but were facing a new enemy. An enemy that seemed to have powers straight out of a science fiction novel. They could travel faster than light and communicate telepathically? He didn’t know what to think or how to act. He knew who would, though.

“And what about Adams? She has one of these implants and was just…sidelined?”

She was the most competent captain he’d ever served under. He could not believe that she was no longer part of leadership here on Teegarden’s star. If she had chosen to get implanted, then the system must have some merits. Winters wondered how different it would be from receiving longevity treatments. When those had been invented, there had been protests. People had complained often and loudly that the treatments would only go to the rich and privileged.

He’d thought all that rather ridiculous. How could finding ways to extend human life be anything but good? True, many of the protestors’ biggest complaints had borne true. Namely, that those treatments wouldn’t reach much of society. Yet before Winters left Earth, many of the most prominent politicians had insisted the treatments were coming for everyone else soon.

Did the people against these Augmented have valid complaints or not? That was the question, Winters supposed. He needed to know more, but he had serious misgivings about the current person in power disqualifying Adams because she had one of these things in her brain. It seemed like too convenient a way to sideline an opponent.

“Dane keeps Adams around as an advisor,” Geoff revealed.

“Even though she still has this implant in her brain?”

“Technically, they removed it, but they weren’t able to completely get rid of it,” Geoff proclaimed.

“I saw those reports. I think it’s gone,” Casper stated.

“Dane said we wouldn’t be able to trust her, so he’d stay in control. Only until the fight with the Augmented was over.”

Winters clenched his teeth. Dane sounded like more and more of a problem.

“So why am I awake? Did Dane tell you to thaw me out for a trial or something?” Winters did not think that was the case. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be hiding in a closet that he was becoming more convinced was part of the base’s power plant section.

Chris laughed, recognizing it for an XO’s style of humor.

“Dane doesn’t know a damn thing about you being back up. He’d probably be pissing himself if he did.”

Winters wasn’t so sure about that. For all his issues with George Dane, Winters was not going to say that he was anything less than tough as nails. Even these guys’ version of the story about Dane had him beating an attack from these Augmented. Still, he grinned and chuckled at the attempt at flattery.

“If it was up to George Dane, you might have stayed in there forever,” Casper revealed.

“So you woke me up hoping to do what?”

“We want you to end this war with the Augmented,” Chris told him.

“By whatever means necessary,” Geoff added.

“I don’t know if I’d be a better battle commander than George Dane,” Winters divulged carefully.

“We’re not asking you to be. We want someone who will consider all options. Someone who might actually talk to the Augmented instead of trying to shoot missiles at each other.”

“I feel like my memories aren’t all back quite yet, but I’m thankful you boys let me out of that tube. Especially considering how much everything has changed. Right now, I could use some food. Then if possible, I’d like a long talk with Adams to see how she feels about being usurped.”

“Yeah…yeah, for sure.” Chris nodded at the others. He didn’t seem convinced, though. Winters didn’t know if that meant he wasn’t sure they could keep his revival secret long enough or if Adams would go along with it. He needed more memories to be sure, which meant he needed time. So Winters settled in to wait in the closet.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After Dane met with Liam, he worked out. Mostly weights, though he was never averse to throwing in a little cardio to stay lean. It wasn’t a long one, and lo and behold, when he was done, Liam was already in the cafeteria! Dane wanted some kelp protein burgers to fuel his post-workout hunger, and if he happened to sit at a table with a clear sightline to Liam, who would notice?

A keen observer might have noted that Dane was checking his tablet more than usual, but certainly not because he’d bugged the kid, no. More like because he was waiting for the foolish kid to text him.

He nearly jumped from his seat when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Jesus, Dane, you all right? Maybe you should lay off the coffee.”

“Oh, Good. You’re here.”

Good flashed him a grin. “Yeah. I’m here. Ruining this attempted stakeout of yours.”

“Shush!” Dane admonished.

“If he hasn’t noticed you by now, he’s not going to. But if he has noticed you, you need to get the hell out of here.”

“I want to know where he’s going.”

“That’s what the tracker’s for. Now, come on.”

Dane sighed and followed Good. He was never one for this espionage stuff.

When they reached Dane’s office, they found Lev waiting for them.

“What are you doing here?” Dane asked.

“Good texted me.”

“When?”

Good chuckled and shook his head. “While we were walking. It’s amazing you managed to get a tracker on that kid at all. Surprised you didn’t try to give it to him in a high-five or something like that.”

“I considered that,” Dane stated, half-joking.

“Wait, you bugged Bell’s kid? Liam?” Lev asked.

Dane nodded.

“The dream of parents across the galaxy,” Good smirked.

“Well, where is he?” Lev asked.

“Still in the cafeteria,” Dane reported.

“Ah. Kelp burger day?”

Dane nodded.

“Wait, wait. I got a text,” Dane announced.

“What’s it say?”

“It’s from Liam. He says, ‘Just got a message. Will let u know what’s up.’”

“Well, there ya go, then,” Good confirmed.

“But this doesn’t explain anything,” Dane complained.

“It shows Liam wants you to know what’s going on,” Good pointed out.

“No, it doesn’t,” Lev argued.

“Sure, it does!”

“No. It does not. Liam did not actually say where he was going. That text only gives Dane the impression that he cares. It means he is good spy. That is all.”

“But a spy for which side?” Dane grumbled.

Liam started to move.

“Should we follow?” Dane asked.

“It’s generally considered good policy to wait and make sure the person you’re tracking isn’t about to go take a dump,” Good declared.

Lev laughed, but Dane only ground his teeth.

When the marker on Dane’s map showed Liam not returning to the cafeteria but heading downstairs, Good straightened up.

“Let’s see if we can get some cameras on him while he moves.” Good flipped through a few different feeds until he found Liam. He was by himself, but when he passed from the view of that camera and into the view of another, he waved hello and shook hands with another man. Dane might not have recognized him right away had he not been looking at his file less than an hour ago. It was Chris Larsen, one of the people Liam had named in the conspiracy to wake up Winters.

“Too soon to get a full security team with us?” Dane asked.

“Not at all.” Lev grinned and took out his tablet to send some orders.

“Good. Let’s nip this thing in the bud,” Dane declared.

Lev and Good were already armed. Dane had not been packing, as he didn’t want to freak Liam out, nor did he like to openly carry any more now that he was governor. He wanted people to feel they could speak freely. Right or wrong, a gun on the hip made plenty of people uncomfortable.

They were in Dane’s office, though, so a quick thumbprint on one of the drawers and he had a handgun. He hoped he didn’t need heavier artillery, but with a full security force, they should be all right.

“Let’s go,” Dane ordered.

They left his office and made for the stairs. As they descended, three more members of the security team joined them. Robinson, Athanas, and a new face Dane didn’t really know. These three all had body armor, though Dane was both relieved and concerned that they only had handguns, too. These conspirators wouldn’t have heavier weapons, right? Would they even fight back?

If anyone could answer those questions, it was Good.

“Do we have eyes on them?” he asked.

“Let’s see what we can do about that.” Good flipped through his tablet controls with an ease Dane would never have. He found multiple cameras, but none of them showed Liam and Chris.

“That’s odd…” He flipped through them again.

“What’s odd?” Lev asked. “Odd is never good in these situations.”

“I can’t find any of the cameras down here. They must have been disabled. I should have noticed, but with the invasion...”

“So we’re going in blind,” Dane commented.

“This is the American way, no?” Lev asked, grinning. “Ignorant but well-armed?”

“The tracker is still working, though,” Good reported. “It looks like he’s headed through the power plant level.”

“That makes sense. There’s plenty of closets and whatnot down there, and normally not a ton of people,” Dane pointed out.

“Probably the best they could hope for, given how small our city is,” Good concurred. “Makes me worry, though. We haven’t been checking places like that regularly, with everything else going on. They could have a stash of weapons or who knows what else.”

Neither of the men said what they were both thinking. Winters had been locked away because he’d been helping plant explosives. Surely these conspirators wouldn’t have thought they needed Winters for something like that? They would know how dangerous it was to have a bomb in an underwater base.

Maybe that was exactly why they had gotten Winters. That way, Dane would take any threats they made seriously. He didn’t know what they would do if there was a bomb. Well, besides do his best to keep his people safe from all threats. No point in worrying about that yet, though. They didn’t know what was down there, and no amount of speculation would answer that for them.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Dane knew it was entirely possible that the conspirators already knew they were coming. They could have planted any number of devices to watch their back, but it was also possible that they did not yet know about them. But if that was the case, stepping through this door represented a fundamental change in what the afternoon would hold.

“All right. Before we engage, I want to be clear on our objectives. We want to subdue these hostiles and contain this threat. I don’t want anyone to die, but if they start firing at us, you have permission to return fire.”

“Who are we dealing with?” Robinson asked.

“People we all know. So be ready for that. There’s also a kid with them. Barely twenty. He’s been trying to help. I don’t want him hurt.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want anyone hurt,” Athanas remarked.

“I don’t. But I don’t want him caught in the crossfire. Same goes for Winters. It’s not his fault these guys got him involved. I want him for questioning.”

“And if either of those two fire at us?” the new face asked. He seemed nervous.

“You shoot back,” Lev stated, not mincing words.

Dane didn’t argue or countermand the order. He could have, as governor, but this was what it was. He didn’t want anyone to die, but he also didn’t want a group of conspirators undermining everything they were working toward, sabotaging the base at a crucial moment, or letting the Augmented in.

“Any more questions?” Dane asked.

No one spoke up.

“Then here we go.”

They pushed into the power plant room and fanned out, moving as quietly as they could so as not to let the enemy know they had arrived. Dane kept wondering about Liam. He had meant to contact Dane, right? Because the governor didn’t know what the hell he would do if they came upon the kid with a gun in his hand, aimed at Dane and his people.

Really, he knew what he would have to do. That was what terrified him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Robinson, Lev and Athanas led the way into the power station, fanning out and keeping their guns up. Good followed, with a pair of flying drones flanking him on either side. Each of them was equipped with a projectile taser. Dane came after him with the new face. He would have preferred to be in the front, not the back, but Lev was insistent. The chief of security had at first demanded Dane stay in his office and watch the operation from afar, so Dane supposed he should consider himself lucky he was on the floor at all.

No, not lucky.

Luck implied something good was going to happen.

There was nothing lucky about your own people working against you.

Nothing lucky about a kid who kept falling into the wrong crowd.

Dane wondered if there was something wrong with his own head. Why did he feel good about being part of this mission? Was it because he trusted that if Liam saw him, he’d do the right thing and come willingly? Maybe this way, if something went wrong, Dane could blame himself. He much preferred that over the idea of not being there. Then he would one hundred percent blame himself for not doing all that he could have.

Lev, Robinson, and Athanas fanned out, moving around the central turbine. That massive device was powered by sea water flowing into a well, where geothermal energy heated it and turned it into steam. Lev went left, while Robinson and Athanas went right. Good and his pet drones followed Lev, so Dane went the other way.

They knew the conspirators were in here somewhere, but not their exact location. There were plenty of closets and unused corners and no working cameras back there. They could systematically check each one, but that would take time and undoubtedly alert the conspirators to their presence. Which meant they had to hope to get lucky. The tracker he’d placed on Liam showed the kid was nearby but not precisely where he was.

Luck was not something that Dane wanted to rely on.

He followed Athanas and Robinson around the central power station, looking for an open door, an out-of-place camera, a drone. Any indication of the conspirators’ hiding spot.

What he saw was better than any of that. It was Liam Bell, standing around and looking almost aggressively casual. He looked up and directly at Athanas. Rather than raising any kind of alarm, he slowly took out his tablet and turned his attention to that instead.

Dane felt a massive flood of relief. He wanted Liam to do the right thing. He had not known how he would tell the kid’s father if he fell in with this crowd and couldn’t see the error of his ways. Now it seemed he should have trusted Liam sooner. That was fine with Dane, though. He was more than happy to have played it safe and been proven wrong. This meant that the kid really was trying to change!

“I think I see their room,” Robinson whispered, pointing past Liam to a door that stood slightly ajar.

“Hold back,” Dane ordered over the comms. “We have visual.”

“We see him, too,” Lev replied.

“I’m going to send a drone up top,” Good announced.

“Stay hidden. Liam’s up to something,” Dane replied.

Liam fiddled with the tablet until an uninspired soundtrack bleated from the poor-quality speakers on the device. It was punctuated with the sounds of some digital avatar jumping or swinging a sword. Hee-yah! Wah! That sort of thing. The kind of sounds that were essential for the gamer and unbelievably annoying to anyone else who wasn’t playing the game.

Indeed, it seemed Liam’s fellow conspirators were unable to ignore the poorly mixed soundscape of the game.

“Do ya need to do that right here?” Geoff O’Reilly snapped. Dane would not have recognized his voice had Liam not clued him into his identity and given Dane time to look up his file.

“It’s not bothering anyone,” Liam insisted. It was the kind of thing only a young person could say. Someone who was older and more cognizant of others would have surely noticed it was bothering the person who’d complained. Liam played it well, though.

“It’s bothering me,” O’Reilly grunted.

Liam aggressively shrugged as if he could not possibly think of a solution to the problem. “It’s hard to land the jumps without the sound cues,” he added for extra, self-centered flavor.

“God forbid you don’t land your jumps,” O’Reilly snorted and gave a cursory look around the power plant. Dane, Robinson, and Athanas were all tucked into a tangle of machinery, hidden by shadow. O’Reilly didn’t see them, nor did he see the people on the other side. He might have seen the drone above the power generation station, but Liam attempted another sequence in his video game, which resulted in another series of hee-yahs!

“I’m almost done!”

“Well, finish it up somewhere else,” O’Reilly stated.

“Sure. I can go watch the door and make sure no one comes in down here.”

“Yeah, do that.” O’Reilly turned his back on Liam and walked into the room he had come from.

Liam kept his eyes on his game as he walked away from the room with the door left ajar.

“Let’s get closer, people,” Lev urged.

Slowly, Robinson and Athanas crawled out from their hiding places and approached the room.

Dane followed them, though he kept his eyes on Liam. Liam glanced up, slow and casual, and Dane held up a finger to his lips to ask for silence. Liam nodded and kept walking past Robinson and Athanas. Hopefully to safety.

Lev and Good were coming up from the other side of the power plant. The new face was close, gun up. He seemed calmer now that they were in a more active situation. No doubt he had trained for this and was something like relieved to be going through the motions of what to do with a group of hostiles in the base.

“All right, we do this by the book. Go in, guns up, and get them cuffed,” Lev declared.

“What if they have a bomb?” Athanas asked.

“It’s not like they would blow themselves up,” Robinson replied.

“Wow. Your understanding of human history has impressively large gaps,” Athanas quipped.

“We assume they have no bomb,” Lev rejoined. “Stick to the plan.”

Dane had serious misgivings, though. O’Reilly had not seemed like someone about to attack the colony or try to blow it up. He seemed like someone in a hurry to get back to a conversation he was interested in. He hadn’t been behaving like a terrorist, so Dane wouldn’t treat him like one.

He stepped past Robinson and Athanas.

“This is Governor Dane. We know you brought Winters out of a cryotube. We want to talk. Please come out willingly, with your hands up, and no one has to get hurt.”

“What are you doing?” Lev hissed.

Dane ignored him. He focused on the open door and the people hidden on the other side of it. He could hear them in there. They were obviously surprised, as he heard a chair crash and a bunch of swearing.

“All right, we’re coming out,” a voice announced. Dane thought it was Larsen.

Then a bullet whizzed by his head.

“Down! Get down!” Lev shouted. Robinson crashed into Dane, knocking him to the floor and dragging him toward cover. More gunshots rang out from the closet.

So much for surrender, Dane thought bitterly. The fight was on!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Winters did not feel great about their chances. Chris, Geoff, and Casper all had guns, but they didn’t seem to have any more ammunition than was in the weapons. There was one small ammo box, Winters supposed, but that didn’t seem enough to… Honestly, he didn’t know what they were hoping to accomplish.

“What are our plans?” Winters asked. He was still sitting in the back corner of the room. Well away from the door. Chris and Geoff were on one side of the door, Casper on the other. Chris had already fired, so Winters wasn’t so sure there were any plans. If plans existed, it seemed they should have used the opportunity to negotiate something with the leader of the colony.

“Shit,” Casper uttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Our plan is to stop this bastard from making us fight a war we can’t win,” Chris stated. Then he popped into the doorway and fired off a few shots before taking cover again.

Winters understood he was still not operating at full capacity. His memories weren’t all back yet, he had a killer headache, and he felt like he both needed to take a nap and never go to sleep again. Yet, each gunshot that echoed in the closet seemed to make it more clear these three had no real idea what they were doing. Their plan had been to wake Winters up…and let him handle it.

“How were we going to do that?” Winters yelled when the gunshots from outside the room stopped. He hoped Liam had already been taken into custody. The kid had seemed so nervous about all this. Winters didn’t think he could stomach the sight of his blood on the floor. He would feel responsible, especially since they had done all this for Winters.

“You can take a ship to Earth and talk to the Augmented. Make them realize we’re not a threat,” Geoff urged. “They don’t want to hurt us. They only want us to join them.”

Chris popped out of cover again and fired a few more shots. When he ducked back in, Winters recognized the crazy look on his face as the thoughtless mask of someone expecting to die. Chris wasn’t thinking past this moment. Which was not good for the rest of them.

“How am I supposed to get this ship? Do you have a path to a spaceport? Or were you thinking we could take over the bridge? What was the next step?”

“We don’t know!” Casper blurted. Neither he nor Geoff had fired back. Yet, while there was terror in Casper’s eyes, something else lurked in Geoff’s.

“Larsen said you would have a plan! That you could lead us to peace with the Augmented instead of all this death.”

“It looks like death out there if we keep this up,” Winters pointed out.

Geoff nodded. “You’re right. I know what we can do, though. You actually gave me the idea.” He dropped away from the door, but he didn’t look like he was planning to surrender. Instead, he opened a box and started fiddling with something inside. More ammunition?

“Come on, Winters, you were always the smart one. What do we do?”

“I think we should have talked to them.”

“Too late for that!” Casper lamented. “What do we do now?”

“We make a bomb!” Geoff pulled some sort of bag of chemicals from the box and placed it on a wheeled dolly. “We cover this in shrapnel, roll it out, and catch them in the blast! Then we rush them in the confusion.”

“That’s not much of a plan.”

“It’s your plan!” Hysteria tinged Geoff’s voice. “Chris said you planted a bomb and nearly had this entire station on its knees.”

“That’s not quite how it happened.”

“Only because you got stopped! You got stopped, so you couldn’t take control, and that’s why we’re in this mess. You can fix this, Winters! I know this looks bad, but it’s better than facing the Augmented.”

Winters looked at the three men, knowing he still lacked his memories but starting to think that did not really matter all that much. He saw these three people for their actions. He decided who they were not because of what they had done but because of what they were doing.

Casper was obviously terrified. He wasn’t firing on the security team. It was a wonder he hadn’t broken down yet, really. He looked damn close.

Chris didn’t have any kind of plan. No more now than he’d ever had before. In a rush, Winters remembered snatches of conversation with his old bud over beers. How Chris thought that he could do a better job of killing the murder stars than the scientists studying the best way to kill them. That he could navigate these oceans better than anyone else. That he could drink more than anyone else and not be absolutely drunk an hour later. He was a big talker. Always had been.

Winters used to be the guy who talked him out of all his nonsense.

That’s why he hadn’t thought of him as a friend. Because Chris Larsen was the guy who got too drunk then talked too much trash. The guy who blamed the people in power but never actually tried to talk to them about fixing anything. The sort of guy who was good at getting stuff done but never knew how things actually got done.

Winters wouldn’t help him lead a coup against the government here. Especially not if what they were saying was true, and the colony was currently at war with a cabal of super-smart people who had broken at least one law of physics.

Winters wanted to know more about them, but his gut rebelled against the idea of a computer being put in someone’s brain. That didn’t sound like freedom to him. Even if the people did choose to put something between their ears, did that mean they’d have their own thoughts to themselves? Winters wanted these questions answered, but he didn’t think that now was the time. These three were wound up tight enough to think setting off a bomb in an underwater base was a decent idea.

He was well aware he was one of the only idiots who had actually ever considered doing that exact thing, but he and Sophia had been careful about ensuring it would be contained. He remembered that much. They had always designed the explosives to not cause much damage. This sack of chemicals and box of screws Geoff had plopped on top of his contraption did not seem premeditated in any way.

“Winters. Winters!”

He realized Chris had been yelling his name, hoping for an answer. Well, Eric Winters finally had one for him.

“Give me your gun. I know what to do.” Winters tried to sound as tough as he possibly could.

“Hell yeah, brother.” Chris slapped the pistol into Winter’s palm with a bit too much enthusiasm.

Winters caught it, though. He was no stranger to guns. He checked the clip and turned off the safety.

Then he shot Geoff O’Reilly in the leg.

Geoff screamed, crashed into his half-made wannabe explosive, and spilled screws everywhere as he writhed in pain.

“What the hell?” Chris demanded, but he raised his hands above his head.

Casper turned back from the open door and found a pistol pointing squarely between his eyes. He didn’t even pretend to be upset. He dropped his handgun and put his hands up even higher than Chris.

“Ow! Ow, ow, ow…” Geoff moaned.

“You two, out of the room.” Winters stepped over Geoff. The other two grumbled, but they walked out with their hands up.

“George Dane? This is Eric Winters. It’s safe to come in. I neutralized the threat.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“You ever hear of something like this?” Dane asked Lev.

Lev shrugged. “It could be a trap?”

“I don’t think so.” Good showed Dane and Lev his drone footage.

Chris and Casper, respectively looking grumpy and relieved, stepped from the doorway with their hands up. Winters stood behind them, with a gun pointed at their backs.

“Where’s the third guy?” Dane asked.

“I think that’s him.” Good pointed to a pair of slowly writhing legs.

“What happened to the other guy?” Dane shouted.

“He wanted to make a bomb, so I shot him in the leg. Hoping for a similar punishment instead of going back into cryo. I’m only just now getting memories back.”

“Still could be trap,” Lev warned.

“Yeah. I’m not saying it’s not,” Dane agreed.

“Athanas and Robinson, head in there,” Lev declared.

Dane clenched his teeth. He didn’t want them to risk their lives on his behalf, but that was the way things had to be. He couldn’t saunter out there. He had to play it safe.

“We’re sending people in. You will obey everything they say.”

“I know the drill,” Winters replied.

Athanas and Robinson went in, guns up.

“Drop the weapon!” Athanas yelled a moment later.

Dane heard the clatter of the weapon hitting the floor.

“Take them,” Athanas ordered. She and Robinson moved forward, grabbed the two men, and cuffed their hands behind their backs.

“We got an injured man here,” Athanas reported. “Looks like a wound to the leg.”

“Yes. That’s where I shot him,” Winters noted.

“Sending for a medic,” Good insisted. Lev already had two medics stationed behind the blast doors in the stairwell.

Lev moved in with his team and made for Winters. He got his arms behind his back, but Winters made no attempt to resist.

“You can leave him alone. Right, Winters?” Dane asked. “It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

“You don’t think I’ll make a swim for it?” Winters scoffed.

“You’re welcome to try, but I’m wondering if you want to.”

Winters shrugged. “From what I hear, there’s bigger problems than George Dane bossing people around and making friends with the Russians.”

“Funny you’d say that when one of the people who helped you was Russian,” Dane quipped.

Winters shrugged. “I had no idea these idiots were going to wake me up. From what they told me, there’s some sort of computer-enhanced people out there now?”

“The Augmented,” Dane confirmed.

“They sound like real assholes,” Winters stated.

“That’s my take on them, too,” Dane offered, surprised he and Winters agreed about anything.

“This Scottish guy really came from another solar system?” Winters asked.

Dane nodded. “Via warp drive. The Augmented are smart and figured it out.”

“Is that why Governor Adams decided to join them?” Winters asked.

“Decided to join? She was forcibly implanted when we were invaded.”

“Ah. I was told she got Augmented, and you deposed her for it,” Winters admitted.

“What makes you think I would ever do something like that to someone?”

The question was rhetorical. Dane let his gaze rest on Chris Larsen as he asked it.

“You’re crazy to fight them,” Chris muttered.

“We don’t have any other choice. I wish we did, but I’ve tried it all,” Dane told him.

Chris only hung his head.

“Things are pretty damn different from when you went in there,” Dane continued. “The Russians and us and a few hundred souls from Alpha Centauri are the last people in the galaxy not to have a computer chip in our brains.”

“So many? All of Earth?” Winters asked, obviously shocked.

Dane nodded. “What did they tell you?”

“I didn’t ask, but I guess I should have. I got the sense it was a smaller group.”

“I wish,” Dane replied.

Two medics arrived and went to check on Geoff. Dane wanted to tell them not to be too gentle, but he resisted the urge.

“It’s all of Earth versus us?”

“Technically, it’s all of Earth, all the colonies in that entire solar system, plus everyone in Alpha Centauri, and most likely a bunch of other colonies as well, versus us. Not great odds. We could use another on our side.”

“What about a trial?”

“It’s wartime. We don’t have time for that right now. Assuming a court finds mistakes were made in a time of distress and the accused wishes to right his wrongs, maybe we could agree any community service performed for the colony at this juncture could be counted toward required hours.”

“What kind of community service are we thinking?” Winters asked. “Because honestly, those pods were pretty comfy. If my choices are more beauty sleep or sign up to fight a bunch of wannabe robots, I might choose the beauty sleep.”

“Fair enough. But for starters, I was thinking you could fix some coffee for our next meeting. I haven’t had a decent cup in a while.”

“I can do that.” Winters laughed.

“Good. We’ll start there, and I’ll reintroduce you to leadership. Maybe look for how we could switch up personnel to help with efficiency. Also, maybe you could oversee complaints against me.”

“Now you’re trying to butter me up.”

“I just don’t want you to mess up the coffee.”

Winters smiled and nodded. “And these three?”

“Geoff needs treatment. The other two can go to holding tanks. We have a few rooms in another part of the base that have working cameras. They can cool off for a bit.”

“I told you that bomb was a bad idea,” Chris grumbled.

Casper said nothing. He only looked relieved it was over.

Dane hoped it truly was.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dane walked into the meeting room at the top of Homebase, feeling even more foolish than he normally did.

Was this really his best plan?

Was he really going to let Winters in on this meeting?

He could think of a hundred reasons to keep the man out and only one to let him in.

His gut told him to trust Winters.

It was not the best reason. Dane could admit that. However, his gut said Winters would recognize the threat the Augmented posed. He could use that. He would have a fresh perspective, and he would understand logistics as well as he ever had.

Still, he had doubts. Would this be a risk? Would Winters clam up or decide Dane should be deposed?

Time to find out.

He walked through the door with Winters at his heel.

“I’ve had quite the morning, and… Well, Eric Winters is back up, everybody,” Dane announced.

Every pair of eyes looked right past Dane to Winters.

Adams was up fastest. She pushed herself from her chair and ran to Winters so she could wrap him in a hug.

“I’m so sorry I put you in there,” she offered.

Winters relaxed as he hugged his old captain. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust your judgment.”

“Things are profoundly different than they used to be,” Adams told him.

“Dane was telling me. The Augmented sound pretty bad.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Ron Bell remarked.

“Eric Winters, this is Ron Bell. He was a senator from Alpha Centauri.”

“A member of Parliament, but same difference.” Ron took Winters’ hand.

“You remember Nat Granger, of course. She’s still working miracles with the machines we have.”

“Your actions hurt a lot of people,” Granger muttered before nervously stuffing a cookie in her mouth.

“That was all a mistake,” Winters insisted. “I’m here to help.”

Ginger waved to him as well, though she was not smiling.

“Dr. Alvarez was attacked. He’s in a cryopod right now,” Dane told him. “Actually, that’s what this meeting is mostly about. Dr. Thorson, would you like to get us started?”

Thorson looked tired. Still, he eyed Winters warily.

Winters took the hint. “I owe everyone here an apology. More than an apology. I didn’t understand why our two people couldn’t live on opposite sides of the planet, and I used force and subterfuge to try to convince people of that. It was wrong of me. I see now how fortunate we were to have stayed together. I don’t know how to make it right, and I might not be of much use. But let me fix everyone here a cup of coffee, and maybe we can go back to things like they used to be.”

There was no applause. Only more hard looks.

“Honestly, I don’t see what choice we have,” Dane noted. “I’m not throwing him back in a cryotube. He hasn’t been out long enough, and the risks to his brain are real. I don’t want him rotting in a cell, either. The situation has changed. There is no more us and them. Now it’s human versus Augmented. Period. Winters is going to be on the correct side of that, right?”

Winters nodded as he fussed over the coffee pot. “I thought the Russians would limit our freedom. These Augmented, though. They sound a million times worse. I know I can’t fix the past, but I can try.”

“And he stopped the conspirators,” Dane added. “Once he realized that they were going against the colony, he stopped them. That must be worth something. He could have done the same thing he’d been doing before, but he didn’t.”

“Good enough for me,” Thorson grumbled. “Now, if we can get things started, I’d like to take a nap later on if I can. It’s not every day you get whacked in the head by a surgical tray.”

“I’m glad I’m not in charge and don’t have to make these calls,” Nat Granger chimed in.

“What about the carcass?” Dane asked Thorson, more than willing to shift the conversation away from Winters’ presence. “Did we bring back enough of it to get something useful?”

“I’ve only just looked at the reports, but yes, it looks promising. We have people extracting it as we speak, and soon we’ll test it for quality and figure out the dosage. We’ll start on rats, but if the consistency is good, it should be fine on humans.”

“And you’re sure it’s enough?” Lev asked.

“What, are you in a hurry to hunt another fish?” Adams asked.

“I want give my team time to pray if that’s the case,” Lev deadpanned.

Everyone chuckled but Thorson.

“I don’t think we will run short for the doctor, but now there’s another choke point. The nanites themselves. We still have not figured out how to make them, and now we are running short. We’ll need to replicate our data with the rats, which means we might need more of them.”

“Why would you need more of the nanites?” Ginger asked.

“Long-term, we could use them as a weapon,” Lev suggested. “We inject ourselves with a working dose of our own vaccine, warp to Earth, implant ourselves with the Augmented nanites, then let the vaccine spread.”

“But there’s not enough for that. Not if I’m going to test this treatment.”

“But you have to test it,” Ginger claimed. “Otherwise, Carlos will still be in danger and can’t get out of the pod.”

“Carlos Alvarez is in charge of this vaccine?” Winters asked.

Dane nodded. “He understands it better than anyone else. He tried out his vaccine on himself, only for us to discover that when his cure breaks down the implant, it damages the brain.”

“Can’t have that,” Winters remarked.

“We’ll have to figure out another way to spread it, but we need Alvarez to figure this out, right? The fish goo won’t be enough?”

“Not for an entire planet, no,” Thorson admitted. “I think it will work on Dr. Alvarez. Like I said, I need to test it. But even if it does, there aren’t enough fish on this entire planet to implant every single person on Earth. Plus, there’s logistics. We can’t prick everyone with a needle.”

“We have to use Dr. Alvarez’s breakthrough to let the cure spread wirelessly,” Nat insisted. “It’s too strong of a solution to ignore.”

“I agree. Which means you should use what you need to get Carlos back in action, Dr. Thorson. We’ll find another way to spread the cure when it actually works without killing everyone.”

“Yes, sir,” Thorson responded.

Dane looked around the room. “Any other major advancements?”

“You mean compared to the one that will allow an entire planet of people to be freed with an update? No. I haven’t made any breakthroughs like that,” Nat exclaimed.

“Fair enough,” Dane chuckled. “Then I guess we can call it a meeting. Mr. Bell, would you stick around, though?”

“Of course,” Ron answered as everyone dismissed themselves or helped themselves to the coffee that Winters had made.

After it was only the two of them, Dane told the senator what his son had done and how he had ended up saving the day.

Ron was dismayed but not shocked. “It’s my fault. I should have been more present for him. I was always so wrapped up in work.”

“He made a mistake, but he fixed it. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come to me. We might not be having this meeting at all.”

“Winters doesn’t seem so bad,” Ron noted. He’d even cleaned the coffee station before excusing himself.

“Only because Liam was able to let me know what was happening. Seriously, I have no idea what would have happened without his help. You should be proud. He’s doing his best.”

“Well, I appreciate that, but let’s hope he’s learned his lesson, huh?”

Dane chuckled. “I’d like to think he has, but kids have a way of always taking one more step than we planned.”

Ron smiled, though he looked curious after a moment. “You don’t have kids, do you, Governor Dane?”

“Never had the opportunity,” Dane stated. “I signed up for the U.S. Space Force when I was pretty young. There were long deployments, and I always wanted to be there for any kid I’d have, so I never got serious about having a family.”

“That’s a shame. I think you’d be good at it.”

“Maybe if this all goes right, I can take the time to think about it again.”

Bell nodded. “A big if, but we can do it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dane insisted he wanted to be there when Carlos was woken up, but he was beginning to regret that decision. He had assumed that there would be blood, and he was prepared for that. He had been in more combat scenarios than he cared to count. Between the Augmented and the creatures of this world, Dane felt like he had seen gallons of blood.

There wasn’t any blood here, though. Only the smell of surgically sterile instruments and an uncomfortably bright pink goo in a syringe.

“Okay. When we open the pod, remember we only have a few seconds to get the mask on him. We don’t want to expose his lungs to the air of Homebase without going through the regular rejuvenation process.”

“We can’t do the regular process?” Ginger pleaded. Dane had not had a good reason to tell her not to come, but now he wished he had come up with something. Ginger Alvarez looked as nervous as Dane had ever seen her. He was thankful that Haley had volunteered to babysit the two Alvarez kids while Ginger was here. Dane didn’t think they would want to see their father like this.

He looked so frail inside the cryotube, like a wax facsimile of himself but without enough wax. Part of that was the cryopod process. Fluids were drained from the body and ran through the system inside the pod. That tended to make people look thinner. Carlos’ cheeks were so sunken they looked like they were hiding from his mustache.

“Not with the compound in his brain. It will cause tissue damage faster than we can get him out of there. This way, we’ll be able to forcibly get the compound to his brain without damaging him. Then we’ll wake him up.”

“Okay. If that’s what’s best,” Ginger drawled in her most disapproving voice.

“All right, here we go,” Thorson announced to his med techs, a mix of people from Alpha Centauri and Varuna.

They all nodded. Dane knew they had taken time to practice this more than once. They were only going to get one shot.

“Then we move,” Thorson announced.

One of the techs entered the override controls to the cryopod, and the lid slid open. Normally, there was an exchange of gasses, and the IV that ran into the back of the hand did something, but the tech had made the pod skip all that. Instead, the lid opened up, and a tech reached inside with a mask connected to a tank so Carlos would continue to get the same mix of gasses that were in the cryotube.

“Mask is secure.”

“Opening the lid all the way.”

When they opened it, the smell sent Dane back to his own time inside one of the tubes. It was both clinically sterile and intensely personal, though this tube smelled different from Dane’s since, instead of his body odor, it was Carlos’ mixing with the chemicals that kept his body in suspension. Simply smelling it made Dane sleepy. None of the techs seemed to suffer from that effect, but that made sense. They were all practically twitching with excitement. This was a medical procedure that had never been attempted before. This was history in the making, and failure would cost them no less than the freedom of the entire human race.

One of the techs swooped in and connected a slew of monitoring tools to Carlos, then retreated behind a tablet to make sure everything was going as it was supposed to. Another tech very carefully shaved three spots on the doctor’s scalp.

“Oh, just do it all,” Ginger ordered, and the tech complied, shaving Alvarez’s black hair down to the scalp.

Another tech was ready with a handheld vacuum to get all the hair out of the way.

Yet another tech was ready with alcohol swabs. She carefully cleaned three spots, then marked each of them with a surgical pen.

“What are his vitals?”

“Still steady.”

“We’re going to do this as fast as we can, but it’s still going to feel slow. Without his pulse pumping at the regular tempo, it’s going to take longer for the compound to spread through his brain,” Thorson informed them.

Then he injected some of the pink fluid into Alvarez’s brain.

Not much. Only a couple of milliliters, but still more than enough to make Ginger gasp.

“It’s all right. We have our smartest people working on him,” Dane assured her.

“I guess! Our smartest person is the patient!”

“I resent that,” Thorson grumbled. “Even if it’s true.”

“What now?” Dane asked.

“We’re monitoring vitals as well as checking his blood for trace elements of the molecule that forms when the implant is broken down.”

“Hasn’t dropped yet sir.”

“Good. It shouldn’t. We want a nice, slow transition.”

“I shouldn’t have come for this,” Ginger murmured.

“You can do this.” Dane took her by the arm. “Maybe we should step away and take a few deep breaths, though.”

Ginger nodded, dabbed a tear from her eye, and followed Dane through the rows of cryotubes.

“My father was in the army, you know,” Ginger told him. “That’s one of the reasons why I fell in love with Carlos. Well, besides his sense of humor.”

“I wasn’t aware that he was a veteran,” Dane remarked.

“Who? Carlos? He never served! That’s why I married him. I could never marry a man who would have to be gone on active duty. When I was a kid, it was too hard. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I would be so worried about my dad. I always worried he wouldn’t come home.”

“I’m sure he tried his best,” Dane assured her.

“He did until he didn’t. Just like that, one day, he stopped coming back. I liked that Carlos worked in a lab. I could always call him and see if he would be late. Not now. Not like this.”

Ginger glanced at Carlos at exactly the wrong moment.

Thorson took out the syringe and drove the point through Carlos’ skull to administer more of the compound.

“That needle is so small you can’t feel it. Even if you’re awake,” Dane told her, as if that would help.

Ginger looked away, her face pale.

Dane didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t any more useful to the surgical team than Ginger was, so he kept his distance. He tried to keep Ginger talking, about her kids, about the mental health of the colony, about what it might look like to free ten billion people from a shared consciousness.

“It won’t be easy,” Ginger warned. “It’s all going to depend on how much their own mind agrees with the Augmented. If there are people who completely align their values with the system, they could suffer heart attacks or specific kinds of mental damage. Those that are having the hardest time with the implants will likely do better.” Talking about her field of expertise seemed to soothe her, so Dane tried to keep her talking.

“Is there any way to make sure we cause as little shock as possible?”

Ginger sighed. “Ideally, we would tell them all that we’re going to take the entire system offline. That way, they’d all have some preparation.”

“But we can’t do that,” Dane insisted. “Our entire plan relies on taking them by surprise.”

Ginger nodded. “I know. It’s like this surgery. I understand getting rid of these things is the best choice, but it doesn’t mean I like the risks involved. What are we supposed to do, though? If we’re concerned about mental health, we can’t let a computer implant and a computer algorithm continue to control everyone’s mind.”

“But you think people will die?”

“Not as many as if we were using bombs, but yes. There will be casualties,” Ginger stated.

Dane nodded. He had known that, but God, it still felt like every choice was a bad one.

“Mrs. Alvarez?” Thorson asked.

“Yes?” Ginger’s voice shook with terror.

“No need to be so concerned, Mrs. Alvarez. As far as we can tell, everything went fine. The markers in his blood are dropping. We’re ready to wake him up. I wanted to let you know so you could be here with him if you want.”

“If I want? That’s why I’m here!”

“Sure. Just remember that when coming out of cryo, people often don’t remember everything. I only want to prepare you for the possibility that Carlos won’t remember you.”

“I’m his wife. He’ll recognize me fine,” Ginger insisted, though Dane thought she was bluffing.

Still, she walked directly over to the cryopod and took Carlos’ cold hand.

“Are we ready?” Thorson asked.

All the med techs assented.

“Very good. Start the procedure.”

Dane watched as the cryopod went to work. Normally all this happened behind glass. Seeing it work almost felt like looking behind a curtain at a magic show.

First, a slender robotic arm came out and connected to the needle going into Carlos’ hand. It scanned something, found what it wanted, then began pumping reddish fluid into Carlos.

“It’s filtering his blood from the compounds needed to keep him stable,” Thorson explained.

After a minute, the fluid was all dark red. The extra compounds were gone.

“That won’t take out the stuff you put in?” Ginger asked.

“Hopefully, it will,” Thorson corrected. “It should have bonded with everything we need, so it can be cleaned out now.”

“We shouldn’t have to do that, though,” one of the techs proposed.

“Not now, Dr. Brown,” Thorson said.

“I know, I know. I’m only saying the nanites should be able to do that.”

“I’m sure Alvarez will want to hear all about it, but not now,” Thorson snapped.

“We’re ready to remove his breathing mask,” a tech announced after consulting a tablet.

“Very good. Go ahead.”

The tech removed the breathing mask from Alvarez, revealing his mustache and sunken cheeks again.

“Oh, Carlos. We are going to have to fatten you up.” Though he already was looking healthier. His cheeks were regaining their color and a touch of their fullness. Dane started to wonder how much blood had really been stored inside that machine.

“Pulse and breathing are normal.”

“He should wake soon.”

Ginger squeezed his hand.

Then Carlos Alvarez opened his eyes. His pupils were wide at first. He tried to raise his free hand to block the light, but his eyes adjusted, and his arm fell back to the bed. Then he turned, and his eyes narrowed as he gazed upon Ginger’s face.

“Mi amor?” he asked.

“Oh, Carlos!” Ginger practically collapsed on top of him, squeezing his chest and peppering his cheeks with kisses.

“Easy, woman!” Thorson bellowed.

“Don’t talk to my wife that way,” Carlos warned, though he did sound like he was being crushed.

“Are you all right? Do you remember everything that happened?” Ginger asked.

“I remember you, mi amor. And our two little girls. They are safe?”

“They’re fine.”

“Then the rest will come.”

The couple embraced, and for a moment, all was right in the world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The next morning, Dane was both pleased and apprehensive to see a message from Carlos inviting him to his lab. He was glad that Alvarez was feeling better. They definitely needed him working at full capacity as soon as possible. However, he worried the doctor was moving too fast. Dane had dinner with Winters the night before to fill the man in. Winters was still foggy on a lot of details. He only hoped that Carlos wasn’t in the same shape as Winters since he hadn’t been in cryo as long.

Still, it wasn’t like he would be able to stay away from the lab that might solve all their problems. He hurried down there and was glad to see Carlos moving around as he always did when he arrived. Thorson was in the lab, too, tablet in hand and taking notes, as were two of the med techs who had helped with the procedure the day before.

“Hey. You called?” Dane asked when he entered.

“Indeed, yes!”

“Are you sure it’s time to be up and working already?”

“Claro que si!” Carlos replied, a smile twinkling below his mustache. Despite now having a shaved head, he still seemed like the same super-peppy, ever-optimistic Carlos Alvarez.

“I was asking Dr. Thorson, not you,” Dane told him.

Carlos put a hand to his chest in mock outrage, but he glanced at Thorson too.

Thorson smiled and begrudgingly nodded. “We’re still technically in a danger zone because he wasn’t under all that long, but all the indications we check for are looking good. I hate to admit it, but I think his work is helping his memories come back.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve missed much,” Alvarez stated. “Except for when we went to Earth. Did we really do that, Dane?”

“We really did.”

Carlos shook his head. “I think… I think those memories do not want to come back, entiendes? Every time I think about Earth, I do not think pleasant things.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Dane told him. “But don’t worry about that now. Right, Dr. Thorson?”

“I don’t want you pushing anything,” Dr. Thorson ordered. “I’d prefer you to be resting right now, but I think this is as close as we’re going to get.”

“I get anxiety when I’m not working,” Alvarez declared, though he winked at Dane as he spoke.

“So you’re saying it’s impossible for you not to go overboard, huh?” Dane inquired.

Carlos shrugged happily, then buzzed off to look over one of the med tech’s shoulders at a readout.

“Ginger and I have been taking turns to make sure he’s doing all right. She said she got him to sleep last night, though I didn’t ask her for the details,” Thorson reported.

Dane had seen how Ginger had looked at Carlos when he remembered her. He had a pretty good idea of how she would have made sure Carlos passed out and rested peacefully.

“He’s been fine since coming into work, then?”

“He has.”

Dane nodded. “Then I’m going to go out on a limb and guess he contacted me for something else? I can’t imagine Carlos wanting more people down here watching him when he’s feeling fine.”

“That’s right,” Thorson told him. “We’ve been going over the serum I made from the BDF.”

“It’s working, though? On Carlos, I mean.” Dane had visions of the fish brain juice turning out to be poison and Carlos passing out. A dire thought, especially since it would effectively mean the end of their ability to fight back against the Augmented.

“Definitely working. The testing pool is only one person and some rats, but if anything, I’d say that it worked better than expected. I think it helped rejuvenate the entire central nervous system.”

“But we still can’t use it on an entire population.”

“Right. Not enough of it, too hard to administer.”

“It’s not the only solution!” One of the med techs complained.

“I’m getting to that!” Thorson shot back.

Dane realized he recognized the tech as the man that Thorson had called Dr. Brown.

“You have another solution?”

Thorson sighed, obviously annoyed about being interrupted. Still, he was professional, and obviously, Brown had something to say. “This is Dr. Lucas Brown. He was a research scientist in Alpha Centauri.”

“I specialized in nanotechnology,” Dr. Brown elaborated.

“Oh, then you must have helped Dr. Alvarez with his vaccine idea,” Dane remarked.

Brown nodded, obviously pleased to have his work recognized. “He made the breakthrough, but I helped with the code, yes.”

“We’re very lucky to have you.”

“You don’t know the half of it. It’s lucky I’m here at all. I wasn’t supposed to be on the defense platform when it was attacked. It was stroke of luck upon stroke of luck that I made it to this solar system.”

“Well, thank you for coming here and working.”

“It’s no problem. I’ve always been interested in nanotechnology. Before the Augmented had shown up, I ran my own lab. I would have still been there if Ron Bell hadn’t conscripted me to come and work on the defense platform.”

“To work with nanites?” Dane asked, half to be polite and half because he had a feeling this was going somewhere.

“To see how they would function in microgravity. They were originally designed to work on Earth, so they use many of the same cues to navigate as we do. At least, our health ones did. The Augmented found a way around that. I was working on getting our health nanites to do the same thing. Everything is different in space, you understand. Temperatures. Pressures. Hostile environment.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It wasn’t what I was originally interested in, though. Using nanites to repair the human body is obviously useful, of course, but I wanted to know what else could be done.”

“Uh-huh…” Dane was starting to get serious mad scientist vibes from Dr. Brown. The way he talked about his work was almost frantic. Dane still wondered where it was going, though he saw why a man like Brown would be interested in the Augmented problem. Their implants consisted of thousands of nanites working together.

“I was most interested in what nanites could make. For example, they could repair bones, but could you use them to strengthen bones that were not damaged? Could you use them to make new muscles, for example? Or to build more rods and cones in the eyes to allow us to see that which had previously eluded us? There were so many options, you see!”

“Until the Augmented arrived,” the other Centauri scientist reported.

Dr. Brown’s expression curdled. “When the Augmented arrived, my work was seen as irrelevant. The Augmented had taken it as far as it could be taken, or so my colleagues thought. Better to work on improving our health nanites than make tools the Augmented had already abused.”

Dane nodded, though he saw how that might have been a mistake. “But the Augmented don’t use them to change the human body beyond creating the implant.”

“Exactly!” Dr. Brown seemed ecstatic to have a fellow forward thinker. “But I did not argue at the time. I saw the danger of the Augmented coming and taking my research. If I did make a breakthrough that allowed controlled muscle growth, for example, they could take that code from my head. Not worth the risk.”

“So you stopped your research.”

Dr. Brown nodded. “Shut down my entire lab and tried to forget all about it. I hadn’t thought much of it until this serum that Dr. Thorson devised.”

“Is that right?” Dane felt like he had been struck by lightning. What was Dr. Brown proposing?

“Some of the earlier work in the lab had been focused on creating long-chain molecules. We were successful, but there were no immediately viable applications when the war came. But now! Now that’s all different.”

Dane blinked. He had obviously missed something. He turned to Dr. Thorson and raised an eyebrow.

“The compound from the BDF is an assortment of long-chain molecules. Dr. Brown thinks he can tweak the code of Dr. Alvarez’s vaccine so the nanites will create those compounds at the same time they’re destroying the implant.”

Dane felt a smile start to grow. “This is exactly what we need! Why didn’t you think of this sooner? Is it ready yet?”

Dr. Brown no longer looked excited, though. He looked deflated. “I wish I had thought of it sooner, but we didn’t know that the implants could be broken down until Alvarez figured out how.”

“It was a team effort,” Alvarez claimed with false modesty.

“It was only then the toxic compounds were discovered.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over that. We can win this thing! How long until you put the code in and we test it?”

Dr. Brown bit his lip and looked from Dane to Thorson. “We’re talking about thousands of lines of code. I can’t remember them, not even kind of, plus they will need to be different to work with Dr. Alvarez’s design.”

“How long will it take?” Dane asked. They could hold off the Augmented again if they needed to.

“Months. Maybe a year. Unless I can get my research.”

“Your research. That was back in your lab, on Alpha Centauri?” Dane saw why Brown was no longer excited. “Your research that the Augmented surely have by now?”

Dane slumped into a chair. This was worse than no breakthrough at all. If the Augmented had all that information, they could likely devise a vaccine for a vaccine.

“I doubt they have it,” Dr. Brown professed.

“Don’t mess with me, Doctor,” Dane told him. “It’s been months since the Augmented invaded. They would surely have gotten it already.”

“It’s possible,” Dr. Brown admitted. “But unlikely. I was rather…isolated in my opinions. Many of my colleagues did not see the breakthroughs like I did. There were rumors of the Augmented before they became a threat, you see, and some of my peers thought my work was a danger. I was shut down long before the Augmented arrived.”

“Still, they would have found the lab.”

“Again. Possible but unlikely. It was on the Desert as a precaution in case the nanites got out. It was utterly locked down. And it’s not like the code would be relevant to them. It can be used to protect the brain from the compounds that the implants create when they break down, but why would they be interested in that? They don’t even know we have a way to break down the implants, correct?”

Dane nodded. They were still working under that assumption. They had seen no scouts or any indication the Augmented had gotten anyone out of the system when the vaccine spread through the invaders. “We’d have to go there, get the tech, and get out. That wouldn’t leave us a lot of time.”

“We wouldn’t need it,” Dr. Brown claimed. “I would only need to copy the code over and make a few tweaks. You get me there, and I could have it done in less than an hour.”

“Getting you there will be the hard part, though. We also don’t know if the Augmented have looked at the research yet. I’ll have to talk to Bell and MacTaggart and see what they think…but if the timeline you’re talking about is accurate, it sounds like it might be our best option.”

“If that timeline is accurate, it’s our best option.” MacTaggart grunted. Despite having his ship destroyed when the Augmented invaded, the Centauri captain was as gruff as ever. Too bad his sideburns had been damaged in the battle. He looked rather odd clean shaven. Dane wanted to say that he had been thinking the exact same thing, but instead, he looked at Ron Bell.

“There’s a risk they found that lab, but I don’t know why they would pursue it. There were protocols in place about what to do if we were invaded. Factories rigged to self-destruct, computer code designed to delete itself to protect any survivors from our own weapons. I know they were not completely successful because we failed to anticipate the sleeper cell Augmented, but some were still enacted.”

“Would any of those systems have applied to this lab on the Desert?”

Douglas rubbed his chin, thinking. “I don’t think so. Dr. Brown was…particular about his research. Always saw more than the rest of us did. I never heard any orders for him to shut it all down, and I don’t think he would have volunteered them.”

“Considering it’s his idea, I think we can be pretty sure he didn’t implement any such sequence,” Dane assured him.

“Then we go for it!” MacTaggart remarked. “We ride in, take what we need, and unleash holy hell on them!”

“It won’t be that simple,” Dane contended. “They’ll see us drop out of warp and come for us.”

“Aye. We’ll need a distraction, ya ken,” MacTaggart professed. “And I’m the man for the job.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There were no easy decisions with this job, and yet Dane didn’t want to make this one, either. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time. They needed to act as soon as possible. Every hour they delayed was more time that the Augmented could prepare an invading force. Every minute was another minute for them to drop another scout into the solar system of Teegarden’s star.

Dane knew he needed to decide, so naturally, he went for a run.

About two kilometers in, he found himself near the passage leading to the crystal cavern. He checked the time. Unless he was mistaken, Haley was probably in there right now.

He turned down the passageway, running through yet more of the destruction from the invasion. He reached the end of the transparent tunnel and entered the cavern. Some of the Augmented had tried to come in here during the invasion, yet you couldn’t tell from looking at it. It was as wondrous as ever. Though Dane always felt that way when he saw Haley working with the nessies.

The crystals were amazing, spectacular formations that must have taken thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years to form. And yet, compared to watching Haley work with the alien creatures she had practically trained by herself, it was only a setting. A backdrop that somehow did her some of the justice she deserved.

“Hey,” Dane greeted, rather than saying any of the thoughts that had been going through his head.

“Uh-oh. I know that ‘hey.’ That’s the ‘George Dane is on the cusp of an important decision and needs to talk it out before he decides’ hey.”

Dane grinned. “Am I that predictable?”

“You realize I’m practically one of the mile markers on your run at this point, right?”

“Maybe we can go for a swim instead?” Dane requested.

“Gladly.”

Dane went over to their storage area, put on a wetsuit, then grabbed a harness off the wall for Agus. He had ridden the nessies enough times that he knew how to strap it on. It was a soothing process. Being in the water against the mighty beast, pushing up against its oddly rough scales, feeling its flippers churn the water in excitement.

“Have they been okay, even after all the wreckage? Has feeding them been working?”

Haley nodded. “I know the area right around Homebase has been decimated, but it’s not as bad farther out.”

“Sounds good. I could use some perspective.”

They each straddled a nessie, then Haley patted Isla, giving her the cue to head out through the aquatic entrance to the crystal cave.

They left the crystal cave, and the destruction of the battle immediately greeted them. It was so damned bleak. Wrecked subs, spilled fuel, and broken zingers as far as the eye could see.

“So what’s the decision you have to make?” Haley asked.

“We have a vaccine. In theory, we can jump to Earth, have someone get injected by the nanites, and it will spread through the entire system.”

“And the problem with that solution?”

“It’ll make all this look like an amusement park.” Dane gestured to the battlefield. “It will kill every single human being on Earth. We would be free, but our home planet would be littered with the dead. I don’t think it’s an option. It would be worse than anything any human has ever done before.”

“And the alternative is what, to let them invade us and figure out we have a vaccine? We might survive another round, but then surely they’d figure out how to beat it.”

“That’s one plan, but there’s a doctor from Centauri, Lucas Brown. He has code that he can use to stop the implants from breaking down and killing people.”

“Well, that sounds pretty good!”

“The only problem is the code he needs is in a lab on the Desert.”

“The second planet in the Alpha Centauri system?”

“The very same.”

The nessies did not wish to linger over the broken spacecraft and subs, so they hurried on. Dane and Haley held on to their harnesses as the nessies passed from one valley into the next. There were still broken pieces of spaceships here, but not quite as many. A few colonies of zingers still stood, and clumps of kelp clung here and there. It was not as healthy or vibrant as it had been, but it was alive. Dane could almost imagine what it would look like in ten years. Would the wildlife move into the subs? Would zingers cover their surface?

Haley gigged the nessies onward. There were a few fish here, but not many.

“Better to leave the creatures in this valley alone. Let them regenerate the ecosystem. We can hunt in the next one,” Haley explained. Dane wondered if she was talking to him or the nessies. He had long since given up on the notion that the aquatic predators were not intelligent. They might not be able to understand English, but for all he knew, they could understand the tone of Haley’s voice.

“So your choice is to wait for them to beat us, do this mission to get this code, or kill every person who’s not us?”

Dane snorted. “When you put it like that, there’s not much of a choice. I guess if they come to attack us, we could send a ship to Earth and unleash it. Even then, we could hardly count it as self-defense.”

“You’ve sacrificed lives before.”

“I know. I dropped rocks on cities. It was awful, but it wouldn’t be anything like this. I can’t order this vaccine release unless we know it won’t kill them.”

“I know you can’t. You couldn’t even let the invaders die. You put them all in cryo instead.”

They passed into the next valley. This one was almost completely untouched. There was a fuselage tucked in, but already, a school of shrimp-like creatures were using it for a shelter. Haley changed her grip on the nessie, and Isla slowed down. Agus followed his sister’s example. Dane realized Haley had subtly given them a command to hunt, but instead of going directly for the food, the pair of nessies were content to explore. Agus towed Dane into a deliciously slow backflip that turned the seafloor into a multicolored roof above his head.

Agus leveled out and fell into line behind a tentacled creature that had somehow failed to notice the massive yet graceful predator. The nessie increased the speed of four of his fins, caught up to the mess of tentacles, and chomped them with as much relish as a kid eating a hotdog.

Dane couldn’t let this world be turned into a battleground, but it was more than that. He knew surrender was an option. He could send an emissary and say they wanted to be implanted, and the Augmented would likely go for it. Even after all that both sides had been through. He could continue to swim in this ocean world. He and the other colonists could live out their lives here.

Except it wouldn’t be their own lives.

No one would experience any of these places for themselves. Instead, they would download the experiences from someone else. If they tried to do it for themselves, a hundred other people would be in their minds to do it with them. Was that living? Was that the future of humankind?

Dane didn’t want it to be. He didn’t want ten billion people to have access to his every thought. He wanted to make his own mistakes, to hear his friends tell stories and not already know how they would end. He wanted those things for him, for the other colonists, and for generations to come. He wanted the Alvarez girls to grow up with a sense of wonder, to do things without their parents watching every move. He wanted that future for everyone. Maybe even his own kids, if that ever happened.

He looked at Haley as this last thought occurred. Could he ask her to fight another battle with terrible odds simply because he held allegiance to an idea as vague as freedom? Could he ask the entire colony to risk their lives yet again?

“So I guess we have to do this mission,” Haley proclaimed.

Dane smirked inside his mask. Of course he wouldn’t have to ask Haley, of all people. She was the consummate explorer, always after something new, some great adventure. Even in the midst of an interplanetary war, she still found time to explore with these nessies.

What about the Alvarezes? Would he have to ask them? Carlos had come out of his cryotube and started work the next day. Ginger had not so much as asked him to slow down. Dane felt like he knew what kind of future they wanted for their daughters.

Even Winters, who had only recently woken up, was opposed to the Augmented. The Centauri would be mortified if Dane even offered the possibility of not trying to defeat the force that had taken their home from them. Plus, if this crazy idea worked, then the people of Alpha Centauri would be freed along with the people of Earth. They’d have to go to Earth first, but if it worked, they could take it to Alpha Centauri.

“I think we do, yeah,” Dane confirmed as Agus chased off after another fish. He held tight, letting the nessie pull him as he talked with Haley over the radio. He loved how close she sounded to him when they communicated like this. It was like she was whispering in his ear.

“But there’s risks,” Haley noted.

“There’s always risks,” Dane agreed. “Though this mission seems to carry a particularly high amount. If we get to this lab and the team is captured and Augmented, they’ll know exactly what we’re doing. If that happens, they’ll find a way to stop it. We can’t pretend like they’re not as smart as us.”

“That’s true. And if Carlos went, or anyone else with the vaccine, it could set off a chain reaction, and they could die, right?”

“That’s right, yeah. We’ll have to time it carefully. We’ll need to get the update up and running before anyone gets us. But if we get captured and have it in us, that could work.”

“That’s the best plan,” Haley agreed. “If you show up already implanted, they’ll be suspicious. Better to have the vaccine nanites in your system first, so when they get you, they implant you themselves.”

“Ugh,” Dane didn’t like the sound of that. “Sometimes I wish we could just shoot it out.”

“I know that, honey. And you’ve had your firefights, but now it’s time for the scientists to do their thing.”

“I guess I can do that.”

“Good, because I don’t think this choice of yours is really a choice. We have to do this, Dane. This is it. Our last shot. Either we win, or we join the Augmented.”

“Then we pull out all the stops and win.”

“I guess that means this is our last swim together for a while, then?” Haley questioned.

“I guess so,” Dane affirmed.

“Then we better make it count.”

Haley tapped Isla, and the nessie took off, her six fins churning the water so fast that a nearby fish got sucked into her backdraft.

Agus released a yip that Dane felt in his chest and chased after his sister. Haley gave a command, and Isla turned, zipping overhead while Agus struggled to change direction and catch her. Dane only grinned and tried to hang on. Faster and faster, the siblings swam, playing the same game Dane had seen every kid and animal on Earth engage in. They switched between being predator and prey, hunter and hunted as they tried to tag each other on a fin, then race off without being tagged.

By the time they were done, Dane’s abdomen hurt from laughing so hard. Haley ordered Isla back to base. Agus followed, swimming more slowly and relaxed now.

Dane felt like a weight had been lifted. As usual, Haley had put everything in perspective for him. She knew the option to do anything but try to fight was a false one. Dane would lead his people to victory so that one day, more people could come and swim with the nessies and be as shocked and delighted by the surprise of it as today.

Some things were worth fighting for, and a sense of wonder had to be one of them.

They returned to the crystal cavern and took off their SCUBA suits, lingering before they got dry. It might be their last moment together like this before their next plan heated up and took them to another world. Dane was glad to spend it here, in this beautiful place, with this beautiful woman.

Though he might have liked it more if the nessies weren’t watching.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Apparently, it’s our last chance.”

“Apparently? What other choice is there?”

“We could hide out. Move to another spot on the planet.”

“That’s no choice. That’s only a delay.”

“Still, it’s an option.”

“No, it’s not!” Liam Bell stood and accidentally flipped his tray of food onto the two people who had been doing nothing more than having a conversation.

“Excuse me?” the woman who was now covered in kelp protein and Varuna’s version of ketchup expressed.

“You need to apologize to her,” her partner added. He had escaped most of the sauce landing on him, though there was a speck of it on his cheek that he did not seem to have noticed. He didn’t sound all that sure, though. Liam realized he must look like a crazy person.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

He turned and walked from the cafeteria. He wasn’t actually sorry about eavesdropping. There were less than two thousand people on all of Varuna. If there was ever a world to gossip, it was this one. Practically everyone on the planet was only a few degrees away from everyone else. And there was a new rumor going around.

A week ago, Liam would have been able to ask the group of conspirators what everyone in the colony was talking about, but since cutting ties with them, he was more isolated than he had been since coming to Varuna. Not that he necessarily minded. Liam was coming to realize his father had been right. He had picked some bad groups of friends. He wanted to be more careful next time.

If there was a next time.

Given what Liam had finally put together from snatches of conversation stolen from the cafeteria or people chatting in the hallways as they headed to work, this was not the time to be careful. Dane was putting together a mission to return to Alpha Centauri.

Liam wanted to be part of it.

He knew his father didn’t approve of him using his position as the son of a senator to get what he wanted, and Liam mostly tried to live by that. Yet in this situation, he was more than willing to use his family to get what he wanted.

He walked into his dad’s office unannounced.

“I want to help with the mission to Alpha Centauri,” he proclaimed without preamble.

His father had always been good at hiding his emotions, but not from his own son. Liam recognized the twitch of a frown that was supposed to hide a smile and the way his eyebrows scooted up in surprise.

Ron sighed. “How did you find out about this?”

“So it’s true, then?” Liam continued.

Ron smirked at that. “I guess I should have played that closer to the chest, but you’ve always been able to read me. It’s classified, though, so I need to know how you know.”

Liam snorted. “We’re not on Alpha Centauri anymore, Dad. Everyone on this planet knows everyone else. I put it together. One of the captured ships is being outfitted for a longer voyage. I know that because all the food handlers have been complaining about having to load it up. Also, the work on salvaging the subs outside has pretty much stopped. That has to mean there’s a plan to do something besides wait for the Augmented to come back.”

“Pretty astute.”

Liam flushed. “I’d heard all that, but then I heard a soldier from MacTaggart’s ship talking about it in the cafeteria. He wasn’t being very subtle.”

“He was telling a group of people?”

“Only his wife.”

Ron nodded. “I guess that’s to be expected. With so few people, pretty much everyone has clearance for most intel.”

“Everyone but me. I should have been told about this, Dad! I can help!”

“You’re not going to Alpha Centauri if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why not? It’s my home.”

“It’s the home of nearly a thousand people here on Varuna. We’re not sending everyone that’s feeling homesick.”

“If you’re going to sneak the vaccine in, we’re going to need to get someone Augmented. I’m the perfect choice.”

“I… You… How did you know that?” Ron asked.

“Everyone on the colony knows about the Augmented vaccine. When it was released, they stopped attacking. Not exactly hard to figure that one out, even though it’s still classified. You must have figured out how to stop people from dying from it because Dr. Alvarez is awake again. I don’t know if your plan is to take the cure to Alpha Centauri first, but my guess is something is still missing. You need something there, don’t you? Something to make the implant work better. If you need to get someone on the station, I can help! They’ll recognize you, but they’ll see me as an ally.”

Ron smiled. “You were always such a smart lad. Yes, the plan is to go to Alpha Centauri. There’s a lab on the Desert that has something we can use. We want to retrieve it.”

“That makes more sense than going to the station above Alpha Central.”

“Well, I’m glad you approve of our war plans.”

“I want to go with you.”

“That’s impossible.”

“You’re the last surviving member of the Alpha Centauri government! If you tell Governor Dane you want me to go, he’ll listen.”

“That’s technically correct, but we’re not beholden to the laws of that government here. This is Varuna, which means we respect the customs of these people.”

“But Dad—”

“But nothing. The real reason you can’t go with me is because I’m not going.”

“I’m just as—wait. You’re not?”

“Someone has to stay behind and handle the administration of Varuna.”

“Shouldn’t that be the governor?”

Ron smirked. “Everyone is in short supply on this world, even pilots. He’s the best they have, and this mission is likely going to need better than that, so he’s got to go.”

“But you know Alpha Centauri better than anyone! You practically built the defense system above Alpha Central!”

“I know, but the fact is that that didn’t do us a whole lot of good when the Augmented invaded.”

Liam felt a profound sense of shame wash over him. The reason that the orbital defense platform had not withstood the attack was because of him. He had been talking with a sleeper cell of Augmented and had told them more than they had any right to know. He didn’t give them access codes, but he had almost certainly told them who else had possessed those codes. For a group of people with brain implant technology, it wasn’t all that hard to get intelligence out of someone. Liam had naively believed that the Augmented would not forcibly implant someone, but he knew better than that now.

“I’ll be staying here with Winters to help.”

Another of Liam’s mistakes.

His dad noticed his discomfort, though. “Taking Winters out of cryo turned out to be the right call. You shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

“I shouldn’t have done any of it in secret, though.”

“Is that why you brought me what you’ve learned instead of trying to sneak aboard the ship headed there?”

Liam felt his face go hot. The thought had crossed his mind!

“I know I haven’t been the best son.”

“That’s not what this is about. This is about what we do to win this war. You’ve proven to me that you’ve grown up. You’ve made some mistakes, but you’ve worked to fix them. But you need to know that you don’t need to do this. You have more than proven yourself. Winters joining us proves that. Your help in the war proved that. I know that you have a good heart, Liam.”

“That’s more than I deserve…” Liam muttered. “But like you said, this isn’t about that. We’re only going to get one chance at this. If the Augmented realize we’ve found a way to destroy their implants wirelessly, they’ll find a way to block it. They’re smart. If it doesn’t get all of them, they’ll find out how to stop it. They’re better at working together than we are. We can’t give them a chance to undo our work.”

“And we won’t. I don’t know where you’ve heard what you’ve heard, but we have a very strong team on this.”

“And what about the other team? The team for Earth?”

His dad smiled and raised an eyebrow. “You might need to check your sources. There’s no team for Earth.”

“There’s got to be!”

“There will be,” Liam’s dad told him. “We think starting with Alpha Centauri is a better plan, though. The people haven’t been Augmented as long, so if they’re freed, they’ll hopefully bounce back quicker than the people of Earth will. Plus, they’ll be a useful ally against Earth. We’re hoping that we can warp in and get one of our people who has the vaccine to be Augmented, but there could be problems. We don’t anticipate as many at Alpha Centauri, even though there are two planets. It wouldn’t make sense to start with Earth. Too big a risk and too many unknowns.”

“Yeah, I get that. But the vaccine has to hit both systems at the same time.”

His dad frowned, obviously having overlooked what Liam was talking about. “I know there’s a risk of people getting out of the system and heading to Earth, but we’re trying to account for that.”

“When the Augmented took over Alpha Centauri, they captured pretty much all our technology, right? I mean, they didn’t outright destroy everything,” Liam pointed out. To him, this was all obvious. Had his father really not come to the same conclusions?

“We’re not certain since we haven’t been back to the system. Given what we saw on the surface of Alpha Central and the orbital defense platform, though, we should assume they have access to everything we built. That’s one of the reasons we want to start there. Much of that tech was designed specifically to defend from and lead offensives against the Augmented. Is there a technology they showed particular interest in when they were talking to you?”

“No. Nothing like that. I’m thinking about the perimeter defense system.”

“That was a top-level government secret. You wouldn’t have told anyone about that. Right, son?”

It warmed Liam’s heart that his dad did not think he would have betrayed that secret, though it was also frustrating his dad still hadn’t seen it.

“If they got any of the top-level government officials, they would have discovered that tech. There were a lot of those buoys on the edge of the solar system, and it’s not like they would have vanished. Every one of them had to have the quantum link technology, right?”

His dad’s eyebrows knitted together. “We’re planning on moving around enough in the system that those buoys shouldn’t give them too much of an advantage. They still have to move through warp. It’s not like they can send anything through warp at the instantaneous rate of quantum tech.”

“What about sending a message to Earth?” Liam asked.

Ron’s jaw and eyebrows tried to escape his face at the same time in opposite directions.

“Oh no. Oh, goddamn it. We never tried to use that tech to communicate between solar systems. There was no need. We had no allies.”

“Will it work?” Liam asked.

Ron shrugged but nodded as he did. “There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t. Quantum entanglement is the same anywhere in the universe. That’s why it works. If they found that tech, and we have to assume they have, they’ll certainly have put it to use communicating between worlds. It’s too big of an advantage to ignore.”

“So it’s possible they could use quantum entanglement for one system to warn the other?”

Ron nodded faster. “I doubt they could send much information, but they surely have had enough time to devise a simple code on either end, so they can send brief, important messages.”

“And an invasion of any kind is definitely going to count.”

“We can’t be certain they’ve actually got it working, but we must assume they have.”

“Which means two missions,” Liam surmised.

Ron’s eyebrows furrowed even deeper in thought. After a moment, he nodded again. “I think… I think you’re right. We’ll have to talk to Dane about it, but it’s a risk I don’t think we can ignore.”

“Then I want to be on the team that goes to Alpha Centauri.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Dane was not exactly pleased to see Liam arrive in his office. He knew he could trust him now, that the whole colony was in this kid’s debt for him preventing a potential civil war, but he couldn’t help but feel like problems followed Liam around. His father accompanying him did not dispel Dane of this assumption.

“Mr. Bell.”

“Governor, we have a problem.”

“Add it to the list. Can it wait until after our mission?” Dane had a feeling Liam knew all about the mission already, but he wasn’t about to reveal those details until the kid did.

“Not if we want the mission to be successful.”

“The missions,” Liam added, accentuating the plural in a way Dane did not like.

“The problem is so simple I overlooked it. On Alpha Centauri, we developed a basic quantum entanglement communication technology. We couldn’t send much data. Not even words, really. We could communicate faster than the speed of light, though.”

“Faster than warp, you mean?” Dane inquired.

Ron nodded. “As far as we could tell, it was instantaneous communication.”

There came a pregnant pause in the conversation that Dane was in no hurry to fill. The two Bells looked at each other with the same nervous expression on their faces.

“I’m waiting for the part when you tell me it would never work between separate solar systems,” Dane admitted.

“As far as I know, it can,” Ron imparted heavily. “We never tested it, but there’s no reason to assume the Augmented won’t try exactly that.”

“It would be a huge advantage.” Dane cursed colorfully enough to make both father and son wince. “Do you have a plan besides separate missions to separate systems?” Dane asked.

“We do not,” Ron admitted.

“But I’m willing to go to the Centauri system and lead the mission there!” Liam exclaimed.

Dane nodded, looking at the kid, wondering how many times he’d have to save all their butts before Dane saw him differently than how he had when they first met. “That’s not an option,” he replied.

“But—”

“We’re not sending two separate missions to these two places. Period. Especially if they have this quantum communication technology, we can’t afford to leave Varuna undefended. I won’t empty out this system for a plan that has no guarantees. We still need to go to the Alpha Centauri system to get the code. Now I guess we’ll have to go back.”

“To drop someone off in hopes that they get implanted?” Liam asked incredulously. “That’s way too suspicious. They won’t believe that.”

“What other option is there?” Dane replied in a rhetorical tone.

“When you go to Alpha Centauri, I’ll come with, then get out in a shuttle. I’ll bide my time until you reach Earth. Then I’ll go to them and ask to be implanted.”

“No. No, this is suicide,” Dane insisted.

“I thought so too at first, but Liam’s right. We need to assume that they have quantum communication, and we need to hit both places at once.”

“And you think your son is the man to lead an expedition of this magnitude?” Dane asked.

“Of course not,” Ron was quick to say.

“I’m the only choice,” Liam proclaimed.

Ron drew a deep breath to calm his nerves.

“You are all the family I have left, Liam. You can’t leave me.”

“And if the Augmented attack, what happens then?” Liam asked.

“That’s completely different!”

“No, Dad, it’s not. I know them. I used to think I knew them, but now I really do. They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to leave us alone. They are going to come and keep coming until every single one of us is Augmented. The only way to protect ourselves is with this vaccine.”

“But there’s no reason you need to be part of this mission,” Dane contended.

“There’s every reason!”

“No. There’s not. You’re a kid. No offense, but we all have more experience than you. I know you had a revelation recently, but that doesn’t mean you have the experience that we need. I have trained soldiers, security experts, and a dozen other professionals to choose from. You’re not the right pick for this, kid. Sorry.”

“Okay, but let me get this straight. For the vaccine to work, you inject it into one of us. Then when the Augmented put in their nanites, and the implant is built, it communicates the vaccine code to other people.”

Dane clenched his jaw. He didn’t like to be spoken to in this way, but the kid had the right of it. “Pretty much, yes. Someone needs to have the vaccine before they’re implanted.”

“Then it’s got to be me.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Ron broke in.

“Yes, it does, Dad. How else is this supposed to work? You’re going to go to Alpha Centauri, drop someone off, then go to Earth and drop someone else off? They would be suspicious!”

“But not of you,” Dane remarked, understanding what Liam was saying.

“Exactly! I was their inside man. I helped them get onto Alpha Centauri. I think… Dad, I’m sorry, but I think I introduced them to the person who got the access codes to the defense platform.”

Ron's face was wild with shock and disappointment.

Dane was sure the other man’s emotions were roiling, but he didn’t have time for sympathy. If the Augmented had this quantum entanglement tech, they needed a plan that addressed it. And it seemed like Liam had already thought one through. Dane was not yet convinced that the kid would be the right person for the job, but he might as well listen to what he had to say.

“But you ran away,” Dane remarked, pointing out the obvious problem with the plan.

“But they don’t know why. Plus, from their perspective, I did what I was supposed to do. The nanites were released into the water supply. That was my job, and it got done.”

“You left, though. They know you’ve been hiding out here.”

“They might. Or they could think I’m dead. It was chaos down there.”

“But if you show up, they’ll know.”

“They also know my father was in the House of Lords,” Liam continued, undeterred. “They would not be surprised to learn he escaped and took his son with him.”

“They would have expected you to stay, though,” Dane added. Ron was still coming to terms with all this, though he was listening, considering his son’s points.

“Maybe. But it was chaotic, and they promised me there would be no violence. I was always interested in that. That was why I talked with them. I thought there wouldn’t be any violence.”

“So you were scared, and your daddy got you out,” Dane summarized, nodding. “It could work, but how do you explain how you got back?”

“That you sent a scouting mission, and I stowed away. That I didn’t like it on Varuna and realized that the Augmented were right.”

Dane chewed the inside of his cheek. “It’s risky.”

“It’s the least risky thing we can do! I know how they think. I can convince them that I came back because I wanted to.”

“I don’t want you near this,” Ron insisted.

“It’s already here, Dad. There was never any chance of that. Everyone on both planets in Alpha Centauri has been preparing for this their entire lives. I thought there was another way, but I was wrong. I should have listened to you. I should have known better, but I didn’t, and now I messed everything up. I need to do this. I need to be part of the solution, and this is the way I can help the most.”

“Your guilt is not a reason to do this,” Dane told him.

“I know it’s not. It’s only an added benefit. Believe me, I know I don’t deserve to feel better about myself after what I did.”

“That’s not what he meant,” Ron claimed. Dane didn’t argue, even though it was pretty much what he meant.

“Still, that’s not why I want to do this. Or not the only reason, anyway. I want to because I’m the only person who can make this work. I’m from Alpha Centauri. I worked with the Augmented. I’m the perfect pick. I’ll be able to get implanted easier than whoever goes to Earth.”

“Maybe,” Dane admitted. “But there’s more to it. You’ve already done plenty to redeem yourself. You don’t need to do this too.”

“But I do. There’s only two thousand free people left in the whole universe. Everyone else is part of the Augmented because of me. If you do this mission without me, and it fails, I won’t be able to live with myself. That won’t matter, though. Because if this fails, I won’t be me for much longer. I know I’m young compared to both of you, but staying on Varuna doesn’t mean I’ll get to finish growing up. If I stay on Varuna and whoever goes to Alpha Centauri in my place fails, I’ll end up implanted along with everyone else here. If this mission fails, we lose. Which means it doesn’t matter how old I am or whose son I am, or anything else. All that matters is that you pick the very best person for this mission. And that’s me.”

Dane looked at Ron, who was rubbing his chin and staring at Dane’s desk. His eyes jumped back and forth, looking for some other solution that wasn’t there. Finally, he looked up and found Dane’s eyes. “Liam will probably attempt to go over my head if I say no or try to stow away. I don’t like it, but he’s right. Unless we can think of someone better, he makes sense.”

“Thank you!” Liam cried triumphantly.

“It’s not up to me, though. It’s the governor’s mission.”

Liam turned to face Dane.

“If I agree to let you come, you won’t be skipping any ranks. You’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole. That means you listen to every order I give you, plus any order that comes from everyone else. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, sir, not at all!”

Dane nodded. “You follow orders instantly and without question. I’ll want your input on how the Augmented think, but when I make up my mind, you obey.”

“Yes, sir!”

Dane drew a deep breath, then nodded. “Fine. You’re on the team.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“You’re sure you want to come?” Dane asked Haley. He knew he needed to stop asking. They were already on the warship.

“Of course I’m sure! I’m not letting you take off. Especially not now…”

Dane nodded, thinking about all that Liam had said a few days ago. There wasn’t a safe place for people anymore. Still…

“I guess I’m surprised you’re willing to leave your iron sphere battle station of doom behind,” Dane teased.

“Oh, I’m not looking forward to traveling in a spaceship that can actually be destroyed by missiles. Though not needing to wear a spacesuit is a perk. Besides, you couldn’t do this without me. Do you have any idea how much hacking it took to make this system safe from Augmented control? It’s like a Frankenstein control system, set up only for Dane and MacTaggart, like the geriatric pilots you both are.”

“I’ll have you know longevity treatments are supposed to prevent younger people from using that word.”

“I guess they didn’t work, then,” Haley retorted.

“What didn’t work? The controls of the Unicorn need to be ready for me, ya ken!” MacTaggart never left the bridge of the ship for long. Though Dane wasn’t sure if he was committed to his role as pilot of the vessel or the ship’s layout was so confusing compared to what the Centauri was used to that it made him nauseous.

“Oh my God, is that really the name? I thought it was a joke!” Haley sputtered.

“A joke? Why would we joke about such a thing?”

“Because unicorns aren’t real?”

MacTaggart snorted derisively as if Haley had said water wasn’t wet. It was impressive how much emotion that man could get into a snort. His sideburns were still growing back in, so it wasn’t the most impressive snort Dane had ever heard him do because the odd facial hair really added to the effect, but it was still rather impressive.

“You’re saying they are?”

“Ye are a lass who swims with creatures called nessies, who have long necks and flippers and are named after another animal from my home. And ye doubt unicorns?”

“We’re on an alien planet. It’s not like nessies lived back on Earth.”

“Who’s to say they didn’t? All sorts of creatures went extinct thanks to humans. You ever hear of an elephant? An unthinkable creature with a nose like a rope and teeth like spears. Less believable than a horse with a horn, ya ken.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“The unicorn’s been the national symbol of Scotland for centuries. Or at least it was until the Augmented did away with countries. We’ve named warships after it before, and I’m naming this one after it now.”

Haley suppressed a smirk. “As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with our chances of survival being mythical.”

MacTaggart grunted distastefully at that.

“We have a plan, and it’ll work,” Dane insisted.

“And ye still wish to only bring the one ship?” MacTaggart asked.

“I think our best plan is to go with the guise of scouting. That means only the one,” Dane remarked.

MacTaggart nodded, reaching for a sideburn to stroke it and finding it not long enough. “Aye, we’ll give them a merry chase, we will.”

“You want to run some simulations?” Haley asked. “I want to make sure the controls we put in are calibrated to you.”

“Aye, let’s push this computer as far as it can go,” MacTaggart agreed.

“I’ll leave you two to tame the Unicorn, then,” Dane told them.

He had a long preflight checklist and needed to start making his rounds.

His first stop was the most important. Carlos Alvarez was coming with them to help update the code and make sure his vaccine worked as planned. He had set himself up in a lab that seemed larger than he needed.

Dane was not pleased to discover the biologist had filled it with a massive aquarium.

“What the hell are those doing here?”

“What?” Carlos asked without looking up from his work.

Dane walked to the aquarium and peered inside at the many-legged, purple-bodied murder stars moving around.

“Those nessie snacks. We’re not bringing any nessies, so there’s no reason to have them!”

“Ah, my brain works better with a challenge. Sometimes, when you get stuck on one project, it helps to move to another. Working on the organic chemistry for this brain implant update is tricky. So I constructed this aquarium for the sea stars. It is completely safe! The acid they use cannot affect the materials.”

“What if you’re wrong, and they get out?”

“They won’t.”

“I want them gone before we leave.”

“I already told engineering about them. The water mass es mucho. If we disassemble the tank now, we’ll have to recalculate fuel costs. Plus, it will take time.”

Dane ground his teeth together. “Fine. The tank can stay. But drop these things through an airlock and into space, or I’ll drop you both out there!”

“Si, si, claro que si,” Carlos nodded, though Dane had no idea if he was actually being genuine. Carlos was the most important part of this mission. If anyone could afford to do as they wished, it was him. The murder stars, though? They were the worst part of Varuna!

Dr. Brown was also tinkering around in the office.

“Dr. Brown, how are your preparations going?” Dane asked. He supposed the doctor had not been on Varuna when the murder stars first attacked, so it made sense he had not talked Carlos out of having them in their shared workspace. Still, it was kind of insane that he could work next to the creatures so casually.

“I wish there was something I could do to prep,” Brown mused. “I can remember the terminal I usually used, the login sequence, how we shut down power to the place, even where the files are stored. I don’t remember the actual code, though. I’m trying to recall as much as I can.”

“That’s good. If you can figure that out, this would all get way simpler. How much have you got done?”

“About a hundred lines, but they’re the most obvious bits.”

“That’s amazing!”

Brown shook his head sadly. “This requires thousands of different bits of code to work. I’m nowhere close. I’m only trying to familiarize myself with the main pieces of what we built, but I know I’m still missing a lot.”

Dane sighed. “That’s fine. You’ve been clear on that. As long as you know where to find what you need in the lab.”

Brown nodded. “I built that lab. I touched every centimeter of that place. You get me there, and I’ll get what you need.”

Dane nodded. That would have to be good enough.

From there, he went and checked the weapons bay. They were hoping not to fight the Augmented this time around. They would only have one warship while the Augmented would likely have dozens on each planet. Still, Dane had spent decades fighting in space. He wasn’t about to go into any sort of fight unarmed if packing heat was an option.

He found Liam down there and couldn’t help but check in on him one more time.

“You’re sure about this, kid? No shame in staying back. We’re going to need someone on that iron sphere that can handle some reloads. You have the skills.”

“Thanks, Governor Dane, but my mind’s made up. If this mission must be done, I want to do it. I’m the best person for the job, and it’s only fair.”

Dane didn’t have much to say that, so he nodded, patted the kid on the back, and headed to the bridge.

There was nothing else to be done but get underway.

“MacTaggart, let’s get to warp distance. We got a couple of planets to save.”

“With pleasure, sir!”

MacTaggart settled into the controls, and Dane took the captain’s chair. This was it. This would be his last mission. They would give it everything they had and either win or die trying.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was said that ninety percent of war was waiting. Dane would think that being able to travel faster than the speed of light would have changed that, but it didn’t.

If anything, the warp drive was the only thing making this war possible. If it had never been invented, the people of Varuna would not have even heard about the Augmented. They would not have heard about them for years. They would have left their time in cryo to find the most recent messages were twelve years old, and any replies would take that long to get back. Would the Augmented still have invaded if the pace of war came with a hundred-year transport period and a dozen years simply to send a message?

Dane didn’t think so.

When they had signed up to board the Cosmos, it had felt like a one-way ticket. More than that, it had felt like a mission with no end date. They had gone to Teegarden’s star to start a new life. Sure, people like Carlos were thinking about their legacy, about the things they might discover and eventually share with the population back on Earth. Yet, for most people on that colony ship, it had been a ticket to a new world with no way home.

Would the Augmented have still come if that fundamental choice had been laid before them? Would they still have seen Varuna as a threat? As something that needed to be assimilated?

Dane didn’t think so.

Technology changed the world. Dane had grown up hearing stories from his father about how technology had changed his life, his grandfather’s life, and even his grandfather’s grandfather’s life. Dane had never really thought he would escape it. Not when someone figured out how to capture asteroids and use them to drop on cities. That wasn’t exactly new tech, but it was a new application of it.

So technology, specifically the ability to get to one place in a week instead of decades, had precipitated this war. Like the quantum tech communication system had precipitated the changes to this mission. Would humans always be blown around by the repercussions of things they invented? Would they always be victims of consequences they had never foreseen?

Dane didn’t think so.

Dane thought people could master their own fates. With enough time and wisdom, they could learn from their mistakes. A thousand years ago, the world was a bleak place. People had still practiced slavery, killed women for being accused of witchcraft, and understood next to nothing about medicine.

Compared to life a thousand years ago, humans were doing great. Dane wasn’t certain that they would overcome the threat that the Augmented represented, but he believed they could. They had overcome the dangers of nuclear weapons and even struck back at climate change. They could overcome what this technology had put into motion. They would come out the other side stronger and wiser. They wouldn’t suffer the same mistakes.

Instead, they’d come up with brand-new ones.

Yet that was what it meant to be human, wasn’t it? The best one could hope was to be better than their parents before them. That didn’t mean being perfect. It did mean not falling into the same pitfalls as the previous generation. It meant building on what had come before and trying to make your own new and improved mistakes.

Dane considered all this as he watched Haley move around their quarters, going about her business. He wondered what it would be like to raise a child with her. To try to impart some of the knowledge he had accumulated. Could he raise a kid who would learn from his mistakes? Would he be able to do a good enough job to let a child make their own mistakes? He felt like the world grew bigger and more complicated all the time.

When he was a kid, people only lived on one planet. Now there were more than a dozen spread out across the galaxy. Dane wondered what the people on the other colonized worlds were dealing with. Had the Augmented made it to all those places as well? Were there any other free colonies trying to devise their own solution to the Augmented?

Dane hoped to meet them someday and find out, but he and all his advisors agreed that focusing on Alpha Centauri and Earth would be the best use of their resources. Earth was the only place with billions. If they could spread the vaccine through the people there and free their minds from the Augmented, they could take back everything and give humanity the ability to make its own mistakes once again.

Sometimes it felt like a foolish thing to fight for, but sometimes, at least the times when Dane was really being honest, it felt like the only thing worth fighting for.

And the time to fight was now.

“Calling all people to battle stations. This is your pilot speaking. We are ten minutes from dropping out of warp. We’ll take a quick peek and see what we’re dealing with before starting our run. I repeat, first call to battle stations. Make the Unicorn ready, ya ken?”

Dane inhaled deeply and took Haley’s hand. Together, they walked to the bridge of the Unicorn.

“Governor Dane,” MacTaggart greeted from the pilot’s console when Dane came onto the bridge.

“MacTaggart. How are we feeling? Gravitational systems looking normal?”

“I don’t think they moved an asteroid out here, but we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Let’s see what they have waiting for us.”

They dropped from warp.

This was arguably the most important part of the mission. They needed to gather as much data as they possibly could to make sure continuing would not doom their chances of success. First off, they had to identify the quantum entangled beacons.

“There’s one there.” MacTaggart highlighted one on the screen of the bridge. “They’re designed to pick up the particles from warp drive, so they won’t see us as long as we’re far enough away.”

“And are we far enough away?” Dane asked.

“Yes sir,” an engineer replied. “I’m calculating the energy dispersal and we’re well clear. By the time any of the energy fluctuations reach those beacons, it will simply look like background noise.”

“And the beacons, have they changed?” Dane asked.

The one they were closest to looked like nothing more than the outer space version of the sort of buoy that might be used to warn ships of a shallow patch of water. It was round, with a few antennae sticking from it, though unlike warning buoys, it was not painted brightly.

“Looks about the same to me,” MacTaggart claimed. “Hard to tell from this distance, o’ course, but it looks to be the same hardware. I think we’re safe from the buoys for now.”

Dane nodded. They were currently light months away from the center of the system. That meant that the Augmented on Alpha Central and the Desert wouldn’t be able to see them for months. That would change when they went back to warp and reappeared closer to the Desert. At that point, they wanted the buoys to activate. It was extremely unlikely that they would be able to get the shuttle down to the Desert completely unseen. They needed the Unicorn to keep pinging the warning system to put the Augmented on high alert. If it turned out that they had not figured out how to use the system, then this entire plan might go belly up.

“How do things look closer in?” Dane asked.

A tech zoomed in on Alpha Central first.

“The orbital defense platform is intact,” the tech announced. “And I’ve tagged eleven Earth ships in and around the orbit of Alpha Central.”

“What about Centauri ships?” Dane asked.

“Highlighting those in orange now, sir,” the tech confirmed. About twenty orange squares joined the eleven red ones.

“An insurmountable force,” Dane commented. It was depressing to see the enemy overpowering them by such a wide margin. About thirty to one. Though it also vindicated their plan. There was no way the people of Varuna could defeat such a force or even defend against one. This plan to spread their vaccine was fraught with danger, but at least there was a path through. Fighting was no longer an option. Dane knew luck had given them victory in the previous two defenses of their colony.

“It almost looks like home,” MacTaggart lamented. “Same platform. Same warships. Same formations.”

“Makes sense. They’re using your people to fly, and they know the best way to use your ships.”

“Aye,” MacTaggart acknowledged, though he was obviously displeased.

“Are they far enough away to go to warp?” Dane asked.

“It’s hard to tell from here, sir, but we’ll get better telemetry as we move. We think so, and it looks like the ships from Earth are farther out.”

“They’ll give chase, the bastards,” MacTaggart commented.

“And what about our true target?”

“Bringing the Desert on screen now, sir,” the tech professed.

The screen changed to show the other inhabited planet in the Alpha Centauri system.

It was immediately obvious why the Desert had never been inhabited as densely as the other planet. It was practically all land, dusty and red like Mars from Earth’s own solar system. There was a blotch of an ocean on one side and a frozen polar icecap in the north, so it wasn’t quite as dry as that, but it still looked like a lousy place to live. Especially after so much time on an ocean world like Varuna.

There were two cities they could see, but other than that, the planet looked largely uninhabited. Dane was not sure “pristine” was the right word, but certainly untouched. Though one patch looked like it had been hit by meteors.

“That has to be where the defense platform fell,” MacTaggart noted with dismay. “They turned one of our greatest strengths into a liability.”

“That’s what they do,” Dane stated. That was what they had done with the quantum entanglement tech, after all. As soon as they captured Alpha Centauri and implanted the scientists there, all Centauri tech was laid bare for the Augmented to do with as they pleased. Their damn brain implants had changed the rules of engagement.

Dane wondered what would happen if they actually managed to win. Would the military leaders of the future ever be able to forget that there was an open door to the human mind? Could these implants be weaponized for intelligence? It wasn’t a question for Dane, but maybe, if they did this right, it would be something that future generations would get to grapple with. An uncomfortable thing to hope for, to be sure.

“Mapping the wreckage and comparing it to the target,” the tech reported. “Looks like we’re clear.”

Dane thought that that was putting it optimistically. The green square that showed the lab’s location was not technically under one of the spots where the wreckage of the platform had come down, but it was between a few of them. Dane had no idea how close the lab would be to the wreckage. Looking at things on a planetary scale zoomed in from a distant telescope did not translate to walkability, but it was closer than he would have liked.

“Your prognosis, MacTaggart?”

“The system is within the parameters we set. We are green to proceed with the mission. The Last Unicorn will lead them on a merry chase!”

The rest of the people on the bridge let up a cheer. Dane might have thought the name for the ship was silly, but the Centauri, with their Scottish history, were filled with nothing but pride. Their enthusiasm had spread through the crew. That was a good thing. They would need every bit of help they could get, and there was much to be said for believing in a mission.

“Well, Governor? Do we proceed?”

“All indications are good, so yes, let’s do this.”

MacTaggart grinned. He was eager to bring the fight to the Augmented. “All teams, we are good. Time to let this Unicorn use its legs!” he called over the comms.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Dane replied.

MacTaggart nodded. “One way or the other, aye.”

Dane left the bridge and made for the shuttle with Haley. He was actually glad she was coming with him. The idea of her being on the Unicorn, serving as bait, while he poked around a dusty old computer system, was not one he liked.

They reached the bay and found the rest of the team was already there. Carlos Alvarez and Dr. Lucas Brown were both carrying packs filled with computer equipment. Good had a few drones with him, and Athanas and Robinson were both armed to the teeth. Obviously, Dane was not the only one of them who thought it was better to have a gun and not need it than to need one and not have it.

Then there was Liam, looking more nervous than the rest. Dane almost wanted to offer to let him stay on the Unicorn, but it was too late now. The kid had to come down to the Desert with them. Him being a stowaway on a shuttle that went on an away mission was their most plausible story. It was too late for him to back out now. Dane greeted him as he did the others. This was his team. No more time for doubts.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

“We only need to get packed,” Carlos responded.

Five minutes later, Dane was settling into the pilot’s chair, with Haley in the seat next to him. He ran preflight checks, getting the ship ready to launch. Among those checks were the new stealth systems Haley and Granger had added to the shuttle. It was about as sneaky a ship as they were capable of. He hoped it would be enough.

“This is all going to happen pretty fast,” Dane informed them. “When MacTaggart drops from warp, he’s going to be well within the Augmented’s sensor ranges. We need to get clear of the Unicorn before he turns the warp back on. When we hit that initial blast of energy, we’ll use the cover of the warp drive energy to hide ourselves.”

“That will work? The Augmented are clever,” Dr. Brown pointed out.

“We did it before, and it worked fine,” Good noted. “These warp drives dump out all sorts of mess for the scanners, so we should be hidden. Dane’s one hell of a pilot. He’ll get us well clear by the time MacTaggart jumps back out.”

“Everyone remember that MacTaggart wants to trigger a response. That means we’ll be in this shuttle, and we’re going to see enemy ships fly by. I want everyone to stay calm when that happens. That means it’s working.”

Everyone nodded. They had been over this enough times that everyone should know it by rote.

Then it was time. MacTaggart counted them down, then the bay doors opened and they were out in space. Dane’s instruments told him he was in the center of the sun, on a launch pad, or near multiple explosions, but he ignored all that. The interference would go away, and they’d be left in empty space, their lone shuttle on its way to the secrets of the Desert.

Before the energy fluctuations could die down, Dane punched it. The force of their acceleration threw him back in his seat. They needed to get their speed as high as possible while they could still burn their engines without being seen.

“Adjust your course to match coordinates.” Haley put up their destination for atmospheric entry on the screen.

Dane tweaked where they were headed, knowing he had to get all this correct now, as any adjustment he made later might alert the enemy to their presence. They had to get clear of the Unicorn, get up to speed, but also put themselves on a trajectory to enter the atmosphere of the Desert in the right spot, as far away from the cities as possible. Not an easy thing to do this far out.

But Dane followed Haley’s instructions and got as close to her coordinates as he could.

The shuttle was rocked when the Unicorn jumped back to warp, leaving them above the planet with the answers they craved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Haley did a great job plotting their course. Dane was within speed and direction allowances, so they were able to cruise past the cities, high above the atmosphere, without raising any alarms. There was a very slim chance that passing through the sky would out them, but they avoided the airspace of the warships, and the simple truth of it was that space was big. Without engines lighting up to point an adversary to their specific location, it was simple enough to slip on by without being seen. It being daytime on the more civilized side of the planet helped as well. They wouldn’t inadvertently pass by any stars and let a casual observer wonder what they had seen.

Dane had been a pilot long enough to feel when they got pulled into the gravity of the Desert. Not in his bones, not anything like that, but as they approached the planet, he noted when their course went from truly straight to a curving line toward the planet. They were traveling extraordinarily fast, so it was not as if they simply plummeted into the pull of the planet below.

“Sensors say there’s nothing broadcasting down below,” Haley imparted as they rounded onto the night side of the planet. It was completely dark down there, lit up by only the faintest refraction of light through the atmosphere. Though in the darkness, Dane saw nothing of their target. He knew the sensor array on the ship would pierce the gloom easily enough. Still, he didn’t want to turn on any of those systems until they were absolutely sure, or at least as sure as possible, there wasn’t some weapons system down there to take them out.

“Liam, is that possible?” Dane asked.

“I think so, sir! The Desert wasn’t very populated even before the station crashed down.”

“This was a world of hundreds of thousands, right? These were colonists. The same sort of nuts who would have tried to live on another planet,” Dane pointed out. He knew everyone on Varuna was batty. Many of them looked forward to the day when Homebase was productive enough to let them start another base on another part of the planet. There were even those who had designed long-range boats so they could live on the surface of the ocean world, sailing as the weather took them and eating what they could catch in the sea. None of those boats had been made yet, but only because of the Augmented. The Centauri on the Desert had not been stifled as quickly. Some colonists had found a way to survive out here in the desert.

“There are communities out here for sure, sir, but I don’t think the Augmented would have made it this far yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because this was where the people fled who thought the Centauri government was overbearing or too powerful. The Desert was for people who really wanted to be self-sufficient,” Liam informed them.

“I can’t imagine any of that sort wanting to be implanted with a bunch of nanites in their brain, sir,” Good put in.

“Good enough for me,” Dane muttered.

He activated the ship’s active systems and felt it hum to life in his hands.

There was something special about being on a ship running dark when it came online. It felt like being inside a mighty beast as it woke and prepared to hunt. First came the engines, the heart of the ship. Dane felt those in his seat, in his hands, in any part of him that touched the ship. He was so accustomed to flying that he felt the gentle vibration spreading through his body from the seat. He felt it in his teeth, behind his eyes. Some didn’t like it, but Dane found it as comforting and invigorating as the first cup of coffee in the morning.

The very breath of the ship came next. As the engines warmed up, the life support systems were kicked into higher gear thanks to the abundance of extra electricity. What had been a whisper of wind from the vents was now a gentle breeze that smelled more strongly of freshly filtered air. Then came the senses of the ship. Radar and lidar, electric eyes with visibility in a dozen different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, detectors that could find dust with penetrating radar, or see hidden UV messages painted on the landscape.

Dane knew this shuttle was not an offensive craft, not armed with claws and teeth like the fighter he was accustomed to. Yet he still let his metal beast reach out to the few missiles it had, making sure the targeting systems were functional and the ship had not found any problems with the armaments.

Last of all, though perhaps most important, especially to this particular mission, were the maneuvering thrusters. Dane saw them all come online, checking to make sure there were no fuel blockages or leaks causing anything to vent. Though, like a predator stretching at dusk, he took all this in subconsciously. When the thrusters read green, he gave the ship a barrel roll spin, then one in the other direction. Not quickly, just fast enough to make sure everything felt right. He smiled as the dark world below spun overhead, changing places with space before returning to its proper position on the bottom half of the horizon.

“Everybody buckled up?” Dane asked.

“Locked and loaded!” Good shouted, and Dane’s motley crew of security folks, scientists, programmers, and one teenager trying to be better all cheered.

“Here we go.”

Dane dipped into the atmosphere. In no time, it grew thick enough to cause them some turbulence, shaking and rattling the shuttle as they bled speed, transforming it into heat. They dropped through the upper atmosphere, the heat shields holding admirably, but when they finally pushed through, and Dane could reactivate his instruments, he found they were no longer the keen electric eyes and ears they had been up above.

“What the hell is this?” he grunted as alarms blared.

“Why are the things flashing red? I don’t like it when the things flash red!” Haley cried.

“It says we’re going to crash into something, that it’s only fifty meters away!” Dane pulled up, but the proximity alert kept blaring. Fifty meters, then sixty-two, then down to forty-four. It didn’t make any sense! There wasn’t anything up this high! They had checked out this side of the planet before they jumped to warp.

“Silence those alarms!” Dane ordered. Something was wrong. The ship didn’t feel right. It was shaking in his hands more than it should have, and that rattle to the engine didn’t sound right either.

“Ah!” Haley yelped as she accidentally flipped on the headlights. “Sorry!” She tried to turn them back off.

“No, no, leave them!” Now Dane saw what the problem was. They were flying in a massive dust storm. The best instruments in the world couldn’t make much sense of the shifting quantities of dust and sand pummeling against the ship. Or maybe the best could, but the ones on this shuttle certainly couldn’t. By the time the radar or lidar got a certain distance, it was all stopped and reflected back. The sand was so thick they were essentially flying blind.

The headlights didn’t puncture far through the dust and debris of the storm, but at least they showed Dane what was going on.

“This is why we couldn’t see the wreckage of the platform,” Haley stated.

“Exactly,” Dane replied. “Until the visibility clears up, we’re going to need to pilot by calculation. I know I have to keep dropping, but I need you to figure out how high we are based on our current bearing.”

“Of course,” Haley acknowledged.

He tried to keep them steady as they moved through the swirling, gusting storm. Even in this chaotic storm, though, there were patterns. Gusts that followed lulls in the wind, clumps of pebbles, patches of dust that were denser or less dense than the last. Dane flew through it all, looking for some indication of the ground or a mountain, something that would change the way the storm behaved.

“All right, there we go,” Haley announced after plugging in the appropriate commands to show Dane where he should be going. Aware this was very much an estimate and he’d surely added extra, unknowable variables when he pulled up, he followed the path but did not relax.

Down they went, moving through the dustier layer of the storm down into a layer of heavier grit, then into what felt like pebbles that tinkled and struck against the spacecraft. If they were traveling anywhere near the speed they had been when they first entered the atmosphere, these pebbles would have punched holes in the shuttle, armored or not. Down here, they were merely a nuisance. Though Dane did flinch when some of the larger chunks struck the glass, threatening to crack it.

Then they were through. The storm vanished, and the dark desert spread below them, illuminated by the stars above.

“Above” being a relative term, as the ground rapidly rose into a craggy mountain range.

“Proximity alarm is serious this time!” Haley yelped as Dane yanked on the controls to pull them up and over the mountains.

“Where are we?” Dane grunted as he barely cleared the low mountains. He dropped back lower, flying as low as he could to stay under any detection systems the storm might have woken up, Augmented or otherwise. He was glad there wasn’t a screen in the back of the shuttle. He didn’t need to set anyone’s nerves on edge more than they already were.

“We’re not far off target. Only forty kilometers or so,” Haley told him. “Putting the adjusted course on screen now.”

A moment later and the destination that Brown had given them appeared as a tiny blip on the screen. Dane adjusted course to fly straight toward it, knowing it would grow bigger as they flew. While the spacecraft would make short work of the forty kilometers, it was still more than enough time and space for plenty to go wrong.

Six kilometers later, they found their speed bump. The wreckage of the orbital defense platform was directly in their path. Going around would take too long, so they had to go over. That shouldn’t be a problem, Dane told himself. This giant piece of machinery had crashed down all the way from orbit. No way any of it was still functional. Yet he wondered about the rail guns, the missile launchers, and the devices designed to scramble enemy communication systems. Any one of those machines going off at the wrong moment could take out their shuttle and ruin their entire mission’s chances of success. He tried to keep his eyes on the structure as he steered them over it.

“I had no idea it would be so big,” Haley admitted.

“Seeing things in space is always different from seeing them on the surface. Our brains are good at relative size when on the surface of the planet. But in space, where’s nothing for scale except a planet, it’s easy to get confused.”

Dane guided the ship up and over a huge piece of twisted metal sticking up from the desert. It looked like it had splashed down and generated massive waves, but there was no water here. Only sand. That meant all the frozen, liquid-looking stuff was actually sand melted into glass. The result of an amazing, stupefying amount of energy scattered across the ground.

It didn’t seem like any of the locals were interested in salvaging any of it, fortunately. They saw no lights, picked up no readings from any ships. It was desolate. Wreckage, already forgotten.

Dane adjusted course after they were past it and continued.

“We close yet?” Robinson asked from the back. Dane could tell from the kid’s voice that he was getting antsy. This was always one of the hardest parts of any mission. A man fell into what he knew when he was in combat, but there was no way to practice for the anticipation of a battle.

Fortunately, it was nearly over. “It’s in a low ridge of mountains up ahead,” Dane reported, which seemed to mollify Robinson.

Dane trimmed their speed and circled around. He barely spotted a bit of reflective paint on what had to be a landing pad, but years of experience made the tiny corner as obvious as could be. He doubled back, adjusting the landing gear on the shuttle. The downward force of their jets blasted away the sand on the landing pad, sending billowing clouds of sand and dust up into the air.

“That’s a good sign, huh?” Haley proposed as they touched down. “No one’s been here in a while.”

“I’d like to think so, but that sand could have all been from that storm too. We need to stay on high alert.”

“That’s the constantly paranoid George Dane that I know,” Haley remarked.

The rear of the shuttle opened, and their security personnel poured out.

Athanas kept her gun up and pointed toward the wreckage in the distance while Robinson scurried around to the front of the ship. Good tossed a pair of drones into the air. Their propellers whirred to life as they took to the sky, giving Good eyes, ears, and limited firepower if they were attacked. He then pulled out a massive battery strapped to a wheeled cart. Brown had told them the base had a high chance of being without power, so they had to bring their own.

The other two security folks they had with them, Joseph and Mark, came out next. They both made a full circle around the ship, checking the landing pad and the perimeter.

“Our turn next.” Dane shut the shuttle down, grabbed an assault rifle, and moved past Alvarez and Brown and out into the desert air. He had expected it to be hot, but it was actually rather chilly. A breeze cut right through him as he scanned the dark landscape, looking for a sign of something, anything. But there was nothing. Nothing but sand and a destroyed space station in the distance.

Haley came out next. She had a handgun as well, but she’d mostly be working with Alvarez and Brown to help them get what they needed.

“All clear on my end,” Athanas announced. All the other security people reported in and sounded all-clears.

Liam stepped from the shuttle next. “Where do you need me? We never, uh…talked about this part of the mission.”

“You’re going to stay at the shuttle,” Dane told him.

Liam frowned, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Dane allowed himself a small smile. That had been a test, and Liam had passed.

“You need to keep an eye on the instruments. I have the shuttle set up to alert me when I’m in there, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be in contact through the rock. If something happens out here, you get inside and let us know.”

“Something like what?”

“It’s entirely possible that we were made on our way in. We can’t let them find you until we’re ready. If we can’t get the update we need, this entire mission won’t work.”

“Okay. I mean, yes, sir.”

“Also, you need to be ready to warm the system up. Dr. Brown seems confident that this place isn’t occupied, and I’m inclined to believe him. But at the same time, if the Augmented did figure us out, or what’s in this place, it would be simple enough to lay an ambush. If that happens, we’re going to get out quickly. You’ll need to hail MacTaggart to get him back here, which won’t be possible if he’s in warp.”

“Got it,” Liam confirmed, then sort of smiled. “Here I thought you just wanted to keep me out of trouble.”

“That time is long past, Liam. You volunteered for a very dangerous mission. You’re part of the team now.”

“Yes, sir!” Liam straightened and held himself like a soldier.

Dane turned to the two scientists still waiting for orders.

“Alvarez and Brown, let’s go.”

The pair of scientists stepped from the shuttle, each holding a briefcase that hopefully contained all the tech they would need to get the relevant code. Alvarez looked nervous, which made sense. He had been in these kinds of situations before and knew how overwhelming the Augmented could be. In contrast, Dr. Brown looked positively giddy. He wore a keycard around his neck and looked for all the world like he was glad to be home.

“The entrance is that way. These mountain formations are some of the only useful geography on this entire planet. We built the lab inside them so we wouldn’t have to spend as much time on the foundation.”

“Seems like you built the landing pad just fine,” Dane observed, tapping his boot against the ground beneath his feet.

“Only because we used the rock we excavated from inside the mountain range as the base on which to build,” Brown replied.

“Oh, great. I love me a hollowed-out secret mountain lab. Not ominous at all,” Robinson quipped.

“We have nothing to worry about,” Brown professed. “This place has been shut down for years. We’re going to have more trouble getting in than anything else. The doors were all automatic, so we’ll have to force them open.”

“Lead the way, Doc,” Dane invited.

Brown was only too happy to oblige. He set off toward the mountain range, somehow picking out one mess of the tangled rocks from the rest. Mark and Robinson hurried to get in front of him while the other members of the security team fell in behind them.

Dane never would have found the door had Dr. Brown not been there. There had only been a corner of the landing pad visible, but there was even less than that of the door. Dane had no idea how Brown recognized the entrance, but recognize it he did.

“It’s right here.” He pointed to one of the many piles of sand accumulated between the boulders and stones at the foot of the mountain.

“It’s…made of sand?” Robinson asked.

“I think it’s under the sand,” Athanas countered.

“It’s behind the sand,” Joseph proposed. “It’s got to be.”

“Third time’s the charm, yes,” Dr. Brown confirmed. “It’s a regular door. Well, vertical, I should say. I suppose there’s nothing regular about a door to a base inside a mountain range in the desert.”

“But do you suppose, though?” Robinson asked.

“Thanks for volunteering to dig first,” Dane told Robinson.

“Me? I didn’t…oh, fine.”

Robinson dug both hands into the huge pile of sand and pulled it toward him. It cascaded down, falling away from the door and revealing the very top of the door frame.

“I don’t think that storm would have deposited all this,” Haley pointed out.

Dane nodded. “I agree. This looks like it’s been here for a while.” He felt hope starting to grow in his chest. If the Augmented hadn’t ever come here, what they needed should still be inside.

They took turns standing watch, making loops around the shuttle, and digging. There was a lot of sand, but it fell away easily enough. In less than ten minutes, the door was clear.

Brown dusted away an access panel next to the door, opened it up, and pressed his thumb to it. Nothing happened.

“It’s as I feared. There’s no power.”

“Not to worry. I came with a battery pack,” Good announced. He attacked the edges of the access panel like an otter trying to get into a clam. Armed with a screwdriver, he was unstoppable. The frame of the access panel fell away, and Good grabbed a wire from the battery pack and spliced it into the existing wires.

The screen lit up, and Dr. Brown smiled. “There it is!” He placed his thumb on the reader. It was now dangling by a wire, but the computer didn’t mind. It scanned, did the electronic version of thinking, then blinked green.

A sound emitted from the door frame, but the door didn’t open.

“Good?”

“The lock’s wired into this panel, but the door itself must not be.”

“Can you do something about that?”

“I know my batteries are big, but I don’t want to use them for that. No idea how many computers we’ll need to turn on in there.”

“No worries. I got something that’ll do the trick.” Athanas produced a pry bar out from her pack.

“Old school,” Joseph commented. “Respect.”

Athanas grinned as she jammed the sharpened end of the bar into the crack between the door and the frame. “Ah, this mission is basically breaking and entering. You gotta have a pry bar for your simple robberies.”

“You sound like you might be speaking from experience,” Robinson suggested.

“Not everyone joined the military or agreed to go into cryo to go to another planet because they wanted a brighter future. Some of us were trying to escape the mistakes of our past.”

“Mistakes that came with some pretty legit skills, though,” Robinson rebutted as Athanas worked the pry bar in, then got the door open. Now that there was a crack, Dane, Joseph, and Mark all positioned their fingers on the edge and pulled the sliding door open.

Dane had thought it was dark outside, but inside was truly pitch black.

“Ah! Like coming home after so long.” Dr. Brown walked into the space.

“Lights,” Dane called, and everyone clicked on their headlamps as they stepped inside the hall.

It was a fairly long and narrow hallway. The floor was dusty, likely from the storms that raged outside. The door had been sealed well enough to keep people out of the lab, but nothing could keep the dust and the wind out.

“No footprints,” Robinson observed.

It was true. The only footprints in the dust belonged to Dr. Brown, who was already at the next door.

“The upper part of the lab is frustrating. All narrow halls. But down below, where the computers are, it opens up,” Dr. Brown enthused.

He touched the access panel at the side of the door, and it illuminated.

Odd. Dane turned back to Good, who was lugging his huge battery pack into the door. If it wasn’t hooked up…

“How is that panel still working?” Dane asked.

Dr. Brown waved away the concern as he pushed his thumb to the access panel. “There was always a backup generator. Mr. Good must have put enough juice in the system to activate it.”

“Joseph, Robinson, positions!” Dane ordered as the door slid open and chaos erupted from inside.

“Oh God, help!” Dr. Brown shouted as something crawled up his leg and onto his chest. Something with too many legs. Something with glowing red eyes.

“It’s some kind of security system!” Robinson shouted and tried to take aim, but he couldn’t shoot. The thing was right on top of Brown, who was beyond essential to this mission.

Joseph grabbed the robot and yanked it off.

Dane saw it silhouetted in the light from his headlamp. Its body was a disc about as big as a sewer lid with six arms total. On top was a gun mounted on a swiveling turret, and on the bottom was a series of scanners.

It was heavier than it looked because Joseph stumbled backward and hit the wall with the thing still in his arms. Despite it being upside-down from the orientation they had first seen it, the machine did not seem to mind.

It pointed the gun at Joseph, then shot him in the chest.

Joseph’s blood flashed crimson in the light. He slid down the wall, leaving a blood streak that pooled with the dust on the floor.

Then Athanas was there, bashing the robot bug with her pry bar over and over until nothing remained.

“That was a goddamn robot spider. Who in their right mind would make a robot spider?” Athanas grumbled.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think they made only one!” Robinson shouted and fired at the ceiling as another pair of the robots scuttled toward them, clinging to the ceiling above.

Dane’s stomach churned at seeing something like that while feeling the pull of gravity. He was used to facing threats from all angles when he was in space, and there was no gravity to orient anyone. Merely hallways and magnets on boots. Down here, the baddies were supposed to be on the ground. It just wasn’t right!

That didn’t stop Dane from raising his gun and shooting at the damn things, though. One of them took a few rounds and kept coming, but the other was struck in a leg. That knocked it right off.

“They’re weak at the joints!” Dane advised. Robinson, Athanas, and Mark all got the memo and fired at the thing’s appendages, knocking them off and dropping the robot to the ground. It landed on its guns, smashing and disabling it. The other was firing from above, but that was fine. They had the doorway for cover. The defenses were automated, so with luck, they could camp out here for a few minutes and wait for them all to—

“Ahhh!” Dr. Brown yelled as he ran beneath the armed spider on the ceiling.

“Goddamn it,” Dane cursed. “Follow that freaked-out doctor!”

“Do we have to?” Robinson complained, but he lay down cover fire, shooting at the bot while Athanas and Dane pushed past him to keep up with Dr. Brown.

“Carlos, stay with Good,” Dane grunted as three more robots emerged from another dark hall.

He stepped into the hall and tried to push through this unforeseen menace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“It’s kind of ironic, you know? We come all the way into the Augmented solar system only to get killed by a bunch of robots?” Robinson announced as he fired at another one.

Despite them knowing how to kill the damn things, it was hard to make it happen because Brown kept running ahead, pushing through every doorway he came to. He had been right about the backup generator system, and now the doors were opening for him, and the lights were clicking on. Dane almost preferred the spiderbots in the dark. They looked too efficient in the light, like they would kill without breaking a sweat. He supposed that was exactly what Robinson was talking about.

“How is this ironic? This just sucks!” Athanas turned to fire at the spiderbots they had not killed, which were now bunching together into a cluster and harrying Dr. Alvarez and Good.

“It’s ironic to be killed by machines instead of machines implanted in human brains!”

“I’m with Athanas on this one,” Dane told him. “You need to check your definitions.”

Dr. Brown got another door open and ran through it.

“Slow down, goddamn it!” Athanas yelled after him, but he didn’t seem to have any interest in doing so.

“The security system can be controlled by the main terminal! If I can get there, I can shut them down!” Brown yelled, already trying to open the next door.

“One, that would have been useful to tell us sooner,” Robinson grunted. “And two, you’re not going to be able to do a damn thing if you’re dead!”

“Fair point!” Dr. Brown agreed, then the door opened, and he ran through, yelping as something fired at him from above. The only good thing about the spiderbots was it took them a minute to lock onto a target. When Brown opened a door, they always paused before firing, which gave him enough time to run past and let the thing focus on the others. Dane might have thought it was a trap, but Brown seemed genuinely terrified. Dane didn’t think he was faking.

“I told him we never should have signed up for this,” Mark was muttering. “I told him we should have stayed in the hydroponics department and stuck with what we knew. Never should have signed up at all.”

Dane recognized the panic in his voice all too well. If Mark couldn’t get a grip on the current situation, he would lose control of himself. In a situation like this, that could cost him his life or the life of someone else. Dane wished he had time to talk Mark through the grieving process, but if they didn’t get to the main terminal to shut down these damn robots, they weren’t going to make it back out of here, let alone face the Augmented.

“Mark, I’m sorry we lost your friend, but right now, it’s not time to mourn. It’s time to kill those multi-legged bastards who killed him.”

“We can’t really kill them since they’re robots.”

“Let’s try, though, huh? They killed Joseph for no good reason. Time to teach them it was a mistake.”

“And if they won’t listen?”

Dane put a round through a spiderbot, stopping it cold. “We make them.”

Mark nodded, pointed his gun at a robot, and blasted its legs to nothing. “That’s for Joseph, you stupid robot!”

Fury ignited inside Mark. He ran forward, firing at robots, knocking them from the walls and the ceiling. Dane hung back, covering Alvarez and Good from the spiderbots still coming at them.

“How many of these damn things are there?” Good asked.

“Enough that I think we should ditch the battery pack,” Dane told him.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” Good shoved the cart against a wall, then picked up a pack from the top and threw it on his back. Dane knew what was in there. With these spiderbots, it was even more essential that their secondary mission that only he and Good had discussed was successful.

Dane had no doubt the bots were recording. They had cameras, and basically, everything with cameras recorded. What he didn’t know was if they were able to broadcast to the Augmented. Given the isolation of the base and the fact that a battle station had nearly crashed down on top of it, he hoped all the data was being backed up locally. If it was being broadcast farther out… Well, things were about to get a lot more complicated.

Brown reached another door and opened it with his thumbprint. The door opened, and he scurried through, down a set of stairs.

“If his thumbprint opens the door, why doesn’t it tell the spiders to leave us alone?” Robinson whined.

“They must have remotely upgraded the defensive protocols,” Athanas suggested, feet flying as she descended the staircase.

“Go, go,” Dane told Good and Carlos. He and Mark stayed at the top of the staircase, firing into the hallway at the spiderbots.

“It’s hard to clear biometric data from a distance,” Good explained. He certainly looked like he must understand such things because his two drones were flanking him as he flew, making him look like some herald of machines. “Easier to tell the system to attack anyone that comes in rather than reprogram all the locks, especially if you might want to reinstate biometric access again at some point. If biometric is the only way to get in, they wouldn’t want to clear that cache. Plus, they probably didn’t come here at all. They probably told everything in the system to attack unless a specific access code was entered.”

“But we don’t know any codes!” Robinson called from the bottom of the stairs as Brown entered his thumbprint into yet another access panel.

“It won’t matter!” Brown insisted. “This was my lab. I didn’t want these security bots. I told them the desert would be defense enough. They wouldn’t listen but agreed to my overrides. They couldn’t have changed those. If they could, my thumbprint wouldn’t work.”

The door slid open.

A shot rang out.

Brown crumpled to the ground.

He held his leg.

Screaming as the blood poured out.

“Man down!” Robinson shouted, dropping to his knees and getting gauze on the wound in record time.

Athanas stepped past him, blasting the mounted gun off the back of the spiderbot, then firing at three more that came across the floor at them.

“Mark, help her!” Dane shouted as he finished climbing down the stairs and went to Brown’s side.

“He’s all right. It’s just a flesh wound,” Robinson reported.

“Just a flesh wound?” Brown yowled in the way people who had never suffered a serious wound yowled.

“I know it hurts, but Robinson is going to get you patched up,” Dane assured him as Good’s drones buzzed past.

“Looks like we found the main lab room,” Good announced.

“Does that mean they’re not on the ceiling anymore?” Athanas shouted as she reloaded.

“Just means the ceiling is farther away,” Good retorted.

As if in response, shots rang out from the gloom-drenched ceiling. One of Good’s drones flew between Athanas and the source of the gunshots. It went down in a barrage of bullets, but it spared Athanas’ life, and she took revenge for the little flying robot.

She fired at the distant ceiling. A moment later, a spiderbot fell and crashed to the floor in an explosion of sparks and screws.

More shots rang out, and Dane perceived more of the glowing red diodes in the gloom. Five. Ten. Twenty.

“I think we found where the rest of the spiderbots were hiding!” he called.

“Take cover!” Athanas dove behind a computer terminal.

Since it had already locked onto her, the spiderbots fired and blasted the terminal to pieces.

“No! No, you can’t let them damage the equipment!” Brown yelped from the door. He had an arm slung around Robinson and a white bandage wrapped around his wounded thigh.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Athanas moaned then stumbled out from behind the terminal, drawing the ire of countless spiderbots.

Dane, Mark, and Good opened fire, but the spiderbots were too far away to aim reliably.

“Get me to the terminal!” Brown shouted through the gunfire.

“Working on it,” Robinson grunted as he half carried Brown down the few stairs that led into the lab. Carlos followed though he stopped at the door, trying to get the thing to close behind them. It worked for about thirty seconds. Then the door opened once more to let the spiderbots that had made it down the stairway into the lab.

“This isn’t looking good,” Athanas grunted as she dodged and kept moving. With no cover, all she could do was hope she could outpace that targeting algorithm of the spiderbots. For the moment, she was doing all right, but how much longer-

“Goddamn it, I’m hit!” Robinson shouted as he crashed out from under Brown, spilling the wounded doctor on the ground. Robinson grabbed at his side. Carlos rushed to his side and tried to give him the same treatment that Robinson had given Brown.

Dane tried to push them both from his head as he scrambled toward Brown. He yanked him to his feet a touch too forcefully, nearly causing the doctor to crash into him, but he caught him, and they stayed on their feet. Brown tried to hop along as Dane hauled him toward the terminal.

He leaned Brown against the terminal, then turned his back to him as he fired at the ceiling. Athanas was wounded too. Blood streaked down her arm, but she either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. She moved like a dancer. This way, that way, firing at the ceiling, at the floor, trying to outpace the machines programmed to do this and only this.

“Got it!” Brown shouted, and the room suddenly got quieter. Now the only guns firing were on Dane’s side. Athanas was the first to realize the robots had stopped attacking. She collapsed, breathing hard, and threw a hand on her bleeding arm.

Mark looked relieved. He stayed on his feet and kept his gun pointed at the retreating robots, though his posture changed. Now that he wasn’t firing, he let his shoulders droop and his knees slack together.

Good had already holstered his weapon and was looking at his tablet, following the retreat of the spiderbots with the remaining drone. “Looks like they’re going to recharge,” he noted.

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Alvarez claimed. “I could go for a margarita.”

“What do they do when they’re done recharging?” Robinson grunted as Carlos helped him to his feet.

“We should be fine,” Brown commented.

“We should be long gone by then,” Dane warned.

“Right, of course. Could someone, er…get me a chair?” Brown asked.

“Give me a minute.” Dane left the scientist at his console. Brown nearly collapsed but managed to stay on his feet. Dane should have felt more pity for the man over getting shot, but he couldn’t help but wish he’d been warned about the spiderbots. They had obviously been here since before the Augmented. Dane was worried he’d have nightmares about the damn things waking up from their recharge stations for months.

He found a few wheeled chairs and dragged a pair over for Robinson and Brown.

Athanas could probably use one too, but she was sprawled out on the floor and looked like she did not want to be disturbed.

Dane made a loop of the room’s perimeter while Brown and Carlos busied themselves getting what they needed. He half listened to them as he checked out where the spiderbots had returned to. He was more than a little terrified to see they had faced only half of them. Plenty more had been sitting in reserve, waiting to be activated.

“This is the code that will make the nanites produce the nanites we need,” Brown announced.

“I thought we were going to make our nanites create the molecule?”

“Nanites are simple by design. They can often only do one thing. It’ll be simpler if we program the ones that are injected to make the ones to build the molecule,” Brown said.

“Ah, si, si. I see it now. Very good,” Alvarez confirmed.

It sounded unnecessarily complex to Dane, but then, there was a reason that he had intentionally brought these two scientists with him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to code any of what he needed, so he brought people who could.

“What’s our timeline?” Dane asked.

“We have the code,” Alvarez told him.

“Then we get out of here?” Robinson asked eagerly.

“We can, but the lab here is better than the equipment we brought,” Alvarez proclaimed. “We should be able to upgrade the nanites here and have the vaccine ready by the time we get back to the ship.”

Dane didn’t like the idea of spending any more time in this deserted desert lab filled with spiderbots than he had to, but he settled in to let the scientists work.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Liam thought he was ready for his mission, but even being isolated on the shuttle for an hour was too much time with his thoughts. He told himself again and again that they were doing the right thing, that it had to be this way. That the Augmented needed to be destroyed.

And yet…he couldn’t help but wonder if this was really the best way. He knew that not everything the Augmented did was wrong. They had brought the Earth back from environmental catastrophe. They had done away with many of the crimes that only happened because people could not empathize with their neighbors. Was destroying their brain implants the only path forward? Could there be some sort of middle ground?

Or was that the younger, more naïve Liam talking?

“I need some air.” Liam pushed up from the cockpit of the shuttle and stretched. He walked through the shuttle and out the back, stepping onto the cool sand of the Desert. It was almost dawn, and already the sky was lightening above the mountains to a rich purple. The stars still shone overhead, but Liam could practically see them winking out, one by one.

Would that happen to the people who woke up with the implant breaking apart in their brains? Liam had met enough of the Augmented to know how much they valued their implants. Could they function without one?

“They should have thought of that before they attacked Alpha Centauri,” Liam muttered.

The first rays of the sun cut across the sky, catching a twisted piece of metal from the fallen orbital defense platform. It seemed to glow orange as the sunlight extended farther down the piece of metal before finding more of the wreckage. A breeze picked up and blew across the landscape. It felt cool, almost cold, though Liam knew enough about the geography of this planet to know that before long, he’d miss the cold air.

He was supposed to survive out here for a few days. That wouldn’t be easy, but at least he knew there was a settlement farther along in the range of mountains that hid the lab. He had never been there, but he had seen some of the reports his father received from it.

Had he inadvertently told any of those details to the Augmented? Had he let something slip that had made it possible for the Augmented to get the drop on the station? It seemed possible, but then again, the Augmented had arrived with a weapon far beyond anything that anyone else had ever created. They had not told Liam about that weapon, instead focusing their conversation on how pretty they had made Earth and how everyone was living a better life there than they were on Alpha Centauri.

Which made them liars. Which meant the stories they told were like the stars in the night sky. Disappearing.

Well, they were disappearing except for one. Liam looked at one bright star beyond the wreckage. It was too big and bright to be a star, which meant it had to be a planet. Specifically Alpha Central.

Alpha Central, where Liam had grown up. Where he had gone to school and made friends. Where even now, he longed to return to. It looked so safe from out here, so calm, so serene. Like all were one. He realized that they were. He had been so concerned with what the Augmented had been doing and claiming to do that he’d never really thought about how close all the people on Alpha Central, and Alpha Centauri at large, really were.

He had seen the divisiveness, the way they all scrambled and clambered to make the machines of war. But he’d only seen that as divisive because he never accepted the simple truth. The Augmented were a threat. He thought his people were working against something, but really, they had all been working together. They had always been working together, even across these two planets. Alpha Central, closer to the stars, and the Desert, so brutally hot with little water.

Yet the planet he was looking at… Shouldn’t it have been on the other side of the sky? He turned toward the rising sun, and his heart dropped into his stomach. There was Alpha Central, already nearly lost to the bright sunrise.

So what in the hell had he been looking at? There wasn’t another planet. Plus, had it been in that spot? Liam could swear it had been a little more to the right. That couldn’t be, though. A planet moved, sure, but not like that. The only thing that moved like that was…

Liam rushed back into the shuttle to find the alarms were blaring.

“Crap! Crap, crap, crap!” he shouted as he tried to bring Dane up on the comms but was unable to. “Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad,” he babbled.

He checked the computer’s estimates—forty-seven minutes—then ran into the underground desert base.

He ran through the first hall, then another. Finally, the radio worked, and he was able to talk to Dane.

“Dane, we’ve got incoming.”

“Damn it. Okay, thanks for the heads-up. How much time are we talking?”

“The ship said forty-seven minutes.”

“Then we need to be out of here in less than twenty, or they’ll see us. Alvarez, can you make twenty minutes happen?”

“I can make thirty happen.”

“Shit. All right, kid. I’ll be right up.”

“Okay. I’ll go back to the shuttle.”

Liam returned and looked at the scanner.

To his shock, it now said twenty minutes.

He glanced at the shuttle’s defenses. He knew this was not a combat ship, and he wasn’t going to try to fly it into battle, but it did have a missile. He tried to bring up the controls and found that he could. The missile’s auto-targeting feature had already found the incoming shuttle.

Could he do it? Could he fire at the Augmented?

“Sure I can,” he insisted resolutely. Then he pressed the button.

The missile streaked off from the top of the shuttle, turned as it rose and caught the sun, and streaked off toward the incoming ship.

Yet Liam was guilty of doing what he felt the Augmented did better. He’d failed to think what they would see. The Augmented saw the missile coming, of course. They saw it and made evasive maneuvers to dodge.

“What in the hell is going on?” Dane asked as he burst into the shuttle, out of breath.

“There’s a shuttle coming, and it’s got to be the Augmented, and I fired the missile, but now it looks like they’re going to dodge!”

“What if it’s not the Augmented?” Dane demanded.

“I don’t know!”

“Goddamn it.” Dane pushed Liam from his chair and took the controls.

“I messed up!”

“A little, but we can fix this. I can tell the missile to detonate. Hopefully, that’ll catch them in the shockwave.”

“What if they’re not Augmented, though?”

“The shockwave won’t be enough to destroy their ship, but hopefully will force them to land. Then I go and find out.”

“I can come, too. I started this mess!”

“Nope. They can’t see you working against them. End of story. You’ll stay here.”

Dane hit the button, and the tiny dot of light that the missile had been reduced to exploded. It lit up the last of the night and illuminated what did turn out to be a shuttle.

“Lucky,” Dane noted, though it didn’t seem lucky to Liam. It was still flying! Then he saw what Dane was talking about. One of the engines was smoking, and the shuttle was losing altitude. The missile strike had been successful, no thanks to Liam. The shuttle would crash.

Though it was taking its time. It kept coming toward them, losing altitude but also stubbornly refusing to crash. Closer and closer until Liam saw the pilot inside, wrestling with the controls, and the copilot trying to talk into a radio. He was Augmented. Liam could tell by the uniform.

Then the nose of the shuttle hit the ground and kicked up a great plume of sand.

Dane vanished into the dust.

The shuttle crew spilled out into the desert, removing their helmets and coughing as smoke poured from the craft’s cab.

“Did you get a hold of anyone?” one of them asked another. There were four total.

“No. Nothing. No goddamn reception out here. I can’t even feel my implant—”

He never would because Dane opened fire, and he did not miss. Two of the Augmented went down. Their blood spilled onto the sand while the other two tried to take cover.

“We’re under fire! I repeat. Under fire! Goddamn radio!” the Augmented cursed, kicking the machine.

Liam crept out. These Augmented were relying on a radio to communicate, not their implants. That meant even if they saw him, the collective mind of the Augmented would not. Which meant he could help.

He grabbed a gun, since there were plenty, and headed toward the crashed shuttle.

Dane approached like a ghost or some desert cat. Liam hardly saw him move. There was a blast of gunfire, then another. Dane sprinted forward, then he was gone.

He was holding their attention, though.

That meant Liam could get closer.

And closer.

His gun came up, and he fired. One of the Augmented turned to look at him. His eyes went wide, and his mouth made an ‘o’ in surprise, then bullets tore into his chest. He crumpled against the shuttle. Liam was too stunned to shoot the other guy. But that didn’t matter. Dane was there. He shot the man, and the fight was done. Except for the guy Liam had shot. He was still alive, wheezing as his lungs filled with blood.

Liam stumbled across the sand and reached the man as the life faded from him, and his eyes went dull.

“That was lucky, too,” Dane remarked.

“How?” Liam challenged, his voice shaking.

“Lucky they had no reception. Hopefully, no one saw your face. Very brave of you, Liam. I know this stuff isn’t easy. I’m proud you were able to act.”

“I… That was awful. I killed him.”

“It was the only choice.”

“Was it?” Liam asked. Because now, he was more unsure than ever.

CHAPTER THIRTY

“Good, make sure our package is ready as soon as we go.”

“It’s ready now, sir.”

“And the doctors?”

“They’re almost done with the batch. Just printing it out now. Enough for all of us to have a dose and then some.”

“Good. As soon as it’s done, get up here. We need to leave sooner rather than later. We had hostiles.”

“You have hostiles?”

“Had. Past tense. I’ll tell you all about it, but let’s wait until we’re back under warp and heading toward the next part of this crazy mission. Get up here as fast as you possibly can. I’m heading back out.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll be there before you know it.”

Dane headed back out to the shuttle. He found Liam sitting in the copilot’s chair. He was visibly shaken, though he kept checking the sky, then the scanners. So at least he was still focusing on the mission.

“You all right, kid?”

“I… I guess so. Is it always like that? It was so…so bloody.”

“It’s not always like that, no. In space, you never look into their eyes. That makes this harder.”

Liam nodded. “He had to die. We couldn’t have saved him, but even if we could have, we wouldn’t have, right? I mean, he was Augmented. If he’d made contact with the network, then everyone would know that I’m working with you, and our whole plan wouldn’t work.”

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah,” Dane agreed. He found it was often best to let people work through these things for themselves. Liam was doing a fine job of that.

“When should I leave?” Liam asked, which surprised Dane.

“You still want to do the mission?”

Liam nodded quickly. “If anything, I want to do it more. If that guy wasn’t Augmented, I wouldn’t have needed to shoot him. He’d still be alive. I need to make sure this doesn’t happen again, that this war can end before anyone else has to die.”

“I agree with the sentiment, but you understand there’s no guarantee that any of this will work, right? If the vaccine doesn’t work, you’ll end up Augmented, with no backup, no one to come for you.”

Liam nodded, looking forlorn. “I need to get Augmented for the vaccine to work. But if the vaccine doesn’t work, I’ll only be Augmented. I don’t think I’ll be allowed to care anymore.”

Dane chewed his cheek. “I think you might be right about that,” he admitted. “You know, Good could do it instead. You could stay on the Unicorn.”

“It has to be me,” Liam expressed. “I’m the logical choice. If I play everything right, they’ll welcome me with open arms.”

“And if they don’t? You did shoot down one of their ships. They might put that together.”

Liam pondered that. “If they mention it, I’ll say I stowed away on the shuttle, and it was you guys who fired the missile. All I did was slip away when you weren’t looking.”

Dane nodded. “That’s not bad. It’ll explain the missile, at least. You’re sure that you can sell wanting to join the Augmented?”

“If any of the Augmented that I was talking to are still around, or even if their memories are, I guess, they’ll believe me. I was always…enthusiastic. Maybe too enthusiastic. I’m sure I can make them believe me.”

“Well, all right, then,” Dane commented.

Though that wasn’t what he really wanted to say. He wanted to say this was a crazy plan, and it wasn’t right that Liam had to do all this. For him to have the fate of not one, not two, but four planets on his shoulders. In fact, the weight of four planets might be putting it lightly. Dane wished he could be the one who stayed here, but that was impossible. Someone had to go to Earth. As little as he wanted it to be true, no one could accomplish anything by themselves. If it were possible, Dane would gladly fight this entire war solo. The world didn’t work like that, though. They all had to do this together, and Liam happened to be one of the best choices that they had.

“Your bag is packed, then?” Dane inquired.

Liam nodded. “I guess I can check again.” He got up from the copilot’s chair and went and found his pack. It was crammed with what he would need. Water, mostly, but also food rations, a weapon, and a collapsible tent he could use to shelter from the heat and the cold.

“I’m going to follow the mountains. There’s a settlement some ways away. I think I can make it there in the timeline.”

“And your watch?”

“Eighty-four hours and counting down.”

“Mine too,” Dane confirmed. This was the trickiest part of the entire operation. The quantum entanglement comms meant that one system could not afford to have the vaccine before the other. If either system was able to warn the other, they might be able to make something to counteract it. That was why Liam planned to take his time out here in the desert instead of bumming a ride somewhere closer.

“And you know what to say.”

“That I’m a stowaway, and I have intelligence. I’ll tell them what I know about Varuna. Nothing about the vaccine, of course, but I’ll tell them we captured their ships. That we have the iron sphere, and we can’t make their big space laser work. I’ll make them believe me, Mr. Dane. I know I can.”

Dane wished he still had the confidence of youth.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“Let’s go, let’s go! You ever want to feel the salty seas of Varuna, get your butt on the shuttle!” Good shouted as the team emerged from the desert base. Athanas, Robinson, and Brown were all limping along, going as fast as they could despite their injuries. Dane hoped that MacTaggart had better luck on the Unicorn. He knew from experience how bad ‘being a distraction’ could go.

“And we have the vaccine?” Dane asked.

“I do,” Carlos confirmed. “Don’t worry about testing it on Liam. I already tested it on myself.”

Dane supposed he should have expected that.

“All right, then. Dose us all, and let’s get out of here.”

Carlos produced a few syringes and had everyone roll up their sleeves.

He wiped Dane’s arm with an alcohol pad, stuck the needle in, and squeezed the plunger. Then it was done.

“That’s it?” Dane asked.

“That’s it,” Carlos confirmed. “It’ll take a few hours to distribute itself through your system, but there are now nanites in you that will interfere with the construction of the Augmented ones. It’ll let them build an implant, but as soon as it’s done, it’ll use this code to communicate with all the others. Essentially it will upload instructions to every other Augmented in range to do two things. First, to produce a set of nanites that will create the long-chain molecules we need to not kill the Augmented with our cure. Then a second set of instructions will order the Augmented nanites to disassemble their own implants.”

“Works for me,” Dane declared. They weren’t planning on getting caught for days yet, so that timeline was fine.

Athanas went next. She chose her opposite arm from the one the bullet had grazed. Robinson and Mark took theirs. Then Good and Dr. Brown. Haley whooped when she got hers.

“I guess it’s my turn,” Liam stated. He looked nervous but not scared. Like he was about to go on a rollercoaster or a long trip.

Alvarez poked him with the needle. Dane smiled.

They had done it. They had a vaccine that worked and had gotten it in the people who needed it. Now they only had to both get captured and implanted within an hour of each other.

Okay, so there was still a lot to be done.

“Well, if there’s nothing else, let’s get going,” Dane remarked.

“More than ready to leave the spider cave behind,” Robinson confirmed.

“Liam, you have everything you need?” Dane asked.

“I think so, sir. Yes. If I don’t see you again—”

“We’ll see you again, kid. One way or the other.”

Liam nodded. “Sure. But tell my dad that I love him, all right? And I’m sorry I didn’t realize how much he cared sooner.”

Dane nodded, patted Liam on the back, and the kid was off, picking his way up the mountain range and into the growing heat of the day.

“Let’s get loaded up and get gone,” Dane reaffirmed.

There wasn’t much to load. Good’s pack made up the bulk of their cargo. Now that his bag was empty, the cargo wasn’t as heavy and not as big of a risk, either.

Dane sat in the pilot’s seat, and Haley settled next to him.

“You doing all right?”

“Yeah, fine.” Haley held her stomach. “Sorry I wasn’t more use in there. I felt like it took everything I had to keep up.”

“No worries. We made it in and out.”

“Barely.”

“Well yeah, there is that.”

Haley turned to the console. “I think we have another shuttle incoming.”

“Damn, looks like it,” Dane noted. “They were probably waiting for a check-in. I guess that means we need to get going.”

He spoke into the intercom. “We got another shuttle incoming. Everyone get in and get strapped.”

The team did not need to be told twice. They all piled into the back of the shuttle and strapped in. Less than a minute later, Dane was done lifting off and heading over the mountains. He barely caught a glimpse of Liam as they took off. The kid really was setting a strong pace, which was good. He needed to get pretty far for them to complete their plan.

“Good, you ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then blow it.”

Good pressed a command on his tablet, and the mountains below them seemed to vibrate and rattle, then a great plume of sand blasted from the doorway they’d walked out from.

“What in the hell was that?” Brown bemoaned when he saw the crumbling stone and plume of dust. “Did you destroy my entire lab?”

“We did,” Dane confirmed.

“But that wasn’t the only project I was working on in there! There were a dozen other things, with a hundred other applications! There might have been the next major breakthrough.”

“Might’ve been,” Dane remarked.

“But you just destroyed it all.”

“He had to!” Carlos insisted. “Imagine what would have happened if the Augmented found that lab! They might figure out what we were up to!”

“They couldn’t possibly have!”

“They might have seen that we used the machine to make nanites. It would not take much imagination for them to figure out we were trying to attack the machines in their heads. We could not have allowed that. Dane did the only thing we could do.”

“I… I guess you’re right,” Brown conceded. “I hadn’t thought about the machine, but yeah, they would’ve realized it. Still, if I had known you were going to do that, I would have taken more files. There was one project…”

Dane let the doctor’s complaints fade from his consciousness as he piloted them up and out of the atmosphere. In the distance, there was an enemy shuttle, but it didn’t seem to be following them. It was likely looking for the cause of the explosion or at the other shuttle that had been taken down. There was a chance they’d give chase, and Dane sort of hoped they would. That would mean they weren’t combing the area, looking for Liam. If they chased the shuttle, they’d come face to face with the Unicorn before too long.

They blasted up through the atmosphere and made for low orbit.

“Haley, check for the Unicorn. See if they’re on target for pickup.”

“Looks like it,” Haley confirmed after a minute of checking the instruments. “They’re only a few light minutes inward, messing with a cluster of asteroids.”

“Send them a tight beam and schedule us for pick up.”

“Scheduling reverse delivery,” Haley remarked.

Dane burned hard out of low orbit until he judged they could be seen, then he cut the thrusters and let them drift out away from the Desert. They were too far out to watch the action in real-time, but they were still close enough to see Augmented were trying to swat the Unicorn away. Their ships were no longer in neat formation. Instead, dots of light were scattered around the system as ships tried to jump in and out of warp to catch the Unicorn.

It looked like MacTaggart had stuck to the plan and sown chaos instead of actually trying to fight. Dane had not really thought the Centauri native would try to fight, but you never knew in these situations. Something could have triggered MacTaggart, and he could have thrown caution to the wind. He hadn’t, though. He’d stuck to the plan, which meant they still had a shot at this actually working.

That came into question when a few warships appeared around the Desert, but none of them followed his shuttle. They were all no doubt wondering what the hell had happened down on the surface. Dane thought of Liam down there, trying to hide out and needing to convince them he was a spy for their side. He hoped the kid could do it.

He would have to do something similar in three days. Not a savory prospect.

Now wasn’t the time for doubts. Instead, they let Carlos run some tests and talked about nothing of import for a while until the Unicorn appeared in front of them in a great splash of energy. It opened its cargo bay, and they came in for a landing. Then they jumped to warp toward a rendezvous with the final part of their plan.

The part that, if Dane was being honest, was least likely to work.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“I don’t see why it has to be you,” Haley insisted.

Dane sighed. They were in their bedchamber, floating above the bed since the Unicorn had trimmed its speed. It would be dropping out of warp and into Earth’s space within the hour. They had made love in zero gravity, and Dane would be lying if he said he wasn’t expecting something like this. The thing was, Dane knew it had to be him, but he didn’t know if he could explain why.

“There’s no one else who can make sure it happens. They might kill someone else,” Dane claimed.

“They might kill you.” Haley pulled the sheet from the middle of the room and wrapped her naked body in it.

“That’s a risk I have to take,” Dane told her. That answer was almost rote at this point in his career, but in this instance, it was obviously the wrong one.

“If you die, all this is for nothing. If you die, our mission here fails.” One of her feet caught the ceiling, and she pushed herself down to the floor, grabbing her clothes on the way.

“I know, but that would be true of anyone. I know I can get them to implant me. Liam was the right choice for Alpha Centauri. I’m the right choice for Earth.” Dane grabbed his jumpsuit from the air and pulled it on, spinning as he yanked one pant leg up, then the other.

“But why? To me, it makes more sense that we send someone like Athanas or even Dr. Brown. Or what about Robinson? He’s a good talker. One of them could say they got scared and wanted to join up with the winning team. The Augmented would believe that! They know they outnumber us. They must be assuming that at least some of us are scared.”

“I mean, yes. You’re right about that,” Dane admitted as he got his arms through the sleeves, then zipped up the front of the jumpsuit. “If this was any other war, I would agree with you, but it’s not.”

“I still don’t see why it has to be you!”

“Because they know I’m the leader now. They know I’ve been a thorn in their side. Plus, they know I’m competent and we’re desperate.”

“You’re competent? Doesn’t that mean they’re going to blow you up as soon as they see your shuttle?” Haley snapped. How could the mood of a room change so fast? Five minutes ago, they had been in tender repose. Now it felt like Haley would storm out as soon as she got her magnetic boots back on.

“That’s a risk. I admit that.”

“Then why you?”

“For a hundred reasons!” Dane snapped, wishing he hadn’t immediately, but also not able to stop talking now. “They know that we held them off not once but twice! They know that we were on Alpha Central when it fell. They know I’m a pilot and I value our warships. They know that we only had a few of our own. If we defeated them and managed to take any of their ships, it was only a handful. They’re not going to believe I let someone steal a warship and bring it to Earth. They’re just not. The only thing they’ll believe is that I wanted this.”

“So you’re risking your life because you’re too good not to?” Haley demanded acidly.

“It sounds crazy when you put it like that—”

“It is crazy!”

“Who else can it be, Haley?” Dane asked.

Haley paused. She had no answer. Dane knew she didn’t because there was no other answer.

“Robinson could talk them into thinking that he, um…”

“We’re light years apart. They’ll never buy that Robinson stole a warship and got all the way out there. Period. The only way is for it to be me. I don’t like it, but there it is.”

“You can’t be betting our entire plan on the Augmented thinking you’re hot stuff,” Haley remarked.

“No. I’m not.” This part was harder to explain. Dane wasn’t sure he could put it into words. “I’ve talked with their leaders. With the general who attacked us last time, and with Carmen.”

“You mean the bra-less wonder in the white dress?” Haley snapped.

It wasn’t like her to be jealous. “Haley, you know I love you, right? That’s why I have to do this. I want to keep you safe. I want you to live in something like the world we grew up in, a world where we can still do new things. A world that would be safe for future generations.”

Haley’s hand slipped to her stomach as tears came to her eyes. “I love you too, George Dane, but what if it goes wrong? People loved each other on Alpha Centauri, and they lost. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to go, either. But I have to, Haley. They’re not going to kill me. Not until they talk to me.”

“You can’t know that!”

“You’re right. I don’t know, but I’m telling you, I’ve talked with them before, and I don’t think that they’re going to attack me. They’ll know that we beat their second fleet, and they’ll want to know why and how.”

“But they could come to Varuna and implant our people to get that information!”

“They could, but it knows that’ll take time. And they won’t get the same answers as they’ll get from me.”

“Wait, you said, ‘it.’ What do you mean by that?”

This was the part that was even harder to explain. “They seem like a collective intelligence to me, but there’s something else at work. Something that every leader I’ve talked to is beholden to. I don’t know if it’s a hidden leader, some sort of executive that makes the final decisions, or if it’s the Algorithm itself.”

“An Algorithm? You mean like a computer program?”

Dane shrugged, then nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but especially when I talked to Carmen the first time, I noticed something. She wasn’t the final arbiter, despite her being the person they chose to speak with me. There’s someone or something else behind her. Something that analyzes everyone’s thoughts and emotions and makes decisions based on that collective intelligence. That thing, or person, or whatever it is, is not some all-knowing robot. It makes decisions based on what it knows. It might be based on the consciousness of all those people, but it’s separate from them, too.

“That thing, that algorithm, hidden moderator, or whatever is in charge, is not going to be content to simply let me get blown to pieces. It’s going to relish that I am offering to surrender. I don’t want to say that it will enjoy the moment, but I think there’s something like pleasure to it. Like, when I was first captured, they could have moved faster to implant me, but they didn’t. It’s because this Algorithm or whatever is all based on human minds. It will want to gloat and rub my face in it, to savor our defeat.”

“And you know all this for a fact?” Haley asked. She was fully dressed now, hands on her hips, boots magnetically attached to the deck.

“No. I wish I did, but I don’t. But how many times has trusting my gut saved us? I know it’s not enough, but I don’t see any other option. I don’t think they’ll blow me up, not if I come to them saying they’ve won and I want to surrender. I think that they, or it, or whatever you want to call their leadership—whatever their leadership is—will want to talk to me.”

Haley nodded, though she didn’t look happy about it. She looked beaten. Like she’d already lost Dane and was now in mourning.

“There was something I wanted to tell you…” she admitted.

“Oh yeah?” Dane asked. She had seemed different to him lately. Moodier. Less willing to get in the action than she’d once been. Dane had assumed it was the stress of the mission, but maybe it was something else.

“Yeah, but given that you’re leaving, I’ll wait.”

“But if I don’t come back—”

“Then I guess you’ll never know,” Haley snapped. “I wish I could explain it better, but I guess it’s my gut instinct.”

Dane nodded. He deserved that. He was about to try to circle back around, but MacTaggart’s voice came over the radio.

“Time to say yer goodbyes and pack up. We’re nearly to Earth.”

“I’ll meet you at the docking bay,” Haley told him. “I need to take a walk.”

“Sure,” Dane agreed.

She turned down the hall and stomped off, her magnetic boots clicking angrily.

Dane went the other way, even though it was the wrong direction. His gut told him he might need help on this mission, and also that he might find what he needed in Carlos’ lab. He hoped this choice wouldn’t mean this was the last time he saw Haley.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

But Dane found Haley waiting for him in the docking bay outside the stealth shuttle. Her eyes were red and puffy. Obviously, she had been crying.

“I’m glad you came to say goodbye,” Dane told her, putting the metal container down so he could hug her.

“I wouldn’t miss this,” Haley stated, her voice still heavy with emotion. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you being out there, thinking I was mad at you.”

“I wasn’t mad. I understand you’re concerned. If there was a better way, we’d take it.”

“We’re five minutes out!” MacTaggart announced over the comms. “Last chance to scuttle this mission and double back with the beam weapon. See if we can fix it and blow this planet to smithereens!”

“We’re not blowing up Earth,” Dane replied. “Plus, we don’t have the expertise to fix that weapon.”

“Aye. Figured it was worth a mention, though. Guess it’s going to be ye ol’ subterfuge, then.”

“Yeah, that’s what makes the most sense,” Haley agreed, then kissed Dane on the cheek.

“I’ll see you on the other side, all right?”

Haley nodded and wiped a tear from her cheek.

Dane picked up his metal canister and climbed into the stealth shuttle. He put the canister on the seat beside him, strapped himself in, and waited for MacTaggart to open the bay doors.

This was it. This was the moment. If his mission was successful, he would save all of humanity from mental enslavement. If he was successful, the world would change. Everything would change. The Augmented would be done, and the survivors of their regime would forge their own path forward. If he lost…well, humanity was going to have a very bad day.

He checked his watch. Twelve hours. Twelve hours until he’d know if they were successful or not. Twelve hours until he and Liam both accomplished their goals. Or only one of them did and pushed this war into a phase that might very well cost them the habitability of their planets. Dane could not imagine the Augmented backing down if the implant tech that made them Augmented were attacked.

So this would be it. This would end the war or start them on a path of inevitable destruction. Though Dane felt like they were well along that path already. Maybe that was why he wasn’t sweating right now. This didn’t feel like the ultimate decision. It felt like the choice had been made long ago before they even got to the Desert. This felt like the final steps of the path he’d put his people on. If he had made a mistake, it was in the past. He’d find out how egregious it was soon enough.

“We’re about to drop from warp. If ye have a god, pray to them now,” MacTaggart called over the comms. Then the bay door was opening, and bands of energized particles were blasting away from the Unicorn.

Dane lifted off in his modified shuttle and flew into the storm of energy. He burned hard, riding the waves of energy, getting lost in them like they had on the Desert. This was their third time trying this trick, which likely meant that there would not be an opportunity for a fourth. The Augmented would figure this out like they figured everything else out.

But for now, Dane was hoping he’d be safe.

He burned hard, adjusting his trajectory for Earth. Then he cut his engines. He was well accustomed to coasting in at this point.

He watched through the cameras and scanners on his ship as the Augmented mounted a defense against the Unicorn. As they had anticipated, the Augmented of Earth must have been warned about the ship showing up in the fringes of the Alpha Centauri system because they weren’t clustered tightly around Earth. Instead, they were dotted all around the solar system. Ready to attack every region.

There were two in the general vicinity of the Unicorn. Both were already burning hard to catch up with the ship before it left them again. So much of this plan depended on the Augmented thinking that they were doing one thing while they really did another. Fortunately, reconnaissance was an essential part of any war, so it shouldn’t seem too out of place that the people from Varuna had sent their ship to both systems to try to scope out the state of the enemy.

At least, Dane told himself they were thinking that.

Though it did not mean they didn’t want to destroy the Unicorn.

Despite the pair of warships being at least half an hour out, both launched missiles. Dane waited for a tense moment while his shuttle made sense of where the warheads were headed. He sighed a breath of relief when their course indicated they were headed for the Unicorn, not for him.

It was ironic they hadn’t seen him. His shuttle was coated with stealth paint the Augmented had designed. They had only reached this solar system because they had been riding on a warship the Augmented had brought to Varuna to destroy the people there, or at least enslave their minds. All this could have been avoided, would have been impossible, had the Augmented left them alone.

They would still be on Varuna, trying to figure out the ecology, expand their footprint, making peace with the Russians that had arrived on the Zhemchug. They would never have devised a vaccine that would destroy the Augmented implants. They would never have even thought to do such a thing because they wouldn’t have known anything of the Augmented. This was not a war Dane wanted, but here they were. He was proud they had devised a weapon that wasn’t designed to kill anyone. Though Dane had been in enough wars to know there would be unforeseeable repercussions.

Twelve hours. Twelve hours, and they would find out how good their plan was.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Liam had barely made it a kilometer across the mountain when they blew up the hidden lab. Liam cursed when it happened, planting his feet and hoping that the boulder beneath him didn’t slide out from under him. A minute later, he was reasonably certain he’d be all right. A bunch of pebbles and stones had slid down the mountain, and some sand had poured down in little streams, but no boulders.

He hurried along, knowing that he needed to get as far as he could before the sun made travel impossible.

Less than an hour later, he was forced to stop when he saw another shuttle on the horizon. He had no idea if they were Augmented or not, but he couldn’t risk being discovered, and humans were particularly good at picking out movement, even from a distance.

He hunkered down under an outcropping of boulders and watched as the other shuttle came around.

Once he got his binoculars on it, it was clear that it was Augmented. Same model as the other shuttle, which Liam felt was a pretty good indication that it didn’t belong to some band of Desert survivors out here to scavenge.

It circled around the damaged shuttle, then came in for a landing. Liam didn’t have an angle to see if they were trying to investigate what was left of the lab, but it turned out he didn’t need one. The Augmented reappeared about a minute after vanishing into the rock face. Liam had made careful count, and none of them had vanished inside. That meant that the explosives must have collapsed the lab.

Between the mystery of the destroyed lab, the downed shuttle, and the Augmented that had been shot, the Augmented were intrigued. Liam felt his breath catch as they fanned out. One group went to check the crashed wreckage of the orbital defense platform, while the other group went up into the mountain range to explore and look for people up there. They obviously thought that there was a threat because they kept their weapons up.

Liam watched them from his hiding place, making no effort to move. Not daring to. If they spotted him, he had no doubt he would be taken in. If that happened, he would have to go days in Augmented custody without getting an implant. Given what he knew about the Augmented, that seemed wildly unlikely to lead to success. He felt like he had better odds of sitting tight here, waiting for them to give up.

Though it didn’t feel good. Lying here, doing nothing, waiting for his time to tick out while the Augmented grew closer.

They looked all day. When night started to fall, they packed up, loaded back up, and took off.

Liam didn’t see them make this decision because he had fallen asleep in the heat of the day. He had not meant to, but the hot sun overhead and being unable to move around made sleep hard to resist. He awakened to the sound of the shuttle revving up and taking off into the air. He remained motionless as he watched it rise over the desert. Now that they were airborne, they’d have a much better shot at seeing him. Only when they were gone, and even the sounds of their passing had faded, did he get up and move.

He knew there was a town along this mountain range. He needed to get there before his watch reached zero. He had lost a day of travel, which was unfortunate, but he had budgeted extra time, which he was eager to make up. After a day of resting, he hurried along the mountain boulders, the light of the stars more than enough to pick out the relatively brightly colored sand from the darker boulders.

He made good time as he hurried through the night.

He stopped when the sun rose and watched the sky as a few shuttles passed this way and that. Not many, though, and no one seemed to be looking for a kid in the mountains. That had to mean Dane and his crew had made it out of the solar system.

Which meant Liam getting the timing right was even more important.

He ventured out when darkness set in and found the town before the dawn of the next day. It was on the opposite side of the mountain range from where the lab had been. The difference was stark. While the other side was all sand and stone, over here, plants eked out a living. Occasionally, he even found tiny streams of water.

He hunkered down in a cave and focused his binoculars on the town. He needed to know if they had been taken by the Augmented. If they had, he only needed to get down there with enough time to take him to Alpha Centauri. Which would only take a couple of hours. If they hadn’t, this would get much more complicated. He’d have to somehow get these people to give him a ride to an Augmented settlement, and he could think of no way to convince them of that besides the truth. But that would risk his entire story being exposed if they were captured.

Fortunately for his plan, and unfortunately for the people of the town, the Augmented were already in control. Not long after dawn, a shuttle came in for a landing. Augmented soldiers emerged while a crew approached to service the shuttle. Liam knew from past experience that the Augmented didn’t deal in alliances. That might have happened in wars past, but not with the Augmented. Everyone in that town had to be Augmented, which meant their plan could work.

Liam waited for the shuttle to get serviced and leave. The last thing he wanted was paranoid soldiers finding him and making connections. He knew enough of the Augmented to know that the town wouldn’t be operating in the same mental space. They would be made calm. Not ordered, not forced, but simply made. The implants in their brains would tell them it was safe. It was better to be Augmented. This new life was a good life. The soldiers wouldn’t have that same operating code running. They would likely be from Earth, running on a different level than these recently implanted.

The shuttle took off. Liam waited for it to clear the wide-open sky, then he bundled up his gear.

With about twelve hours on his timer, Liam set out from the cave and made for the town.

He could tell that the people of the town saw him coming while he was still a ways out. One minute, everyone was going about their business, repairing this, shopping for that, hunkering down in the shade, and the next minute, every single person in the town was staring at him. It didn’t last long, this moment of group-think, but it was long enough for Liam to notice and to feel unnerved. If anything, it was even odder when they all slipped back into what they were doing. It made it plain how very different these people were. They still needed to maintain their buildings and get what they needed for dinner.

Now that Liam had seen them all look up at him, he noticed every time one of them glanced his way. He was too far to make out individual faces, and he didn’t want to whip his binoculars out and look like a spy. Yet he saw when someone paused and turned to him. It was highly organized, like the town as a whole was making sure the person entering from the mountains was being watched.

Liam came down from the last of the rocky outcroppings of the mountain range and headed across the thin soil toward the town. It was obvious why there was a town here. The mountains forced what little moisture there was up above them, where it condensed into clouds and rained on this side of the mountain. It was greener over here than it had been on the other side of the mountain. The mountain itself bore scrubby plant life, and down here, a rather small river or possibly a stream cut the town in half. If there was anywhere to build a town on this desert world, this was it.

The town wasn’t particularly impressive by Centauri standards. It was really only a handful of shops—a grocer, a hardware store, a building that repaired mining equipment, a landing pad—along with a few government buildings and a scattering of what looked like multi-family dwellings. Liam had seen a similar design on Alpha Central, though these were built lower as if they were hiding from the sun. Liam supposed they were probably built to do exactly that. It didn’t look like the most inviting place, though surely part of the reason was that quite a few people stared at him with open disdain.

Liam picked one of them out, a fella with a mustache who had been working on a porch until Liam got too close for comfort. He walked straight toward the man.

The man watched him come, hooking his hands on his belt and glaring all the while. Liam met his eyes and tried not to pay too much attention to the other townsfolk, who were slowly but surely cutting off his escape.

“You’re not from around here,” the man noted in lieu of a proper greeting.

“No, sir, but I’m here to help.”

“Help what?” The man frowned.

“I have information about a population of un-Augmented people.”

“That right?” the man asked.

Liam nodded. Obviously, he was a carpenter and not a master of interrogation. “Is there someone I can talk to about becoming implanted?”

Now that was the right thing to say. As soon as the words left Liam’s mouth, the mustachioed fella softened. “Sure. Sure, I can take you to the administration building.”

“You can point me there. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your, uh…porch?”

“It’s no trouble at all.” The man took Liam’s arm a little too forcefully and led him to the building.

Liam still had hours before he was supposed to get implanted, so having the other man put his hands on him made him jumpy. Yet he felt no needle, and now that he was willingly moving along with the man while under his power, the townsfolk stopped staring and went about their business.

Liam entered what had obviously been a jail until very recently. There were Plexiglas cells in the back and a big front desk to look official.

“Howdy,” the mustachioed man drawled. “This is him.”

The man at the front desk scrutinized Liam. “It’s true, then. You’re not implanted.” He was large in all possible ways. Big shoulders, big round face, big belly. He looked like the sort of man who could do just about anything asked of him as long as he had a square meal waiting for him when he was done. Liam was not so naïve to think he would be able to fight the large officer.

“That’s right,” Liam confirmed. “I want to be, though.”

“Well, I can help you there.” The man at the desk pulled out an injector. He looked relieved. “We all thought you was one of them holdouts from out there in the desert. Too many of them out there. They don’t know what’s good for them.”

“I hear that,” Liam replied, trying to remain calm. He couldn’t get injected. Not yet. But he couldn’t make it seem like he didn’t want to get injected, either. “But actually, I’m not from one of those settlements.”

“Well, whatever the case, sit down and roll up your sleeve. We’ll have you feeling fine in a few hours.”

This was it. The moment Liam was hoping for. The moment he could not mess up.

“A few hours?” he asked, furrowing his brow as he rolled up his sleeve. “What do you mean?”

“The nanites take a while to configure the implant. Most people are unconscious for that time. It’s painless, though. I promise you that. Hardly anyone in town even remembers the process. You sort of go to sleep feeling alone and scared. Then you wake up, and you’re part of the Augmented, and all those feelings of isolation are gone.”

“That sounds great, but I don’t know if I can do it yet,” Liam told him.

“Why not?” The big man looked suspicious now. Liam had to play this right.

“I told you that I’m not from one of those settlements out there, and I’m not. Actually, I’m a stowaway.”

“A stowaway? A stowaway from where?” the big man asked. He must have sent a message to the mustachioed man because he took a few steps back from Liam and placed himself squarely between him and the exit.

“Varuna,” Liam announced, and the big man’s eyes widened.

“Varuna, you say?” he sputtered.

“My name is Liam Bell. I’m the son of Ron Bell, who is still alive and working on plans to destroy the Augmented as we speak. I snuck aboard the stolen warship that came to this system, and when they went to the surface for some reconnaissance work, I hid on the shuttle, then escaped into the desert. I have all sorts of sensitive information, and I don’t know if you all are going to want to wait for me to wake back up to get it.”

The big man’s eyes looked into the distance. After a moment, they snapped back to Liam.

“There’s a ship being dispatched to pick you up. You understand they’re not comfortable with this sort of information being disseminated over our system while we’re at war with the people on Varuna. Too high of a risk of it getting out. You’ll wait here until they arrive. Won’t be long.”

“Yes, sir,” Liam replied. He tried to stay calm as the big man led him to a cell, then locked him inside.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

As Dane neared Earth, the traffic grew denser. The area around his home planet looked more like the seas of Varuna than it did the cold and hostile void of space. Mining craft trundled by as smaller and more agile maintenance craft darted to and fro. Huge battleships slowly passed like whales.

Dane felt like the octopus, a master of camouflage who might be able to avoid detection as long as he stayed to the corners but could not hope to go unseen if he traveled through open water. Whether done with stealth technology or biological abilities, hiding only worked when one stayed clear of large groups. It worked best when one stayed still. Dane could do neither. That wasn’t why he was here. He was here to get injected with nanites, and surrender was the best way to do that.

So rather than trying to hitch a ride on a mining vessel or scurry through the wake of one of the massive warships, Dane flew straight into the traffic, making no attempt to hide his craft. Instead, he turned on his radio and broadcast across all channels.

“People of Earth. This is Governor George Dane from Varuna. I am approaching your planet in a shuttle. I am here to negotiate our surrender and end this war.”

He expected a hundred replies, but he got only one. He accepted the request for a video call and was greeted with the hard face of a woman in a general’s uniform with closely cropped hair. “George Dane, this is General Chien. We have received your message and will escort you to the surface. Maintain your current course and trajectory until we send you further instructions. Any deviation from your course without our permission will result in your immediate termination.”

The video ended. Obviously, General Chien was not interested in having any sort of conversation with Dane, though that hardly surprised him.

Dane followed their instructions, maintaining his course as the traffic all around him flowed and moved to accommodate him. The mining craft and maintenance vessels cleared from his path while other ships moved in to intercept him. Most notably, two of the huge warships turned and flanked him as he proceeded. Each of these huge ships opened doors to their docking bays, and a dozen fighters poured from each one. They swarmed all around Dane’s shuttle, coming in behind him, on his sides, in front, everywhere. Many drew too close for comfort, but plenty of others stayed far enough away to blast him with a missile and remain safe from the resulting explosion’s fallout.

Dane was hyper-aware of how fragile he was at that moment. If he so much as bumped one of his controls, he would be annihilated. There would be no chance to dodge, to evade, to fight back. If he missed the first missile, he’d get struck by the second, or the bullet from a rail gun, or simply from a fighter crashing into him. He knew how the Augmented valued their individual people, or more specifically, how they did not. They would gladly sacrifice a few of their own to destroy him. The only reason they had not already killed him was because he was offering them a planet.

He wondered if even that would have been enough had they not dipped in and out of the Centauri system. The Augmented would likely have simply blown him to pieces. He was hoping that they had some level of paranoia because of that. Coupled with having the man who had thwarted two of their invasion attempts flying right into their grasp, it would hopefully be enough to keep him alive for another… six hours, he thought, looking at his watch.

A few tense minutes later, Dane received a new flight path and a call from General Chien.

“You will follow this new path to the Manhattan spaceport. Commence new flight path in five, four, three, two, one…”

Dane adjusted his controls to follow the new path, not wanting to be a second late or a moment early. The fighters all around him swooped in and out like a hive of bees, agitated that something had interfered with their business. A moment later, they all settled into their positions again. Dane’s shuttle told him that three of them had a missile lock on him. This just got better and better.

They reached the outer atmosphere of Earth, and the smooth ride grew turbulent as the shuttle entered the pocket of air that surrounded their planet.

“It’s a little bumpy, but I’m doing my best to maintain my course,” Dane told General Chien over the radio.

“Maintain your current course, or you will be fired upon,” the general replied.

Dane sweated as he tried to stay on course. Normally, entering an atmosphere was the part of a flight with the most variation. Depending on how one’s ship reacted to the subtle variations in atmosphere, a pilot would react by trimming speed, adjusting their angle of entry, or any of a dozen other adjustments. Dane ignored those reflexes now, though. The shuttle was rated for atmospheric reentry, so it should be fine, even if it did feel like it was rattling more than usual. Though maybe it was only Dane’s teeth chattering in his skull.

The détente held.

They crossed from falling to flying. Dane saw no airplanes, no flying craft, likely because they had all been ordered to clear his flight path. What he did see was half a dozen of the Augmented fighters that had entered the atmosphere before him and were already in place, ready to blast him to pieces if he deviated. Behind him, another dozen ships emerged from the edge of the atmosphere. Dane did not like to think about how all their fingers would be on their triggers while their fighters were rattled about this way and that.

Did the Augmented still have reflexes like regular humans did? Could their nerves still cause them to twitch and fire a weapon that they had not intended to fire? Could the implant in their brain stop the fingers in their hand from accidentally squeezing a trigger? How much of the person did the implant leave, and how much was programming?

If everything went as planned, these questions would all soon be irrelevant.

Though other questions would linger, Dane thought as they passed over a cluster of clouds and into clear skies.

When he had left Earth, it was a broken place, choked with the ash of cities destroyed by the rocks they had dropped. Even before the war, it had been suffering. The oceans were clogged with plastic, topped with a sheen of oil, and barely supported life anymore. People still fished, but those who still ate seafood had to learn to content themselves with creatures that survived best in a warmer, more acidic, and trash-choked ocean.

That was all forgotten now. The ocean of the past.

Below Dane, the waters of the Atlantic were blue and so clear that he saw massive shoals of fish beneath him. He noticed pods of whales, great communities of hundreds, swimming through the seas, leaping and splashing. Yet the oceans had not been turned into an untouched preserve, either. Fishing ships dotted the Atlantic, all with huge sails and solar arrays. Dane watched one pull in a huge catch of shining, silvery fish, flopping and jumping with life. It was more fish than a boat could have expected to harvest in a month when Dane had lived here. Now it seemed like it was only a small fraction of the bounty available from the oceans of this world.

Then, on the horizon, Dane glimpsed Manhattan. Even back when he’d lived here, he had always found the Manhattan skyline inspiring. Something about the twisting towers of steel and glass encouraged people to think big thoughts. Dane found the idea of all those people living together, struggling and working and doing their best to make something of themselves, beautiful.

The Manhattan of the future made the Manhattan of the past look like a garbage heap of poorly constructed blocks. As Dane grew closer, he could make out details on the buildings. Before, some had been things of beauty, while others had seemed more utilitarian in design. It seemed all those were gone, replaced with structures that were real works of art.

Some familiar sights remained. The Chrysler Building still stood, as did the Empire State Building. Yet where many of the other buildings had been were now taller and even more impressive edifices. One of them was made of a thousand different colors of glass, while another appeared to be all twisting, sinuous curves. Still another consisted of independently rotating stacked discs.

Perhaps most impressive was how far the plant life reached into the sky. Plants grew in elaborate patterns or broad swaths up the sides of many buildings. The city looked lush, vibrant, and healthy in a way that it never had before. It was a testament to what the human imagination was capable of when it worked together and agreed on the same priorities.

Dane felt that now familiar pang in his gut, that pang of doubt. Everything looked so good under the control of the Augmented. Could Dane really destroy all this? Could he really hope people would be able to do as good a job taking care of their environment once they no longer empathized with their neighbor?

Yet there was no reason to think that people would stop enjoying the beauty the Augmented had created. They would have freedom again. The freedom to think, to feel, to truly appreciate this space. Dane had to give that to them and hope they would see what he saw. Things could be better than they had been if they all put aside their differences and work together to make the world healthy for everyone.

This wasn’t his war. He was only here because the Augmented had come to his new home, attacked his people, and sullied the waters of his world. He didn’t like it, but he had to bring the fight to them. He knew what he was about to do might cause major problems and, more than likely, some deaths. Yet he could not let the Augmented put a computer chip in the brain of every single human being because he happened to like their aesthetic and the way they managed their resources.

So, not feeling great about doing it but knowing he had to, he pulled a lever on the canister he had gotten from Carlos. Then he opened a hatch and pushed the canister through. It splashed into the ocean below him. It would work, Dane hoped. Maybe he wouldn’t need it, but maybe things would go wrong like they always did. And he would need the distraction.

He cruised in over the spaceport and guided his ship down to the landing pad. It was just off the coast of Manhattan, near the Statue of Liberty. A new island that Dane knew he would not be able to escape from. But maybe it being out here would work in his favor if the package from Carlos did as he hoped. No sooner had the landing gear extended and the shuttle opened than no less than twenty soldiers stormed onto the shuttle, guns all pointed at Dane’s head.

He slowly raised his hands and allowed them to lead him from the shuttle. They cuffed him, and George Dane, governor of the last free planet, became a prisoner of the Augmented.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Liam expected to be interrogated on the shuttle that picked him up. Yet the crew remained silent as they took him out of his cell, loaded him into the back of the shuttle, then lifted off to space. Likewise, when it docked with a warship, Liam expected to be brought before the captain, but instead, he remained in the shuttle as the warship went to warp.

Only an hour had passed, and yet warp had taken them toward the inner solar system and to the orbital defense platform that Liam’s father had worked so hard to create. He glanced at his watch. A little over four hours remained. He felt nervous but hopeful. He had a chance to make this work. If he could stall them for another few hours then get implanted, he’d be on target.

The tricky part would be doling out what he knew slowly enough to fill up the entire time but not so slowly that the Augmented grew suspicious.

They docked and disembarked. Liam was not put in handcuffs or any other kind of restraints, but he did not feel like he had free rein of the station. It was sort of difficult to feel free when there were four armed guards shadowing his every movement.

“Where are we going?” Liam asked as they left the part of the platform that had no discernible gravity and entered the central asteroid that had been spun up to create the sense of gravity. The thing was, he knew exactly where they were. He had been in this part of the station many, many times.

The guards led him to the station manager’s office. Formerly the office of Liam’s father, Ron Bell.

Liam entered the space feeling wildly uncomfortable. The desk was the same. The computer terminal was the same. The screens on the walls showed the same sorts of displays. The only difference was a picture of Liam no longer occupied the desk.

Well, that and the man on the other side of it wasn’t his dad.

“Hello. You must be Liam Bell,” the man greeted in a painfully familiar accent. He was a local, then. Someone from this planet who was now Augmented.

“I am, yes.”

“My name is Dr. Albert Smith. I’m really happy you’re here.”

Albert Smith looked familiar to Liam, but he didn’t remember him in the context of his father’s associates. Had he been a dockworker? One of the secret Augmented who’d worked with Liam? Had he worked alongside this man before? He wasn’t sure, but it seemed obvious that Dr. Smith knew him. He saw it in the intensity of his eyes. He wondered if they had met or if Dr. Smith had simply consumed every memory of Liam all the other Augmented had.

The thought made Liam nervous, even though it was what they were hoping for. If Smith thought of Liam the same way the other Augmented had thought of him, he’d be more likely to believe what Liam was about to tell him. He certainly seemed eager to chat. Nothing to do now but go along with the plan.

“I’m glad to be here, too.”

“Would you like anything to eat or drink? Some juice, perhaps?”

“Juice would be fine. Yes, please,” Liam agreed, wondering how young Dr. Smith thought he was. Not that he really minded. He had spent days in the desert. To say he was thirsty was putting it lightly. Someone bustled in with a pitcher of juice and poured Liam a glass.

Now that he was thinking about it, his father had used a similar trick. For people accustomed to being in space, seeing liquid pour on a space station was an impressive sight. Liam’s father had done it to show his workers that what they were doing out here was something worth celebrating, something impressive. Smith must have been taking a play from the same book. Likely from a memory of one of the Augmented people who had seen Bell do it before they had been Augmented.

“Now, I understand you want to join us,” Dr. Smith began.

“Yes, sir. I had been working with the Augmented before the, er…”

“You can call it what it was. An invasion.”

“Well, yes, sir. I was working with some Augmented before the invasion.”

“Yes, we’re aware of your service and indebted to you. What we’re less aware of, and what we’d like to know, is how you got back here. Unless you’ve been on the Desert the entire time?” Dr. Smith asked.

That was a test, of course. Liam had already told an Augmented person on the Desert that he’d arrived from Varuna. That effectively meant every Augmented person in the system had that information already.

Even if he hadn’t already said he’d come from Varuna, the Unicorn had been bouncing around the system. Plus, that shuttle had touched down on the Desert and found the sabotaged lab. Smith would know better than to assume Liam happened to show up at the same time. Or someone on this planet would know that and have shared the information with Smith via their brain implants. Liam tried to focus on the man in front of him instead of the larger, more powerful forces he represented. It was a little overwhelming to think he was currently trying to bluff an entire planet of people.

“No, sir. I went to Varuna. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about and what I told the local sheriff back on the Desert.”

“Ah, yes. Of course,” Dr. Smith declared. “So, how did you get back here?”

“Well, when the Augmented attacked, my dad fled. He got as many people off the station as he could, and he insisted that I go with him.”

“Did you try to resist?”

“I should have, sir, but to be honest, I was overwhelmed. The Augmented I had been working with, they never said anything about a full-scale invasion or that beam weapon. I was in shock.”

Dr. Smith nodded in understanding. “The group you were working with was not allowed full access to the plans being laid on Earth. Otherwise, I’m sure they would have told you. We had to escalate our plans when the Centauri sent an asteroid ship that destroyed one of our major cities. We knew then that peace wasn’t an option.”

And Liam knew that the Augmented must have been developing the technology to make that beam weapon possible for far longer than the amount of time that had passed since the Centauri sent their ship to attack, but he didn’t say so now.

“When my dad told me to come, I obeyed. But then, when I got to Varuna, it was just more war. Everyone there was preparing for an invasion.”

“An invasion of Earth or Alpha Centauri?” Smith asked.

“Alpha Centauri. They want to strike the broadcast system and destroy the ability of the Augmented to communicate with each other.”

Smith smirked. He did not say it aloud, but Liam knew what he was thinking, that the implants had a built-in ability to communicate with each other. Any attack on the broadcast system would slow down the rate of transmission of messages from one Augmented to another, but they wouldn’t entirely stop it. Of course, that was exactly what the vaccine Dr. Alvarez had designed relied on to function. It would be disseminated through the larger network, but first, it would spread person to person. Like it had in the lab rats back in Dr. Alvarez’s office.

“And they’re building warships to do this?”

“More like repurposing the ones they captured. The Augmented invasion…it was a failure.”

“We assumed as much when we saw one of our ships bouncing around our solar system.”

“That’s MacTaggart controlling that. He named it the Unicorn.”

Smith smirked. He looked genuinely pleased, then the expression faded. Liam realized it might have been an emotion from Dr. Smith, the real Dr. Smith, before the implant in his brain told him it was not funny.

“And what are they planning on doing with the Unicorn?”

“Mostly reconnaissance, I think, but I’m not completely sure. I hid in one of the shuttles while they warped over, so I wasn’t in any of their meetings.”

“Did you see munitions?”

“You mean like missiles and stuff?”

“Yes,” Dr. Smith clarified.

“Yes, I did. They are definitely able to defend themselves if you attack the Unicorn, but I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon. I think they were heading to Earth next.”

“Earth? Why Earth?”

“To make sure Alpha Centauri didn’t have the full armada here, I think.”

Dr. Smith nodded, then looked into the distance, no doubt sending messages via his implant.

“It’s good you came here. You’re going to prevent a lot of bloodshed,” Dr. Smith told him.

You don’t know the half of it, Liam thought.

“What else can you tell us about the force back on Varuna?” Dr. Smith asked.

Dane had told Liam they would ask this and said he needed to be honest. It was too easy to verify, and the Augmented were too smart. It wouldn’t do to exaggerate or minimize the numbers because it would be too easy to prove he was lying. So Liam told them the truth.

“They have three warships, all stolen from the Augmented after the last battle. There’s other warships, too, but I don’t think any of them are working.”

“And the beam cannon?”

“It was damaged, and I know it’s not working.”

“Good. The system we put on it worked, then. Anything else?”

“They built a defense platform, but it was destroyed. Now they have a huge iron sphere in orbit. It's super-thick, so missiles don’t damage it like they would a normal ship.”

“Very good. Thank you, Liam. And can you tell me how they defeated the Augmented and managed to take three of our ships?”

“I can’t, sir.” Liam had been briefed on what he could say about this. They had deployed an EMP near the ships, they had released a virus, they had boarded them and taken them by fighting in the halls. He didn’t think the Augmented would buy any of that. He thought it more likely that they would believe that Liam didn’t know. It seemed he was right because Dr. Smith was already moving on.

“And what was the mission to the Desert? We know they were after a lab that they destroyed. Do you know what they wanted there?”

“Not completely, sir, no. I think it was for a lab that Dr. Brown used to work in. He’s one of the Centauri scientists who came to Varuna.”

Dr. Smith nodded. It was hard to read his expression, but Liam didn’t think he saw surprise. He almost wanted to jump with joy. He had thought it insane to tell the Augmented what they were after or anything like it! He’d told Dane repeatedly that it would be better to say it was a weapons depo or something like that, but Dane had been insistent. They needed to be as close to the truth as possible without quite coming to it. If Dr. Smith seemed to recognize Dr. Brown’s name, that had to mean he’d already figured out who had been in control of the lab and what they had been working on.

“I think Dr. Brown was working on nanites there. Stuff they were doing before the Augmented came along. Stuff to make you stronger or faster. Stuff like that. I think they blew it up because they didn’t want it to fall into Augmented hands.”

Dr. Smith nodded. “Thank you, Liam, for all of this. You have been very useful. Is that when you ran away, then?”

“Yes, sir. They all went into the lab, and I ran for it. I had made it pretty far when I heard an explosion. I think they shot down a shuttle, then blew the lab to pieces. I kept walking, looking for help, but I didn’t see anyone until I reached the town.”

“We’re very glad you survived, Liam. Sharing this information is important to us and helps us understand what they’re up to, as well as why they attacked that lab. Thank you.”

“Of course, sir! I know some other stuff too. I have a pretty good idea of how the Varuna base is laid out and even how their water system works, so I can help you with that.”

“And you will help us with that.” Dr. Smith stood and reached into a drawer. “You’ve already told us the most important details. We’ll get the rest when the implant finishes. We can afford the few hours now that we know you’re here to help.”

Liam couldn’t help but look at his watch. There were still hours to go! He couldn’t let Smith jab him with the nanites yet!

“Are you sure? What if they come back? I can tell you who’s on the Unicorn.”

“I have it on good authority the Unicorn has already been spotted in Earth’s solar system, so there’s no need to be concerned.”

“What if some of my info gets lost? What if I can’t describe Varuna as well?” Liam tried not to let his hands grip the arms of the chair and betray his fear, but he wasn’t able to help himself.

“This might be hard to understand for the non-Augmented, but those kinds of details are actually easier to recover post-implant. After the nanites finish building the implant that will interface with your brain, we can simply look at your memories of the place. It will be more useful than any description you can provide, I assure you.”

“There might be other stuff, too.”

Smith looked away, and two guards came into the room.

“It’s normal to feel nervous before you get injected. We almost all felt that way. You don’t need to be, though. When the nanites finish building, you won’t feel nervous, scared, or frightened. Ever again.”

“Can I get some more juice first, then?”

“Now you’re being silly. You can have juice when you wake up. Please, roll up your sleeve so I don’t need to have these two gentlemen restrain you. It’ll go much better if you’re relaxed.”

Liam didn’t know what else to do. He should have told them about how the Augmented were defeated back on Varuna or spent more time talking about his time in the desert or something. It was too late, though. He couldn’t say any of that now. All he could do was roll up his sleeve.

So, not wanting to, he did it anyway.

Dr. Smith smiled, pushed the injector against his arm, and pulled the trigger. Liam felt a prick as the nanites flowed into his bloodstream.

He felt woozy almost immediately. His eyes felt weird. He heard sounds that weren’t there. The thoughts of the other people in the room? His head hurt, pounded, like his brain was too big for his skull. He felt it growing, building, causing increasing pressure…

Then it stopped.

The headache started to recede.

His vision returned.

Dr. Smith fell to the floor, twitching.

“What did you do?” he groaned. Then the two guards collapsed.

Liam grimly regarded him. “I realized who the real villains were.”

“You’ve made a grave mistake,” Dr. Smith announced before his eyes rolled into his skull, and his body went into a series of convulsions.

“I don’t think so,” Liam retorted, still stuck in his chair as the rival nanites and snippets of code battled each other for control of his brain. Though it was entirely possible that he had. If Dane was not also running ahead of schedule and Earth lost contact with Alpha Central, this could all be for nothing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dane was led across the spaceport toward the control tower that sat in the very center of it. He hid a smile. This would be the perfect place to watch what happened when they injected him. He didn’t dare assume that the vaccine spreading through the population would be a harmless occurrence. He knew that the people of Earth had been living with implants for a long time, many for their entire lives. The sudden loss of that connection would cause chaos. Better to be outside the densely packed city of Manhattan than in the center of it.

When the guards led him into the control tower, then down a staircase instead of up one, he was less than pleased. Two guards led him down two flights of stairs while another eight followed. Their guns were trained on his back, he noticed whenever he turned to glance back at them. Not the sort of force one could do anything about, even if he wasn’t cuffed.

They opened a door and led him into a sort of opulent lobby. It was all pillars and perfectly white tiles and doors. Screens dotted the walls that showed views of Manhattan from the spaceport. All idyllic. All beautiful. Even the weather seemed more pleasant now that the Augmented had taken control. At the very center of the room was a desk, but the attendant already knew they were coming. He gestured for them to go to a room. As he did, the door clicked open.

Dane entered an opulent conference room with a sole occupant, a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing a thin white dress with a plunging neckline. The table was made of a sort of wood that Dane would have assumed extinct if not for the way the Augmented handled their resources. There were fruits in bowls and dishes on the table, spread out in a way that looked casual but Dane knew had likely been agonized over and picked out by a professional.

“Welcome, Governor Dane,” the woman greeted, her voice resonant and cultured. “My name is Karen Greene.”

“Another first among equals, huh?” Dane asked.

Karen smiled and tittered a gentle laugh as if Dane had uttered the funniest, cleverest thing anyone had ever said. “I’ve heard about your interest in the economics of our world here and how you have your doubts. I would be more than happy to discuss what equality looks like and how we strive for both economics and equity. Our shining lights, one could say.”

“And by ‘you’ve heard,’ you mean you’ve seen it all in your head thanks to your implant, right?”

Karen smiled. She was beautiful when she smiled. “We would not be able to have this discussion if I was not Augmented. I would not represent the side to which you are surrendering. But please, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You made it rather close to Earth before we spotted you. That paint we designed to mask our stealth shuttles from scanning instruments worked well, did it not?”

“If you expect me to apologize for using the technology you attacked us with, it’s not happening,” Dane told her. The last time he checked his watch, he had a few hours yet, but he didn’t care. The sooner Karen implanted him, the better. Then he could be done with this farce.

“No, George Dane, nothing of the sort. We expect you to use the innovations that we’ve shown you. After you join us, you’ll have access to even more of the technologies we have developed.”

When she said join us, Dane noted her hand touched an injector lying on the table, on the opposite side of the fruit. He was ready for her to jab him and end this thing, but he couldn’t act that way. Surely they’d notice if he was too eager. He needed to be willfully resigned.

So when Karen asked him to sit, he sat.

“I regret that we do not think that it would be wise to uncuff you, given our history, but if there’s anything I can do for you—a piece of fruit, perhaps? Please, you only must ask, and I’d be happy to feed you by hand.”

“Like a pet?” Dane asked.

“If that’s how you like to think of it.” Karen smiled as if her intentions were something entirely different.

Dane did not ask for a piece of fruit or anything else. Karen and the Augmented mind inside her head paused thoughtfully as if waiting for him to ask for food. They only waited a minute before they started asking him questions.

“I suppose the first thing we wish to know is why you want to surrender. We had expected as much, though we thought we would have to lead another invasion first. It’s a rather pleasant if unexpected surprise to have you arrive in our system like this. And so soon after that same ship was in Alpha Centauri. Curious.”

Dane was relieved she’d mentioned their foray into Alpha Centauri. That meant they were using the quantum communication technology, which meant the awful decision to leave a kid by himself in enemy territory was as necessary as they thought.

“We went to Alpha Centauri to do reconnaissance work and see what sort of force you have there. Plus, to find out if you had been successful in subduing and implanting the entire population of both planets.”

“And what did you discover?” Karen purred. Obviously, she knew the answer to that better than Dane did.

“We discovered your mission was successful.” Dane sighed, allowing his true feelings to show through. “We had thought you couldn’t move that fast, but every warship we saw was moving in cooperation with the others, which indicated there were no holdouts. We didn’t approach the planet, but we saw the orbital defense platform was fully intact. That indicated that we wouldn’t be able to overcome you in battle there. Your force was too superior.”

Karen beamed like he’d fed her the most delicious bite of dessert she’d ever tasted. Then a look of consternation crossed her face as if she’d bit into an insect while chewing that dessert. She nodded in reply to an unheard question.

“What about the Desert? We know you destroyed a lab there.”

Dane grimaced but shrugged. “One of the Centauri scientists that escaped to our world ran a lab out there that had worked on nanite tech. Before the Augmented had arrived, he had been interested in using nanites to increase bone density, muscle strength, red blood cell efficiency. Stuff like that. We didn’t want it to fall into your hands, so we made destroying it part of our mission. But by the time we saw what you had done with the system…” Dane shrugged. “Doesn’t really seem to matter.”

Karen tittered, her mask of pleasure restored. “Oh, George, you should know better than to think we’d implement such a technology. We figured out such things long ago, but we deemed them unnecessary. Machines are able to accomplish tasks that the human body cannot, and we didn’t see the reason to make some of our people stronger or faster.

“How would we decide who got these enhancements? How would we ensure equity? We could have given them to soldiers, but we are not a war-minded people like you are. We would not have wanted to have ‘super soldiers’ left around after we defeated you. Improving the body like that comes with a cost, higher caloric requirements, and shortened life in some cases. We did not see the advantage.”

Then, a crueler voice that did not sound entirely like her own. “You wasted your time.”

Karen fluttered her eyes as if regaining control of her body.

“I suppose we did.”

“Did what?” Karen asked, blinking, looking confused.

“Wasted our time going to that lab.”

“Oh, yes, unfortunately. Those sorts of improvements, they do not represent the equality and equity we strive for.” Karen’s eyes once more went blank. Her posture changed as well. No longer did she possess the flirty, feminine posture she had when he first came in. Who was Dane really talking to?

“Why are you surrendering now? Before our attack?” she asked, her voice not sounding like hers. “It is not logical.”

“I can see why you’d say that, but to my council and me…it’s the only choice. We managed to defend our planet against two of your attacks, but we don’t see how we can make it a third time. I don’t know how much intelligence you got from that battle, but all our ships except one were destroyed.”

The grin that spread across Karen’s face seemed to indicate she had not received any of the information from that battle. Though again, Dane was confronted with the idea that he was no longer talking to Karen.

“And yet you survived,” the voice that came from Karen but was not Karen intoned.

“We boarded the ships and fought hand-to-hand. Your people weren’t expecting it.”

“No. We weren’t.”

“But we know you learn. Everything we try only works against you once or twice. We couldn’t risk another battle. You might have the numbers to do that in population and in warships, but we don’t. We’re less than two thousand, and that attack cost us too many. We can’t lose any more life or risk any more damage to what infrastructure we have. We can’t have any more war. My council was unanimous.”

“Interesting,” Karen who was not Karen remarked. “You can reach unanimous consent without implants.”

“We can. And because of this, we are hoping for mercy. We understand you will want to have implanted people on Varuna. To show our good faith…I will volunteer to be implanted.” Dane made no attempt to hide his disgust at the idea, even though it was the keystone of their plan. “Since our people sent me to entreat with you, we ask for mercy. Spare them from being implanted because they chose to work with you. Let them live free!”

“Unacceptable,” the entity speaking through Karen responded. Dane had no doubt she was no longer in control. This force speaking through her had none of her guile, none of her charm. Karen was only a puppet for this…this mind. The Mind of the Augmented.

“You will all be implanted and join us. This is the only way you avoid war. There will be no conditions to your surrender. You will ask nothing of us but to be spared. The other six colonies were not allowed to keep minds isolated from the Augmented, and neither will you.”

Dane did not fail to note that there were six other colonies. “Please!”

“There were holdouts, and there still are in the Alpha Centauri system, but there will be no holdouts on your planet. Your people will submit to us, or we will destroy your colony and render Varuna uninhabitable. We would rather not do this, but we now control enough planets that Varuna is not necessary to ensure our extended survival. Your people will submit, just as you are submitting now. They will line up when we arrive. We will inject each and every one, and their minds will be ours. Any secrets you think you hold will belong to us. Your hopes, your dreams, your nightmares? They will become our hopes, our dreams, and our nightmares. Together, we will be stronger. Together, the universe will be ours.”

Karen had been pacing around the table as she said this, and now she picked up the injector.

Dane was ready. This was it. “Give me a minute,” he requested.

“There will be no more time. There will be no more concessions,” the entity in Karen’s body proclaimed, stalking toward Dane with deadly grace. “This is an important day for humanity.”

Dane silently agreed, even though he was quite certain they would have different ideas about what was important today.

Then the woman froze. A frown formed as if she was listening to something Dane could not hear.

“You have lied to me, George Dane.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“You can verify everything I said. I know I can’t hide from your warp ships,” Dane insisted.

“You lied about why you are here,” the person who was not Karen expressed. She looked into the distance, receiving information in a way Dane could not and would never be able to. Provided this worked.

“We have lost contact with Alpha Centauri,” Karen remarked. “That’s not possible. Not unless something very bad has happened there.”

“My people are long gone,” Dane stated.

“The Unicorn left, yes. Yet the timing of all this is too suspicious. We finally have George Dane in captivity, and we lose contact with Alpha Centauri? It is not a coincidence.”

“Well, if you think I’m going to tell you a damn thing, you’re crazy. I told you why I came.” Dane hoped the antagonistic bluff would encourage Karen to simply jab the injector into his arm.

No such luck.

Karen walked away, taking the injector farther from him. He needed to get injected now more than ever. Them losing contact with Alpha Centauri could only mean Liam was successful. The vaccine had worked. Yet there were still guards with guns trained on him, and he was still cuffed. If he lunged for the injector, their plan would be ruined. They would know he wanted to be injected, and the game would be up.

He could try to attack Karen, but the guards would surely shoot him even if he reached her. The mind using her like a puppet would not care if she died. It could simply use one of the plentiful guards instead.

So when Karen ordered Dane taken to a cell, he didn’t know what to do except go.

“We’ll finish this later, George Dane. Rest assured, your people will be implanted, and the power of the Augmented will spread to your planet as it has spread to every other human colony.”

“On your feet,” a guard snapped, gesturing at Dane with his gun.

“I don’t know anything about this,” Dane contended. “Maybe one of my people went rogue, or you don’t have Alpha Centauri under as tight of a control as you think you do.”

“It’s irrelevant. We’ll figure this out.”

“You can’t hurt my people!” Dane roared, but a guard shoved him out the door and through the lobby. They were about halfway across when alarms blared.

The group of guards with Dane consulted the collective intelligence and decided whatever had set off the alarm was a larger threat than Dane. And with good reason, Dane thought, if he was right about what was threatening the spaceport.

He needed to get an injector and use it on himself now. But there were still too many guards in the lobby. So Dane let the pair escorting him to continue to do so. They took him into a stairwell. Dane let the first one go down three steps, then he started down and knew it was his moment.

He kicked the man in front of him in the back of the head, causing him to topple headfirst down the stairs and crash to the landing at the bottom. The guard behind Dane tried the exact same tactic on him, but Dane expected it. He felt the boot in the back of his neck, but he leaned back against it, so instead of toppling down, he felt a sharp bolt of pain in his neck. Preferable!

The guard tried to get his gun trained on Dane, but Dane dropped his head and head-butted him in the gut before he could. The guard doubled over, so Dane took two steps up and kneed him in the face. The guard tumbled back into the wall, then clattered down the stairs to land on top of his fallen comrade and stun him. Dane hurried down the stairs, then kicked the now tangled guard in the face, knocking him unconscious.

He dropped to his knees and found an electric keycard that he slid through the cuffs on his wrist, freeing his hands. What he did not find, however, was a nanite injector!

Dane picked up one of their weapons, knowing that he would need it, and went back upstairs to the lobby. All he needed was to find a nanite injector and dose himself, and this could all be over. That shouldn’t be that hard! It was all that the Augmented had wanted to do to the people of Varuna since they discovered they had survived out there.

Still, he could not help but glance at one of the screens in the lobby that showed the water surrounding the spaceport. The source of the alarm was clear, and it was Dane’s doing.

Dozens of murder stars crawled up from the sea, attacking people, boats, and anything else that moved.

They had been in the canister he’d gotten from Carlos Alvarez. Only a few of them, chopped into pieces that would regrow as soon as they had food to eat. The canister itself was made of material their acid could not touch, but the lever had pulled away a section of that material, giving the starved murder stars a place to chew through. They had surely found things to eat out in the sea. They’d devoured what was between them, regrown their bodies, and were now flooding the spaceport and parts of Manhattan. Likely because they could sense exactly how many people were there.

Dane grinned. That would be a problem for later. Possibly a big one, depending on how well the alien species was doing in the ocean here. It had bought him the distraction he needed, though. The Augmented were working against the swarm. Guards crawled out onto the base, firing at the murder stars with less-than-effective bullets. Then one of the Augmented tried armor-piercing rounds, and all the Augmented stopped to switch over the kind of munitions they would need.

Dane didn’t like the Augmented, but damn it if it wasn’t impressive when they did things like that. More Augmented targeted the murder stars that were still underwater as well. They dove into the sea in the amphibious fighter jets they had designed to double as submarines on Varuna. Dane had no doubt if those ships were not equipped with the right kind of bullets for the job, they would be soon.

The murder stars were already regretting their foray onto land against this less-than-edible foe and were trying to flee back into the ocean. But the Augmented were waiting for them in boats and aircraft, firing on them and breaking their bodies into pieces too small to regrow. They were going to beat back the murder stars with the sheer force of numbers.

Which meant Dane didn’t have much time. He ran through the lobby, trying door after door, but none of them opened. His distraction was about to amount to nothing. All the guards outside would flood back in here, a swarm every bit as deadly to Dane as the murder stars.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Finally, a door opened, and Dane found himself back in the conference room. It was odd to see it empty and still after the action happening outside. The fruit made it smell sickly-sweet. He scanned the table, looking for the injector that Karen had, but it was nowhere to be seen. As he searched, he saw that there was another door on the opposite side of the room. Would Karen be in there? He hadn’t seen her on any of the screens depicting the murder star attack. Surely, he would have noticed a woman in a flowing dress wielding an assault weapon?

He checked the weapon he had taken from the guard, made sure it was loaded, then kicked open the door.

Karen yelped when the door slammed open. The room beyond was an office, complete with a desk and cabinets.

“What are you doing here?” she screeched.

“Shut up, or I shoot.”

“Why aren’t you escaping? Isn’t that why you released those horrible things? You’re a fool if you think they’re going to stop us for long. Our people will destroy them, and they’ll come here.”

“I guess I don’t have much time, then,” Dane drawled. He rushed at Karen and struck her with the butt of the gun.

She yelped in pain and crashed to the ground. Dane knelt and checked her pulse. She was not dead, but where was the injector? She didn’t have any pockets for the damn thing. Dane cuffed her so he could search for it. She had to have the injector in here somewhere. Where else could it be?

He rifled through the desk and had moved on to the cabinets when he heard a low groan from Karen.

“The guards will be here soon,” she announced in the voice that was not her voice. “Whatever you are planning, it will fail.” Her eyes weren’t even open. It was like she was sleep-talking. “You will fail. These creatures are already dead. Even now, the guards are coming.”

Dane finally found it in the bottom of one of the cabinet drawers.

He yanked out the injector and stuck it into his neck.

“What are you… You’ve found a way to destroy our implants! You cannot do this! You will destroy all we have built. All the advances we have made in technology.”

“I can, and I will.”

Dane squeezed the trigger and felt the prick as the nanites flowed into his bloodstream.

Not a moment too soon. Guards poured into the room and grabbed him, yanking the now-spent injector from his hand. One of them threw him over the desk and cuffed his arms behind his back while another went to check on Karen.

“You have failed,” Karen boomed in that same voice. “You have tried to hurt us, but you have failed!” She raised her arms, pulling at the cuffs until there was a snap. The sound wasn’t the cuffs but one of the bones in her hand. It had broken through the skin and was now jutting out as she pulled it through the cuffs. It wasn’t her, though. It was whatever controlled the Augmented, wearing her like a costume.

“You tried to stop us, but you have failed. You could not outthink us, for we are many, and you are few.”

Dane felt the nanites working in his head. The pounding sensation made him want to shut his eyes. It would work, right? It had to work.

“We could learn a lot from the Augmented. Maybe we could have, or we still will, but not at the cost of implanting every single one of us. You fell for that good old human sin. You got greedy.”

Then the guard holding Dane against the table collapsed, followed by three more, and finally, Karen herself.

He had done it.

This was the beginning of the end.

CHAPTER FORTY

Dane had known that destroying the implants of ten billion people at the speed of wireless communication was not going to be pretty, but even he had failed to anticipate the full extent of the damages.

As soon as Karen and the guards fell to the ground, Dane got back up and told himself this headache was fine. After uncuffing himself, he ran back to the surface level of the spaceport. It had not been easy to see.

The fighters, which had been flying and firing at the murder stars moments ago, were now crashing from the sky into the sea. An explosion ripped out as an airbus behind him smashed into one of the Manhattan towers. All around him, the soldiers who’d been blasting away at the murder stars fell unconscious as the wireless vaccine Carlos had devised spread like a virus through them all.

Dane ran to a fighter on the spaceport and took to the skies.

As he flew out farther from the spaceport, he realized the destruction was not quite as bad as he had thought. It appeared the Augmented had gone to an alert status when he arrived. Most of their flying vehicles were grounded. Dane saw far more parked vehicles than he saw wreckage from them falling out of the sky, so there was that. He flew around Manhattan, widening his circle to take in more of the landscape below and to see how everyone was doing. For hours, the world was eerily silent, as all the Augmented lay still while the implant in their brain was disassembled and the toxic compounds it released were destroyed.

Then they started to wake up.

That was when Dane felt hope again.

He landed in Manhattan on top of a tall building with its own mini helipad and heard cheers from down below. People were celebrating, whooping with joy, dancing, and simply living again. As they woke up, they took to the streets arm-in-arm and danced, once more able to connect the way humanity had since its inception.

Dane set up a beacon at the spaceport and asked volunteers to come in and help. He wasn’t alone anymore since MacTaggart and the Unicorn had landed. Still, it was overwhelming to see first thousands, then hundreds of thousands of people, arrive to volunteer to put the planet back as it had been.

Dane was relieved he had spent so much time as a governor. It made the administration of a planet at least somewhat possible. Not that he could do it himself, but his experience had taught him that delegation was one of the most important tasks of a good leader.

He assigned people to manage communication, to go to the other continents, and to check in on the people living on Mars and the moons of Jupiter. He met delegations from all over the world in his spaceport, everyone eager to get the world turning again, to keep the crops coming in and the hospitals open.

It was inspiring to see so many people who wanted to help, who wanted to live free. Who had been living a muffled existence for so long, all ready to stretch their minds again. He was often greeted with hugs, whoops of joy, and overly enthusiastic handshakes.

Though it wasn’t all good.

Those who did not adapt to losing their implant were not nearly as loud about it.

Many of them simply didn’t wake up. Most of the people on Earth had lived their entire life with an implant in their brains. For some, especially the elderly, it was simply too much. Many fell into a coma or suffered strokes or heart attacks. Dane didn’t know how many, but he did know millions was a conservative estimate.

There was a rash of suicides, too. Especially by the people who had been in Augmented leadership positions. It seemed like every day, more and more people jumped from skyscrapers or simply walked into the ocean. The survivors’ first task would be taking care of those who had not or did not wish to survive. The hard task quickly tamped down the celebratory atmosphere. Many of them overwhelmed the hospitals and clogged the roads.

The infrastructure of an entire solar system broke down, and for a week, no one seemed to know how to put it together again.

Then the Centauri showed up.

Dane knew they were coming, thanks to the quantum communication between the two systems, but he still felt his chest fill with relief when they first appeared as bright stars in the sky. They came with every ship they had, all loaded with as much food, medicine, and people as they could send.

It turned out the amount of time one spent living with an implant in your brain made all the difference in recovery time. The people of Alpha Centauri did not lie catatonic or seek to end their lives. They celebrated the freedom that had been won for them, then came to help Earth.

“Lev, how are things?” Dane asked when the security chief stepped out of a shuttle all the way from Varuna.

“Varuna is a dream,” Lev reported. “We were not attacked, so things are proceeding. I brought what food we could and all the medical staff we could spare. It feels like a small drop compared to the billions of Earth.”

“We need all the help we can get here,” Dane told him.

Lev was more than happy to help organize the restructuring of life on Earth.

With him came Ginger Alvarez to help oversee the mental health of an entire planet, as well as Dr. Thorson, who wished to study the best way to revive and reintroduce those who had suffered brain trauma. Adams and Winters threw themselves into managing various intercontinental relief organizations basically the second they stepped onto the planet.

Then Haley stepped from a shuttle. Dane ran to her and wrapped his arms around her, unable to put into words how relieved he was that she was all right. It was unfair to feel such relief at the well-being of one human in the face of so much death and destruction, but the human heart felt what it would.

They embraced, and Dane led Haley up to the top of the control tower, where he had been working on the recovery efforts. She stepped over a dead murder star with disgust.

“MacTaggart said you released those. Was that really the best plan?”

Dane shrugged, but he couldn’t help but grin. “You should have seen their faces. I bet they were expecting something. Blowing things up is, like, the oldest trick in the book. Those murder stars, though? They never expected that.”

“Are they all dead, at least?”

“You’ll be happy to know I put together an environmental task force. They’ve been gleefully hunting down the last few of them and killing them ‘for the planet.’ It’ll be fine.”

“I hope so,” Haley remarked, holding his arm tighter. “Have you heard about the other colonies?” she asked, changing the topic.

“A bit, yeah. From what we can tell, they didn’t have the quantum tech set up yet. They’re all a lot smaller than the population at Alpha Centauri, so we’re not judging them to be an immediate threat.”

“We’ll have to do something, though. If they try to sneak in and start implanting people again…”

“I know. We will send people there with the vaccine and doses of the implant. It should be simple enough, really, but I don’t want to cause any more chaos yet. Earth is barely holding it together. If we don’t get the food situation straightened out soon, we’re going to face starvation and possibly riots.”

It was Haley’s turn to chuckle. “Riots, huh? The Augmented never had to deal with that.”

Dane nodded. “True, but it’s more reason to get everything running again. We’ve already got some of the shipping lanes back open. We can make this work.”

“And what happens when it is working?”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Well, I’d like to go back to Varuna,” Dane informed her.

Haley smiled, and Dane knew she wanted that, too. “Now that we can visit Earth, I want to be part of it, but I’m still excited to see what we can make of our ocean world. I wonder if we can build ships to sail across the oceans instead of under them. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

“George Dane, war hero and sailor.”

Dane grinned. “Doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

“I don’t know. I worry a little bit about the seasickness.”

“Haley Lopez, worried about a thing like seasickness? I don’t believe it.”

“Well, there’s a reason. Something I wanted to tell you sooner but didn’t.”

“Oh, yeah. You mentioned there was something on your mind. Something big, by the way you were talking.”

“Well,” she began, uncharacteristically shy. “You know how Varuna only has about two thousand people? I guess I’m going to make it two thousand and one.”

Dane blinked. Her hands moved to her belly, and he understood.

“You mean… Does that mean… I’m a father!”

“You better be!”

Dane was stunned, but only for a moment. “Haley, this is amazing! Oh my God, there’s so much to do! We’re going to need a nursery, and to figure out formula. Unless you’re comfortable breastfeeding, of course. Are you going to want to take time off? I think I need to help get things in order on Earth, but when that baby comes, I am here for him! Or her!”

She shut him up by wrapping him in a huge hug.

In that moment, it felt like all the worlds would be all right. That while there was work to be done, people were choosing to do it.

That there might not be a better thing in the universe than humanity coming together to make things happen.

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN APRIL 3, 2023

Hi!

Here we are at last – the final book in the "Free Worlds Series." What an incredible journey this has been! As we close the final chapter of this adventure, I can't help but feel truly grateful that you've followed it all the way to the end. Thank you for being part of this journey.

This series and the characters in it certainly went far afield from what I’d imagined when I started writing it! They've grown and evolved throughout the series, and I hope you've enjoyed getting to know them as much as I have. Writing about their triumphs, struggles, and friendships has been a ton of fun. I have to admit, I hold a special place in my heart for the Nessies, especially Agus and Isla. Heck, even the murder stars made a final appearance in this book!

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. It's time to say goodbye to the Free Worlds and look ahead to new horizons. I'm happy to announce that I will be working with Michael on a new LitRPG series, coming out this summer! This one will mix some elements of fantasy and science fiction.

When I was younger, two series of books I enjoyed a lot were “The Warlock in Spite of Himself” (and the ton of books in that series) and “The Cross-Time Engineer.” Both series were essentially science fiction, where the hero comes from a high tech society (either another planet or the future, respectively) and lands in a medieval one. In this new series, I’ve borrowed that basic concept. We will be following the engineer and college professor Dr Charles Smith as he accidentally gets transported from our world into a magical one. Will his knowledge of engineering and science be enough to turn the tide of the magical invasion he finds himself in the middle of?

We're both very excited about this collaboration and can't wait to share more details with you soon.

On the home front, I've recently welcomed a new addition to the family – Hope, a 12-week-old black Labrador retriever. Hope is a service dog in training, and she's incredibly smart. She'll be living with us for a year before moving on to advanced training. Having her around has been amazing, even though it’s only been a few days. Getting enough sleep is a wee bit challenging, as puppies need to go out more than once a night! But she’s also a terrific companion, and I find myself watching her explore the world with wide-eyed curiosity, reminding me of the importance of being open to new experiences and adventures.

As I mentioned in my Author Notes for book five, I never intended for the series to be an indictment of social media and interconnected technologies. However, I believe a bit of that has undoubtedly seeped into the story.

In today's world, we're more connected than ever, but it's crucial to strike a balance between the virtual and the real, between technology and our humanity. The Augmented in the series lost that balance, and the consequences were far-reaching. Science fiction, at its core, is about exploring possible futures and the impact of technology on the human experience. I hope that through the "Free Worlds Series," I've been able to achieve that while also weaving a fun and exciting story. My primary goal has always been to take you on an unforgettable journey, and I sincerely hope I've succeeded.

As we bid farewell to the Free Worlds, I'd like to express my heartfelt appreciation for your support throughout this series. Your encouragement and feedback have been invaluable, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to share my work with you.

I can't wait to see what new adventures await us in the world of LitRPG, and I hope you'll join me on this exciting new journey. Together, we'll explore new universes, meet incredible characters, and continue to push the boundaries of our imaginations.

Once again, thank you for your unwavering support, and I look forward to sharing many more stories with you in the future.

All my best, until next time!

Kevin

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN MAY 15, 2023

First and foremost, thanks for joining us on this literary journey, and for sticking around for my author notes at the end of the last book. I hope you will join us on another trip into the fantastic future in another series.

Internet or Bunkers (Bonkers)?

In the last few days, a thought has been lingering in my mind. It sprang up during a recent business trip. What would happen to our American society if we suddenly lost the internet?

It's terrifying how deeply technology has woven itself into the fabric of our lives. From confirming our hotel bookings to working remotely, we are entangled in this web of virtual connectivity we've built.

As an author, I'm often engaged in mental exercises that involve speculating about the “what ifs” of the world, but this thought experiment has left me unnerved. I've caught myself contemplating whether I should build a bomb bunker in my backyard (a nearly impossible feat, considering my small pool-occupied rock and fake grass-filled backyard in Las Vegas) or perhaps buy land out in the country.

The latter idea would likely necessitate a shift to a vegetable-heavy diet, which I dread. I have a combative relationship with vegetables, and I'm afraid that society forcing me to eat them might significantly shorten my lifespan. So, here's hoping that our world doesn't impose such drastic dietary changes upon us.

Of course, these musings are just that—musings. However, they serve as a reminder of the delicate balance of our existence, which hinges on the conveniences of our modern world. It's not all doom and gloom, though. As we continue to adapt and evolve, we also develop resilience.

I hope to God we develop resilience, and perhaps a bit of self-control.

In the end, these hypotheticals are a part of my job, a part of the thinking process that fuels my writing. But sometimes, it's necessary to hit the pause button on my mental gymnastics lest I get lost in a labyrinth of dark thoughts.

So, here's hoping for a future that's bright, where we all get to see a ripe old age without any catastrophic interruptions. And remember, having a forward-thinking brain isn't always a bed of roses!

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)

Freedom Dawns (Book 6)

Realms of Power and Fury

(with Michael Anderle)

Discovering Power (Book 1)

Finding Honor (Book 2)

Field of Valor (Book 3)

Undead Reckoning (Book 4)

Undead Center (Book 5)

Undead with Honor (Book 6)

Tomb of Malevolent Evil

(with Michael Anderle)

Roll For Initiative (Book 1)

Cast of the Die (Book 2)

Natural Twenty (Book 3)

Steel Dragon Series

(with Michael Anderle)

Steel Dragon 1

Steel Dragon 2

Steel Dragon 3

Steel Dragon 4

Steel Dragon 5

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

The Dragonclaw Sword

(with Michael Anderle)

Clawing for Survival

Clawing for Escape

Clawing for Honor

Clawing for Vengeance

Clawing for Battle

Clawing for Victory

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

Sign up for the LMBPN email list to be notified of new releases and special deals!

https://lmbpn.com/email/

For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit:

www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS

Connect with Kevin McLaughlin

Website: http://kevinomclaughlin.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevins.studio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KOMcLaughlin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevins.studio/

Connect with Michael Anderle

Website: http://lmbpn.com

Email List: https://michael.beehiiv.com/

https://www.facebook.com/LMBPNPublishing

https://twitter.com/MichaelAnderle

https://www.instagram.com/lmbpn_publishing/

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/michael-anderle