Liberty

Adventures of the Starship Satori: 5

Kevin McLaughlin

Role of the Hero Publishing

Copyright © 2016, 2018 by Kevin O. McLaughlin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

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About the Book

Armed with a new weapon, the crew of the Satori risk the voyage to a new world - the home of the Cyanauts, a race of beings enslaved by the Naga for their ability to telepathically translate languages.

They hope to free the slaves, depriving the Naga of a powerful tool in the process. But freedom is not so simple as flipping a switch. Trust is earned,  and the crew find themselves embroiled in controversy and danger.

The Naga are not about to give up their servants without a fight, and would like nothing better than to get their hands on the human starship.

The crew of the Satori must decide for themselves the value of liberty - theirs, the Cyanauts, and that of all humanity lie in the balance.

1

John drummed his fingers on his desk. The news wasn't what he'd hoped. The team had taken incredible risks, going after intel on the Naga. What was supposed to have been a simple scouting mission went from bad to deadly far faster than anyone had anticipated. Their own AI, Majel, had faced down and destroyed a Naga AI. In the process Majel had captured what they thought was a great deal of intelligence on the enemy. Majel had been going over the data for days now, collating and drawing correlations. Her analysis was not what he'd been counting on.

"So you're saying the data is useless?" he asked.

"No. But incomplete," Majel replied. "Only part of the enemy AI was able to transition to the Satori computers before the satellite was destroyed. Of the code which made it across, there are enormous gaps in the database. I've pulled what I can from that."

He got up from his desk and paced the room. Perhaps it was time to bring in government backup. They'd taken risks before, sure. But it was one thing to risk their own lives, and another entirely to play games with the entire future of humanity. If the Naga showed up on Earth's doorstep it seemed unlikely the planet would be able to do more than give token resistance to the invaders. Humanity would fall.

The Satori was the one weapon they had capable of doing any significant damage to the Naga ships. Would the governments of the world see things that way, though? John wished that he thought they would. It seemed more likely the Satori would be scrapped, the engine turned into a massive generator that nations would squabble over for control. In time the technology which powered the ship's engines might be unraveled, but he had some of the best minds he knew working on that already. They were stumped.

No, figuring out the engine well enough that they could build more starships would simply take too long. This Naga tech, on the other hand? He strode back to his desk, tapping the screen a few times to flip through schematics. They were tantalizingly incomplete. Diagrams of one part of a ship, and then nothing about how it connected with the other elements.

"Have you shown this to Beth yet?" John asked aloud.

"You asked me to present you the data first," Majel reminded him.

"Bring her in on this. Charline too. I'd like to see what they think. If we can replicate any of the Naga's technology, it might be useful in fighting them."

"Agreed," Majel said. "However, the crystals they are using are not like anything in human technology. They seem to be using quantum states to connect to one other rather than electrical circuits."

"How far behind are we?" John asked. He knew how to use computers, but these diagrams were gibberish to him.

"Hard to say. My best...guess...is that we lack the infrastructure to build the tools to build these machines. Three generations of technology behind, roughly speaking."

It was still odd hearing Majel speak of 'guessing' at something. Their AI had grown into something significantly more than it - she - had been when John installed her software on this base. Somehow mingling her program with the alien hardware inside the Satori had altered her. Or expanded her, was more like it. Majel had allowed Charline to examine her code. From her analysis it seemed like the original components of human-created code represented less than one percent of the being which was now Majel.

That wasn't quite accurate, though. Charline explained that it looked more like the new code had grown from the existing code, like an oak rising from an acorn. The alien systems had given Majel the tools to better herself, and she had. More, those changed were ongoing. She was continuing to adapt and grow. Just like all living things did.

Most living things didn't have quite as much power as Majel did. John hoped she was going to be a good teenager when she got to that stage of her development. He chuckled a little under his breath.

"Was something I said funny?" Majel asked him.

He couldn't tell from her tone if she'd been offended or was just mildly curious. Damn, he'd never had to worry about offending the computer before! He needed to set some working parameters in place with her, fast.

Confusion, thought the small animal living in John's ear. Consternation. The alien creature was telepathic. It acted as a translator for any being it bonded to, reading the thoughts behind the words spoken by beings nearby and translating them into thoughts its host could understand. But it couldn't read Majel's mind. She was a computer, not a biological life form. The slug-like alien had gathered from John's thoughts that Majel was sentient, but it couldn't hear her thoughts at all.

"Not about you so much as laughing at myself," John said. "Don't worry, Majel. I'm always going to have your back."

"And I yours."

"Good," he said. He'd talk with Charline about how best to approach the issue. For now he intended to just treat her like he would any other crew member. And he'd expect her to comport herself as well as the rest of the crew. To date, her performance had been stellar, so he had few worries in that regard.

"The team meeting is in fifteen minutes," Majel said. "You asked me to remind you."

"I did, and thanks. We'd better get going. This is a big day for you," John said.

"It is?"

"You've been in these meetings before, Majel. But you've never attended as a full team member before," John said. "I expect you to contribute as much as any of the rest of us do now."

"I won't let you down. I already have a few ideas..."

John laughed again, a huge grin breaking out across his face. "You're as bad as Beth for enthusiasm. Or myself for that matter! Save it for the meeting, though. We've got a lot to discuss."

"I'm already there waiting," Majel said. "Better hurry or you'll be the last one there."

Was that a joke? Or a simple statement of fact? It seemed like it could be read either way, but the tone Majel chose to use and the tempo of her delivery of the line made it sound like she was trying for humor. He shook his head again as he headed for the elevator. They had so much to learn from her. Interesting times.

2

Linda double checked the results one last time. Which more or less made this a quadruple check, but who was counting? She wanted to be damned sure she was right. Her comm device was beeping away. She ignored it, focusing on the view through her microscope instead.

And it was god-damned working. She almost couldn't believe it. If she wasn't watching it herself, she wouldn't have. The slow, steady pattern was unmistakable though. She'd solved the problem. Much more quickly and with a better fix than she would have thought possible before, too.

The comm had begun chiming again. She picked it up with one hand, still peering into the eyepiece while she brought the thing to her ear.

"Yes?"

"Did you forget the meeting, Linda?" John's voice somehow managed to come across as stern and kind at the same time.

She looked down at her watch and gulped. Where had so many hours gone? "No, I remembered the meeting. I just forgot to watch the time.”

"We'll see you shortly then?"

"Definitely. I have exciting news."

Linda grabbed the data chip from her computer and raced for the exit. She made it all the way to the door before she realized she'd forgotten her glasses. She turned and went back for the things, then continued on her way.

This was beyond exciting. This was game changing. She couldn't wait to spill the beans.

It was about time, too. She’d been feeling like something of a fifth wheel since arriving at the lunar base. Sure, she was immediately welcomed by none less than John Caraway. She could admit, at least privately, that she was more than a little star-struck by that experience. I mean, the man was a legend in both business and scientific circles. In business, he was known for taking wild chances - and making them somehow pay off when the pundits all thought he was at last about to fall flat on his face.

In science, he had another name. Her field knew Caraway as the man willing to fund things no one else would even consider funding, simply because they sounded interesting or potentially useful to him. He’d sent work her way more than once. That’s why she had been so willing to meet with Charline on short notice. When Mr. Caraway asked for something, her bosses at the university told her to take care of whatever he needed.

The break-in at her lab might have ruined her career. The cost in lost and damaged equipment was enormous. The cost to the university in terms of prestige was much worse. Their most secure lab had been busted wide open as easily as if they’d left the door unlocked. Her lab did classified work for the military. They’d been unamused.

It wasn’t Linda’s fault, but that didn’t matter even a little bit. The affair had embarrassed the university. Her bosses needed a scapegoat. She was handy, and best of all hadn’t even stuck around to defend herself. Instead she’d gone who-knew-where doing who-knew-what.

In truth she’d helped capture the people who’d vandalized the lab in the first place. That should have helped, but it didn’t. Her career would have been in shambles if Caraway hadn’t offered her a job on the spot.

He’d made her a great offer, too. Not that she could have refused just about anything better than minimum wage at the time, but he had been more than fair. On top of the great pay and benefits, she was the only xenobiologist in the world who got to work with actual alien specimens, instead of just theorizing about them. Even if she didn’t get to actually work publicly or publish any of her findings…

Adjusting to the moon had taken some time. She still bounded a little too far and moved with a little more force than was required sometimes. She envied the way the other people here just seemed to flit about completely at ease.

Worst of all was being left behind on that last mission. Not that she’d really wanted to go. Especially after the crew returned and she heard the stories of their misadventures. Getting shot at or nearly eaten by alien monsters was not her idea of a great time! But they hadn’t even asked her. She was just another scientist like the other crew working the base here. And damn it, part of her missed the experience of working with people like she had on that one mission. The closeness of it, the sense of belonging, it had a dangerous appeal.

If she could’ve gotten past the image of watching Corey get killed right in front of her, maybe she would have asked to come along. But the whole episode had terrified her. She’d been too scared to ask.

Linda reached the meeting room and paused for a moment to collect herself before going in. She had the goods, this time. She had what the crew needed more than anything else. She looked down at the little data chip in her fingers. She’d accomplished the damned near impossible, was what she’d done. If anything would make them all take her seriously, this would be it.

She slipped the chip into her pocket and straightened the lab coat over her shoulders. She brushed a little dust from the jeans that she still wore as a daily uniform and checked her hair in the fuzzy image reflected in the polished metal door. It wasn’t clear enough to really see herself, but she batted worriedly at her hair anyway.

“They’re waiting,” Majel’s voice said from the intercom next to the door.

“I know. I’ll be right in.”

“Your hair looks fine,” Majel informed her.

Linda glanced up at the little camera mounted to the wall a little ways down the hallway. She wasn’t sure if it creeped her out that the AI had eyes just about everywhere on the base, or if she just thought it was cool. But Majel had been incredibly helpful in her research, so she trusted the AI’s observation.

“Thanks,” she said. “Guess I need to buck up and do this?”

“They won’t bite,” Majel replied.

“That’s not really what I am worried about.”

Linda was less concerned about someone biting, and more about being seen as worthy of being here in the first place. The five people she was going to see - six, if you counted Majel, although she wasn’t sure if the AI counted or not these days - were the crew of the starship Satori. And whether she liked it or not, Linda realized she had something of a hero worship going on for the team. She sighed. This would impress them. It had to.

Linda fluffed her fingers through her hair one last time. Then she tapped the panel beside the door and it opened up for her.

3

Dan sipped some coffee to hide a smile as he watched Linda join the rest of the team at the table. From the bright flush on her cheeks the poor kid was very clearly feeling out of her depth, and he didn’t want to make it any worse for her than it already was. She couldn’t be older than twenty-five, twenty-six or so, and she had the air of someone who’d spent her entire adult life behind the walls of academia. He knew the type.

It was going to be a good experience for her to get out and see what the real world looked like. John was doing her a kindness bringing her out here. Of course, if she was half as good as John said she was then she was a valuable asset for them as well.

“Glad you could join us,” Beth said, arching an eyebrow. Dan winced a little. Beth had little tolerance for tardiness and was more into giving someone the rough side of her tongue than coddling them. Linda blushed even more furiously at the comment.

“We know you’ve been working hard on the ratzard problem,” John said. Dan wasn’t sure if that was more to make Linda feel a bit better, or a warning for Beth to tone it down a bit. Either way, it looked like it wasn’t working too well.

“Relax,” Dan said. He offered the young woman a smile. “Nobody here bites, I promise.”

“Sorry I was late,” Linda said.

“No trouble,” John replied. “You told me you had something to report, though?”

“I do, yes,” Linda said, catching her breath a little at last. She looked about the table like she was trying to find something and then stopped, smacking the side of her head gently. She gave a good natured laugh, holding up the small square. “No data chip readers. You guys just have Majel. Can she help out with this?”

“Of course, Linda,” Majel said. “What would you like me to do?”

“Open the folder titled Paris Seven Eight One, please,” Linda replied. “There should be a slideshow inside. If you could display that please?”

“Done.”

The slides popped up on the screen. Dan saw that the first slide was labeled with the number symbol and then the numbers Linda had used. “This is attempt number seven hundred and eighty one?”

“Yeah,” Linda said. “Seven hundred and eighty failures.”

“Holy shit, that’s a lot of work,” Charline said.

“Well, I had Majel helping…”

“And still do. Shall we proceed with the slides?”

“Please,” John said.

The next slide showed an image of the small creature the crew had brought back home with them from the desert world. The thing looked creepy. Too damned many legs, big pincers on the front end, and ugly bulging eyes. Of course it was nothing compared to the monster it became when it grew up. Dan hadn’t been on the planet’s surface dealing with it, but he’d gotten the story out of Andy after a few beers when they returned home.

“Turns out that the cave you guys found was protected, but not like you thought,” Linda said.

“We guessed the mama bug was eating the ratzards before they could infect the cave’s water supply,” Andy said. “Maybe even chopping off bits of the ratzards to feed its young. There didn’t seem to be that much else there to eat.

“Which might be true, and thanks so much for the image. Yech. I need brain bleach now,” Linda said. “But it turns out there is something else. Next slide.”

The next slide was the image of an elaborate molecule. “Our little critter produces this. Secretes it in its saliva, actually. Guess what it does to the black goo? Next slide.”

This slide was video, showing a time lapsed display of the black goo growing on top of a thin film of water in a petri dish. Then a few drops of a clear liquid were added. At first nothing happened, but then the black goo began showing a few small bubbles. The bubbles grew both in size and number, and soon the black ichor that the ratzards used for blood was literally boiling away.

“That enzyme came from the insect we found?” John asked.

“Yes, sir,” Linda said.

Andy slapped the table and chuckled. “Told you all it was worth bringing back. Even with the bites.”

“This molecule - you can synthesize it?” John pressed.

“Yes. That was actually not too difficult. I mean, the hardest part was finding the molecule in the first place. The next hardest was finding a good delivery system.”

“We can’t just dump it into infected water?” Dan asked. If they could create the liquid, and the liquid killed the ratzard blood, then it seemed like the most logical solution. Just dump a whole bunch of cure on any infected water.

He was a lot more concerned with the implications of this new finding. Like what were the odds that a creature producing an enzyme which attacked the Naga’s bio weapon just happened to have evolved that way? That smacked of more bio-engineering. In this case it worked in their favor, but what else were these ancients getting into?

“Won’t have the desired effect. We need a vector capable of creating the enzyme on the go and bringing it to infected areas,” Linda said.

“You’re not breeding more of the bugs, are you?” Beth asked. “Because I am definitely against that idea.”

“No, nothing like that,” Linda said. “The bugs seemed to have been cave dwelling and preferred cool places, which is why they never spread the cure outside their local cave systems. There may be more little patches of cured water there, but the oceans - so crucial to life on most planets - remained covered.”

“The cure vector won’t work unless it is able to travel,” Linda said. “So I used this. Next slide.”

This image was something Dan knew well. It was a bacterium. He didn’t know what kind it was, but this had to be Linda’s proposed vector. Was this what the ancient race that built the Satori’s drive had been doing, thousands of years ago? Had they tried to find a way to fix the oceans in time, coming up with the bug that produced a curative enzyme but lacking the time, perhaps, to bring it to the next stage?

“I picked the most harmless bacteria I could think of, and then I tinkered with it a lot,” Linda said. “This version can pretty much only eat the ratzard blood. But it does that really well, using the enzyme to digest the stuff and convert it into hydrocarbons it can use.”

John and Charline both looked ready to say something, but Linda held up a hand to forestall them a moment. “I know. You’re going to say that it’s risky. We’re talking about seeding a different planet with a Terran bacteria. With a lot of Terran bacteria.”

“How do we predict the results of an invasive species like that?” Charline asked.

“We don’t. We need samples to test. Lots and lots of samples,” Linda replied.

“But this bacteria does work?” John asked. “Right now, in the lab, the thing works?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

“Linda, please stop calling me sir. It’s John.”

“Right,” she replied, flushing furiously again.

John stared around the room intently. Dan knew the look his friend had in his eye. John’s eyes met his with a momentary raised eyebrow asking the question: are we up for this?

Dan replied with the smallest of shrugs and an upturned corner of his mouth. Always up for whatever. Best of all, that felt less like a deliberate mask that he was hiding behind and more like the truth these days. Dan was surprised how genuinely good things felt since their return.

“I’ll work out specific parameters, but I think we have a mission,” John said.

4

The Satori flashed into high orbit around the dusky planet for the third time. Andy decided that he truly hated this place. Nothing good ever came of their visits. The first time he’d been captured and almost died. Paul had died - or so they’d thought. Then on the second visit they were almost eaten by a giant bug, while Dan and Charline were almost captured by the Naga. Worst of all they’d learned that Paul wasn’t dead. He’d been transformed by the Naga, rebuilt into some sort of armored cyborg monster.

Andy shuddered. That could have been him. If the team hadn’t gotten him away, it probably would have been him. He couldn’t imagine too many more horrible fates.

“Here we are,” Dan said. “Cloaking device is working, but I’m giving their satellites a wide berth anyway.”

“Good thinking,” John said. “No sense tempting fate.”

“We could use a name for this place,” Dan said. “We seem to keep coming back here.”

None of them had thought to name the planet. The place felt desolate, dead, and tragic. The Naga had annihilated this world, seeded it with the ratzards to ensure it could never recover, and then to top it all off placed a ring of defensive satellites around the place. It reminded Andy of the Roman invasion of Carthage, when the Romans were said to have salted the earth after destroying the city so that no one could ever rebuild it.

The whole idea reeked of fear. The Romans had been terrified of the Carthaginians. That’s why they invaded. That’s why they were so thorough in their destruction of the place. Who had these people been, that the Naga were so utterly terrified of them?

“Dustball works,” Beth muttered under her breath as they broke out of their descent. Andy couldn’t argue with her. The place was a vast desert, except for the oceans. Those were covered with ratzard blood.

“Coming in low over the ocean,” Dan said.

“Are we sure we’re doing this?” Beth asked.

“I can’t think of a better way to test the bacteria, can you?” John asked.

Beth pursed her lips, but remained silent. They’d hashed out the idea in detail for days. A trip to the ocean world was still necessary to collect samples for Linda to study. But an actual field test of the bacteria would be ideal as well. The planet was nearly dead. Coating the oceans had stopped evaporation, which had killed the clouds. No evaporation, no rain. No water and - well, you ended up with what they were seeing. An entire planet turned to barren desert.

If this worked out then all of that might change.

“There’s minimal other life for the bacteria to interact with,” Linda said. She still looked a little pale, and was gripping her seat with white-knuckled fingers, but Andy thought she was handling her first trip on the Satori pretty well all things considered. “I’ve made sure they can’t infect the insect life you guys found. They will do nasty things to any ratzards they infect, though.”

“I bet,” Andy said. He could imagine the effect of a bacteria which literally ate ratzard blood as its only food on any of the things which became infected.

“No great loss there,” Dan added.

“No. They’re also invasive,” Linda said. “It’s OK to remove them from the system. There is likely other life that we haven’t seen, though. Maybe something survived on the ocean floor, or inside protected cave systems like the one you discovered. It’s not perfect.”

She shrugged. “I can’t predict the results when our bacteria meets native life. But because there is minimal native life, the contacts should be small. And the bacteria was designed to have as little impact as possible on anything except the ratzard blood. If anything it should have less impact than the bacteria you already introduced during your earlier visits.”

They were cruising along the coastline, approaching the ruins of the ancient city they’d explored. Well, explored a little of, anyway. The Naga had wiped out most of the rest of the city with a massive bomb strike. Whatever other wonders existed in there, they might never know. If anything survived at all it would be buried under enormous piles of rubble.

“The best thing about this is going to be the Naga’s reaction,” Andy said.

John looked at him and cocked his head sideways. “Explain?”

“These people were the Naga’s boogeymen, right? They were terrified of us when we arrived, mostly because we were using tech that was out of the stories they used to frighten their kids. Or something like that.” Andy recalled the vicious little Naga young. Maybe the comparison wasn’t all that good.

“If this works and they see the planet coming back, they’re going to be scared and pissed. Seeing how they react to that will be interesting,” Andy said.

“Indeed,” John replied. “OK, let’s do this. It might be kicking over an anthill bigger than we thought, but let’s make it happen. Beth, your dispersal system ready to go?”

“Set,” Beth replied. “Dan, take us in low and slow along the coast. We’ve got enough material for about five miles at optimal spread.”

Ten minutes later the job was done. Beth had built an external tank into the Satori, with spray nozzles to release the bacteria into the water. As the Satori flew along the coast she engaged the device, sending gallons of the bacterial soup down onto the surface of the ocean.

“Dan, take us back over the course we just flew. Let’s take a look at the work,” John said. “Linda, how soon should we begin to see an effect?”

“Fifteen minutes?” she replied. “The first areas we sprayed might already be dissolving, but the process will be slow until the bacteria multiply.”

“Look down there!” Dan called out. “Majel, can you magnify that spot and put it on our screens?”

“Done,” the computer replied.

The image was not that different from the flat black of the rest of the ocean. The tarry substance was completely black, with a matte finish that seemed to soak up the light. But in one area the surface had taken on a reflective sheen. Magnified, Andy could see a few small bits of foamy bubbles appearing in the top of the stuff. Linda’s bacteria was working.

“It looks good,” she said. “Now we need to see if it will take hold. If the bacteria is strong enough, it will continue to grow and spread. Eventually the entire surface of the planet might clear out from this one delivery.”

“How long will that take?” John asked.

“I don’t have any way to estimate. If we come back here in a week or so I might be able to give you something but right now?” Linda shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

They knew the stuff worked, which was important. Now everyone was dancing around the elephant in the room. Well, maybe not Linda. She was new to the ship and might not realize what a monumental trip they were about to take. Everyone else was completely aware, though.

5

“So we’re going to visit the Cyanaut’s home world next?” Linda asked. Her blithe manner expressed that she had no clue what everyone else was so uptight about. They’d never jumped anywhere except to this world and back home. Nowhere else. The idea of jumping to a new planet based entirely on coordinated planted in John’s mind by a small aquatic slug was leaving them less than happy.

“Cyanauts?” Dan asked. “Wait - did she just name them? Who gave her naming privileges?” He turned to grin at the offending Linda, who wasn’t quite sure how to take the sudden attention. “Who gave you naming privileges?”

She laughed. Andy joined in. He couldn’t help himself. The look on Dan’s face was too comical. Even Beth was smiling. John looked thoughtful.

“It’s a good name,” Majel chimed in. “But a bad pun, Linda.”

Which of course made them all laugh even harder. Majel was calling out bad puns. What was next?

They’d reached orbit by the time everyone was growing serious again. Soon they’d be far enough outside the weak gravity field of the planet below them that they could safely open a wormhole and jump away. It was getting darned close to moment of truth time.

“Well, Majel approves of the choice and the critter in my ear seems more bemused than anything else. If they have a name for themselves, it translates more or less as ‘people’,” John said. “Besides Dan, you were the one who said we ought to be naming things.”

“Well sure, but do we have to give the rookie naming rights? We let Charline do it and we ended up with ratzards,” Dan said.

“What’s wrong with ratzards?” Charline replied.

“Everything.”

The bridge devolved into a little more chuckling. Andy could see what John and Dan were doing, deliberately leading the conversation down lines which would bring a few chuckles or a laugh. It was a good way to blow off some steam and release a little tension. It couldn’t last though. Finally John gave a wistful little smile.

“Majel, how are those coordinates looking for the jump?” John asked.

“The same as the last time you asked,” she replied. “In theory, they look fine. They are in the right code structure for wormhole coordinates. In practice, I simply don’t have enough data to know anything at all about where it will take us.”

They had a probe on board which would be fired through first. But the probe was small, with a weak camera and transmitter. They could only keep the wormhole open a minute or so. It would leave them almost no time to ascertain what was on the other side before they had to make the call to go through or not. They’d be able to see if there was open space, so it wasn’t like they were going to jump into the middle of a star. But they could end up literally anywhere.

“Dan, bring us to a full stop,” John ordered.

“Got it.”

The ship decelerated. They needed to be at rest so that the probe would be launched through the wormhole while the Satori remained behind.

“Engage the wormhole drive. Fire the probe in as soon as we have a confirmed wormhole,” John said.

“If we get a wormhole,” Beth muttered. She’s pointed out that bad destination coordinates would likely just not lock on anywhere, and the drive would spin up and then spin down without actually putting out a wormhole at all. Andy privately thought that was preferable to a wormhole opened into some random and completely unpredictable location.

“Engaging drive,” Majel said.

The space in front of the ship erupted in a bright display as the ancient device worked its magic on the fabric of the universe. It might as well really be magic as far as Andy was concerned. No one knew how the damned thing did what it did. Not even Beth had more than the smallest notion of how it actually operated. Somehow the drive generated massive amounts of power and then channeled that energy into forging a connection between two points of space.

“Firing the probe,” Beth said. She was trying to sound bored, but he could hear the same tension in her voice that everyone else was feeling.

Of everyone on the ship he was the most helpless right now. Andy had no part in this piece of the mission. He was the gun, and maybe the team tactician. But out here in space it was all tech geeks and fly-boys. It was maybe worse that this entire trip was really his fault. He’d been the one who had an alien life form inserted in his ear. It was Andy who’d almost gone nuts from said life form trying desperately to communicate after his friends got it out of his ear.

“I’ve got telemetry,” Charline said. “Probe is intact. There’s a planet nearby. Probe is starting scans.”

“Wormhole is destabilizing, John,” Dan warned. “It’s going to be a good hour before we can fire up another one.”

“If we go through now, can we return?” John asked.

“Affirmative,” Majel said. “The coordinates we have for Earth are destination codes. Source of departure isn’t relevant, as near as we have been able to determine.”

“We’re pretty sure that’s the case, but not certain,” Charline added.

John hesitated a moment. Andy could feel him wondering which path to take, trying to feel out the options. But he knew the old man. Andy already knew what he would do. He cinched down the straps on his harness a little tighter.

“Take us in, Dan,” John said.

Dan didn’t reply with words. He tapped buttons on his console and the Satori slipped forward toward the brilliantly spinning pattern of light directly ahead of her. Moments later she slid into the wormhole, jumping across space to appear…someplace else. Wherever it was they were going, it was going to be off the map. But wasn’t that part of the point? When most of the universe is uncharted space, anyplace you travel to is an adventure.

6

The Satori slid out of the wormhole in a blaze of light. Dan was watching his console carefully as they entered this new system. He had no idea what to expect, so he was trying to be ready for anything at all. His fingers hovered over the controls, ready to make the ship dance at his direction.

That saved them.

“Encroachments! Multiple objects!” Charline shouted out.

“I see them. Hang on!” Dan said. The radar was full of blips, a horde of Naga fighters hovering around their entry point. He turned the Satori in a corkscrew maneuver, diving between the enemy ships. One loomed suddenly in the view screen and he twisted the Satori hard to the right, changing the angle of their spiraling path and accelerating out of the danger zone.

“Shit, that was close!” he said. “What the hell happened?”

It was clear the cloaking device was working fine. The fighters couldn’t detect them. The one they’d nearly collided with had not taken any evasive action at all. They’d slipped through without a single Naga ship opening fire on them.

“They must have responded to the wormhole effect,” Beth said. “It does have a rather specific energy signature.”

“If they responded that quickly with fighters, there must be a ship somewhere nearby. Majel, what are you picking up?” John asked.

Majel could analyze their scan data more quickly than any human could. Dan was going over the scans himself, now that they were out of range, but the AI could usually look at all the available data and give them specific points of interest more rapidly then any of the humans. This time, it wasn’t necessary though.

“Shit,” Dan said, staring at the massive structure floating in space a few hundred kilometers away.

“Large orbital facility dead ahead,” Majel said. “Presumed Naga construction. Confirmed Naga fighters and shuttles exiting it.”

“Well, that’s how they got to us so quickly,” Dan said.

The thing was massive, more like a small moon than a space station. It was roughly spherical, with small bits of machinery jutting from the surface. Dan was trying to get a feel for the scale of the station by comparing it to the fighters exiting from small bays. It might well be the biggest structure he’d ever seen constructed anywhere.

“Can we avoid them, Dan?” John asked.

“Hmm? Oh. Sure. It doesn’t look like they can see us at all. If past experience is any gauge, the only way they’ll be able to spot us is if they’re in atmosphere and close enough to detect the pressure changes from our wake through the air.”

“Good. Keep us well clear from them, then. I don’t want to take any chances,” John said. “We’ve got a mission to complete here, folks. We expected that the Naga might have a presence here. It looks like they’ve been a bit busier in this system than we’d hoped, but it doesn’t change what we need to do.”

There were a few affirmative murmurs from the rest of the team. Dan stuck to his piloting, veering the Satori sharply away from the station before starting a gradual descent into the atmosphere. This was a much bigger problem than John was saying. He hoped his friend knew that and was simply giving everyone encouraging words. It wasn’t simply that the Naga were here. No, this was a hell of a lot worse. The enemy knew they were here, too.

They’d seen the wormhole. As far as the Naga knew there was only one ship which had the capability of jumping from system to system that way - the Satori. The race that had created the Satori’s drive scared the Naga, and the fear of their return drove the scaly things to pay a lot more attention to the matter than Dan thought they really warranted. Sure, they’d been a thorn in the Naga’s side a couple of times, but they were a few people on board one ship.

To the Naga, they were the return of a nightmare from the past. And now they knew their nightmare was here, in this system. They knew the Satori was someplace nearby, cloaked and hiding. This was one hell of a big anthill to kick over.

“Oh, shit,” Beth said.

“What?” Dan replied. He glanced over at her, worried. No matter how hard he tried, if Beth was in trouble his knee-jerk reaction was always to go help her. She was all right, but her brow was furrowed with a worried look.

“I’ve just lost telemetry from the probe we sent through,” she said. “With all the dodging and weaving to get away from the fighters, we didn’t pick it on on arrival.”

“Did the Naga destroy it?” John asked.

“I don’t think so. I think they captured it,” Beth said.

Her voice was grim, and with good reason. They’d worked hard to ensure as little Earth tech fell into Naga hands as possible. Bad enough that Paul was still their prisoner. But he seemed to have been damaged enough from his experiences at their hands that so far they hadn’t been able to discover the location of Earth from him. That was the theory, anyway, based on the fact that no Naga fleet had shown up in orbit.

Any additional clues they gave away might help the enemy find them, though. Even something as simple as the small probe would add to their understanding of humanity, and perhaps give them hints about where the Satori had come from.

They couldn’t hope to remain hidden from the Naga forever. Dan knew that sooner or later there was going to be a reckoning. But he wanted them to be much more prepared, when that day came. If the Naga attacked them tomorrow, Earth would be nearly defenseless. The Satori was the only ship really capable of taking on a Naga ship, and he knew they wouldn’t have a prayer against an entire fleet.

“The probe shouldn’t supply them with any critical data,” Beth said. “We did build it knowing it might be lost, so we took precautions.”

“Let’s hope,” John said.

Which was all they could do. Finding which ship had the probe out of the swarm of fighters buzzing around out there would be like finding a needle in a haystack. It wasn’t practical to try taking them all on in the slim chance of blowing up the right one.

The mood aboard the Satori was somber as Dan brought the nose down, beginning their descent through the upper atmosphere. Lights flashed on his console, alerting him to sources of power generation on the ground.

“Looks like the Naga are on the surface, too,” he said.

The planet was about Earth sized, but brilliantly blue. If Earth was two-thirds ocean, this planet had to be at least nine-tenths. Strings of islands broke up the blue, but most of the surface was water. One larger landmass about the size of Iceland seemed to be the focus of Naga activity. Every other island he saw was smaller. Most were a few kilometers across or less.

“I’m getting directions,” John said wryly, tapping his temple. He was talking with the alien living in his ear. Dan shook his head, wondering for the umpteenth time what that felt like. The idea of having something else talking directly into his head was strange at best, but it was also a little exciting.

“We’re looking for a set of islands running in a ring, something like a big atoll,” John said. “Shallow water between them, with deeper water outside and a very deep trench right off the coast to the west.”

“I’ve located three sites which could correspond with that data set,” Majel said. “One stands out as most likely, due to proximity of the trench.”

“We’ll try that site first then,” John said. “Make for those coordinates.”

“How will we know if it’s the right one?” Dan asked.

“I have a feeling my little friend will let me know when we’re close,” John replied.

7

The Satori settled down on the small, rocky island. This place was so much like Earth that John felt pangs, looking out the windows. The water was a blue you would have called Caribbean, on Earth. The sand was jet black, like he’d seen on a handful of volcanic beaches. There didn’t seem to be a lot of vegetation on the ground. Perhaps they’d discover more under the water?

“We’re splitting the team.” Dan paused before continuing, “Again? Are you sure you want to do that?”

John took a deep breath before replying. He was taking a chance. But they were always taking risks, out here. They always would be. How best to keep the team on board with those decisions though?

“Linda needs samples. She can’t get them underwater. But we need the Satori to bring me to the alien colony,” John said.

“We could do one first, and then the other?” Charline said.

The alien in his ear was put out by the idea of waiting any longer. It was home. It wanted to be back with its people and was quite adamant about expressing that. If John delayed much longer he wasn’t sure what it might do. It had already learned that it could damage a human with its abilities, and while he had worked out a decent arrangement with the being, he didn’t want to push it past a breaking point.

“We need Linda to get some samples quickly. With at least a preliminary analysis, we’ll have something we can tell the Cyanauts,” John said. “I don’t want to give them false hope.”

“Why tell them about the bacteria at all?” Dan asked. “Just keep it quiet until we know for sure.”

“Telepathic race,” John said. “They don’t understand the idea of keeping secrets from one another. I’m not even sure they can keep secrets once they are close enough to form colony bonds.”

The things were alien, much more so than the Naga when it came down to it. They were colony beings, collective intelligences which used their telepathy to join minds into almost a single being. Almost. It was more like a chorus of voices all talking at once, from what John had been able to glean. He wondered what talking to such a being was going to be like.

“So you’re dropping Linda and I off here,” Charline said.

“I’ll get a mobile lab up and radio you as soon as I have any information,” Linda added.

They were a good team. John had considered sending Andrew along with them, but this might not be a case where more was merrier. If anything, more bodies might make it easier for the Naga to find them.

“No radios,” John said. “Remember, the Naga can track us by even the smallest radio signals. We’ll come back topside as quickly as we can.”

“Assuming everything goes well down there, sure,” Beth said.

“Which is why I want Linda to bring all of her bacterial samples with her,” John said. “It’s insurance. Just in case this doesn’t go as well as we would like, it would be good to have a bargaining chip up on the surface.”

All of them nodded. As much as the little alien seemed grateful they were returning it home and working on a solution to the Cyanauts’ problems with the Naga, they were still alien. They were as different from human beings as John could imagine a life form being. He had high hopes that they would find common ground against the Naga, and become allies in their fight. But he would be a fool not to have a backup plan.

Charline and Linda departed, setting up shop in a set of caves not far from the shore. Andrew and John scoped out the caves - which were shallow and uninhabited, this time - while the others unloaded supplies.

Then they were off. The Satori hovered briefly over the sands, its invisible form blowing out spinning gusts over the beach. The ship glided out over the water and then descended rapidly. John watched the water splash up over the nose of the ship as they dove beneath the waves. He held his breath for just a moment, then exhaled as they continued to descend.

If the land was barren, the sea was anything but. As soon as they passed beneath the waves they were flying through the middle of a forest of greens and blues, tall waving fronds of sea-plant rising from the soil beneath them. The Satori brushed against some of the weeds, and fish darted off on all directions. Sunlight flashed off their forms for the brief moment before they were gone. Some of the fish looked strangely Earth-like. Others looked uncanny, but that could have been because of how short a glimpse John had.

“You sure we have to go down into this trench?” Dan asked. “I don’t really know the crush depth for the ship.”

“We’re not even going to come close,” Beth said. “We won’t run into trouble until we’re at least three hundred meters deep, and crush depth should be much lower. Those coordinates only place us down about one hundred meters.”

“Sure, but it’s the position that bothers me. Right over the deepest part of the ocean around here,” Dan said. “Majel, how deep is that thing again?”

“A little over four thousand meters,” Majel replied quickly. “Not even much of a trench, in Earth terms.”

“Still deep enough to be trouble for us,” Andy said.

“Those are the directions I’ve been given,” John said. He thought at the alien in his ear, questioning, asking why here? There was no answer. The thing might not know how to dissemble with its own species, but John had the feeling he wasn’t being told everything. If it was giving them directions to a meeting, it had to be in contact with others. Had it already blended into a colony? Was this being already part of a collective of Cyanauts?

It still wasn’t an easy notion to grasp. As individuals, each Cyanaut had a basic understanding of its own existence. It had memory of home, memory of the colony it was born into. It had enough understanding of the world around it to translate the things it heard, which was how the Naga used them - as translation tools. The Cyanaut in John’s ear would translate the spoken words of any being nearby, regardless the language. It would translate the ideas behind those words, taken directly from the subject’s mind and placed into John’s.

Privately John wondered if it could do even more. Could he get the Cyanaut to read minds? To pluck thoughts right out of the minds of other beings, even rummage through their thoughts? Basic things like knowing if someone was lying or not might be possible, at least. If he knew the right way to ask.

“I’m picking up several large objects in the water ahead,” Dan said.

“Those will be colony fish,” John replied.

When the creatures were close enough to one another they merged into colonies. They melded their intelligence into one collective whole. Most of the time members of a colony would attach themselves to a single large aquatic animal, using their bond to help the animal thrive and live far longer than it would on its own.

John watched the radar as they drew ever closer to the three large objects ahead. Three colonies. He felt a little thrill. This was exciting. This was how first contact was supposed to go, with two intelligent species meeting and learning how to co-exist and even cooperate.

STOP The thought wasn’t his, and was clear as day in his mind. That pretty much spelled out whether the critter in his ear was already operating as part of a colony or not. He wasn’t speaking with ‘his’ Cyanaut any longer. He was talking to all of them.

8

Andy mostly ignored the banter between Beth and Dan. The two often went at it like…well, like an old married couple. Some days he wondered why the two of them didn’t just get back together again. Part of them clearly wanted to. He didn’t know what had torn them apart in the first place. It was obvious to anyone who watched them interact that they still cared deeply for one another. How had that gotten messed up?

He was more interested in watching the water outside the ship grow gradually darker blue as the ship continued to delve deeper into the alien sea. The ocean floor had dropped away sharply now. The forest of plants and fish they’d crossed were left behind. All that lay below now was more inky darkness.

Somewhere out there were more of the creatures like the one that had hurt him. Not just a few more, either. If they were telling John the truth even a small colony was made up of hundreds of the things. Some had thousands of members. He knew that John felt differently, but Andy didn’t like the slugs. He didn’t trust them. If it were completely up to him, he might have just dropped the slug into the water here to find its own way and gotten the hell home again.

But John wanted to make nice with these things. He’d never failed to back John up on anything, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Thinking about the man, he glanced over and saw that John had gone completely still, like he was listening to something that only he could hear.

“John, you OK?” Andy called over.

“Yes. Dan, stop the ship,” John said.

Dan looked worriedly back over his shoulder, but moved his hands quickly over the controls before saying anything. The Satori stopped, using the engines to hover in place but no longer pressing forward.

“What’s up?” Dan asked.

“They’re scared of the ship. Of our weapons,” John said. “They want us to continue without the ship.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Dan said. “We don’t know enough about these things to trust them.”

“And they don’t know enough about us to trust us. Someone has to try trusting first,” John replied.

“So you’re gonna just go out there?” Dan asked. He narrowed his eyes.

“We brought wet suits for a reason,” John said.

“Sure. Because we thought contact might be necessary. This is too big a risk.” Dan crossed his arms over his chest.

Andy completely agreed, but he kept his peace. Dan was making his argument for him. Of all of them, John was perhaps the least expendable. Of course these things would want to slice the leader away from the team. Once they had him out there, would they be willing to let him come back?

John paused, not saying anything for a moment. His face got that faraway look that Andy knew meant he was talking with the ear-slug.

“They said I can bring someone else with me, if we are worried about sending me alone,” John said.

“Good enough for me,” Andy jumped in. At the very least he would be able to have John’s back. “I’m game.”

“You…might not be the best choice, Andrew,” John said. “They know I am the only one with a Cyanaut linked to him. The only one they can talk to directly. To prevent miscommunication they insist that whoever comes with me also accept a symbiote.”

Andy froze. All of the dread and fear he felt about the creature which used to reside in his ear came back at once. It washed over him, making his heart race. He could feel his face flush as his body reacted to the visceral panic like it was an eminent attack. He took a deep breath, trying to still his reaction.

“Someone else can go, son,” John said. His voice was kind, but Andy hated hearing the sympathy there. Sympathy for his weakness and fear. That was not the sort of person he wanted to be. No - it was not the sort of person he was.

“No, I’ve got this,” Andy said. Somehow he kept his voice firm and even as he said it. He wasn’t quite sure how.

“No, I don’t think…” John started to say. But Dan cut him off.

“Actually, I think Andy is precisely who we should send with you,” Dan said. “If you go at all. He’s had experience with these things. He is an expert with weapons, which might be enough to keep you alive if things go badly.”

John faced Dan again, preparing to make an objection, but Dan raised a hand to still him.

“Best of all, he doesn’t trust them,” Dan said. “You do. You want this to go well, John. I can see it in your eyes. You want this to go well very badly. Andy thinks these critters are up to no good. Me, I think the truth will probably lie somewhere between those two extremes, but Andy will be an excellent balance to your optimism. If he’s up to it.”

There was no challenge in Dan’s voice, but the words felt like one anyway. Could he do this? Could he go out there and knowingly allow one of those things to climb into him again? His skin crawled just thinking about it.

But Dan was right. John wasn’t taking the potential threat these creatures represented seriously. Andy didn’t know what they were capable of. None of them did. But they were smart, and they’d proven capable of causing harm if they wanted to. He didn’t trust them not to try something again.

“I said I’m game. I meant it,” he said.

Dan locked eyes with him. Andy held his gaze long enough that his friend seemed to be reassured, or something. Dan nodded once, a small crisp motion of his head, and looked away.

“Beth, is the diving gear ready to go?” he asked.

“Sure. I’ll have to hook up the right mix. At this depth you’ll want trimix. You’re going to need to decompress before coming back aboard, though,” she said.

“I can set the airlock to decompress them slowly on return,” Majel said.

John stood. “There’s no sense in keeping our friends waiting, then, is there? Let’s go do this.”

Andy kept his seat another few minutes while Beth and John set about getting the gear ready. He’d been diving before. He knew John had as well. Neither of them had ever gone this deep before, but they had the right equipment for the job. The ship was right here, too, with a ready-made hyperbaric chamber they could use to avoid the bends.

That wasn’t what scared him. He remembered all of those dreams the Cyanaut had sent to him. He recalled the desperation in its longing, how much it yearned to come back here. How it would do anything to return home and be with its people again. Andy knew full well that this was a complex race, full of many ideas and ways of thinking which were utterly foreign to him.

But one thing the Cyanauts had in common with humanity was their willingness to do whatever it took to preserve their own kind. They’d sacrificed some of their own to the Naga to get the lizards to spare this world, and allow most of their race to retain their freedom. They’d sold their own into slavery to save the rest.

How much more would they be willing to do to beings that were not even the same species as them?

9

The water was a murky deep blue around John as he swam slowly away from the Satori. The pressure at this depth was enough that he could feel it pushing in against him even through the wet-suit and SCUBA gear. Flickering shapes drifted in and out of the beams of light that shot from the Satori’s bow, reminding him that even at this depth the water was not empty, not really. There were things living out there in the water, just outside of his sight.

One animal the length of a car crossed the beam close enough to catch a good look. It had rows of sharp teeth, and a predatory shape not unlike a shark. Andrew saw it too. He was swimming alongside John, and whirled as the giant fish swam by, tracking its movement until it vanished out of sight.

“Not really loving this,” Andrew said.

“Understandable,” John replied. They were communicating using a pair of very low powered Bluetooth devices. The range was terribly short. They might still be able to reach each other from as much as two dozen feet. But the power level was low enough that the Naga shouldn’t be able to detect it, especially masked by a hundred meters of ocean.

There were no guarantees, of course. They had no way of knowing just how detailed a scan of the surface the Naga were doing, now that they knew the Satori was somewhere in the system. But the power level was so low that it ought to simply vanish against the normal background radiation of the planet.

“That thing is coming back, and it brought friends,” Andrew said. He raised the gun he was carrying and aimed it toward the lead shark.

There were three of the fish now, each at least three or four meters long. They looked deadly, moving with the violent grace of a predator. John was armed too. Both of them were carrying spear-guns they’d brought along specially for this trip. They’d anticipated they might be diving a lot, and experience had taught them all that being armed was a good idea even if you thought you didn’t need a weapon.

John was hoping they could pull off this mission without firing a shot, but it looked like that might not happen. Three sharks, two spear-guns - and it would take too long to reload. Even if they hit with both shots, the third shark would be on them before they were able to fire again.

“STOP,” came the voice in his mind. “DO NOT. THEY ARE YOUR PROTECTORS.”

He squinted and realized that the sharks’ backs were dotted with small, hairlike objects. He’d passed them off as some sort of growth before, but he realized with a start what they were. The sharks were dotted with little Cyanauts, scores of them per animal.

“Hold your fire, Andrew,” he said. “These are our escort.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” John said. They had to start trusting these beings at some point, or any sort of alliance was doomed before it even got off the ground. If he was wrong, and they were out to hurt the two of them, then this whole mission was about to go south in a hurry. But his gut said that wasn’t the case. Why lure them out here just to kill them?

The sharks veered away, giving the two humans a wide berth. They began circling about, close enough to see but maintaining a steady distance. It made sense, in a way. Any other predators in the water would see the sharks and stay away. If one was daring enough to try for a nip of human anyway, the deadly predators had positioned themselves to intervene before it could strike.

“Let’s not keep our hosts waiting,” John said. He continued swimming in the direction they’d been told to go. Andrew followed close behind him.

They’d only swum a few hundred meters away from the Satori before the colony-fish came into view. At first they were distantly seen pools of shadow in the water, but John swiftly realized that those dark patches were growing larger by the moment. The Cyanauts were coming to them.

“WE ARE,” they said into his mind.

It wasn’t until the colonies were almost on top of him that he was able to fully grasp how huge they were. They were massive, each at least as long as the Satori. Larger than most whales on Earth, the things nonetheless cut through the water with grace and speed. They slid past him on either side and below before whipping about in a tight turn.

“My god,” Andrew said aloud.

John couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. These were remarkable creatures. They were dark colored, with long fins. John didn’t notice a blowhole on the one which passed beneath him. Perhaps they were true fish, not mammals like the whales they resembled? It was hard to know for sure.

“WE CANNOT SPEAK TO THE OTHER ONE,” the colony said to John. “WE MUST HAVE CONNECTION.”

The voice was loud, almost overpowering. It was a demand, not a request, and his immediate reaction was to obey. With an effort of will John gritted his teeth together and held his place, even though his body wanted to do as they told it. He was in command of himself, damn it!

He should have realized how hard it might be to resist their telepathic commands. They controlled these fish, after all - their floating cities. His mind might be different, even more complex perhaps. But the colony had so many minds pressed together into one voice. It was difficult to disobey.

“What’s wrong, John?” Andrew asked. He must have noticed something.

“They’re…very loud,” John said, working to steady his breathing. “This close to them, their telepathy is closer to mind control than it is to communication. They want you to take on one of them as a passenger.”

“What, so they can control me too?” Andrew snapped. He sounded furious, and John couldn’t blame him for the anger - or the fear which lay beneath it.

“I don’t think they are trying to,” John said. “They’re unused to this sort of communication. Let me see if I can ask them to temper it.”

Friends, your voices are very loud, John thought at them.

Contrition. Remorse. Sadness. And more than a little bit of guilt. All of these emotions came back at him, but with much less intensity than he’d felt from the colony before.

“They feel bad about it. I think they’re going to tone it down a bit,” John said. “Listen - Andrew - Andy - if you can’t do this, nobody is going to fault you for it. You can go back to the ship.”

“And leave you alone? Not happening,” Andrew replied. “What do they want me to do?”

“Swim down to the one beneath us,” John said. “One of them will board you from there.”

“OK.”

John hoped it really would be all right. Andrew had been wounded by one of these things before, hurt inside his head where healing was difficult. While he’d recovered a lot, asking him to go through it again was like re-opening the wound. It was hard to say if that would help the healing, or delay it.

10

Andy swam down toward the massive fish, dread warring with wonder. It was amazing just to be here and experience all of this. The Cyanaut community was incredible. It swam slowly beneath him, almost hovering in place so that he could make contact. Its back was almost flat, a gently rounding curve dotted with thousands of little slug-like beings.

He needed to stop thinking of them as slugs. That would help. But try as he might, he couldn’t shake the feeling he had when the Naga had captured him, pinned him in place and forced the thing into his ear. He could still feel the terror of that moment. He’d been certain that he was about to die, and probably in some horrible manner. The idea of another of those things slipping into his ear wasn’t just unpleasant. It was like revisiting that moment all over again.

He swallowed hard. This had to be done. He was close to the fish now, swimming alongside it as it drifted past him. Slowly, he reached out toward it to touch the smooth surface. As soon as his fingers touched, several of the Cyanauts began flowing across the fish’s smooth side toward him. He withdrew his hand immediately.

The giant fish flashed its tail fin back and forth in a wide, agitated sweep. It swept away from him, nearly spinning him around in the backwash from the swift movement.

“You OK?” John asked. “They say you’re being very loud.”

“They can hear me?” Andy replied.

“Sure. That’s how they translate for the Naga, right? They hear all of the thoughts nearby them.”

Right. “So why do they need to be in my ear?”

“They need contact to be able to speak with you,” John said. “Their communication ability is poor at best without contact. I’ll ask about the ear thing, though.”

Andy crossed his fingers. If any sort of contact would do… Maybe he could deal with that. Anything but the ear. After a short pause while he was speaking with the Cyanauts, John spoke again.

“They say the ear thing is a conceit of the Naga. Contact can be anywhere so long as it is skin to skin.”

Skin to skin. He could handle that. The big fish was circling back toward him again. With an effort, Andy calmed his mind. His anxiety was still through the roof, but he could do this. He had to do this.

The fish came up alongside him slowly, easing past him in a gentle manner. He had the feeling it was intentionally taking it easy on him, working hard not to frighten him more than he already was. If the fear hadn’t been so embarrassing he would have appreciated the gesture more.

Andy reached out with a bare hand toward the fish again. His palm touched down, sliding easily along the animal’s skin. It wasn’t slimy, just smooth. He’d never touched a dolphin, but he’d seen them and imagined it might have felt similar.

As the fish continued to slip past him, Andy’d hand brushed against a clump of the Cyanauts. They tickled his hand as it brushed over them. Then all at once one of the beings slid free from its resting point and reached toward his hand. He could feel it stretching out, oozing around one of his fingers as it tried to grab hold of him.

He couldn’t take it. Andy jerked his hand back again.

The Cyanaut lost its grip on him. But it had already relinquished its hold on the fish as well. Horrified, Andy watched as it tumbled free and began sinking. In another moment or two it would slide out of sight, falling into the crushing depths beneath them.

Andy didn’t even think about what he was doing. He dove straight down, kicking hard with his flippers to catch up with the little being before it slipped away. It was falling fast, and he had to struggle to keep up at first. Then he began gaining on it again. There was no way he was allowing something to die because if his fears. He was almost there…and…caught it! His fingers closed gently around its frail form. Almost immediately he felt it latch on to his skin and wrap itself around a finger.

And…contact.

Andy remembered how the contact had felt with the single Cyanaut. It had been subtle, the awareness of a presence in his mind. Barely there at all, except for later on in his dreams. But this experience was completely different. The Cyanaut colony was speaking to him as one now, through the one of their kind attached to him. The telepathic voice was a powerful force resonating in his head. If this was what it sounded like after they’d toned it down, no wonder John had been having trouble before!

“Our gratitude,” the colony said. “You went to save one not your own. Why?”

“Because I would not want to accidentally kill,” Andy replied aloud. He supposed he could just think the words and they’d hear them, but he was more used to speaking aloud.

“But you have intentionally killed,” the colony replied. “You carry a weapon even now.”

“Sometimes, yes,” Andy said. He swam back upward slowly, closing back on the massive fishes. “But I prefer not to.”

“You are a warrior, then,” another colony voice said. Somehow Andy could tell this voice was coming from one of the sharklike fish. Was each animal its own colony, speaking in its own voice?

“Yes,” the shark colony replied to his thoughts.

That was going to take a little getting used to, the idea that anything he thought would be broadcast immediately. He felt ashamed now of all of his fear. These things had heard every one of his frightened thoughts, had listened to all his terror.

“And yet you still overcame those fears when you thought a life was at risk,” the first colony said. “Which shows honor and courage both.”

The thoughts were not quite honor, nor courage… Andy had the sense that his own mind was more or less translating their concepts into those words, but that it wasn’t quite a the right fit. Like those precise ideas were not echoed by the Cynaut species, but rather some trait similar but not quite the same was recognized and applauded by them instead.

Then John was beside him again, resting a hand on his shoulder. “He is both of those things.”

Andy smiled at the compliment beneath his SCUBA mask. “I try.”

“You have come a long way to return one of our kind to us,” the colony said. “And, it tells us, you have more news as well?”

“News that will let us throw of the damned shackles of the invader!” the shark colony spat out the forceful thought with a vehemence that hurt Andy’s head.

“Perhaps,” the first colony said. “But we must hear more about this, and consider together.”

“What’s to consider? If they have a cure for the threat holding us in slavery, then we take it so that we can be free again!” The shark colony was sharper in its thoughts, more direct somehow. Andy could see their motivation clearly. They wanted an end to the Naga, the sooner the better. Now that they’d been given hope that might be accomplished they’d latched on to the idea and were holding it close. He hoped that they wouldn’t do anything rash.

11

John drifted a little closer to Andrew. This was a precarious moment for them, and for their potential future friendship with these beings. The way the Cyanauts were enslaved by the Naga was a terrible thing. That they had been forced to give away some of their people into isolation and servitude was atrocious, and he meant to put a stop to it.

But the very means of putting an end to the slavery might involve that relationship. He'd seen firsthand what impact the beings could have on the mind they were connected to. They could be a powerful weapon against the Naga, if the timing was perfect. They could also pass along intelligence, perhaps, or give the Naga false information. The possibilities were endless.

It was going to take more than a bacterium that could kill the ratzards to save these people. If the Naga wanted to crush this world they could simply bomb it from orbit, or drop a shower of asteroids on the place to boil the oceans and kill everything living in them. Which they might well do if they thought there was no other recourse to control these aliens.

"We understand your concerns," the giant, whale-like colony said into his mind. "And you have another worry, yes...? Something about contagion."

They understood the concept of infection, of bacterial life or fungus making something ill. They might not have microscopes, but the Cyanauts were deeply attuned to the life forms they inhabited. Coupled with what they were no doubt pulling from his mind, they seemed to have a good idea of the nature of the problem.

"Yes, it's a worry," John said. "The organism we have designed to fight the Naga bio-weapon seems to be effective. It eats away at the stuff, devouring it when it comes in contact. But it is a living organism. We have concerns about the impact introducing it might have on your environment."

"Surely you are introducing such organisms even now, with your very presence here?" the sharklike colony said.

"We took as much care as we could to decontaminate ourselves before coming here, but it is likely that some remain," John admitted. "The risk seems low from a few microbes which developed on our world, for our environment. This new thing we created is different though. It did not evolve; it was engineered. And to be effective we would need to seed it widely across your world."

John got a sense of consternation from the assembled colonies. There were more of them here than he'd first thought. The three whales were each a colony. The sharks were three more. And he heard wisps of thought from others, nearby but not directly part of the meeting. They were being listened to intently by many minds, each of them considering and judging his words. He needed to make a good case.

"What do you need to do, then?" the whale colony that was doing most of the speaking asked. John wished he had names for them. Their voices felt different in his mind, but naming was something that came naturally to humans but seemed to be an unnecessary value for the Cyanauts.

"We need to gather samples from your world," John said. "My crew is working to do this even now."

"And then...?"

"Then we bring those samples home and test the bacteria extensively, to ensure that it will not do harm to your world. We do not to seed your planet with something that might accidentally cause death or damage," John said.

The shark thrashed its tail and flashed in closer toward the meeting. John saw Andrew raise his spear-gun, and made a shushing motion with his hand. Andrew lowered the weapon, but John could still see the tension in his shoulders.

The shark stopped just a meter in front of him. Its maw was large enough that it could eat him whole, although the rows of sharp, hooked teeth implied the anything going into that gullet usually wasn't in one piece. It was hard to read body language in a fish, but the threat was clear.

"Delays! You hold out your help while our colonies are captured, the members culled and taken off world to other places!" It had given up on the semblance of quiet and calm, and was roaring into John's mind. "You will give us what we need to be free!"

The compulsion was so strong that John almost began swimming toward the Satori to fulfill the order. He checked himself, remaining in place with an effort. He closed his eyes, drawing his mind inward. The first calming image that came to him was of his wife, Satori - of a sunset they had shared together so many years before.

Another wave of thought washed over him, threatening to shatter the memory he was using as a shield. He held fast to the thought, clinging to it like it was a rock keeping him from being swept away in a tide.

The pressure vanished as suddenly and completely as it had arrived. John snapped his eyes open. Andrew had swum up next to the shark and was holding his spear-gun poised next to the thing's eye.

"I don't know what happens if your host animal dies while all of you are attached," Andrew said. "But I'm pretty sure this weapon will do the trick, and I don't think any of us want to find out. Back off."

The shark colony backed quickly away, and John was able to drift a little closer to Andrew and lay a hand on his shoulder. "I'm all right."

"You didn't seem to be, for a moment there."

"No, that was rough." John could hear chatter going back and forth between the colonies in his mind, catching snippets of the conversation but not enough to really understand what was being said. The whales were circling them now. The sharks were outside the circle, hovering in place some distance away and below them.

"We apologize," the whale colony said. "The actions of our cousin were brash, and rude. That will not happen again."

The last thought seemed to be directed at the sharks as much as it was at the humans.

"We understand their eagerness to be free," John said. "It is a trait we humans share with your kind. I promise we will help you as soon as it is safe to do so."

"We know this," the colony replied. "Waiting is hard, but we have waited this long for hope. We can be still a little longer."

"There is more we will need to do," John said. "The Naga cannot be stopped with this one tool. We will need to find a way to make your planet truly safe from them. Some way to prevent them from destroying all of you with a different weapon."

"We will simply kill all of them who venture here!" the shark colony snarled. "And we are done with delays! It is time for action!"

The three sharks sped away from the meeting. John wondered what their words meant. They couldn't beat the Naga that way, but they didn't seem to understand that. Or perhaps they were simply so frustrated with things as they were that they could not accept that.

"They are tired of patience," the whale said, with a thought that felt like a sigh. "Those colonies are young, and chose fearsome hosts in the hope that the Naga would be deterred by the forms. Instead they have become favored prey. If they have abandoned patience I fear for what they will do next."

John shivered a little, partly from the cold water and partly from worry. These people were at the cusp. With work, he could perhaps help them become free. But if they rushed the matter they might end up annihilated instead.

"I don't like this one bit," Andrew said, echoing his own thoughts. Then he added another worry. "They headed off in the general direction of the Satori."

12

Beth drummed her fingers on the console, frustrated. Sure, she was safe aboard the Satori this time, which was after all what she had said she'd wanted. The last trip they'd take she had been with the ground team, and almost died. More than once. She was tired of being shot at, chased, and almost eaten by the things they ran into.

But sitting here like a lump while the others were out there facing who-knew-what was worse. The communications issue was maybe the worst of it. Things could be going horribly wrong up on the surface and they wouldn't even know it. At least they had some idea what was happening to John and Andy. They'd swum far enough away that they were barely visible on the ship's sensors, but there were detectable. She knew they were still out there, talking to the fishes.

The lack of communications disturbed her because it was a problem she ought to be able to resolve. The Naga satellite had been able to use their radio to detect the Satori even when it was cloaked, though. It was a fair bet they were actively hunting for the ship, and even though they'd shut off the cloaking device to help the wormhole drive recharge more rapidly, the risk of the Naga detecting even a small radio signal was too great. This deep underwater they didn't really need to remain invisible, but start chirping out radio waves and they'd likely have a lot of unwanted attention.

She didn't know how to fix the issue, though. Without having access to the tech the Naga were using to detect them, she couldn't even be sure if something she did was going to work or not.

"Multiple objects closing on the rear of the ship," Majel said, breaking into her thoughts.

"What?" Dan asked, suddenly alert. He'd been dozing in his chair, the bastard. He was always able to relax even when she was tense as a piano wire.

"There are six objects, each about two meters across. No, twelve objects - they were too close to pick up the full number before," Majel said. "Closing slowly on our location."

"The Naga?" Beth asked. She tensed, thinking her fears had come to life despite all their precautions.

"No, I don't think so," Majel said. "They're biological."

"A school of fish passing by?" Dan asked. He was tapping his console, bringing the displays there to life.

"I thought that might be the case," Majel said. "But they've been approaching in a manner which suggests we are their destination, rather than just passing by us."

Dan was looking at the track displayed in his screen. Beth crossed the bridge to stare over his shoulder at the image. To her, it looked like a fairly erratic zig-zag course, but if Majel said there was something odd about it she was probably right.

"Can you get a camera on them?" Dan asked.

"Yes," Majel replied.

Dan's screen blinked, the image replaced by a view out the rear of the ship. The creatures approaching them looked like enormous jellyfish. They had a mass domed top, with long appendages dangling from beneath like vines. As Beth watched they moved the dangling bits. Not quite like jellyfish, then. Those had to be actual appendages, capable of controlled movement. She revised her earlier assessment - these were more like jellyfish with octopus arms.

The first one connected with the rear of the ship, gently bumping into them. Beth grabbed the back of Dan's seat to keep her balance as the ship rocked slightly.

"Grab a seat," Dan said.

She did as he suggested. This might get a little bumpy if the entire school of these things banged into them. The Satori's engines ought to be able to handle a few curious creatures bumping around outside. They were keeping the ship stationed at this depth by running the engines, churning the water beneath the ship into a pool of whirling bubbles.

"They're slipping below us," she pointed out, watching the screen as one after another of the animals slid down below the ship. "They're going to get hurt if they go near the engine exhausts."

"I can't shut them down. We'll sink," Dan said.

"Can we move away from them?"

"Sure," he replied. He engaged the main drive a little, trying to gently scoot clear of the things.

Beth flipped through the cameras, and found one which showed her the bottom of the ship. The jellyfish had all latched on there, gripping the hull with their tentacles. As she watched, one of them drew near an engine exhaust port. She flinched, hoping it would not be injured too badly. The creature entered the exhaust and she lost sight of it for a moment as the stream of bubbles pulsed and flowed over its gelatinous form.

The ship lurched sideways, tilting sharply.

"Shit!" Dan said His fingers flew over his controls, and the Satori righted itself. They still seemed to wobble a bit as he fought to stabilize their ship.

"What's happening?" Beth asked.

"We're losing power to the aft port liftoff thruster," Dan said through gritted teeth. "I'm trying to compensate."

She looked again at her screen. The jellyfish was still there, covering most of the thruster exhaust. Somehow it hadn't been blown clear or blasted apart by the force. It was soaking up enough of the thrust that it was actually impacting their ability to stay afloat. As she watched, more of the things were headed toward the other thrusters.

"Dan, we've got a serious problem," Beth said. "The fish. They're covering the thrusters."

She had just gotten that out before the Satori lurched sideways again, violently tilting up on the starboard wing. There was a high pitched whining sound coming from somewhere beneath her as the engines struggled to keep them up despite the blockage.

"I can't keep her steady," Dan said. "I'm going to try to increase power, blast them clear."

"You overload those thrusters and we'll lose them," Beth warned.

"How much tolerance did you build into them?"

"A lot." But this was going to tax her design to the breaking point. "They can handle a hundred and fifty percent output for a short while."

"Giving it a shot."

The engine noise increased to a roaring sound as Dan applied more thrust. But even as he did Beth watched more of the things latching themselves on to the thrusters. There were only four nozzles to help control attitude during vertical takeoff and landing. The ship had never needed more than that. Now they had three of the jellysquids pulling themselves in to block each thruster. Dan was giving them every bit of engine power he could, and it wasn't doing a damned thing to break them loose.

"I'm losing attitude control," Dan said. "Hang on!"

The ship tilted again, the nose dipping down sharply. Through the viewscreen on the front of the ship all she could see was the utter blackness of the depths beneath them.

"Thrusters no longer maintaining depth. Ship is now descending rapidly," Majel said.

They were falling into the night beneath them. How deep had the trench here been? Beth tried to remember, thinking as she did that it didn't matter. If they didn't find a way to dislodge the creatures, the Satori would reach crush depth a long time before it crashed into the bottom of the ocean.

13

At least the whale colonies were being reasonable, and they seemed to have more presence than the smaller colonies living on the smaller, more predatory fish. John was growing confident that they could make this work out well after all. It had seemed about to fall apart, but as soon as the sharks left the meeting things returned to a reasonable tenor.

"We won't need long. We will return here as soon as the testing process is complete," John promised.

"The colonies must take you at your word," the Cyanaut colony replied. "We shall wait for..."

It cut off in mid-thought, and began swimming in an agitated series of diving and rising motions. The other whales joined it and opened up in a song of long, keening notes. Something was up. John was at a loss to know what was going on. The Cyanauts could read his every thought, but the power didn't flow both ways.

"We are so sorry," the colonies said in unison.

"For what? I don't understand," John said. Something terrible was happening, that much was clear.

In the distance, the lights from the Satori wobbled briefly, like something had jiggled the ship. They were so remote that John almost missed the movement. But it was impossible to not notice a moment later when the lights went out entirely. The ship. Something was happening to the ship. With a sudden wave of insight, John realized it had to be the colonies which had left. They'd done something - attacked the Satori, or damaged it in some way.

"What have they done?" John demanding. There wasn't an immediate reply so he added more force behind his thoughts. "What have they done to my ship?!"

The whales continued their keening noises, not replying at all. Andrew was looking around at them, confused. He had his weapon at the ready though. With a swift movement Andrew leveled the spear-gun, aiming it outward. John stared in the direction of his aim. All three sharks were returning, steaming toward them at high speed.

"Don't shoot unless they force our hand," John said.

"I think we're a little past that," Andrew replied. "It looks like they hit the Satori."

The sharks weren't slowing down. John pulled his own spear-gun off his shoulder and aimed it at them as well. He'd never fired one of the damned things. He didn't know if he could hit the broad side of a barn with it, let alone nail a fast moving object. He'd need to wait until the sharks were just about on top of them.

Andrew had no such reservations. He fired. The shot sped out toward the lead shark, which twisted wildly to avoid the weapon. The spear gouged a line along its flank, slashing the skin and releasing a pool of blood into the water. It was only a light wound, but it broke the rush. All three sharks went swimming in different directions, turning fast to avoid any other projectiles coming at them.

Andrew was already reloading as quickly as he could. John tracked the nearest shark with his own weapon but held his fire. Partly because he wasn't at all sure he could hit the thing, and partly because he was still hoping they might be able to talk their way through this.

"What have you done to our ship?" John asked, projecting his thoughts as best he could.

"Sent it into the abyss," one of the shark colonies replied. "Where it will remain unless you give us the cure you say you have."

Would a bluff work? "If the ship is destroyed by the depths, then you lose the cure forever."

"I think not," came the reply. "Your words do not match your thoughts. The cure is not on the ship."

John cursed under his breath. Lies and half truths were useless against telepaths, and he should have known better. The truth was the only way through this.

"If you can read my thoughts, then you must know that I believe it when I tell you that this bacteria could do terrible harm to your world. We must test it before we release it here," John said.

"That is not your decision!" The shark sailed past John's head. Andrew was about to snap off another shot at it, but John waved him off. He had the thing talking now. All that remained was to convince it.

"No, it's not. That's fair. But should it be your decision alone?" John asked. "Or the collective decision of all your people?"

The shark dove in toward him again, and John was afraid it would strike this time. But one of the whales came in from the flank, smashing into the shark's side and battering it away from him. The sheer mass of the animal knocked the shark spinning, dazed.

"THAT IS ENOUGH!" the whale called out, its voice loud an imperious. It quieted again before continuing. "What you have all done is abhorrent. You have attacked our guests. And you have spilled blood."

"Our friends are going to die unless we do something," Andrew said.

"Our people are dying because you do nothing," a shark colony replied.

The whales came around together, then one of them swam off toward the Satori, while the other two remained close to the humans. Whether that was to keep them safe from the sharks, or the sharks safe from them John wasn't sure. For all he knew it might be both.

"We will call conclave, and ask all the colonies to weigh in on this matter," the whale colony said. "In the meantime our brethren will assist your ship to ensure it is not destroyed by the deeps."

"Thank you," John said.

"Do not thank us yet," the colony replied. "Some of our people want what you have to offer, no matter the cost. Their voices will be heard now as well."

John grimaced. Whenever someone said that they would do something no matter the cost, it always seemed that it meant they were ready to abandon reason and ethics in favor of whatever their cause might be. He prayed fervently that would not be the case here. Too much was at stake.

14

They were still sinking, and it looked increasingly like there wasn’t a damned thing that Dan could do about it. The Satori’s hull groaned, reminding him that they were on a clock. At some point, the ship would crack apart under the pressure, imploding from the crushing force of the water around them.

“Beth, any idea how long we have?” he asked.

“Hard to say. Minutes? No more than that, for sure.”

He pursed his lips. The engines weren’t kicking those jellyfish things off. Nothing he did seemed to matter. Whatever they were made of, it was tough material. Without the thrusters to keep them aloft, they were sinking fast. He didn’t even have enough control of the ship to get their nose up so he could power their way skyward with the main engines.

“The wormhole drive is still working,” Dan said. “Majel, how’s our recharge level?”

“The drive is at about half charge,” she said. “There’s enough for a small jump, but not enough power to return home.”

“We have any known coordinates close enough?” Dan asked.

“Just the one for this planet,” Majel replied.

“We’re too close,” Beth said, shaking her head. “The gravity well…”

“I know,” Dan growled. He was maybe a little more harsh than he’d meant to be, cutting her off like that. But they were running out of options.

The gravity of large objects seemed to throw off the wormholes somehow. For some reason none of them really understood that effect was greater on short distance jumps. They’d only tried one short jump before, and Jupiter’s gravity had grabbed the wormhole and yanked them in close enough that the ship had almost been sucked down into the turbulent storms in its atmosphere.

This close to the planet’s surface, with exit coordinates barely a few dozen kilometers away, what sort of havoc would that wreak on the wormhole exit point? They might end up transiting through a wormhole into the planet’s core, for all they knew. But Dan was fast running out of other options.

“I might be able to mitigate the risk somewhat,” Majel said.

“What?” Dan asked.

“I’ve been running simulations on the micro-jump we did in Earth’s system,” Majel said. “I believe I can manage the jump better if I can directly modulate the power going into the wormhole drive.”

“How sure are you?” Beth asked.

“Impossible to be sure without testing,” Majel said. “It’s a hypothesis at best. I had meant to discuss the idea of testing it once I had run more simulations, using a probe to test the destination point. If I can compensate for the gravity distortion, it should be possible to manage very short jumps with greater accuracy.”

“But you haven’t yet,” Dan said.

“No, it’s just a theory,” Majel said. “But I do not have any other insights which might solve our problem at this time.”

Neither did Dan. He swept his eyes over the console again, like he would somehow see the answers written there. Instead he saw the blinking light of a new object on their scanner.

“Majel is that a ship?” he asked, unable to take his eyes from the radar screen. Whatever it was had to be even larger than the Satori. Maybe some sort of sub?

“Negative, scans indicate it is biological,” Majel said.

“Time until it reaches us?” Dan asked.

“Forty seconds,” Beth replied. “Dan, if that thing rams us we’re going down. The Satori’s hull is already under too much strain.”

“I might be able to give us a burst of speed from the main engines, make it miss us once. But the trick won’t work twice,” Dan said.

“And you’ll just drive us down faster,” Beth said.

“If I may interrupt, I am preparing the systems for micro-jump,” Majel said.

“Whoa. Can you jump the ship without the pilot engaging the drive?” Dan asked. He didn’t like the idea of the computer taking over his steering wheel, no matter how smart or likable the computer might be.

“Probably. But I won’t. However, I do not wish to die down here, and unless either of you has any better suggestions, we have about twenty seconds left until we all perish,” Majel said.

Dan looked at Beth and shrugged. The AI was right. If they were going to die anyway, they might as well take a stab at surviving. In the worst case scenario he could imagine, they would die. Which was what would happen if they did nothing anyway.

Beth snapped her harness into place and gave him a small smile.

“Engaging wormhole drive now,” Dan said, flicking the switch. “Majel, I hope you can do this.”

“So do I,” the computer said.

Lights flickered in front of the ship, exploding into the now familiar pattern of swirling photons that appeared whenever they activated the wormhole drive. The device punched a hole in the fabric of the universe. Water rushed into the wormhole, pouring through it to whatever was on the other side. Was it simply being annihilated out there, coming into contact with solid matter at the destination? Or had Majel accurately projected a new destination?

“Power fluctuations in the drive,” Majel said. “The wormhole is unstable. We’re going to lose it.”

“Hang on,” Dan said. He turned the main engines on full power, and the Satori rocketed forward through the portal and into the unknown.

The ship exited the wormhole, blasting out somewhere. Dan couldn’t tell where they were at first. They were surrounded by a massive bubble of water which seemed to stick to the ship. It was freezing in place, lines of ice forming all around the ship so quickly that he could watch it happen.

“We’re in space,” Beth said. “Not far from our point of entry.”

Which was good, and bad. Dan engaged the cloak - not that it would do a lot of good, with a big ball of ice forming around the ship. “So the good news is, we aren’t dead,” Dan said. “The bad news is, we’re sitting right next to the Naga again.”

“Shit,” Beth said.

“Power levels are down to two percent,” Majel said. “It will take us some time to recharge.”

“Ive got the main engine still,” Dan said. He lit those thrusters off, blasting ice away from the rear of the ship. Ahead of them was the titanic station, floating out there in orbit. Already it was disgorging a host of small fighter craft to intercept them. Dan tried to bank the Satori away from the station, but the controls were not responding.

“Those damned fish must still be hooked to our maneuvering thrusters,” he said. And now they were stuck fast under two feet of solid ice. It wasn’t a pretty scene. They could still fly straight ahead, but that was taking them directly toward the station. Not the way Dan wanted to go.

“Talk about out of the frying pan,” Beth said.

The Naga fighters were surrounding the Satori, closing in from all sides. There was a jarring impact that shook the ship as several fighters fired something at them. For a moment Dan almost hoped they might fire on the ship. It might chip away enough ice to free them. But no - they weren’t using guns. They were firing anchored cable lines, the anchors grabbing on to the ice, letting the fighters tug the Satori along with them. They were being hauled in toward the station.

The Naga had them. And Dan had no idea how they were going to get out of it this time.

15

Linda walked back up from the beach with the last of her samples. This job was done, at least. Preliminary analysis was already underway, and looked promising. If she was right, the water here was teeming with life. But she hadn’t spotted anything yet which would be especially infectious to humans, and she didn’t think that her bacteria negatively affect the creatures that evolved here either. Too many differences.

Of course, it was too early to know for sure. She would need to do a lot of work with the samples before she had a better idea. She’d captured a few small animals, tiny analogues of Terran crustaceans and mollusks along with a few smaller arthropods.

“Still haven’t found anything alive above the waterline,” Linda said to Charline as she came back into the cave.

“Well, keep at it. I’m sure you will.”

“I’m not so certain,” Linda said as she set the new samples down into the crate with the others. “There should be tons of life out there, at least at the bacterial level. Even if the local flora hasn’t evolved its way onto land yet, why is the water full of bacteria but there’s nothing at all living on the land?”

Charline gave her a look, tilting her head sideways. “You do love a good mystery, don’t you? You’ll find one pretty much anywhere you look.”

Linda laughed. “It’s in my nature to look for challenges, I guess.”

She flushed a little as Charline rose and stretched. The woman was tall, lean, with blonde hair that she would have killed for. Well-toned muscles filled out the ship suit uniform they all wore perfectly. Damn, she was hot. Linda lowered her face, trying to hide blushing cheeks she knew had to be growing brighter by the moment.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you with all of this,” Charline said, waving her hand at the plastic crates full of samples. She seemed to have missed the blush, thank god.

She was right, too. Charline usually was, and she was dead on this time too. This whole thing was a mystery. Why was there no life on the land? How the heck had sentient life evolved in the ocean before even bacteria made it onto the rocky shores? Damned peculiar.

Linda decided to go out over the island again checking just one more time in the likely areas for potential life. Anyplace that was wet, dark, and even moderately warm ought to be a good place to look. So far nothing, but that didn’t mean there really was nothing. It simply meant she hadn’t found it yet.

She was stepping outside when she heard the roar of engines passing overhead. It must be the Satori, back already! They’d made good time with the mission down below if they were already back. Linda went toward the entrance to wave them in.

Something crashed into her from behind, knocking her to the ground.

She struggled, but whatever it was held her fast. She was about to yell out for Charline when she realized that was who had knocked her down and was pinning her to the cave floor.

“Don’t move!” Charline hissed.

Linda froze.

A Naga fighter streaked by overhead, flying only a few score meters above the waves. It circled around their island a few times before gliding out in the direction the Satori had gone. Two more fighters joined it out there, flying slowly enough that they had to be scanning the sea beneath them.

“They must have tripped some sort of alarm or scan system,” Charline said, slowly rising back to her feet. She reached down a hand to pull Linda up. “Sorry about the rough treatment. If you’d gone out there they would have seen you for sure.”

“How did you know?” Linda asked. In thoughts she kept to herself she was wistfully thinking that Charline could knock her to the floor any time she wanted. She shrugged the thought away. They were in trouble. Time to act like an addled schoolgirl later, if she wanted.

“I recognized the engine sound,” Charline said. “It’s not something you forget after what we’ve been through.”

“Did they capture you, too?” Linda asked. She’d heard stories about Andy, about how the Naga had taken him onto their ship and tortured him.

“No,” Charline said. Her eyes had a faraway look, and Linda knew she was reliving memories as she spoke. “It was me they were after when they got Andy.”

Linda watched the fighters from the safety of the cave. They hadn’t been detected. Of that she was sure - the Naga would have been all over them if they’d known there were humans on the island. She watched their flight pattern. She wasn’t a pilot, but it seemed to her like they were looking for something. Probably the Satori.

“If they’re still looking for the ship, then that’s a good thing, right?” Linda said, voicing her thoughts. “It means they haven’t found it yet.”

“Yeah, but the fact they know to look right there tells us that the guys had to do something that alerted them. I can’t think of too many things that would do that. Radio, firing the guns, using the wormhole device?” Charline said. “They shouldn’t have been using any of those things. At least not if things went according to plan.”

“You think something went wrong down there,” Linda said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, pretty damned sure of it.”

“What can we do to help them?”

“Right now? Not a damned thing,” Charline said. Her faced wrinkled in frustration.

A series of wavelets a few dozen yards from shore caught Linda’s attention. They looked like the wake from something coming to the surface. It didn’t seem big enough to be the Satori, but she wasn’t sure just what she was looking at.

As she watched the wake resolved into a more organized patter. Or rather, the wakes did - there were at least six of the things, whatever they were down there. They were still too distant to be able to see whatever was swimming out there. But the Naga flyby had her on edge. If this was another threat, she and Charline needed to prepare.

“I think we’ve got company out there,” she said.

“Out where?” Charline replied sharply.

“Out there,” Linda said, pointing toward the water. She had just enough time to say those words before the water exploded upward in a heaving wave of foam.

16

Andy checked his air gauge. They had plenty left, but if anything happened to the Satori they were in deep trouble. Never mind getting home, without a way to safely decompress aboard the ship they would have to do it the hard way, slowly returning to the surface to avoid getting the bends. They had enough trimix left in their tanks to manage it, but before long they would have to begin the ascent.

The whale which had swum off to go rescue the ship was returning. That was either very good or very bad. Andrew looked down at the creature still wrapped around his finger, thinking questions at it. He knew it would send his thoughts out to the colonies nearby.

“The ship disappeared in a blaze of light,” the whale replied. “It entered the light and then vanished.”

“Wormhole?” Andy asked John.

“Probably. They must have seen the colony approaching and figured it was another attack. They jumped out to avoid getting hit.”

“But where could they go? Do you think the ship had recharged enough to just jump for home?” Andy asked. He was trying to recall how quickly the Satori’s drive recharged. He didn’t think there had been enough time to build power for such a long distance jump.

“No way,” John said. “They must have tried for a micro-jump.”

“Like when we almost crashed into Jupiter.”

“Exactly,” John said. He didn’t sound any more pleased at the notion than Andy was.

He knew they’d made the jump as a last resort. They would have tried everything before taking such a desperate step. But that still left them in deep trouble. The Satori might be anywhere. There was a solid chance it was simply gone, lost for good. He supposed in a pinch they could try to fight their way into the Naga base, maybe steal one of their ships. But that would be one hell of a battle. Their odds would not be good.

Those were thoughts for another time, Andy figured, putting the ideas away. It was way too early to write off Dan, Beth, and Majel. They were some of the smartest people he knew. If anyone could bring the ship safely through, it was them. He had to trust that they’d be back.

“How’s the conclave coming together?” Andy asked.

“It is not,” the colony replied. “It is not a matter of coming together. It is a matter of connecting minds. Our life is spread out across this world, in oceans far away. Conclave occurs when we connect with all of those beings to converse on topics of great importance.”

“How much range does your telepathy have?” John asked.

“We can still reach our brethren enslaved by the Naga floating above our world, but we cannot reach those brought further away,” the colony said. “By connecting one to another, we can reach all around our oceans, though.”

“Like a big telepathic daisy chain,” Andy said. It was pretty incredible. If he was understanding them correctly, each colony was acting like a retransmitting station for all of the others, spreading their signal.

“Yes.”

“So what’s the problem?” Andy asked.

“Not all are responding.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” John said. “Are some not responding because they are injured or sick?”

“No,” the colony replied. There was a long pause, before it continued its thoughts with an emotional resonance of deep sorrow. “Some are refusing to hear or be heard.”

“Why? John pressed.

Andy had a bad feeling he knew why. These colonies not responding had to be the same ones who attacked the Satori. For whatever reason, they were cutting themselves off from contact with the other colonies. Which would make it impossible for the colonies in the conclave to know what they were up to.

“This has never been done before,” the colony replied. It sounded confused, even lost. “We do not understand.”

“John, they’ve learned subterfuge,” Andy said.

“What?” John asked.

“They’re screening their communications. Standard procedure for a military action. These beings are in contact with the ones who are attached to the Naga, right?” Andy asked. “My guess is they’ve learned some new tricks from their slave-masters.”

“Military action. Against whom?” John asked.

There was only one target which made sense. He and John were protected. The Satori was someplace else, out of their reach. But the people they’d left behind on the surface… Andy felt a sudden pang for Charline. If they hurt her…!

John must have come to the same realization. “But they’re aquatic creatures. They can’t get on land.”

“They can if they control certain types of bottom crawling beings,” the colony corrected. It projected the image into their minds of crab and lobster like creatures in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some of the things looked damned big.

“We have to get up there,” Andy said.

“How? It would take us an hour to surface,” John said. “We don’t even have a radio we can use to warn them.”

Andy turned to the colony. “Can you intervene? Stop these rebel colonies from attacking our friends?”

“Attack our own kind? It has never been done. We cannot do that.”

“Damn it, you have to do something!” Andy said.

The whale swam in circles for another few moments, flipping its tail hard in strong, swooping motions. It was clearly agitated. Andy wondering if he had gone too far, if he had maybe pushed the giant animal that could squish him like a bug a little more than was smart. Whatever the whale colony was saying, it wasn’t being broadcast to them. If it was doing any talking it was just with its own kind.

“We have more news,” it said at last. “Your ship has been located.”

“Thank god,” John said. “Where is it? Are they OK?”

“No. The ship has been seen by those of us who are enslaved,” the colony said.

“What? Where?” Andy asked.

“They have been taken aboard the Naga station.”

17

Dan tapped the console in front of his wheelchair, trying not to feel trapped and helpless. It was a continuous effort to keep his fear in check. The controls were as dead as he was probably about to be. He couldn’t recall ever feeling so utterly helpless. The Satori was sitting on the deck of a landing pad inside the Naga station. At least all the ice around them had melted away. But they were stuck, and just then there was nowhere else in the universe he’d rather not be sitting.

The banging on the ramp door continued. Another minute or so, tops, and the Naga would be inside. They’d have him then, and there was nothing at all he could do about it. Everything that could be done had been. Beth cut the power from the main engines before hiding herself away beneath them. They were still hot, giving off a massive enough energy signature that they hoped her presence wouldn’t be noticed by their scans.

In the meantime it was his job to keep the Naga occupied enough that they wouldn’t tear the Satori apart completely. At least not right away. He had to buy Beth enough time to repair the damage and get clear.

If it were anyone else whose life was at risk, he didn’t know if he could have willingly surrendered himself to the Naga. But this was Beth. He had to get her out of here, no matter what. Nothing mattered more.

The Naga finally pried the ramp open a few inches. The hydraulics screamed as they forced the doorway down. Dan heard booted steps coming up the ramp as the Naga boarded.

“Come in,” he said aloud. He had no way of knowing if they understood him. Did any of them have Cyanaut earpieces to help them translate? “I surrender.”

He raised his hands, about as universal a sign as he could think of. Three Naga poured up the ramp, rifles held at the ready. Two of them turned immediately toward him, but they seemed to feel he wasn’t a significant threat. They left one guarding him while the others began a quick search of the ship. Three more Naga climbed aboard the ship, joining the others in their search.

It was the first time Dan had seen any of them up close. They were reptilian. What he could see of their bodies was covered in scales that ranged from a dull green to an olive color that was almost tan. Most of their body was covered with what looked like armor. The stuff was probably similar to the dragonscale body armor Andy had procured for the Satori’s team, but it looked a lot heavier. Probably more durable as well.

Two of the Naga searching the ship returned to the bridge and said something to Dan’s guard in a language that sounded more like clicks and hisses than intelligible words. The guard gave a small shrug, then turned back toward Dan. Raising its weapon, it uttered a different series of hissing sounds at him.

“I don’t understand,” he said, keeping his hands carefully raised and his body as motionless as possible.

It repeated the sounds, but looked frustrated. Then it tapped something on its shoulder - a comm link? - and said something else. It growled in Dan’s direction. Then it waited. There wasn’t much else Dan could do but sit there and wait for whatever it was they had planned. He was sweating, though. Any moment now they might find Beth. He had to figure out a way to prevent that.

He slid his hands down to the control bar of his wheelchair and activated the motor. The guard’s eyes got wide, and Dan could almost see him thinking about whether or not to pull the trigger on his rifle. After all, Dan hadn’t done anything obvious yet… Just lowered his arms.

Dan nudged the control joystick forward. The wheelchair had a lot more power than he was putting into it right now, but he didn’t want to alarm the guard enough to actually shoot him. He just wanted to draw a little extra attention to himself.

“I want to see Kassresh,” Dan said, loudly enough to that any Naga nearby could hear him. He had no idea if the leader of the Naga they’d run into was nearby or not, but it was the only name he knew. “In fact, I demand to see him. Take me to your leader at once.”

He drove the wheelchair toward the ramp. If he left the ship, it ought to get a little attention. He made it as far as the top of the ramp before the guard came up beside him and brought the butt of its rifle down against his skull.

Dan tried to roll with the blow, but it still hurt like hell. His ears rang, and there was blood trickling down from the side of his scalp. The Naga uttered a few more very loud demands of its own, and held its rifle poised for another blow. Dan raised his arms, palms open and facing toward the Naga.

“OK, I get it,” Dan said. He groaned. “No wandering off.”

The commotion brought back the other Naga who’d been searching the ship. Dan hid a smile, despite how badly he was hurting. He’d done the job, at least. They were far more interested in him than they were in poking their noses about.

Another alien came up the ramp, carrying a small cylinder in its hand. It popped the cap off the thing as it came up toward Dan. He tensed, unsure what this new Naga had in mind. But he relaxed a bit when it poured the contents into its palm: a Cyanaut. He hadn’t had one of the things in his ear before, but both Andy and John had been able to deal with it. So could he.

The Naga said something to the guards, and two of them grabbed Dan, one by each arm. They were a hell of a lot rougher than they needed to be.

“I understand what you are doing,” he said. “I will not resist.”

They looked at each other, eying Dan with suspicion, but they relaxed their grip on his aching arms. Dan turned his head sideways, revealing his right ear for them. His left had an ear-bud hidden inside it, and he didn’t want them to discover it while trying to insert the Cyanaut. The little device would let Beth hear what was going on around him. There was scant hope that she and the others could get him out of this place, but communications would improve his odds a lot.

The Naga slid the Cyanaut into his ear. It slid partway in, and then began inching its way deeper until it rested someplace near his ear drum. His hearing felt odd, almost hollow. Like there was a big ball of cotton stuffed in his ear, which wasn’t far from what was actually going on. He winced a little at the slimy feel of something oozing into his ear, but he’d dealt with worse.

The Cyanaut would let him understand what the Naga were saying. And just maybe, it would give him more connection to the outside than they knew. The Naga might think of the wormlike beings as simple animals, but Dan knew better. There was an entire world full of intelligent Cyanauts down below them, and right now John and Andy ought to be in communication with them. If he could convince this one to trust him, he might have a chance.

18

Beth’s teeth left marks in her hand from biting it hard. It was all she could do to keep from crying out in fear as the Naga stomped through her engine room, tearing the place up in their search. She heard the metallic clatter as they dumped out her toolbox. They ripped through drawers and opened every storage locker in the place.

Any moment now she knew they were going to look into the crawlspace beneath the engine housing. She’d built it that way to gain access to the inner workings of the engine, should it ever be required. She still didn’t understand how it worked well enough to take it apart, but she’d put the crawlspace in anyway. Just in case.

Now she hid inside, and her design might just save her life. The entrance to the crawlspace was hidden. She’d paneled it over from the inside after she slid in, quickly bolting a plate over the opening. It wasn’t much of a barrier. A few strong stomps from above would knock the plate down, revealing her. She was armed with one of the captured Naga rifles, but that wouldn’t be enough to save her if she was discovered.

Maybe the worst of it was being able to hear Dan. Through his earpiece she heard everything he said. She was listening when the Naga struck him. He was helpless and it was her fault. He was doing it to protect her, damn him.

It had made sense at the time, even though she’d protested.

“No way,” she’d said. “You’re not staying out here alone.”

“We can’t both hide in there. We won’t fit, and besides, they’ll never believe there was no one aboard the ship.”

“Then I’ll stay. You hide,” she’d replied. Even though the idea had made her insides shake.

“Because I can repair the ship? Get her flying again? Rescue everyone?” he’d said. His words hurt, because she knew he was right. “Andy survived a little visit with them. So can I.”

“But you can’t defend yourself like Andy did, Dan. You’re…”

“I’m what?” he’d asked her. His voice had taken on a bitter note. “Broken? Crippled? Is that what you see when you look at me?”

“No,” she’d said. Then she’d turned and left, retreating to the engine room to hide herself away and let him face the danger alone.

What she had wanted to add was that she couldn’t stand the thought of him in their hands. Not because he was less able, but because she had never really stopped caring. No matter how much she’d tried. And damn it all, she had tried. For years. They’d split up because their careers were consuming both of them. They wanted to be the very best at what they did, and that left precious little time for anything else, including each other.

Breaking up had made sense. There were no children, so divorce was easy. Setting aside the emotions hadn’t been so simple though. She felt like she’d almost managed it, and then John had hired Dan on as the Satori’s pilot and three years of effort was washed away in an instant.

Now he was captured by creatures that would see him as nothing more than a chunk of meat, and she had no idea how she would ever get him back so that she could say those things. She fingered the little object he’d left with her, hidden away in her pocket for safekeeping.

“Just in case,” he’d said before she hid herself. “It’s the only thing I have on me that it would really hurt to lose.”

Dan was speaking to the Naga again. She stilled her breathing so she could better hear what he said.

“Yes, I’ll come with you. I want to see your leader. Is Kassresh here? Or someone else?”

She heard the Naga hissing something in reply, but she couldn’t understand them.

“No, I can’t stand,” Dan said. “An injury. Unless you want to carry me the whole way, I must use my chair.”

He was talking with them. They must have placed a Cyanaut on him so that he could understand what they said. It made sense, if you thought about it. They wanted to question him. They wanted to get information out of him. He needed to understand the questions they were asking if that were to work.

The Naga were making more noises, and gradually she realized they had to be laughing at him. At his injury, his inability to stand. The Naga prized strength. They saw Dan as weak, unfit. She might know better, but all they saw was a broken mammal.

“Yes, I’m alone,” Dan was saying. His voice had a bitter note as he went on. “I was considered expendable, so I was sent on this mission by myself. The ship was attacked in the water by animals there. I barely got away, and…you know the rest.”

One of the Naga barked a command.

“I will come. I’m not resisting,” Dan said. Beth heard the whine of his motorized chair activating. They were taking him off the ship, away to some room where they could question him.

She waited what felt like forever, even though her watch said only fifteen minutes had passed since they’d taken Dan away. She could still hear him speaking from time to time, so she knew he was alive. For now. Rescuing him was going to fall to her.

“Majel, did they leave guards behind?” she whispered as softly as she could manage. For all Beth knew, the Naga were still sitting out there ready to pounce.

The AI was still active. The ship’s systems were all down, but she was resident in the computers controlling the ship’s drive and other alien tech…like scanners.

“Two,” Majel replied into her earpiece. “One is in the main corridor, the other on the bridge. They look nervous.”

“Nervous? What makes you say that?” Beth asked.

“They keep glancing around like the place is haunted,” Majel said. “Must be something about the strange noises they keep hearing. Maybe we really are the boogeyman they think we are.”

Beth stifled a snort. “Your doing?”

“Of course,” Majel said. She sounded especially pleased with herself. “Don’t worry, I can distract them when you’re ready to move.

Beth was about as ready as she was going to get. She stilled her breathing, then slid forward to the bolts holding the panel in place. As quietly as she could, she twisted the nuts free. Then she gently lifted the plate clear. It made a faint scraping sound as the bolts slipped free from the roughly drilled holes. She winced, and froze, hoping that the noise hadn’t been heard.

The engine room remained completely still. She peered out through the crack. As Majel had said, the place was empty. The door leading into the main hall had been closed. She heaved a sigh of relief. Unless she made a big clatter they weren’t going to hear her rising up from the crawlspace.

Beth slipped out, hauling the Naga rifle up with her. It had been that or one of their guns, and the Naga weapons were a lot quieter. She had the feeling that might make all the difference here.

She padded across the room to the hatch and peeked out through the porthole. One Naga was in the hall. Its back was to her. It carried its rifle at the ready, but it was aimed in the wrong direction. As soon as she opened the door that was going to change, though. She needed to be fast.

“I’ll distract it as soon as you open the hatch,” Majel told her.

Beth nodded, unsure if Majel could actually see that or not. It didn’t really matter. Whether the distraction worked or not, she had to do this. Dan was counting on her. Hell, the whole team was relying on her saving the day here.

She slapped the open button on the wall, and the door whooshed open, recessing into the wall. Beth was already aiming her rifle at the Naga, who was also raising his weapon - in the wrong direction. Flashes of light were appearing on a monitor at the far end of the hall, and the Naga had turned to face the wrong threat.

She fired.

The rifle barely bucked. The Naga weapons discharged a high velocity ball of force, somehow sending a bullet-like energy pellet speeding at the enemy. They could be set to a low power that was something like a big rubber bullet, or much more powerful settings. She’d cranked the rifle up as high as it could go.

The shot penetrated the Naga’s armor, sending a spray of blood out the far side. It grunted with surprise and tried to turn in place. She fired a second time, and a third. The guard went down and didn’t rise again.

She had to keep moving. Majel said there was one more of the things on the bridge, and it had to have heard the commotion. Beth kept her weapon trained on the far doorway and advanced. She’d crossed half the distance when a Naga snout appeared. It looked down and saw its fallen comrade, then looked up and saw her.

It raised its rifle and fired at the same time Beth did.

19

The sea boiled as a swarm of things came up from the depths. Charline had never seen anything like it. Most of the critters coming their way were crablike things, but there were others that looked like bugs. There had to be hundreds of them. The smaller were the size of her fist. The bigger ones looked more like soccer balls with legs.

And each of them had a little Cyanaut attached to it somewhere.

“What do we do? Linda asked.

“I don’t know… The others went down to speak with these things. Maybe this is a welcome wagon?” Or maybe not. Maybe the mission had gone sideways and these creatures were coming after them. “Let’s back up into the cave.”

Which left them trapped, but it was either that or trek out across the small island where the Naga ship would see them right away. Although if the Naga missed seeing this little parade they were blind. The horde followed them into the cave. There wasn’t any communication from them, no signs of slowing down.

Charline stalked to the back of the cave and grabbed her rifle. Holding it in one hand, she returned to the front of the cave and faced down the crabs. It was just about time to make the call, and she was pretty sure they were hostile. They hadn’t actually attacked, but neither she nor Linda had been close enough for them to so much as nip their heel, either. Well, there was one way to figure it out. She reached out a hand toward one of the leading crabs.

“What are you doing?” Linda asked.

“Seeing if these guys are friendly or not,” Charline replied.

“They don’t look friendly.”

Linda was right. They really didn’t look friendly. But she’d never forgive herself if she opened fire on a friendly species without cause. Maybe they were trying to say hello. In a very weird and scary way.

“Grab a gun. If I’m wrong, shoot them,” Charline said.

She reached out a little closer to the crab. It crawled forward toward her hand. Right before it was close enough to touch, it pulled the claw back in a little bit - and then slashed out with the claw, trying to lop off Charline’s finger.

“Oh no you don’t,” she said, darting back. That was it. She could be making a horrible mistake, but she was going with her gut on this one. If they waited any longer to act they wouldn’t have any room left to maneuver in the small cave. They’d be cut to ribbons.

Charline raised her rifle at the offending crab and squeezed the trigger. Between the loud sound of the gunshot and the bits of hell and crab which suddenly decorated the room, there was a brief moment where everyone froze. Neither the humans nor the crustacean swarm so much as twitched.

Then they advanced again, like a seething tide of living things. Charline opened fire, peppering their front row with bullets. She fired careful, aimed shots. There were a lot of critters coming at them and they were going to run out of bullets before they ran out of crabs if they weren’t careful. But she wanted to clear the front of the cave, give them a little breathing room. Then the butt end of the rifles would work as pretty good clubs.

Then Linda was there next to her, with another rifle in her hands. She started shooting too, nailing some of the bigger creatures massing near the cave opening. Charline blinked. Some of those crabs were the size of a medium dog. How big did these things get? Still, they made handy targets for Linda, who hadn’t all that much practice shooting yet.

“We need to switch to using the weapons as clubs,” Charline said. “We’re going to run out of ammo otherwise.”

“Gotcha,” Linda said.

“Let’s take it to them.” Charline took a step forward, swinging as she went. The butt of the rifle smacked into a shell with a meaty cracking sound. She brought the weapon down again and killed another one, and another. One of them was trying to climb the cave wall beside her. If the things could get above them they could flank them, even attack from behind or drop on them from above.

“Watch the walls,” Charline said, knocking the climber off. “They’re trying to sneak around us.”

“Gotcha,” Linda said. Then she added, “Oh!”

Charline turned at her exclamation. The creatures had been concentrating more on Linda’s side of the cave, and they’d tried climbing a lot earlier. Now dozens of them were on the wall beside Linda, and some had already reached the ceiling.

“Back up fast!” Charline shouted. She followed her own advice, backing up as quickly as she could and flipping her rifle around. She fired upward, picking off two of the climbers who’d reached the ceiling. Bits of their shells and chunks of the creatures inside the shells spattered down all over Linda.

“Oh, gross!” Linda said. “Yuck!”

“You rather they drop on you?” Charline said, laughing in spite of the dire situation.

“You could have waited a moment,” Linda said. Then she froze, her body locking up and her eyes staring blindly ahead for a moment before she went limp and collapse to the cave floor.

“Linda!” Charline shouted. She rushed forward. So did the crab army. They crawled over Linda’s legs, snapping at her still body. Charline slung her rifle and grabbed Linda underneath both arms, hauling her backward into the cave a dozen feet. Breathing room. They were just about out of it again. Several of the crabs had come along for the ride when she dragged Linda. Charline stomped them before they could cause any more trouble.

A living tide was coming down the tunnel toward them. Charline shook Linda gently, but the woman wasn’t moving. She didn’t know what the things had done to her, but for now at least Charline was on her own.

“Lucky I hit up Andy for a few of his toys,” she muttered, digging around in the supply crates. They’d brought along a lot of things. The supplies for Linda to set up a basic lab. Food and plenty of water, since they didn’t want to risk drinking from this planet’s water source without checking it carefully first. But also a box of supplies Andy had pushed on Charline to keep them safe if the Naga decided to come calling.

She snapped one item out of the crate, setting it down on the floor in front of her and spinning out a reel of wire. Then she tossed the rest of the wire spool to the other side of the pile of crates. Grabbing Linda again, she dragged her comatose friend around behind the makeshift barricade.

Charline tucked herself down next to Linda as best she could and grabbed the clacker on the end of the reel. She was panting with the exertion, and hoped that she hadn’t missed any setup steps in her rush. Damn it, she should have thought to set the things up earlier.

The cave was filled with the sound of clattering legs and clinking shells. They were coming closer. Hundreds of the things, more than she could possibly swat with her rifle or crush under her boot. But she didn’t have to rely on those things.

“I see the light,” she said, as she squeezed the clacker hard. The world erupted on the other side of her wall of crates as the claymore mine went off.

20

Dan tried to stay as cool as he could. It wasn’t going to do him any good to panic, even though right now would be a damned fine time for it. The Naga had let him bring his wheelchair along. If anything they seemed more amused by it than threatened. He wanted to show them differently, that he was still a threat. But he’d have one shot at escape, and if he blew his chance before the moment was right then he would never get out of this place.

“What was your mission here?” The Naga interrogating him was a flunky. Dan wasn’t sure how he knew, but he could tell. There was something about lesser officers and NCOs that just reeked of being the same even across their wildly different cultures. Dan knew just how to deal with someone like this.

“No,” Dan said.

The Naga struck him across the face. The blow was hard enough to split his lip and daze him, but he worked as hard as he could not to show it. Instead he projected an image of cool disdain.

“Striking a prisoner doesn’t show your strength,” Dan said. “I demand to speak to your leader. These matters are too important to rest with anyone else.”

With any luck, they’d listen to him and actually get whoever was running this station. He’d made it very clear that he had important intelligence, information that the Naga urgently wanted in their hands. He’d even hinted he might be willing to spill, for the right deal. It ought to take a little while to get the station commander to come see a random prisoner, and that would give Beth more time to fix whatever was wrong with the ship and get the heck out of there.

The doors to the room opened, and a large Naga in black armor came in. Good cop to the other one’s bad? Or maybe this one was supposed to be the ‘even worse’ cop?

“I am Garul, the commander of this station,” the Naga said, leaning in close and sniffing at Dan’s face. Then it opened and closed its jaws, snapping them together with a clack centimeters away from Dan’s nose. He jumped despite his best efforts to remain still.

“Pleased to meet you,” Dan said.

“I understand you have been giving my men trouble,” Garul said. “Ordering them around. Refusing to answer their questions. Demanding they come get me. Things like that?”

Dan held his silence.

Instead, the Naga guard who had been questioning him answered. “Yes, sire. He has been most obnoxious in all of those regards.”

Garul laid a clawed right hand on the guard’s shoulder, leaning in close. He nodded to the guard. “I can see it was a great hardship for you. To be ordered around so by a useless mammal. It must have been difficult.”

With a flash of insight, Dan suddenly realized where this conversation was going. The Naga guard seemed to still not get it, though. It hadn’t seen Garul tense his other arm, or shift his hand down toward his belt.

“Yes, sire. It was most troubling to be ordered about by a mere mammal. Now we teach it a lesson, yes?” the Naga guard said.

“Yes,” Garul said. “We do.”

Then Garul slammed his left hand upward, claws raking across the guard’s body, slashing through clothing and skin and much more. Dan had to fight not to look away as the dying Naga slipped to the floor. It’s eyes were wide with horror and confusion.

Garul stepped back and let the guard slump to the floor. “Even in death he didn’t understand. But you did, didn’t you, mammal? You saw what I was about to do before I did it.”

“Yes, I did,” Dan replied.

“Curious. The tales I’ve heard might actually be true. Some of them at least. Mammals that can fight? It wasn’t something we thought possible.” Garul circled Dan’s wheelchair, trailing a claw along the arms and back. “Of course, you can’t fight very well anymore. Was it a battle injury?”

“Something like that,” Dan said. He felt tense as a bowstring. This alien could kill him in half a heartbeat. He’d just killed one of his own people for the crime of taking orders from a prisoner. Dan had no doubt that Garul would kill him for much less cause. Of course, that was half the point of the demonstration - to ensure Dan knew that he Naga he faced was utterly ruthless. To sow fear.

“A shame. I would have enjoyed seeing if you could actually do battle,” Garul gave a sound that the Cyanaut in Dan’s ear translated as a sigh. “There’s something to be said for seeing the impossible with your own eyes.”

Dan took small, short breaths. His body was near rigid with tension, no matter how he tried to relax. He’d never met a Naga face to face before. They were everything Andy had said, and being held at their mercy was a nightmare. How had Andy just laughed off his captivity? He stifled a shudder.

“Put me behind the controls of a ship and you’ll see how well I can fight,” Dan said.

“A pilot, then,” Garul said. “No, I don’t think I’ll do that. It would be interesting to watch, and a challenge for our pilots, but too much risk for too little reward.”

“Nervous I’ll show your people up?” Dan said. He smiled a little despite himself. He had shown up the Naga pilots, more than once. Of course, he had the Satori then, but he was pretty sure he could fly rings around them even in one of their own fighters. If he could convince them to stick him in one of their fighters, he was pretty sure he could work out the controls quickly enough. A fighting chance would be welcome.

Garul laughed. “No. But you are a valuable resource. I don’t want to waste you.” The Naga stalked back around to stand in front of Dan again. “The Council and Queen are more than a little interested in you and your ship. You’ve scared some very powerful Naga.”

“Should I feel bad about that?” Dan asked. Bravado to hide the fear seemed to be the ticket here.

“No. If anything, I’d probably feel pleased with myself if I were in your shoes. But there are great rewards offered for anyone who can learn the whereabouts of your homeworld.”

“Why?” Dan asked. “We’ve run into your people twice now. Both times you shot at us. Why are the Naga afraid of us humans?”

“Tch-k-k-k, that is a story,” Garul said. “Suffice to say that the technology you use has a deep meaning to us. To all species in the galaxy. No one has used such tools since the Great War against the Overlords. No one has been able. That technology was lost.”

Dan wondered at his words. Overlords? Great War? There was a lot more to whatever was going on than met the eye. They knew there had been some sort of battle involving the dustball of a world they had visited. The evidence suggested a bio-weapon had been involved, and implicated the Naga. But the team had more or less assumed that the Naga had been the aggressors, and the race which built the Satori had been unable to survive against their attacks. What if that wasn’t entirely the case after all?

“You think we are these Overlords?” Dan asked. He almost added an assurance that they were not, but decided to play his cards closer to his chest.

“No, I do not. I’ve seen samples of your technology. Your probe, which we picked up, for instance. It’s astoundingly primitive. Your firearms are still using hard projectiles and ammunition. And yet you possess the ability to bend the universe around itself for travel,” Garul said. “So I ask myself why such a wide variation?”

“We have some very good engineers,” Dan said, thinking of Beth and hoping she was all right. If everything was going to plan, she ought to be fixing the Satori and ready to take off soon.

“No doubt,” Garul said. “But I do not think they came up with the idea on their own. And the wormhole drive was a secret the Overlords took with them when they vanished. It was a great secret that they never revealed to anyone else. I do not think they gave it willingly to you.”

“Who were these Overlords?” Dan asked, hoping to keep him talking.

“Precisely my point. If they had given you this technology, you would know of them. If this was the first signal of their return, you would not be confused about them. You’d be their slave. And yet you are not,” Garul tapped the wheelchair arm in thought. “So I think you are just lucky. You happened upon a cache of their technology and found a drive intact.”

“Do you think if we found only one drive that we would risk it on a simple scouting mission?” Dan asked. Better to bluff. Garul was smart, and was working out far more than Dan wanted him to know.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But you’ll soon tell me everything you do know,” Garul said. The Naga’s smile was very broad, showing all his teeth.

21

Beth worked as quickly as she could. She was an old hand at this, after all. The Satori’s power systems were always one of the major flaws for the ship. It was an issue she needed to find a better solution for, in the long run. The problem was simple, really. The drive was creating enormous amounts of power. Far more energy than any human built system was designed to withstand. She’d built in systems to help regulate the flow of that power, to prevent it from burning out the rest of the ship’s systems, but if there was any sort of major fluctuation in the power levels it tended to mess up her work and blow something out.

“There’s got to be a better way to handle this,” she muttered, sliding out from beneath a console in the engine room.

“I think I can help with the design of a new buffer system,” Majel said into her earbud.

“Later,” Beth replied. Much as she wanted out of habit to fix the problem right away, there wasn’t time for it right now. “How’s the outside of the ship?”

“The Naga do not seem to have realized that both their guards on board are dead,” Majel said. “I don’t know how long until they will. If they miss a check-in…”

There were two dead Naga laying in the hall just outside the engine room. Beth knew she’d been lucky so far, but sooner or later someone was going to notice those two weren’t talking anymore.

“Then they’ll send more troops to look. I know. I’m almost done.”

She raced back to the bridge. The engines were back on line. The coupling between the alien engine and the human systems was repaired. All she needed to do was reboot the system and she could get the hell out of here. She paused before settling into the pilot’s seat. Dan’s seat. Damn him, how the hell was she going to get him out of there?

“A group of six Naga have started from the hall adjacent to us. They’re headed this way rapidly,” Majel said.

She was out of time to ponder it. She flicked the switch to boot up the Satori’s systems. Lights flashed to life all around the bridge as stations and systems came back online.

“Closing the ramp,” Majel said. She was using the main speakers to talk again. The time for subterfuge was over. There was no way the Naga were going to miss the drives coming to life.

“Going to try lifting off,” Beth said. She had to cross her fingers and hope that this worked. The creatures which had blocked their thruster exhaust should have frozen and fallen off in deep space. But then, they should have roasted to death from the heat of the thrusters, too. She tapped the thrust control, bringing them to life.

They responded with a roar, blasting the ship clear of the deck. She was up and moving! The ship wobbled and Beth tried her best to steady it. If Dan were here he’d have the thing moving as smooth as glass. But he wasn’t, and she had no idea how she was going to get him back.

“Firing railguns,” Majel said. “Pan the nose of the ship across the targets.”

The Naga who’d been running across the bay toward the ship had stopped. Their raised rifles were now firing small, high energy balls at the Satori. Not enough to take her down unless they got really lucky, but why risk it? Beth spun the ship slowly to face them while Majel locked the railguns on her targets and fired. The AI was incredibly efficient in her fire.

“Scratch one squad of Naga,” Beth said. “Good shooting.”

“Thanks. We should evacuate this area, collect the rest of the crew, and then come back for Dan,” Majel said.

Beth could tell from the tone her her voice that the AI wasn’t sure she was going to agree with her assessment. She didn’t want to agree. What she wanted to do was blast her way through this station one bulkhead at a time until she reached Dan.

“Open fire on the central wall,” she told the AI.

The station was like a stack of spinning rings, one atop another and all of them rotating around a central hub. The Satori was berthed inside a dock on a middle ring. The space was large, big enough for a lot of ships, but empty for now. That gave her some room to fly about, but she wasn’t going to get further without cutting a lot of holes in things.

“Are you sure…?” Majel asked.

“Yes,” Beth said. Her face was a cool, grim mask. She was getting Dan back. No matter what. “Fire.”

The Satori spewed dozens of high velocity iron pellets at the central wall of the hangar. The railguns pounded the Naga hull, shattering steel and sending bits of torn metal spinning out in all directions.

“Hang on, Dan,” she said. She keyed the microphone to transmit, hoping that he could still hear her through the tiny comm-link that he wore. “I’m coming.”

22

Dan was sweating. Garul had wandered over to a table on one side of the room, where he was carefully picking up and then setting down a series of handheld implements. Probably some sort of torture devices, Dan figured. Garul wasn’t filling him in about what the things did, but if anything that made it all worse. Dan’s mind was happily filling in all the details for him without the Naga’s assistance.

“Where is your world?” Garul asked.

Dan shook his head. “That is the one thing I will not tell you. Sorry. I’ll answer a lot of questions for you, if you’ll keep answering some of mine. I have a hunch that although we’ve gotten off to a crappy start, we might be able to work some things out. But I won’t give you my home world.”

“Why not?” The Naga stalked toward him, holding something in his hand. “Don’t you look forward to your fleets meeting ours in mortal combat? Don’t you thrill at the idea of watching our ships blast at each other? Your kind are warriors, you say. You should believe that your fleets can be superior to ours.”

Garul moved quickly, jabbing the device into Dan’s ribs. Shocking jolts of pain lashed into him, sending his body into convulsing motions as he thrashed to get away from the pain. It seemed like it was never going to end, like he couldn’t possibly breathe, like it was just going to go on and on…

And then it was over. Garul withdrew the device, and the pain just stopped. Dan could still feel the ache from where it had been, but that was all. The Naga leaned in close to whisper in his ear - an affectation that was meaningless because of the Cyanaut translation, but Dan thought it was again strikingly similar to what a human might have done.

“Unless you do not think your fleets can stop us at all,” Garul said. “Perhaps…perhaps you do not even have fleets? Perhaps you just have one ship!”

On the last word, Garul touched him with the tool again. This time, Dan didn’t even try to hold back the scream. But the pain didn’t last for as long, either. Garul seemed to tire of it quickly.

“We will find out, you know,” Garul said. “Whether you tell me or not, analysis of your little probe is going to tell us everything we need to know. Your metals, your isotopes, all carry unique signatures. It might take us a little while to find out where the metals were mined, but we will. You could save yourself all of this pain if you just tell me.”

Dan beckoned him in closer again with one hand, fingers calling Garul nearer. The Naga seemed wary. Dan wasn’t tied or chained down, after all. But then Garul shrugged and leaned in close to hear whatever Dan planned to say.

“You’re going to lose,” Dan said. “We are your nightmare.”

Garul jerked back like he’d been struck. For just a moment terror flashed across the Naga’s face, clear as day. He reached up with a claw to slash Dan wildly. But before he could strike, the door slid open and another Naga entered.

“What is it?” Garul shouted at the newcomer.

“Sire, their ship! It has come alive! It is blasting the station!”

“What?” Garul roared. He whirled to face Dan again. “You were not as alone as you seemed. All of this - everything you have said in here - just to delay me?”

“Something like that,” Dan said. He managed a small smile despite his pain.

For a moment it looked like Garul was going to strike him again. The Naga took two steps forward and raised an arm, but then stopped and backed away. He was making some sort of sound deep in his throat as he stepped away. It took Dan a moment to realize that Garul was doing the Naga equivalent of chuckling.

“No, mammal, you won’t anger me into killing you quickly. We should be able to find your world given time, but having you here will shorten that time. I won’t lose the advantage you have given me to a burst of temper. I am made of sterner stuff,” Garul said. Then he turned to the Naga who’d interrupted with the news. “Torch the dock.”

“But sire, the damage to the station!”

“Is irrelevant if we lose the station entirely. Torch. The. Dock.”

Dan wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. If they had some sort of weapon in place big enough that there was concern about damage to the entire station along with the dock, then it would probably destroy the Satori as well. Beth needed to get the hell out of there. Then as if thinking about Beth brought her words to him, he heard her break radio silence to contact him through his earpiece.

“Hang on, Dan. I’m coming.”

She was going to blast her way through the entire station if she had to, coming to get him. He knew Beth. Once she set about doing something she wasn’t going to let go. She’d keep at it until it broke, or she did. He had to reach her, warn her. He just hoped that she was still listening, because he was only going to get one shot at this. She was only hearing the hisses and grunts the Naga made. She didn’t understand what their words meant. But once he spoke directly to warn her, his captors would know that he was wearing a radio transmitter. They’d stop him from ever using it again, one way or another.

“Beth, they’re going to blow up the entire dock! You need to get out of there now!” he said.

That was all he managed to get out before the back of Garul’s hand slapped him across the face. The impact was hard, the pain intense for a few seconds before he lost consciousness entirely. His last thought was a prayer that his message had gotten through, and that it had been enough.

23

Linda’s eyes snapped open. She was still in the cave. She could tell from the hard stone floor beneath her head, and the smooth limestone rock above her. But the place seemed different. The room was filled with smoke and stank of gunpowder. There was a lot more of the smell than ought to have been there from just their weapon fire, right? Something else had happened. Charline must have done something.

She slowly struggled up on one elbow, trying to get herself upright. Her head felt strange, sort of fuzzy. What had happened to her? Had she fallen down? Hit her head? She remembered looking up and seeing the crabs climbing the rock wall above her. Charline had shot at them, and bits of them had spattered on her. Then nothing.

Reaching up to touch her face, her fingers met bits of a gooey substance. Bits of fleshy matter still clung to her cheeks and hair. She pushed back an urge to retch. There wasn’t time for that right now. They were still in trouble. Linda figured she could fall apart later if she wanted to. Ideally right after taking a bath.

“You’re awake!” Charline said.

“Yeah,” Linda said turning to face her friend. Charline was laying on the floor of the cave next to her. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you might tell me. You just fell over,” Charline said. “Oh! You mean the smoke? I set off a claymore mine. Ought to have bought us a little breathing room, at least.”

She staggered slowly to her feet. Linda tried to follow her up, but was too dizzy to stand at first. She kept feeling like she as floating, or drifting. Like she was surrounded by water. She made it as far as one knee and then flopped back over on her butt.

“Ouch!” Linda exclaimed. The landing hurt, but even the pain seemed distant, like it was through a haze. Part of that was the ringing in her ears left over from the explosion, but the other part? She felt strangely detached from herself.

“You OK?” Charline asked. She reached down a hand to pull Linda to her feet. “It looks like we took them down.”

Linda accepted the hand and allowed her friend to help her up. She was still woozy, but she was standing. Through the haze still floating through the cave, she saw that what Charline said was true. The mine’s explosion had devastated the wave of crabs and other scuttling beings that were attacking the cave. Shattered bits of shell and goo where spread all over the floor, walls, and ceiling. The place was a mess of mushed sea creature. A few of the animals were wounded, still switching or feebly crawling across the floor. But the invasion seemed to be over for the moment.

“That seems to have done them in,” Charline said. She brushed her hands together, smiling. “A job well done. Andy will be thrilled that the claymore practice paid off.”

“You blew them all up,” Linda said. For some reason that she couldn’t define, she wasn’t feeling happy about that. If anything she felt…sad. Which was strange. They were alien critters, sure, and she hated the loss of life. But why this sense of grief?

“It looks like I made a mess of you, too,” Charline said. She flicked a bit of shell out of Linda’s hair, then reached up to brush a drying bit of crustacean slime from her cheek. “You’re covered with goop.”

Charline’s fingers brushed Linda’s cheek, and it was all she could do to hold back a gasp. It was like there was an electric current running down those fingers, tracing lines along her skin as they brushed clear a little patch of debris. Every single emotion and hidden desire she had ever felt about anyone came bubbling to the surface all at once. It was like someone was picking over the memories attached to that sort of gentle touch, analyzing each one.

The result enflamed her. It was like being hit with a wall of all of the attraction she’d ever felt in her life, bundled into one moment and thrown at her with force. Charline’s fingers tried to brush loose another bit of something from her neck. This one was stuck fast. Charline’s nails tried to dig in at the edge of it, and clipped the skin of Linda’s neck instead.

The touch of those nails threw the last bits of her self control out the window. Linda reached up with both hands, wrapping them around Charline’s head. Then she leaned in and kissed her.

The kiss didn’t last long, but it seemed to do the trick. It took Charline’s breath away, anyway. Linda smiled at the shocked look on her friend’s face.

“Wh-what?” Charline asked.

Her mouth was still so tantalizingly close that Linda wanted to go for another kiss, but she stopped herself cold. The surge of attraction was already fading. It was being replaced by the grief she’d felt earlier - the sadness for the death and destruction Charline had wrought. Now those feelings were back, magnified many times over.

Linda reeled from the weight of this new emotion. It was overwhelming, especially right on the heels of a different strong feeling. She wanted it all to stop. She had to make it stop. She would do anything to make it stop.

With a start, she realized what she needed to do to end the feeling. She had to take the samples of her bacteria and throw them into the ocean. Only then would she be free.

24

Beth heard Dan’s message come over her radio. She just wasn’t listening. There was no way she was giving up on him this easily. The Naga were about to blow up the hangar? Fine. She’d blast her way out of the hangar and fly through the station if she had to, in order to get to him. If the corridors weren’t wide enough for the Satori she’d just enlarge them with the railguns until it worked.

“I am detecting a massive buildup of energy beneath the hangar floor,” Majel said.

“Some sort of weapon?” Beth replied.

“Likely the one Dan warned us about. If the scan readings are right, it will obliterate this section of the station.”

Beth didn’t reply. She was watching the railguns rain destruction down on the hangar wall. She’d punched through in more than one place, tearing huge rents in the wall. Another few shots and maybe she could fly the ship into the space beyond.

“Beth, we need to go,” Majel said. Her cool voice cut through the fog of Beth’s fury a little.

“Not without Dan,” she said.

“We’ll get the rest of the team and come back for him. It’s the best bet. For us and for him. My scanners are detecting another hangar on the other side of that wall. We can’t fly the ship to Dan, and you can’t fight all the Naga on this station alone.”

Beth wanted to come up with a good retort, but she couldn’t think of one. As much as she hated to admit it, Majel was right. If she went out there to fetch Dan she’d be shot, or captured herself. She needed the rest of the team.

“Damn it, I can’t just abandon him,” Beth said.

“You’re not. You’re bringing him the help he needs. I’ll signal to him that we will be back,” Majel said.

Then the AI took control of the ship. Beth could feel that the controls had stopped responding to her, but she didn’t object this time. Her face was wet. Damn the man for getting under her skin and then staying there.

Majel swung the ship’s nose away from the inside of the station and focused fire on the outer wall instead. The hangar doors might be closed - the Naga wanted to trap them in here for the fireworks. But as Beth watched the railguns fired carefully placed salvos at key points on the hangar doors. The top door tumbled away, pushed outside into space by the rush of air evacuating the hangar.

“Hang on, this is going to be close,” Majel said.

“Close for what?” Beth asked. She didn’t hear the reply, if Majel made one. The roar of the explosion bursting around them drowned out all sound. Majel fired the main thrusters on maximum. The force of the sudden acceleration slammed Beth back into the chair despite the ship’s inertial dampening. She gasped for breath as the Satori shot out of the fire spewing from the floor and leaped forward into the gap Majel’s shots had created in the doors.

It was going to be incredibly close. Beth was glad it wasn’t her hands on the controls anymore. She was fairly sure she’d have piloted the ship into the wall and ended up like a bug on a windshield. The explosive force buffeted the ship, bouncing her around as the ship burst out of the station and into the relative calm of space. Trailing fire, they sped away from the station.

“Activating cloaking device,” Majel said.

The Naga would send fighters after them, but they could both outrun and hide from the fighters without too much trouble. The hard part would be getting back in, now that they were out.

“Head to the surface,” Beth said. “We need to get the rest of the team back together for this.”

She wished there was some way to signal the others, to let them know what had happened. Was John even aware the Satori was gone? If he was, he’d be frantic with worry. Without the ship the team might end up stranded on this world for good. It was a scary thought.

If she’d hesitated even a little longer, the ship would have been lost in that explosion for sure.

“Majel, you knew that explosion would destroy the ship, didn’t you?” Beth asked. Her voice was quiet. She was deep in thought as she asked.

“Yes.”

“Which would have stranded the entire team here.”

“Yes,” Majel said again.

“You took over the controls there, at the end. Why didn’t you just do it as soon as you knew the threat was real?” Beth asked.

There was a brief pause before Majel answered. If the AI was a human, Beth would have thought she was gathering her thoughts before replying. For a computer, the delay seemed very long.

“Would John have shoved you out of the way and taken over, if it was him there instead of me?” Majel asked.

“Well, no, he knows I would have socked him if he tried something like that,” Beth replied. “But I wasn’t really being rational back there.”

It hurt her to admit that. Rationality was one of her strong points. Being able to think through problems and come to a logical conclusion was crucial to her sense of who she was. It was something that had always bothered her about Dan, because he was able to make her act in ways that were entirely illogical. Somehow, he got past her walls without even really trying. It sucked, sometimes. It was wonderful, others.

“Would you ever have trusted me again, if I’d done that?” Majel asked. “Would any of you? You’re a team. I’m on the team, but I’m not really like the rest of you. Not really. Having power to do something, even if I know it is right, doesn’t mean I should use that power to force the rest of you to do that thing. Otherwise we’re not a team.”

Beth thought about that for a long moment. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”

“Me, as well,” Majel said.

25

Charline took a deep breath, blinking. Her heart was beating a little faster than it ought to be. That kiss…! Linda hadn’t just been giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She could feel the heat of the emotion behind it. The feeling took her aback. Where had that come from? She hadn’t seen Linda looking at her…that way…before. The whole thing felt totally out of the blue.

Linda was walking away from her now. She knew she ought to say something. Had she hurt the other woman’s feelings by not already talking? She really didn’t know what to say. Linda was poking in some of the crates now, fiddling with some of the canisters from her lab. Probably trying to distract herself from a moment that had been more than a little embarrassing for both of them.

She looked out over the cave, half expecting to see another rush of sea creatures coming her way. But it was over. Either they’d run out of crawling creatures to send, or they’d been driven off by the mine. Whichever it was, she’d take it. She only hoped that the others were still safe under the ocean. They had the Satori there to cover them, which ought to be enough. But this attack had seemed to directed, so focused. It had to be the Cyanauts driving the assault. That boded ill for John’s diplomatic effort.

Charline turned back toward Linda. “What are you looking for?”

She didn’t reply, continuing to rummage through the lab equipment instead. There was an odd almost desperate feel to how she was searching. Like she was looking for the one thing that could save her. But the danger was over, wasn’t it? Charline looked back at the mouth of the cave, but no new threat was looming.

“Linda, it’s OK,” Charline said, taking a few steps toward her. “I think we’re safe for now.”

She wanted to ask about the kiss, but with Linda already so disturbed it seemed like a bad time. Charline laid a hand on her shoulder, hoping to calm her down. Linda shrugged the hand off. Charline backed away. What was going on with her? First the kiss, then the cold shoulder?

Charline was about to say something to that effect when she noticed a fleck of the goo that had dripped on Linda’s cheek. It was a greenish color, and pulsed a little like it was moving. It was a Cyanaut, it had to be. How many of the things had dropped on her from above amidst the debris? How many more managed to crawl onto her while she was on the ground?

The things were telepathic. One was enough to control a small animal, from what she’d seen today. How many would it take to control the mind of a human?

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Charline said. She put her hand back on Linda’s shoulder, more firmly this time. Her other hand reached for a flashlight laying discarded on top of a storage box. If it came down to it, she could knock Linda out and peel the damned things from her body.

Linda turned, holding something up and smiling. It was a tube - a vial marked with red biohazard tags. That had to be her bacteria, one of the samples she’d brought with her.

“I thought they were all broken by the blast,” Linda said. “Thank god, there’s still one left.”

Vial in hand, she started toward the front of the cave. What was she going to do? Or what did the Cyanauts want her to do, rather? Was she going to toss the sample into the ocean? They’d gone to great lengths to ensure that they didn’t contaminate anything. Why would the Cyanauts want their ocean infected? It made no sense to her. But she couldn’t let them use Linda like this.

“Not happening,” Charline said. She swung the flashlight at Linda’s head.

Linda ducked under the blow, her arm coming up to catch Charline’s in a scooping block that redirected the motion. Out of control, Charline spun sideways and smacked into the wall of the cave. Since when had Linda been so fast, or so strong?

Charline shook her head to clear the stars from her eyes. She’d hit the wall harder than she’d thought. Linda was continuing toward the mouth of the cave, not paying any attention to her at all. She rushed toward her unprotected back with the flashlight raised for another swing, but Linda sidestepped like she had eyes in the back of her head and then fired off a punch into her ribs that took her breath away.

She sagged to the floor, fighting to catch her breath. How had Linda seen her coming so easily? She looked around the cave floor, realization dawning. That muck of dead an injured crustaceans must still have some live Cyanauts mixed in. They were reporting everything to each other. In a sense, Linda did have eyes in the back of her head right now.

“Linda, stop!” Charline gasped out.

There was no sign she heard her at all. She walked to the front of the cave, uncorked the vial, and threw the liquid from inside it out into the ocean. Where the fluid struck the waves the water seethed, rising in a heavy foam. There had to be scores of creatures under the water, all of them infecting themselves with the bacteria. From there they’d be able to spread the thing wherever they wanted.

But why? They’d taken such great pains to ensure that the bacteria wasn’t spread here without testing it first. These creatures had alien physiologies, hell, the entire ecosystem was still one big unknown. Introducing an engineered contagion like this could work very well, or it might be an ecological disaster. There was no way to know without the testing they’d been trying to accomplish.

She hoped it worked well for them. If it didn’t, they had dug their own grave, as far as she was concerned. The Satori’s team had made every effort to protect them from this stuff, so that they could test it before loosing it on an alien world where the side effects might be hard to predict. Whatever came next, they’d done it to themselves.

While Charline staggered back to her feet, Linda took another step forward. Her feet were on the shoreline now. She stood there for another moment like she was listening to something that Charline couldn’t hear. Then she took another step out, and another. Linda was knee deep in the water before Charline realized that she had no intention of stopping. They were walking her out into the ocean.

“No, you don’t,” she said. She gave chase, running to catch up with Linda before she vanished beneath the waves entirely. She was waist deep by the time Charline was close enough to do anything, and it was too late by then for anything but the most desperate moves. Linda was out-fighting her in hand to hand, so Charline simply threw herself through the air at Linda, tackling her and crashing them both through the surf.

Linda’s hands beat at her as she struggled to get free from Charline’s grip. She held fast, keeping them both beneath the water. She’d taken a deep breath before taking the leap. Linda hadn’t. Suddenly Linda went limp, relaxing beneath her. Charline held her down another moment, lungs burning with the effort of holding her breath and body sore from the pummeling Linda had just given her. She had to be certain that her friend was actually unconscious, that it wasn’t just a ruse. She’d never get a second shot at this.

Then she burst up from the water, dragging Linda with her. It took all of her strength to get them both back on the shore. Linda wasn’t breathing. She must have inhaled water down there during the struggle. Charline rolled her over on her belly and pounded her back.

“Come on,” she said. “Breathe!”

For a long moment she thought that she’d killed her friend while trying to save her. It crushed her inside, that she had accidentally hurt someone she cared about. But it had been the only thing she could think to do. She hammered in another blow, and Linda coughed, spitting out sea water and sucking in a ragged breath.

“Oh, thank god,” Charline said. She rolled the other woman over, checking her face and neck for signs of the Cyanauts. They seemed to have left. Maybe that was why they had been taking her into the water - they wanted to return to their home.

Linda blinked a few times. She looked shocked and confused. Charline could see awareness and memory leaking back into her eyes, and then all at once Linda burst into tears. She was wracked with long, heaving sobs.

Charline didn’t know what to do. She had no idea how to help. She wrapped her arms around Linda and held her close, murmuring comforting words into her ear as the sobs slowly eased and turned into softer, more mournful crying.

26

John checked his air gauge. They were out of time. Technically, they’d already passed the point where their ascent wouldn’t be safe, but they were rapidly heading into territory where they would have to go back to the surface and risk the bends, or suffocate.

He looked over at Andrew, who nodded and gave a thumbs up motion. He agreed. They’d done all they could here. If the Cyanaut conclave was going to reach a decision, they’d have to do it on their own.

“You are leaving?” the whale colony thought at him. It was still unnerving to have his mind read like that. No matter how calm his logical brain wanted to be, part of him rebelled at the idea.

“We need to go,” John replied. “Without our ship, we have limited air here. We will die if we do not ascend.”

“We understand. We will guard you while you surface. We are very sorry about what our brethren did.”

The colony even sounded apologetic, at least in his mind. Not that their apologies made the situation even a little better. He was pretty sure that if Dan had been able to bring the ship back, he already would have. Something had gone wrong with the wormhole jump. Without the Satori, they were stranded here. John had no idea how he was going to get the team home. He wanted to rage at them, but it wouldn’t have done any good. It wasn’t their fault, it was his. Beth and Dan were gone because he’d led them here.

John kicked his flippered feet, beginning the long, slow climb back toward the surface. “We’ll have to take it slowly,” he said to Andrew.

“Gonna be tight.”

“We’ll make it,” John said.

There was a flash of movement from off to John’s left. He turned to look. One of the sharks was coming straight at him, moving torpedo fast. He tried to raise his gun , but was only able to bring it up to his chest level before he thing closed with him. Toothy jaws snapped tight around the weapon, narrowly missing his hands. John couldn’t get the weapon back under his control, but he didn’t dare let go, either. It was the only thing keeping those teeth away from him.

“Desist! These are guests!” the whale colony said, swimming fast toward the melee.

“We don’t need them anymore,” the shark colony replied. “We have what we wanted from them.”

“What have you done?” John shouted.

“We have the cure. Now we will spread it throughout our world.”

The surface team. They must have found a way onto land and hit Charline and Linda! He’d been so sure they couldn’t get out of the water, but clearly he’d been wrong. Again. Were the women even still alive? John felt his heart sink with the hopelessness of it all. First Dan and Beth. Now Charline and Linda? He’d led them all into disaster. He could feel his fingers slipping from the speargun as the shark twisted him about, working to dislodge him. The whale colony wasn’t going to arrive in time.

Just as he thought he couldn’t hold on another moment, there was a bright flash and the left side of the shark’s body erupted in a splash of red.

John fell backward from the thing’s body, dazed by the burst. The shark flopped a little, but it was dying quickly, bleeding out into the water. John looked over toward Andrew, who was already reloading his speargun.

“Explosive tips,” Andrew said. “I thought we might need some serious firepower down here. You OK? That went off damned close to you.”

John nodded, unable to speak for the moment. He felt dazed. The concussive force had been like a mighty slap. The suit protected him somewhat, but he was probably going to be hurting a lot more once the shock wore off.

“We’ve got more of them coming,” Andrew said. “Stay close to me.”

John looked up to see over a dozen of the sharks closing. Several of them peeled off to keep the whales at bay, but the rest drove straight on toward the humans. He realized he’d lost his gun when the spearhead blew. It was probably still in the maw of the dead shark, on its way to the bottom. That left Andrew as their sole defense. There were too many targets for one speargun to deal with, and both of them knew it.

Without warning two of the sharks exploded, bits of them floating off in all directions. The remaining sharks seemed confused. They twisted around in their swim patterns, trying to evade whatever had killed their brethren. It didn’t work. Two more blew apart in flashes of fire.

“That’s railgun fire!” Andrew shouted.

It had to be the Satori, returned at last! John’s heart surged as the ship slipped into sight, chasing a few more of the sharks. Another one was cut in half by a railgun round. The others must have decided they’d had enough, because they split and swam away in different directions.

The Satori slowed and drifted toward them. Once it was close enough, John could see Beth sitting at the controls.

“You looked like you two could use a cavalry rescue,” Beth said.

“You were just in time,” John replied. “Have you checked with the surface team?”

“Already picked them up. Linda’s in a bad way. Charline is in the back taking care of her. “

“And Dan?” John asked. He didn’t want to ask. He knew it wasn’t going to be good. If his friend was all right, he’d be the one sitting at the steering console, instead of Beth.

Beth’s face fell. “We were captured by the Naga after the jump. I hid. He was taken. I had to leave him, John!”

The despair and hurt in her voice broke his heart. Those two were going to drive him crazy, one of these days. They’d always been something special. That they had allowed their damned careers and self-involved thinking get in the way of that had been a tragedy. One he’d been hoping might correct itself if they spent enough time together. Maybe it finally had.

“We’re not going to leave him,” John assured her.

He hoped they would not have to, anyway. John was pragmatic enough to realize they were going to have an uphill battle trying to fight their way through to him. It might be damned near impossible. The station would be very well defended. They’d already seen the fighter ships, and who knew how many armed guards were stationed aboard? But they couldn’t leave him. He just needed to find a way.

“We can reach him,” the whale colony thought at John.

“What? How?”

“They have implanted one of our kind on him. We can feel his thoughts. We can connect you to him. And if he is very brave, we might be able to do a bit more. We owe you that much, for our kind’s treachery against you.”

27

Dan screamed again as Garul pressed his device up against his ribs. Tears streaked down his face. His back went rigid from the waves of agony coursing through him. He ground his teeth together, trying without success to hold back another cry of pain. His body jerked so hard that he felt something give way in his back.

“We can keep this going forever,” Garul said. “That was your spine breaking. No matter. We can repair it. We can fix all of the damage we do to you. I will do this again and again until you tell me what I want to know.”

The Naga set his pain making device aside and picked up another tool. Dan shuddered as the thing was placed against his back. Every inch of his body felt raw, but even the lightest touch against his spine burned with a familiar agony. Had he really broken his spine again? He remembered the months of rehab just to get some control back over his legs, after the car hit him. The thought of going through all of that again was too much. They were breaking him down, and he knew it.

This new device didn’t bring pain, though. If anything, it numbed the agony, and he was able to take a deep breath without it feeling like his lungs were on fire. He gasped, taking in big gulps of air in shaky breaths.

“You see? I can be kind as well as cruel,” Garul said. “Now tell me what I need to know. Then all of this will be over.”

“You’ll just kill me,” Dan said.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. There might be other uses for you.”

Dan remembered what the others had told him about Paul. They’d thought he was dead, but the Naga had saved him, rebuilt him. Now he was some sort of cyborg killing machine working for the enemy. It was only dumb luck that they hadn’t managed to get whatever information they needed out of him. Perhaps the damage to his brain had been too severe, or maybe he just didn’t know well enough where Earth was in the universe to be useful to them.

Dan did. He’d always loved astronomy, even as a kid. He could list enough nearby stars, complete with their colors and proximity that the Naga would have no trouble narrowing their search down. But he’d be damned if he was going to give them that information.

“No? Then we begin again,” Garul said.

The shock as the pain device touched him again felt even worse than before. The brief pause in his agony made the renewed torture even worse.

But then it was gone, as quickly as it had come. Dan could feel that Garul was still touching him with the tool, but it wasn’t working on him anymore. He felt somehow detached from his body, like he was floating free inside his head. He tried to twitch a finger and couldn’t. He felt his head loll forward, tried to stop the motion, but had no control over his muscles. Was he dying?

“No,” came the thought in his mind. “We are shielding you.”

At first Dan thought he was going crazy, but then the images of oceans came to his mind, of blue water and massive fish swimming through the waves. It was the Cyanauts! They were talking to him, and shielding him somehow.

He was vaguely aware of Garul muttering something about weak mammals. The Naga was going for his healing device again. He must assume Dan had lost consciousness. The Naga had no idea what their slaves were really capable of. If they knew more, Dan thought they would have destroyed this planet rather than taking Cyanauts as translation tools.

“Can you help me?” Dan thought at the Cyanaut.

“We can disable him briefly. You will need to escape.”

“How?” Dan thought.

A map appeared in his mind, images of place after place, a set of directions pieces together from the minds of many Naga, all of them walking around the station with Cyanaut earpieces. The map led to a hangar full of fighters.

“You want me to fly one of their ships out of here?” Dan asked.

“You think you can,” came the reply. “We saw that in your mind.”

“Maybe,” Dan thought back. He wasn’t really sure. It was alien tech. There was no telling how long it would take him to learn it…

Another download into his brain, sent by the Cyanauts. Suddenly he knew all about how to fly the Naga fighter craft.

“You guys are really useful,” Dan thought. “But I still need to get past Garul.”

“We will disable him. Then you must go quickly. Your ship will distract them. They will open the fighter bays and launch against your ship. You must be ready to fly out when they do.”

“Thank you,” Dan thought back. With their help, he had a shot. It was a long shot, but it was a lot more than he’d had before. He couldn’t have lasted much longer under Garul’s tender care. “How can we ever repay you for your help?”

“It is we who are repaying you, at great risk. But our race has dishonored itself. We will redeem ourselves by aiding you,” the Cyanauts thought at him. “When we release you back to your body, you must be ready to act immediately.”

“I’m ready,” Dan thought.

With a snap he was back in command of his body again. He tapped the controller on the right arm of his chair, bringing the wheelchair up to full power. Beth had tinkered with this thing. She’d said that he might need to have something with more juice than an ordinary motorized chair, someday. She was right.

Garul looked up at him when he moved. “Back awake? Good.”

Then the Naga’s eyes lost focus. It seemed like he was staring into the distance at something that only he could see. That had to be the distraction. Dan shoved the throttle all the way forward on the chair, smashing it against Garul. The Naga went down, collapsing half on top of Dan. His injured body screamed in protest at the additional weight, but he managed to reach down and grab the Garul’s sidearm. He contemplated firing it, but there was no way to know if shooting the pistol would set off some sort of alarm. Instead he slammed the pistol down into the Naga’s head as hard as he could.

“There, you bastard,” he said, heaving Garul’s body from his lap onto the floor. “Enjoy the headache. And explaining how you let a useless mammal get away from you.”

He patted down the Naga’s body, looking for any other tools which might prove useful. A small box looked interesting, and a palm sized card looked promising as well. He took them both, and then turned to go. It was well past time to get the hell out of there.

28

The doors opened smoothly for Dan, reminding him strangely of John’s base on the moon. The almost silent snik as they recessed into the walls on either side of the doorway was almost comforting in its familiarity.

Nothing else about the place was. The light had a yellowish-green cast. The walls were marked in a language he didn’t understand, and the Cyanaut seemed unable to translate text the way it did spoken language. Even the hallway outside his cell was shaped just a little bit differently from how a human would have made it.

He didn’t need to understand the language or like the architecture to know how to get where he was going, though. The map which the Cyanaut implanted in his memory was still there. Dan turned left out of the door, zipping down the hallway as quickly as his chair would carry him. So far he hadn’t run into any Naga, but his luck might not hold out forever. The sooner he could get to the hangar where the fighters were kept, the better.

At the next T intersection he turned right, and then left again. He had the vague idea that he was proceeding further away from the hub of the station, moving toward the outer edge of the ring he was on. Which made sense. The fighters would be stored closest to space.

“I hope you were right about those directions,” he muttered softly.

There was no reply from the Cyanaut in his ear. It hadn’t spoken to him since he left the cell. It was as much at risk here as he was. If he was killed trying to escape, it might die as well. But with luck he could get both himself and his little ally away.

Finally he sat in front of the last door in his mental map. On the other side of the door ought to be a hangar bay filled with a dozen or so fighters. He rolled up to the door, but it stayed closed. Dan narrowed his eyes, looking for some sort of latch or sensor that needed to be tripped so that he could enter. He couldn’t very well wait for the Naga to open the door for him!

The station shook, tremors running through the hull beneath his wheels. More shockwaves hit, and an alarm began to sound. The lighting changed, bright green lights flashing in a steady staccato pattern. That had to be the Satori starting her attack run. They were here to distract the enemy, and buy him time to escape. Pretty soon there would be a whole squad of pilots making for this bay to fly their fighters out into battle. He was out of time.

Dan examined the door carefully. There was a little window off to the left side. A control panel? Maybe some sort of retina scanner? If that’s what it was, he was out of luck. He had Garul’s pistol, but that wasn’t going to be enough to fight off an squadron worth of angry Naga.

The panel made him think of the little card he’d swiped from Garul, though. It had looked like an ID card of some sort, although there wasn’t any picture. Maybe it was set up to allow access? He mentally crossed his fingers and held the card up to the little window.

Nothing happened at first. Then the door slide silently open, revealing the hangar beyond. He heaved a huge sigh of relief. If he hadn’t thought to search the body…!

“You could have warned me that the door was locked,” he murmured to the Cyanaut in his ear. There was no reply.

The door slid shut behind him as soon as he entered. Inside the bay were two rows of six fighters. How many wings of fighters were on this station? The way these were packed in, the place could hold hundreds of them. The Satori would be incredibly outmatched.

The alarms were still blaring. Pilots would be pouring into this room any moment. He was out of time. He rolled over to one of the furthest fighters, hoping that maybe there would be a little less notice taken of the more distant craft. Each fighter had a railed ladder attached which led up to the cockpit.

This was going to be the tricky part. If he just climbed in and left the wheelchair at the base of the ladder, the pilots would see it immediately when they came in. He had to get the wheelchair out of the way. Thinking fast, he powered down the chair right next to the ladder. Then he tore a strip from his shirt and used it to lock the little control joystick in the forward position. As soon as he turned on the wheelchair it would dash forward at maximum speed until it crashed into something. The wall where he’d aimed it was in shadow. With luck it wouldn’t be noticed.

He grabbed the rail of the ladder. He noticed as he did that it only extended partway down to the floor. It was built to be climbed by someone who still had use of his legs. If he slipped, or was jarred loose, he was never going to be able to make it.

Dan tightened his grip as best he could. He pulled himself most of the way out of the chair, and then tapped the on button of his wheelchair. It activated with a beep and then sped away, stopping with a thump once it hit the wall. As he’d hoped, the bump knocked his makeshift tie loose, and the wheelchair stopped in place again.

His legs were dangling useless below him. Only his shaking arms were holding him on the ladder, and his strength wouldn’t last forever. He let go with one hand and reached for a higher rung. His fingers held. Then he pulled himself up one more rung with the other hand. Only a couple left to go.

Finally one of his hands could reach the edge of the cockpit. He reached, relieved at having finally made it - and slipped!

For one terrible moment he thought he was going to fall all the way down to the floor. He only had one hand holding to the rail, and it wasn’t going to be enough to stop his fall.

Then his feet caught on a rung, sliding into place with an automatic motion just like they would have done back before his accident.

He gasped with shock and relief. There wasn’t much strength in his legs. His body was still sinking as they buckled under his weight. But it seemed like he had just enough control over his lower extremities to save him from falling all the way to the floor. He reached out with the other hand and grabbed hold of the ladder again. Then he carefully hoisted himself back up, hand over hand. This time he was more careful when he reached the top, and pulled himself over the lip without another fall.

Dan knew he’d been incredibly lucky back there. If his legs hadn’t instinctively moved to arrest the fall, he’d have dropped to the floor. He panted a little, trying to catch his breath. Maybe all the physical therapy and workouts with a walker back on the moon had been worth it after all.

The sound of shouts and booted feet pounding the deck plates echoed through the room as Naga pilots raced through the door to their fighters. He’d made it without a moment to spare.

He tucked himself down into the cockpit as low as he could get, and aimed the pistol at the top of the ladder. The Naga who was due to pilot this ship was about to get a massive surprise.

29

John had the helm. This was usually Dan’s job, and more than ever he wished his friend were still aboard. Of course, if he were then they could simply head for home and avoid more engagement with the Naga entirely… John had the feeling that the more trouble they caused for their scaled adversaries, the more attention they were drawing. Sooner or later there was bound to be a reckoning, and the further in the future they could push that date the better off Earth was going to be.

With Charline busy taking care of Linda, and Beth working in the engine room on still more repairs of the damaged ship, they were critically short on crew. John wasn’t the pilot Dan was, but he’d have to do.

“Andrew, you set with the guns?” John asked.

“Ready to fire. Majel is already prioritizing targets.”

“Good,” John replied. “Hang on, we’re making our run.”

Cloaked, the Satori was nearly invisible to the Naga sensors. As soon as they began firing they were going to stick out, of course. Every enemy aboard the station would be focused on taking them out. Which was precisely what they were counting on. The chaos that ought to ensue might give Dan the opportunity he needed to escape. If the Cyanauts came through, then it might be just enough to get him out of there.

It had to be. The station was huge. There would be hundreds of Naga aboard it - perhaps thousands. They weren’t going to be able to fight their way through that mess to rescue him, and so far the Naga hadn’t seemed interested in talking things out.

He brought the ship in low over the hull of the station, and then felt the thrumming pulse of the railguns opening up. He could see the streaks of the hot bits of iron as they spat from the guns on either wing, stabbing down into the Naga base with furious force. Again and again they fired as he swept past the wheel of the station.

“That ought to be enough to wake them up,” Andrew said.

“Indeed. I’m pulling us clear so they can’t get a lock on us,” John said.

That was the plan. Dart in, hit them, dart away and change trajectory quickly so that they enemy guns couldn’t get a good lock on them. Already fire was pouring from the station’s guns. They were shooting blindly, but all they needed one was lucky shot.

“I’m bringing us around for another pass,” John said.

“Quickly,” Majel said. “I’m detecting fighter bay doors opening all over the station. We’re about to have a lot of company.”

John grunted an acknowledgement before returning his focus to the ship’s controls. He brought them through a wide arc and then pushed more power into the main thrusters, darting back into firing range again. The Naga were better prepared this time. The moment Andrew opened fire, their guns returned fire on the Satori, aiming for the origin of their railgun shots. John tried to randomize his approach as best he could, dodging and weaving from side to side. Some of their shots were coming dangerously close.

There was a cracking sound like breaking thunder, and then alarms blared across the bridge. The Satori twisted, the controls jerking in John’s hands. He fought to restore the previous heading and couldn’t. The ship was going into a spin.

“I can’t pull us up!” John shouted.

“We’re losing pressure from the main hall,” Majel said. “The venting air is destabilizing the ship. Sealing the compartment and compensating for the vector change.”

“You’re supposed to be dodging!” Beth’s voice said from the speakers. “Not putting more holes in my ship!”

“I’m trying!” John yelled back. He twisted the ship around, jerking the controls hard to avoid another volley of Naga fire. “I have to pull us clear. Their fire control is going to nail us next time.”

“Agreed. We got lucky there,” Andrew said. “Besides, I think we’ve stirred the hornet’s nest enough.”

He wasn’t wrong. The station had opened a dozen bays, and fighters were spewing forth. John wasn’t sure how many might be coming at them, but it could be hundreds.

If he’d been both lucky and good, one of those ships ought to be piloted by Dan. But how the hell were they supposed to figure out which one he was in? Even after they accomplished that, they still needed to get him back aboard and jump for home again. All while dealing with enemy fighters swarming all over them.

The initial assault had been the easy part.

30

Dan stayed crouched as low in the cockpit as he could. All around him he could hear the sounds of other fighters whining as their engines warmed up for takeoff. Where was the pilot who would come to this fighter? Had he seen the wheelchair and gone to investigate? Even now there might be an entire squad of Naga soldiers on their way to this deck, alerted to the fact that Dan was here.

Much of this escape depended on how long Garul remained unconscious. As soon as the Naga leader was awake again, he would sound the alarm. They’d be looking for him in earnest at that point. Even then, the fighter bays might not be the first place they would check. After all, in their eyes he was a cripple. Useless and discardable. But Garul knew that he could fly, so it wouldn’t be terribly far down on the list of places he would look.

The worst part of this was the waiting. That, and not being able to peek. He couldn’t see what was happening out there. If guards turned up the first he’d know of it was when they tossed grenades into his cockpit or something. He could fly this fighter - or at least, he was pretty sure that he could - but it would take time to get it powered up and launched.

A clanging at the base of the ladder got Dan’s attention. There was a banging noise, and then the steady thump, thump, thump of someone climbing. This was the moment of truth. He aimed his pistol at where the Naga’s head would appear.

A claw reached over the edge and came down right next to Dan’s shoulder. He almost jumped out of his skin at how close the Naga had been to touching him. He shrank away from the contact, and almost lost his point of aim.

The Naga’s head rose into sight. It looked distracted at first, but as soon as it saw him in its peripheral vision it locked eyes with Dan. It’s eyes narrowed, a second eyelid fluttered for a moment over the eye. It was getting ready to make some sort of move.

Dan didn’t give it time to do anything. He fired the pistol. He’d already cranked the setting up to maximum, in case he had to fire it at something in body armor. But this Naga’s head was unarmored, and the blast hit it square in the snout. It made a mess, but Dan didn’t see much of it. The body fell off the ladder, crashing to the floor below.

No time for subtlety now. Even if no one heard the shot or saw the body drop to the floor, it was going to be noticed soon. He powered up the fighter, lowering the cockpit canopy and fastening the unfamiliar harness around his torso. The engines whined with a high-pitched sound that grated on his ears as they powered up.

Outside his fighter, the hangar doors were opening and the first fighter was already getting ready to zip outside into space. An energy barrier flickered in blue light over the open bay doorway, apparently holding the atmosphere in, but allowing the fighters to depart freely.

“Cute trick,” Dan said aloud, wondering how it was done.

There was a helmet resting in a bin above and behind his head. That probably had all the communication gear in it, but Dan had already checked it over. It was built for a Naga, not a human. There was no way he was getting it to fit onto his skull. If whatever the Naga used for wing command was trying to talk to him, there was no way he could hear it.

“This is gonna be messy,” he muttered. He juiced the engines, lifting away from the deck. Next to him another fighter was also lifting off, and almost smacked into him. He veered sideways quickly to avoid it and overcompensated, almost careening into a wall instead.

“These things can really move!” Dan said. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, it might have been fun. He’d never have imagined that he would be back in a fighter cockpit again, but this wasn’t too different from the F-16s he’d flown years ago. The Naga craft were incredibly responsive and maneuverable, if a little touchy on the controls.

He fired the main engine and lit out through the bay doors, crossing his fingers and hoping that no one was going to fire on him for not replying or following normal procedures. He’d have been more circumspect, but he didn’t really know what the Naga launch pattern usually looked like. Hopefully he just looked like another over-eager fighter jock jumping the queue to get out against the enemy faster.

Dan saw another fighter from his wing banking to the left ahead of him. His HUD was circling the fighters from his bay in red, helping them to stand out against space that was becoming increasingly crowded with Naga fighters. He followed that fighter for a bit as it cruised down the length of the station. All of the fighters were spreading out, searching for the attacking ship. Which meant that the Satori was all right, out there somewhere cloaked and waiting.

Of course, knowing they were out there didn’t help him to find them. They were as invisible to Dan as they were to the rest of the Naga fighters. He was effectively hidden from them as well, just one more Naga fighter mixed in with scores of identical ones. He needed to find a way to let them know which one he was flying.

“Always one good way to do that,” he said. He brought his guns live, locked on to the ship that he was following, and fired.

Or tried to fire. The computer was chirping a warning at him. The written alert was in Naga writing so the Cyanaut in his ear wasn’t able to translate it.

“Probably something to the effect of ‘that is not an enemy ship, dumbass’, or something like that,” he said aloud. He was used to hearing chatter in his ear during combat ops. This complete silence was a little unnerving. “Is there a way to disable that friend or foe thing?”

“Unknown,” the Cyanaut replied.

“So you are still speaking to me!” Dan said. “You’d gotten so quiet I wasn’t sure.”

There wasn’t a reply, but Dan hadn’t really expected one. He turned off the targeting computer entirely. It ought to be possible to fire the guns without locking on, and if he could do that…

He fired again. The shots went harmlessly beneath the other fighter. But he pulled back on the controls, slowly guiding the nose of the ship upward and fired again.

This time the shots hammered home, blasting apart one wing of the other fighter and damaging one of the thrusters. It went spinning off to the right, toward the station.

“Now we’re in business!” Dan said. “One down…a hell of a lot more to go.”

31

Majel watched the arcs of Naga fighters. They were hunting her. She could almost feel their search, thanks to her deep understanding of the pattern behind their movements. She plotted a new course and fed the information to John, who acknowledged her assistance and changed direction. The new course would keep them clear for another few minutes, but at the rate the station was disgorging fighters it was only a matter of time before they were found.

Eventually the Naga would have enough ships in the air to be able to build a virtual net, which they could use to scour the surrounding space. They would limit her choices of movement, lock down her options for trajectories, and then close the net around the Satori. Eventually one of them would find the ship, even if it was by smashing headlong into it.

Majel predicted they had another ninety-eight seconds before it would be too late to escape the web of hunters. After that they would have to begin firing again, and the station’s guns would come into play to assist the fighters in annihilating the ship. The better option would be to depart before that time, but she knew that meant locking on to Dan’s fighter first. John wasn’t going to give up on his friend easily. Neither would the rest of the crew.

She was searching, of course. But it was hard to tell which craft might be his, or if he had even made it to one of the fighters at all. The Cyanauts had assured John through their link that Dan was indeed out there. Somewhere. Were they to be trusted to their word, after all they had done? It was hard to say.

Majel had managed to narrow down the choices of possible fighters were down to six, out of eighty seven in flight, when Dan simplified the entire process for her.

“Got him!” she said.

“What?” John sounded more alarmed than pleased.

“I’ve located Dan,” she said. “Or rather, he’s revealed himself. One of the Naga fighters has fired on another one. The survivor is breaking off from the search pattern and engaging other fighters now.”

John and Andy looked at each other.

“Dan,” they said in unison.

“Plotting an intercept course now,” Majel said. “John, if I may?”

“The helm is yours,” he replied, taking his hands off the control panel. “I suspect you’re better at this than I am anyway.”

“Probably,” Majel replied. She was more predictable than John’s erratic flying might be, which would hurt them when it came to the station’s guns. She could tell from their firing patterns that the station’s fire control was run by AI. From experience, she knew that the Naga AIs were strong. Maybe not as strong as she, but enough of them working in concert would be difficult to overcome. On the other hand, she was going to be much more effective than John against the fighters, and his erratic pattern of flying was the result of inexperience rather than brilliance.

What they really needed was Dan back at the helm. But he was out there, and although he’d taken down two Naga fighters, he had three more on his tail.

“Moving to engage his pursuers. Ready on the guns,” Majel said.

“I’ve got them,” Andy replied.

She lined up the shot, and he took it. One of the fighters exploded in flames, and the other two shot off in different directions. Dan was clear, at least for the moment. Majel changed course before the rest of the fighters could converge on them. Every time she revealed their presence for even a second gave the enemy data about their location, which they could use to further box them in.

“The station is still launching fighters,” John said. “What’s the count up to?”

“One hundred and forty four,” Majel said. “Minus three.”

Andy got a lock on one fighter which strayed across their path and lit it up. “Minus four,” he chuckled.

“Naga fighters are closing on our position, using our fire to locate us,” Majel warned. They were englobed now. The fighters knew they had the Satori inside their sphere, and were closing the net. They could punch a hole by blowing up a few fighters, but as soon as they did the station’s guns would have them.

32

Dan shot along the outer hull of the station. He stayed as close to the ‘deck’ as he could, mostly to avoid the station’s guns but also because the curve kept pursuing fighters away from him. Most of the fighters chasing him had gone elsewhere - hunting the Satori. He gritted his teeth, jinking the fighter hard to the right so that he could line up another of the station’s turrets in his sights.

He fired, and it exploded satisfactorily. But this was taking too damned long. The Naga base was covered with the things. Even taking a few out wasn’t going to be enough to rescue the Satori from that mess.

It was clear what the Naga were doing. They’d put out enough fighters to completely surround the area where the Satori could be. Then all they needed to do was shrink the globe, and eventually something would run into the human ship. Or more realistically, the Satori would blast her way out - revealing her location. At the range they were sitting, the station’s guns would tear her apart.

Dan peeked at his scanner. Only two fighters still following him. He was small potatoes compared to the Satori. They wanted her more than anything else. He wasn’t sure if they wanted her for the technology they’d lusted after for so long, or because the idea of someone else having that tech scared the shit out of them. In the end it didn’t really matter.

He was finishing an orbit of the station, coming up on a vector which could bring him into the battleground. It was going to be dicey out there, but he needed to screw with the Naga formation. Somehow he needed to manage that without dying to the fighters still on his tail.

With a few taps to the controls he changed his vector, then applied all the speed the craft could muster. He burst away from the space station, building speed. His pursuers rocketed after him. Which was pretty much what he’d expected. They opened fire. He dove and turned a bit, moving about to make it harder for them to track him. One bolt of green fire flashed past his cockpit, near enough that the brilliance startled him.

“Whoa, way too close,” he said.

Time to try something different. He shut down the main thrusters and hit the attitude thrusters, which spun his nose completely around without changing his course at all. Now his steering was crap, but the chasing fighters were right in his sights. Literally. He’d taken a bit of the Naga blood that had spattered on the edge of the cockpit from the pilot he shot and smudged a targeting reticle onto the front of his canopy. Since the targeting computer was still not allowing him to lock his guns on Naga ships, he was stuck using World War One era targeting.

He could work with that.

Dan fired, blowing one of the Naga ships to brilliant bits of burning metal. The second one tried to veer away, but he caught its wingtip with a second burst. It didn’t need wings to fly in space, but the force of the impacts sent it into a spin. Dan tracked the damaged ship with little jets of thrust, gently nudging it into his targeting area, and then unleashed a burst of fire on it.

It exploded.

He spun the ship back around on its axis so that the nose was again pointing in the direction of travel, then hammered the main engine to maximum again. It had been a risky play. He was already halfway between the station and the globe of fighters. If the station’s guns had been retasked to shoot him down, he might have been toast. He was gambling that they had every gun that could be aimed at the globe, searching for signs of the Satori.

That meant those same guns would be able to target him soon, but he was going to be in the middle of all of those fighters before the guns could lock on him, and then they’d have to shoot their own people to hit him. He hoped they’d hesitate to do that. With Naga, you never could be certain.

“You’re insane,” the Cyanaut in his ear said. “We’re both going to die.”

“There’s only a hundred or so of them,” Dan said aloud.

“As I said.”

It felt good to have someone to talk with, even if the little alien was being a sourpuss. It could be right, after all. He was about to stir up a massive mess in there. The fighters were going to be all over him as soon as they realized he was there, but to do that they’d have to break off encircling the Satori.

The real question was going to be how to get close enough to the Satori to get back aboard. He didn’t really see a way, not with so many fighters all over them. And good as he might be, he didn’t think that he could take down that many fighters. Not even with the Satori’s help.

“Here we go,” he said aloud, bearing down on the first fighter and firing hi guns. It exploded, and he was off to go hit the next one. All around him the fighter pattern shifted as the nearby craft broke apart from their formation to engage the new threat.

33

John watched Dan’s ship make its daring rush into the middle of the fighters. They broke apart, shooting off in different directions to engage him.

“There!” he said, stabbing a finger. “Majel, make for the breach he gave us!”

“Already on it,” she replied. The Satori blasted through the swirling mass of fighters. Andrew took down two with the guns when an opportunity presented itself. It was chaotic enough in this mess that John thought their detonations would largely go unnoticed, but Majel quickly alter course after each shot anyway just in case.

They were clear! Dan had done it. But now he had scores of fighters chasing him, instead. He was going rapidly enough that they were struggling to get into range to engage him, but that wasn’t going to last forever.

“Can we overtake him?” John asked.

“Affirmative,” Majel said.

“Get us right next to him if you can,” John said. “I have an idea.”

He thought about the little Cyanaut in his ear. It was odd that it had elected to remain with him. He’d expected it to want to stay behind when they left. The one speaking with Andy had slid off his finger and onto one of the whale colonies.

Really, he’d have been happier if it had remained behind. John’s feelings about the Cyanauts were mixed. They’d lied to his people and almost gotten some of them killed. But right now they also represented the only way he could possibly reach Dan.

“Tell him we are coming,” he thought to the alien.

“Message sent,” it replied.

John tapped a button to open a radio link to the engine room. “Beth, how close would Dan’s fighter have to be to enter the wormhole with us?”

“Are you nuts?”

That probably meant ‘very close’. John grimaced. “No. It’s the best shot I can think of to get all of us out of here, Beth. How can we make it work?”

There was a pause before she replied. “Maybe a meter. Two, tops. Anything more than that and it’ll be outside the envelope. But John, he’ll have to maintain that distance through the transit. If he veers off even a little, he’ll be destroyed by the wormhole. If even a little bit of his fighter is behind the Satori when our tail enters the wormhole, it will close and cut his ship in half. This level of precision…”

Her voice trailed off. John could hear the fear behind her words. He didn’t want to leave Dan behind any more than she did, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Do you see any other way to get him home with us? Given what we are facing out here?” John asked her.

“No. Damn it.”

“OK. We’ll be outside the station’s gun range soon. Get ready to jump.”

Dan was fleeing around the planet, keeping the fighters trailing him between him and the station to avoid its guns. Soon the curve of the planet itself would handle that job. As soon as they were hidden from the station, it would be time to jump. Otherwise once they rounded the planet on the other side the station would unload everything it had at Dan, and he’d be lost.

John had the Cyanaut send the plan to Dan.

The image it projected back to him confused John at first, but then he laughed. Dan had sent it. A picture of a pig with feathered wings.

“When pigs fly, indeed,” John murmured.

“We’re out of sight of the station. Fighters are closing. They’ll be able to fire on Dan’s ship in ten seconds,” Majel said.

This was going to be close. “Open wormhole!” he said.

The Satori flashed into full view of the enemy as the cloak in device dropped to engage the wormhole drive. Every Naga fighter unleashed its fire at once, all of it aimed at the Satori. It was too little, too late - they would transit before they incoming blasts reached them. It was Dan he was worried about, not the Satori.

“Eight seconds to transit,” Majel said.

John watched as Dan’s little fighter streaked across the distance between them, blazing a trail with its engines firing for everything they were worth. John swore. He was too damned far away. He’d have to break his velocity, stop almost on a dime. There was no way he was going to be able to manage it.

“Majel, lower the landing gear!” John shouted.

Andrew gave him a confused look, but the AI was already complying. John could only hope that Dan would see the landing gear coming down and know what to do.

34

He wasn’t going to make it. Dan had been flying ships in space for long enough that he knew that cold truth in his bones. The physics had beat him. He would cross the Satori’s trajectory and then spin away into space. He’d pushed the little fighter to give its everything in the mad dash to try to link up with his friends, and he’d gotten just enough speed out of the thing to make it within shouting distance of the other ship.

His thrusters would never be able to brake enough, though, and the Satori was already spinning up its wormhole drive. He could see the swirling patterns appearing just ahead of the ship’s bow. The Naga fighters had unloaded on the Satori. There was no way they could hold off and wait for him to take another shot at a linkup.

He’d missed the boat.

Somehow Dan felt calm about that. This whole escape had been an incredible long shot. It shouldn’t have been possible at all. He’d fought his way free of the Naga, stolen one of their ships, and even done a fair bit of damage to the enemy with their own weapon. He’d tried everything he could. It just hadn’t been enough.

“Only thing left to do is to see if I can take a few more of them with me,” he said aloud. He prepared to spin the fighter around and dive back at the incoming Naga ships.

Then he spotted something odd. The Satori was lowering its landing gear. Dan sucked in a deep breath. There was only one reason they’d be doing that. They’d seen he wasn’t going to make it, and they were hoping to give him a little bump.

He might be able to do even better than that, but it was going to be tight.

Dan spun the ship on its central axis so that his own landing pads were facing toward the belly of the Satori. All the while he continued to push his brakes for everything they were worth. Overload warnings flashed on his console as he took the engines to the breaking point and systems began to shut down.

If he could line his ship up perfectly he might be able to use the gear from both ships like a hook. He hoped it would be enough. Beth might be able to calculate how much punishment the Satori could take, but he had no idea. And there was no way of knowing the stress tolerance of the Naga ship.

There was a titanic screeching noise as his ship connected with the Satori, his landing gear gouging huge divots from the lower hull. Then a clang, and a sudden stop that threw him forward in his restraints as the landing pad in his fighter’s nose connected with the Satori’s right landing gear.

“Oof!” he grunted. “Did it!”

His ship began to rebound, drifting away from the Satori a little. He fired thrusters again to bring them into clanging contact once more.

The brilliant lights of the wormhole surrounded both ships, coruscating in that familiar, vivid display. Dan held his breath, fighting to keep his ship in contact with the Satori. If he let it drift even a few feet away he'd be toast.

35

Beth had just finished patching the latest hole in the ship’s hull when she was thrown to the deck by a massive impact. Then a sound like the world’s largest fingernails grinding on the universe’s biggest chalkboard echoed through the ship, followed by another crash that threw her back to the deck.

Something was up. Something big. She raced forward to the bridge so that she could find out what was going on. Alarm bells were sounding all around the bridge as she entered. It looked like every console was lit up red, which jarred with the flashing blue lights of the wormhole visible through the front view-screen. In another moment the colors were gone, though, leaving the flashing red of warning lights as the main illumination.

In the distance she could see the now-familiar dusty world they’d visited before going to the Cyanaut planet.

“We jumped?” Beth asked. “What about Dan?”

“We don’t know,” Andy said. He was working with his console, trying to pull up scan results without success.

“That banging was Dan trying to use our landing gear like the arresting wire on an aircraft carrier,” John said.

Beth stared at him like he was crazy. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mine,” John said. “We were out of other options.”

She stalked over to her console, unsure whether she could trust her voice or not. After all she’d been through - all they’d all been through - trying to rescue Dan, to have possibly lost him right at the last moment? She shoved the thought away. If she held on to the idea she might tear up, and that was the last thing she wanted to show to the rest of the team.

She dropped into her seat and called up the instrumentation. Sensors were a mess. Dan’s last dive had screwed with the entire underside of the ship, knocking out relays and antennae and who-knew what else.

“Majel, have you got anything at all on Dan?” she asked. Even though she almost didn’t want to hear the answer, because she knew the odds of him being able to stop and then somehow follow the ship precisely through the wormhole had to be so damned slim… Still, if there was anyone who could do it, Dan could.

“Nothing yet, Beth,” Majel said. “No, wait!”

A Naga fighter jetted away from the ship, soaring from underneath them to flash ahead of the bridge. It waggled its wings as it sped by. The thing looked pretty torn up, but it came close enough that Beth could see Dan inside, waving across at them.

She waved back, smiling in spite of herself. John and Andy cheered. They’d cheated death yet another time, won through despite the odds facing them. She wondered how long their luck could hold. The thought made her feel cold.

Beth reached into her pocket for the hundredth time that day, touching the little keepsake Dan had left with her when he was captured. The one thing he wanted her to have, if he was gone forever. She needed to return the simple gold band to him, and then they needed to have a talk.

Book 6: Satori’s Destiny

Chapter One

The airlock door flashed green as the last air was evacuated. Andy felt his heart thump with excitement. It wasn't every day he got to go outside, and he felt penned in after a few days of lockdown up in John's base. Oh, it was for a good reason. He understood entirely. When they had come back home from their last trip, it wasn't just the cloaked Satori coming through the wormhole. They had a Naga fighter with them this time, too.

If they were very lucky, no one on Earth had seen it arrive at all. If they were unlucky, then they were going to get a lot of strange questions coming their way. John's plan was to keep a low profile for as long as possible. It had been four days since there return, and no official inquiries yet. Andy took it as a good sign.

"I still don't think you need to be the one going outside," John said into Andy's ear via radio.

"You're absolutely right. It doesn't need to be me at all," Andy said. But he'd been glad to pull rank a little and grab the job. Anything to have something to do.

"We need to comms back up, but I've got techs to handle that sort of thing," John said. "This is a tense moment. I'd rather have my head of security close at hand."

"I've got one of those techs up here with me right now," Andy said. "If she can't handle it, I doubt any of the rest of your goons can. Besides, she's better company."

"Thanks, I think," Charline said. She bounded past him out the airlock, jumping up a little before landing in a poof of lunar dust.

"Well, be careful and come back soon. It still feels odd that the antenna would go down at this particular time," John said.

He sounded worried to Andy, and with good reason. It wasn't the first time that they had lost an antenna to a micro-meteorite. It wasn't the twelfth time, either. It happened more often than they liked, but it was an easy enough fix. Run outside, repair or replace the antenna, come back in.

Everyone was tense about the Naga ship, though. The Satori's cloaking device made it easy to hide. The fighter? Well, it just flew in and landed. There were precious few spacefaring vessels, and every one was identifiable by sight. A new one would be remarked upon. If anyone had seen it. The trouble was they had no way to tell if they’d been seen sneaking the thing in or not.

Having the antenna go down wasn't unusual. That it went down at the particular moment it did was giving John frown lines.

"We'll get it done and be right back," Andy said. Charline had gone a bit ahead, and he bounded a few more times to catch up. The damaged antenna was on a ridge about half a kilometer from the base. It was a short hop in the light lunar gravity.

"OK," John said. His voice crackled with static. "Be careful....there. Need....ack.....est."

"You're breaking up, John," Andy said. He tapped the radio, trying to clear up the signal without success. The signal was gone. "Damn."

"Everything OK?" Charline called. She was about a hundred meters ahead of him, a bit up the ridge. At least he was still receiving her signal all right.

"Sure, just the broken antenna messing things up even more than we'd thought," Andy said. "I lost contact with John."

"You think things are gonna go south?" she asked. "We're in private out here. You can give your honest opinion."

"I already gave it. If I'd thought that it was going to cause problems, then I wouldn't have agreed about bringing the fighter back,” Andy said. “But I think the risk was low enough, and the reward high enough. We had to try.”

He hoped that was the right call, anyway. If they’d screwed up… If a stealth satellite they’d missed had been snooping at precisely the wrong moment, or if someone on the base saw something and spilled a little too much information to the wrong person? He remembered all too well that Paul had already tried to take the Satori for the US government once. He wouldn’t be the only person who would feel it was his patriotic duty to hand the device over.

Some days Andy wasn’t entirely sure that Paul had been wrong. They were hanging alone out here, but their actions could hang everyone. Every jump they took was bringing danger onto not just themselves but onto all of humanity. The Naga were an existential threat, and it was clear that they’d rest at nothing to find the location of Earth.

He shoved the thoughts away. Andy trusted John. He didn’t trust the government. Not really, anyway. Probably no soldier did, and most of his adult life had been in uniform. The die had been cast, anyway. If things went badly, well, they’d figure it out from there. John had to have a plan for when the rest of the world discovered the Satori, anyway. He surely had to. Right?

“Charline, want to grab some coffee after?” he asked, working to bring his mind back to where he was. Running around on the surface of the moon was safe compared to some places he’d been, but that didn’t mean he could let his thoughts wander forever. Charline had been a little distant since their return. Something had happened when she and Linda fought side by side, and it wasn’t just Linda falling under Cyanaut control.

“Charline?” She didn’t answer. Andy looked ahead at the top of the ridge. Charline had disappeared across it, somewhere on the other side. They’d lost line of sight, but the radio should still reach her. The antenna shouldn’t impact their suit to suit coms.

He bounded up the rest of the hill, scrambling a little when he reached the crest to avoid taking a fast tumble down the far side. She was nowhere to be seen, but the terrain was littered with boulders and craggy chunks of rock. She could be just out of sight. Perhaps she’d slipped down the hillside like he almost did? He activated the tracking transponder on her suit, but it wasn’t showing up on his heads-up display.

Which was strange. Because even if the radios were on the fritz, the transponder would still show her location. It was running on a very different system. The only way thing that would keep him from seeing her transponder signal would be…

“Jamming,” Andy breathed. “Shit.”

He hesitated for a moment, wanting to go racing down the hill to find her despite the danger. But if he was right, then all of them were in danger now, not just Charline. He needed to get back to base. Pass the warning. Get a security team together and then come back after her.

He whirled in place, getting ready to launch himself off the ridge back in the direction he’d come. The entrance to John’s lunar base was in sight. He’d get to radio range in minutes.

But he never started the bound. As Andy turned around, something slammed into his suit’s faceplate. The glass starred with cracks, almost shattering. The impact stunned him. Something swept his legs out from beneath him, and he crashed to the ground.

Through the stars flashing in front of his vision he saw the blurring motion of something rushing toward his face. He tried vainly to block with his arms, but the impact struck him in the throat just under his helmet. He couldn’t catch a breath. The stars in his vision whirled, blending with the stars in the sky above until he couldn’t tell one from the other, and then his sight swirled into blackness.

Exclusive free story for fans of Kevin McLaughlin’s science fiction! Learn the story of how John found the alien ship on the moon, launching the adventure which spans the stars and saves all of humanity!

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About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Kevin McLaughlin has written more than three dozen science fiction and fantasy novels, along with more short stories than he can easily count. Kevin can be found most days in downtown Boston, working on the next novel. His bestselling Blackwell Magic fantasy series, Accord science fiction series, Valhalla Online LitRPG series, and the fan-favorite Starship Satori series are ongoing.

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www.kevinomclaughlin.com

kevins.studio@gmail.com

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