SAVAGE STARS

FREE WORLDS™ BOOK FIVE

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

MICHAEL ANDERLE

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Version 1.00, April 2023

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-840-9

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THE SAVAGE STARS TEAM

Thanks to our JIT Readers

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CHAPTER ONE

The commander was not prone to loneliness. If he was, though, he might have felt the sting of isolation on this post. He was not alone, of course. His task was far too important to be left to a single individual. Yet compared to the endless riches he’d found in the shared mind of the Augmented of Earth, being aboard a scout ship with only three others felt desolate.

They had been here ever since the Augmented launched their attack on Varuna. The Algorithm had given the attack a three percent chance of failure. Enough to justify a scout ship to stay behind, but not much else. It had come as quite a shock when the attack had failed. To the commander, anyway. The Algorithm had anticipated this and had been ready with fresh orders before the bulk of its consciousness winked out of this system.

The commander and his three crew members had been here ever since, watching.

The job didn’t require a lot of attention. They kept their scopes pointed at the single inhabited planet and the spacecraft in orbit above it. There was only one of those ships now. The Zhemchug, the unimproved humans called it. A colony ship turned into a weapon that had somehow survived the Augmented assault. The Algorithm did not believe in luck, but the commander could not think of any other explanation.

Their other ship, the stolen Augmented vessel that the thieves had renamed the Prometheus, had vanished weeks ago. The commander and his crew had traveled via warp back to Earth to report it, leaving a drone with its cameras pointed at Varuna. They had returned and found nothing to report on the video. The people were doing exactly what the Algorithm had predicted they would. They repaired what they could, tried to build more ships, and tested them in orbit. Nothing of note. Nothing of consequence.

Sometimes a shuttle would go to deeper space but too close to the sun’s glare for the commander and his crew to make out what they were doing. The Algorithm assumed they were mining asteroids or perhaps even making asteroids into usable objects like the people of Alpha Centauri had. Low priority, whatever it was.

The commander’s shift was almost over. On Earth, that meant time to enjoy the pleasures of life. Here, it meant scooting to the back of the cramped ship. Worst of all was the lack of access to the other Augmented’s minds. Here, there were only three other minds, and they had already delved so deeply into each other’s consciousness that there was nothing new to be found. No hidden shames, no secret joys, no puzzling contradictions of the psyche remained to be explored. They knew each other better than they had ever known anyone else. Their minds were the only places to explore in this awful corner of the galaxy, so they had dived deep.

How the commander longed to implant the people of Varuna. Something like a thousand of them, yet only a precious few had been implanted, and even then, not even fully. The commander had received a few snippets of thoughts from the governor of this world, but then she had subjected herself to time inside some ancient machine that had rendered her implant useless.

To think she would do such a thing. And willingly! It boggled the mind. He knew the Algorithm said this was normal, that the unimproved often feared Augmentation. They had a long history of fearing that which they did not understand. It was paradoxical because if the people of Varuna would simply submit to being implanted, they would understand the limitless joy of sharing minds with each other. They would be freed of their own bodies and see that life could be so much more than what it had been for the first hundred thousand years of human evolution.

The commander knew the other three people on the scout ship with him had similar views. One of them felt less strongly, but only because he had more unusual proclivities than the others and thus felt a stronger-than-average sense of shame. That had been interesting to explore for a time but, like every other part of this mission, had also grown tiresome.

Easily the best part of this mission had been when they’d returned to Earth. Not only had they been able to let their minds dive into the sea of consciousness that was living with the Augmented, but they had also gotten news.

Earth was close to ready for its invasion of Alpha Centauri. If that went well, they would come for Varuna next. Though they had needed to return to Varuna long before any more news arrived on that front, it did give them hope their watch might soon be over.

The commander was stewing about this, as he had been for days, when the shift turned over. Before they could make the shift, a burst of particles appeared on the edges of the solar system.

Immediately, all four of them were on the scout vessel’s consoles, trying to glean as much information as they possibly could from what they were seeing. They didn’t need to check the drive signature to know this was not one of their ships. Theirs would have come in behind the planet on the fringes of the solar system, in the blind spot where the people of Varuna had yet to place any monitoring systems. If it was an attack, they would have brought far more people with them.

This was likely the Prometheus, finally returned from its mission.

Then another ship emerged from warp. Followed by two more.

“Drive signatures?” The commander only had to think before his crew had answers for him.

“The ships are from Alpha Centauri, sir. Judging by the size, two of them are transports, and one is a warship.”

“Then the attack on Alpha Centauri has come and gone,” the commander noted, wondering which way it went.

“Indication on what they’re carrying?”

“Still too much radiation from warp to tell,” was the reply.

“At this distance, it will be difficult to get a mass reading. Even if we can, the difference between a hold filled with grain and one filled with passengers will not be easy to find.”

They had discussed this before, of course, and thus had already come to the same conclusions. Either the attack on Alpha Centauri had failed, or it had succeeded. If it had failed, these ships were here to reinforce Varuna, provide more firepower, and ensure that Earth could not come here. If the attack had succeeded, this was likely where any refugees would go.

The commander hoped it was the second, of course. The idea of not one solar system belonging to the Augmented but many was tantalizing. Worlds of people’s minds to explore? There would be endless entertainment, endless thoughts, and endless potential. All these people needed to do was submit.

“Make sure the drone is set up and recording everything that happens. And send a beacon toward the inner solar system. If those are refugees, there might be Augmented in need of orders.”

“What orders would you give them?”

“That’s not my place to say,” the commander snapped. The proclivities of that crewmate made them unusually independent. It was rather disgusting, really. “We will need to be ready to act, though. Maneuver us directly behind the planet. We go to warp. The people of Earth will need to know about this.”

His crew did not respond verbally. There was no need. They simply went to their stations and got to work moving the ship where it needed to be. The chances of them being seen this close to the planet they were using as shelter were slim, but they still had to be careful. If a telescope scanning for heat happened to be looking at them when they fired up their maneuvering thrusters, they might be made, and the people of Varuna would know they had been there. That could betray their hiding spot and make it harder to keep tabs on this system in the future.

It didn’t take long to get behind the planet, though. After they were blocked from the people of Varuna, they activated their warp drive. With a flash of electromagnetic energy, they were off and headed back to Earth.

With luck, they’d be back here in no time with orders to implant the people of Varuna and join their minds to the overmind of the Augmented.

CHAPTER TWO

“My mind. It’s mine again!” Petrov stepped from the table and did a little jig.

“You just had brain surgery. No need to dance around!” Thorson groused, though he struggled to hide a smile. Petrov’s Russian dance moves were pretty special.

“Pretty impressive brain surgery, though. Only an injection, right?” Adams asked. She had undergone the procedure the day before and wore the same ridiculous grin as Petrov.

“That’s all it takes!” Dr. Alvarez boasted. “The Centauri health implants are now capable of recognizing the nanites that make the Augmented. We simply have to scale up production, and we’ll all be brain surgeons soon.”

“You worried about job security, then?” Dane asked Thorson.

Thorson shook his head. “I’d rather not have to cut people open if I don’t have to. If we can use nanites to fight the nanites, I’m all for it. But now you are the one who should be worried about job security.”

“Oh, I’m more than all right with not being governor anymore. I thought chief of security was a tough job. Being governor makes me miss the simple days.”

Adams’ grin faltered as she chewed her lip. “I was worried you would say something like that.”

“Like what? Like I don’t want your job anymore?”

Adams nodded. “I don’t know if it’s that easy, Dane. I was implanted. Can the colony still trust me?”

“Of course they can. I do!”

“Which is not wise,” Petrov suggested. “You trusted us even when we had the implants in us. Most people did not.”

“I trust you because the implants were never fully formed. Also, the Augmented need some sort of broadcast signal to control their people, and we haven’t turned up any sign of anything like that. You two are not a danger to the colony.”

“Perhaps not,” Petrov allowed as he sat back down and put a hand to his head. Apparently, his jig had winded him. “But my people have not been shy about telling me that we need a new leader. In Russia, appearances matter. They matter in America, too, no?”

“But we’re not in America! We’re on a completely different planet! You two can still lead—”

“We may not be in America, but we made sure to keep one of our most cherished traditions. The transition of power.”

“Adams, please, don’t start with this.”

“No, Dane, I’m serious. If George Washington could decide to step down and his decision was respected, you need to respect mine. I don’t think me staying in power is best for the colony, not with the Augmented coming for us. Not with a war on the horizon. We need our people to follow orders willingly. We can’t be sure they’ll do that if I’m in charge.”

“You got this colony on its feet. People aren’t going to forget that.”

“I don’t want them to. But just because I started this mission doesn’t mean I should continue it forever.”

“Dr. Alvarez, back me up here,” Dane requested.

Carlos shrugged. “Adams is cured. The health nanites have dismantled the implant the Augmented tried to put in there. Beyond that, pues, politics is not my thing.”

“Thorson?”

“Leadership has to change time and again. It’s a pity Adams was a good leader instead of a bad one, but at least this way, she sets a precedent. If you mess everything up, you’ll be able to step down, and no one will question it.”

Dane did not laugh at the dry humor.

“So what now?” Dane asked.

“I would advise that you make this announcement to the rest of the colony council and delegate responsibilities accordingly.”

Dane realized he had backed himself into a corner. Here he was, saying he wanted Adams to continue making the decisions, and now she had made one. If he rejected it, it showed he was willing to make his own decisions, but accepting it amounted to the same thing. He shook his head and smiled ruefully. She was good at this.

And he had so much to learn.

CHAPTER THREE

Even something as simple as walking through a doorway felt different, with the weight of leadership on Dane’s shoulders. He knew, on some level, he was overthinking it. After all, he had traveled to Alpha Centauri as acting governor of Varuna. He had been making decisions for the entire colony for more than a month now. He had outlined what he wanted them to do in his absence and had teams of different people reporting to him.

Yet he had done all that, knowing he was hiding behind the “acting” part of his title. He had felt comfortable making those decisions. Well, comfortable was a strong word, really. Only because he knew if he messed it up, Governor Adams would straighten it out when she resumed her role as governor. Now that day was never going to come.

The worst part of it was knowing there wasn’t really another choice. With the fall of Alpha Centauri, the Augmented would set their sights on Varuna. They needed to be ready to defend themselves, and Dane had the experience to make sure they would be as prepared as possible. As much as he would have liked to call for elections or ask someone else to fill the role, he knew he was well-suited for the job. Especially right now.

Hence, the weight on his shoulders.

The only consolation was everyone else on the council seemed to be struggling under a burden as well. Each of them understood the gravity of their roles. They knew they had to get this right, and there would be no rest and relaxation until they did.

Dane walked into the council meeting room and gave himself a moment to appreciate what they were fighting for. This room was situated in the highest level of their Homebase, which was built inside an undersea volcano. This level was the smallest, as the volcano got narrower as it got taller. That meant the room was small enough for windows on all sides that looked out into the underwater world of Varuna.

Outside the windows, schools of alien creatures swam by, catching the late afternoon sun as they enthusiastically fed before night fell. Divers out there harvested kelp, and others swam with the pair of six-finned, long-necked alien reptiles they had managed to tame. This was a beautiful world, a place worth protecting. A place where humanity could thrive. Dane was not going to give it up to the Augmented.

“Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here,” Dane greeted them.

“Are you kidding?” Nat Granger replied. “The rumor mill is buzzing about Adams and Petrov being cured. We’re not about to miss that!” Nat had a batch of cookies for the impending celebration. Dane doubted she had baked them. As head of engineering, she was far too busy.

More likely, she had asked one of the fulltime chefs to do it, and they had obliged her. One did not say no to the person capable of fixing any broken machine on the planet and the authority to order people to fix it. She reached for a cookie with her tattooed arm and took a bite. Her sweet tooth was too powerful to allow her to resist the cookies any longer.

“Did you replicate the results, sweetheart?” Ginger Alvarez was the head of the planet’s social services, their best psychologist, and Carlos’ wife as well as the mother of Carla. One of the first babies born on Varuna, and thus one of the most popular people on the planet.

“We did!” Carlos grinned and gestured for Petrov to follow him in. “Petrov is cured!”

A round of applause erupted when Adams and Petrov both came in and took a seat. With them as well as Thorson and Dr. Alvarez, the full council was now present. Dane was pleased to see it grow, though he wished it was expanding under other circumstances.

In addition to the familiar faces who had been on the council since they had held their first meeting up on the Cosmos, they were now joined by Grant Richmond, captain of the Prometheus. The man responsible for their access to a ship that could engage warp and thus travel faster than light.

Though he was not the newest face in the room. Captain MacTaggart of the Wallace sat at the table, frowning between his massive, bright red mutton chops. He had managed to save his ship from the havoc the Augmented had wrought on the Alpha Centauri system. It was now the single most powerful spacecraft at their disposal, more modern and better suited for combat than even the Prometheus. No doubt he was about as pleased with his position on the council as Dane was with his role as leader of it. MacTaggart was a soldier and would have preferred to be up in orbit, coordinating defenses.

Beside him was Lord Ron Bell, a man well accustomed to meetings like this and the de facto leader of the thousand or so refugees from the Alpha Centauri system. He looked gloomy as always. Dane did not think he had seen the man smile since coming here. Not even the news of Adams and Petrov being cured was able to lift his spirits.

Not that Dane blamed the man.

Days ago, he was a representative for more than a hundred thousand people, and he had been one of many. Now he was the last surviving member of his government. Every one of the refugees owed their life to Ron Bell, yet Bell probably blamed himself for the loss of the many instead of patting his own back for saving those he had. In addition to the survivor’s guilt, Ron Bell had been the station manager at Alpha Central. The orbital defense platform had been his domain, so when it had fallen into enemy hands and turned its ample defenses against their own ships, he had to have taken that personally.

On top of all that pressure, there was his son, Liam. Who’d been duped by the Augmented and convinced to release nanites into the water supply of Alpha Central’s capital city. It was possible the entire Alpha Centauri system could have fallen without Liam’s treason. Yet no one could argue that it would not have fallen as quickly or completely if not for the capital city’s water supply being corrupted with nanites.

What should have been a stronghold of defense had been infected from the inside out. Dane still had nightmares about the horrors they had seen there, of the freshly Augmented spraying others with fire hoses and dunking them in the river that ran through the center of the city.

It was a small consolation that Alvarez’s breakthrough could save those people.

But it was a consolation, and Bell needed to see that.

“It’s pretty amazing that the first collaboration between our people has resulted in such a success.” Dane addressed Bell.

Bell may have been glum, but his time in Parliament would not allow his manners to lapse enough to ignore Dane speaking to him.

“It is a victory, indeed. If only it had come sooner, we might be discussing a counteroffensive on Alpha Central.”

“We’re lucky it happened, though,” Dane pressed on, not wanting the mood in the room to drop. “We found a way to cure the Augmented. That means we can fight back.”

“Against millions?” Bell asked. “Or billions? Our solar system had four million. Surely there’s less now after the chaos we witnessed, but that means we need millions of this treatment. And that’s not counting Earth.”

“Our priority will be to manufacture as much of it as we can,” Dane declared.

That earned a mumble from the group and a fair number of glances at Adams.

Dane sighed. Might as well get this out of the way now. “While we are certain this cure is both safe and effective, we are less certain that Governor Adams will reprise her…err…”

“I can’t do this anymore,” Adams interrupted. Dane had never been so thankful to be cut off. “Physically, I feel better than I did before the treatment, but we now have two thousand people to lead. A thousand of them know Petrov and I were implanted, and we can be sure the other thousand will learn soon. My leadership would be called into question, and rightly so, I might add. Which means I must step down. George Dane will stay governor for the time being. Unless there are any objections.”

Dane wished there would be, but no one raised any.

Only Ginger raised a hand. Dane nodded at her to speak.

“Unfortunately, I think Adams is right. Many of our people are concerned about her being compromised. Sentiment has improved since Dane took command. It would make sense from a morale perspective to continue with him as leader while we deal with the Augmented.”

There was no disagreement. That meant Dane was governor for the foreseeable future until they either beat the Augmented or succumbed to them. He knew the second was more likely, but he also knew better than to say such a thing aloud or even think it. He would do everything in his power to make his people safe from the Augmented, even if it meant freeing ten billion implanted minds. Somehow.

“If we’re going to push back against the Augmented, it’s going to have to start with our defenses here. We can’t expect them to leave us alone, which means we need to use all our resources effectively. Right now, that means figuring out the best thing to do with the refugees from Alpha Central. Lord Bell, what can you tell us about that?”

“Well, your people have been very generous thus far. We packed as many people as we could into the three—two, rather—ships that made it here.” Bell was still smarting because there had been three ships filled with refugees, but one had been destroyed before they had been able to jump to warp. Considering those three ships were the only people who had even come close to escaping, losing a third of them was another brutal loss.

“We have a little over a thousand people,” Bell continued. “Thanks to the shuttles, we have already brought down close to half that. Your people have offered us floor space, extra beds, and plenty of food, and we are grateful. We’ve also had supplies brought up to the people still in space, so no one is in danger of starving. Though the smell up there is getting pretty ripe.”

Was that an attempt at humor? If it was, Bell made no indication of a joke.

“Granger, how long until we can get the rest of them down?”

“Short-term, we have a solution. The Russians brought four of the habitable domes, and we had only constructed and inflated three of them. We’re already working on the fourth and should have that up in a day or two. It won’t provide space for five hundred more people, but it will allow the bulk of them to come down. Depending on how we assign labor and tasks, it might get everybody somewhere to sleep and work, at least.”

That was one of the best things about the refugees…they were ready to work. They understood the stakes of losing their planet and that this solar system’s tech was decades behind their own. Every one of them Dane had encountered promised him they were ready to devote as much time and energy as possible to the war effort.

“Why is that only short term?” Ginger asked.

“The domes are helpful, but they’re not terribly solid. If we got bombarded, they’d be easy to puncture and flood. Hell, even a Big Damn Fish could destroy them if they got frisky. They’ll work temporarily, but longer term, we either need a second base or to extend this one.”

“I would prefer to expand this base if we can. It’s going to be hard enough to defend ourselves. I’d rather not spread our surface population any thinner than we need to.”

Nat nodded. “I was thinking along the same lines. I can draft a proposal for you. We’re in a mountain chain, so maybe we can target another nearby mountain and use a tunnel so we can walk between them.”

“I want that proposal as soon as possible, but let’s prioritize getting the dome built and inflated. I want those people off those ships so we can use them to defend ourselves.”

“I don’t know if that’s a great idea.” Ginger frowned. “They have suffered unimaginable trauma. They lost everything. More than everything, really. They lost an entire planet.”

“But we can win it back,” her husband claimed.

“I know, dear. I want that too, and it might help some of them work through this, but others will have lost people in the fighting. They’re going to need to come to terms with what happened, and that will take time.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” Dane clarified. “I wasn’t talking about the people, though. I was talking about the ships. Can we get those armed and use them in our defenses, MacTaggart?”

“Aye. They’re the same model as my warship, ya ken. Not armored as well or with as many guns, but they can maneuver fine. The crews will want to stay with them to fight, of course.”

“We’ll need to train some of our people on them, so they can relieve your people if needed. Will you be able to handle that?”

“Aye, sir. I’ve trained plenty of grunts in my day. I can train some fish too.”

MacTaggart puffed up, looking better for having a job. Dane only wished he could do the same thing for Bell. Then it occurred to him.

“Nat, have you looked at any of the asteroids in our system?”

She stopped chewing her cookie to consider the question. Clearly, he had caught her off guard. “Um…you mean like for precious metals?”

“We can consider that if needed, but mostly I’m wondering about some of the tech we saw in Alpha Central. They had an orbital defense platform that used an asteroid at its core. Made it more resistant to heavy power.”

“Interesting.” Nat looked at Bell.

He wasn’t gloomy enough not to take the hint.

“It was an ideal medium for us. We towed some into orbit around our planets, then hollowed them out using a variety of methods. I can show you some of them if you would like. The benefits were not needing to manufacture as much material and having a solid anchor to build off. Not that it did us much good.”

“The asteroid itself had nothing to do with that.” Dane belatedly realized his words implied something else had to do with the planet’s fall. The obvious inference would be Liam, Bell’s son.

Bell deflated further as he made the connection.

However, Dane would not let him fall into despondency.

“I’d like a satellite in geosynchronous orbit above Homebase. Before, during the last attack, we used the Zhemchug as the last line of defense for our planet. I’d rather have that ship be more active. Can we look at some asteroids and find some likely candidates to use?”

“If there are asteroids here, we need to look at composition and size. Then we can do that, yes,” Bell agreed.

“Great. Let’s make those plans our next priority.”

“Will do,” Bell affirmed.

Dane would have to accept that for now.

“MacTaggart, I want you as head of space defense, understand? You’ll still answer to Lev, who will be in charge of the entire planet, but you’ll be coordinating our flights and stuff.”

“Can do!” MacTaggart exclaimed.

“Bell, can you take point on this platform?”

“I can.” Bell spoke with less enthusiasm.

“Okay, then. Let’s break for now. We have too much to do and not enough time to do it.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Even though Dane had called the meeting over, it did not stop. Everyone broke up into smaller groups to coordinate what they needed to do or simply to give orders to each other’s team. Alvarez needed to talk to Granger about how to best replicate more of the nanites. Ginger obviously saw that Bell was hurting and pulled him off to talk to him. Thorson stuck close to Petrov, who seemed to be doing fine.

Dane was about to leave them to it and sneak off for a quick run, but then he saw MacTaggart puzzling over a tablet. He knew Bell was in good hands with Ginger, but how was MacTaggart handling this? He had been despondent when they had been under warp. Was putting him in charge of the planet’s space defenses the best move, or would that leave him thinking about the loss of Alpha Centauri too much?

Dane approached MacTaggart. He knew how it felt to lose a battle and still be expected to win a war. Hopefully, he could assure MacTaggart the best thing to do was keep working and fighting.

“MacTaggart, you got a minute?”

“Next shuttle doesn’t go up for an hour, so I have a couple, aye,” MacTaggart confirmed.

“Come talk to me in my office.” Dane hoped he could squeeze in a workout later.

MacTaggart followed him from the council chamber, but before they had made it halfway down the stairs to the next level, Richmond and Lev caught up to them.

“Governor Dane, a moment, sir?” Richmond asked.

Lev grinned. “You still have time for us little people, right?”

“I was going to speak with MacTaggart. Can it wait?”

“We’d rather not,” Richmond declared.

“MacTaggart might have good ideas on this,” Lev uttered. “Perhaps we can all talk for a few minutes? Off the record, though.”

Off the record? Dane didn’t really like the sound of that, but he wasn’t going to say no.

“Right this way.”

They went into an office that Dane kept trying to tell himself was now his. He still thought of himself as a pilot first, which meant his workspace was a cockpit. It wouldn’t do for the governor of a colony to hold meetings inside a space fighter, though. He needed a room that inspired confidence and made people think he was always considering what was best for the colony. Certainly, more than a couple of blank walls, a desk, and a few chairs. At least the desk was clean. He’d found that he thought better with less clutter, so he was trying to keep it that way.

“Gentlemen, please sit. What can I do for you?”

“We need to consider a strategic retreat,” Richmond announced.

“A retreat?” Dane could not believe what he was hearing.

“The forces of Earth are substantial,” Lev revealed.

“Beyond substantial. They have billions to our two thousand,” Richmond explained.

“Aye,” MacTaggart admitted. “The odds are not great here, worse than on Alpha Centauri.”

“That doesn’t mean we should run.”

“When you cannot beat bear, you run. There is no dishonor in this. That is life. Such thinking prevented our two countries from slaughtering each other,” Lev remarked.

Dane saw they’d been talking about this among themselves. Sometimes the best thing to do with a plan you didn’t like was to hear it out in its entirety, then raise objections. If he pushed back now, they might try to anticipate his arguments. Or not listen. “Where were you thinking? Do you have a destination in mind?” He tried not to sigh when he said it.

“Not as of yet, sir,” Richmond told him. “But we can find one.”

“What about you, Captain MacTaggart? Your people had a century to look for other worlds. Surely you found something that would be reachable with the warp drives?”

MacTaggart tugged on one of his bushy sideburns. He looked uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Aye. There are other worlds people can live on. There are other colonies, for that matter.”

“Then we go to one of those!” Lev voiced.

“I’m not so sure. Earth wasn’t an enemy until recently, ya ken. They know of all the planets we do. If they come here and find us gone, it won’t be hard for them to figure out where we went. They’ll find us again.”

“Not if we go to a planet no one has ever discovered,” Richmond suggested.

“How do we do that, though?” Dane asked.

“I take the Prometheus, someone else takes the Centauri vessels, and we go looking for a new home. We can’t beat Earth. We simply can’t. All my rebellion did was slow them down. But if we can get far enough away, they won’t be able to find us. We could live without them as a threat.”

“They outnumber us, though. For every one ship we send looking, they can send ten. If not more.”

“We can’t face them,” Richmond insisted. There was something in his voice Dane hadn’t heard before. Fear was slipping in. That was new. Richmond had been a stalwart warrior ever since he first appeared in their system. Had the defeat of Alpha Centauri changed that about him, or had he always been considering a retreat, as he called it?

It worried Dane because Richmond was in charge of the Prometheus. The last thing he needed was one of their ships to warp out and never return, which was exactly what Richmond had done on Earth. He had been part of the resistance there. When he and his crew had stolen a ship, they had not turned it back on the Augmented but used it to escape.

Dane had not seen that as cowardice. He knew one ship would have done nothing against a force as large as Earth, but how was this situation any different? What if Richmond was making the same calculations now and looking for an opportunity to escape because he saw no other option? Considering the Prometheus currently represented half of their warships, Dane didn’t want to think about that.

Yet he couldn’t approve the request, either.

“If we send the Prometheus scouting, we won’t have any defense for the colony. I can’t allow that. Not yet.”

“When?”

Just then, someone knocked at the door.

“Come in,” Dane called, eager to change the subject. He was more than a little surprised to see Bell. Surprised and pleased.

“Lord Bell, please come in. We were just talking about orbital defenses.”

“Oh.” Bell obviously realized the conversation was more heated than simply talking about how to best defend the planet. “We’ve identified a region of space rich with asteroids and one in particular that would be ideal. It’s about two kilometers wide, which is large but still manageable. Not too far from this part of Varuna’s orbit.”

“You think we can capture it?”

“With the three ships we brought from Alpha Centauri, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“But how long will it take to fit something like that with defenses?” Richmond grunted. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“You won’t need to.” Bell brightened for the first time in days. “The people who came here were mostly from the orbital station. They’re well accustomed to converting asteroids into defenses. We’ll need you to build us the missile launchers and railguns, but we can turn it into habitable space and create the necessary foundations to connect docking bays and whatnot to it.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. Richmond, I’ll need you on high alert while these other ships tug this asteroid into place. After we get it armed and are able to use the ships from Alpha Centauri and the Zhemchug for defenses, we can talk about your proposal.”

“Yes, sir.” Richmond saluted before walking out.

Dane didn’t think he would disobey a direct order, but he reminded himself he couldn’t necessarily think of everyone as part of a simple military chain of command. He needed to make sure Richmond wanted to stay and fight. Not an easy task, but one Dane knew he had to accomplish.

CHAPTER FIVE

With a thousand people without a permanent place to live and an entire planet likely to invade at any moment, the concept of relaxation was nonexistent. Everyone worked all the time. They needed living spaces, workstations, and more spaceships. They needed missiles and computer chips. They needed food stores and surveillance systems for not only the entire planet but the entire system. There was no time to watch videos, read, or chat idly.

So Dane felt rather guilty when he still took time to work out. He knew himself well enough to know he had to do it. He had been working out at least five days a week for the last forty-five years. His body craved it, and his mind needed it. If he didn’t work out, his temper grew short, and his attention span vanished to nothing. He didn’t sleep as well, which was equally important, even in these times. Dane fully believed people did their best work when they were at their best physically.

That meant despite the round the clock shifts, he still made sure department heads didn’t double-book people to take away from their sleeping time. Despite the pressures to use every minute, he didn’t want people to succumb to the pressure of skipping meals or cramming their faces with junk food instead of the healthy and nutritious bounty that came from the sea of Varuna. It took time to maintain the human body. Dane had absolutely no doubt their greatest asset, more important than every missile, spaceship, and satellite, was people.

He knew this. He knew people needed to be well-fed and physically fit. Yet when he finished a three-mile run and a weight routine and hit the showers before meeting up with Haley Lopez for dinner, he could not quash the feeling that he should be doing something more.

“Wow. I guess you were hungry?” Lopez asked.

“Huh?” Dane shoveled another forkful of kelp salad into his mouth. They were eating in his office instead of the cafeteria. That way, when he finished, he could get right back to work.

“Oh, nothing.” Haley smiled, then daintily speared a slice of an underwater sponge-like creature that tasted a lot like mushrooms. Dane didn’t particularly care for it, but it was a rich source of protein, so he had already eaten all his to better fuel his body.

“If you could be an animal, would you be a snake?” Haley mused.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Dane asked around another mouthful of food.

“Snakes can unhinge their jaws and swallow their meals whole. That seems like it might appeal to you.”

Dane spluttered around a mouthful of kelp salad, nearly spraying it all over his spartan office. “Sorry. It just feels like every minute of the day has to be accounted for. I already spent a half-hour working out, so I guess I was trying to make up for lost time.”

“Ah. Guilt. That makes sense. Still, I bet you would feel pretty crappy if you choked to death on your salad and left us without effective leadership.”

Dane snorted again, nearly inhaling some of the kelp. “Hey! You trying to take me out?”

“No, no. Nothing of the sort. Even before you got this job, I knew dating you would mean dating your work. I don’t mind that this is what counts for a date. I’m only concerned that I’m dating a bird.”

“A bird?”

“They swallow most of their food whole because they have a gizzard to grind it. Keep up, Dane. I’m giving you gems here.”

“Sorry.” Dane made sure to chew his next mouthful instead. He knew Haley was right. The more he chewed and masticated his food, the more nutrition he would get from it. Thus, his mind and body would be better prepared for the job at hand.

“Will you chew your food if we talk about work?”

“Yes,” Dane answered without thinking. “Sorry. It’s great being in a relationship with you, really, but it feels like there’s no time to enjoy each other’s company. There’s a million things to do and not enough people to do them.”

“I know how you feel. But maybe I can take something off your plate? Nat has me working on a hundred things, but what’s a hundred more?”

“I know you’re working as hard as anyone, harder, I’m sure. Plus, I know you won’t desert us.”

That gave Haley pause. “Are you worried about someone leaving? I don’t think the Centauri would risk going back home.”

“No, not them. Or not their leadership, anyway. MacTaggart wants to fight, and Bell is too despondent to try something like that on his own.”

“Then who?”

Dane sighed. “It might be nothing, but I’m worried about Richmond.”

“Richmond? But he hates the Augmented more than anyone!”

“I know he does, but he also understands how powerful they are. He came to me earlier today. He thinks we should look for other planets. That we should run.”

To Dane’s surprise, Haley nodded.

Dane wanted to snap out, “How dare you agree with that coward!” He held himself back, keeping his mouth shut until the wave of misplaced emotion rolled by. Haley didn’t deserve his ire. Maybe he ought to take Ginger up on her offer of a chat. “You think their plan has merit?” he asked instead and managed to keep his tone civil.

Or so he thought.

“I know I said to chew your food, but now you’re making me feel bad for that piece of shrimp. Are your teeth all right in there, or did you clench your jaw so tight that you broke one of them?”

“That was a carrot from hydroponics,” Dane pointed out. Rather than being annoyed, he was pleased. It was comforting to know someone on this world understood he was human, with all the messy emotions that came with that. Now that he was governor, still a crazy thought to him, he needed to present himself a certain way in public. Haley had seen right through that. It made him feel like he didn’t have to try, at least with her. “And no, I don’t think we should run. We’d buy ourselves a few years, maybe. Which would be more than enough time for the Augmented to build hundreds of warships. Better we face them now.”

“I mean, yes, I get that. They lost some ships attacking the Centauri, and they only had the one five-ringed laser blaster. If they had more than one of those, we’d be screwed.”

“Right. Which means we need to fight now.”

“I hear what you’re saying, but the thing is, they already have that ringed blaster. If that ship shows up in this solar system and we fail to disable it, we’ll be finished. It might make sense to have an escape plan.”

“But we don’t have enough ships to move all our people in one trip. We literally cannot evacuate. Not anymore. If our warships retreated, they’d be leaving civilians behind. I can’t consider that option. I won’t.”

Haley nodded. “I get that, but maybe Richmond doesn’t. He stole that ship and left Earth behind. From his perspective, the only reason Varuna has not been taken over and forced to join the Augmented is because of him retreating.”

“This is a different situation, though. I guess I worry he still thinks of that ship as his and might take it and flee if he feels there’s no other choice.”

“People make bad decisions when they’re backed into a corner,” Haley agreed. “I guess that’s sort of the problem, right? Like, so long as he’s in command of the Prometheus, he can’t be backed into a corner. He’s going to know he can simply jump away.”

Dane saw what she was getting at. “I don’t think removing him as captain is the solution.”

“Why not?” Haley asked. From her expression, he knew this was exactly where she had been leading the conversation.

“For starters, he’s a good captain. He knows that ship better than anyone, and frankly, he understands the Augmented better than anyone else does, too. I had hoped the Centauri would have a better handle on them, but…” Dane shrugged.

He did not need to tell Haley, of all people, how much the Centauri had underestimated the Augmented. If they had not trusted the sense of patriotism they tried so hard to foster, they might have survived the invasion. But maybe not. The Augmented had a ship capable of blasting orbital platforms to scrap. It crippled the most powerful Centauri ship with a single blow.

They would have to find a way to anticipate and disable that ship. Dane knew the Augmented would prefer to put implants in the population here since that had been a large part of what they had done in the Alpha Centauri system. He also knew they did not value human life the same way he did. If they could not get a foothold on the surface of the planet, Dane did not doubt they would blast them to pieces.

Richmond was one of the few people who might have a plan on how to stop them.

“I’m worried he’s going to see this as a lost cause. That he might try to find another colony or even an empty planet to hide out.”

“Well, that’s what you have to prevent.”

“I know it is. We can’t let him leave.”

“No. Not that. You must prevent him, and others, from seeing this fight as a lost cause. He took crazy risks for Earth. And he went back to help us find out more about the Augmented. Richmond is not a coward, but he needs to be able to hope. He has to see a way out. He must see a future that doesn’t involve a computer chip in his brain. Frankly, that’s what we all need.”

“We have a solution. Carlos has found a way to reverse the Augmentation!”

“And that is why you’re governor! We are facing a force of billions. An entire planet’s manufacturing capabilities. Continents worth of people, but we’ve saved three people from Augmentation, so George Dane thinks we have a shot!”

“Of course we have a shot. We know there’s a cure now.”

“It’s not an ‘of course,’ though. Not even kind of. You’re the one who sees a path forward. All you need to do is share that vision with the rest of us. Starting with Richmond, I guess.”

“I’m not the only person who can inspire us.”

“No. Not the only one. Carlos Alvarez is amazing. Both his work and his attitude, but he needs to be in a lab to get anything done. But for most of us, hell, we’ve been attacked and seen people die in these hallways. We found millions of allies, only to lose them all. We lost our leader to a brain implant. That’s not even considering the murder stars or how bad the nessies were before we figured out how to deal with them. I think it’s worth it, and I think most people feel the same way, but there’s no doubt it’s been hard. Half of our population are refugees who lost not only an entire world but an entire solar system.”

“I don’t know if I’m the man for that job,” Dane admitted.

Haley put her hand on top of his. “You may not be sure, but I am. You’re the best this planet has to offer, and I mean that literally. There’s only like two thousand people here. I’ve met pretty much all of them.”

Dane snorted. He found Haley’s relentless sense of humor inspiring. He supposed if she could keep cutting jokes against hopeless odds, he could give a speech or two and shake a couple of hands.

“I don’t know if I’m the man for the job, but I’m the man in the chair, so I’ll make the best of it.”

“There we go! There’s the man who runs miles every day for no good reason!”

Dane decided to ignore that. “Everyone needs to know that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”

“And what’s the right thing to do, according to George Dane?”

Dane grinned. That was easy. “We get ready for the fight of our lives. We get every person we have, all two thousand of them, building weapons, caching food, and reinforcing paneling. We go all-out in defending the hell out of this planet, and we don’t let them so much as dip a toe in this water without taking heavy fire.

“People need to work all day, every day, on what’s important. We need to get those refugees integrated quickly and get their hands working. If we keep them busy, their minds won’t wander so much. Plus, we’re going to need every bullet we can get. Every drop of cure. Every kelp burger.”

“And you were doing so well.” Haley laughed. “What about me? If you want all hands busy, what can I do for you?”

“You could make me one of those asteroid leviathan ships like Alpha Centauri attacked Earth with,” Dane joked.

“We did get some preliminary scans of some of the asteroids. Some of them are nearly pure iron.”

“Oh, yeah? Now that I’m governor, I only have to snap my fingers, and you’ll make it so?”

Haley laughed, but she pulled her hand away from Dane’s so she could look at her tablet. Dane belatedly realized she might have meant something else when she mentioned her busy hands.

“You’re not wrong that we need a bigger ship,” she agreed. “Something that could withstand missile fire. I realize the ring ship they had disabled the asteroid ship, but maybe we could reconfigure an asteroid somehow and make it more consistent.”

“Reconfigure an asteroid? It can’t be that simple.”

“If we could melt one somehow, we could sort out the various elements using centrifugal power. What if we could make an iron shell? It could be meters thick! Tens of meters! That could withstand missiles, anyway. No way of knowing about their big ring laser, but if we could make something to stand against their warships…”

“I thought this was supposed to be a date?” Dane joked.

“You can’t go and flirt with a girl about repurposing an asteroid into a war machine and leave it at that! That’s the worst kind of tease!”

“So, no idle hands, then?”

“No. No idle hands. I’ll get to work right away.”

“Well, maybe not right away…”

CHAPTER SIX

Personally, Commander Lester Nelson did not like warp drive.

However, feelings mattered to neither military officers nor the Augmented.

Would he have liked to spend less time under warp?

Of course.

Would he have liked to be back on Earth instead of inside this tiny stealth craft packed with ten of Earth’s most skilled soldiers?

Obviously.

Would he have liked to eat pineapple pizza and chocolate ice cream every day of his life and have his own personal live-in chef who could make him French fries whenever he wanted?

Who wouldn’t?

Yet none of that was possible. Not so long as there were still unimproved, hostile humans out there.

The military of the Augmented were all in agreement on this. The unimproved were a danger. The sooner their consciousness was added to the global pool of ten billion, the better. There were microvariations in opinion, of course. Some of them thought it would simply be better to nuke the entire planet of Varuna and thus squash this rebellion.

Others, Nelson among them, considered that an unnecessary expenditure of life. It wasn’t so much the thousand souls who called this world home Nelson cared about. It was the planet itself. The Augmented had taken over every corner of Earth, but there was an entire universe out there. No telling how many of these rat nests were tucked away in some wayward corner.

Some would resist. Most of them, judging by the history of the unimproved when they encountered the Augmented. Others would attack. That made taking a planet like Varuna essential. They could build it up as a military outpost and use it to stage attacks on other errant colonies. It was well known as colonies went, being the first one, so they probably couldn’t use it as a secret base. Still, it would be useful to have more planets than Earth and the other less-than-habitable ones in their own solar system. It made sense to capture Varuna.

Perhaps Nelson should not have argued his point so fiercely. He could have gone along with the majority of military leadership and started their conquest here with an overwhelming show of force. That time might still come.

However, Nelson was not one to shirk his independence and the responsibilities that came along with it. The vast majority of Earth’s people had only the smallest sliver of independence. They thought they could decide what they wanted for lunch or what video they would watch after dinner, but those decisions were made based on supply chains and public sentiment for future works. Control was best when it worked subtly. Nelson understood that. He also understood that he had more free will than most out of an obligation to use it.

So when leadership had debated about what to do, Nelson had recommended an infiltration. Others had argued vociferously against it being a waste of resources. He replied that it was only one ship. One ship and twelve soldiers, including himself. The Augmented could easily afford it, even if it turned out to be a total loss.

Someone in leadership had pointed out that the unimproved capturing another ship capable of warp represented a substantial increase in their capabilities. Current estimates said they only had four ships capable of warp, three of which were Centauri craft. Nelson had been quick to suggest using a shuttle instead. It would be easier to waterproof, and a larger ship with a warp drive could simply drop it into the solar system and quickly leave.

He had explained how he and a small team could potentially Augment the entire colony before a larger war effort arrived, similar to what they had done on Alpha Central. No one had argued against the utility of this.

The Alpha Centauri mission was a huge success. They might have still been stuck in a standoff with Alpha Central, but thanks to a sleeper cell convincing some of the locals to release nanites into the water, the capital planet had fallen along with the rest of the system. Instead of cleaning up wreckage, the Augmented were repurposing craft. The only problem had been that most of the warships were already airborne when the nanites were released.

Think how much more efficient the operation would have been if we’d gotten to the command structure sooner, Nelson had argued.

And he had won.

There hadn’t been any more debates. The cost versus reward ratio of his mission had been enormous. It made no sense not to do it.

Which was why Nelson was now crammed into a shuttle with eleven of the finest soldiers Earth had ever produced.

“Commander Nelson, we are a go to drop from warp. Your team will have sixty seconds to get clear before we warp back out. Acknowledge.”

“I acknowledge. Ahmad, check the nanites.”

“Nanites are go, sir. We have enough here for ten thousand.”

“This is Commander Nelson. The nanites are loaded, and we’re ready.”

“Dropping from warp now.”

The second the larger craft dropped, Nelson was already piloting the shuttle out of the cargo hold. The doors opened, and they were in outer space, with nothing around except Teegarden’s star. The scout ship positioned here had decent readings of the solar system and had found a few dead spots where the locals’ monitoring equipment had not gotten eyes-on yet. One of them was on the opposite side of the star from the planet. They had to come in close, but at that point in the planning, Nelson was too committed to consider backing out, dangers be damned.

“We are clear to burn. Acknowledge.”

“You’re clear. May the Algorithm guide you, Commander Nelson.”

“You monkeys hold on.” Nelson hit the shuttle’s engines as hard as he could.

His head pounded as the blood rushed to the back of his body. He was squashed flat along with his soldiers as they increased in speed. As the pressure against his eyes blurred his vision, he tried to check their counter.

They needed to get far enough away from the larger ship that when it warped, they wouldn’t be caught in the energy burst and fried. Furthermore, a ship couldn’t monitor its own energy wave, as it only happened after the ship was gone. If Nelson messed this up, they’d be dead…and no one would know about it.

On top of that, he needed to get the shuttle moving as fast as it possibly could before they left the “shadow” of the star. They would only be able to use minimal power once they were out in the open. By then, they needed to be going so fast that all they needed was to slow down.

For all this to work, they also had to get close enough to the star to use its gravity as a slingshot to shoot them closer to Varuna.

All this had been Nelson’s idea.

Any mistake now and they’d either be fried by their own ship, burned up in the sun, or seen coming a long way off and subsequently blasted to bits.

It would all be worth it after they got those nanites inside the rats on this planet. They wouldn’t be able to release them in the ocean, of course. It was too big, plus they assumed the salt content was different than the oceans of Earth and therefore different from human blood. The nanites likely wouldn’t survive it, and even if they could, they were not particularly good swimmers. They mostly used the pumping motion of the human circulatory system to get around. Navigating an ocean would be too much.

Which meant not only did Nelson and his team need to get to the planet, but they also needed to get to the base. At that point, they would start to improvise.

Until then, they were all trapped in here with nothing to do but think about the mission ahead.

Sixty seconds later, Nelson killed the thrusters on the shuttle. He knew they were going as fast as they had been before, but now that they were no longer accelerating, it felt like they were still.

“All right, Ahmad, you’ve got the tiller. The rest of you, let’s run some scenarios. We’re only going to have one shot at this. Let’s not get caught with our panties down.”

Ahmad squeezed past Nelson and took the controls, and Nelson slithered back into the cramped confines with the remaining crew. They would be in here for two weeks. Living cheek-to-cheek, marinating in the stink of each other’s bodies with no room to think.

Except they were Augmented.

Nelson closed his eyes and activated the implant program that let him shut off his sensory awareness. Instead of feeling like he was trapped inside the shuttle, he felt like he had splashed down on Varuna. His soldiers had all done the same thing and were treading water around him.

“All right, round one. Last one to the base has to run the next round with a simulated malfunction.”

His soldiers didn’t need to be told twice. They dove under the surface of the virtual sea and started their first drill on taking over this planet.

Nelson would bring the light of the Augmented to the misguided fools of this world. He’d gift them with the same virtual reality simulations he and his team used, as well as every other ability the implant gave the Augmented.

Whether they wanted it or not.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Dane had doubts about nearly every decision he made over the next week, but one thing he never found any reason to question was his commitment to trust people above all else. Calling the Centauri refugees already felt inaccurate. When Dane considered the word refugee, he thought of people fleeing, of hunger, of the displaced and desperate, never able to find their way home.

He knew this was unfair and colored largely by his experience with the wasteland that was Earth after the war. Back then, it seemed like everyone was a refugee. People were either fleeing floods or droughts, extreme heatwaves, or devastating blizzards. None of the governments of Earth had been able to effectively put the people who arrived at their borders to work any more than they had been able to deal with all the skilled workers who’d left.

The refugee crisis had been, in a word, messy. Too much bureaucracy, too much emphasis on passports, legal documents, and credentials that ultimately didn’t have a damn thing to do with what people were actually capable of.

Things were simpler here. Painfully simple, maybe. On Earth, there had been a thousand industries. Agriculture. Manufacturing. Tech Research. Medicine. Not to mention all the people still obsessed with money as the planet’s ecological and political stability had crumbled.

On Varuna, there was none of that. Everyone understood what needed to be done. Both populations, the people of Varuna and the refugees from Alpha Centauri, had lived through the exact same threat. They knew their survival depended not on the efficient utilization of resources, medical breakthroughs, or agricultural harvests. It depended solely on their ability to stop the Augmented from putting nanites into their brains.

This was a complicated task, of course. There were two thousand mouths to be fed, so it was not as if they could simply manufacture weapons all day. The fish analogs of this world needed catching, processing, and cooking. The shrimp analogs needed to be captured and removed from their shells. Kelp needed to be planted and harvested. The hydroponics needed tweaking. But food was simple enough to find when only two thousand people lived on an entire planet.

They were scaling up their aquaculture, but in the meantime, there were plenty of fish and edible plants to forage. Though nearly everyone preferred the imported kelp varieties from Earth, no one complained about the slightly soapy flavor and extra-chewy texture of the indigenous flora for once.

Medicine was part of their defenses as well, and as days turned into weeks, Carlos Alvarez attacked the issue of the nanites from every angle. Dane had thought that was solved and they would be able to beat the Augmented at their own game.

Still, Alvarez and about a dozen other people had been quick to point out that even if all two thousand of them were armed with weaponized implants, they would have to stick ten billion arms. It didn’t take a mathematician to see they needed a more elegant solution, though both Dane and Alvarez agreed that a team should be working every hour of the long Varuna day to manufacture as many doses of the implant-destroying nanites as possible.

The Centauri were essential to that operation. The nanites were nothing more than a slightly modified version of the ones they used for mending wounds and curing disease, after all. Many of them had worked on the orbital platform, and some had even manufactured the nanites on-site. Turned out that building things in space was not easy work, and injuries occurred often enough to always need a fresh supply of medical nanites on hand.

However, the Centauri truly excelled in the “building things in space” category.

Dane had never thought he’d see engineers more skilled than Nat Granger. He wasn’t sure if any of the Alpha Centauri folks were more brilliant than Nat, but they were certainly more familiar with working in a microgravity environment, in orbit above a planet.

They understood what tools would be needed to repurpose their captured asteroid. Hell, they were so damn good at their job that when Dane allowed the three ships to go out and capture the targeted asteroid, they sent two toward Varuna instead of one. Dane had been about to reprimand them for that. Even if it used fewer resources to get two at once than making two separate trips, it still used more than only getting one. However, he’d gotten a message from Haley that she had plans for the second one.

Dane didn’t argue. He had watched as one of the asteroids slid into orbit above their volcano base, a sort of captured moon, while the other had floated past and ended up somewhere between Varuna and the star in the center of the solar system.

He’d let that one slip from his mind for the last few days. His attention was on the asteroid that would serve as the base for a major planetary defense station.

The Centauri had been essential in getting the project moving. The first thing they did was drill deep holes into the center of the asteroid and attach maneuvering jets to them so they could control the asteroid’s spin in all three planes of motion, as well as move it closer or farther from the planet. It was massive, and thus any adjustments took a long time, but this didn’t bother the Centauri. Even MacTaggart, who was accustomed to zipping around in a warship, accepted the slow rate of change of the asteroids’ movement as simply part of the process.

“The thing is, once it’s where we want it and spinning the way we like, it’ll keep doing that. Ya ken?”

Dane supposed he understood. In theory, anyway. He was thankful for the way the Centauri felt it in their bones.

Really, the project had been a boon for the people of Centauri in many ways. For starters, they were good at it, so it gave them somewhere to use their skills to maximum effect. Plus, it provided a living space for many of them. They had not hollowed out the asteroid yet. Bell had explained it was a time-consuming process that could take weeks to finish properly, though they weren’t trying for “proper” at this point.

Instead, they had created habitable domes on the surface of the asteroid, similar to the domes beneath the Varuna sea that the Russians had brought from Earth. The ones the Centauri affixed to the asteroid were much smaller than the Russian domes since they had to be manufactured locally. Yet what they lacked in size, they made up for in numbers. Domes peppered the asteroid’s surface as if it had suffered burns, and each of the little domes was a blister.

The Centauri were more than comfortable living in these tiny domes, as most of them had lived in similar conditions when they had worked on their own platform. They had solved the housing issue as well as the labor one.

Better yet, the Centauri understood the end goal. Though maybe it would be fairer to give that credit to Bell. He threw himself into the work, planning the orbital defense station with every waking minute of his day. Not only did he design what it would eventually look like, but he planned the various stages of labor. He knew time was tight, so they couldn’t build a habitat for people in a spot that would eventually house a missile launcher or railgun, for example.

Though the project was still bare-bones, mostly maneuvering thrusters and places for people to live and move about, Dane started to see the shape of the final structure through omission. That was, he saw where they were not building and thus where the largest emplacements of weapons and the station’s wings would attach.

Bell made all that possible. Dane was thankful the man was so devoted, though he wondered about his son. Ron Bell rarely spoke of Liam, and Dane had noticed the two of them didn’t even speak at meals. Dane wondered if Ron regretted saving his son from being implanted or if he blamed him for what had happened to the planet. He wished he had the emotional library to talk to Bell about it, but he didn’t. Instead, he made sure Bell met with Ginger at least every couple of days. It felt like a copout, but sometimes leaders needed to delegate. Besides, they needed this platform to work, and Bell had the brains for the job.

“The most important thing is to make sure it’s maneuverable,” Bell expressed.

Dane, MacTaggart, and Bell were currently in the command center of the asteroid. It was a pocket they had created under the surface. It would eventually be used to store munitions since it was so close to the surface. For now, it would serve as their command center.

“Ye’ll never be able to make it fast enough to avoid being hit by a missile!” MacTaggart complained. He was recovering much better than Bell, happy to be doing what he did best—keeping a planet safe with a warship.

“Of course not, but if we get hit hard enough, the orbit could decay, and this thing could crash to the planet below us. We need to be able to steer it away from Homebase and ideally keep it from crashing down on the planet.”

“The last platform couldn’t do any such thing!”

“And look what happened there,” Bell recalled.

Dane did not want to point out that the last platform had not crashed but had been taken over. Bell’s main point was valid.

“I can see why we want this thing to be as maneuverable as possible. We’re not going to outgun the Augmented. But we need to be able to outfly them. Being able to use an asteroid for cover and as a place to stage our fighters and refuel is more important.”

“I still think a couple of cannons will keep the Augmented at bay.”

“We’ll have them,” Dane stated. “How long until you finish the maneuvering system?”

“At this pace? A week,” Bell replied.

“We can’t speed that up? I have people manufacturing missiles and railguns for this station. But it’s a waste of time if we don’t get them in place.” The hard part about being a leader was that everything was important. Yes, Dane saw why Bell was prioritizing the station’s mobility, but he also saw where MacTaggart was coming from. If they didn’t get guns on here soon, the station would simply be a big, rocky target.

“I can try, but we’re already skipping quality control on a lot of this work. If we go any faster, there’s going to be accidents.”

“I understand, but we don’t have time to make it perfect. We need it done.”

If Dane was a superstitious person, he would have regretted those words because no sooner did he utter them than the command center radio blared.

“We have a code red! We lost control of a scaffold and have two injured mechanics!”

“Location?” Bell inquired.

“One man is at surface station six, but the other got caught on the wrong end of the scaffold. He’s headed for a hot reentry!”

Dane swallowed biting words about what he’d said mere moments ago. He was a pilot above all, so he grabbed the helmet to his envirosuit and headed for the shuttle he had flown up in.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MacTaggart helped Dane through the airlock but stayed behind in the control center to help coordinate the injured people. Unlike Alpha Central, they didn’t have a bank of nanites they could use to heal their injured. Dane had to get them down to the surface if they were going to have a shot at survival. He had to make that happen. Every tech up here was absolutely vital to getting the job done. Dane should not have pushed them so hard. He should not have…

He pushed the doubts from his mind as he climbed out onto the surface of the asteroid. It was far too small for there to be a substantial gravity field. One misstep and Dane would push himself out into space, which would then necessitate another rescue and possibly doom the falling man. Despite being in a hurry, he still clipped the cable hanging from his belt to another cable that ran along the surface of the asteroid toward the landing area. They really needed to build a proper bay for the ships, but it was a lot of work and would slow down production if everyone had to go in and out all the time. So they hadn’t messed with all that yet.

Dane pulled himself toward the shuttle using a series of handholds. He reached the landing field where magnetic clamps anchored the ships to steel strips, then climbed into the bulky shuttle. He would have preferred to use one of the more maneuverable fighters, but he had to snag two people. Maybe more, depending on the extent of the damages. A fighter could only fit one.

He wished Anderson were still around. He had been better with the shuttles than Dane had thought possible. As it was, Dane felt like a sixteen-year-old driving a truck for the first time after learning how to drive in a compact. The shuttle didn’t have rearview mirrors, but if it did, he felt certain he would have clipped them off when he tried to lift from his position among the other ships.

“Do I have clearance to leave, MacTaggart?”

The shuttle wasn’t inside an actual bay but magnetically docked to the asteroid’s surface. That did not mean there was no risk of collision. If another shuttle or a fighter practicing drills came by, the collision would make everything worse.

“You’re clear! No one else was in the air, so we need you out to him as soon as possible!”

Dane did not need to be told twice. He lifted off the asteroid, forcing his brain not to reckon with how his perspective shifted. At first, he seemed to be on the “surface” of something. As if a big rock was under his feet, and though it wasn’t big enough to keep him stuck there with gravity, it felt like it could. However, after he lifted off and it shrank beneath him, it was clear how tiny the asteroid was. Compared to a planet, at least.

"Sending suit vitals to you now. They should appear on your screen.”

Two motes flashed onto the built-in display of the screen. However, Dane cursed at the information. One man was hurt and on the surface of the asteroid, while the other seemed uninjured based on his vitals, but he was the one floating toward the surface. That meant Dane couldn’t really leave either of them behind.

“I’m heading for the man pinned on the asteroid.”

“I was going to advise the same. His vitals are dropping. His suit must be breached,” MacTaggart replied.

“Are there other engineers there?”

“One second…patching them through.”

“Merl! Jesus, Merl, are you all right?” a voice Dane didn’t know yelled over the radio.

“I’m all right, Tom. Not hurt. Just floating.”

The bitter irony of it was that despite Tom’s concern, he was the one in more immediate danger. His pulse was increasing, and his blood pressure was dropping. He was wounded somewhere.

“You’re okay, Tom?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine. I got hit in the belly when that scaffold went spinning, but I’m still clipped into the asteroid. It’s cold, though. Getting colder.”

Dane couldn’t take any more.

“Merl, Tom, this is Governor Dane. I’m coming in with a shuttle. I’m going to get you both down to the planet.”

“Oh, thank God! You’ve got to save Merl!” Tom cried.

“I will. But first, I’m coming for you, Tom.”

“I think… I think I can see you,” Tom muttered, his voice weaker.

“Any engineers in the area, I need that scaffolding removed from him.”

Dane saw Tom now, pinned beneath a piece of scaffolding. Based on the scorch marks, something had exploded and made the scaffolding rotate away from the blast. Likely a fuel source. The heavy metal pinned Tom and snagged on something instead of floating away. Two engineers shuffled over toward it, using a hammer and spikes to anchor themselves to the asteroid. This specific section didn’t have any of the guide cables installed yet.

Fortunately, the engineers were more than competent and obviously had experience with this kind of thing. They moved quickly, only dropping a new spike into the asteroid’s surface when their tether got far enough to float them up and away. By the time Dane was in position, they were too. One of them went to the “top” of the scaffolding and untangled it from a cable. Then Dane had a moment of incredulity as one of them lifted the metal scaffolding up and off Merl, then clear above their head. It didn’t look possible, but then it would not have been on the planet’s surface. Up here, there was hardly any pull from gravity.

The engineer heaved the scaffolding off his shoulders, and it went up and into space. Maybe someone would snag it before it entered Varuna’s atmosphere and burned up, maybe not. Dane didn’t care, not right now. Time was running out for Tom, who had completely stopped talking.

Dane lowered the shuttle and touched down on the surface of the asteroid. It would have been a decent enough landing on a planet, but here, his lack of finesse made the shuttle bounce back off the surface.

“Goddamn it, Anderson,” Dane muttered. Anderson had died a hero. Without his sacrifice, there was no way of knowing if Varuna would have survived the invasion from the Augmented. But damn it, Dane needed his skills with the clunky shuttle at this moment.

The pair of engineers were there to help. They made it over to Tom and lifted him off the ground into the open door of the shuttle.

“Get some pressure on that wound and get his suit sealed up. We’re going to have to open those doors again.”

Dane ordered, and the two engineers obeyed. There was a medical kit in the shuttle, and no one was allowed to work in these conditions without at least having learned the fundamentals of first aid. Dane glanced back once, the soldier in him unable to resist, and saw they had already pressed a good few fistfuls of gauze against Tom’s middle and were now patching the hole in his suit.

“Let me know when you’re strapped in,” Dane ordered. “Make sure to get Tom secured as well.”

Dane felt the urgency of Merl floating out there in space. He wanted to race over and save him, but really, Tom needed those few seconds of care more than Merl did. The computer had already traced Merl’s trajectory. He had six minutes before he’d start to accelerate from the pull of the planet’s gravity.

Dane could get him before then. He had no idea about Tom. The suits had biometric monitoring, but they couldn’t say what was wrong with him. Only that his vitals were not what they were supposed to be for some reason. He needed to get him to a doctor fast.

“We’re all strapped in back here!” one of the engineers reported.

Dane didn’t have to ask twice. He punched the acceleration and shot out toward Merl. Previously, he had not known a spacecraft’s engine could rattle like an old, poorly maintained minivan. Though when his seat started to shake, and a sound like a hammer tapping an anvil came from the engine, Dane knew he was pushing this clunky ship to its limits. That was fine. He’d gotten the burst of acceleration he needed. Now he needed to match speeds perfectly.

One of the constant contradictions of connecting with a moving object in space was that only relative speed mattered. When there was no ground for perspective, raw speed didn’t matter. You could be motionless or traveling five thousand meters per second. In space, there was no difference. Your body couldn’t tell. Being still wasn’t any safer than going fast, either. If you were completely still inside a mess of asteroids zipping past at a high velocity relative to yours, they’d puncture you without issue. However, if you were matching their speed, they wouldn’t do a damn thing.

Dane didn’t really care how fast he was going right now. He only needed to match the speed of the astronaut.

His initial burst of speed threw him and his three passengers against their seats, but that was the easy part of the operation. Now that Dane was moving faster than the floating engineer, his job was to carefully slow down until he was traveling barely faster than Merl. If he went too slow, he’d never catch up. Too fast, and he might zip by. That would be a death sentence for Merl, as Dane had already chewed up some of that six-minute window and would not have time to turn around and get back in position. He also might bump Merl and transfer some of the bulky ship’s momentum to the tiny astronaut. That would both injure Merl and send him tumbling away from Dane.

Which meant despite every fiber of Dane’s being, every muscle and nerve that had flown combat in spaceships, telling him to go faster, he tried to keep it steady.

“How’s Tom?” he asked the pair of engineers.

“He’s stable, sir, but he’s pale. We need to get him medical help.”

“That’s the plan. We’re about thirty seconds out from his buddy, though. Can one of you unbuckle and get ready to grab him?”

“No problem.” One of the engineers got up, then found a safety tether and connected it to his suit.

“I’m opening the doors.”

“Yes, sir,” the engineer acknowledged.

The shuttle sucked all the air from the bay so it could open to space without losing any precious oxygen. When the doors opened, Dane saw Tom’s pulse quicken and heard the man mutter, “So cold.”

Dane gritted his teeth. He needed to get them both to safety.

“I see him,” the engineer reported.

“Me too. Angling over now,” Dane replied.

“Sir, I can get him with a jump.”

“Not necessary. I can get us close enough.”

“Sir, I’ve done this before. A couple of times. Have you?”

Dane had. Of course he had. He had rescued more than a dozen pilots from the cold emptiness of space. But never in a shuttle as clunky as this one. He cursed and gripped the controls harder.

“You got one jump. Make it count.”

“Yes, sir.” The engineer unraveled the cable he was attached to so he wouldn’t run out of lead at an inopportune moment.

And before Dane could give an order, he jumped.

Dane watched as the man approached the floating Merl. They were extremely close to the same speed now, and the engineer’s jump was enough to send him flying out in front of the shuttle. He stretched out both arms and legs, turning himself into a flying star. Merl did the same and reached for the solar system’s biggest hug.

The engineer’s approach was off. Even without the help of a targeting system, Dane could tell they were going to miss. Their torsos would pass, and they wouldn’t be able to reel Merl in. Dane would have to pull the engineer himself, then come back for Merl, but there wouldn’t be time. This was all going to be for nothing. Dane could not believe it…he had failed.

Or so he thought until the engineer stretched at the last second, and his fingertips grabbed Merl’s fingers! Obviously, the two men had enough experience to know how important this was. Their fingers gripped each other with strength Dane did not think he possessed, then they pulled each other into a big hug.

Dane hit the controls to reel in the cable, and the two men were coming for him.

They had done it!

The other engineer unbuckled and helped the pair of them inside the shuttle.

“All strapped in?” Dane asked. The second he got an affirmative, he was off, blasting through the atmosphere, radioing for medical staff to meet him on the platform, praying it wasn’t too late.

CHAPTER NINE

They were just in time. Thorson had received his message and waited on the platform with a pint of blood. He got that into Tom and stabilized him enough to bring him down below and to surgery.

Dane was a hero.

But he didn’t feel like it this time.

Yes, Merl would live instead of being burned up in the atmosphere because of Dane. And yes, Tom was getting worked on by the best surgeon on the planet because of Dane’s fast acting and piloting skills.

Still, he was also the only reason either of them was in that position.

He had ordered everyone, the whole damn colony, to work as much and as fast as they could. He had mandated the minimum rest periods, but he had not mandated that shift leaders check in or go above and beyond on safety protocols. He hadn’t believed they had time. He felt the pressure of two thousand lives on his shoulders. At the end of the day, their chances of survival against the Augmented would depend on how many bolts got tightened and steel sheets got welded.

Except the Augmented weren’t here.

There was no sign of them.

Sure, there were spots in the solar system their satellites could not see.

But there was no invasion.

No bombs coming for them.

There wasn’t even an indication any Augmented were in the system.

Dane felt certain an attack was coming, but were his feelings worth people getting hurt?

He knew they needed to be prepared, but at the same time, how ready could they possibly be? There were billions of Augmented. Likely millions of soldiers. They had more ships, more numbers, and one ship big enough to destroy an orbital platform with a single shot. How much could Dane really do against something like that? Even if they could find a way to stop the Augmented forces, what could they hope to accomplish besides delay the inevitable?

Dane reached his office and found Haley there waiting for him.

“I figured you’d come here after you finished a workout. Congrats on saving those guys!”

“Am I that predictable?”

Haley frowned at Dane’s lack of gratitude for the kind wishes. Then she shrugged. “I like a man who has a routine.”

“I wish we had a routine. Everything feels so breakneck. I’m worried I’m pushing everyone too hard.”

“Is that why you look like the two people you saved actually died?”

“They could have died! If I was only seconds later, one of them could have bled out.”

“But you weren’t a few seconds later because you’re George Dane. War hero.”

“They were only in that situation because I’ve been pushing everyone.”

“You’ve told us all to make sure we’re getting enough sleep and food. Plus, it’s clear you value exercise. I don’t think you need to blame yourself.”

“But I’m in charge. If this all goes belly-up, that’s on me. That’s the situation right now. Whether I like it or not.”

“Dane, you saved them. You did a good thing today.”

“I guess…” Dane shook his head. The strength drained from his shoulders as he slumped back in his chair. “I keep thinking maybe I made the wrong choice.”

“To save them?”

“No! Of course not. I meant the decision to stay. Maybe Lev and Richmond were right. If we used our resources to find another planet, maybe we’d have one by now. Maybe we could have already started the migration over there.”

“Yeah. And maybe we’d find one with benevolent aliens who can give us superpowers. Maybe we could find an entire planet made of cheese!”

“Are you making fun of me?” Dane asked.

Haley smiled, though he saw the apology in her eyes. “No. Not trying to. Just teasing to help lighten your mood. I’m saying you could have chosen to evacuate, but you didn’t. You chose to stay and fight.”

“But what if I chose wrong?”

“Maybe you did. I don’t know. What matters is that you chose. You don’t honestly think if we all picked up and moved to another planet, it would be easy after we got there, do you? This planet claimed a lot of lives before we understood the ecology. It will probably claim more over the years. Many more. I can’t imagine finding a planet that’s any easier than this.”

“I suppose it would have had its own challenges.”

“Precisely. And it’s not like leaving would have eliminated the threat, either. The Augmented would have kept looking for us. Maybe it would have bought us a few years. Maybe ten. Maybe fifty! But maybe not. Maybe they would have gotten lucky and found us again within a year. Either way, we would have been living with that threat for our entire lives. And if we somehow did survive, I can guarantee our kids wouldn’t believe us, and they’d get walloped.”

“I thought you were trying to cheer me up.”

Haley snorted. “That’s fair. I didn’t mean to bum you out. I’m only saying I stand by your decision to stay here and fight. It might not turn out to be the right decision, but the way I see it, it’s the only one. We can’t win unless we fight back, right?”

Dane nodded. At the end of the day, it always came back to this for him. They couldn’t beat the Augmented by building more ships or more missiles or a more advanced orbital platform. The only way to beat the Augmented was to understand what made them Augmented and strike there.

“Carlos’ breakthrough could change this war. I know there are issues with manufacturing enough of it and getting it into ten billion people, but it’s a different fight now that we have it. I believe that. I feel like I have to believe it.”

“That’s why we all want to follow you as a leader. We know you have a plan, and you’ll do the right thing, even when it seems hard.”

Dane nodded. “It still feels like we’re beating our heads against the wall for nothing, though. We’re so outgunned. Even if we get the platform finished, it’s going to be a hard fight.”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Then how can you stay so upbeat?”

“Because my boyfriend gave me permission to commandeer an asteroid.” Haley passed her tablet to Dane.

“What am I looking at?” Dane asked. It looked like an asteroid, but part of it was glowing cherry red.

“That’s an asteroid. A mostly iron one.”

“And it’s…glowing?”

Haley nodded proudly. “One of the few manufacturing systems still on the Cosmos is the machine for making panels of glass. Well, more like the material we all call glass. The stuff for windows on spaceships and the covering for solar panels. I put it to work making great big mirrors.”

“Mirrors?”

“To focus the heat.”

“I feel like you’ve skipped a step. Or seven.”

“You said you wanted an asteroid ship to fight against the Augmented.”

“As a joke!”

“All the best jokes are based in reality. I guess you could say I’m trying to turn you into a better comedian.”

“What do mirrors have to do with an asteroid?”

“They’re gathering sunlight and bouncing it back at the asteroid. You can’t see them in this shot, but that’s why the asteroid is glowing red. Sunlight. Concentrated sunlight. Really concentrated sunlight, actually, because the sun isn’t that bright, so we had to get them close.”

“And you’re doing this to…heat it.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Glad you asked! After you told me this ‘joke’ about a bigger and better war machine, I went and talked to some of the engineers from Alpha Centauri.”

“So they told you to make some mirrors?”

“No way. I’m taking full credit for that. They did say their asteroid ship had a weakness. Obviously, right? We saw a hole punched in it. They said the Augmented probably found a firing solution after scanning the asteroid. If there was a way to make it more pure, it might be able to withstand a shot from their big gun. Maybe even multiple shots.”

“Enter the big mirrors.”

“Right! So we’re using the big mirrors to heat up the asteroid until it melts. At that point, it should turn into a perfect sphere, or pretty damn close to one anyway. It already has a light spin, so between spin and gravity, the denser materials should sink, while the lighter materials float to the surface. That will leave us with a massive but crude sphere of iron.”

“And why do we want a massive but crude sphere of iron?”

“Because we can hollow it out and make a huge iron battleship of doom! We haven’t figured out the best way to hollow out the center yet, but we’re running various models. Depending on the size and how efficient the entire process is, we could end up with massively thick iron walls. Like maybe a hundred meters thick! Even if we can’t get the thing into a fully functioning spaceship by then, we could crash it into anything they bring to our solar system. You can’t design anything to resist that kind of force. You simply can’t.”

Dane was smiling now. Here he was, worried that he was pushing people too hard, and Haley had a team of engineers repurpose an entire asteroid? It was wild! It was daring! It was exactly what they needed and a reminder that he was not alone in this. He might be in charge, but that did not negate the two thousand brilliant minds all doing their damnedest to come up with every advantage they could.

“I did have a question for you, though,” Haley added.

“What’s that?”

“Can I have the Cosmos? Pretty please?”

“What do you need a ship like that for?” Dane asked, though he already had an idea.

“Well, it has a big old powerful nuclear engine. If I could use it, I might actually be able to get my iron death sphere moving.”

Now Dane was laughing. “You are melting an asteroid, and you want to use our old ship to drive it around like the world’s biggest bowling ball?”

“The solar system’s biggest bowling ball, but yes. That’s the general idea.”

“Sure! Why not? We’ll need to strip some of its systems, but yeah, you can use it to make this sphere of yours.”

“Yay!” Haley beamed. Dane did not think he’d ever seen someone so maniacal appear so happy.

“I have to admit I’m concerned for your mental well-being. This is some next-level supervillain stuff.”

“Pah. Those who fight with monsters need to make sure they kick the monster’s ass.”

“Is that how the quote goes?”

“I’m paraphrasing.”

“Well, I like it. I want to know when you get it into a sphere shape, but please proceed. If we had something like that…well, I don’t think they’re going to expect it.”

“That’s the beauty of a giant ball of iron. Even if they do expect it, what can you do about it? It’s a giant freaking ball of iron. It will take the energy of a sun to even melt it.”

“Okay. Please go and harvest the sunbeams for your death asteroid, with my blessing.”

Haley gave her best maniacal laugh. She was quite good at it.

CHAPTER TEN

Another week passed without an invading force arriving at their doorstep. Dane didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, he was starting to wonder why the Augmented had not hit them yet. Could the Centauri have done more damage to the invading Augmented than Dane had realized? Perhaps they had expended all their resources and were simply taking the time to replenish their supplies of missiles and ammunition. Maybe they were working on some other massive ship, even more powerful than the last one they had seen.

Dane doubted that. Far more likely, they were simply recharging the ship’s proverbial battery. He had no idea what sort of fuel would be needed to make the beam weapon they had seen, but he imagined whatever it was, it would not be easy or cheap to make.

He wasn’t complaining, though. They needed the time. Every day was another day of welds finished, another cache of food prepared and frozen so they could eat a few more days if they were under siege. Better than that, every day the Augmented didn’t attack was another day the people of Varuna and the Centauri refugees could work together. Every day was another chance for these new residents of the system to feel like they were at home, like they belonged. Like this was their place to work. Already, the teams were integrating well.

The medical team in particular was gelling, no doubt because Carlos had gone to their planet. Thus, they had a few extra weeks of working together. They were devoting as much machinery as they could to manufacturing their cure but continually worked on ways to improve it as well. Dane went by there at least once a day on his runs, and he heard them talking about airborne particles, water reservoirs, or even coating bullets in nanites. Dane knew enough about science to understand many of these ideas would never reach fruition, but he was pleased to know these two peoples coming together was creating a tornado of new ideas.

Though without a doubt, the most exciting thing was the work Haley Lopez was doing on her giant iron sphere.

She and the engineers from Centauri learned more about the process all the time. They continued to produce mirrors and place them around the asteroid, so as the days went on, more and more sunlight could be collected and reflected at the asteroid. They got more sensors on it too, so they were able to anticipate when it would fully melt.

It was quite the thing to see. Dane wished he could have brought it up on a screen so the entire colony could watch, but Lev cautioned him against doing anything that everyone would be able to see. It made sense. If any one person were Augmented, they would immediately share everything they knew with the whole of the enemy. Secrecy was king, so Dane watched the report in his office with Lev, MacTaggart, and no one else.

Haley had positioned multiple satellites and sensors to watch the asteroid so the view cut between angles. The first showed the asteroid as a whole. The entire thing glowed red. It was being heated rather evenly, thanks to its spin. Still, the equator of the lumpy asteroid glowed the brightest. Already, parts of it were so hot they were liquid. When they passed directly underneath the focused sunlight, several areas boiled.

The poles of the asteroid were still solid. Yet as they watched, some critical threshold of heat was reached. The caps started to move back and forth like coagulated grease on a hot frying pan. These solid bits shifted until the core collapsed, no doubt as some pocket of less dense material evaporated. Then the entire lump of rock seemed to fold into itself. As ripples spread across its previously solid surface, chunks of still-rocky asteroid emerged and sank like icebergs.

“Wow! Awesome!” Haley enthused.

“And only with sunlight,” MacTaggart muttered.

“What happens now?” Dane asked when the asteroid stopped bubbling and boiling. Already the mirrors were shifting. Haley had affixed two tiny thrusters to each one, but it only took infinitesimal micro-adjustments to redirect the light where it needed to go.

“Now we have to cool the damn thing, which is going to be tricky.”

“But space is cold!” Lev pointed out.

“Right, but there’s no convection in space. No atoms to carry away the excess heat, so if we leave this thing, it’ll take too long to cool,” Haley replied.

“You can’t use a molten ball of iron as a battle station. You can’t even attach something to it to launch it at the enemy,” MacTaggart proclaimed.

“What we’re going to do is let the outside cool enough to resolidify. That shouldn’t take too long. When we have the crust, we’ll extrude long strips of metal from the center of the ball. The more surface area we create, the faster it’ll cool. We’re hoping after it’s cool, we can ship those toward Varuna so they can be used as well. It should be a lot of iron. It’ll take a lot of mirror-redirecting to make sure we’re hitting the right spot with the reflections, but I think we can drill out the core.”

“You’re using sunlight to drill now?” Dane asked. He’d hardly followed what she said.

“Not yet. We need the surface of the sphere to resolidify first. After that happens, and we estimate it’s solid iron for at least a couple of meters, we’ll tighten the sunlight into one spot and get this whole extrusion process started.”

“Do you need anything from us?” Dane asked.

“I don’t think so! The Centauri engineers have been great, and one of the Russians told me he used to be a steel worker. He’s been super.”

“Russians are always great,” Lev noted prosaically.

“Almost as good as the Scottish,” MacTaggart agreed.

Dane rolled his eyes at the two of them. Now wasn’t the time for national pride, though maybe it was. Maybe national pride was one of those silly things people would always want to have. The Augmented had done away with it, and maybe there was something to that. Dane longed for the day when they could have Russian versus ADN versus Centauri sports. Hell, maybe one day, when they defeated the Augmented, they could have a league play against Earth as well. It had never been possible before, but now that ships with warp drive existed, they could have interplanetary sports if they wanted.

A dream for another day.

Because this day soon turned into a nightmare.

It started with a priority alert on his tablet.

“If you two will excuse me,” Dane remarked to Lev and MacTaggart. They nodded and left his office, excitedly gossiping about the capabilities of the giant iron sphere, like schoolgirls who had discovered the prom theme a week earlier than the rest of the school.

“Thorson. Is everything all right?” Dane asked, calling the surgeon back regarding the red alert he had sent.

Thorson grimaced. “Someone arrived in the med bay with stomach pain and a headache.”

Dane felt the smile slide from his face. He didn’t see why such common symptoms would cause Thorson to send him a red alert. The surgeon knew that he was busy running the defenses of the colony, and it was not as if he needed Dane’s permission to do his job.

“What was wrong with them?” Dane asked, knowing Thorson had an answer that he was not going to like.

“We put her in the MRI and tried to do a quick scan. It triggered convulsions.”

Dane felt like the floor was dropping out from him as if he was on a trajectory for reentry and couldn’t stop. He felt like the windows of their underwater base had all shattered at once, and he was in the center with walls of water coming at him and nothing to do but hold his breath and wait to get hit from all sides. Convulsions from an MRI? The last time that had happened, the governor of Varuna had been injected with nanites.

“Is she all right?” Dane asked, not wanting to ask the question he wanted to be answered. Not daring to ask the one he needed to ask.

“We found traces of nanites.” Thorson’s voice was hard yet unsteady as melted iron.

“What do you mean, traces of nanites?” Dane asked, apparently unable to form a more intelligent question.

“I mean, there are freaking robots in her skull,” Thorson snapped. He was obviously not happy. Dane didn’t blame him. He’d get angry himself as soon as the shock and denial passed.

“Is the patient okay?”

“We caught it early, so the MRI stopped them from assembling. We’ve injected her with the cure and are waiting to see if it works.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Dane hurried from his office and ran down to the med bay. An advantage of always doing laps through the base was that when he raced through the halls, no one looked twice. He knew leaders needed to project calm confidence, and running through the base and taking the stairs two at a time was not the way to do that. Fortunately, Dane was always running through the base and taking stairs two at a time. The only difference this time was not stopping to do pushups.

He reached the med bay without breaking too much of a sweat.

“How is she?” Dane asked when Thorson emerged from a back room.

“She is fine. But we have three more.” Thorson grunted and nodded with his chin at the two other people in the waiting room. Both of them held their stomachs and looked mildly uncomfortable.

“The treatment worked?”

“The convulsions passed, and we have her resting. We’re scanning the next person now to see if it’s the same thing. If it is, we’re going to administer our cure with your permission.”

“Of course, yes. It’s our best bet, right?”

“We think so. There’s a bit of a risk, but Adams and Petrov responded to it fine. We’ll need to keep everyone here for assessment, of course.”

“Everyone? It’s only four people, right?”

Thorson shrugged. “For now, yes, but I would like to put out an alert. These four…they are not from the same area. One works in hydroponics. One is a custodian. One is a cook. And one is an engineer. I’m sending you their work and lodging history. I’m not seeing a pattern.”

“Shit.” Dane looked at a map of the base and saw four blips that didn’t seem to have anything in common, geographically speaking. “Were they at lunch or something? Or somewhere all together?”

“No.”

“Shit,” Dane reiterated.

Thorson nodded. “Pretty much sums it up.”

“Sir, the patient is going into convulsions,” an aide poked out to tell Thorson.

“I should go.”

“Please, go ahead. If it comes back positive, skip that for these next two and give them our injection instead. That okay with both of you?”

“Yes, sir!” one of them replied, and the other nodded.

“Send me a report on if that works. I need to—”

“Figure out where the hell this stuff is coming from?”

Dane nodded and left the medical bay. As he walked, he called Lev on his tablet.

“Lev, we have a code nano.”

“Shit.”

“That’s what I said. We have four separate people infected. We need to assume there’s more, though. I’m sending you their jobs now, as well as where they’ve been staying.”

Dane vaguely remembered arguing with Lev that keeping track of where people were bunking was unnecessary, but he was glad he had relented to his chief of security now.

“I’ll check out the areas. Are we thinking it’s a trap we missed? Maybe left over from the raid?”

“I don’t know. It’s certainly possible. However, I can’t imagine they left multiple traps, and we didn’t detect any. I would think if there was a trap, this would appear to be more localized.”

“So you think it’s something else?”

“I don’t know what I think. But I want your team to look into these areas and make sure they keep an eye out for people with nausea or headaches. All four of our people came down with those symptoms to start.”

“Sounds like food poisoning.”

“Ha. I wish it were that simple. Those are the symptoms, though, all right? Let me know what you…”

“Dane? Are you okay, Dane?”

“Yeah. Yes. I had an idea.”

“An idea that changes the orders you gave me?”

“No. Not at all. Get to work. Let me know what you find.”

Dane already thought they wouldn’t find anything. It wouldn’t hurt to check, and it might save lives. However, the idea of food poisoning percolated in Dane’s head.

It didn’t really make sense that it was a trap. All the people would have been infected in the same area. At the same time, he couldn’t imagine it was airborne. If that was the case, surely everyone in the hydroponics bay would have been infected. He supposed this was still a possibility. Surely there were more than these four infected, but he didn’t think that was it.

The idea of poisoning made him think about what had happened on Alpha Centauri. About how the water supply had been weaponized.

Could that be happening here on this ocean world? Could the enemy have infected the entire sea around them? Could their fresh water supply have been targeted in some way?

Dane had no idea how that would work. He wasn’t even sure if normal nanites could be drunk like those could. But he knew someone who would have all those answers.

He went off in search of Liam Bell, the kid who had doomed his own planet.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Sir, I’m telling you, I had no idea about the invasion. I swear. If I had known that…” Tears emerged in the corners of Liam’s eyes. “There were Augmented on Alpha Central. I met some of them. They were all so kind. And me and my friends, we were tired of all the safety drills, of all the good jobs being in weapons manufacturing. We thought…we thought there was a different way than what my dad was always going on about.” Liam choked out a sob. “I thought he was a villain. A warmonger. But he’s a hero. If I’d done what he said, maybe things wouldn’t have…”

“We all make mistakes.” Dane wanted to say it was all right or things would get better, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. What Liam had done was wrong. He had fallen for an obvious deception. He had collaborated with an enemy during wartime. Maybe if Dane was a father, he would have found kinder words to say, but he wasn’t. He was a soldier. And soldiers did not abide by treason.

However, he was also a governor now, responsible for two thousand people. One of whom was Liam, who seemed genuinely remorseful despite all his mistakes. Dane had not asked for an apology. He had simply knocked on the boy’s door, and the words had spilled out, unbidden and raw.

“If you had a chance to make things right, would you?” Dane asked.

“Oh, yes. I would do anything to undo what I did.”

“We can’t undo the past, Liam. That’s one of the hardest parts of living, but it’s also what it means to live. You have to make your decisions by remembering the past and thinking about the future.”

Liam nodded. Dane knew the kid was not expecting to be ushered into a time machine or anything. Still, he looked disappointed.

“There is something you can help us with, though.”

“Really? I mean, anything! Whatever I can to make it right. Well, not… I know I can’t fix that. But now that I know the Augmented will kill whoever stands in their way, I want to help.”

“What do you know about the nanites they released in the water of Alpha Central?”

Liam looked like he wanted to curl up under a rock and never emerge. The question seemed like a rusting spike digging into his guts. He somehow managed to nod and bring some color back to his face.

“It was very important to them that we get the nanites as deep into the system as possible.”

“Deep into the system? You mean like underwater? The nanites need pressure or something?”

“No.” Liam bit his lip, trying to phrase his words. It was interesting how different he was. Before, he had been a leader of his little group. He had spoken passionately about his “noble cause.” Now, that confidence was gone.

Liam had staked everything, his whole identity, on the Augmented coming to the Alpha Centauri system to bring peace. He had been wrong. Most college-age kids were faced with revelations that changed their identity. But surely few had ever had to come to terms with such a monumental shift in perspective from so dire a change. Liam was doing his best, but he was not the same person Dane had first seen in that water treatment plant in another solar system.

“They needed access to the water treatment area so they could get the nanites past the filters,” Liam admitted.

“Which filters?”

“All of them. The physical filters would have taken out some nanites, and I guess the UV light isn’t great for them either. I think they even said the biological processes they used to treat the water could harm the nanites. That’s why you found us where you did. It was the last spot in the water treatment plant before the water headed out. It was all clean and pure already.”

“So if they tried to repeat that, it’s likely they would try to get their nanites past the initial stages of filtration?”

“Yeah, definitely.” With the weight of Dane’s question, Liam’s eyebrows looked about to jump off his forehead. “Wait, are they here? Are the Augmented here?”

“Calm down, Liam. We’re not sure yet.” Dane almost wanted to protect the kid, but at the same time, he was more than old enough to know what was going on. “But they’re going to invade. It’s only a matter of time. We need to know if they’re going to try something like they did when they attacked your home world.”

“They will. Why wouldn’t they? If they get a few of the right people, they could just open up all the doors.”

Dane nodded. “Believe me, I’ve thought all about it. You’re sure about the nanites, though? I mean, you’re sure they added them to the water system after all that stuff?”

“That’s what they did on Alpha Central.”

“All right. Thank you, Liam. If anything else about how they worked occurs to you, contact me.”

“Yes, sir. You got it, sir.”

Dane turned to go, but before he made it two steps, Liam yelped after him. “Can I come? I can help!”

“Help with what?” Dane asked, wondering how sharp this kid was.

“With the water issue.”

“How do you know there’s a problem with the water?”

“I don’t. Not really. But you’re asking about it, and earlier, I saw security escorting someone to the medical bay who seemed to have a stomachache. If there’s a problem with the water, I want to help.”

Dane considered telling Liam no, but on a whim, he decided otherwise. “Try to keep up.”

“Yes, sir!”

Liam fell into step behind Dane as they descended through Homebase and made their way toward the water treatment level.

As they walked, Dane radioed Stark to meet them down there. He’d just gotten confirmation when he bumped into Haley.

“Haley! What are you doing here?” Dane asked, grinning like an idiot. “I thought you were working on your, uh…project.” He wanted to trust Liam, but there was a big difference between wanting to trust someone and telling them about a secret iron battleship.

“I have been! I came back to surprise you!”

“Well, I’m surprised.” Dane noticed she was wearing a wetsuit. “You didn’t come to surprise me, though. Or that wasn’t your only reason, anyway.”

Haley laughed. God, did he love that sound.

“No, it’s not. I know you can get by without me, but Agus and Isla? Not so sure.”

“Agus and Isla?” Liam asked, unable to resist.

“You haven’t met our very own Loch Ness monsters?” Haley asked.

Having grown up on a planet that was proud of its Scottish roots, Liam obviously got the reference. “You mean those long-necked fish things with three fins on each side?”

Haley nodded. “We literally call them nessies. I trained two of them.”

“They’re like her scale babies,” Dane teased.

“Would you like to meet them?” Haley asked.

“Wait, you really came down here to see the nessies?”

Haley shrugged, though she looked sheepish. “I have a great time working on my project with mostly Russian steelworkers and miners. People who were sitting on their hands but are now eager to work. They understand this part of the project better than I do at this point, though. Best to let them do it, right?”

“Sure.”

“But the nessies…well, no one gets them like I do! They’re my scale babies, like you said.”

“We can leave you to it, then.”

“Where are you two going anyway?” Haley asked.

“Governor Dane thinks there’s nanites in the water, or there could be,” Liam blurted.

“Shit.”

“That’s the general sentiment, yes,” Dane asserted.

“I can come with you if you’re going to check out the system. I’ve used the nessies to do maintenance on it, so I know how it works pretty well.”

“You’re sure your nessies can wait?”

“Of course,” Haley agreed. “This seems like a priority.”

Dane teased her no further. He was glad to have her along, as always. Besides, it had been getting rather awkward with Liam. Dane didn’t want to resent him, but he couldn’t help feeling animosity. Maybe he needed to talk to Ginger about it.

They followed Haley instead of the map on Dane’s tablet until they reached a large cistern located inside the bottom level of the base.

“That’s where our drinking water is stored before use. It comes in here through that pipe at the top from the ocean outside. We have a series of filters and chemical gradients to take out all the impurities, so by the time it gets there, it’s ready to go.”

“It can filter ocean water?” Liam asked.

“It can,” Haley confirmed. “I don’t understand all of it, honestly, but the Russians who built it did a damn good job. We couldn’t find any reports of water contamination before we got here, and we haven’t had any.”

“That means the filters must work well,” Dane suggested.

“Which means the Augmented must have got the nanites past the filters,” Liam pointed out.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.” Dane waved to Stark, who’d just made it down.

“Sorry I took so long. I was bringing someone to Alvarez’s lab. More stomach issues.”

“That’s good. You’ll know the way back.” Dane climbed the side of the huge cistern with a ladder bolted onto it. He reached the top and dipped in a vial from a collection of them stationed there for testing. Though Dane doubted the people in charge of making sure the water didn’t give anyone the runs were regularly testing for brain-controlling micro-robots. “Take this back to him and have him test it for nanites.”

Stark looked defeated at the prospect of going back the way he’d come. He had never really gotten over his limp after he had been bitten by a wild nessie. Most of the time, he hid it well, but Dane knew it would likely bother him for the rest of his life. Modern medicine had done a lot of amazing things, but the human body was still a wildly complex system. No one medicine worked on every person.

“Is that where all the people with stomachaches are going?” Liam asked.

“Yes,” Dane confirmed.

“Then can I go, too? If there are people being implanted with nanites here, I want to help them.”

Dane saw no reason to argue and little reason to suspect Liam of anything if he was traveling with Stark. He was one of his original security people, and Dane trusted him with his life.

That left him and Haley alone.

“Can I bounce ideas off you on your way to the nessies?” Dane asked.

“Of course,” Haley offered, and they started off that way.

“For the moment, let’s assume there really are nanites in the water. How would they get there?”

“Are we assuming Liam was right, and they can’t release them by the intake and have them make it through the filters?”

“We can check the filters for that. If we find nanites, we know that’s what they did. But that seems sloppy.”

“Yeah, a waste of a resource. We know if they are releasing nanites, there can’t be a ton of them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because we haven’t detected them in our system. That means a small operation, right?”

“Makes sense, yeah.”

“So let’s say they tried to get past the filters. They could have made a nanite to do that for them, I suppose. Some sort of drilling bot. Like a termite or something.”

“Maybe, but that’s pretty specific. Plus, someone would have had to release that and the other nanites.”

“Yeah, I would think so. Maybe they have something larger. If they maybe drilled through the filters and sent a tube with the nanites, they could get them pretty far though the system. That means they could have come from another direction. Hit the pipe with the clean water, not necessarily drill through the filters, but at an angle.”

“They would need schematics of this base to do that.”

“They might have them. The Russians who came on the Zhemchug knew there was an underwater base here. They came with supplies to specifically provision it. The Augmented would have had access to those plans the minute they implanted any of the Russian scientists who worked on it.”

“Hmm…makes sense. But again, doesn’t that imply there’s a team out there? I can’t imagine them leaving something like this to a drone. They value human labor but, at the same time, don’t value human life. They would have sent a team to do it themselves.”

They fell silent as they reached the end of the tunnel from Homebase to the crystal cave where they kept the nessies. Dane always marveled at the wonder of this place. Could the Augmented even see beauty anymore? Did they all feel the same thing when they looked at a natural wonder of a piece of art? Dane knew that was insignificant compared to all the other things they had taken away from people, but he wondered all the same.

Dane was no artist, no eloquent philosopher. He was sure other people could find things in this cavern that he could barely begin to understand. Yet something in the way the lights shone through the crystals was both calming and inspiring. This cavern, carved from water moving through it for millennia, relaxed him and gave him a profound sense of wonder. He didn’t want to lose that any more than he wanted to lose any of the people here.

That sense of wonder was compounded when they reached the part of the crystal cavern that made it so useful. The shore sloped right into the water. There, waiting for them like a pair of loyal hounds, were Isla and Agus.

The pair of long-necked nessies had grown since Dane had last been this close to them. Their heads were as big as his, though slightly squatter and more elongated, and their necks were thick as tree trunks at the base. Agus’ neck was slightly longer, maybe ten feet instead of nine, but Isla’s body was undoubtedly bigger and more robust than his. Both of them churned the water with their six fins, obviously excited.

“Do you think they recognize you?” Dane asked.

Haley playfully slapped his arm. “Of course they do! Who wouldn’t recognize their own mama?” She grabbed a couple of fish from the nearby refrigeration unit and tossed each of the alien dinosaurs one. They caught them in the air, spearing the fish with their sharp, needle-like teeth. The way they seemed to dote on Haley was cute, but Dane didn’t doubt these creatures were powerful monsters capable of truly hurting people. He was relieved that at least these two liked their human friends.

While Lopez went through a quick training routine with them, Dane got on a wetsuit and called for Athanas and Good to take a sub out and meet them out in the open water. He didn’t know what he would find out there, but he wanted the nessies to have backup if they met trouble.

CHAPTER TWELVE

For once, when Dane grabbed a weapon, Haley didn’t protest. Normally she would say something about it not being necessary or that the nessies could handle themselves well enough, but today they both knew there were more dangerous things out there than Big Damn Fish.

If there were Augmented soldiers here somewhere, these weapons might not be enough, but Dane was pleased to have them all the same. He always felt better when armed. He knew such an attitude was more appropriate for a soldier or chief of security than a governor, but he wouldn’t be able to change who he was for the job, no matter how important it was. Besides, they were living in a rather uncomfortable time in which an armed governor was a necessity.

“Help me saddle them up,” Haley requested.

Dane grabbed one of the saddles off the wall. He noted it wasn’t the same as the last time he had ridden a nessie. It was bigger and shaped differently. Haley showed him how to put it on the sea creatures. A strap encircled the nessie’s thick neck, then a sort of saddle rested on its back. The next strap connected to a central strip of material that ran down the nessie’s chest and past their first pair of fins, where it split and went around the fins. Each of the two ends buckled into the rear of the saddle.

Really, “saddle” might not have been quite the right word. A saddle made Dane think of something he would ride on as he straddled, and this was not quite that. There was a place to sit, in theory, but the nessies’ bodies were so broad that it wouldn’t be comfortable to sit atop one for long. Instead, the saddle had various handholds, including a big knob in the center. It also had a few straps with clips at the ends, so Dane could attach himself to it if needed. And it most definitely was. While Haley seemed supremely relaxed with nessies, Dane was still uncertain around the huge creatures.

“Should I clip in?” Dane asked.

“Definitely. They’re designed to break away if you hit a snag or something, so you won’t get crushed or injured too badly. Try not to let that happen, though.”

“Noted.” Dane waded into the water and approached Agus.

The creature lowered his head, and Dane performed the same gesture in return. Had the nessie greeted him? Surely he was reading into things.

He pulled a rebreather over his face, clipped onto his nessie, and they were off.

The first minute of their swim was as exhilarating as ever. The crystal cavern extended underwater for a few hundred meters, and it was as spectacular underwater as it was above. Though underwater, crystals and coral-like zinger structures battled for space. Light still glowed from the lamps the colonists had installed in the cave above, but now sunlight also filtered through the cave entrance. Every crystal and zinger in the cave sparkled no matter which direction they looked.

When they emerged from the cave, it was as if it had never existed. Now, instead of crystals and zingers, tall strands of kelp waved, and fish swam about. Somehow, that abrupt transition made the splendor of the cavern all the more amazing.

“You done sightseeing?” Haley teased over their comms.

“Was it that obvious?”

“It’s so obvious that Agus can tell. That’s why you’re so far behind. The nessies know what we want to do based on our body language. Your head is swiveling more than an office chair.”

“Sorry. It’s been a long couple of months. Got lost in the moment.”

“No worries. I came all the way back here just for this.”

“True. But yeah, lead the way to the intake.”

They swam around an underwater mountain and emerged in the valley in which Homebase was set inside. How different it was from when they first arrived. When they found the abandoned Russian base inside a volcano, it had been overgrown with aquatic life. Most of that was cleared away, though the second round of colonists had understood the importance of working with the ecology of the area better than the Russians, so they’d left swathes of natural life here and there. Many of the planet’s most vividly colored organisms filled the space.

Besides that, the area all around the volcano base teemed with human activity. There were the four huge domes the Russians had brought, plus the tunnels connecting them, as well as the tunnel that housed the elevator running up to the floating platform situated two valleys over. Between all these structures were kelp farms, seafood nurseries, and various experiments and pieces of machinery.

They had turned this outpost into a sort of underwater village, and Dane was glad to call it home.

They rounded the volcano base and doubled back toward a corner of it far away from any of the entrances. Dane noted the base blocked the area they were headed toward. If someone had come over here, especially at night, it was quite possible no one would have noticed.

“There’s the intake.” Haley gestured toward a concrete block covered in metal grating with a large hole in it.

“Looks pretty normal to me.” Dane patted Agus’ back as he pushed off to swim over for a closer look. If the intake had been sabotaged, the saboteur had been subtle. Dane didn’t see any holes drilled in it, any cracks, or anything else. He came closer, noting how he had to control his body not to touch anything. He tried to imagine how he would have done the same while operating a piece of machinery. With the ground so close, he wanted to put his feet down. Would the Augmented spy have tried to do the same?

Dane scanned the ground. Was that a depression in the sand?

“I might have something.” Dane swam closer to the ground, getting his face inches away from what might have been the indentation of a flipper. He couldn’t be sure, though. There were all kinds of creatures on Varuna, including fish-like organisms that plodded around on fins and crab-like animals capable of swimming with claws evolved into structures resembling fins. Could this be from one of them, or was it the footprint of a human wearing a flipper?

Dane snapped a few photos with the camera built into the facemask of his rebreather, though his third photo came out blurry when someone shoved him from behind.

“Agus, bad nessie!” Haley chided. Though Agus, without a headset and not currently looking at Haley’s hand signals, did not stop pushing Dane out of the way with his snout.

Dane was not about to fight the giant sea monster, though he grimaced when it stuck its snout where he had been looking, then exhaled a gout of water from the holes on its snout. At least I got a picture. It wasn’t like he would get much more from half a footprint, anyway. He was a fighter pilot, not a tracker.

Was the nessie, though? The creatures had internal, gill-like organs, which was how they could breathe underwater, but he never knew them to smell. Yet Dane was convinced Agus was doing just that.

“Is he trying to find a scent?” he asked.

Before Haley could reply, the nessie swam off, up the side of the volcano toward another spot. It stopped abruptly and bleated a song into the ocean. Was it calling for Dane to follow?

Dane was not one to look a gift dinosaur in the mouth, so he followed the nessie. They did not go far, maybe thirty meters, but it changed everything.

Not far up the volcano hill, right underneath the nose of the sniffing nessie, was a mess. Most of the area was untouched, but there was a section less than a meter square where the plants had been scraped away, and the rock underneath was exposed. It looked like some sort of tool had been mounted, repositioned, and mounted again. Right in the center of the damaged area was a tiny hole, about a centimeter in diameter.

“Did Agus find a murder star, or—oh…” Haley trailed off when she saw the damaged area on the side of their base.

“You said if they had plans to the base, they could have drilled in from a different angle?”

Haley nodded.

“I would say this looks like a drill could have been mounted here, wouldn’t you?”

“Definitely.”

“Which means—”

“Shit.”

“Exactly. I need to find out why no one has reported this. If people came by the intake pipe, they should be on camera, right?”

“We have cameras on all the essential infrastructure, yes.”

Dane called Lev on his tablet. “Lev, I need you to look at all video of the intake valve to the water supply. I think we’ve been compromised.”

“We’ve found more people with stomachaches and headaches, so yeah, I’d agree we have. But one minute and I will check for you.” Lev stared at Dane, though Dane knew he was looking at a different image on his tablet.

“Well, there is bad news.”

“You see people?”

“No. Worse. That camera is damaged. Has not functioned for days. I sent you a report.”

“What? How could I have missed this?” Dane demanded.

“You mean how could we miss security camera that always shows nothing happening while we are preparing for giant invasion? I am not so sure.” His Russian accent made the sarcasm sting more.

“If the tests haven’t come back yet, Alvarez and Thorson need to assume everyone has an implant. We’re going to presume it’s in the water at this point. I need you to shut down the drinking water at the source. I don’t want anyone drinking anything until we get this sorted out.”

“Consider it done.”

“Great. Dane out.” Dane closed the connection and called Athanas and Good in the sub.

They picked up, but before Dane gave orders, Haley gestured at him, and he looked to see what she was pointing at. It was Agus. He was still sniffing along the bottom of the sea, like the world’s biggest hound dog on a fresh scent trail.

“Sir? Orders?”

“We’re following potential hostiles down here.”

“Sir?” Athanas sounded as if she wanted to load her weapons. Dane knew she wouldn’t need to. Athanas was the kind of person who always kept her weapons loaded.

“The nessies are…well, they’re smelling something. We’re going to follow it. I want you to track us but ascend. You can’t move as quietly as us down here, and I’d like to have the element of surprise. But keep your sonar on and pinging for anything big moving down here. I think we might find a ship, or at least a sub.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And be ready to come in hot. If I radio for help, I need you there.”

“We wouldn’t miss it.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They’d traveled maybe two hundred meters before Agus dived into a bed of zingers. Dane braced himself. The damn zingers were like coral’s bigger, tougher alien cousins. They had the same stinging abilities as coral, though they were stronger, and their barbs could punch through a wetsuit. The nessies normally avoided them, but Agus was a space-dino possessed.

To Dane’s surprise, they did not crash into the wall of zingers. Instead, the zingers retracted at the last moment and allowed Agus to swim into a hole Dane had not been able to see. He doubted Agus had been able to see it either. The nessie was following its nose and seemed to have lost itself to its task.

Dane glanced back from his place behind Agus’ neck and saw Haley and Isla following. Isla seemed less obsessed with the smell, but Dane noticed the holes on the front of her snout were open as well. She seemed to be watching Agus and mimicking him. Dane knew the creatures were smart, and they seemed more than capable of learning from each other!

Haley gigged and told Isla to go faster, so she gained on Agus. The tunnel they were in was just wide enough for the pair of nessies, so when Isla pulled up alongside Agus, she was able to maintain that pace.

“Give me one of the straps,” she ordered.

Dane did not argue and handed her one of the straps. She pulled on it twice, paused, then a third time. That seemed to pull Agus from his obsession with the smell, and he slowed down.

“If he’s really on the trail of Augmented, we don’t need him crashing into them,” Haley noted.

“Good thinking.” He had been too amazed by Agus’ behavior and their surroundings to think of telling the nessie to stop. Not that he would have known how.

“Have you ever been here before?”

“I have not,” Haley reported.

Dane had been in a chasm like this one before, though it felt like a lifetime ago when they had first explored this world. This one was different, though. It was rounded on the bottom and along the walls, making Dane think of a mole tunnel or something to that effect. Light came in from above, though it was filtered through brightly colored zingers, which seemed to grow in profusion above them.

“Do you think this could be an old lava tube or something?” Haley asked.

“Good guess. Though to me, it felt like a tunnel that something dug. Especially with the crack up above.”

“You don’t think the Augmented dug this?” Haley asked.

“I know we missed that other hole, but I don’t think we would have missed this,” Dane pointed out.

“Heh. Yeah, I guess not,” Haley conceded.

They reached a branch in the tunnel. Dane was trying to look for some sign of which way to go, maybe another footprint, but there was no need. Agus and Isla were both emphatic about the left passage. Whoever’s trail they were following had gone that way.

Haley looked at Dane, and he could only nod. She patted Isla, and the nessie swam forward. However, Agus wouldn’t let her pull ahead of him. It was like the nessie was proud of finding the scent and didn’t want to give his sister credit.

“This tube seems older than the last one,” Haley suggested.

Dane was not sure if he’d have noticed such a thing before coming to this world, but after all his time on Varuna, he saw what she meant. It wasn’t like she had tested the age of the rocks. She had simply paid attention to the organisms in the tunnel.

While the last tunnel they had been in was mostly bare except for a few small, scurrying crab analogs, this one was more populated. There were holes in one part of the wall where eel-like creatures nested. Fish swam through the surface and darted back up. Plus, a couple of formidably large crabs that could not have squeezed through the cracks above wandered the ground. They must have come down when they were smaller and grown fat enough to get stuck down here.

One thing Dane did not see was zingers. Despite the sedentary organisms being prolific above the cracks in the top of the tunnel, there were none down here. That was odd, especially considering the zingers reproduced by releasing eggs into the water. Surely some of those eggs would have floated down here. Maybe there wasn’t enough light? That couldn’t be it because here and there, large pools of sunlight made it down into the tunnel. So why hadn’t one of Varuna’s most successful organisms colonized this place?

They reached another branch in the tunnel, and once again, the nessies were unanimous in their decision about which way to go. Neither Haley nor Dane had any reason to doubt them, so they urged them onward.

They went about another hundred meters before one of Dane’s questions was answered. A huge beast occupied a tunnel that branched off the one they were in. If Dane had to describe it, he’d say it looked like a turtle mixed with a mole. A pair of diminutive back legs, more like fins, faced them. A shell hid most of its body, while two huge front legs with massive digging claws extended the tunnel ahead of it.

Many creatures of this world had six appendages instead of four, and this one was no exception, though all three pairs were different. The back ones were for swimming, the front for digging, and the middle not much more than spikes it used to grip the sides of the passage and anchor it while it dug.

While they watched, it broke a small hole in the top of its tunnel. Then it disconnected its two spiky arms, poked one through the hole, and used it to rip a zinger from its mooring and pull it into its mouth.

“I knew something had to eat those zingers!” Haley exclaimed.

“I wonder if it ever comes out or if it spends its entire life down here.”

“Judging by the way Agus and Isla are growling, I think it might come out and hunt nessies from time to time.”

Dane had not noticed, but now that Haley mentioned it, he felt Agus sort of vibrating. Note to self. Rumbling alien means bad mood, Dane thought.

“Alvarez will want to study it if we ever get to study this world again,” Haley stated.

“Let’s make sure we have a chance to do that,” Dane rejoined.

They nudged Isla and Agus to continue, and the nessies went back to their mission, eager to please but perhaps even more eager to get away from the massive turtle mole.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The nessies were implacable. Lucky for them, because there was no way Dane and Haley could have navigated this maze of tunnels. Dane had a GPS on his tablet, so he knew they weren’t far from Homebase, but he didn’t know how to get back. If left to figure it out on his own, he didn’t see a choice except to swim toward one of the many cracks and holes in the top of the tunnel and push through the zingers. It was a painful proposition, but fortunately, it didn’t seem necessary right now. The nessies continued to follow a path both invisible and intangible to Dane.

It was so intangible that he did have some doubts the nessies were still on the right path. They were obviously still sniffing about, which was a behavior Dane had not seen before. Still, how could he be certain they hadn’t gotten hungry and changed course?

He soon spotted an indication that the nessies were still on a mission. At the bottom of a branch of two tunnels, Dane noticed a footprint in the silt. Again, he was less than positive it was human, but it was the same track he had seen near the base. That was enough to trust what was ahead of him. He assumed it was Augmented. It had to be, given they had found nanites. Yet he longed for it to be something else.

Seeing the giant turtle mole creature had made him oddly nostalgic for their first days on this planet when it was mere hunger trying to eradicate them. They had dealt with hordes of carnivorous sea stars as well as fish so big they could eat nessies for snacks. It had been hard and more than a little terrifying, but compared to a force of humans who had been duped out of their free will and turned into mindless soldiers, it was a simpler threat.

Dane supposed people being duped into becoming mindless soldiers was the largest threat humanity had ever faced. One that had reared its head time and time again throughout history, though this time, it had a literal bent it previously lacked.

Then Agus vibrated beneath him.

Haley still held both nessies’ reins, and she gave them a short tug. The nessies stopped moving forward, fanning their fins to keep them floating in the middle of the tunnel.

“I think this means their prey is near,” Haley stated over the comms.

“Either that or there’s a whole family of BDFs swimming nearby,” Dane advised.

Haley nodded. Obviously, that thought had occurred to her as well.

“Do you want to stay here with these two, and I’ll swim ahead and see if I can get visual confirmation?”

“Sounds good. Don’t do anything without us.”

“Of course not. And let’s make sure Athanas and Good are ready to lend a hand.”

“Sure.” Haley sounded less confident about the armed sub than Dane felt. He supposed that made sense. They were in a tunnel with holes to the surface, but none of them were even close to big enough to allow a sub through, and even if it blasted its way in with a torpedo, Dane wasn’t sure if it could enter the tunnels. It might be too long to get around, like trying to move a couch through a tight door frame into a narrow hall.

Dane unclipped himself from Agus and swam ahead slowly, hugging the inside bend of the tunnel as he proceeded. He’d barely gone around the bend before he saw someone in a wetsuit armed with a weapon he didn’t recognize, swimming backward as they kept an eye on the tunnel behind. A rear guard. Dane had no doubt they were from Earth. He didn’t recognize the wetsuit material, either. It seemed to have a sort of active camouflage, rippling in and out of full sight in the dappled light filtered through the zingers.

The diver seemed satisfied they weren’t being followed, or perhaps he had been given orders from someone ahead of him because he turned forward and kicked hard to speed ahead.

Dane crept forward, walking on the silty ground and leaving footprints of his own.

Slowly, he peered out.

The diver he had seen was the rear guard of a team of nine people. Dane went ahead and assumed there were more. It was always best to assume such things in situations like this.

The divers were all distracted. Three of them were out front, looking up at a big hole in the top of the tunnel. It was wide enough for a nessie to get through and must have been how they got access to these tunnels. Clearly, they were well aware of the threats of this ocean and were not moving forward until absolutely necessary.

Two of them were attempting to haul a big metal canister that sort of looked like a large O2 tank, though an incredibly long, flexible hose was attached to it. The kind of hose that could have snaked down a hole drilled into Homebase and deposited nanites directly into the water supply.

As if that were not enough of a smoking gun, the other three divers wrestled with a machine with four legs centered around a core attached to a periscopic arm.

These people had drilled a hole into Dane’s home and infected his people with nanites.

Dane planned to take the bastards out, but he couldn’t rush in. There were too many of them. So even though he didn’t want to, he did the only thing he could. He retreated to Haley’s position.

“I found them,” he told her. “Nine of them, all armed. There’s a gap in the zingers, so they must have come into these tunnels through there. I’m assuming there’s more in their ship, wherever that is.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to feed them to the fishes, but we have to be smart about this. If we can keep eyes on them and wait for them to try to take off, we’ll be able to overwhelm them a lot more easily.”

“If they have a ship, we won’t be able to follow with the nessies. They’re fast, but a ship is going to have guns.”

“I don’t want to risk Isla and Agus. Or you, for that matter. Fortunately, we have backup.” Dane activated his comms.

“What have you got?” came Athanas’ cool reply.

“Visuals on nine hostiles. They’re heading away from base. I’m guessing toward a ship.”

“Orders?”

“I don’t want them to know we’re onto them. Keep your distance, and hopefully, they’ll all load up into their ship and try to escape. Radio MacTaggart and get him to scramble some fighters. I want them all in that ship, in one nice easy package. That way, we can disable them and take them prisoner. The second they take off, I want you on their tail.”

“I can do that.”

A buzz of static came over the radio, and Dane heard Athanas hitting what had to be radio switches.

“Everything all right over there?” he asked.

“Sir, it’s Dr. Alvarez. He wants to talk to you, but I told him you were indisposed.”

When Dane was merely chief of security, he probably could have gotten away with that, but not anymore. There was a medical crisis happening. The governor needed to stay abreast of the situation, even if he was on a stakeout.

“Put him on.”

“Governor.”

“Dr. Alvarez. How are things?”

“Worse. Much worse. There are now several dozen people affected. Our med bay is full, but more people are still coming. We told everyone not to drink the water, but we were too late. Plus, that will only work for so long. People need water, and we have limited backups.”

“Get Granger on that.”

“She already is, sir.”

“Good. What about the affected? Do you have enough cure for them?”

“Maybe if we resort to sending everyone through the MRI first to interfere with the formation of the brain implant, but that is muy peligroso. The convulsions it triggers have not been lethal yet, but if someone had a preexisting medical condition, it could be bad.”

“Don’t worry about that for our people or the Russians. Our governments chose us as colonists partly because of our physical fitness.”

“But if we’re wrong, or someone has developed something since they’ve been here?”

“If that happens, it’s on me, Carlos. I don’t see what choice we have. As for the Centauri, they had no such selection process. I guess you need to make sure they don’t have health issues before you do the MRI.”

“We can do that.”

“Okay, good. Anything else?”

“Yes, claro. The worst part is we don’t know if anyone is fully affected. We need to scan everyone on the base to make sure no one is already working for the Augmented.”

“Maybe that’s not a big concern. We still haven’t found any broadcast of their signal in this system, right?”

“Entonces… We are not so sure about that anymore. Granger said she might have found something, but that was before the water situation. I think it’s possible there is a signal now. It would only make sense, no? Why implant anyone if they cannot activate the implants?”

It was a frustratingly good point.

“Contact Lev and put him in charge of that.”

“Yes, sir,” Carlos confirmed.

“I can relay that order,” Good cut in.

Dane made a note to thank them all. It wasn’t Alvarez’s job to tell the head of security what to do. He had enough on his plate.

“Great.”

“Same orders, sir?”

“No, goddamn it. We can’t play this safe anymore,” Dane snapped. “We can’t afford to let these bastards go. I want you to advance, look for a clearing. If they landed a ship, you’re going to see it. Go slow, so we can match pace. Let us know when you have a firing solution, and we’ll hit ‘em from behind at the same time.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Haley stated.

“Don’t worry. It won’t be.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It did not take long for Athanas and Good to spot the enemy shuttle.

“We have visual contact, sir. Looks like a small shuttle. I very much doubt it’s capable of warp.”

“It is underwater, though?”

“Yes, sir. Resting in the middle of a large clearing of zingers. I’m assuming there’s someone inside, but we don’t have any indication they’ve seen us yet.”

“Do you see where the Augmented could have gotten access to these tunnels?”

“Not yet, sir. We’ll make a wide loop and see what we can pick out.”

“We’ll press ahead too. Maintain radio contact.”

“Aye, sir.”

Dane and Lopez continued down the tunnel. The nessies could sense something was amiss. They were vibrating their bodies and clicking as well. Dane could not help but wonder what they were saying to each other. At this point, he had little doubt they were intelligent enough to communicate. They sang, after all, and it certainly made sense they could tell each other there was danger ahead.

“Sir, we’ve got movement. I think they’re coming out.”

“Roger. We’re going to attack from behind and see if we can force them all out. If you see them, shoot out an explosive-tipped harpoon. Let’s end this as fast as we can.”

Dane remembered how the first Augmented he fought with were all able to feel each other’s pain. It had turned an injury to one into an injury for all of them. They crept forward, bit by bit. The nessies were the perfect allies for this because they had so much control of their bodies underwater. With the subtlest movement of their fins, they were able to creep forward, keeping their long necks down, close to the walls of the tunnel so they wouldn’t stick out.

“I have a shot…” Dane raised his rifle and took aim.

Then the rear guard remembered what he was supposed to be doing and turned around. His eyes widened, and he yelled something to his comrades over their radios before his face went slack. Dane had shot him in the chest.

Still, the remaining Augmented were not affected by their friend’s death. Whatever bit of code had allowed them to share pain so easily had been turned off on these soldiers. It had been too much to assume they would all go down with a single shot.

One of them ordered a couple of them to stay back while the rest made a break for their ship. Good. That was exactly what Dane wanted. Though he could have done without the three people firing rounds at them!

“Back!” Dane ordered. The nessies understood what he wanted and swam backward as easily as they swam forward. Isla made it back around the bend and to safety, but Agus was not so lucky.

Dane felt the nessie flinch as a bullet took it in the chest.

Panic seized him as he worried the bullet had done serious damage to Agus. If it had, Agus wasn’t whining about it. The nessie screeched in what sounded like both pain and anger, then raced forward toward the three armed men.

Agus moved so fast that Dane was not able to hold on. His strap broke away as the nessie left him behind and attacked the man who had shot him.

Isla was also not content to sit back while her brother defended her life. She raced forward, though her rider was much more accustomed to navigating the seas of Varuna by nessie and managed to stay in her saddle.

Then Dane’s world spun upside down as an explosive-tipped harpoon exploded and sent a shockwave through the water.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Dane did not know if he had blacked out for a few seconds or longer than that. All he knew was when he blinked his eyes back open, the slow, plodding stealth mission had turned into an all-out underwater brawl.

The Augmented had scattered. They’d been closest to the harpoon when it exploded, but their wetsuits had protected them. They were still trying to flee, and Dane understood why.

Isla and Agus were in the midst of them, biting and rending flesh with their needle-like teeth.

Haley had been closer to the explosion than Dane and thus hit harder by the shockwave. She was still unconscious, floating toward the bottom of the tunnel with a gun still held limply in her hand.

Dane swam toward her, triggering a headache as he did to save her from her own savage mounts. He was too far, though, and it would only take a single bite from one of the nessies to kill her.

Except the nessies did not bite the woman who called them her scale babies.

Dane had already known they were intelligent, but now he saw he’d underestimated them yet again. Even though the water had grown hazy with blood and turbid from kicking, thrashing, and weapon firing, neither of the nessies so much as thought about hurting Haley.

“Good nessies,” Dane murmured as he kicked over to Haley and checked her vitals. When he touched her, she instantly came to and tried to punch him in the face before realizing who it was.

“Sorry! Reflexes,” Haley admitted.

“Good reflexes, sleepyhead,” Dane praised. “No time for coffee, though. We got nessies who need us.”

Haley did not need to be told twice. She grabbed her gun and fired at one of the Augmented as he tried to flee through a gap leading into the open sea up above.

After Haley was safe, Dane realized Athanas was yelling for him over the radio.

“Sir. Sir! Are you okay? Sir!”

“I’m here, Athanas. I was caught in that harpoon blast.”

“I should have thought about that, sir. I’m sorry.”

“It was my order. I never thought their suits would protect them better than ours. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Dane fired on the retreating backside of one of the Augmented and hit his leg. The soldier did not even slow down. It was like they were impervious to pain. Dane wondered if some of them had suffered a loss of consciousness from that blast. Maybe the wetsuits hadn’t protected them after all. Maybe it was their implants. Maybe they had been knocked out, but their commander or some line of code on their ship had made them keep coming.

It was a chilling thought, but Dane stopped ruminating on it when Agus grabbed the bloody leg of the man he had shot and yanked him back into the tunnel with them. Isla seized the man’s opposite arm and pulled. After a moment, the wetsuit failed, and the man was torn asunder.

No more Augmented remained in the tunnel with them. None in whole pieces, anyway.

Which was too bad because, now that they were all gone, the tunnel began to vibrate. Silt and pebbles fell from above, then a larger hole opened, and a cluster of zingers dropped through.

“What the hell is that?” Dane roared.

“The shuttle is trying to take off,” came Athanas’ reply.

“All the Augmented got aboard?”

“No, sir. They’re trying to get to it, but they haven’t all reached the shuttle yet.”

“There must be tech they don’t want us to have on that shuttle. Stop them by any means necessary!”

“Yes, sir!”

Dane heard the low thud of a mounted machine gun firing.

He and Haley swam toward the hole and followed the two nessies out.

It was somehow even more chaotic than inside the tunnel.

The enemy shuttle was taking fire, but it was still lifting off the seabed. To Dane’s dismay, it turned its mounted machine gun on the submarine.

Athanas knew they couldn’t afford to lose their sub. Rather than blasting each other to pieces, she took evasive maneuvers.

The ship did the same, not heading directly to the surface, so Athanas and Good couldn’t anticipate the movement and blast them the entire way. As they tried to avoid being hit, stray bullets flew every which way.

In the midst of these two giant machines trying to blast holes into each other, there were still armed Augmented to consider. Six of them were still alive and had all given up on trying to reach their ship. Instead, they were standing shoulder to shoulder and firing like hell at Isla and Agus.

The two nessies swam toward the Augmented. They were incredibly agile and dipped about like they were hunting a school of fish. They drew closer and closer, miraculously dodging dozens of rounds. Yet the closer they got, the larger targets they became.

Isla was hurt first. When she shrieked in pain, Agus doubled back to protect her. That worked, but only by getting himself shot in the process.

Both nessies wailed in pain and swam away from the Augmented, leaving trails of blood in the water and singing their distress so loudly that it rattled Dane’s mask.

Which left him and Haley undefended against six armed Augmented.

Dane didn’t know what in the hell they were trying to accomplish. They had to know they were dead, right? They would have fighters coming in, and despite Dane not giving the order, Athanas would have told Lev, who would have sent another sub as backup.

Maybe they were doing what so many soldiers had been taught to do when they knew victory was no longer possible. They were fighting to the end. Or maybe they knew some of Dane’s people were already infected with nanites, and if they could hold out long enough, they’d have reinforcements of their own.

Whatever the reason, the six of them were not acting as if their only ticket off the planet was bogged down in a firefight with the locals.

Instead of trying to make contact or take cover, they advanced on Dane and Haley.

Dane wouldn’t go down without a fight, but he also knew when they were outnumbered.

“Keep firing while we fall back to the tunnel.”

Haley nodded and fired at the Augmented as she kicked backward. They hadn’t made it far from the tunnel. They could get in there and be safe.

But then an explosion rang out, and another shockwave shook the water. Dane and Haley were in open water this time, so neither bashed their head, but the shockwave did cause the tunnel entrance to collapse and get crowded with zingers.

He might be able to bear the pain, but he knew if too many stung, he’d pass out from the toxins.

Which meant their way was blocked, and the Augmented knew it.

They fanned out, laying down cover fire with annoying efficiency.

Dane and Haley fired back. Dane even hit one in the leg, to no effect. They had obviously discovered the weakness of feeling pain in battle and had turned off the sensation. They kept coming, even when Haley popped one of them in the chest, and he stopped his approach, dead in the water. They weren’t intimidated. They didn’t care.

Dane’s weapon clicked. He was out of ammo.

“Use mine,” Haley offered when she saw he had stopped firing.

Dane took it from her, but the enemy saw the exchange and pressed them.

Was this how it would end? At the wrong end of a trap that Dane himself had sprung?

He didn’t know what to do. He was low on ammo with no cover and a splitting headache. There was also a ringing in his ears, a high-pitched warbling noise he could not shake no matter how much he tried.

Then he realized what it was.

Agus and Isla reappeared from the gloom of the sea, singing as loudly as they had when they swam off.

They weren’t alone.

Behind the two juveniles were another ten nessies, mostly adults, though with juveniles mixed in. They were swimming very fast, and as they approached, they outpaced Isla and Agus.

The Augmented did not see them coming, so it came as a surprise when five were reduced to four in a single bite.

Another nessie bit the first snack’s legs, and two of the nessies began to fight.

This could have worked in the Augmented’s favor, but then one of them opened fire. The nessies finally understood what exactly Isla and Agus were singing about.

They tore into the armed intruders as the Augmented tried to fight back. Bloody holes opened in one of the nessies, and it died from a lucky shot. This only enraged the rest of them. They attacked more vigorously, focusing on killing their prey before they ate it. Agus and Isla joined in on the feast of carnage, a stark reminder of the fact that these were wild animals with instincts like every other large predator in the world.

“Let’s get back to the tunnel,” Dane told Lopez.

They both started swimming backward. It was slower than turning around, but neither of them wanted to turn their backs on the nessies. Not when they were like this. The entrance to the tunnel was still crowded with zingers, but Dane would take his chance with the passive predators over these decidedly more active ones.

Another shockwave shot through the water. Dane was dimly aware of Athanas telling him they had been successful and shot down the enemy shuttle, but he could hardly focus on her words. The nessies had already killed all the Augmented, and while most of them were content to rip their bodies to pieces, a few were swimming around in wider and wider circles, looking for more prey.

But when the shockwave blasted through the nessies, they all stopped feeding to look around. Dane knew what they were doing. It was a threat assessment. He had done enough of them himself. And when the nessies saw him, they did the same thing he would have done. They came to investigate.

Six of them paddled over, clicking to each other as they kept their gazes focused on Dane and Haley. Dane didn’t have enough ammo to finish off six nessies. He doubted he had enough left to finish off one. Plus, these had come to the aid of Isla and Agus. Could they be related somehow? The family they had left behind? What would Isla and Agus do if Dane opened fire on their kin? Would nessies even think of it that way?

“Any plans?” Dane asked.

“Are you asking me if I want to go on a date later?”

“Absolutely. But I was wondering more about if you knew enough nessie language to tell them we don’t want to be eaten.”

“I don’t think they’re going to listen to me if I threaten not to feed them like I do with Isla and Agus.”

“I guess I’ll aim for their faces, then, and hope to scare them off.”

Before Dane could activate this admittedly optimistic and foolhardy plan, Isla and Agus darted in between the approaching nessies and Dane and Haley.

They did not sit still but swam in tight little backflips as they sang. They stretched their long necks until they were also touching their stumpy tails as they did flip after flip, singing all the while, loud enough to vibrate Dane’s body.

The other nessies sang, too. One of them made the same backflip move, though it was the smallest of the group and didn’t seem to hold much persuasive power over its elders. The other nessies yipped and clicked at each other, debating what to do about these two young ones vouching for a couple of snacks.

Suddenly, the group of nessies turned away from Dane and Lopez and went back to finish their feast on the remaining bits of Augmented. Only the one that had joined Isla and Agus in the backflip move remained, and even that one only stuck around for another few seconds until it realized it had been left behind.

Dane became aware that Athanas and Good were yelling in his ear over the radio.

“Do you want us to engage?”

“We have a firing solution!”

“Sir, what are your orders?’

“We’re fine,” Dane reported. “They’re backing off. I think our nessies vouched for us. Still, I’d like to get out of here.”

“Yes, sir. We hit the enemy ship with an explosive harpoon, and it's grounded. We can come in and take you to it.”

“We’ll come to you, Athanas. These nessies accepted us, but I don’t want to push them if the sub shows up. We used to hunt them, and they might remember that.”

“Yes, sir. Understood. Well, we have visual on you and the enemy ship from where we are right now. We’ll maintain visuals while you come this way.

“Great. Perfect. We’ll be right there.”

Dane started to swim, but before he found his rhythm, Haley touched him and gestured for him to stop.

Despite Isla and Agus communicating with the wild nessies, they had not joined in on the meal. Instead, they continued their backflip dance until it was clear the other nessies were not going to eat their human friends. Then they swam over to Dane and Haley. Agus’ clicking sounds seemed triumphant. As if he was quite proud of saving his people and calling for help. Isla seemed mournful, though, as if she was embarrassed her relatives were eating the humans instead of simply stopping them.

Dane vowed never to underestimate these creatures again.

Then he and Haley attached themselves to their saddles and steered the nessies toward the downed ship.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Augmented ship came to rest on a bed of zingers. After looking at it, Dane wasn’t surprised the vessel made it all the way to Varuna without being noticed. It was utterly black, almost more than black. It was such a deep shade that it seemed as if light could not escape its pull. No wonder no satellites had picked the thing up.

The only way to notice it would have been if it had passed in front of a star and temporarily blocked the light. The Augmented were probably aware of that and had chosen their path to avoid such lines of sight. The dark color made it stick out here on the sea floor, nestled in a bed of brightly colored zingers.

There was also a hole near the front of the vessel, just past the cockpit. The interior of the shuttle was not painted the same light-absorbing black, so it stuck out plainly now, contrasting like egg yolk against the white.

“Have you seen it move since it went down?” Dane asked Athanas.

“No, sir. We think we damaged its electrical system. We haven’t seen its engines fire back up or any of its weapons activate. That being said, I still think it would be better for me to go down there instead of you.”

“I understand your concern, Athanas, but Lopez and I will check this out ourselves. With the nessies in the area, I think it’s best to keep the people with the most experience with Isla and Agus.”

“They’ll be fine,” Good claimed. “Plus, you and I are better with the sub’s weapons than they are.”

“He’s not wrong,” Dane concurred. “I counted three explosive harpoons, though. Are you out?”

“Yes, sir. We expended all our heavy munitions.”

“Then we’ll make this investigation quick. We’ll make sure the engine’s not in danger of overheating, then we’ll bag it and bring it back. Stand by to drop buoys.”

“I’ll stand by to fire our gun on anything that messes with our governor, but we’ll drop the buoys when you ask for them.”

“Fair enough.” Dane couldn’t tell if he was becoming less concerned about security now that he was governor or if his security people were stepping it up because his paranoia wasn’t there to keep them in check. Either way, he both appreciated Athanas’ priorities and found them slightly unnecessary.

This stealth ship represented a boon in this war. With luck, they’d find a record of communication logs, a flight path, and maybe even a device that broadcasted the signal the Augmented needed for their implants. Hell, even the odd, light-absorbing black paint that survived a trip through space, the atmosphere, and ocean submersion would be valuable.

It was nice to have a fully loaded weapon again, though. Athanas might not have had explosive harpoons, but they had plenty of the super-cavitating rounds that were so essential underwater. Dane had no idea if the pilot was still alive. Water filled the ship, but the inability to breathe was rarely a concern for people accustomed to working in space. Surely, if the pilot had survived, they could have grabbed a breathing mask.

It was something to keep in mind, though Dane felt confident he and Lopez could handle it. Especially considering they had faced down ten or so Augmented and as many nessies. One pilot in a damaged ship didn’t sound so dangerous. Although…

“Point all that sub’s scanners at this ship. If someone so much as turns on a light, I want to know about it. The last thing I want is for us to get caught in a blast intended to scuttle the ship.”

“That’s why Good and I should go, sir.”

“Your concern is noted, but I’m doing this one myself. You ready, Lopez?”

“Let’s see how these bastards decorate.”

They swam toward the ship. The hole was high on the side, so they didn’t need to get anywhere near the zingers, which were already reaching out with their long, probing arms, testing to see if they could digest this object that had fallen on top of them.

Dane activated the light on his mask, then set the embedded camera to record. If something did go wrong, this video might be all they would get out of the ship. They entered through the hole and found themselves in a sort of hold or cargo area. Benches lined each wall, and what looked like the remains of people living here scattered the space.

It was hard to tell where everything was supposed to go after the frantic battle that had ultimately flooded the cabin, especially since half the objects were floating. Based on what Dane saw, he assumed these had been the soldiers’ living quarters.

That implied this shuttle had been dumped into the solar system, and all these people had been crowded back here while they made their way across. It must have been a slow flight. If they had burned hard, Varuna’s satellites would have picked them up. They would inspect the shuttle later to be sure, but Dane felt confident the shuttle had been dropped here. So, the Augmented had not developed an even smaller warp drive. Which was good. If they had, it would tilt the balance of power further toward the Augmented.

There wasn’t much in that compartment, though. Ammunition, the remnants of food packaging, and soiled clothes were about it. Dane thought he found the spot where the tank of nanites must have been mounted for the duration of the flight, but again, he was sure the engineers would be able to make better sense of it than he could.

What he did not find was a bomb, an automated weapons system, or an indication of any other system that might have made bringing this sub back home a danger.

“The cockpit is still locked,” Haley called from the front of the room.

Dane swam over and tried the door.

“What, you didn’t believe me?” Haley joked.

“Sorry. Old habit, I guess.”

“Do you want to try to get in there?"

“No…if the pilot is still alive, I’d like to keep him that way. Everyone else was eaten, so he might be our best source of intelligence. I’ll guard the door, though, while you attach the buoys to the outside.”

“Sure.”

Lopez swam from the sub and called for Athanas to drop the buoys.

No sound came from the cockpit, and the ship did nothing but sit there. Dane swam back up and out of the hole, where he could see the door and also help affix the buoys to the ship. They were dense little bundles of strong plastic with a magnetic hook on a heavy cord.

Dane hooked some of them to handholds inside the sub while Haley connected some to the exterior. Once connected, they simply had to pull a cord, and the compressed air inside the buoy was released. The buoys expanded and floated up, pulling the sub with them.

At least, that was the plan.

“Do you have any more up there?”

“Four more.”

“Send them down,” Dane stated doubtfully, though he didn’t think four more would do the job. Indeed, they did not. Despite the ship now being surrounded by bright orange balloons, it was not lifting.

“I have the winch. We were going to use that to tow it back, but we could try to lift it first,” Good suggested.

“Sounds as good a plan as any.”

A long cable dropped down from the sub, and Dane hooked it to the gun affixed to the front of the ship. If it could withstand being fired in combat, it had to be mounted with enough strength to be able to lift the shuttle in water.

He connected it, Good reeled in the slack, and finally, the ship came up off the bed of zingers.

“Damn, that’s a heavy ship,” Good complained. “Maybe if we could seal the hole and pump out the water, we could do it.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Dane insisted.

“Well, what other ideas you got? As it is, we can barely lift it off the seafloor, let alone pull it.”

Dane didn’t know how to solve that problem. He looked at Haley, who smiled from behind her mask.

“Oh, I can think of two.”

Five minutes later, they had Isla and Agus connected to the ship. Now, with fourteen floatation buoys, a sub, and two nessies, they were able to get it moving and head back to base.

Dane maintained his position outside the hole in the ship, where he could monitor their journey while keeping his gun trained on the door to the cockpit. He wondered what the pilot thought. If he was still alive. Must be strange to be on the other side of that tinted glass while your ship was picked up with you still inside.

They radioed ahead to the base so there would be a team ready to meet them. The going was slow, so they had plenty of time to get ready. Nothing attacked their odd little procession as they drove back to base, though Dane kept finding himself thinking about that odd, tunneling turtle they had seen. There were still so many mysteries to this planet. It was frustrating to be stuck dealing with this wrecked shuttle and an invasion, with plenty of things here already that would be more than happy to kill them.

They came to the base and headed for the moon pool room.

It was tricky getting the ship into position because it was connected to the other sub. Eventually, they decided to drop it on the ground as close to Homebase as possible and disconnect the sub’s winch. Then, while the sub and the nessies maintained a perimeter, thanks to Athanas and Lopez, Dane swam up to the moon pool.

He surfaced and was pleased to see a team of engineers had assembled the moveable crane they used for lifting the subs from the water. Despite the weight of the ship, it should be no match for that machine, which had been designed to raise subs even if they were completely flooded. Dane took the lead, swam back to the ship at the bottom of the sea, and connected the chain leaders at the end of it to a few different spots.

It took a few minutes to get the ship into position, but after they started lifting, it came up toward the moon pool. Dane and a few other divers disconnected the buoys, and the crane hauled it up and out of the water.

One engineer went to fetch a pump, while another simply opened a hatch on the side that let the water drain out.

“We’ll see what we can find,” Granger commented, having made it in time to see the water spill out.

“I would appreciate that, but first, we need to crack open the cockpit. It’s sealed, and I have no idea if the pilot is still in there or not.”

“Sure.” Granger picked two engineers and armed them with cutting tools. Then, while they got to work cutting through the hinges on the door, Dane covered them.

The door opened, but no Augmented came out. The man in the seat wore high-tech SCUBA gear, the mask on the seat beside him. But he was dead, and there wasn’t a single mark on his lifeless body.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dane knew that hours had passed. Yet, in the chaos of it all, it felt like it had only been a few minutes since he had come back inside the base. Since then, he had eaten, gone through a decontamination process, had his brain scanned, answered a hundred questions, given a thousand orders, and briefly passed out from exhaustion before waking up to a message from Carlos.

The biologist had not flagged it as a priority or anything, but Dane still felt compelled to go talk to him. His crisis with the ship and the swimming Augmented had only been triggered because they had released nanites in the base. He had found the Augmented, but there was still a real risk they’d already accomplished their goal. If Dr. Alvarez had news on that, one way or the other, Dane wanted to know as soon as possible.

So, despite the idea of falling asleep at his desk holding great sway, he got up and headed for the med bay.

Though Dr. Alvarez had called him for a briefing, Dane still had to wait a few minutes when he got to the doctor’s office. He supposed that was simply part of humanity. No matter how advanced a society was, people would always have to wait in the doctor’s office for a few minutes longer than they would have liked.

When Dr. Alvarez did emerge, he looked exhausted.

“Dr. Alvarez, how is everything going?”

“Eh. Not as good as I would like. So far, we have found thirty-eight infected citizens.”

“Thirty-eight? Goddamn it.”

“Based on what the teams found in the water, there could have been ten times that many, if not more. We are trying to tell ourselves that we are lucky, pero no es el cierto. Tenemos el suerte de un mosca in caca.”

Dane’s Spanish was okay, but he didn’t know exactly what that meant. Still, Alvarez’s expression said it wasn’t great.

“You have a team scanning people?”

“Yes. A team of three working through the base. We haven’t found anyone fully infected yet. Fortunately, the stomachache was a common symptom. We made sure that everyone who felt anything reported here. Still, there is probably someone who tried to sleep it off or did not notice.”

“And have you given the cure to everyone on hand?”

“No. I wish. We used the MRI to disrupt them, so we had to use less of the cure, but even so, we ran out before we got to everyone.”

“How many did you get?”

“Well, we prioritized the people from Alpha Centauri because we didn’t want to risk using the MRI on them. We didn’t want anyone to go completely untreated, entiende?”

“Sure. Makes sense.”

“Except that meant we didn’t have enough for everyone. We got about two dozen. Well, veinte-cinco.”

“Twenty-five. So still thirteen untreated?”

“Thirteen. Unlucky thirteen. They all passed through the MRI, so they should be fine, based on Adams and Petrov. But of course Thorson is very worried about everyone.”

“Where’s Thorson now?”

“He is almost done with the autopsy on the Augmented pilot you found. He should be out soon. We think the crisis is over, but until everyone is scanned, we have to assume there are more.”

“Have your team keep going until they finish. If they need help or get burned out, contact security.”

“Yes, sir. Claro.”

“What else do you need to be successful?” Dane asked.

“More of the cure,” Carlos stated.

“I couldn’t agree more. Can we increase the manufacture of it?”

Dr. Alvarez paused, biting his lip. “Of course.”

“What would it take to make that happen?”

Dr. Alvarez shrugged, looking as tired as Dane had ever seen him. “It would short-staff us here. But if we send some of the people from Alpha Centauri up to their ships to manufacture more, they could increase the efficiency.”

“When you and Thorson finish with this crisis, let’s do it. This proves we need more of the cure ASAP. We can’t risk them trying another one of these infiltrations.”

“Claro.”

A commotion erupted from the back, and Alvarez looked over his shoulder. He was needed. That much was clear.

“If you need to go, then go.”

“I will. Dr. Thorson will be out soon.”

Dane nodded and let Dr. Alvarez get back to work.

While he waited, Dane had a brief vision of the Augmented sending spy ship after spy ship. They could target the Varuna ships in orbit, take out satellites with ranged attacks, or send five submersible ships instead of one. Every attack would wear down the people of Varuna, and it would only take one to undo them all. If they planned on doing it again and again before the invasion, Dane’s people would be too exhausted to fight back. They needed a cure in every person on this colony. Tomorrow, if possible.

Dane blamed himself for the oversight. He had been so focused on the military logistics of their defense he had let the medical researchers steer their own ship. In normal times, he wouldn’t have beaten himself up for letting people follow their interests, especially when their interests lie in finding a better, more functional, and efficient medical treatment. But they had a cure. It might not be the quickest to manufacture nor the most efficient, but it worked.

That should have been enough for Dane to order some of the team to manufacture enough to dose everyone on Varuna three times over. Instead, he had let the scientists do what scientists do. They were always eager to learn more about everything.

Dane remembered how excited Alvarez had been when they had first gotten to this world. All he had wanted to do was study every creature they saw. He didn’t care how big or small, how complex or simple. He was addicted to new knowledge. Of course, medical research would be the same way. Now, instead of exploring the bounds and limits of a novel ecosystem, he was exploring the very limits of how the human brain worked.

Of course they had wanted to find different methods. Of course they had wanted a way to use fewer nanites. All those goals were important. Ultimately, they would need breakthroughs in quite a few aspects of how the health nanites interacted with the brain implant nanites if they were to end the Augmented threat. Still, he should have started with a good old-fashioned stockpile of the medicine that worked.

He hoped he hadn’t cost them the time needed to manufacture enough of it. If the Augmented were using the spy vessel as a false flag, they could be in trouble.

A door opened, and Thorson poked his head out and beckoned for Dane to come in. Dane entered a room with a corpse on the table. Thorson had obviously been performing an autopsy.

“Dr. Thorson, how are things?” Dane asked, not sure how to broach the subject of the corpse in the middle of the room. Surely the surgeon would get to it.

To his surprise, he didn’t. At least not right away. “I’m not well, Governor. I swore an oath. An oath to do no harm. I don’t know if I upheld that today.”

“Because of him?” Dane asked, pointing at the dead body, which had to be the crudest way possible to broach the subject.

“That asshole? No, I don’t care about him. He was dead on arrival. I have no allegiance to the dead. I mean our own citizens. We sent them through the MRI based on your orders and triggered convulsions in everyone. No one died, but I can hardly say I was acting in their best interests.”

“Those were my orders, and I take full responsibility for them,” Dane stated. Having this conversation on either side of a dead body added a certain gravitas to the situation that Dane was doing his best to respect.

“Thank you for that, but frankly, your orders don’t matter. My oath is to myself. I cannot hurt a patient because I am ordered to. Some of the worst atrocities in human history happened precisely because a surgeon told themselves they were following orders.”

Dane nodded. He was not about to disagree. In the military, they were drilled to take orders. It was the leaders making decisions, and the blame for a failed plan lay on their shoulders. Though anyone who had pulled a trigger knew that did not always feel as true as one’s superiors wanted. And that was within the chain of command. Doctors, surgeons, weapon designers, and engineers often were not part of any chain. Thorson had every right to grapple with what he was doing, even if Dane thought it was the right choice. The only choice.

“I understand where you’re coming from, Doctor, and I want you to know that I agree. I’ve asked Dr. Alvarez to send a team up to the ships so they increase the rate of manufacture of the cure. I’d rather be able to use full doses and skip the MRI, and I don’t want to be rationing this breakthrough.”

“Oh, thank God, yes.” Thorson looked relieved, an odd expression to see on someone wearing a bloody apron. “Dr. Alvarez is brilliant, of course, but I agree, we need to get a reserve of the cure done before we move on to reverse the transmissibility of the broadcast.”

Dane wanted to ask about that. It sounded like something Alvarez had been working on, not Thorson, but that meant Thorson was not the person to talk to. Besides, even if it did sound tantalizing, that was the problem with research. So many amazing ideas ended with a dead end. They didn’t have time for that now. They might not have time for anything, depending on what Thorson had found.

“What can you tell me about this pilot?” Dane asked, getting to the point of being in this room.

Thorson threw up his hands. They were the only part of him not bloody, surely because he had just taken off his gloves.

“There is not much to say. I can’t find any reason he should be dead. No trauma, no damage to any major organs. He was likely alive, even after his ship was hit with an explosive.”

“Do you think it was some sort of a kill switch in the brain implant?”

“I do, but that is mere conjecture. The implant itself is fried. Overloaded with a charge that makes any data unreadable to us. It did not cause a huge amount of visible damage to the brain. I would expect lots of bleeding or swelling, and I see neither.”

“Any idea if he did this to himself or if someone ordered it?”

“These are hardened soldiers. People who were in this shuttle for at least a week before they came here. Whether he decided to end his life or the implant made him think it was a good idea is irrelevant. These are fanatics. We need to remember that. They cannot think about being anything other than what they are, and they think the only way we will be convinced is if they make us like them.

“A very dangerous combination, but not new to humanity. There are many fanatics in history who kill themselves instead of being captured. They think it is easier to face the ultimate end rather than examine their own cognitive dissonance. That must be even more acute with the Augmented.”

“Then, there’s the fact that the Augmented don’t value individual lives,” Dane added.

Thorson nodded. “We should assume we will not capture any Augmented alive. They will either end their own lives or have their lives ended remotely. It is another concern for our people if they are taken over. I worry that if one of ours is implanted, and we capture them, the implant could force them to do this to themselves before we can intervene.”

“I’m sure they’d rather use someone on the inside as a spy than that, but I take your point. We need more of the cure. We can’t risk having implanted people, not even if they’re imprisoned.”

“Unfortunately, I think that’s the only thing I learned from this autopsy.”

“Well, thank you for your time and for giving so much to this colony. I know some men would let their scruples fall to the side in a situation like this, and I’m glad you’re not one of them.”

“Same for you, Governor. It is good to see a man of principle.”

Dane wasn’t so sure about that since he’d felt immense relief when a pack of wild nessies gobbled up nine people. Yet he thanked Thorson all the same.

He left and headed for the team of engineers working on the shuttle, hoping there was something more to be gleaned.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Dane entered the moon pool room, his brain struggled to make sense of the black hole in the ceiling. He blinked twice before he could understand what he was looking at. The paint on the Augmented shuttle was so dark that it was hard for him to make sense of it as an object. After spending so much time in space, his brain defaulted to “hole in the wall to the void” rather than “ship painted black.”

Though as he approached the shuttle, still hanging from chains and suspended, he was able to make better sense of the craft. It had to have been custom-built for this mission. It was remarkably streamlined, which was unnecessary for a spacecraft but absolutely essential for a vessel that needed to travel underwater.

It was a frightening reminder of what the Augmented were capable of. They had built this custom craft and deployed it far faster than Dane’s people would have been able to. There were probably more like it, or worse, more sophisticated iterations on the way.

He hoped capturing the thing turned out to be the boon he wanted it to be.

Though when he saw Nat Granger climb down from the dangling ship and put her tattooed arms on her hips in that now-galactic gesture of disapproval, he felt his hopes wane. She looked like someone had eaten the last cookie, which was pretty bad news for Granger.

“Granger. Tell me you’ve got something.”

Her jaw flexed. “That puts me in an uncomfortable position of wanting to follow an order but also not wanting to lie.”

“Goddamn it. Seriously?”

“As far as logs go, we’ve got nothing. Honestly, it’s impressive. I have spilled ice cream on a computer console and fried it only half as good as this puppy is fried. Like, if the ocean got into the cabin, it would not have been as toasted as these components are now. However they got here, the Augmented really don’t want us to know.”

“I’m guessing they didn’t keep paper logs, then?”

That got a laugh from Granger. “Yeah, right. They kept them with the stone tablet that was etched with a map of our solar system. Got it all right here.”

“So nothing, really? Do you know how hard it was to drag this thing back here?”

“Well, not nothing, nothing. Just nothing. We’re already reverse-engineering the paint, and the engines are interesting. They managed to fit something to get them through space in the same area as something to push them through water. As far as spy stuff goes, I wish we had something to give you.”

“We have no idea how they came into the system? It would be nice to know how they got so close undetected.”

“Not specifically, no. It had to have been basically what you all did to go to Earth. There’s no warp drive in there, so a larger ship must have warped in, then dropped them out and warped away. They burned their engines hard, then they coasted in. Their fuel reserves were practically empty, so unless they jettisoned their fuel for some reason, we know they were not planning on heading home.”

“And no guesses where the hole in our security is?”

“It’s a big solar system, Dane. There’s a couple of larger planets farther out. They could certainly hide behind those. We’re getting a satellite to one of them, but it would take an overhaul of our priorities to get them all monitored. Then there’s the entire other side of the sun to consider. That’s the biggest region we can’t see. If we’re going to plug a hole, I’d start there.”

“What are you recommending?”

“I’d fly two satellites out and put them in Varuna’s orbit, but a third of the year ahead and a third of a year behind. That way, we’d have full coverage. But with the launch systems we normally use on satellites, it would take weeks to get them in position.”

“I don’t think we have weeks.”

Granger shrugged. “I mean, we might? That shuttle had nothing in reserve. My guess is they were supposed to soften us up. Like I said, though, that’s a guess.”

Dane sighed. “Damn, I really could have used some good news.”

Granger sighed in commiseration, but then she brightened. “Well, I did send a team out to get that canister you marked on our digital system. It was mostly empty, but you were right about the nanites. We found trace amounts. So we definitely know that’s how they got the nanites into our systems.”

Dane didn’t want to say he’d already figured as much, so he said nothing.

Granger continued. “The cleanup of the water system is going well. We have a solvent that will dissolve a component in the nanites and not damage the pipes. We’re running it through there now, and it should have its job done in less than an hour.”

“You had a lot on hand, then?”

“It’s highly corrosive, so we didn’t need a ton…oh. I see what you’re getting at, but unfortunately, we cannot inject it into a human. It would scrub the inside of your veins even better than it does our pipes. It would be like injecting bleach into your veins to destroy a virus. Only a complete and utter moron would consider such a thing.”

“Cannot inject ourselves with bleach to beat the nanites. Got it. How long will the decontamination of the decontaminant take then?”

“After it’s done, and we’re giving ourselves a thirty-minute buffer to make sure, we’ll flush the entire system with seawater. We’ve already removed the filters, and we’re ready to reinstall fresh ones when we’re sure the nanites are gone.”

“Any ideas on how to prevent this in the future?”

Granger nodded. Obviously, she had anticipated the question. “For starters, we’re installing redundant video cameras. That way, every entrance to the base and all the major access points, like the water system, will have two eyes on them. One of the cameras will continue to be in a visually obvious place, while the other will be more hidden. If another of these spy teams takes out a camera, we’ll have eyes on what happened.”

“Makes sense. What about sensors in the water system itself? Considering they’ve used water against the people of two planets now, they might try it again.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but you make a good point. Should be simple enough to install a modified scanner somewhere on the system. I could program it to alert me if it detects anything or to shut the system down.”

“Make it do both.”

“Sure.”

“And what about drinking water? How long until people can use the tap again?”

“Hours, but we have the kitchens working on making distilled water by evaporating the sea water. It’s time-consuming and not at all efficient, plus distilled water tastes like crap. At least no one will die of thirst, though.”

“I guess that’ll have to do.”

“I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else, but goddamn, this is a headache. We were hitting our stride with missiles. This is going to slow us down.”

“I think the focus on artillery is what got us in this mess in the first place. I should’ve known better.”

Granger shrugged. “You can’t outthink everything these guys do. I think you’re doing all right. Though I look forward to the day when I have enough time to think about baking some cookies again.”

Dane faked a laugh and said his farewells. He couldn’t stop thinking about how close of a call this had been. If they hadn’t caught those first few people, there was no way of knowing how many would have been Augmented. And if even one of them had been “activated,” it could have been much worse. Hundreds of Augmented would have represented an end to the colony.

How were people supposed to fight against their own loved ones? Scientists who’d worked side by side for more than a year were supposed to turn on each other? The psychological aspect of fighting people who looked like—who were—the people you knew would be difficult to overcome.

And what was Dane to do? The Augmented made their next move, and it failed. What were they going to do next? Dane wasn’t sure, but he knew he couldn’t strike them. What option did that leave besides building up the system’s defenses as best as he could?

But there was one option. An option his chief of security and his most experienced captain had both recommended. They could withdraw and leave this world for the Augmented. They could go somewhere that did not have a base the Augmented undoubtedly had the blueprints for. They could take a chance and leave all this behind instead of scrambling like mad and missing who knew how many different aspects of security.

Dane didn’t know what the best choice was, though he had a feeling there wasn’t a best choice. More likely, he would have to pick what he thought was better and hope he wasn’t wrong. It was not the place a leader wanted to be, but perhaps the one all leaders had to operate from. Dane started to run as he tried to think through it all, but he was worried that no matter how many kilometers he covered, the situation wouldn’t change.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“You have got to stop showing up like this.”

“Unannounced?”

“Dripping in sweat.” Haley pretended to wrinkle her nose at Dane’s stink. Or maybe she didn’t have to pretend. The water wasn’t back on yet, something Dane had neglected to think about before he started his cardio meditation. Now that he was done, there wasn’t anything he could do about the sweat covering his body.

“I’ve heard some women are attracted to particular body odors?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not one of them.” Haley laughed, then blasted Dane with a spritz of perfume. It smelled of the sea and a particular type of kelp that was inedible but produced a jasmine-like aroma when dried. It made Dane nostalgic for life back on Earth. Jasmine had been one of the few plants to survive the ecological destruction Earth had suffered in its last world war. Likely, the Augmented had brought back dozens of varieties and had them growing in perfectly tended gardens. They could have done something like that here if there wasn’t a war. Amazing how a simple whiff of perfume could bring back so many memories so quickly.

“Sorry. I just needed someone to talk to.”

“I know you do, and I’m glad you caught me.”

“You’re leaving again?”

“A giant iron sphere of war won’t build itself.”

Dane nodded. He had enjoyed their time together. Well, the first half of it before they had nearly been shot and devoured. And he would miss her. “How long until that’s done?”

“The crew is almost done with the structure itself. When it’s finished, and the iron is cool enough, we’ll start attaching weapons to it. Then we’ll bring the Cosmos in if that’s still all right.”

“Yeah, I think that makes sense.”

“Okay, great. Well, if we have that to work with, it won’t take that long. I’m not even going to pretend to put in comms or life support. Not now. We’ll use the Cosmos for what we need and get it battle-ready. Assuming we survive the attack, we can improve it from there. Maybe put in some shag carpeting.”

Dane snorted bitterly.

“Are you all right?” Haley asked.

“It’s amazing that you can still crack jokes, even when you’re talking about an imminent attack.”

“The shag carpeting? That’s no joke. Shag carpeting is awesome.”

Dane nodded and tried to laugh but found that he couldn’t.

“Hey, what is it now?” Haley asked, pulling Dane down to sit on her bed with her.

“I mean, everything? Mostly it’s like you said, though. Assuming we survive the attack. For a while there, I could almost tell myself the Augmented were not coming. Like maybe we were too small for them to care, so we’d have enough time to build up our defenses. Now that we caught them trying to poison us, there can’t be any doubt.”

“But that doesn’t change anything, right? We’ve all been working as much as we possibly can to get ourselves ready. I guess it seems like more of a sure thing now, but no one doubted it was coming.”

“True.” Dane paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “I guess… I guess part of it is that I didn’t anticipate them using spies against us. I had assumed they would arrive with overwhelming force and we’d fight to the finish. Thinking about all the different ways they could try to undermine us… God, it’s so much.”

“Yes, we need to diversify our defenses. Now more than ever, but I still don’t see what that changes. I don’t think this lessens our need for an iron sphere of death.”

“You only want to make that thing because you’re a mad scientist.”

“Wow. You really are glum if you’re talking mess about my ship.”

Dane sighed. “I’m worried I’m making the wrong call. If we don’t get this right, everyone here is either going to be implanted or die.”

“You’re still thinking about fleeing, then? About trying to find another planet?”

“I was trying not to, but with this attack, I can’t help but consider it.”

Haley looked concerned, but she was nodding. “That makes sense. A leader needs to consider all their options.”

“Right. And I can’t help but see the downsides of fighting. They hurt nearly forty of our people with eleven of their own. We won that skirmish, but we have people in the med bay because of it. And they can simply send more. More and more and more. They can attack us, but they could also send one of these submarine spaceships loaded with nanites every day for years, and it wouldn’t affect them.”

“I think if they kept sending the shuttles, we’d start catching them before they splashed down, don’t you?”

Dane was forced to nod. “Of course. We’re going to adapt, but do you see what I mean? They have so many resources and ways to hurt us. What if they develop a version of their nanite that could survive in our oceans?”

“We have a filter system now, right? We’d catch that.”

“Right, but then they could drop a bomb on our platform or send a meteor at our space station. The odds are something like five million to every single one of us! How are we supposed to stand against that?”

Dane realized he was breathing hard, harder than he had when he’d been running. Haley took his hand, and he realized he was sweating profusely. Her hand felt cool and dry in his sweaty, clammy mitt.

“It’s not that simple. They can’t bring ten billion people here in ten billion fighters and drop ten billion nukes on us. There are logistics that favor defense. They need to warp here, manufacture weapons, and equip soldiers. You know as well as I do that a small, well-trained, and well-fortified group can repel a much larger one. Didn’t the ancient Greeks stop the Egyptians or something with only three hundred soldiers?”

“It was the Spartans, and they were defending against the Persians, but yeah. That’s the gist of it.” Haley’s coy grin said she knew exactly who had been defending and attacking in that ancient and famous battle, and she was only trying to get him out of his funk. “But we don’t have a choke point like they did,” he pointed out.

“Maybe not, but we have an ocean above our heads. Not exactly the easiest barrier to cross.”

“That’s true, but they don’t even have to get down here to win. They could point that massive energy beam ship of theirs at us, and poof. We’d be done.”

“That’s true. They could also drop a thousand nukes on our heads. But I don’t think they will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because they haven’t yet. And they didn’t do that to Alpha Centauri, despite there being two occupied planets and the Centauri having already attacked them. If there was a planet to turn into scorched earth, it would have been theirs, but they didn’t. I don’t think that’s what they want.”

“You really think they’ll invade and not resort to deadly force?”

“They have ten billion lives. More than any other empire in history, the Augmented must see the value of real estate like Varuna has. I don’t know how their beam weapon works, but I bet hitting the surface of a planet and punching through its atmosphere does not make for a positive long-term impact. I could be wrong, and they could do that exact thing. But if they wanted to wipe us out like bugs, why haven’t they? It would be so much easier.”

“I suppose that’s true…”

“Of course it’s true! They could launch a warship in, filled with a hundred laser-guided H-bombs, and we’d be done. There would be nothing we could do. But that’s not what they want. Either because of this planet or because of who we are and what we know, they’re not willing to do that. Which means we can fight back.”

“That makes a lot of sense, but I still wonder if fleeing is the better choice.”

Haley bit her lip. God, Dane wanted to kiss her at that moment. She was so beautiful and so wise.

“You’ve ordered people into combat before. How is this different?”

“Because these are civilians!” Dane snapped, surprised at his own outburst. But there it was. Haley had got to the truth of his feelings. “It’s different because these are scientists and engineers, farmers and cooks. It’s one thing to order soldiers to battle. Hell, the Alliance of Democratic Nations only used volunteers. Those people at least thought they knew what they were getting into. But the people here? How am I supposed to decide how they can best risk all their lives?”

“I understand, and that makes a lot of sense…”

“But?” Dane heard the unspoken word.

“But you did not choose this. The Augmented did! We are being hunted by people who want to put robots in our brains! It’s not like you’re ordering us to fight a cause we don’t believe in.”

“I’m ordering you all to fight, though.”

Haley nodded. “That’s true. We all understand our governor wants us to prepare for a battle. And yes, you’re right that a lot of us probably don’t know what that really means. I barely knew what it meant until the Augmented attacked, but they did attack. We all have some experience with this, and no one is trying to stage protests or tell you not to stand against them, right?”

“Maybe they would if they knew there was somewhere else to go.”

“Do you really think running will save all these people?”

“I don’t know. It might make more sense than fighting.”

“In the short term, sure,” Haley stated, which nearly made Dane’s breath stop in his throat. Here was Haley, one of the smartest people on this entire planet, confirming his greatest fears. “But in the long run? I don’t think so.”

“We could evacuate, though. Don’t you think?”

“I do. We could probably even get all our people to another planet in maybe two jumps of our ships. Let’s say three if we want to bring a good amount of gear and food.”

“That timeline is so long, though. It’s at least a few days to the closest planet, traveling by warp. If we needed three trips, that’s potentially weeks, especially since they’ll check the closest planet first.”

“Right. We can move faster than light, but that doesn’t mean we can move faster than the Augmented. And if they catch us mid-move, with our pants down—”

“That’s not an option. If we’re not dug in with every gun we have pointed at them when they arrive, we’re not surviving this.”

“I think you’re right, but let’s say, for the sake of argument, we can get clear. We could certainly evacuate all our non-combat people. Obviously, we’d need to keep everyone who knows how to fly a ship or fire a gun, but even now, that’s about half of our population. Everyone who’s more comfortable could go ahead, set up shop, and leave us frozen fish until we follow.”

“But we can’t stretch ourselves out like that.” As Dane spoke, Lopez’s strategy impressed him. She was making him argue against what he was considering, probing the idea for weaknesses. And she’d helped him find plenty.

“Like I said, let’s say we can. Here’s the list of confirmed planets that ought to be habitable.”

Haley showed him a list. It didn’t even fill the entire screen of the tablet.

“There’s only twenty-three of them,” he remarked.

“Exactly. So we go to one. The Augmented get here with a fleet of warships, all loaded up and ready for action, but they find the lights off and nobody home. What do they do next? Do they go back home?”

“I want to say yes, but really, no. Probably not. They might move in and fortify this place-”

“Which would make Varuna lost forever.”

Dane nodded. Haley knew he loved this world and would not enjoy thinking of losing it like that.

“But do they stop?” Haley pressed.

Dane sighed. “No, I don’t think they would. I wouldn’t if I were in their position. They obviously see us as a threat. Otherwise, they’d leave us alone. If they come to invade and find out we’re organized enough to evacuate under their noses, that won’t make us less of a threat.”

“So what would you do?”

“I would dig in but wouldn’t take a whole ton of people. I would send most of my fleet onward. Probably go to a few of the closer systems and poke around, maybe drop some surveillance gear or scout ships to hang out and see if anyone pops in.”

“Which means if we do flee, we shouldn’t go to any of the closer planets. We should go as far away as possible.”

“Which would make fleeing take more time,” Dane pointed out.

Haley nodded. “Put that aside for now. Let’s say we make it to another planet. What do we do, dig in there? Try to build something as well-defended as an underwater base inside a volcano? Because I have my doubts about us being able to accomplish anything like that.”

“We could land the Cosmos. That’s what it was designed to do.”

“Right, and it would provide shelter for most of us, but we couldn’t lift it off again. Once it goes down to a planet, that’s where it stays.”

“So we couldn’t ever flee again.”

“Not if we land the Cosmos. It would be difficult to bring the machinery we need to build on that kind of a timescale, too. Granger can make some amazing things, but at the end of the day, it’s about moving mass from one place to the other. That takes time and energy. Period.”

“Okay, so we can’t land on any of the known habitable worlds. Lev and Richmond said maybe we could flee to one of them, use it as a temporary base, then set out to find a new planet no one had detected.”

Haley chuckled, and the gleam in her eyes said this was his dumbest idea yet. “But you don’t think that would work?”

“Again, two-trip minimum. More like three, so it’s not like we can leave people hanging out in space. I guess it’s possible we could find a world with a decent enough climate that we could hang out on the surface, but that seems unlikely. But say we do. Then what? We start hopping to stars we like the looks of and hope we get lucky? There’s more to it than luck,” Dane insisted.

Haley nodded. “There is. We would look at stars with the right mass and luminosity, but here’s the thing. Any calculation we run, the Augmented can run, too. Probably more times over than we can imagine. That means there’s not much sense in trying to figure out the smartest place to go. Because for us, the smartest place is the place where the Augmented are least likely to be, which would likely be not the most obvious spots.”

“But if they think that, maybe they won’t go where it’s obvious.”

Haley shook her head. “We have to remember they’re always going to win the numbers game. They have more ships and more people. For every system we hop to, they can hop to ten. Maybe more. That means they can afford to look at all the most likely spots, maybe even more than once. But we can’t do that. We have to guess right on the first or second try, then hope they guess wrong, forever.”

“Those are bad odds,” Dane admitted.

Haley nodded and patted him on the back. “I’m sure there are people who’d take them. I’m not one of them, personally. It seems like too big a risk for too little reward.”

“I agree. I mean, you make a lot of sense. Fleeing isn’t going to get us much. And the more time goes by, the more they build up their supplies, and they can do that at a faster rate.”

Rage replaced Dane’s self-pity. Like ore being melted into iron, fury grew inside him. A fury made from the burnt cinders that Haley’s cool logic had reduced his desire to flee to.

“How dare they try to take over our minds! How dare they come here after all they’ve done to our home world? What they put people like Richmond through? It’s unconscionable.”

“And you know that if we fled and left them this world, they wouldn’t accept it as a truce.”

“Of course not. They already added two planets to their holdings, and they’re already coming for us. The bastards won’t stop.”

“They won’t.”

“Which means neither can we.” Dane’s certainty grew. He had made a decision, the best of a bunch of poor choices. Now he would stick with it, damn it. If only to show the Augmented this was what free will looked like. “We’ll defend this planet against them with everything we have. We’ll blast them from the air and inject them with our own damn cure if we have to. I don’t know how, but we will keep this place safe against all comers.”

“Absolutely!” Haley beamed, proud of Dane for letting her help him pull out of his mental rut. “I’ll do everything I can to help.”

Dane kissed her then, pulling her close to his sweaty body and holding her in his strong arms.

“I’m going to miss that,” he divulged.

“Miss what? What’s wrong with a kiss?”

“They’re a little tricky when your girlfriend is stuck working on a battle sphere.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Time seemed to fade from Dane’s existence as the tasks of the next week all blended together. Constant threats lingered of the enemy fleet arriving, of another person showing up with a stomachache, of someone somehow becoming fully Augmented and attacking or injecting the other colonists. Every hour when none of that happened—hell, every minute—was used to its fullest.

Dane felt like he was constantly greenlighting new projects, approving modifications, or reallocating resources. He had worked in management before, since commanding a rock-dropper involved ordering around maintenance crews and resupply runs, but never anything like this. There were more than twenty teams doing different things, many of them using people involved in multiple projects.

Considering how tight they were on time and personnel, Dane was constantly arbitrating. Some of those decisions were difficult, even for a military man. Did they need more missiles or more launchers? Was it worth it to spend time on the targeting hardware or a waste of time, considering the Augmented would mow down ninety percent of the missiles they launched at them? What parts of the orbital station should be most heavily reinforced? Did it make sense to build parts of it thick enough to survive missile bombardment, or was that a lost cause considering the sheer size of the Augmented’s energy weapon?

Maybe it would make more sense to prioritize escape pods. But would manufacturing escape pods send the wrong message to his people? What if the escape pods all had hand weapons inside, so whoever was making them or eventually used them would implicitly understand the idea was not to run away but to make it to the surface, regroup, and continue fighting?

However, some decisions were easier to make.

Dane did not want to run out of the nanite cure again, so he had Alvarez send enough people up to the Centauri ships to make them run at full capacity. Alvarez and Thorson had not been happy about him gutting their lab—their words, not his—but when the first shipment of the nanite cure got shipped back down to the surface, their tune changed.

There was enough in the first tank for eight hundred people. A third of the colony. Far more than they had possessed previously. That calmed the pair of doctors, as did the lessened workload. No additional patients had come down with any symptoms of being implanted, so the med bay had cleared out and was once more filled with only the inevitable injuries of people working on too many projects too quickly.

So when the first batch arrived, neither Alvarez nor Thorson asked for any of their staff back. Thorson was able to handle the med bay with the people he had, and Alvarez was still pursuing different avenues of research, though admittedly not as many.

Both surely felt the same relief as Dane, knowing they could now cure so many people without having to subject them to the violent reactions the MRI caused. Though that didn’t make him stop the manufacture of more nanites, even when a second shipment and a third arrived. Dane wanted there to be enough to dose everyone on the colony twice over. Yet when they reached that amount, it became clear they would need somewhere to store it.

Especially after the teams on those ships figured out how to fully automate the process. With that, they could come back down and work without slowing production. Dane didn’t see that as a waste of resources. He trained pilots nearly every day. If he could get them good enough, maybe they could even attempt to land on the big beam ship and try to inject the vessel’s commander with a cure. It might not work, as the Augmented could probably make someone else with access to the commander’s memories take over. Having more of the cure gave them options, though.

Still, they didn’t need all that cure down here. Not when they already had twice what the colony would need. Dane had ordered the scientists to figure out how to get it all to the Cosmos, which had been moved closer to Haley’s battle sphere but was still largely empty. The Centauri and Russians had collaborated on the most efficient way to do this and had come upon the solution of using a pair of the robot dogs the Russians had brought over.

They assured Dane the process was simple, though he thought it was anything but. After the various machines involved in producing the nanites had filled a barrel of the stuff to the brim, a robot dog would load it into a bay in the ship. It would then put it in a good old-fashioned magnet-powered launcher. They had tested to ensure the magnets would not damage the nanites, and they did not. Finally, the robot would press the button to launch the barrel at the Cosmos.

It took some time to float over, but it was easy enough to calculate how long it took with the Cosmos’ computer. When the barrel was close, another robot dog headed to a bay on the Cosmos and used a large net to snare it before it crashed into anything, then rolled it into the proper place.

It all sounded wildly complex to Dane, but everyone involved in making it happen assured Dane it was all pretty straightforward. Someone on either end supervised the transfer between their other duties, sending barrels of cure from the Centauri ship to the one with the robot dog, but they hadn’t yet needed to intervene.

Dane didn’t see how all these brilliant minds could have pulled off such a thing. However, it made him happier than he cared to admit to think there were robot dogs out there, hurling barrels of nanites at each other on his behalf.

One of the best things about automating that process was it freed up some of Alvarez’s people. Carlos had project ideas for them, but Dane had intervened. He’d equipped three of them with nanite scanners and given them orders to scan every person on base at least every other day. They had balked at first but quickly found a way to make it happen. There were only two thousand people on the entire world, after all. Daily reports showed that no one had been implanted. A small solace, but one the entire colony desperately needed.

He considered keeping the information secret. Yet anyone he told, mostly Haley through video chats, was beyond thrilled to hear it, so he ended up making it public knowledge. Depending on where he was when the news came in, he sometimes heard people cheer when they got another good report.

He wished Haley was here to share the good news in person, but he checked in with her daily via video. She was making remarkable progress on her iron sphere of death, and Dane looked forward to their calls every day. She had already extruded enough metal to hollow out the center of the structure and help cool it. They were now simultaneously working on cleaning out the hole to fit the nose of the Cosmos inside, as well as a warren of halls and rooms they could use while working on the ship.

Dane felt like he was constantly telling Haley no, as she had big plans for the station, but time was an issue. As it was, they were prioritizing getting mounts for rocket launchers and maneuvering thrusters on the sphere, as well as painting it black using the same paint the enemy shuttle had been coated in. Haley wanted tunnels to reload the missile launchers and, ideally, automated systems to repair any thrusters that got damaged. They certainly had the technology for that in the form of the robot dogs. Still, Dane couldn’t allow that many people to go out to the battle station for two reasons.

One was that it was still a secret. Lopez, her team, and the people sending the nanite cure to the Cosmos all knew about it, which was a large enough circle, but Dane didn’t want to expand it any larger.

The other reason was they needed those same technicians to work on the highly visible, not at all secret station. Especially since it was positioned directly above Homebase and the floating platform on the surface. It was already functional, but Dane constantly wanted it more functional. He wanted more escape pods. More missile launchers. More communication systems. More landing bays. Using an asteroid in its raw state gave them a ton of space to work with, and Dane kept feeling like he wanted to use all that space.

Bell was only too happy to agree. He had thrown himself into the work and seemed to be trying to design a better defense platform than Alpha Centauri had ever had. That was not possible, and they all knew it. There simply weren’t enough people to make such a feat realistic, nor to man such a thing, but that didn’t stop Bell from trying to make the orbital platform as powerful as possible.

They were also manufacturing more ships and weapons, but Dane hardly had anything to do with that. When Granger asked him to do things, he said yes. Almost everyone else he had to dicker with. Yet Granger was so brilliant and so adept at understanding what the entire engineering division was capable of. It was a better use of everyone’s time and resources to simply let her do as she thought best.

Dane spent much of his time working with the element that he judged most valuable. People. He flew training drills in their expanding fleet of ships. He practiced drills with their warships, testing what they should do if any number of components on the mighty war machines failed, as some of them inevitably would in the battle to come.

Though even his time training pilots actually was time spent killing two birds with one stone. All those hours in space meant the fighters were constantly scanning the solar system. Dane made this an essential part of their drills. He’d have one of them launch a dud with a beacon on it to some corner of the solar system, then see which pilot could find it fastest.

The entire team was getting good at locating beacons with even the faintest of signals. Dane knew the Augmented needed some kind of broadcast signal to make their implants work. No effort to take over the colonists’ minds would work without that to tie them all together.

Still, even with the fighters scanning as much of the solar system as they could every day, they hadn’t turned anything up. Dane supposed he should have taken that news as a good thing. It was unlikely the colony was being bombarded with encrypted mind control codes, but he couldn’t make it feel that way. It felt like the other boot was waiting to drop. He almost relished the contact they were all working so hard to prepare for. Even though they wanted to stave it off.

Granger did say the lack of broadcast devices likely meant their plan had been to send a signal from the shuttle. They had fried it, so there was no way to be sure, but the engineers did find communications equipment. That meant nothing, of course. Only that the shuttle had needed to communicate with something, a necessity for even spy craft. Considering it was the only Augmented antenna, it still seemed like the best bet for what they planned to use.

He knew there was a hole somewhere in the solar system. A large hole. Anything that would have been big enough to hide the flood of radioactive particles appearing with a warp would easily be large enough to slip in enemy warships. If they placed it somewhere large enough to dissipate those particles, like behind a planet or on the wrong side of the sun, the other ships could maneuver around it and allow more in, one by one. Thoughts of a battalion appearing from behind a planet or attacking his pilots from the sun while they tried to fly their fighters were both continual sources of nightmares.

On the whole, he felt confident. They had ships, a defense platform, and a secret iron battle star. Dane would not have thought having two of those things was possible when he returned to this planet not so long ago, but now they had all three. Sure, there was a shortage of fuel for the ships, the defense platform needed more launchers connected to it, and the iron sphere didn’t have anything resembling life support, but progress had been made.

Teams were starting to gel, too. Alvarez’s team of scientists had been at the forefront of Dane’s mind for a while now. Partly because the mission was so important and partly because it was the one team he had absolutely no way to help personally. Yet there were coming to be other cohorts of eminence in this underwater base on an alien world.

The Centauri building the platform were clearly intent on operating the weapons after they came online. They were developing a reputation as preparation freaks. They cleaned their station compulsively and, despite not having enough launchers yet, kept their supplies of missiles carefully stacked and well-polished while they awaited life in a feeder tube that had not yet been built.

Still, they came down and interacted with other members of the crew often enough that their reputation for preparedness and cleanliness had spread. Now, when something was dirty, people often teased that it needed to be cleaned before the Centauri found out.

The fighter pilots were also gaining an aura of mystique. Dane knew part of this was because anytime they came down from space, they sagged in their chairs from the gravity, gobbled fresh food like they had never had it before, and often wore dark glasses inside to keep their eyes ready for space. The old affectation was not based on science, but Dane had encouraged it, and they all loved it. Dane knew they only did all this because he was pushing them so hard, but their love of the job, despite their exhaustion, was inspiring.

For nearly all of them, this was the most intensive flying they had ever done, and they were taking it seriously. When others talked to them, they were happy and eager to talk about how hard they were working. When the people risking their lives on the frontline were that enthusiastic about their mission, it was easy for everyone else to fall in and go along with them.

There was also the mystery of the missing Russians. A source of near-constant delicious gossip was exactly what had happened to most of the toughest, hardworking Russians. All their greasiest mechanics and most pit-marked welders had seemingly vanished into thin air. Dane knew where they all were, of course, as did most of the security people and many of the engineers. He did not dispel any of the rumors, though.

People were having too much fun with it.

Some said the Russians were on a secret mission to infiltrate the Augmented on Earth.

Some claimed they were heading to Alpha Centauri to fight them there.

Some thought they were looking for a new colony.

None of these rumors ever mentioned the fact that none of their warp-capable ships were missing, of course, because that would ruin the point of perfectly good gossip.

Still others suggested they were out swimming in the seas around Homebase, hunting spies.

Or hunting nessies.

Or capturing nessies to train them to help fight.

Or riding Big Damn Fish.

Yet no matter how absurd the tale, it was always assumed that wherever the missing Russians were, they had taken the vast majority of the kelp vodka with them.

Dane was considering if he should call the “czarina,” as most of the rumors had titled the chief of these missing Russians, but his tablet buzzed with an urgent message.

He jumped, having half fallen asleep going over what needed doing. Was it Haley calling him?

It was Dr. Alvarez. That meant either good news or very, very bad news.

Dane placed a call to Carlos, but when the doctor didn’t pick up on the first ring, he started running toward the labs all the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dane tried to call Carlos as he ran toward the lab, but the doctor did not pick up. Come on…come on… Dane repeated in his head. He practically skidded to a halt outside the labs, then walked inside.

But instead of finding someone in an MRI or waiting to be injected with something, or worse, he found Dr. Alvarez and three Centauri scientists all huddled around the table. Their backs were to him, but all the same, Dane could tell they were in a good mood. They were laughing and chatting instead of arguing or crossing their arms in silence, two poses he found them in plenty down here.

Dane couldn’t see a body on the table in front of them, which gave him an immediate sense of relief. Yet when he took a few steps closer and saw a cage, his old doubts about Carlos arose. Had he gone off and caught some creature to use in a treatment? Had he found a new species and tried to study it? Dane knew people reacted to stress in all kinds of ways. It wouldn’t be unthinkable for Alvarez to have gone down a rabbit hole of research only to come out the other end with an obsession with some alien creature that could not possibly help them.

But it was not an alien of Varuna in the cage before the scientists. It was a cage of rats.

“Where in the hell did you catch those?” Dane yelped. Rats had once made it aboard the rock-dropper he’d been in charge of. Those had not been his proudest days. They had been on a shipment of food, nestled into a box of protein bars. By the time Dane’s crew had found them, the rats’ broods were nearly full-grown and spread out all across the ship.

Instead of being hampered by the lack of gravity, they had adapted quite well to it. Dane still remembered the way they’d hop across tunnels. Flying rats, the crew had cursed them. Everyone complained about the smell of rat pee far longer than the rats had actually been there. Dane still had little love for the creatures.

“Some were on the Centauri ships when they fled. They are resourceful, but I do not think they could have made the passage from Earth to here without warp.”

“And you caught them all?”

“We hope so,” Alvarez advised. “It’s hard to tell with rats.”

Dane suppressed a shudder. “What are you doing with them?”

“Experimenting! These are escaped descendants of some of the lab rats on the Alpha Central station. People have been using them for experiments for thousands of years. I was hoping they might eventually be useful in our studies of the Augmented.”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm for rats, Doctor, but I can’t help but think this is not the time for this. We need solutions—”

“And the rats have given us one!”

“The…rats?” Dane had to be sure he was getting this right. He looked at the other scientists. They wore expressions of jealousy, pride, and eagerness, odd emotions to feel toward rats.

“Do the rats, like…talk to you?” Dane asked, totally at a loss for where this was going. The last creatures he had interacted with were the remarkably intelligent nessies. Was Alvarez saying the rats were somehow as brilliant?

Carlos threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, no, Governor. No, no, no. Have you been getting enough sleep?”

Dane smiled. “No. Not even close. So if you could enlighten me on the rat wisdom, that would be great.”

“Well, we made so much of the nanite cure that I had an idea.”

“A brilliant idea,” one of the Centauri scientists proposed.

“We should have thought of it first,” another suggested, not hiding their professional jealousy.

“We would have. We were so close…”

“But we didn’t, did we?”

“All of us will be credited when we finally write this up,” Alvarez told them, which seemed to mollify the mulish scientists.

“Credited for what?” Dane asked.

“For making a nanite vaccine.”

“That is not the right word!”

“For making a virus for a virus!”

“Machine un-learning!”

“Weaponized medicine!”

“Okay, we’ll come back to the name. What’s the breakthrough?”

“Well, we went from having not enough cure to having too much.”

“It’s not too much,” Dane hastened to state. He couldn’t let himself doubt the only decision he had been sure of.

“No, not compared to our foe. Yet there is enough to use some to study if it will help our people.”

“Sure,” Dane agreed, pleased that his decision had helped this team.

“We began experimenting with the rats. We know the cure we use essentially treats the brain implant like a tumor or some other malignant growth. It goes in and removes as much as it can. Well, we ran some trials on the rats. First, we implanted them with some of the Augmented nanites we captured from the water tank. That was key. We needed a source of the Augmented nanites. After the implant was in place, we applied the cure in the same way.”

“Wait, and that worked? You implanted the nanites, and they became Augmented? Even without a signal?”

“You’re jumping ahead,” one of the scientists claimed as if Dane was ruining a movie for them or something.

Carlos continued. “We kept feeding the results back into our nanites. If one batch was able to cure a rat more quickly, we looked at what regions it targeted and programmed the next batch to target that region more specifically.”

“Selected evolution.”

“Of a robot!”

“It’s brilliant!”

“Not statistically significant, scientifically, since we only did one rat at a time, but still. An impressive breakthrough that the data will likely back up.”

“May I continue?” Alvarez asked the curmudgeonly scientist.

She nodded.

“Well, we noticed the nanites were increasingly focused on only a few regions of the brain. By severing the implant from these structures, we could render them obsolete and incapable of communicating with the brain.

“I’m with you so far.”

“Okay, here’s where it got weird. We wanted to see if we could tell an implant to damage itself. They’re only nanites cobbled together. What if we could make them undo part of themselves? It would mean—”

“We could weaponize a broadcast signal against them!”

Alvarez nodded. “That’s what we tried, but it didn’t work.”

Dane had been ready to jump for joy. He had been ready to scoop up Carlos Alvarez in his arms and prance around the lab, proud to have a solution, finally. Instead, he tried to keep a smile on his face and wait for whatever development the team of scientists had actually made. They wouldn’t have called me here unless they had something.

“There’s too much encryption. We tried all sorts of methods, but we couldn’t give direct orders to the Augmented rats.”

“And you’re sure they were Augmented?” Dane asked, not wanting to be rude but definitely getting lost in all this. “How can you tell if they weren’t following orders? Did they act differently?”

“They did! And that’s exactly what we noticed. When we injected Augmented nanites into the rats, it changed their behavior. Some of the typical dominance displays we see around food, or around certain parts of their cage—”

“They really love the running wheel.”

“Yes, they would fight over it like you would not believe.”

“But those behaviors changed!”

Carlos was bubbling with excitement now. “Instead of their normal behavior, they would queue up and not allow the unimplanted rats to eat or use the equipment until all the Augmented had. There must be something programmed into the most basic level of the nanites that encourages collective action. That makes them fundamentally dangerous, of course, though it does describe how small groups of Augmented can communicate and work together even without a larger broadcast signal. They were not like normal rats anymore. The normal rats will squeak or nip at each other to get their way. But with the Augmented rats, that behavior stopped.”

Dane nodded, trying to keep up with these brilliant minds and their undoubtedly dumbed-down explanation. “It stopped?” was the best he could manage.

“We thought it stopped.”

“Of course it didn’t, though. Hierarchy is very important in all communal living animals.”

“They found a different way to communicate?” Dane asked.

“Exactamente! They were using the implants to communicate with each other. We couldn’t be sure, so we set up a system to check for radio waves. We found that when the rats would normally engage in dominance behaviors, they used the implants to communicate.”

“An amazing discovery.”

“Completely proves the plasticity of the brain.”

“The adaptability of life.”

“The absolute necessity of bossing your friends around.”

“Most of all, we learned that while we could not communicate directly with the newly formed implants in the rats’ brains, the rats had no such issue. They were able to send messages to each other in some form or another. We don’t know the exact form of those messages, of course. Obviously, it’s not text-based or even through voice. We think emotional pulses are most likely, though that is hard to codify or build an experiment around—”

“You didn’t call me down here because the rats can make each other feel happy or sad, though.”

“Right! Claro, lo siento. We brought you here because they don’t.”

All the scientists tittered at this like it was the juiciest bit of news Dr. Alvarez had delivered thus far. It was always good to see people excited about their work, but Dane needed them to get to the exciting part.

“So the implants stopped working?”

“Si! We already knew we could undo the Augmented implants by using the Centauri healthcare nanites against them. We have modified them so they target the implant, disassemble it, and remove it through the waste. Like it’s a tumor or internal bleeding. Simple enough. We were also streamlining that process, making the healthcare implants more and more efficient at the task. This was all happening simultaneously with the research on the Augmented nanites themselves. Normally we would do one rat at a time and isolate them, but thanks to someone forgetting to clean a tank—”

“It was me!”

“We put the cured rat back in with rats with the Augmented implant.”

“And they started biting and squeaking again!”

“The rat with the cure did.”

“No! The rats without the cure!”

“But how is that possible?”

“We are still working out the details, but we are fairly certain the implants are communicating with each other. Before, the Centauri health implants would tell the Augmented nanites to destroy the implant, but the implant knew better. It resisted that code because it was a threat. But after our modifications—”

“Targeted nanite evolution—”

“After our targeted nanite evolution, the Augmented implant no longer recognized what the Centauri nanites were pinpointing as a threat. The implants were only saying there were a few regions that were dangerous to the brain. The Augmented implant works as a health device as well, so it tried to fix these problems—”

“And when it did, it destroyed itself,” Dane mused, finally getting it.

All the scientists nodded and patted each other on the back and pumped their fists into the air in triumph. It was their second major breakthrough of the day. The first was doing the actual work, and the second was communicating their science to a layman like Dane.

“So what now? We let the Augmented land and get near a rat, and their implants will just…turn off?”

Carlos hesitated a moment too long, and all the other scientists jumped in.

“Exactly!”

“Not at all!”

“You are assuming the rat brain and the human brain are identical in form and function.”

“That could kill every person with a Centauri health implant!”

“It would do no such thing. It will make them all impervious to the Augmented.”

“Bold claims!”

“This is the time for action!”

“Not if it means killing the last two thousand independent minds in the galaxy!”

“Okay, everyone, calm down,” Dane soothed. “It sounds like you need to make sure this works on people.”

All the scientists more or less agreed to that with varying levels of enthusiasm. Some excited, others begrudging.

“The first thing we need to do is program the exact regions of the brain to target into our healthcare nanites. Though even that will take time. We cannot risk telling the nanites to damage the wrong part of the brain. If they do—”

“Yeah, that would be bad,” Dane understood enough of biology to see the problem there.

“I am confident we can program our health nanites to do this to the Augmented. When we have that code, we can simply inject everyone on Varuna with the latest version of the Centauri healthcare nanites. Then we’d have a wall against them! If they injected any of us—”

“It would transmit the cure to all of them!”

Now Dane was the one jumping up and down and dancing. This was the breakthrough they had been waiting for! This could turn the tide against the Augmented. It could give them victory if they were invaded. Hell, depending on how they used it, it could give them victory over Earth!

If it stayed secret.

“You can’t tell anyone about this.” Dane glanced at a security camera. “I’ll wipe the videos myself. If we do this right, it will be our greatest weapon. You all need to get it to a point where it’s safe. Hell, we might not even have to fight! We could let them inject us…”

“It will take time to get to that point, though,” Alvarez informed him.

“Right. Of course. Make it your number one priority, but it needs to stay Top Secret. No one can know. Not Thorson. Not Ginger. No one. Do we understand that? If the Augmented are monitoring our radio waves, and they certainly could be, we cannot let any whisper of this get out. They’ll obliterate us from space.”

“They wouldn’t,” one of the Centauri remarked.

“They very much would,” Dane insisted. “They value being Augmented above all else. More than their own lives. If they find out we have a way to undo all that, they will not risk invading us. They’ll nuke this planet to nothingness. Turn their beam weapon on us and evaporate every drop of ocean on Varuna, or worse. Do I make myself clear?”

“The Augmented are bastardos. We get it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Dane was still buzzing with excitement when he got back to his office. If Carlos could make enough progress before the Augmented arrived, this entire war might be over with a single injection! He knew there were other factors, the broadcast power of the Augmented being foremost among them. Still, he felt like they could overcome them. They would have a shot!

He was even more delighted when his tablet buzzed, and he saw Haley was calling him. He picked up and turned on the video.

“Tell me you have good news.” Dane grinned.

“I do…but you go first! I haven’t seen you looking this good for a while.”

Dane wanted to tell her everything, to tell her they might have found a way to weaponize their own healthcare implants, and they might be able to turn the tide, but he couldn’t. He needed to keep the secret as much as the scientists did. The last thing he should do was blab about it on a radio wave being sent clear across the star system.

“There’s a new kelp salad in the cafeteria…” Dane wondered how obvious the lie would be if someone was out there watching.

“A new kelp salad? There’s like twelve different kinds of kelp salad in the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, well, now there’s thirteen.”

“O…kay. Well, anyway. Things are going well out here.”

“Careful what you say. The airwaves—”

“Yeah, I know. I’m calling from a shuttle, so no need to worry.”

“Sure. Just be careful what you say.”

“I read you loud and clear, oh worrywart.”

“Great. Now the Augmented know my girlfriend teases me.”

“I was calling to tell you the interior is done. We’ve got the sprockets ready to load it up. All I need now are the keys to the car!”

The car was the Cosmos, of course.

“Really? You’re ready for a drive?”

“We’re still attaching a few things, but yeah. We’re ready to pilot this puppy.”

“Well, if you’re sure, you got it. Go ahead and take her out for a test spin. Sound good?”

“Indeed it does! And if you could start more missiles our way, that would be great, too!”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dane promised. “I still can’t believe you got so much done so quickly.”

“Well, it wasn’t all me.”

Dane grinned. She was beautiful, brilliant, and humble. The total package.

“The Centauri engineers helped a lot with the design. Turns out they’ve wanted to make a car like this for a while… This is more basic than what they were thinking, but I still relied on their plans a lot. Plus, well, those missing Russians are pretty useful when you know where they actually are.”

“Sure. How long until you get this thing moving?”

“A few days? We’ll need to make sure our connections are all solid and reinforced. We don’t want to crack the windshield by putting it into gear too soon.”

Dane thought the car metaphor was starting to unravel, but he understood what she meant. If they hit the gas on the Cosmos without properly attaching it to the iron sphere, it would smash inside it, which would do no one any good. Dane knew Haley had a variety of methods to ensure this didn’t happen. The least impressive of which was simply some giant springs with connectors on either side to absorb the initial shock of the mass transferring from one system to the other.

“I can deal with a few days. Be careful, though. Last thing we need is this thing slipping out of control.”

“You don’t have to worry about us rushing that. We’ve all been living in our pressure suits. We’re looking forward to being in the car with the AC on and a little space to breathe. No one wants to mess that up and leave us stuck inside these suits.”

“Okay, great. Well, I’ll get the missiles shipped to you.”

He also wanted to tell her the vats of nanite cure on her ship might represent a weapon against the Augmented. That with a simple software update, Dr. Alvarez could transform all that from medicine into their greatest weapon. But he couldn’t, of course. It was the single most important secret they had. And unlike the iron battle sphere, this one shouldn’t slip out.

Dane wanted to keep Haley’s project under wraps, but that was tough when you constructed giant mirrors to harvest solar energy and turned a meteor into a giant glowing ball. The colonists didn’t talk about it openly, but plenty of them had to have seen it or guessed what was happening. The breakthrough Carlos had made, though? That was a true secret.

“Great! We look forward to the delivery. I’ll finish up here and head in. See you in a few days.”

“Can’t wait.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“I got eyes on the probe! Marking X and Y axis.”

“I see it. Coming in with you.”

“No need, there’s nothing—”

“We have hostiles!”

“Don’t break formation yet!”

The Defender-class fighters dived and dispersed, but there was a plan in the chaos. While the six of them appeared to be scattering, Dane’s trained eye realized they were flying in three loose pairs. That was good. It was the point of running drills like this.

The Defenders posing as the Augmented came out from behind the asteroid. They had used the angle of obstruction well and were cruising at high speed. Dane wished he had paintballs for them to use to tag each other, but they hardly had time to make the real weapons they needed, let alone practice weapons. A two-second lock with a targeting laser meant your target was dead. Less glamorous but plenty effective.

This team was working together even better than the first. They flew in a wedge, swooping around the “probe,” which was really a satellite Dane had hauled out there for them to find.

They kept the first couple of attacks at bay, but then a pair swooped in and tagged it with a laser.

“Less than two minutes. Not bad,” Dane told them from his vantage point on his ship. “Let’s switch roles and work in a malfunction this time. I’ll radio one of you during the seeking part of the exercise to simulate something. Everyone else, your goal will be the same. Destroy the probe. But now you’ll have to defend your wounded person, too.”

“Which is more important, sir? The wounded person or the probe?”

“What do you think?”

“Well…it depends, I guess. If the ship suffers a fatal malfunction, like life support or something like that, we could save the pilot.”

“And the ship,” another pilot put in.

“But if something like a missile explodes…”

Dane did not need to explain to any of them what would happen. They had been flying with live munitions for weeks now. One slip-up with those, and there would be no rescue operation.

“It might feel cold, but these are the kinds of calculations you need to make. Always remember that we’re stronger together. When you think about what the entire team is doing and how your actions affect them, we’ll succeed.”

“And what if our only option is a suicide run?” one of the younger pilots asked with a snicker.

“Then I hope your last words are an apology to your instructor for not teaching you better. You shouldn’t end up alone in a situation like that. If we’re going to risk your life, it means we’re in a desperate situation, and none of you should take that risk alone. Now, fuel’s burning, so let’s hop to it.”

Dane let the pilots all go back to their places. There were finally a decent number of them. The Centauri all had military training of some kind, and fortunately, many of the thousand who came to Varuna had worked on the orbital defense platform. They were well-practiced with the ships. There was a learning curve to figuring out the locally-made Defenders, but after enough practice, Dane could hardly tell the difference between who was who anymore. They were really gelling.

Only twelve were out practicing, but that was because Dane liked to keep some always in port with full tanks and full missiles, ready to launch. There were actually twenty of them now and even more pilots. If someone got sick or had a mental breakdown, which Dane had seen happen more than he cared to admit, they’d still be able to fly at full capacity.

All and all, Dane was feeling good about their chances. Yes, they were still facing insane odds from a better-equipped, more advanced, and more numerous enemy, but at least they had some pieces in place. This system was not going to go down without a fight. They had a well-defended orbital platform, multiple warships, and twenty skilled fighters. They had a secret ship painted black and hidden in reserve. What they did not yet have was the vaccination Alvarez had promised. If Dane could speed up the process on one thing, that’s what he would pick, without a doubt.

After they had something that could undo the Augmented implants without actually injecting them, they could formulate some serious counteroffensives. As it was, Dane had not dared send any ships to scout out either the Earth or Alpha Centauri systems. The intelligence would be useful, but it wasn’t worth the risk. They couldn’t afford to lose a single one of the warp-capable battleships. Not when all there was to gain was an understanding of how outnumbered they were.

Yet if Alvarez made his breakthrough, maybe it would make sense to send a ship to the Earth system. They could feign a malfunction or try to fight and lose intentionally. Something that would end up getting them captured and injected. Then Alvarez’s vaccine would go to work.

Dane fantasized about what it would look like. Would it spread from Augmented to Augmented based on proximity, so first, the people on the ship would be free to have their own thoughts, then people on the closest ship, and so on, like a wave of freedom? Or would the broadcast towers all over Earth pick up and retransmit the signal, so that for one glorious moment, every person on the planet would open their eyes and be free?

Of course, he thought about it not working too. Maybe they’d upload, and the powers that be of the Earth system would simply override the code. He didn’t spend much time on those thoughts, though.

Any of his negative thoughts focused on how foolish it was to let his girlfriend take on a project that might as well be on the other side of the solar system. He missed her more every day, and having to talk in code was not great either. When this was all over, if it ended well, Dane wanted to have Granger build him and Haley a boat so they could sail across Varuna without a care in the world. Wishful thinking, he knew, but hope was a powerful motivator.

For now, the two teams were ready, and Dane had to pick one of them to pretend to be injured. He wanted to pick something tough, maybe a failed coolant system coupled with faulty comms. That would force the other teammates to figure out what was wrong without communicating. Plus, it would create a hierarchy of needs as far as what to do. If they acted quickly, a coolant system could be fixed easily enough. They could save their friend and wait on the probe. But if they waited, a failed coolant system meant the entire ship might overheat and explode. Which would mean keeping away. Dane wondered how they’d make that call.

Before he could decide which one of them would be the proverbial lame duck, they were already claiming victory.

“We have eyes on the probe! Sensors are picking up a strong signal!”

Dane looked at his dash. Odd. He hadn’t activated the probe yet, but he saw what the pilot was talking about. There was one obvious source of energy coming from the opposite side of the sun. That wasn’t a probe…

“Oh, thank God Granger made us practice up here,” he muttered.

Granger had insisted they run their drills well above the ecliptic, the plane that all the planets and moons of the solar system orbited on. That way, they didn’t clutter it up with debris from their ships.

Now Dane saw the other advantage.

If they had been lower, they would have failed to see the flare of radiation from arriving warp drives.

“All fighters, both teams, sensors on the disturbance. Don’t let the angle fool you. It’s well past the sun.”

At first, neither Dane nor any of his pilot’s sensors could pick up a thing besides “bright, dangerous energy.” Dane knew what that meant. He supposed this could also be an object exploding, which was extremely doubtful, or a feint from the enemy. They might have warped in to watch the response or to drop another shuttle.

Yet as the initial wave of radiation dissipated and Dane’s sensors determined what they were looking at, he knew it was neither situation. It was time. The enemy was here.

Dane knew he was looking something like ten minutes into the past. Whatever he saw had already happened, and they couldn’t pierce the speed-of-light barrier without using warp.

That only gave him chills when the image finally appeared, knowing he was already out of date.

Because what he saw was truly terrifying.

It was the Augmented, and they had come packing.

They had what Dane considered to be their calling card, the huge ship capable of generating a beam that could destroy any of the ships on Dane’s side. Even from this distance, he saw its five rings were all intact, connected by a long spine on one side.

Dane also knew the ship had smaller craft docked aboard it. Likely dozens. And it had not come alone. There were a dozen battleships, each the size of the Prometheus but sleeker and more advanced. Dane wished he could get proper readouts on them, but he was too far out.

They watched as the ships all lurched into motion. It looked like they were coming right at them, up and over the sun and back down on to Varuna.

“Come on. We need to land and get back to base. This is what we’ve been training for.”

The exercise forgotten, no one complained as they all headed home, then off to war.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“This is Governor George Dane, broadcasting on all channels. Whatever you’re doing, you should stop and listen. This won’t take long. All right. The Augmented are here. Begin final preparations for battle. I want all manufacturing to stop. We’re only going to have a little time, and I don’t want to use it making any more missiles or anything else. Let’s get everything we’ve done in place. Check in with your superiors and take care of yourselves. It will be hours or days, not weeks. This is it. Dane out.”

Dane led the Defenders back to the defense platform. Even though he was alone in the cockpit of his fighter, like he had been on the way out, it felt different than before. On the way out, it had felt like another day at the office. They were doing the same drills they had been doing for weeks, getting ready, preparing, and running through their routines.

Now that the Augmented were here, the same silence began to fill with anticipation, with the thrill of what was to come. Dane did not want to fight this war, but now that it was here in his solar system, he wouldn’t simply let it happen. He would do what he was trained to do and fly a fighter to victory. The stakes were different now that he was the governor, but that only meant everyone’s victories would be his. As would their losses. He would let his spirit rise to the challenge, and they would push back the enemy with everything they had. Anything less would lead to utter defeat.

Dane wasn’t about to let that happen.

They landed in multiple bays of the defense platform. They could have fit in one, but part of the plan was to diversify where their assets were being held. If one missile got through their defenses and smashed one of the bay doors, they wouldn’t have the resources to fix the problem.

Funny, only a week or so ago, none of the bays even had doors. But it was undoubtedly better to be able to block off the cold of space. As Dane set his fighter down and connected it to the magnetic clamps that held it in place, a crew was already rushing out. They were trained to refuel and re-arm first, then check over the entire craft and make sure every component was ready to go.

Dane left them to their work and contacted MacTaggart.

“Aye, big enough message then, governor?” MacTaggart asked.

“We’ve been preparing for this nonstop. I don’t want to hide what’s happening from our people. I trust them not to panic.”

“The Centauri have been preparing for this war for years. My people won’t panic.”

“My people ride alien sea lizards. They only need to know what’s coming to be ready.”

“Very good!” MacTaggart grinned.

“Take me to mission control.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

They floated through the asteroid base. Despite the Centauri having the technology to drill an axle through the center of an asteroid, then spin it up to give the sensation of gravity, they hadn’t done that here. It was too big of a job, plus it made all the battle stations on the surface of the asteroid much harder to aim, as they would be zipping around instead of fixed in position. The Centauri had done it because they had huge wings on their base, but the base here was only a fraction the size of that one.

Dane didn’t mind the weightlessness. He’d spent so much time in space that he was accustomed to how his stomach felt without the pull of gravity. Plus, swimming was part of life on Varuna. Dane pulled himself along with handholds as easily as anyone else and better than most.

They reached the command center of the asteroid to find it was rotating.

“We had it facing Varuna for a variety of reasons. Mostly safety concerns and perception. But now that we’re coming to the big day, we’ll face the enemy,” MacTaggart explained.

Slowly, the hollowed-out asteroid pointed up, so Varuna could barely be seen through the bottom of the screen. Dane knew it wasn’t actually a window but a monitor plugged into cameras mounted all over the defensive platform. It still felt like a window.

“Do they still look like they’re coming over the sun?” Dane asked.

“They do.” MacTaggart nodded. “We think they’re hoping to get some element of surprise. Even so, they have to know they’d come in so far out that we’d see them before they arrive.”

“They might be planning on dropping in more ships soon, so we miss their main force.”

“Ah, that would make sense. Well, in that case, we should make it clear we know about them.”

“You have a scout watching them?”

“I do. We had three on duty. I ordered two back as they were at less than half capacity with fuel, but I ordered one to stay and run dark.”

“Tell them to flare their jets, let the Augmented know we see them. I want to fight the force they have. I don’t want them to think there’s anything to be gained by any deception.”

“Aye, sir.” MacTaggart nodded, and one of the technicians in the room started talking to someone in the scout.

“I also want a couple of probes launched. Two above the ecliptic, right in their path, and another in the opposite direction.”

“Aye, we have some prepped. We’ll get every electric eye on them we can.” Again, MacTaggart simply had to nod at a technician, and they made it so. There was something absolutely delightful about a well-drilled and efficient command team.

“All right, then. Tell me about our fighting force.”

“We have four warp-capable battleships. Richmond’s Prometheus, my Wallace, and the two other Centauri ships that transported my people here. Those don’t have armor as thick as the Wallace, but they’re bristling with weapons and ready to fight. There’s the Zhemchug too, but that’s hardly as strong as the rest.”

“And the plan is still for you to captain the Wallace personally?”

“Aye. No one knows that ship like I do. We’re waiting on the initial estimate of arrival time, as we don’t want to be caught with our pants down, but they’re on the far side of the sun.”

“We should have time to get everyone into position unless they warp over here.”

“They won’t. They didn’t do that on our system. The big ship must have quite the mass. They won’t be able to warp if they’re too close to a gravity well.”

“Sir, sorry to interrupt, but we have an estimate.”

“Go ahead,” Dane told the technician.

“Based on what we’ve seen in the past, they’re moving at about eighty percent of their top speed. If that speed holds, they’ll make contact in about three Earth days, though they will be able to launch missiles sooner. Their speed will give them an edge in that regard.”

“They might adjust course, too. Try to use the sun’s gravity as a slingshot,” MacTaggart suggested.

“So we’ll have time to get fully into position,” Dane stated.

“Aye, sir. Bell will come up here to command the defense platform, and I’ll be on a battleship.”

“Makes sense. Bell helped build this thing. What about our fighters?”

“We’ll have three per battleship and the other eight stationed here. Depending on what they throw at us, we have the different formations you’ve been drilling to work with. Do you want to run any more drills if we have two days?”

“No, I want all ships kept ready to go. No need to tire our people out right now. Have everyone stand down from general quarters. I want everyone to remain on alert, but there’s no telling how long this battle is going to last once it starts. I want everyone well-fed and rested.”

“You get all that?” MacTaggart asked a technician who was rapidly entering commands into the station.

“Yes, sir!”

“Very good. What else, my lord?”

“Lord?”

“Sorry. Old habit, Governor.”

Dane didn’t know if that was better, but he did have one more thing he needed to do. “Open a secure connection with these coordinates. Laser only, tight beam. I don’t want any of this to scatter.”

Dane gave the coordinates to the technician, who entered them in.

“Haley, we have enemy contact. I know you won’t receive this right away, but send a message when you do. I want you to get everything in place but stop construction. The Augmented are here. It’s time to make ready.”

He wanted to wait for her reply, but she was too far. It would take a few minutes he simply did not have to sit around and twiddle his thumbs. The leader of this colony needed to be seen leading as much as they needed him to make decisions.

Which meant there were more orders to give.

“Get me Lev.”

A moment later, the chief of security was on the screen.

“You got bored and decided to start a fight?” Lev joked.

“Pretty much. And I need to know what you’re going to do if we mess everything up here in space. Will you be able to defend the colony?”

“We have a cache of weapons, and we’ve been training most people on those. In addition, we have an ample supply of cure nanites, so if we lose people to the Augmented, we can get them back.”

Dane wanted to ask about Alvarez’s work since he hadn’t received an update in days, but Lev didn’t even know about it. Not that there was anything to know yet. If the Augmented implanted someone, they could inject them and get them back. However, they could not yet hope one of their health-implants-turned-vaccine could save anyone else. Now it was too late. Dane didn’t want people assembling missiles anymore. He didn’t see how Alvarez was supposed to make a major medical breakthrough that had thus far evaded him.

“That’s good to know. What about entrances and exits?”

“I wasn’t too concerned, thanks to our improved security cameras, but Liam Bell is convinced they might try an aquatic entrance. He recommended welding all the doors shut except the main entrance and the crystal cavern entrance.”

“Makes sense. We can open them up later when we make it through this.”

“When, not if. This is why I like you, George Dane.”

“Not the time to kiss my ass, Lev. You can do that if I hold them up here and keep you from helping.”

“Please do. There is hand of cards I would like to win instead of fight.”

Dane cut the connection.

“Other orders, sir?”

“I want all personnel moving supplies where they need to be.”

“Aye, sir. You said that in your message to the colony. We’ve already sent specific commands through. We’re hoping to have everything staged where it needs to be in the next six hours.”

“Great. Then I’ve circled back. That means we’re ready, unless…”

“Sir?”

“Well, maybe this is stupid, but have they tried to hail us?”

“No, sir. They don’t know we know they’re here yet, ya ken. Ten light minutes mean a twenty-minute lag. They should have seen that scout flare by now, but if they sent a message, we haven’t got it. You’re thinking of opening a conversation?”

“You think that’s a bad idea?”

MacTaggart shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. You’re the governor. Top of the chain of command.”

Dane sighed. “I was taught it’s always better to avoid a battle if possible. Maybe we can tell them we have no intention of going to Earth, and we only want to be left alone.”

“They won’t believe that. Not with the Centauri here. They know we want revenge.”

Dane nodded. “In that case, I order you to get to the Wallace and make it ready. I’ll hold the bridge until Bell gets here.”

“I… You… Fine, sir.” MacTaggart saluted crisply. Amazing how a military man could make the exact same movement seem agreeable or disagreeable. Still, he followed the order as soon as he was done with his salute.

“Try to hail the enemy,” Dane ordered.

The technician obeyed.

And now Dane had to wait. While he did, he checked video feeds of people moving supplies where they needed to be. He watched spreadsheets change color as they went from incomplete to complete. He watched soldiers slap each other’s backs and pretend like today was a day like any other instead of potentially their last. He saw people passionately embrace in hallways, cry at their workstations, or simply stop for a moment to breathe. They had time for all this. Dane knew they did, so he didn’t correct anyone. He let his people feel the grief for what was to come. He let them have their release. He let them be people.

Thirty minutes passed, and Dane received an alert that Bell had loaded up in a shuttle and was on his way to the station. He was about to give up on trying to talk to the Augmented, but then a message came in.

“On screen.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When the video appeared on the screen before him, Dane was confronted with a version of himself. The enemy commander was an older white man. Tightly cut salt-and-pepper hair, clean-shaven, a crisp uniform, and a face that looked fifty but eyes that said he was much older. He could have been one of Dane’s training buddies, if not his brother.

Like Dane, he obviously cared about physical fitness. His arms bulged from a short-sleeved military uniform, and his shoulders and pecs pressed against the fabric like Dane’s did. He took a moment to stare into the camera before he spoke as if he knew Dane would size him up based on his looks, and his looks would say I am like you. I trained like you trained. I fought like you fought. I serve like you serve. He clenched his jaw, then he spoke into the camera.

“My name is Captain John Harper. I’m in charge of this mission and currently riding our BDB. That’s what we call the Big Damn Blaster. We see you trying to hail us, and I have standing orders to make any attempts at communication I can. I think you and I both know there’s not much to be talked about. You people are unevolved and a danger to Augmented society. You must either join us or be destroyed. To quote the classics, prepare to be assimilated.”

Harper didn’t so much smile as clench his jaw tighter, as if someone told him that counted as a smile. Maybe it was the best the computer program in his brain could do with the muscles in his face.

“I have nothing else to offer you. Do you surrender or not?”

Dane took a moment to think about the best way to reply. It was frustrating to have a twenty-minute delay, but there were advantages as well. He didn’t need to worry about controlling his facial expressions until he told the technician to record, and he could take a moment to think about the best thing to say.

Obviously, he could do better than “never give up, never surrender,” though he was tempted.

“Captain Harper. You are in our air space without authorization. We are asking that you leave now and go back to your world. We have no interest in becoming Augmented or joining your ranks. You have already destroyed two worlds' worth of people. You don’t need to do that to a third. If you leave now, you have my word we won’t come to Earth ever again. Both of our people can live out our own futures.

“You said you’re the captain. I find it interesting you still have things like ranks, despite all of you being equals. I understand you’re not that different, and some of you are more equal than others. If that’s the case, surely you have the power to call this mess off. Tell your more-than-equals that we’re not a threat, take your BDB, and leave us alone.”

Dane waited the twenty minutes, then once again, Captain Harper spoke.

“For a second, I almost thought that line of drivel you were spilling was going somewhere. Not in your air space, huh? I could almost respect that. Ain’t no truce in war, of course. Especially seeing as how you and those Centauri fugitives have invaded our air space twice, either one of which constitutes an act of war. Still, I almost respect that. Would’ve been better if you could have timed a rocket launch or missile strike at the same moment to make your point, but I get this is real life, not the vids.

“But all this drivel about ranks not having meaning? Like you think humankind was able to use a computer implant to improve our brain, and suddenly we were supposed to sit around and sing ‘Kumbaya’ for the next thousand years? That’s a load of horseshit, and you know it. Humans are social creatures. Our brains are wired that way. Even yours. If they weren’t, celebrities wouldn’t exist, and people wouldn’t be so damn obsessed with gossiping about what everyone else said about who and how they said it.

“Fact is, rank still means something on Earth. Money still means something on Earth. These implants we got…” Harper tapped the side of his head like a human would when gesturing to their own brain. “They fix a lot, but they don’t make us perfect. It’s going to take a few more iterations to get that done. The implants make us better, and they’ll make you better too. Certainly, a better point than trying to make me feel like I should go home and hold hands and break bread with the woman who cleans my house. Some are more equal than others… For Christ’s sake, was it not ever thus?”

Dane could already see where this was going, but he had to try. He told the technician to hit record.

“You admit your implants aren’t perfect. Come back when they are. Come back with a ship of ambassadors and no weapons in a month, or a year, or however long it takes. When I came to Earth, I was attacked for ordering coffee the wrong way. Fix those problems, and we won’t have to waste all our resources trying to blow each other to bits.”

“Waste of resources?” Harper chuckled twenty minutes later, or at least he chuckled inasmuch as a shark could smile. “We control the entire solar system around Earth, and now the entire Alpha Centauri system as well. We don’t lack resources anymore. There are more metals in the asteroid belt than we can count. There’s more hydrogen on Jupiter than we’ll be able to use in ten thousand years. This isn’t some desperate scrabble to get the last well of clean water. We’re not ants coming after your picnic.

“This is war. You came to our planet as spies, killed our people, then used yourselves as a distraction while your cowardly Centauri allies came in with their big asteroid blaster and rained hell on our people. You know what it’s like to feel a million people die at once? Because every Augmented person does. We all felt those deaths. And we all know George Dane was distracting one of our own with his bullcrap when it happened. There is no offer you can make us, no argument you can use that will keep us away. So let’s talk straight.

“You were there when Alpha Central fell. You saw it all happen. You saw what our BDB can do. And you know our battleships are going to blow yours to pieces. You know your pathetic few thousand people aren’t even enough to crew the machines of war we have brought here. They say a wise man learns from the past. Well, you just lived the past, George Dane. You about ready for all this shit to go down again here on your precious ocean planet?

“You said you want to avoid the waste of the battle? I can respect that. I bet you and everyone on that glorified swamp puddle of yours have been busting their butts to get everything in place to stop us from hurting you. Well, how’s about we don’t hurt a single person down there? How’s about you fly your warships nice and far away from your planet, up where we can see them, then evacuate them of all the people inside? You leave ’em floating, and we’ll come on in, nice and gentle. Then, all your people can get in a line, and we’ll give you the gift of Augmentation, one injection at a time.

“After that’s done, you’ll see how concerned you were over nothing. We’ll even let you pick—how did you put it? Oh, yeah. Who gets to be more equal than the rest. If you got a little girlfriend or boyfriend, we can set them up nice. You do all that, and not a soul has to die.”

By the time Harper’s speech was done, Dane’s heart hammered in his ears louder than the man’s droning threats. He hadn’t given them a choice. Not really.

“We’re not going to surrender the last bastion of free humans without a fight. We’ll see you when you get here. I hope you brought plenty of body bags.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“So, what’s our best plan for attack?” Dane asked.

“Honestly, sir, to let them come to us. I don’t like it after what happened on Alpha Centauri, ya ken, but there isn’t much choice,” MacTaggart explained.

“Bell?”

“I agree with MacTaggart. Our greatest strength is the orbital platform. It has the most missiles and is the most defensible, but we can’t send it out of orbit. If we engage close to the station, we’ll have the best odds, without a doubt.”

“Don’t we have portable missile launchers? Can we use those to soften them up?” Dane asked.

“We can, sir, but they will expect it, no?” Lev pointed out. “When we last battled, we had launchers hidden in plain sight, so to speak. It worked then, but if they anticipate us doing the same thing, they will turn their defenses on the missiles and destroy them before they make contact. We must assume they will do everything they can to protect their largest ship.”

“Do you think the portable missile launchers would be of better use later?”

“I do,” MacTaggart butted in. “If we’re engaged in a firefight with them, especially if we’re battling fighter to fighter, they won’t have the same defensive capabilities.”

“Be careful. They don’t value human life like we do. They’d sacrifice a fighter if it means a win,” Richmond stated.

“Aye, of course they will, but look at the size of their force. It’s big, but not massive.”

“I don’t know. I would call that BDB pretty damn massive.”

“Aye, sir. It’s true, but they only brought the one. That and twelve battleships!”

“True, but not a hundred. They want this done quickly. Which means they must have a chokepoint in their manufacturing. Happened on Alpha Centauri all the time. That means they won’t be so willing to sacrifice their fighters. Not unless it means a victory, at least.”

“I see your point, and I agree. We’ll keep the portable missile launchers close, and we’ll wait for the right opportunity to use them.”

“Maybe your engineer can give you access to fire them from your fighter?” MacTaggart asked.

“You still want to do that, then? Fight in the battle personally?” Bell asked. He looked skeptical.

“I do. I’m a skilled pilot, and we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Richmond, Lev, and MacTaggart all nodded in agreement, but of course they did. They were pilots themselves, and two of them were captains of warships. Despite being high up in the chain of command, they didn’t want to sit this out, either.

“Fine. But if you want to do that, I want to stay here. On the battle station I helped build.”

If Bell was expecting a fight, Dane wouldn’t give it to him. “Thank you for your willingness to serve, Lord Bell. We would be honored to have you in command up here.”

Bell bowed.

“Lev, that means you’ll be in charge of defenses down below. Your most important job is to make sure no one gets in. That might mean scuttling the platform.”

Lev nodded. “We can rebuild if we need to. Not so hard to make a big floating rectangle, no?”

“Then we’re agreed,” Dane affirmed. “We form a wall above Varuna, and we do our damnedest not to let these bastards touch our people.”

Everyone agreed. Four hard men with four hard faces. They’d all sacrificed so much to be here. MacTaggart and Bell had lost their world so recently that the wounds were still fresh. Yet they were not alone in having suffered losses to the Augmented. Richmond had grown up on Earth. He had watched the Augmented spread like a disease, and he’d lost everyone. Especially the people in his own community of rebels.

Lev had suffered the same losses as Dane. They had both left Earth behind, hoping that while they traveled across the vast emptiness of space, Earth would begin to regrow and prosper after its eternal history of war. They had awakened to find Earth had indeed grown, but not in the way they had hoped. Instead, the brain implants had spread from one technophile to another, unrestricted and unconsidered, until there were not enough people left to think for themselves.

Dane knew all five of them would fight for their lives. Not one of them would give an inch or be willing to wait on the edges of the battle. He was grateful for that commitment, for people willing to put down their lives for a future they might never see.

Therefore, his immediate reaction to Haley had been more than a little hypocritical.

“Stay out of the fight? How dare you ask me to do that!”

“It’s not an ask. It’s an order.”

“George Dane. You are not a stupid man. Yet this is a very stupid thing you are telling me to do,” Haley snapped. “The Augmented are here. We’re getting ready to fight, same as everyone else.”

“I read your last report. Are you even going to make it here in time?”

“The station is heavy, and we’re still bringing the Cosmos up to speed, but we’re going to make it there.”

“When? In twelve hours? Because that’s when our estimates say the battle is going to begin based on their current rate of travel.”

“We might be able to make twelve hours work. Even if we’re late, it’s better than not being there!”

“Is it, Haley? I understand you want to help, but showing up to this battle and not being able to slow down isn’t exactly going to help.”

“We have weapons! You know that! You sent us missiles.”

“But the launchers are mostly bolted on temporarily, right? I know you got your Russians to drill holes for mounting gear, but the last report I read said you ended up using all those for maneuvering thrusters.”

“True, but we still have the launchers mounted!”

“That’s what, one shot each? It’s not like you’ll be able to send people out to reload them in the middle of the battle.”

“You’re talking like they’re BB guns and not the same damn missiles everyone else in the colony is using. You know we only have to connect with one to destroy a warship.” Haley’s voice cracked, and Dane saw tears forming in her eyes, even over the lousy video connection.

Was he being ridiculous or unfair? All he wanted was to make sure her hard work didn’t go to waste. He had been impressed with everything she had done thus far. The battle station would be extremely impressive…when it was done. But it wasn’t finished yet. Haley’s reports said as much. Why send it into battle when it didn’t have the capabilities they needed?

These words went through Dane’s head, and yet another, louder refrain pounded in his gut. Don’t lose her. Don’t lose her. Don’t lose her. He felt it beating beneath the surface of his thoughts as surely as he felt his pulse beating inside his head. It wasn’t a fair thing to feel, but then, were feelings ever fair? Dane had already lost so much. He couldn’t lose the first woman he had ever loved, too.

He realized it now. Haley was the love of his life and his first love, too. His first true love. He had given his life to protecting the Alliance of Democratic Nations, and after that, to his work here on this planet. He had been in relationships with other women, some for years. He had loved some of them. Or he thought he had. Still, he had never felt for anyone else a fraction of what he felt for Haley Lopez. He knew he was being irrational, but how was he supposed to send her to die? How could he let her fight in a station that couldn’t even fly under its own power?

“Haley, you have one good volley on that station. Maybe a dozen small volleys. That’s it, right?”

“We have thirty-two missiles!”

“Which statistically means only one or two are going to make it through the defenses of any of the ships we’re facing.”

“But there’s only twelve of them besides their moving beam cannon! Even if we take out a single one, it’ll give you a better shot at surviving.” Tears were coming down her face now. Good. She needed to understand he was serious, and he didn’t want her in the battle.

“That’s if you even get to fire them. If you show up to the battle, we both know they’re going to turn the BDB against you.”

“But that’s the plan! This battle sphere has iron armor more than a hundred meters thick. It’s stronger than anything their stupid BDB has faced before. I made it just for this! Plus, we painted it, so it should be invisible until I’m close enough to strike.”

“You can’t seriously think they will be blind to their own technology?” Could Dane have kept the stinging tone out of his voice? Yes, maybe he could have. But he needed Haley to see how foolish it was for her to be in this fight with her half-finished battle sphere. He needed her to see that if she tried to fight, she could die!

"You can’t tell me to sit this fight out!” Haley’s tears streaked tracks down her cheeks. They caught the light and sparkled. Dane had to finish this. He had to keep her safe, even if it broke her heart.

“I can and I will. There’s absolutely no sense in you getting stuck in a fight where you can’t properly defend yourself. Maybe if you had anti-missile turrets, auto-reloading capabilities, or the ability to steer your ship without the Cosmos. But the simple fact is that you don’t. You’ll end up a sitting target.”

That did the trick. Haley’s eyes narrowed, and she straightened, hardening her body and her mind against him. She wiped her eyes. She no longer looked sad and pleading. Now she looked angry, furious at Dane for the simple act of trying to keep her safe.

“That’s all any of you are going to be if my battle sphere’s not there to help.” Her voice sounded harder than the iron from which her sphere was made.

“That may be your opinion, but it’s my call. I am ordering you to stay out of this.”

“Well, I’m definitely not doing that. It’s my right to defend this world as much as it’s yours. Just because I’m screwing the governor doesn’t mean I have to go and hide so you can pretend you’ll live through this and come find me later.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Dane insisted, though the words tasted like the lies they were on his tongue.

“I’m fighting, same as everyone else.” And with that, Haley cut the transmission.

“Damn it, Haley! Haley, listen to me! Listen to reason!”

But no matter how many times he tried to call her, she did not answer.

Which meant all their planning to form a defensive wall and carefully laid traps might be in jeopardy. If Haley showed up at the wrong moment, she would die. And worse—from the perspective of the governor, if not Dane personally—her arrival at the wrong moment could spell disaster. If they had to dodge her bulky, barely steerable iron sphere, it could ruin everything. Plus, Dane knew if he saw the sphere coming under attack, it would be difficult to maintain formation.

But Haley was resolute. She would not sit this out any more than the four men Dane had just finished a meeting with would. Only now, she wouldn’t be part of their defense. Instead of an asset, he’d turned her and her crew upon their battle sphere into a liability.

And it was all his fault.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The console in Dane’s fighter lit up with alarms. The enemy had launched their missiles. The battle was joined. The Augmented were traveling toward the planet, so the velocity of their battleships added to the velocity of the missiles. They could launch their missiles far sooner than Dane and his Defenders could. The enemy missiles were already traveling at thousands of meters a second, simply sitting inside their launchers. Add that speed to the missiles’ own considerable speed, and they were streaking toward Varuna at insane velocities.

In the last twelve hours, Dane had slept, worked out, eaten, and tried to call Haley a dozen times, but he could hardly remember any of it as his adrenaline spiked. It felt like they had been preparing for this battle for years, not weeks. Loading up missiles, checking fuel lines, making caches of food, and going through training drills felt like they had been Dane’s existence forever. His entire life seemed to have been building to this moment.

Now that he was here, he didn’t know what to do with it.

It was not time yet to fire his missiles. They would be sluggish compared to the enemy’s rockets. The defending ships had to wait a few more minutes until it would be optimal to launch. That gave the Augmented what amounted to a free shot. Not ideal, but there was no help for it, and the anti-missile tech built into their station should help at this range.

The Augmented didn’t fire up their beam weapon, though. Not from this distance. That could mean a couple of things, according to Granger and her army of engineers. The beam fired at nearly the speed of light, so that wasn’t the issue. Their best guess was its power dropped off over range, reducing the damage the beam could do until it was closer.

The only good thing about the enemy’s approach was they had adjusted their path. Instead of coming directly over the sun, they’d used its gravity to swing them around and put them into Varuna’s orbital path. There was something ominous about their choice of position. If the Augmented chose to stay put, Varuna and all the objects that orbited her would reach them in a few days. They had not chosen that option, but it had been a dark moment when the engineers marked out the inevitable collision.

But right now, it felt like an advantage because rather than being silhouetted against Varuna, Dane, the battleships, all the fighters, and the battle station itself were against the backdrop of space and were thus harder to see.

A proximity alert sounded on Dane’s screen. This was it. The first salvo of missiles was here.

“Battleships and Orbital Defense, let’s show them how clean we can keep things in this first volley. I want every one of these missiles destroyed, and I want you to stick to your own zone.”

They had practiced this, making sure they didn’t waste time and resources by targeting every missile and instead only focusing on the ones closest to them.

“Fire!”

More than a hundred railguns opened fire, sending slugs of metal toward the approaching wall of explosive missiles. One missile was struck and blown apart, then another, until it was a veritable fireworks show of explosions. The flashes of light hid the enemy force. For a moment, it felt like the battle was won, and they were celebrating.

Then the light of the explosions faded to nothing, and the enemy ships were in range.

“First volley, go!” Dane ordered, and hundreds of missiles soared into the night. The chances of any of these missiles hitting were slim, but it was still worth it to play the odds. The enemy might have a malfunction or get unlucky, and a missile could get through. Even if they destroyed only one of the enemy ships before truly being in the thick of combat, it would help.

Though the real purpose of the missiles was to provide cover for Dane and the other Defenders.

“Let’s go!” Dane felt the familiar crush of acceleration as he punched his ship’s controls and got himself up to speed.

The Augmented wouldn’t sit back and let the Varunan missiles and fighters reach them unmolested, of course. Their railguns opened fire. Dangerous because a stray bullet was impossible to predict and thus impossible to intentionally dodge. The missiles the Varunans had been working so tirelessly on for so long were reduced to puffs of energy in the void of space.

Then they launched more missiles. A lot more missiles.

“Don’t fly too straight!” Dane called. He went into the rolls and twisting maneuvers that were necessary if they didn’t want the enemy guns to pick them out of the sky as they had the missiles.

The rush of battle hit as Dane’s guns found a missile, then another one. Each one he destroyed was a tiny victory. Each one was a waste of time. This battle would not be won as long as the BDB was still out there. Dane had to do more than protect his people from missiles. He had to punch through.

He wasn’t alone, though. All around him, Defenders destroyed enemy missiles and grew ever closer to the enemy warships.

There was a big explosion as one of the Varunan missiles got through and struck an Augmented warship. It was a lucky shot and must have hit missiles that had yet to be launched because the warship went up spectacularly.

Dane had told himself taking out one of them would feel like a victory, but it did not. It still felt like they were facing an overwhelming force.

Because now the fight was really getting started, and the sheer numbers of the enemy forces were becoming clear. One of the warships had been destroyed, but the others were all still in the battle. Augmented fighters poured out of them. Now, instead of one massive target and eleven smaller ones, they faced something like a hundred angry, buzzing fighters.

“Stay close! We go for the BDB and hit it with everything we have. If a fighter gets in your way, take them out and stay with your team. But don’t forget the mission!”

Though that was easier said than done. The enemy fighters also benefited from the momentum of their battleships, and in an instant, it seemed like they were everywhere.

Dane took out two of them with his railgun and another with a missile, but the rest of his Defenders were not so lucky. Two of them went down without launching any missiles, and the rest that survived did so by turning away from the devastating attack headed for them.

It was chaos of a caliber Dane had hoped to avoid, yet his people were doing all right. They were sticking together as he had trained them, covering each other’s wings, not letting the enemy take easy shots on them.

They still needed to get to the BDB, but they were getting closer, chewing through ships and avoiding missiles at a faster rate than the enemy was. Dane wondered if the Augmented implants were costing the enemy pilots their lives. Maybe they relied on the big picture too much. Maybe instead of honing their individual instincts, they had hoped to upload an optimized strategy into all their soldiers’ brains. Whatever it was, Dane’s Defenders were performing better than he’d hoped.

Neither side was content to let that skirmish among the missiles last. The enemy warships came into range, and Dane had to order his people to fall back while railguns ripped apart the two closest to the warships.

The Prometheus and the three Centauri warships weren’t about to let the enemy have all the fun. They pushed into the battle as well, though they were doing little more than giving cover fire for the fighter pilots. Their railguns had to stop more missiles than the Augmented did. A missile that didn’t hit the Augmented was merely a miss. A missile that bypassed the warships could still take out the orbital station or strike Varuna itself.

The Zhemchug, the only battleship on their side without warp drive, broke forward from the line of defense.

“No! Stay in line! Stay in the formation and let them come to us!”

But the Augmented saw the mistake as quickly as Dane did. Their missiles were all remote-controlled, so rather than zipping past or continuing for their targets, six of them converged on the Zhemchug. The Russian colony ship turned battle cruiser managed to destroy them all, but only by ignoring the Augmented fighters that got too close. They raked the ship with their railguns, then hit it with a pair of missiles.

And just like that, their warships went from five to four.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Dane couldn’t tell if any escape pods got away from the Zhemchug. Pieces of it were hurtling everywhere, making the already chaotic battlefield even harder to navigate. Dane had a horribly selfish moment where he felt gratitude for his buddy Lev not being on that ship. He wasn’t certain anyone had survived its destruction.

And still, the enemy ships were coming. They fired off another massive volley of missiles. Dane and his Defenders tried their best to protect the four remaining warships, which in turn tried to stop the missiles from getting past them. They were not successful.

It quickly became obvious the enemy was aiming not for the warships but the orbital station. The missiles all went wide around the warships, then streaked toward the station. Most of them were shot down, but a few missiles pounded the station.

Worse, the BDB was powering up.

“Damage report!” Bell shouted to the technicians on the bridge with him.

“Missile launchers six through nine are done, sir.”

“We’ve lost life support on a third of the station.”

“Escape pods are undamaged, sir.”

Bell wasn’t a superstitious man, but news like that seemed a clear indication of how this would go.

“What’s the enemy doing now?”

They were still frustratingly far away. Bell understood the reasoning, of course. His station needed to be the last line of defense. That meant hanging back, and it wasn’t like it could fly forward, anyway. But it was a different thing to be sitting here, watching, unable to do much to help.

“Sir…they’re powering up the BDB!”

“Get me a firing solution!”

It was a tense thirty seconds, but then the answer to the request appeared on Bell’s screen.

“Are we sure about this?”

“We ran it twice, sir.”

“Goddamn it,” Bell snapped.

The BDB was going to fire on the station, and there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it.

That didn’t mean Bell would roll over and die. “I want every missile we have ready to launch on my mark, and get me Dane on the radio.”

A moment later, the governor picked up. His face was streaked in sweat, and he never looked at the camera. He was focused on the battle in which he had insisted on being in the very center.

“The BDB has targeted us.”

“Which means you need to evacuate.”

“We can’t do that!”

“We’re going to try to shoot it down, but we’re not close enough. You can read the estimates as well as me. We guessed wrong. Nothing to do now but get your people to safety.”

“Fine,” Bell snapped. He closed the channel and turned to his people. “I want every missile ready to launch. Then we go to the escape pods.”

His crew had known this order might come, and they made it so. They loaded up every launcher they had and filled their auto-launcher slots to be ready after that.

“Bombs away,” Bell remarked.

Then he cursed and made for the escape pods.

It wasn’t until he was aboard one of them that he got the report. Fifteen of the missiles had jammed.

“Fifteen? That’s too many to leave in the chutes!”

“It’s three launchers, sir. They’ve lost power.”

“Damn it. I guess...”

Before Bell could give an order, a voice came over the comms. “Don’t worry. I got this!”

Bell’s heart stopped beating. It was his son.

“Liam, what in the hell are you doing up here?”

“I want to help! I’m by the jammed missiles. A backup generator that doesn’t use the same circuit got knocked out. I can restart it!”

“No, Liam, get in an escape pod!”

“I have to do this, Dad. I have to make this right.”

“Shit,” Bell cursed.

Then he got off his escape pod.

“Sir?” one of the technicians asked.

“Launch,” Bell told the system. On his order, the escape pod closed up and blasted down toward the planet. Bell pushed himself through the now-empty halls of his station and tried to find his son.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Bell received Dane’s order and had evacuated, thank God. The escape pods streaked away toward Varuna as the station launched a massive volley of missiles at the BDB. This was the moment Dane had been waiting for. Their only chance.

“Every fighter, on me. We need to burn hard and fast for the BDB. Get ready to launch missiles on my mark.”

The Augmented fighters let them go. What was a scene of chaos one moment was the serene calm of space a moment later.

The missiles from Bell’s station caught up to Dane and his fighters. Not being restricted by the necessity of preserving human life, they could accelerate much faster. Dane ordered his fighters to launch every missile they had.

He wasn’t about to waste this opportunity. The BDB was the most formidable single weapon the enemy had. It could not be allowed to survive this. No matter the cost.

He activated the remote rocket launchers as well. They were spaced all around the battle instead of being grouped tightly. If he had chosen to fire them by themselves, they probably could have been picked off by anti-missile fire. But when they were added to the overwhelming storm of missiles, they made it all even harder to predict, as these were coming in from different angles.

Hundreds of missiles flew forward, all filling the space around the BDB as it powered up. Dane felt convinced some would get through. The railguns on the BDB weren’t taking them out fast enough. They were going to hit the biggest ship the Augmented had! This was the crux of their strategy, and it was going to work!

Before it did, the BDB fired its beam.

It didn’t appear to travel or launch anything. Instead, the five rings all flashed, and a huge beam of light extended from the ship to the asteroid station.

The beam of energy slammed into the station. The center didn’t explode so much as it was broken away to nothing. Stone and steel became dust and ash, and the asteroid base was reduced to fine, unsalvageable rubble. Dane hoped everyone had escaped, but he knew it was a fool’s wish.

There was nothing he could do for the station. Nothing except make sure the BDB didn’t get to fire again.

And it wouldn’t. Commander Harper must have seen that as well because shuttles sloughed off the BDB, desperate to escape the incoming barrage of missiles.

The railguns took out the vast majority of the missiles. Yet with hundreds of explosive-tipped rockets, a vast majority wasn’t enough. Six missiles hit the foremost ring, another two smashed the second, and one more got through and struck the fourth ring.

It was enough.

The front ring was destroyed, and a short or a ruptured fuel line exploded the spine that connected the rings. Not enough to entirely wipe out the structure but enough to blast every window out and surely kill anyone who had been in there.

“All ships turn around! We need to get back into the battle!”

This was the part of the battle Dane had been least looking forward to. He and all his fighters were burning full speed past the enemy’s back lines. They needed to turn around. But in space, that meant more than putting their drives in reverse. They had to turn around, then burn hard merely to slow down, then keep burning after their momentum ceased so they could rocket back toward their own people.

Which meant Dane and his most skilled pilots all watched helplessly as the shuttles racing toward Varuna slipped past them.

“Pick off as many of those shuttles as you can, MacTaggart, but your focus needs to be on the enemy warships!”

“Aye, sir. There’s still too many of them!”

“We’ll take care of them,” Richmond promised.

Those turned out to be famous last words.

It seemed the Augmented had never forgiven Richmond for stealing their ship and thus granting the people of Varuna with a ship capable of faster-than-light travel. Of the remaining nine Augmented warships, six of them launched missiles at Richmond’s vessel.

It did not survive. It caught a couple of missiles before they struck it, but nowhere near enough. Where once was the proud silhouette of the stolen warship, nothing remained but debris.

“Take them down!” MacTaggart raged over the radio, and the Centauri tried to follow orders. But the Augmented were ready. The fighters got in the way of the Centauri missiles, sacrificing themselves and allowing the Augmented warships enough time to launch another volley of missiles.

In a flash, two of the Centauri ships were gone, blasted to pieces. MacTaggart’s more heavily armored craft was not destroyed, but it was sent drifting end over end. Dane had no idea if the ship even had life support. There were obviously no comms because MacTaggart was not responding to his calls.

Which meant there were now six Augmented warships in orbit above Varuna, unmolested and safe from any retaliation, at least until Dane and his Defenders got there.

He looked at the people on his screen. With him, they were only eleven. Eleven small fighters against six warships and something like fifty enemy fighters.

It wasn’t enough.

Even if they flew the best they ever flew, it was not going to be enough.

But what was Dane supposed to do? Sit back and watch Varuna get implanted?

No.

Not that.

They would ride it out.

They would give these Augmented bastards everything they had.

They would show them hell waited for these people who sought to take their own minds away from them.

“There’s a lot of these bastards out there,” Dane told his pilots. They had finally reached zero momentum and were now accelerating back toward the planet. They had front-row seats to the destruction of their fleet.

“And we’re going to make them a lot less. We might not be able to win. But we can make them regret coming here. We can make them think twice before they go to another colony. We can—”

“Maybe save the last desperate attack speech until it’s necessary?”

Dane was shocked to hear Haley’s voice. Shocked and relieved!

“Haley! Where are you?”

“We’re close.”

Dane checked his scanners. “I can’t see you anywhere.”

“That’s the idea. Come to these coordinates. We’ll signal you when you’re close. We’ll have a better chance of fighting them together.”

“You heard her,” Dane announced. “All Defenders, head to the coordinates on your screen.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

“They’re veering off, sir.”

Harper didn’t have to look at the screen to see what the soldier was talking about. He could access the data via the implant in his head as easily as he could look at the screen.

“Prepare three of our warships to follow them,” Harper ordered, distracted by the shuttles pushing through Varuna’s atmosphere. He wasn’t terribly concerned with the fighters, especially since they were out of missiles. He had seen them fire everything they had at his BDB. Now they were doing what many would do in their situation…running.

Some would brand them cowards, but Harper didn’t feel that way. They were doing what weak humans had done for millennia. Running when confronted with a stronger foe. There wasn’t any shame in it. It would be like shaming a gazelle for running from a cheetah. Nothing wrong with that. It was simply the way things worked. The less evolved minded those more capable, or they perished.

“Sir, they’re awaiting your command.”

“Go ahead and…” Harper wanted to finish the command, but he felt the Algorithm pushing in, refocusing his attention.

After all these years, he would have thought it a familiar sensation by now. But it was still as odd as it had ever been.

John Harper had been with the Augmented since the early days. He was one of the first people to see the military applications of such a technology. He knew it could be used not only to help make soldiers more efficient but also to help with those pernicious problems of mental health. Soldiers wouldn’t feel so isolated and alone when they were able to communicate with their sweethearts via brain implant. Not that Harper had ever cared much about a bunch of grunts crying into their pillows at night.

What he cared about was the mission. A mission told a man where he stood. There were clear successes and failures. Harper had always endeavored to complete every mission he had ever been assigned. This one was no different. Even before they had come to this solar system, Harper had known there was a real chance the BDB would be destroyed. Unimproved humans were clever and thought in ways that the Algorithm could not foresee.

Harper couldn’t anticipate everything they did, either. He had thought they’d hit their orbital base hard and fast enough to remove it as a threat, but he had been wrong. They had prioritized launching their missiles over everything else. Harper respected that. They couldn’t have had a ton of time to make the structure, and they had spent that time making sure the missiles could launch.

He should have anticipated that.

Sometimes Harper felt like the younger version of him had been better at guessing an enemy’s thoughts or coming up with novel strategies. These days, he mostly followed the Algorithm’s plans. He made his own adjustments, and he had the Algorithm and its collective of minds check them, like everyone else. Yet he still sometimes felt like there used to be more to what he did.

Though he had anticipated them firing on the BDB easily enough. When the first volley of missiles launched, Harper had his people run the calculations. They had estimated a sixty-three percent chance that all the missiles would be destroyed. That meant a thirty-seven percent chance they would get through. More than one in three. Those odds were too high on a mission this important. When the fighters had given up on taking out their Augmented counterparts and launched every missile they had, Harper knew they were toast.

So he did what any leader of a mission like this would. He evacuated his ship to make sure they preserved the chain of command. He watched from afar as the BDB was hobbled, then he pushed the attack from one of the warships.

It had felt like sacrificing the queen in the ancient Earth game of chess. It was unpleasant and often unwise, but sometimes the allure was so great that the opponent forgot all about the well-placed rooks waiting for this moment.

And Harper had plenty of those. He had not anticipated losing quite so many to the last of the Varuna defenses, but still, six warships were enough to face an essentially undefended planet. Though there were those fighters—

“Sir, we have visuals on the landing platform.”

Harper had been thinking about the dozen or so fleeing fighters. He had warships ready to chase them down, and he knew he should chase the little bastards down. They were like rats, and they needed to be exterminated before they bit someone and caused an infection.

Yet as he tried to cling to those thoughts, he felt them being pushed from his mind. The Algorithm was alive and well in the Varuna system. It lived on this warship, and the one beside it, and the other four orbiting Varuna like hawks on the wind. Having servers to control implants was essential in battle. If they lost their connectivity, they’d lose their greatest advantage.

However, sometimes Harper didn’t think the Algorithm made the greatest decisions. Like right now. He knew he should try to split his attention between the landing party and the warships, but that was not what the Algorithm wanted. It wanted every bit of Harper’s military experience focused on getting those shuttles to the surface.

Harper couldn’t resist it, of course.

“There’s two big guns on either corner of the platform. They’re heavily armored, but we should be able to disable them with a well-dropped bomb.”

The guns had been disguised to look like shelters, but Harper saw the telltale slit that hid a moveable cannon. The four shuttles dropped closer and closer, and when they were in range, the pair of guns came to life.

“Evasive maneuvers,” Harper ordered, and the shuttles began to weave in and out of each other’s paths. The cannons tried to catch them but were unable to.

Until one of them did, and one of the four shuttles was reduced to scrap.

But the remaining three were close now. Getting closer by the second.

“Try to take them out, but do not hit the platform. I repeat, do not hit the platform.”

The shuttles were lightly armed compared to the rest of the fleet but still had bombs and guns. They both opened fire, careful to hit only the hardened armor surrounding the guns and not the relatively fragile platform in between them. They were not doing great.

“Sir, one of them is hit in one of the engines.”

“Order them to take out the emplacement.”

“Yes, sir.”

The view of the action switched from the foremost shuttle to one of the two in the rear. The one in the front was smoking from one of its engines and rattling as it flew lower. The pilot, Algorithm bless him, did not hesitate to do what needed to be done. He crashed his shuttle and all the soldiers inside it directly into one of the fortified guns. It was like hitting a mailbox with a baseball bat. It did not completely crumple, but the top was taken off, rendering it useless.

The shuttle smashed right through it and splashed into the water of Varuna. If there were survivors, they weren’t immediately visible.

“Send down four more shuttles.”

“What about the other gun?”

“That strike worked pretty well. Let’s do another of those.”

“But neither of the shuttles is damaged, sir.”

Harper knew there was something to that. Sacrificing all the soldiers inside that shuttle might not be the most efficient use of resources, but the Algorithm didn’t care. It wanted that platform. It wanted to know how the people of this world could even pretend they wanted to resist joining it. The Augmented was the greatest evolution of humanity in over a hundred thousand years. How could anyone dream of not joining it? How could anyone try to fight it?

But fortunately for the soldiers aboard the two remaining shuttles, their pilot got lucky with a gun. He struck the other cannon, and it stopped aiming. It still fired, but only in one direction. One of its motors was jammed.

“Get them landed and secure that platform! I don’t want to do a water entry if we can avoid it. They’re going to have better odds in that kind of an altercation.”

The last time the Augmented came here in force, they had been able to take control of Varuna’s elevator. Harper hoped the programming they had put into the lift computer was still lying in wait. If they could control access to the surface of this world, they would control the negotiations, and the Algorithm would get what it wanted.

The two remaining shuttles landed on the platform, and Augmented soldiers poured out. A moment ago, the platform had been the enemy’s. Now it was Harper’s. The two pilots understood their role and did not linger. They lifted off and headed back up to let the additional shuttles already en route come in for a landing. In less than five minutes, more than a hundred Augmented soldiers occupied the platform.

Harper and his command team now had over a hundred viewpoints to check. His attention was on the ones at the elevator, though. One of them had cracked open an access panel and was connecting to the base’s programming. The unimproved humans had tried to remove the programming the Augmented had put in there but had been less than successful. It was easy enough to put in code that appeared to vanish. When people saw that, they assumed they were successful and stopped looking.

“They’re going to be waiting for you on the other end of that elevator,” Harper spoke directly into the minds of the soldiers near the elevator. “Do not hesitate to use lethal force for the first people you meet. We want to implant some of these minds, but we are well within the margins for acceptable losses. We need to secure the other end of the elevator. At that point, we’ll push in deeper and begin making the lives of these people better.”

The elevator opened, and Harper grinned. This was it. This was what victory meant.

Twenty soldiers crowded into the elevator, careful to position themselves so they would have their guns facing the door when it opened on the other side of the tube that connected the surface to the world beneath.

The doors closed, and they descended, using these unimproved humans’ own infrastructure against them.

Meanwhile, on the surface, Harper watched as the last four shuttles lifted off and four more landed. Hundreds of soldiers were ready to go down in shifts. Now that they had such a presence, they could start sending down some of their aquatic shuttles as a backup. Harper tasted victory. It was so damn close, and it was his.

Then the platform exploded.

It did not sink. It did not flounder or lose power.

Instead, every goddamn inch of the goddamn platform ignited at once as if the entire thing was made of explosives. Harper supposed a floating platform would have quite a few places to hide explosives.

The effect was devastating. The blast of fire and pressure snuffed out hundreds of feeds. Perhaps even worse, three of the four shuttles trying to land got caught in the blast and lost control before they crashed into the choppy sea.

One of those shuttles suffered a catastrophic explosion of its fuel, and all those soldiers’ feeds simply vanished. Two others plunged into the sea, and Harper and everyone else on his battleship had to watch forty battle-trained soldiers try to escape a sinking ship like rats. At least they were wearing pressure suits.

The soldiers in the elevator were unaffected by the blast for about four seconds. But without the top of the elevator tube secured to the platform, it teetered and fell into the sea. The elevator carriage came to a stop as the tube filled with water behind it.

One of the soldiers screamed as a long-necked fish-like monster snapped its jaws at the window. Another listened to the command coming into his brain and opened fire without thinking.

Water flooded the carriage, the force of it knocking the soldiers crammed inside to the ground and into a tangle of limbs.

This was the problem with Augmented soldiers. Obviously, the benefits outweighed the disadvantages, but there were issues. A better-trained soldier would have known better than to fire inside that elevator. But the Augmented didn’t have time to train all their soldiers. Instead, they relied on code to make them do what was needed. That meant sometimes they did things that weren’t the smartest. Like flooding their own goddamn elevator carriage.

Every feed, everywhere, was a mess. Soldiers were either dead or were trying to swim. Some sort of horrible feedback in the water made everything worse. The high-pitched shrieking made it difficult to hear what the soldiers were saying.

And it seemed to be coming from the long-necked fish things as they appeared from the sea to feed on the swimming Augmented.

“Goddamn it,” Harper fumed.

They had been on the cusp of victory. They would have established a foothold in the underwater base, and the locals would not have been able to stop them. Instead, they had been turned to fish food.

But Harper had a plan even for this.

“I want every submersible we have to head down there immediately. We’ll crack open that base by any means necessary.”

“Every submersible, sir? Even the ones on the warships prepped to chase the fleeing fighters?”

“Did I stutter?” Harper roared. He might have shown some restraint if the Algorithm disagreed with his fury, but it did not. The distilled thoughts and opinions of thousands of people loaded up onto the warship’s servers intensified his rage.

“No, sir!”

“Then get those warships—all our goddamned warships—unloading shuttles down there. I want our submersibles fully loaded, and I want our people inside that base! We only need to take a few of the right people to end this thing. I want it done yesterday!”

“Yes, sir!” his underlings replied and got to work sending his orders.

“They think they can stop us from improving them, and they are wrong. We will go in there with everything we have, and we will have victory. These punks want to live in the Stone Age? Too bad. We’re about to open a can of civilization on their asses.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Lev watched as the debris of the floating platform sunk into the water.

He had destroyed it with the press of a button. He had taken out hundreds of enemy soldiers and multiple shuttles with a single finger. It might have been the greatest military victory he’d ever personally accomplished.

So why did he feel so god-awful about what he had done?

Was it because he knew how much work it would take to rebuild? Was it because blowing the platform had cost them the elevator? Was it because he knew eliminating the platform wouldn’t actually stop the Augmented…it would only slow them down? Or perhaps because now they were cut off from outside support?

Now he knew no one would come down and chase off the Augmented for them. And the Augmented would keep coming. They had already sent one underwater sub. It was only a matter of time before they sent more.

If they were lucky, anyway. If not, the Augmented might drop a kinetic round on them and wipe them out with one blow.

Lev was not ignorant of what a rock could do to a planet when dropped from outer space. Sure, the physics were slightly different here, since there were twenty meters of water between Homebase and any dropped rock, but not that different. He had seen many rocks dropped on cities. Too many. They left nothing but a pillar of ash in the atmosphere. Any time Lev had watched one hit a city and the ensuing aftermath, it had served as a cruel reminder of how devastating this universe could be. Life was so fragile, and it didn’t take much to end it.

Would the Augmented consider such a tactic?

If they did, now would be the time.

“I want all satellites reporting to me on what’s happening up there. If they drop something, I must know.”

“The warships are all in formation, sir,” Good reported. “We won’t be able to see their final approach, though. That platform had our best scanners.”

Good hadn’t meant it as a rebuke. Or maybe he had. It didn’t matter. Lev was in command now, and he was responsible for the choices he made. He had slowed the Augmented’s progress toward penetrating the base. There was no point in lamenting that decision. Not now. Maybe if they survived and he had a bit of kelp vodka to help him think it through.

Right now, what mattered was preventing the Augmented from getting into the base. That had to be the top priority. If the Augmented got inside, it would be damn hard to force them back out. They had more people and more firepower, and they likely knew this base as well as Lev did. There would be plans for it back on Earth they would have studied. If they got in, it would go from bad to worse.

“Sir, we got something on our perimeter.”

“School of nessies?” Lev asked hopefully.

Good shook his head. “Looks like an enemy sub.”

“So now, we fight.”

As Dane grew closer and closer to the coordinates Haley sent him, he checked to make sure he was in the right place. Coordinates in space were confusing at the best of times, needing to reference the position of the sun and the planets to make them work. It wasn’t like there were any other landmarks out here.

And most notably, there did not seem to be a giant battle station either.

“Haley, are we in the right area? My scanners aren’t picking up a damn thing.”

“That’s by design. The shape of the station and that paint we reverse-engineered make this the biggest stealth vessel anyone has ever seen.”

“Are we on track?”

“You are. Just keep coming.”

Dane nodded and tried to hail Varuna for the tenth time. The call didn’t go through. The Augmented were jamming the channel, though Dane feared something worse had happened. If the Augmented knocked out the satellites around Varuna or even blew the platform on the surface of the world, it would make communications with the Defenders all but impossible. But the Augmented would not do such a thing. They wanted to take over, not destroy. That had become clearer as time went on. Every second the base on Varuna continued to exist was more indication they wanted not only the planet but the minds of the people on it.

Would Lev have blown the platform, then? He knew they had wired it to blow. Dane had been so focused on space defense he had not actually thought about his friend needing to make that decision.

“Sir, are you seeing that?” one of his pilots asked.

“Not following you, pilot,” Dane replied.

“The stars… They’re vanishing.”

It was true. A star winked out of existence, then another and another. He realized there was now a circle of black in front of them.

“Looks like we found the hidden iron sphere,” Dane remarked over the radio.

“Roger that, Governor. We see you coming in close. Swing around back, and you’ll find a docking bay. I’m turning on the lights so you don’t get too close.”

A few lights appeared on the black circle, and suddenly Dane could tell it was a sphere. Every bit of it was black, but now, thanks to the lights, Dane realized the outer surface was dotted with missile launchers and thrusters. The lights were all white, so if Dane wasn’t careful, his brain told him it was simply another region of space. Which was a lot better than the ship’s sensors were doing. The paint swallowed up their radar and lidar, which made the ship think it was empty space. It was a good thing Haley had turned on the lights!

They flew around the massive, hulking ball of iron and found the back of the station was not nearly as camouflaged as the front.

There was a huge hole drilled into the back of it, and the Cosmos was tucked inside. Well, mostly. The huge thrusters on the back of the colony ship stuck out from the back of the hole. Obviously, Haley wanted space between the nuclear engines and where she and her crew would essentially be living. White light spilled out around the Cosmos and illuminated a landing area beside the ship.

“That’s where we’re headed.” Dane noticed the other shuttles in the landing bay. He desperately wanted to land and get out of his Defender for a hundred different reasons. He wanted to see what the Augmented were doing. He wanted to see what Haley knew about their people down beneath the planet’s surface. But mostly, he wanted to see Haley, to hold her, and to know she was safe despite all the death they had witnessed.

Rushing now could cost them all their lives, though. There were none of the automated systems the ships and the station had to help their Defenders land. There were no crews waiting for them. There was merely a hole into a black sphere and tracks that their vessels could magnetically clamp to.

“Keep it cool, everyone. We’re going to have to do this by eye.” Dane had the most experience, so he led the way. There was plenty of space on all sides of the bay door, so he flew in while paying attention to the landing spots. Bright tracks painted on the ground represented as much as the crew had bothered for a landing area. There were likely coils of copper underneath those painted tracks to provide a magnetic field for a hidden piece of iron. Dane headed for a pair of tracks in the corner. It was the tightest place to land, so he figured he’d do his pilots a favor and take the spot himself.

He lowered his ship meter by meter, then slowed until it was a centimeter crawl. A less experienced pilot might not have noticed, but he felt the tug of the magnetic field on his landing gear, and the Defender clunked to a stop.

“When you get a meter out, let the magnetic field pull you in. After you’ve stopped moving, make sure you shut down all systems. Half the pilots will give the ships a once-over and see if we can find some fuel or missiles to replenish what we used.”

All the other pilots acknowledged. Then Dane climbed out of the fighter. He couldn’t exactly swing himself over the edge because there was no gravity here to pull him toward the ground.

Instead, he had to push himself up into a float, then haul himself back down the side of his fighter using the scant handholds there. He only made it about halfway before Haley emerged from an airlock, pushed off, and caught a hug so huge it knocked him loose and sent them both floating through the middle of the airlock.

“I thought you were dead.” Haley rested her helmet against his. The contact meant he could actually hear her talking. It was faint and buzzy but truly her, not some signal over the radio. Dane released the huge breath he’d been holding.

“It’s nice to see you too.”

“You’re not mad I moved this battle sphere close enough to save your ass?”

“No… No, I can’t say that I am.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It couldn’t end like this. They had come so very far. They had maybe saved the colony itself, and now? Now, Ron Bell was going to asphyxiate a few meters from Homebase.

As his vision started to blur, he thought back to the events of the last thirty minutes or so. It felt like an entire lifetime.

It had all started when he discovered his son was on the battle station. How had that happened? Ron had done so much to protect Liam. Too much, he sometimes thought when he had too much to drink or not enough to do. But whether saving his son was the right thing to do was irrelevant now. He had saved his son. He had forgiven him. He had brought him to Varuna to keep him safe. He still had not learned how he got up to the defensive platform without Ron finding out. He supposed it was irrelevant. Sometimes it seemed as if children existed to defy the wishes of their parents, if only to make them proud.

When Ron heard Liam’s voice, he had not been able to evacuate. Instead, he raced through the halls and found Liam trying to get a jammed missile launcher moving. Ron hadn’t said a thing. He’d grabbed the fin on the missile pinched between the next one and the loading chute, then shoved.

They got it unstuck, and the missile launcher gobbled up the remaining missiles, sending them at the BDB as quickly as it could.

“We did it,” Liam announced. He didn’t sound proud, but grim. He always had been a smart kid.

“Come on,” Ron invited, and they raced toward an escape pod. They launched less than ten seconds before the BDB blasted the platform to nothing. If it had been a traditional weapon, they might have been caught in a shockwave, but that had not been their experience. They had flown on toward Varuna as all of Bell’s work in this system was reduced to nothing.

“I can’t steer.” Liam tried to mess with the controls and failed.

“These ships are on autopilot after they launch. Can’t have someone playing the hero and causing a crash.”

“Oh.” Liam frowned. “Come on. Let’s put on wetsuits.”

“Wetsuits?”

“We’re not going to land on a dry surface, Dad. We’re going to need to swim.”

Ron smiled at his courageous son. After everything, he still hadn’t given up. They had watched the enemy sweep away their greatest weapon in this underdeveloped solar system like it was nothing but crumbs, and Liam was still willing to keep fighting.

“Sure.”

They got suited up in wetsuits and fitted with rebreathers—Liam was much more adept at it than his father—just in time to feel the shakes of atmospheric entry.

They broke through a cloud bank, pulling a plume of vapor with them. Ron could not actually see this, but he saw the other escape pods doing it, so he assumed they were also dragging the clouds down with them. He also realized not only escape pods were coming down. They were at first, but then heavier shuttles broke through the clouds as well.

“They want to implant everyone here,” Liam stated.

“Most likely, yes,” Ron replied.

Liam nodded. “It’s all they care about. I thought it was people, but it’s not. They only want more nodes in their network.”

They splashed down not long after that. Bell didn’t know what to do, but Liam was not willing to sit idly. He crawled out of the pod, used the plume of black smoke from the wrecked platform burning on the surface to get his bearings, then told his dad they needed to swim.

It had gone so well until an enemy sub caught up to them.

Ron hated to admit it, but he had been willing to die at that moment. What were the two of them, unarmed and out of breath, supposed to do to a submersible spaceship filled with soldiers? Had the positions been reversed, Ron would not have hesitated to open fire on the swimmers and tear through their fragile bodies to reduce the number of his enemy.

Yet these were Augmented.

They didn’t want everyone dead as much as they wanted their wills enslaved to their hive mind. So instead of firing on them, they’d opened a hatch and swam after Ron and Liam.

That was when Ron found hope again.

Because while Ron had been working on the orbital defense station, Liam had been working with the nessies. Ron still didn’t know how he had done it—they had not had much time to converse with each other—but somehow Liam heard nessies coming and signaled them for help.

There had been a pair of them, and they tore into the Augmented with something between delight and hunger. It was both terrifying and amazing since they were eating the enemy and not them.

The Augmented had not secured their shuttle before they left it, so Ron and his son grabbed weapons from the dead and climbed in. The pilot was shockingly easy to overcome. He had not even been paying attention to his surroundings. Instead of listening for someone in his shuttle, he had been paying attention to data on his implant. Ron shot him in the head, destroying the source of the distraction.

They took the sub and headed back to Homebase, only now they had to convince their friends they were still friends.

“I don’t doubt that you’re Bell. I can read your audio signature well enough. How do I know you’re not implanted, though?” Lev asked over the radio.

Bell didn’t have an easy answer for that.

“That’s a good question.” Liam scratched his head. “The Augmented can access any memory you have after their implant is built in the brain.”

“So I can’t tell Lev about some conversation we had that only we would both remember.”

“Right. The only way to know is through motive, and that can be tricky. I had thought they wanted to help, but then they invaded…”

But then Ron had the answer.

“Lev, I can’t prove I’m not Augmented, but maybe I can demonstrate that I’m not.” He got up from the pilot’s seat and went to the hatch of the sub.

“Liam, I have to do this. I have to get in there and help if I can, but you don’t. You can stay here and be safe.”

“What? No way.”

“Listen to me, Liam. You can stay in this sub and sit tight. If you wait out the entire fight, no one will think you’re Augmented.”

“They already think I’m a traitor! I can’t have them think I’m a coward too. I’m going with you.”

Ron understood. He wouldn’t argue with his son, though Liam coming with him might very well mean the end of the Bell family.

He shucked off his wetsuit and his rebreather.

“What are you…oh,” Liam said as realization dawned. “We can’t be seen as any kind of threat, huh?”

“Right. If we try to break in there, even without guns, they’ll need to search us and make sure we don’t have nanites and all that. They don’t have time.”

“So we’re going to go out there…like this?”

“Not quite.” Ron stripped naked. “Unless you have any other ideas?”

Liam only shucked off his suit faster. Father and son looked at each other. They had similar frames, though Ron’ sagged everywhere that Liam’s remained pert.

They went to the airlock and climbed inside together. Father and son both drew big, deep breaths, filling their lungs as much as they could before they made their final swim.

Then they opened the hatch and let the water of Varuna flow all around them.

Bell was in his heart a man of Scotland, even though he had not been born there nor ever visited. So when he thought water, he thought cold, but the water of Varuna was pleasantly warm.

He had no time to enjoy it, though. As soon as the force of the water stopped pushing them back, they had to swim or die. They swam as hard and as fast as they could. Liam was better than Ron, both because he was younger and because he had used his time on this planet to practice.

They swam for the moon pool room, hoping Lev would see what they’d tried to make clear. They were no threat. They had no weapons, no injectors. They were putting themselves at the mercy of the people of Varuna. They had nothing to hide.

Closer and closer they grew until they were beneath the moon pool room and found the heavy metal disk they’d fabricated to lock the door still closed.

Smart move, tactically, Ron thought bitterly. The Augmented might send decoys. Better to keep the hatch closed.

Only now, there was nowhere to go. Ron watched as his son swam ahead of him and banged on the door. They were going to asphyxiate. Here on this world, together, because they had both failed to protect the last world.

Ron had no more thoughts for that. He was out of air. Out of time. His vision closed in, and there was only darkness.

Then he was awake, his son smiling over him and Lev accompanying him.

“Didn’t have to do all that!” Lev held an injector in his hand. “All you had to do was offer to take our cure.”

Ron blinked and felt a prick on his arm. He grinned.

“Don’t smile yet, though. We’ve got submersibles incoming.”

Dane was beyond impressed to actually be on the asteroid Lopez had turned into a battle sphere through sheer dint of will and solar energy.

“We carved these spaces to work and live, eventually,” Lopez explained as they pushed themselves through the asteroid’s halls. Lopez and her engineers had been more traditional with their designs than the Augmented were. Her halls met at ninety-degree angles, for the most part, and the doors to the rooms were rectangles. It made it possible to glance backward and make sure his pilots were following them.

“There’s a lot more room to expand, of course. Even with keeping the shell over a hundred meters thick, there’s room to wiggle down here.”

“That’s why the halls seem so long?”

“Exactly. We can cut in living spaces and work stations later, not to mention access hatches to the surface.”

“There’s none of those, correct?”

“Yes. We thought it would be better to keep the surface solid for now.”

“And you’ve been living in here with no atmosphere?”

“We were until we got the Cosmos. Now that’s where everyone is. It’s the nerve center of this whole place for now.”

“Well, take me to the brain, then,” Dane pronounced.

Lopez turned down an unmarked hall, and Dane followed. She seemed to have a supernatural sense of the space, no doubt because she had designed it from the ground up, or ground in, rather.

They reached the slot for the Cosmos and pushed across the empty space from a hallway to the ship. They could only go two at a time, though, so Dane’s pilots had to wait before they jumped. That meant Dane and Lopez would be alone in the airlock…where they could take off their helmets.

“You didn’t build permanent connections to the ship?” Dane tried to keep the conversation going while his mind went elsewhere.

“Not yet, no. It’s hardwired with breakaway cables, so we can disconnect if needed. I didn’t want to do that with entrances and exits, though. I want everyone to remember this is a spaceship crammed inside a big iron slug. Take those things for granted, and people forget,” Lopez explained as they waited for the airlock to cycle through.

After they removed their helmets, they embraced, touched each other’s faces, and basically made out like teenagers.

“I missed you,” Dane announced.

“I could tell through your spacesuit.” Lopez winked, then opened the airlock to the Cosmos.

Dane was not expecting to feel much of anything for the old colony ship, so he was shocked when the smell of it sent him down memory lane. “Oh, wow.”

“The smell, right? It’s the hibernation pods. The gasses they use are supposed to be odorless, but of course, they’re not.”

“I don’t think I remember the smell of gunpowder, though.”

Lopez chuckled. “Are you saying I stunk up the ship I borrowed?”

Dane laughed. “I love the smell of gunpowder in the, err…never-ending timelessness of deep space.”

“Funny. I do, too, these days. Makes me feel safe.”

“So the Cosmos is working?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. We need the nuclear engines to propel us, of course, but we’re also using it as our generator, so all the systems on the iron sphere are powered by the Cosmos. We’re also using the computer bank on the Cosmos to control the iron sphere. It takes quite a bit of computer power to keep all those thrusters on the hull working properly.”

Dane remembered his first foray into the computer system of this ship. He had used it to break a Russian encryption back when the Russians were their scariest enemies, even when they had not yet even landed on the planet. Funny how now they were their staunchest allies. Time healed all wounds, Dane supposed.

“What about the fighting capabilities of this ship?” Dane asked when they reached the bridge of the Cosmos. Dane knew the screens had never actually been windows. They had always shown a video feed from a camera mounted on the front of the Cosmos. Haley had done the same thing, but with cameras mounted on the iron sphere. Though now, knowing the Cosmos was tucked inside the other object, it felt disingenuous. Not that he wanted to see a wall of iron.

“Well, we’ve got about three dozen missiles mounted outside. We have plenty of reloads but no machines to do it. We have to send people out to do that.”

Dane nodded. He was well aware of the limitation. “In that case, I want all your extra missiles on my fighters.”

Haley nodded to a technician who relayed the orders, albeit in Russian.

The first pair of Dane’s pilots had made it through the airlock and reached the bridge.

“You want our fighters reloaded?”

“Wait for everyone to get here, but then yes, I’ll want you all to go back to the bay and work with the team here to get our birds ready to fly again.” Dane turned back to Haley. “What’s the status of the invasion? I assume we weren’t followed, or we’d know it.”

“You weren’t followed. They are completely focused on Varuna. They sent down some shuttles, but we lost contact after that. I think there was an explosion on the surface.”

“Lev must have blown the platform.”

Lopez nodded. “Some of the warships were holding a defensive position until then. But when we lost contact with the surface, they all moved closer. I think that Harper jerk was surprised Lev did that and now wants vengeance.”

“He hasn’t dropped bombs?”

“No. But he’s launched shuttles. A lot of shuttles.”

“We have to assume they’re waterproof,” Dane remarked.

“We should also assume they have a plan for how to get into Homebase.”

“Which means we need a plan. What are your capabilities here?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be able to do anything without my crew. Our head of engineering has been Vlad.” A technician knew what she wanted and brought up a video feed of Vlad on the screen.

“We are ready to rock, Czarina,” Vlad reported. He was a big man standing in front of other big men. They were mostly miners, mechanics, and other rough men with rough hands on this ship. They had not hesitated to get in a ship and leave Earth to colonize a world with potential hostiles, nor had they hesitated to work in the cold of space, transforming a lump of asteroid into this station.

“This is Governor George Dane.”

Vlad spit. “Then the defense did not go so well?” he asked.

“Not really. We took out their big ship, but it cost us our platform and all our warships.”

Vlad held up a finger in protest. “Almost all. You still have the Czarina’s iron sphere.”

“That’s true,” Dane agreed. “How many do you have here?”

“We have sixty-one men willing to fight, even though we are out of kelp vodka as pay.”

The rumors were true, then. The missing Russians really had been drinking all the vodka.

“I’m sure the governor can get you more vodka if we can protect Homebase,” one of Dane’s plucky pilots remarked.

Vlad and all the Russians threw their heads back and laughed. “No, no. That is not necessary.” Vlad wiped the tears from his eyes with a greasy hand. “We like vodka fine, but it is not why we do this job. We believe in Varuna. In this new world and other new worlds to follow. There is none of the…history here. None of the blood spilled on the land yet, no?”

“Then we should spill some!” one of the other Russians joked to much cheering and laughter.

“What I try to say is we will do whatever the governor wants to try. We are getting missiles loaded now.”

“Thank you, Vlad, and I assure you I’ll need your help. I don’t think we can do a straight-out assault, though. We don’t have enough missiles, and there are too many warships.”

“The Czarina’s iron sphere can take a beating,” Vlad insisted.

“I’m sure it can, but if a warship comes around back and blasts the Cosmos, we’ll be out of power, navigation, and everything else, right?”

This set off some bickering among the Russians standing behind Vlad on the view screen. Apparently, they’d had similar conversations.

“I’ll be in touch.”

Vlad nodded and cut the transmission.

“I guess what I need to know is what all is on the iron sphere or the Cosmos.”

“Well, the most obvious asset besides the missiles is definitely our most recent acquisition.”

A technician brought up a supply list. An item at the bottom read “two hundred gallons of nanite cure, stored in solution.”

He could not help but grin. Here he’d thought it was inconvenient to keep all of that way out here. Turned out it was perfect.

“We can make that work. It might be enough to dose every Augmented in the system.”

“Sure, but how? Not to be a pessimist, but as soon as they get into Homebase, they’re going to look through our computers. They’re going to see we have plenty of cure. I can’t imagine them not checking the water, for example.”

Dane nodded. “I suppose you’re right. The chances of tricking them into consuming it with their own methods probably won’t work. Plus, Alvarez designed it to be injected. I don’t even know if getting them to drink it would work. What about weapons? You have sixty people. Maybe we could take over one of the warships?”

It felt like a longshot, but they had to consider all their options. They had to find something that could work.

“There’s not much for weapons here. When we launched, it was in the post-war peace, so they didn’t want to load the Cosmos up with too much.”

“You don’t have weapons for all these Russians?”

Lopez shrugged. “It wasn’t a concern. We were using solar mirrors to melt an asteroid. No one was exactly thinking about packing.”

“There’s got to be something, though! This is a battle station!”

“Yeah, we have a few handguns and assault weapons, but not sixty.”

Dane felt like a fool. He should have made that more of a priority. He would have if he hadn’t been so concerned with keeping Haley safe. He had let his personal feelings get in the way of solid tactics and was paying for it now.

“Ma’am, there’s the tranq guns?”

“The what?” Dane asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. They suspected there was life on this world before they launched the Cosmos, so the builders included a bunch of tranquilizer guns for subduing the wildlife.”

“I don’t remember subduing any wildlife with a tranq gun!”

“That’s the thing. They anticipated life, but not an ocean world. The darts don’t work underwater.”

“Wait…are you telling me you have a bunch of guns on board that will shoot darts loaded with liquid?”

“Yeah, but I don’t—oh, my God!” Haley got it. Dane grinned. It was rare he beat her to any conclusions. Surely, he only reached this one because it concerned military tactics.

“We load the tranquilizer darts with the cure.”

“Oh my God, yes! Yes!” Haley was beaming. “We’ll have to be very careful, though.”

“Extremely careful. We can’t simply shoot darts at a warship.”

“Ma’am, I’m getting a transmission from Varuna.”

“Varuna? We haven’t heard from them since the platform went down. Put it on!”

A video feed thick with static filled the screen. Lev stared into the camera, glanced over his shoulder then back to the camera. “Hello? Can anyone out there hear us? We are not going to last much longer. I am not sure if you can see this, but…” He rotated the camera to show the moon room.

The circle of water, normally the passageway between the dry air of Homebase and the sea of Varuna was covered in a metal disk. A metal disk that was starting to glow orange in the center.

“Burning through! They…” The sound came in and out. “Not much longer. We will hold them…hallways…blood bath.”

Then the video went dead.

“I have a plan,” Dane announced, aware it was not his best plan but the first one that popped into his head and, thus, his only plan. It was a little crazy and a lot desperate, but if they played their cards right, it just might work.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Less than fifteen minutes later, Dane was in the biggest room of the Cosmos, with everyone from the iron sphere and his pilots all around him. All around being a literal term here. The room was wide, but it was especially tall, lined as it had been with pods for people to hibernate while they traveled the vast distances between the stars. The Russian workers and the pilots were all well accustomed to working in space, so rather than standing in front of Dane, they floated all around him, clinging to whatever they could.

“Thank you all for coming,” Dane began.

“Where else were we to go? There is no ballroom for dancing on this hunk of iron!”

Laughter replied to that. Dane could deal with laughter. He was about to ask these people to risk their lives on a mission that might be best described as suicidal.

“I want us all to take the fight to the enemy.”

A few people called out and cheered, but plenty of others shifted in place. They knew what this station could do and what it could not.

“Those ships carry hundreds of people each,” Dane reminded them.

“More than us!”

“Ten times more than us!”

“We always knew we were at a numbers disadvantage.” Dane tried to retake control of the crowd. “The Augmented know it too. They know they vastly outnumber us, and they can overwhelm us. In fact, I’m counting on it. As we speak, they’re sending every soldier they can down to the surface of my world, of our world. They are going to try to beat our people by throwing everything they have at them.”

“It will work!” a Russian called.

Dane nodded. “It very well might, and they’re going to be betting on it. They already have, heavily. They’re all fighting down there, thinking they control space, but they don’t. Not yet. Not while we’re all still here. They have six warships instead of twelve, and they lost their BDB. My guess is each of those ships had to send more people down than they had planned. And why would they keep any up here? No one has seen this iron sphere yet. They have no idea we’re up here. They think they’ve won. We’re going to prove that they haven’t.”

“But how?”

Dane hauled one of the containers of nanites off the ground and sent it floating up through the room, past all the faces. They all followed it with their eyes instead of looking at him. They knew what was in there, but Dane told them anyway.

“A few milliliters of that in their bloodstream, and they’re not Augmented anymore. We found a stash of tranq guns on board the Cosmos.”

“Darts?”

“Not your grandma’s darts. These things have titanium tips and are designed to punch through thick skin or shells. They should work fine against spacesuits.”

The Russians were nodding at this.

“And we get in by cutting, yes?” Vlad asked.

“That’s right, Vlad. You all built this station. You obviously know how to work metal. We use that. We come at them with our Defenders and the iron sphere. Then, once we get their attention, the shuttles try to land on their warships. Two per. Do you have enough for that?”

“Not quite,” Lopez clarified. “We have nine.”

“Then we blow some enemies up first,” Dane quipped, which earned a laugh from the Russians. “But this could work. We get in. We hit some of them with our cure, then take their ships.”

“I do not think all of them will wish to join us,” Vlad suggested.

“Me neither, but the cure knocks people out for a bit. Many go into convulsions.”

Vlad grinned. “Much better plan.”

“It can work. It must work. After we take one ship, we turn it against the others. Try to take them all out. If we control space, we control the battle.”

The Russians nodded at this. They had been on the other side of the war that featured dropping rocks on the cities of Earth. They knew the power of space, of what a single fighter up there could do, and how insurmountable the Augmented would be if they let them stay above the atmosphere unmolested.

“And our Czarina?” Vlad asked.

Dane had not actually talked about that with Haley…

“I command the iron sphere,” she boasted, hands on her hips like she was posing for a statue. “I built this ship, and I’ll use it to crash through their puny warships if they think they can stand against me!”

The Russians cheered, and Dane understood he would not be telling her to wait this one out or anything like that. At least this way, she wouldn’t be in any of the boarding parties.

“Then you’ll do it?” Dane asked.

“We will fight for Varuna,” Vlad asserted. “And when we win, we will drink kelp vodka and sing songs of loss!”

The Russians cheered for this depressingly possible aftermath. Then they got to work.

Getting the nanites into the first couple of darts was tricky. They had to drain them without breaking them, then get them refilled and make sure the mechanism that injected the liquid still worked. They lost quite a few trying to convert them, but then a Russian found a slit that could be split open with a sharp blade without breaking the dart. After they figured that out, they divided the labor, and things went fast. In less than an hour, they had retrofitted every dart they had. That meant every one of the sixty or so Russians, plus Dane’s pilots, had a dart gun with ten-dart clips, plus two or three extra clips.

“Man, the people who built this ship were really concerned about hostile wildlife,” Haley joked when they were nearly finished and were divvying up the clips.

“Either that or they knew they couldn’t bring lethal firearms but knew we’d still want weapons,” Dane surmised.

Haley looked at him as if maybe he had been the person to recommend bringing so many of the darts, but Dane only chuckled. “I was hoping for bullets. I never talked to anyone about darts.”

“Good to know I’m dating a gun nut.”

Dane laughed. “If I wasn’t, I don’t think we’d be in this situation.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad someone’s leading the assault.”

“Well, that makes one of us, I still think—”

“If you ask me to sit this out with my warship, I will order my Russians to toss you into space right now.”

“They wouldn’t.” Dane looked around at the burly shoulders and welding scars. He had no doubt if they wanted to, they could.

“I’m their Czarina. I assure you they would.” Haley winked.

Dane was glad to have her. Who else in the world could turn a death threat into a flirt?

They finished filling the darts, then it was time to go. They had probably already wasted too much time, and without a working radio on Varuna, there was no way of knowing how bad it had gotten down there.

“Fall back! Fall back to secondary positions!” Lev cursed his own order as soon as he gave it, but nothing else could be done. The Augmented had cut through the shield that was supposed to keep them out of the moon pool room. Now they were using chunks of the metal as shields.

Despite Lev and his security team throwing everything they had at them, there hadn’t been a damn thing they could do about those shields.

So now the Augmented were in the base.

Lev raced down the hall with Good. The American had a stash of his drones in a nearby room.

“Cover me!” Good shouted, and Lev did, firing at the Augmented who dared come out from behind their shields. They were relentless, fearless, and they never did anything alone. Instead of one Augmented breaking cover to advance, it was always three or four.

Lev tagged the first one that emerged from the moon pool room, but a second was already behind them, catching the fallen man and using him as a shield. Three more followed him, then kicked in a door in the hallway and took cover in there. They were officially in the building now. Worse, there were screams coming from that room.

“They were supposed to evacuate!” Lev moaned. Orders were worth little when they were not followed.

“I got this.” Good launched a drone down the hallway. He knew how to anticipate enemy fire. The drone weaved and dodged as he tried to keep from being hit. He steered the drone into the room and found the Augmented pushing three civilians into the back. They were hydroponics farmers.

The Augmented weren’t trying to kill them, though. Instead, they were trying to inject them with nanites.

“Take them out!” Lev ordered Good.

“I’m trying! This is a bad angle. I don’t want to kill our own people!”

Lev tasted bile as he saw this fight playing out. The enemy wasn’t using lethal force, which meant if Lev and his security people did, the blood of their people would be on their hands. He couldn’t have that. Yet he couldn’t let the Augmented march right in here, either. Did he tell Good to fire and accept the risk of casualties to his own people? Did he wait for a better angle? Did he rush in? Did he—

The feed on Good’s tablet jumped as something crashed into the drone, cracking the camera and knocking it to the ground. Then a boot stomped on it, and Lev’s decision had been made for him.

A moment later, the screams stopped.

There had been no gunshots.

The Augmented had their newest recruits.

Dane got back into his fighter. Once again, he had missiles and plenty of bullets for his railgun. Though he no longer placed faith in those weapons. Now, their best hope lay in the dart gun he cradled in his lap.

“Pilots, check in.”

They all did. There were ten now. Dane and nine others. They had another ship, but it had blown a coolant leak, and the engine was apt to blow apart if they took off. There wasn’t any time to fix it. They hadn’t heard from Lev while they had been working on the darts, but Dane knew the situation down there was not going to improve. Not unless Dr. Alvarez could… but no. They couldn’t put faith in that miracle cure. Not anymore. Dane had to use the cure they had, take a battleship, and somehow use it to turn the tables.

“Here we go,” Dane took four of the Defenders with him while the other five went the other way around the iron sphere. He knew they wouldn’t get the drop on the six Augmented warships. They’d see the craft.

Which meant they might as well launch some missiles and let the enemy know they were coming.

They each launched a missile. A waste of artillery since Dane knew none of the missiles would get through.

Three of the Augmented warships turned their attention to the approaching missiles and blasted away with their defensive emplacements. That was fine. Part of the plan. While those warships focused on those missiles, Haley turned on the nuclear drive of the Cosmos, bringing the iron sphere into the fray.

Dane saw the instant the enemy noticed the iron sphere. One moment, three of the warships were sitting in orbit, obviously not concerned about the Defenders coming their way. The next moment, all six of them formed up to face the glob of rapidly expanding black space as it approached them.

Dane marked the ship that moved to the center of the formation.

“That one’s mine,” he told his pilots, showing them what he had seen on his screen.

The pilots all picked a warship of their own. Their signals were being radioed back to the shuttles filled with Russians, still riding on the back of the iron sphere, waiting to launch at the right moment. They would be key in all this, but not yet. Not until the chaos of battle engulfed them.

The iron sphere accelerated with every bit of power it had. The plan wasn’t to slow down. They wanted the ship to join the battle as soon as possible. Plus, the Cosmos couldn’t simply throw itself into reverse. It needed to pivot a hundred and eighty degrees.

The enemy didn’t know this, though.

They took their defensive positions and fired their missiles at the massive target. Dane and his Defenders blasted as many missiles as they could out of the sky. A few still got through, slamming into the iron sphere…and doing next to nothing.

Every spot they hit left a glowing cherry-red mark, but knowing what those missiles could do to most ships made Dane feel like these red marks were nothing but kisses left by lipstick.

Haley seemed to feel the same way.

“If the iron sphere’s a-rocking, don’t come a-knocking!” she shouted over the radio when Dane asked for a status update.

The Augmented shot more and more missiles at the iron sphere, but none of them slowed it down. They didn’t realize this, though. Not until it was too late.

Really, it could not have gone better. The continuously accelerating iron sphere approached faster than the Augmented could imagine. It behaved differently than any ship they had faced before, so they didn’t know how to defend themselves. It hardly came as a surprise when one of them failed to get clear, and the iron sphere smashed through it like a semi-truck plowing through an aquarium.

And the iron sphere kept moving on. There was a terrible moment where it showed its engine to the enemy, but then Haley rotated it, so the iron mass again faced their ships. He knew she was using the nuclear drive of the Cosmos, this time to slow it down, though her part in the battle was hopefully done. She was flying out of the battle. Her shuttles had all launched and were trying to use the chaos of the wreckage to land unnoticed on the five remaining warships.

If only it were that easy.

The Augmented had scrambled their fighters, and Dane’s stomach dropped as a shuttle was detected and blasted to pieces.

But then he pushed conscious thought aside and let himself sink into the thrill of flying his craft in battle.

He had fought in battles like this before for far worse reasons than saving the last independent minds in the galaxy. He had battled, but never with a lover like Haley on the battlefield.

He would show the Augmented no mercy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Dane and his pilots flew like demons possessed.

Before, they had been concerned about victory, the odds, and how the battle would determine their future.

There was none of that now.

Their home was being invaded.

They were the last defense Varuna had, and they all knew they wouldn’t win by fighting. Ten tiny Defenders, no matter how divinely piloted, could not possibly stand against the five remaining warships. Their aid to victory would be keeping everyone busy enough to miss the shuttles landing and infiltrating. Their job was to buy time with their lives if necessary.

And they rose to the occasion.

Dane knew he was communicating, talking, picking up on people’s wings, and driving off enemies, but there was no thinking about any of it. Instead, he dived, tumbled, and changed direction as he blasted any fighter that tried to shoot the shuttle he was shepherding through this maelstrom of chaos.

He was largely successful, while some of his other pilots were not.

A warship’s guns blasted one apart.

Another was hit from behind and smashed into a warship’s engines, crippling it but not doing a thing to its guns.

Two more were simply chased down by the superior enemy numbers.

While this happened, they all blasted apart multiple fighters and took out warship-mounted weapons. They even somehow shot a missile as it was coming from a warship, causing it to detonate and take that ship out of action.

Somehow, the shuttles performed better than Dane’s wildest expectations. They understood their part in the mission and made directly for the warships.

A shuttle landed on each of the damaged ships and clamped on. Those wouldn’t be the best to take over, but Dane would be happy with either.

One shuttle went for one of the three fully functional ships and got blasted to pieces. Another had come in from the opposite side and landed before they knew it had gotten through.

The ship in front of Dane—the flagship, he was pretty sure—blasted a shuttle that tried to land, and another ship to smithereens, then another one.

Yet, while it was defending itself, a shuttle managed to land. Dane was close enough to see a cargo door open and a Russian with a terrifying cutting claw emerge onto the warship’s outer hull.

Another fighter made a run at the one ship where nothing had landed, but it was blasted to pieces. Dane cursed, but he didn’t want to abandon the people on the flagship. They would simply have to deal with one Augmented ship not being taken over.

Already the battlefield had changed. The ships had stopped firing since most of the targets had now landed on their own warships.

Dane was one of the few remaining Defenders, which everyone noticed at about the same time. Four fighters converged on him. He burned toward the flagship, clamped on near the shuttle, then got out as bullets started flying. They shredded his Defender but then stopped. They were so close to the warship that their railguns did substantial damage. They pulled off and headed deeper into space.

Though Dane knew it only looked like that. Really, the iron sphere was desperately trying to slow itself down and reenter the battle for another pass, which was drawing the enemy’s attention. Yet one battleship had avoided a landing party, and the fighters were all headed that way.

There was nothing Dane could do besides continue with his mission. Haley would have to protect herself. At least until Dane could take control of the warship and come to save her.

Dane boarded the shuttle through their airlock as they finished cutting through the hull. It was amazing to see the claw work. It was pneumatic or something—Dane didn’t know—and devilishly sharp. The operator could use it to snip and grab, so he got through the hull of the warship like a chimpanzee might get into an orange.

Dane pushed through the Russians for a glimpse of the scene inside. He carried a tranquilizer gun, though he had the reassuring weight of a regular pistol on his belt if the dart rifles proved ineffective or if he ran out of ammo.

“What is this place?” the Russian asked.

“Docking bay. They don’t care about ups and downs,” Dane explained. He was far more familiar with the layout of this ship thanks to his time on the Prometheus. The strange architecture seemed off-putting to the Russians.

“They’ll come through there or there.” He pointed to two doors, not quite across from each other.

The Russians slipped inside and fanned out along the walls on either side of the hole. After there were three on each side, they kicked off, hurling themselves through the empty space of the docking bay as they made for the doors.

One of the doors opened, and the Russians rained down hell from above.

Dane held his breath. Were the darts going to work?

The first one bounced off an Augmented helmet, but the next took one in the shoulder, and the Augmented dropped their weapon.

“Guns work! The guns work!” one of the Russians screamed. The others all cheered as they opened fire, bringing down a rain of needles on the enemy.

The other team landed but met no resistance at their door. Dane beckoned for them to come with him and his three.

They entered the airlock, and when it wouldn’t open, they cut through it.

Augmented waited on the other side, but they did not anticipate the entire door being heaved down the hall at them. Those who didn’t dodge caught the limbs of those who did, and suddenly, half the hall was cleared out.

Pushing wasn’t a guaranteed way to take out an enemy, so Dane ordered the Russians to stick each Augmented they passed. They did, and as soon as the needles injected them with their cure, the Augmented felt it.

Most of them curled up, clutching at their chest or lost consciousness as the cure reached their brain and sent them into convulsions.

Dane wondered what they would be like when they woke up. For now, it was enough to know they’d be out of the action for at least long enough for them to reach the bridge.

“This way!” Dane shouted. The layout of these ships wasn’t comfortable and probably never would be, yet it was familiar enough that he could tell which way they needed to go to reach the bridge.

They made it through two hallways before they were caught in a massive ambush.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“Hit ’em with everything we got!” Haley ordered her crew. She knew it was a fruitless gesture. When the iron sphere had passed through the battle, it had taken a lot of missile strikes to the surface. Those had done serious damage to the missile launchers and emplacements they had on the surface. When it had taken out a warship with its bulk, that had pretty much scoured away anything left.

Almost anything. A single missile launcher remained with a single missile.

“Missiles…ahem, missile away, Czarina.”

Haley didn’t have hope for the missile to actually work, but she still felt her heart go out with it, traveling toward the enemy. Her last chance to keep bloodshed off this iron sphere.

The Augmented shot the missile from the air, and Haley’s breath caught in her throat.

“Czarina?”

“Full speed ahead,” Haley ordered. If they couldn’t destroy the warship with missiles, they could destroy it with their bulk.

The warship launched a barrage of missiles—their systems counted ten—before they slammed into the iron sphere.

Haley and her two remaining crew braced themselves as the missiles shook and rattled the iron sphere. Here on the Cosmos, protected by some inertial dampeners between the iron sphere and this ship, they felt it like a low rumble, though Haley heard things cracking and tearing free from where they had been kept on the Cosmos.

A few cameras still remained on the hull of the iron sphere. They had put up hundreds and encased them in a diamond-like, carbon-based material that had managed to protect only the last few cameras from all the missiles.

It was enough to see when the warship and the people inside realized there would be no more missiles coming from the iron sphere. It was enough to see them adjust their course and try to intercept the iron sphere.

It would have been impossible had their momentum not been what it was. Unfortunately, Haley was not the kind of person who could drive past her boyfriend and the last Defenders without a thought. She had slowed down and cut their momentum in hopes of reversing it.

Except that meant the Augmented warship didn’t have to do much to catch the iron sphere.

The warship opened a cargo door, and two shuttles emerged and headed for the back of the iron sphere, where they would have their choice of places to land. If they didn’t decide to simply bomb the Cosmos and turn this entire experiment into a failed one.

But no bombs came, though even one direct hit to the Cosmos would end its century-plus tenure. So Haley looked at her crew, then grabbed a dart gun.

“They’re going to come directly for the bridge,” she warned.

“Do we wait for them here, Czarina?”

“We need to make sure we don’t crash into anything, so yeah. I guess we do.”

“Very good. I always thought the bridge of Cosmos would be good place to die. It is ship of legend, the first colony ship to leave Earth. I once dreamed of destroying it for your American impertinence.”

“And now?”

“Now we will die together and with pride.”

Haley nodded and checked their course. She supposed they would.

“This we should have seen coming!” Vlad shouted. Dane had not realized he had been the man with the claw.

“Shut up and shoot!” Dane pushed off a wall and floated across space, shooting darts. It shouldn’t have worked. They had no reason to think it would have worked, but somehow the Augmented took cover from Dane’s darts.

He reached a hallway intersection and took cover, then fired more darts so Vlad and the other Russians could advance.

One of them screamed as he went down, shot in the chest, but the others made it to the same intersection as Dane.

“Why are they so afraid of the darts?” Vlad asked. “They do not kill them.”

It was true. They had checked the bodies of those they’d hit with darts, and all but one still had a pulse.

“It’s like they would rather die,” one of the Russians theorized.

“That’s got to be it.” This was their worst fear. The Augmented that Dane had talked to all touted their connectedness, how they worked together and served the collective good. Being separated from that would represent something awful to them. Something painful, even. Either they feared being isolated and alone in their heads after so much time together in each other’s, or the programming in the implant made them feel this way.

“But it makes no sense,” Vlad protested. “If we kill them, they are disconnected forever. Their life is over. But if we disconnect them, they can be reimplanted if they beat us.”

“Logically, that makes sense, but common sense doesn’t override basic fear,” Dane remarked.

A door opened at the end of the hall, and more Augmented came out firing. Dane, Vlad, and the other four Russians fired back. When their volley of darts launched, the Augmented tucked back through the door.

“Go, go!” Vlad shouted. He followed his own orders and leaped forward with two of the Russians. One of them took a bullet to the skull and spun backward. He didn’t fall to the ground because of the microgravity, so instead, he merely kept spinning.

The other two Russians with Dane did not cry over the loss of their friend. Instead, they pushed forward, using his sacrifice to their benefit. Dane followed, checking behind them, but no one was back there.

Someone or something compelled the Augmented to all come through the door and fire on the approaching attackers. They followed orders, but they were terrified. They took out no more of Dane’s force, even though they outnumbered them. Cowering was not a good strategy, and in a moment, they’d all been pricked with darts.

“Get through that door!” Dane shouted at Vlad, but they were too late.

The door slammed shut.

“There is bridge on other side?” Vlad asked.

“That’s right. And now it’s going to be undefended.”

“Then we cut through and claim victory!” Vlad announced.

Not one to give orders and fail to follow them himself, Vlad set upon the door with his cutting arm. Another of the Russians had a torch, and he went to work on the hinges.

“How long?” Dane asked.

“Not long,” Vlad replied.

“That might be too long!” Dane called as more Augmented appeared at the end of the hall. They were armed, and they fired at Dane and the Russians. One of the Russians went down choking on his own blood. They couldn’t lose any more. Not if they wanted to control the bridge. Still, they fought on, trying to keep the Augmented at the end of the hall with only two guns firing.

“Vlad, I need you to cut faster.”

“You are bossier than Czarina! Words I never thought I would say in my life.”

“I learned it from her.” Dane shot at an Augmented’s foot sticking out from cover and made contact. They only had to break through the door, and they would have control of this warship. The Augmented firing at them weren’t even soldiers. They were engineers or mechanics, people who didn’t have the body language of soldiers. The Augmented were using all they had left. Most of their soldiers had to be down on Varuna. Which meant if they could only get through the door…

The doors opened.

“Get through!” Dane shouted and turned to find John Harper standing there with an assault-style rifle trained on his forehead. He was not alone on the bridge of the warship. Fifteen heavily armored and even more heavily armed soldiers flanked him.

“Drop ’em!” John Harper ordered.

Between the two forces, they were outnumbered ten to one. Two of his people weren’t even holding guns.

“Do as he says.” The words tasted like bile as Dane spoke them.

“That’s right.” Harper grinned, and one of the soldiers came forward to take their weapons.

“Thanks for the delivery. I was worried we were gonna have to spend months looking for you cowards. But you came and turned yourselves in. I appreciate that,” Harper gloated.

Dane only clenched his jaw. They had been on the cusp of victory, or so he thought. Yet it had only been another Augmented trap. Another example of how little they cared about human lives.

He’d guessed wrong, and now he had been captured.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Dane still had a dart palmed in his hand. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do much with it, but maybe he could stab it in Harper’s veiny neck. Even at that moment, he knew such a dream was a pathetic version of the victory they had foolishly envisioned.

Vlad and the other Russians had no intention of waiting around for the right moment, though.

Vlad leaped at the Augmented with the huge cutting claw. Before he could slice the face of his intended target, three Augmented grabbed him from behind and slammed him into the ground, their magnetic boots a necessity in the lack of tangible gravity.

The Russian with the torch reached for his weapon and was shot dead.

The one with the gun tried to wrestle free and earned an injection in the neck.

“You—” Vlad started, then he too was injected with nanites. Dane was alone on this ship with nothing but the disembodied mind of the Augmented enemy with him.

“Cuff him.”

“No!” Dane struggled, but four soldiers laid hands on him, and they were all magnetically connected to the ground while Dane was not. They used their leverage to wrench his arms behind his back and cuff him with a plastic tie. For a brief moment, Dane thought he might get to keep the dart in his hand hidden, but then one of them squeezed his wrist, and his fingers released it. The dart floated up. A soldier grabbed it, then tossed it to Harper. It slowly floated across the bridge, out of Dane’s reach, and over to Harper.

“This is it, huh?” Harper plucked the dart from the air. “Your people figured out a way to undo humanity’s greatest accomplishment, then you loaded it up in…what is this, a tranquilizer dart?”

“Don’t act so tough. Your soldiers were pissing themselves.” Dane sneered. Little did Harper realize he had another dart up his sleeve.

“And still, with your defeat assured, you have such gall. We don’t raise ‘em like we used to, I guess. How’s it feel to be a dinosaur?”

“A dinosaur who almost took you out,” Dane retorted. He looked about the same age as Harper, thanks to health rejuvenation treatments, but Harper was referring to the fact that Dane had been born more than a hundred years ago.

“Not really,” Harper shot back. “Glad you thought so, though. We’ve been watching your progress up here.”

Harper gestured at the screen, and Dane suddenly saw himself through the eyes of one of the soldiers who had guns pointed at him. Then another, and another.

“We watched your progress throughout the ship via the link we all share. I’ll admit, there was a second there where my people got skittish, but we figured if we could spook you up the hallway, you’d try to get in here and walk right into our trap. Don’t blame yourself, though, Grandpa. It’s hard for one mind to outthink so many.”

“You may think you’ve won—”

“Oh, come on. There’s no time for bluffs and all that. Maybe you haven’t kept in touch, but we most definitely have. Here’s our sister ship. The one you landed on first.”

The screen cut to video of Russians with hands behind their heads, getting injected one by one.

Then to a view of the hallways of Homebase, down below. People screamed and ran as the Augmented advanced through the halls, past barricades, and over downed drones. Another view of Homebase, this one of people being injected as their loved ones watched.

Then to another ship. No one was being injected on this one. They must have fought to the last man and given up their lives in the process.

Then to the hallways of the Cosmos as a team of soldiers tried to hunt down Haley.

Dane tried not to let his breath catch at the image. The last thing he needed now was for Harper to twist his feelings for Haley against him.

The image cut again, this time to a shaky view of someone holding a gun. The screen shook and flashed, and the Augmented’s weapon floated up as their vision faded.

“Get me another view!” Harper snarled, obviously surprised by the development.

“Working on it, sir.”

The video cut to a long shot of a hallway. Dane realized he was watching Russians get onto the bridge and seal the door behind them, locking the Augmented out.

“I guess it wasn’t such a bad plan after all,” Dane drawled.

Harper’s face clouded with rage, and he stomped over to a console. He punched in a set of manual commands.

“Switch the view to the whole damn ship,” Harper snarled.

“Yes, sir,” the technician confirmed, and the shaky video shot with people’s eyeballs was replaced with a calm feed from a camera mounted on the outside of a warship, pointing at another.

Dane watched, waiting for a shuttle to launch or the ship to power down. He was not expecting to see the entire warship explode.

“But…but your people were still on that ship!”

“They stopped being my people when they let their navigation system get damaged,” Harper snarled. “So, what’s it going to be? Order a surrender, or do this the hard way?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The Augmented were a single hallway away. Only that separated them from Carlos Alvarez, his wife, and their daughter and baby.

“It’s going to be okay, babies. It won’t hurt, and we’ll still be together,” Ginger was saying, trying to reassure her kids with a type of dark truth.

Carlos couldn’t stomach the idea of his children being Augmented. His entire life, he had valued the power of the human mind. Now the Augmented were going to steal it away from his daughters before they were even old enough to even flex that most human of skills themselves? It was unconscionable. Unthinkable. Los bastardos no pueden.

“Carlos, what are you doing?” Ginger asked when Carlos stood from behind the bed.

“I cannot let them take you. I have to help.”

“You’re not a soldier.”

“I know. Yo soy un doctor,” Carlos replied.

Then, before he could get cold feet, he ran from their room.

“We got a runner!” an Augmented shouted, and Carlos heard shots fired. He skidded around the corner of a hallway before any of them hit. He didn’t keep running but waited for the soldiers. He wanted to hear if they were coming. He would save his family, but not by using them as bait.

It worked. The Augmented stomped down the hall, past where Ginger and their two girls were hiding. Directly for Carlos.

The doctor did not waste any time. He raced down the hall, putting as much space between him and his pursuers as possible now that he knew they were pursuing him. He reached a stairway and hesitated only long enough to make sure the Augmented were following him.

Then he clambered down the stairs and made for his lab.

His mind swirled with contradictions. He needed to lure the Augmented away, yet he couldn’t let them find him. He had to protect his family, but letting them be implanted would be the safest thing for them right now. He had to save the people he loved, and he could only do that by helping the entire colony.

The one pure thought that cut through all the noise was what he had done in his lab. There was no answer to this invasion except one. The one Carlos was working on in his lab. It wasn’t perfect, nor was it ready for people, but was there any other choice?

Carlos’ conscious mind said there might be. There could be some other solution to this, but the career scientist wouldn’t sit around and wait for divine intervention. Without thinking, Carlos began to prepare two syringes.

He needed a clean sample of the Augmented nanites to start if he was going to spread his vaccine’s signal. It worked by sending a transmission that changed the code of already-formed implants. Carlos had to get the dosage right. Too little, and it wouldn’t work. Too much, and he’d go into convulsions and not be able to administer the other dose.

He checked his data and thought he’d found the right amount. Quickly, he plunged the syringe into the meat of his thigh and injected himself with what the enemy was trying to shoot into the bodies of all his allies.

Now, he simply had to wait a minute for the construction of the implant to commence. Then he’d inject himself with the cure, and if the data worked the same way it had in the rats, it would spread throughout the entire population.

“This will work. It has to work.” Carlos checked the code that would tell the nanites what to do once more. It looked right. With one last glance at his rats, he stuck the needle into his other leg and injected the nanites into himself.

It was only after he had administered the cure that he realized all the rats were dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Dane felt sick to his stomach. He had known the Augmented didn’t value the lives of individuals, but to kill an entire crew like that? They could have shot the ship and damaged it, or locked them out of the controls, or something.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Dane spluttered.

“We are here to ensure victory. We knew when we came that lives would be lost thanks to you. Their blood is on your hands, George Dane. You could have ordered a surrender before any of this started. You could have made a deal that let our two worlds live in peace.”

“That’s a lie. You were going to inject us all with the nanites.”

“Do you think the savages of Earth complained this much when the wealthy countries showed up with penicillin? Do you think they whined as much as you did when other countries came in and built their roads? I swear, we offer you the next step in evolution, and you act like we’re holding a gun to your damn head.”

Dane clenched his jaw. There was literally a gun pointed at his head.

Harper glanced at the weapon and smirked. “Oh, well, how about that?”

He turned his back on Dane and returned his attention to the screen. Dane knew he could see anything on the screen via his own implant. Staring at it was for Dane’s benefit.

“To think of what could have been. All your people lined up, sharing memories with each other as they waited for others to join the world of the Augmented.”

Harper nodded, and the screen cut to show video of the interior of Homebase. It was the view of someone holding a gun. Colonists broke cover and tried to run from one room to another, and the person holding the gun shot them down.

They were non-lethal rounds, at least in this soldier’s gun, because the people shot did not bleed but collapsed, writhing in pain. The Augmented approached, then maintained a perimeter as a different Augmented injected the three people with the nanites.

“We already control enough of this system to make the outcome of this battle a foregone conclusion. We control space up here and now the surface below. I guess the only unknown was your girlfriend’s battle station.”

Dane snarled, trying not to show that Harper had guessed right.

“Oh, we got that little piece of intel as soon as we got our nanites into your Russian pals here.” Harper pointed at a passed-out Russian who’d been injected with nanites. “They’re unconscious, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have access to their brains. It’s tough, digging for scrap in a mind that’s not trained for it, but we’re willing to go the extra mile to win this thing as quickly as we can. We didn’t have to look far in his memory, though. You and Miss Lopez weren’t exactly doing a great job hiding your feelings, huh?”

The video switched to inside the Cosmos. Dane watched in horror as a door he had walked through a hundred times was bashed in, and the man on the other side was filled with holes.

“That wasn’t her, thank goodness. Do you want me to tell them to slow down? To keep an eye out for where she might be?”

Dane had actually seen them flee through the far door, but apparently, Harper hadn’t. Did that mean they would be safe? That the Augmented had not noticed even though Dane had? Would some other Augmented see the blip of motion and know what it meant?

Not that there were a ton of places to hide on that ship.

Harper let the video roll as the Augmented advanced on Haley’s position.

“Does it hurt knowing it didn’t have to be like this? All these lost lives are on you. You went from a hero to a butcher of your own people.”

“That’s not what’s happening here!” Dane snarled.

“Oh, so he does still have a pulse! I was half-guessing you were one of those meditation gurus. The kind of fella who believes in inner peace and all that. Though if that were the case, you would have done the smart thing.”

On screen, the Augmented blasted another door open. It led to the room of hibernation pods, which was tall and cavernous, a great place to hide, except the Augmented had seen Haley try to slip behind one of the tanks. He kicked off, floating up toward her.

“How do we do this, I wonder? Do you want to see your girlfriend get implanted? That’s kind of what I want to do because you are a pain in my ass, and I’d like to see you squirm, but at the same time, it might not be best. Better not to have too much dissonance when you get your implant. So let’s do it like this. You let yourself get implanted, and we don’t kill her. You resist, and we kill her dead.”

“Her being implanted isn’t any kind of life!”

“You say that now, but after you have it in you, you’ll see how wrong you are. You’ll be able to visit her any time you want, mind-to-mind. If we kill her, though, that’s not an option. Obviously.”

“You’re sick. This is all sick.”

“Name-calling. That’s the best you can do? I guess I should have expected as much… Well, let’s get this over with.”

A guard came over, arrogant in his body language, thanks to disarming Dane earlier.

He didn’t know Dane had a dart up his sleeve containing the cure.

Not that he knew what to do with it.

He had two options. He could either try to use it on the guard, take his gun, and hope to overpower everyone else on the bridge, which was a long shot, or use it on himself. That would protect him from becoming Augmented, but for how long? They would know he wasn’t on their network or whatever, wouldn’t they?

Dane decided it wasn’t going to work. He would go out of this the way he’d come into it. Fighting. He’d inject the guard if he could, take his gun, and unleash as much hell on the bridge as possible before they brought him down.

The guard was four steps away.

Then only three.

Then two.

One.

The guard stopped. He cocked his head sideways like he was listening to something far away.

Dane waited for Harper to yell at him, but Harper was doing the same thing, listening for a sound that wasn’t there. Dane glanced around and realized all the Augmented were doing that. Was it some sort of update? Had something happened? Were they incorporating too many people too quickly?

Then every Augmented on the bridge went limp, shaking uncontrollably as their magnetic boots held their feet to the floor.

CHAPTER FORTY

Dane had no idea how long this malfunction would last, and he wasn’t waiting around to find out. He kicked off the ground, floating up toward the ceiling. He rotated his body in midair so his feet hit the ceiling and he could launch himself back toward one of the twitching guards. Before he crashed into him, Dane rotated his body so his back crashed into the Augmented rather than his front. Dane grabbed the blade on the soldier’s belt and deftly yanked it off, spun it in midair, caught it, and used it to sever the plastic ties around his wrists.

With his hands free, Dane ripped the gun from a soldier and pointed it at Harper’s face. He was still floating up, moving closer to the ceiling bit by bit. Dane kept the gun pointed at Harper’s face, but he didn’t regain consciousness. Harper and everyone else continued to twitch, their boots rooted to whatever magnetic surface they were connected to. Dane activated his magnetic boots and planted his feet on the ceiling, gun still trained on Harper.

But Harper didn’t move. He didn’t reach for a gun or order his crew to do anything. None of the Augmented did a thing except twitch. Dane kept his gun on Harper, but he glanced at the screen. It showed the bridge of another warship, though the view kind of drifted. The Augmented whose eyes he was looking through did not seem to be in control any more than the person on this ship was. Dane glimpsed a Russian push himself up and look around with a dumbstruck expression. Then he grabbed a gun.

Dane tried the radio on his belt, but he was too far away to be able to speak with anyone except the people on the warship with him.

He looked at Vlad, but he was suffering from the same seizures as everyone else.

Because he had been Augmented!

This had to be Carlos’ vaccine at work. The brilliant doctor must have finally got it working in people and managed to inject an Augmented. Did that mean every Augmented in this solar system had been taken out?

Dane looked back at the viewscreen that showed the bridge of the other ship. He pushed himself down to the controls, but before he could figure out what to do, the video feed deteriorated and blacked out. That meant the Augmented whose eyes he had been looking through was no longer an Augmented!

Were they safe? Was the Augmented threat over? Dane wanted to celebrate, to dance for joy, but he was stuck on the bridge of an enemy warship with no way to communicate and no way to be sure the same thing had happened to the Augmented on Haley’s iron sphere.

He pushed off the ceiling and down to the floor. He needed to restrain everyone on the bridge. If they regained consciousness and were still Augmented, or they still believed in the Augmented vision, they would attack. First, though, he had to make sure this had happened all over.

He reached the console and tried to call someone on the surface but was locked out.

“Enter biometrics,” the screen prompted.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Dane pulled Harper over and touched his hand to a panel.

The screen displayed a list of options.

Dane selected “communication” followed by the option for “all.”

He cleared his throat.

“This is Governor George Dane. I have taken control of an enemy warship. It appears the Augmented are malfunctioning. If you can hear me, please report in.”

“This Yuri,” a Russian voice croaked over the comms a moment later. “They tried to inject me, but I fought them off. I am on other warship.”

“Can you take control until I get you some backup?”

“Da. I will tie Augmented together with own clothes. The ship is mine.”

Lev called in next. “Dane? This is Lev. Can you hear me? Every radio on every belt just talked with your voice.”

Dane realized he could choose a reply option that did not include everyone and selected the icon that singled out Lev.

“This is Dane, Lev. Are you all safe down there?”

“We have suffered losses, and they injected many of us, but they’ve all stopped. The Augmented and the injected. We are safe. For now.”

“Good. Round them up and lock them away. We can’t risk them coming back. You don’t need to worry about any threats coming from space. And Lev…” Dane added, thinking about what might have transpired. “See if you can find Dr. Alvarez. I’m worried he injected himself or something like that.”

“I’m on it!” Bell shouted over the radio.

Then Dane tried to call Haley. There wasn’t an option for simply dialing the iron sphere, so he grew increasingly frantic as he looked through the options, trying to find one that would direct him to some way to contact her. He found the option for the warship that had attacked her, then the subroutine for the shuttle, and finally, the personal comms of the soldiers who had boarded the iron sphere.

It was wild to think the Augmented had this level of sophistication in the technology integrated into their heads. He knew Harper didn’t have to dig through submenus when he wanted to contact someone. He merely thought of them, and whatever he was saying or thinking appeared in their brain. It was yet another frightening reminder of these people’s power. Fortunately, such power came with a cost.

“Pick up, pick up.” Dane wondered if Haley could hear the radio blaring from the Augmented’s belt.

“Dane?” Her voice was scratchy with interference, and she sounded breathless, but she was alive!

“Haley! Are you all right?”

“Yes, somehow. The Augmented almost had us, but then they just…stopped. Do you think Alvarez finally figured it out?”

Dane grinned. Of course Haley would have figured that out more quickly than him!

“That’s what I’m assuming, but I haven’t had contact with him yet. I’m all alone on their flagship. They injected or killed all the rest.”

“Oh, God.” Haley groaned.

“Vlad’s not dead, but he was injected. We’ll have to see what happens to him and any others who were taken like that.”

“Sure, right.” She struggled to control the emotion in her voice. Sometimes, being a battle-hardened veteran made him feel more callous than he would like.

“Haley, I want you to secure all the Augmented, all right?”

“Yes. Yes, we can do that. We thought we’d put them in the cryotubes for now. Do you think they’ll be dangerous when they wake up?”

“I think it’s more than possible, so we need to be ready for it. I’m going to do the same here but without the cryotubes. When you’ve got them secured, bring the iron sphere into orbit around Varuna. Do you think you can do that? It’s the closest thing we have to a defensive platform now.”

“I’ll make it happen. And Dane?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

He had no idea what the Augmented would be like when they woke up, but he supposed he needed to be sure they wouldn’t attack him. So even though he desperately wanted to stay on the radio and make sure everyone was all right, he had to assume they would be for a few minutes.

He got to work hauling all the Augmented to a room, binding their hands with their own zip-ties, and locking them in. It wasn’t hard because of the lack of gravity. He didn’t have to drag them so much as float them around. He got everyone from the bridge locked up, then did a quick pass back to where the shuttle and his Defender had landed. He didn’t find anyone conscious here, though it was hard to tell how many had lost consciousness thanks to the update and how many had been hit by his team’s darts. He wondered if the effects would be different.

He still put everyone in rooms, clearing the halls and locking the doors.

For the Russians who had been implanted, he dragged them to the bridge and put them in chairs, zip-tying one of their ankles to a chair to make sure they could not surprise him in case the nanites did not work the way he was hoping they did.

Feeling reasonably secure, Dane returned to the radio and tried to hail the other ships. Yuri had secured his ship, and a team of three Russians and one of Dane’s pilots had taken over one of the damaged warships. No one could hail anyone on the other damaged warship, which meant everyone, including Dane’s team of Russians, must have been injected. They were spread thin, but Dane had the three Russians and the pilot split up to take over that ship. The last thing they needed was an ornery Augmented waking up and attacking them when they weren’t ready for it.

Haley checked in to tell Dane she had secured the iron sphere and sent her remaining crewmen out to the warship via shuttle, where he had taken control. They were currently lashing it to the front of the sphere to aid in navigation. Turned out there were plenty of places to connect things now that most of the missile launchers had been stripped away.

With everyone working and the situation seemingly under control, Dane got the warship in a somewhat stable orbit above Varuna and settled in to watch his forces take control of all the enemy ships. There weren’t many of them. Only a handful of pilots and twenty of the Russians had survived, but it was enough to take control of all five remaining warships. Dane ordered the Augmented kept under heavy guard, at least until they woke up. Then they could figure out what to do with them.

But with the immediacy of the Augmented threat diminished and a pilot and three Russians to replace him on the flagship, Dane grabbed a shuttle and flew to get Haley.

He found her in the docking bay, floating from one side of the room to the other. As graceful as ever, even in this massive iron ball of her own creation.

He barely finished clamping the shuttle down to the magnetic strips before he was out of the driver’s seat and pushing across the cargo bay to embrace her.

They met in zero gravity, both having pushed into the other, so they met in weightlessness. They both wrapped their arms around the other and embraced while the cargo bay swirled all around them.

“I was worried about you,” Haley told him.

“You were worried about me?” Dane laughed.

“You didn’t have an awesome iron battle sphere like I did. There was no telling what could have happened to you.”

Dane chuckled. “I guess that’s true.”

“I can’t wait for all this to be over,” Haley muttered.

“That’s still a long way out. This was only one force. They will send more if we can’t stop them.”

Haley sighed. “I don’t want to think about any of that.”

“We don’t have to. Not right now.”

Haley sank her head into the crook between Dane’s shoulder and neck. Dane held her and simply breathed for a minute, wishing they were sharing the same air instead of being in their suits.

As precious as the moment was, it had to come to an end. Things were going all right, but the Augmented would wake up, and when they did, Dane needed to be ready. Plus, he needed to assess the damage to Homebase down below. If there was structural damage—and there most assuredly was—Dane would need to make decisions on what needed prioritizing. The road to rebuilding would be a long one, and they had to get started.

“I want to stay here floating with you forever, but we need to get back to work,” Dane finally managed.

“I know. Plus, my suit stinks. Uh…how do we get out of here? We’re floating with nothing to push off from.”

“We have each other,” Dane pointed out.

Haley grinned. “I guess we do.”

She shoved his chest and sent him floating backward toward a wall. She flew in the opposite direction, propelled backward by the same shove that had sent him drifting away.

But their separation was only temporary. They each touched down on the opposite side of the cargo bay, activated their magnetic boots, and stomped around their respective ceilings and floors until they came to a shuttle in the middle. They boarded and headed down for the surface.

The reentry through the atmosphere went smoothly, and in minutes, they were looking at the surface of Varuna.

Dane’s first thought was it didn’t look that bad. Compared to what the Earth had looked like after the war, the watery oceans of Varuna looked the same as ever. Their floating platform was missing, and there were dark blotches in the water here and there, but the ocean hid so much.

Not even when they splashed down could they see the true extent of the damage. The water looked as blue as ever. The sky as gorgeous.

They couldn’t explore on their own. Not in this shuttle, as it was not made for going underwater. So they called for help.

Dane didn’t know what he would find underwater, but he tried to appreciate this part of their world while they waited to find what was gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“Going down?” Athanas asked when she opened the top of the submarine. She tried to smile, but she was tired, and it didn’t reach her eyes.

“You all right?” Haley asked.

“You haven’t been underwater yet, I take it,” Athanas remarked.

Haley had no reply for that, so she said nothing. Dane led her into the sub, and they strapped themselves in. Athanas took them under, and they immediately saw how bad it had gotten.

In space, the aftermath of a battle became virtually invisible almost instantly. A ship exploded, and its wreckage kept moving with the force of the explosion in whatever direction it had been traveling. The battlefields almost always cleared themselves because every ship traveled in a different direction or at various speeds. The wreckage that did stay behind was not illuminated in any way. Even when pieces were left, like the wreckage of the Augmented warships that Harper had intentionally destroyed, it was easy to look past. It appeared to be swallowed up by the vast blackness of space.

Down here, there were no such illusions.

The seafloor was littered with the wreckage of more shuttles than Dane could count. Some of them were the kind designed to land on the surface, but many were obviously amphibious. Some of them were damaged, while others seemed to have simply run out of steam and come to rest on the bottom of the seafloor. That only meant their pilots were no longer conscious. What would happen when they woke up?

“Has Lev given orders about any of the subs?”

“He ordered them all tagged, and if they looked functional, we wrapped cables around their propellers. That way, if the Augmented fire them up, they’ll damage themselves. It’s not a great solution, but—”

“It’ll work for now. That’s fine. Thank you.”

“I think it might work longer term, too,” Athanas suggested.

“Longer term? We don’t know what’s going to happen when they wake up.”

Athanas glanced at him. She looked concerned. “You haven’t talked to anyone about what happened to Alvarez?”

“Not yet, no. It was his nanite update, though, right? He’s our hero!”

“More like a martyr,” Athanas commented after a moment.

“He’s all right?” Haley asked.

“For now…yes. But all the rats from his experiment died.”

“Oh, God,” Dane blurted.

They fell silent for the rest of the ride back to Homebase.

The damage was substantial. The subs had crashed all over the place, so beds of zingers and kelp gardens had been destroyed. Some of the subs were leaking all manner of fluids into the pristine oceans of Varuna, as well. They had the beginnings of their first environmental catastrophe, something Dane would have liked to avoid while he was serving as governor.

There were no fish in the area currently, none of the squid-like analogs or any of the other creatures Dane had come to recognize as part of the community of organisms that called this place home. He wondered if the noise had frightened them all away, or if it was the chemicals leaking from the crashed ships, or something else. The soldier in him said it was good since it reduced the number of dangerous factors in the area. The organisms of this world had proven themselves to be serious threats. It was best that they were gone.

Yet the person who had come to love this home worried that the aquatic creatures would not come back. He feared the environment here would collapse, and his people would have to move or risk starvation. Or worse. Nature abhorred a vacuum. The last time there had been one here, she had sent tens of thousands of sea stars to rectify the situation.

However, there was good news, too. Homebase itself appeared largely undamaged. One of the windows was cracked but still holding the water back. A Russian dome had been punctured, but they had ordered those evacuated in case something like that happened, so it was an acceptable loss. Homebase itself had held up admirably. Dane was proud to call it home, even though he knew Lev would be bragging about his Russian compatriots’ engineering for months.

They surfaced in the moon pool room. Here, it was abundantly clear a firefight had taken place. There were bodies, blood, pockmarks, and scorch marks on the walls and ceiling.

“We held them here as long as we could,” Athanas told him.

“Long enough.” Dane knew they might feel like empty words, but they were true.

They climbed from the sub, and Thorson met them with a scanner.

“Are these still necessary?” Dane asked.

“From our perspective, you might be a spy,” Thorson drawled, though he was smiling as he scanned Dane, Haley, and Athanas. “But you’re not. Welcome back, Governor.”

“How are things?”

“They have been better, but they could be worse. Alvarez’s cure worked.”

“We owe him our lives.”

“You might regret those words. He is not doing well.”

“I heard his rats died?”

Thorson nodded and gestured for Dane to follow. “His vaccine only worked by taking over the implant that was already in his brain. He had to inject himself before he could administer the vaccine so it could spread. We have no idea if he’s going to be all right. Some of the Augmented have already died, though many of those could be from wounds.”

“Take me to him.”

They hurried through the halls of Homebase. Dane surveyed the damages as they went. Some doors had been smashed down, and there were bullet holes here and there, but not as many as Dane would have thought. The Augmented had been serious about their landing party coming to implant the people of Varuna with their nanites. So instead of dead to mourn, they had implanted people to tend to.

They were easy to pick out. They’d be lying in a hall with no visible wounds, watched over by a concerned friend. It was odd, this new kind of battle. Dane had spent much of his military career in spaceships, blasting them to pieces. He didn’t see blood all that often, yet he had always known it was there. Every time a ship exploded, Dane knew he had taken a life. He rarely saw the bodies, though at times, he did come across human remains in the iciness of space. Still, he was all too aware of their deaths.

That was different in this battle. There were dead but comparatively fewer. Far less than there had been on Alpha Central, certainly. It was the same for the Augmented. Yes, they had blasted each other’s ships from the sky, and every one of those represented at least one death. Far more for the warships. Yet the hand-to-hand fighting had been relatively bloodless.

Would that be a hallmark of battles to come between their people? Would they both see it was better to fight over minds than to destroy bodies? Dane already had trouble thinking about losing Richmond and MacTaggart. He had been shocked to hear Bell’s voice over the comms but had yet to be surprised by the survival of those other two, whom he had had far more in common with.

Could he hope the future war would not have to kill so many people?

And was that better?

Would knowing death was a lesser part of war make people more or less likely to start one? Would a battle over brains fought with nanites make the Augmented more or less likely to attack?

Those were big questions, and they were only made possible by Carlos Alvarez.

Dane came to him in the medical wing. He was being attended by his wife, Ginger, who was clutching their youngest, still-tiny daughter to her breast while she held her older daughter’s hand. The kids did not look terribly upset, and why should they? Their dad was conscious and talking to them. Ginger, on the other hand, was a wreck. She was normally skilled at hiding her emotions. At letting other people emote and feel what they needed to in her presence so she could keep the station running.

Now, though, her kids were controlling their emotions far better than she was.

“It’s going to be okay,” Carlos told her as Dane entered.

“Dr. Alvarez.” Dane didn’t want to intrude on this familial moment any more than he already had, but he also needed to talk to the doctor. To find out how dire the situation might be.

“Ah, Governor. It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Carlos. I hear your breakthrough is to thank for our last-minute victory?”

“Ah, not so big a deal. Maybe name a volcano after me when I’m gone?” He meant it as a joke, but it was too much for Ginger. She snorted back tears and began to cry in earnest.

“Come on, kids.” She carried her baby and pulled her daughter from the room. “The governor needs to talk to Papi.”

“Your breakthrough saved us all. It was almost over, then suddenly the Augmented just…stopped.”

Carlos nodded and allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “It is because the chips are constantly communicating with each other. We thought it was a big broadcast signal, and that is part of it, but the chips are in constant contact. After I had the vaccine in me, it spread to the nearest people. Then it was taken up into their server and replicated from there. It worked! I out-programmed a machine!” He chuckled, which turned into a ragged cough.

“Well, we thank you, but how are you now?”

“Not good. I had to inject myself with the Augmented implant so my vaccine could spread through it. Unfortunately, I don’t know how it works. Only that it works.”

“Lev told me the rats you experimented on are all dead.”

Carlos nodded. “I don’t know if it’s because the implant broke down or if it caused some sort of reset. I’m sure I can solve it. Well, I’m sure I could have.” Carlos smiled at his gallows humor, but Dane only grimaced.

“It’s a physiological issue, so I know I can figure it out.” Thorson had been standing in a corner of the room, quiet until now. “I simply don’t know how long it’s going to take. Long enough for me to dissect all those rats, at least, and maybe some of the dead Augmented.”

“I don’t have that much time,” Carlos pointed out.

“But what if we could give it to you?” Haley’s excitement was way overblown for the somber room.

Have some respect, Dane wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Surely Haley wouldn’t act that way for no reason, right?

“How can we do that?” Thorson asked.

“The cryotubes! We have hundreds on the Cosmos. That was where we put the Augmented who tried to attack us after they stopped. We have some down here too!”

Dane looked at Thorson, daring to hope.

“That…could work,” the Icelandic surgeon mused, a smile coming across his face like the sun striking an iceberg. “The cryotubes slow down all metabolic processes. The nanites mostly use our own biological systems to work. Putting a human in a cryotube should stop whatever decay is causing the deaths. In theory, anyway.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Carlos agreed.

Dane nodded. That was good enough for him.

“You think it can work, Dr. Thorson?” Dane asked.

“I am sure it’s better than leaving him like this while we try to figure it out. I don’t have any other ideas, so this is our best plan. There are Augmented who have already died, so there should be answers there. We have a few cryotubes down here. I’ll prep one, then we can get any of our other people who were infected in them, too. Do you want me to send Ginger back in here?”

“Si, por favor,” Carlos stated.

Thorson nodded and left.

A moment later, Ginger returned. Obviously, Thorson had not told her any of what they had realized because she was as miserable-looking as she had been a moment ago.

“Dr. Thorson said you…you wanted to see me?” The words rose into a question inadvertently.

“Si, mi amor. We have no guarantees, but we have a plan. They are going to put me in a cryotube while Thorson studies the rats and some of the fallen Augmented. He is hoping he can figure out why they are dying—”

“Then he can save your life!” Ginger nearly jumped out of her own shoes.

Carlos straightened, obviously expecting a hug or kiss. Instead, Ginger hollered for Dr. Thorson and chased after him, hugged him, and came back for her husband.

“You think it’s an okay plan, then?” Carlos asked, grinning.

“I was trying to make peace with being married to a martyr, but it wasn’t working for me,” Ginger admitted. “I would much rather watch you grow old.”

“Your research will continue without you, I assume?” Dane asked.

“My team is up to speed, yes. With Thorson’s understanding of anatomy and their work on the nanites, they will come up with something that will work.”

“I hate to break up the party, but frankly, any celebration is premature right now,” Thorson expressed. Dane wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a joke. Maybe it counted for one in cold Iceland. “I have the cryotube ready to go. The sooner we get you inside, the better. I have no idea how long the typical deterioration takes, and of course, nothing about your situation is typical.”

Carlos pushed himself up and let Ginger wrap him up in a huge hug before he followed Thorson.

“Make sure you take care of my team when I’m gone, okay? I don’t want Carlita walking around before I’m out.”

“That’s not going to happen for a long time, Daddy,” Carlos’ older daughter insisted.

“Good to know, sweetheart. And you will take care of Mommy while Daddy rests?”

“I’ll try,” she promised resolutely.

“Que bueno. Okay, mi amor, this is goodbye.”

“For now,” Ginger amended before they shared a kiss long enough for their daughter to cringe.

“We’ll see you on the other side, Dr. Alvarez.”

“Sounds good, Governor. Even if I live, you can still name a volcano after me, no?”

“We’ll try to find a good one,” Dane agreed. “Come on, Haley, let’s get up to the control room.”

Haley followed Dane up through the station to the room at the top of the volcano, where it seemed all the biggest decisions of the station were made. Dane looked out the windows encircling the room. No longer did it seem like they lived in a pristine aquarium. With the wreckage of the enemy subs all over, it looked like a wasteland. Dane had no idea how long it would take to clean all that up or if they would even bother for the next couple of months.

There was still so much to be done.

“Lev, this is Dane.”

“I read you, Dane. What’s the plan?”

“I want you to get as many people as you can up top to those warships. You can use all the shuttles we have, and I want you all to go heavily armed.”

“What exactly did you want us to do?” Lev asked.

“I want you to round up all the Augmented and get them to the Cosmos and inside cryotubes. I don’t want them all dying if they don’t need to.”

“But sir, they would have killed us!”

“No. They wouldn’t have. Or maybe they would have, I don’t know. But this wasn’t their idea to come here. It was the implant in their brain. I have no idea what they’re going to be like when they wake up. But I don’t want them all dying if we could save them. Some of them might feel about as good about being implanted as we did. And even if they liked being part of the Augmented, we’ll be able to learn from them.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I am. We also can’t risk one of them coming back instead of dying. For all we know, they might have an override code for those warships. We could be locked out before we even get started on the next stage of this war.”

“Yes, sir!” Lev replied.

Dane disconnected the line.

He and Haley got to work coordinating the effort to contain all the Augmented. They radioed teams, got people refueling shuttles, checked in on satellites, and searched for survivors in escape pods. Unfortunately, they didn’t find many of those. Most of their best fighters were gone in a flash, simply because they had tried to defend their home. It was a lot to take in.

One bright note came when a swearing, angry MacTaggart was hauled soaking wet from his escape pod in Varuna’s ocean. Dane grinned at the Scotsman’s acerbic comments. Apparently, his pod sprang a small leak on arrival, shorting the radio and gradually flooding the interior. He was soaked but fine.

One fewer loss to tally for the day.

They kept working. They watched security feeds when the security team went into the rooms where the Augmented had been locked. They helped catalog the people who were put in cryo. Hundreds, in the end. They organized burials at sea for the people who did not survive but could be recovered. Many Augmented fit that bill, and Dane saw no reason not to treat them honorably as humans who had fallen in battle.

A few hours later, when all the Augmented were in cryotubes, and their surviving and mostly functioning warships were under the control of Lev’s security team, Dane declared victory.

He didn’t quite know how they had managed it. Their carefully laid plans had all gone wrong, one way or another. They would have lost it all if not for the mind of one scientist. And yet, they had won. They had defended their home against an implacable foe again.

Best of all, Dane and everyone whose opinion he asked came to the same conclusion. They were all fairly certain the signal was transmitted to every Augmented in the star system. After all, every one they found on Varuna and on their warships above had fallen unconscious at the same time. They’d confirmed this in various ways.

Dane tried not to get too excited. That meant no one escaped with the news that the vaccine existed. Hopefully, no one on Earth had any idea there was a threat to the Augmented. None of them knew of the brilliant breakthrough Carlos had cooked up.

There were tweaks to be made, obviously. Dane would not unleash what amounted to a computer virus that would kill all ten billion people in Earth’s solar system. Yet if they could make those breakthroughs and find a way to spread it on Earth, they could take this fight to the Augmented and win their planet back!

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with Free Worlds book six, Freedom Dawns, available at Amazon.

Claim your copy today!

KEVIN’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN APRIL 11, 2023

Hi!

We’ve come a long ways together, haven’t we? I hope you enjoyed this installment of the adventure! Varuna has maintained her freedom - for now, at least. Time will tell if they manage to maintain that status or not.

Small nod to John Ringo for introducing me to the idea of melting down a nickel-iron asteroid, letting the thing cool, and turning it into one hell of a base. While my version isn’t quite the behemoth he had his hero build in ‘Citadel,’ it’s a similar concept.

Personally, I look forward to when we can actually do that sort of thing. The science is fairly simple: get the right sort of asteroid in a consistent orbit, aim a whole lot of solar mirrors at it, and you can literally let the sun do the work of warming it up. Gravity will do the rest, bringing heavier elements deeper into the core. You bust off the lighter elements, mine out the center, and you’ve got a tough nut to crack. The heavy barrier would be awesome protection for real human bases in our solar system.

OK, our tech isn’t quite there yet, but I’m hopeful!

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll already be hard at work on a new series. This one will be LitRPG, not science fiction. But you might want to give it a whirl anyway. See, this one’s about an engineer, who’s sent to a dimension where magic is real. That doesn’t make his skills less valuable, however. If anything, they prove to be extremely important.

For this upcoming series I drew a bunch of inspiration from both “The Cross-Time Engineer” series (not very PC, but solid writing) and Christopher Stasheff’s amazing Warlock series. I read those Warlock books when I was a kid, sneaking my Dad’s copies. They, with a lot of similar writing from the time, were formative in my early reading and eventual writing habits, so I’ll be thrilled to take a shot at writing something that draws small bits of inspiration from them.

All right, until next time, then. We’ve still got one more book to go, and it’s going to be a doozy. We’re bringing back a bunch of old friends to play in this one!

Thanks again for reading!

Kevin

MICHAEL’S AUTHOR NOTES

WRITTEN APRIL 17, 2023

First, thank you for not only reading this story, but these author notes in the back as well!

Useless ideas and chances to build cool space stations!

In this Author Note, I'd like to discuss the likelihood of various space station concepts becoming a reality, based on current and near-future technology.

Here are the ideas, ordered from most likely to least likely:

Solar Sails: Harnessing solar energy for propulsion and life support is a feasible concept with existing technology and makes this space station design the most likely to be realized in the near future.

I’ve seen NASA discussing solar sail options, and one of my neighbors in Henderson, NV is Robert Bigelow (Bigelow Aerospace), so I know we have some cool technology related to the ability to create space stations using inflation techniques and it is something humanity can accomplish.

(On a personal note, I had the chance to speak with Robert Bigelow at lunch one time. It was a science-fiction fan-boy moment, to be sure.)

Ice Moon Caverns: Building space stations within the caverns of ice moons is more challenging but still achievable as we continue to advance our knowledge of geothermal energy and resource extraction. Mind you, I personally HATE the cold, so if I couldn’t get something warm and be assured we wouldn’t lose heat, I’d not be sticking around inside a cold cavern for any amount of money.

Gas Giant Atmosphere: Floating space stations in the dense atmosphere of gas giants would require significant advancements in materials and buoyant structures, making this idea somewhat less likely at this time. BUT, we do have a gas giant in our neck of the woods, so, knowing humanity, someone is already trying to figure out the solution.

Magnetosphere Bubble: Creating a space station within a magnetosphere bubble is a fascinating concept, but the complexity of generating and maintaining such a bubble puts it further down the list of ideas we are going to be able to accomplish anytime soon.

For those who are wondering what a magnetosphere bubble is, it refers to a region in space where the magnetic field of an object, such as a planet or a space station, dominates the solar wind's magnetic field. This magnetic field forms a protective barrier around the object, shielding it from the charged particles and harmful radiation present in the solar wind and cosmic rays.

In the context of a space station, a magnetosphere bubble would be created by generating a powerful magnetic field around the station, providing protection from the harmful effects of space radiation. Additionally, the trapped charged particles within the magnetosphere bubble could potentially be used as a source of power generation for the space station. However, creating and maintaining a stable magnetosphere bubble around a space station would require significant advancements in magnetic field generation technology and our understanding of magnetospheres.

While I had a few more ideas about creating space stations using far-out technology (including dark matter), I think these three work for now. I just wanted us to talk a little about additional ideas on how to create space stations and (based on today’s technological abilities) their order of likelihood.

Thank you for reading our stories, and I look forward to chatting with you in the next book!

Ad Aeternitatem,

Michael Anderle

P.S.

MORE STORIES with Michael newsletter HERE: https://michael.beehiiv.com/

OTHER BOOKS BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

Free Worlds

(with Michael Anderle)

Deadly Fathoms (B00k 1)

Fatal Depths (Book 2)

Augmented Fatality (Book 3)

Entrapped Worlds (Book 4)

Savage Stars (Book 5)

Freedom Dawns (Book 6)

Realms of Power and Fury

(with Michael Anderle)

Discovering Power (Book 1)

Finding Honor (Book 2)

Field of Valor (Book 3)

Undead Reckoning (Book 4)

Undead Center (Book 5)

Undead with Honor (Book 6)

Tomb of Malevolent Evil

(with Michael Anderle)

Roll For Initiative (Book 1)

Cast of the Die (Book 2)

Natural Twenty (Book 3)

Steel Dragon Series

(with Michael Anderle)

Steel Dragon 1

Steel Dragon 2

Steel Dragon 3

Steel Dragon 4

Steel Dragon 5

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

The Dragonclaw Sword

(with Michael Anderle)

Clawing for Survival

Clawing for Escape

Clawing for Honor

Clawing for Vengeance

Clawing for Battle

Clawing for Victory

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

BOOKS BY MICHAEL ANDERLE

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