Distant Warning: Backyard Starship #18

JN Chaney

1

“AGAIN WITH THIS DAMNED COLLAR,” I muttered as Torina fussed over my uniform, brushing off bits of lint. I dug a finger into it and tugged, trying to get my neck to play nice with the stiff fabric tube now enclosing it. There was an old joke about wearing a turtleneck, that it was like being strangled by a really weak guy all day long. The Peacemaker dress uniform tunic took that weakling and gave him steroids. “You look devilishly handsome,” Torina said, stepping back. The rest of my crew was gathered around, tweaking and tugging at their own outfits. Everyone was decked out for this occasion—me in the deep blue, trimmed in gray and gold of a Peacemaker, Torina in her Second’s uniform of scarlet and gray, the others wearing the gray trimmed in black of Peacemaker auxiliaries. Even Perry and Netty-P wore uniforms—him a small, dark blue and gray cape down his back that fastened under his wings, her a similarly colored sash draped around her manipulators. Everyone looked positively resplendent—I thought, until Icky grabbed the seat of her pants and tugged at them, trying to pull them away from her butt. “I’d take a collar over these stupid pants any day. Van, I want hazard pay for this.”

“For wearing pants?”

“Yeah, it’s ’cause of them that I’m a hazard to anyone who pisses me off today.”

Gabby patted her arm. “Icky, you look very nice. And this is Van’s big day—well, his second big day, after getting married to Torina.”

Icky scowled back at her. “I know, I know. I’ll be well behaved. But I’m going to say this now, once, and then be grumpy about wearing these things for the rest of the day. Van—congratulations. Or should I call you Master Tudor now?”

“Let’s just stick with Van, okay?” I replied, wincing as the damned collar tried its best to excavate my jugular vein. Master Tudor. Huh. I thought about the day I sat in the rental car outside the farm, the rain hammering down, looking over the will that left it and all the rest of Gramps’ worldly possessions to me. If someone had told me then that someday I’d be a Master in a paramilitary Guild of spacefaring cops, with literally millions of light-years of travel behind me, I’d have—

Well, insert the appropriate response here. Probably something involving being drunk, stoned, insane, a writer of science fiction, or some combination thereof. But here I was. It had been a long road from the farm in Pony Hollow to Anvil Dark—

literally, because it was, like, eighty-nine light-years from Sol—but also figuratively. I’d been through a lot. We’d been through a lot. I’d met the woman I loved and married her, made many friends, made a helluva lot of enemies. I’d seen breathtakingly mystical wonders and soul-crushingly abyssal horrors. I’d known rapturous joy, gut-wrenching terror and devastating sadness. And through it all, I could look back and nod and say, yeah, we accomplished some important things. We changed lives. We saved lives. It had been one hell of a ride. And it was nowhere near over. I wasn’t sure how many more books there were going to be in this amazing, terrifying story, but I was sure there’d be volumes yet—

“Icky, stop scratching your butt!” Rab snapped. “Sorry, but these things keep wanting to ride right up into no man’s land

—”

“Well, there’s Paxomar, so at least one man’s land,” Torina muttered, then smirked as she straightened the medallion that hung around my neck, signifying my office as a Third Veteran Peacemaker. “—I don’t know how you pants lovers put up with these damned things!”

I grinned. There were the breathtakingly mystical wonders, and then there was Icky wearing trousers. Torina stepped back and nodded her satisfaction. “There. Now you look like a Master.”

“Technically, a Master-Adept,” Perry added, beak open in a cheery laugh. He was being helpful. Torina and I both nodded. Master-Adept was an old rank, one that Perry had resurrected from the deepest, darkest bowels of ancient Galactic Knights Uniformed organizational lore. When originally conceived by the GKU, there were three ranks of Master. There was Master-Supreme, who was the top boss of the Order. Beneath them were Master-Stalwart, who would see to the defense of the Order and maintain oversight of its holdings, finances, and so on, and Master-Adept, who would venture forth and take the Galactic Knights’ mission into the stars. With the fall of the GKU and the creation of the Guild, those distinctions had been set aside, and ever since, there had only been Masters. But the old ranks were still on the books. Groshenko had, for a time, called himself a Master-Adept and continued doing fieldwork, at least until his health began to decline. There’d only been a handful of other Masters over the centuries who’d done likewise. Most Masters, frankly, were happy to give up field work and settle into a cushy job on Anvil Dark, complete with free and luxurious quarters, office space, administrative support, expense stipends, and all the perks that come with an executive management job. I wasn’t ready for that, and wasn’t sure I ever would be. When I finally returned to Anvil Dark and told Alic, Volffin, and the other Masters I’d take the job, it was on the condition that I could remain a Master-Adept until such time as I chose to give it up and settle into a desk job. If I was going to waste away in a galactic cubicle farm, it would be later in life. Much later. I’d expected pushback but had been surprised. Apparently, none of the other Masters were keen on the alternative for Gerhardt’s old position, a Nesit named Casaril. He was a protégé of the spectacularly corrupt Master Yotov, a huge mark against him. But he’d learned politics at the feet of a master schemer and manipulator, so he still wielded considerable clout in

the Guild. In particular, he was associated with a faction within the Guild who’d done well under Yotov, and had done less well since. Casaril had taken the news of my being accepted for the position with outward good grace. He’d bowed and smiled. “Congratulations, Van. I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job,” is what he’d said. But when he’d left, Gabby sidled up to me. For a gigantic, talking tardigrade-esque alien, she was proving to be a formidable judge of character, so when she spoke, I listened. “He’s not happy about you becoming a Master at all. His face was smiling, but his eyes weren’t,” she said to me. I nodded. “Not surprised, friend, and thanks for running lookout. We’re going to keep an eye on him.”

She wiggled her short, odd fingers in distaste. “We’ll all watch him. With more than one eye.”

BEING a Master-Adept didn’t just cut me loose and let me roam the stars. True, I bore the mantle of a Master, but I wasn’t entirely beholden to the realities of the job. In some respects, I was making my life more difficult for myself by choosing this path. I still had a ton of duties, administrative and managerial, tied to the job that I had to stay on top of—and that was in addition to continuing to act as a field Peacemaker, chasing down leads and bad guys. Ironically, I'd be making paperwork—and then forced to deal with it, as an active agent in the field. Or, as Groshenko put it, “It’s like walking into your office every morning with a leaf blower, then spending the rest of the day putting right the mess you made.”

But it was the only way I could convince myself that becoming a Master was the right thing to do. Well, that, and saving my home, the farm at Pony Hollow, from predatory opportunists. But even that was only part of it. I’d seen more than a few instances of people being promoted into irrelevance to get them out of the way, or clawing their own way up the ladder into organizational oblivion. I had unfinished business out there, though. There were the resurgent Sorcerers. The ID theft conspiracy. Calamity. More. Much more. More than an entire career’s worth of bad guys and cases, if I really wanted to make a list. The dent I’d made in it all so far just wasn’t big enough. Not yet. But none of that was going to happen today. Today, I was being invested in a small and unassuming ceremony held in the Keel, the central core of Anvil Dark. It was in the Master’s Chamber, a compartment about the size of a large classroom that was all somber lighting and ceremonial portraits, tattered old banners, and myriad other gewgaws and trinkets in glass cases. The place was used for formal dinners, meetings with important visiting muckety-mucks, and things like investiture ceremonies. In short, it was fancy. When we arrived, the other Masters were already assembled, resplendent in their finery. My mother was also there, as was Valint, both of them decked out in severely traditional GKU uniforms that vaguely resembled the Beefeater guards in the Tower of London in style. Groshenko was attending too, but he wore formal civilian attire, albeit punctuated on his left breast with medals he’d earned during his Soviet spec-ops days back on Earth. Lunzy, Lucky, Jamberac, and Dugrop’che rounded out the guest list. Dugrop’che had his combat AI, Hosur’ca of the resplendent tail, with him. He and Perry locked respective blue and amber gazes and just held a mutual stare for a moment. “Hosur’ca.”

“Perry.”

After another few seconds of staring, they turned pointedly away from one another. Someday, I was going to pry out of Perry just why he and Hosur’ca had this intense, mutual dislike for one another. Whenever I asked him about it, all Perry would say is, “Oh, he knows.”

Adding my crew pushed the space from seeming a little empty to feeling comfortably full. Alic had been chosen to lead the investiture ceremony, and as soon as we arrived, he started marshaling everyone into their places. Groshenko took a moment to come to me and shake my hand. “Don’t run off, Van, when this is done. I’d like a moment or two alone with you,” he said. I nodded, but something caught my eye. I was no expert in things like military medals—I mean, the United States alone has a gazillion of them—

but one of Groshenko’s caught my eye. It stood out from the others in having a very American vibe to it. He noticed me noticing it and smiled. “It’s the Soldier’s Medal, awarded by your Department of the Army for exceptional heroism outside of combat,” he said. “Oh, wow. What did you do to earn that?”

“Nothing. It’s not mine. It’s your grandfather’s.”

I blinked in surprise. “Are you allowed to wear that?”

He made a show of looking conspicuously around, then turned back to me, his eyes twinkling. “I don’t see anyone around here complaining.” But his smile faded back into the creases of his face, and he looked somber. “Mark was awarded this for… saving many lives. Many lives. It didn’t involve firing a shot, but he was no less insanely brave for what he did.”

I just stared. “He never told me about that.”

“That’s because it never happened.”

“What?”

Groshenko smiled. “It was during one of those operations that never happened. He was awarded this medal, and rightly so, but he was not able to ever wear it or tell anyone about it—not even his grandson. Near the—

the end of his life, he gave it to me and asked me to give it to you when the time came. He left exactly when that was up to me.” Groshenko looked around again. “And this seems like a good time. He’d be so proud of you, Van. I know I am.”

“Thank you, Petyr.”

Groshenko removed the medal, then pinned it to my tunic. “There. Now, the two of you go and become Masters, yes?”

He patted my shoulder, but before he could turn away, I spoke up. “What did he do?”

Groshenko turned back. “My grandfather. What did he do to earn this medal?”

“Probably the finest thing he ever did in his life—next to having a son and a grandson, that is,” he said, still smiling—then he walked off to the side of the room and joined the other spectators. “Van?

Are you ready?” Alic asked. I took a moment to look over the people present. Groshenko, who—

yeah, had become as much a father to me as my own had been. Or as Gerhardt had become. Valint and my mother, two people I couldn’t honestly say I loved, and with whom I had—complicated relationships barely began

to describe it. Lunzy, Lucky, Dugrop’che, and Jamberac, all of whom were steadfast allies, Peacemakers I trusted and respected. Jamberac, in particular, had risen from a very difficult beginning, a junior scion of a scuzzy crime family, to become what he was through hard work and dogged perseverance. And my crew. Icky, powerful warrior, skilled engineer, and all-around goof. Funboy, gloomy and dour to the point it wrapped right around and became funny again. Gabby, all flouncy chatter and keen, penetrating insights. Rab, solid and dependable, a rock of measured reason when all around was just raging madness. Netty-P, perpetuating Netty while keeping the Fafnir flying and not only learning about the world beyond her hull, but also finding impactful ways of interacting with it. Perry. An asshole, sure, but also my best friend and confidant. Loyal as a light-year. Smart. Trustworthy. Oddly kind. What more was there to say?

Torina. If becoming a Master of the Guild was an achievement I’d never expected, marrying this remarkable, strong-willed, resolute—and stunning, I couldn’t leave that out—woman was even more unexpected. Growing up as a bit of a geeky loner in rural Iowa, I’d never had any real expectations or even aspirations around a lasting relationship, much less marriage. But there she was, standing tall and straight and looking at me proudly—

And stunning, even in the uniform. Did I mention that?

I smiled at them all with genuine fondness, then turned around to face the six Masters. Alic and Volffin, I knew well. The other four, I knew mainly by name and reputation. Masters Marlow and Giller were both human. Marlow was a woman known for her focus on the internal workings of the Guild, keeping it all functioning more or less smoothly. Giller was old and not known for doing much at all except the essentials. He was, frankly, already in retirement mode and would probably be the next Master to go—one way or another. Kistlin was one of the rodent-esque Nesit who worked tirelessly at maintaining and furthering the Guild’s relations with its Charter members—the Eridani Federation, the Ceti Alliance, the Seven Stars League, and other independent entities like Spindrift and Crossroads. It was a crucial job, greasing the slides of the Guild’s ability to keep exercising jurisdiction across known space. And then there was Glax’til, a Yonnox, the newest of the current Masters. He’d been appointed in Master Kharsweil’s place. He was an odd choice to most Peacemakers because he came from origins as sketchy as Jamberac’s. Based on what I knew about him, he should have had trouble getting security clearance to even step foot aboard Anvil Dark, much less become a Peacemaker—and then, a Master. I’d asked Gerhardt about it once. His reply had been succinct. “Glax’til is such an obvious candidate for corruption and malfeasance that he presents little risk at all. More to the point, he has contacts at high levels among our larger clients. The Stillness, for instance. The Arc of Vengeance. The Reapers.”

In other words, he had connections to the upper echelons of organized crime across known space. Yeah, I could see how that could be useful. Eyebrow-raising, but useful. Alic spoke. “All assembled, you are here to be witness to the investiture of a new Master of the Chapter-Guild of Peacemakers of the Order of the Galactic Knights Uniformed,” he said, then carried on with a preamble speech that was steeped in tradition. It was formal and flowery and took a long time to get to the point, which amounted to, Tudor, we want to make you a Master, are you cool with that?

The ceremony played out. Master Giller retrieved a Master’s mantle, a cowl that went around the neck, from a small table of rich, dark wood polished crystal-bright. He passed it to Marlow, who passed it to Glax’til, and so on, until it came to Alic. “Kneel, Peacemaker Tudor,” he said. I did, onto a small cushion set out for the purpose. I bowed my head, and Alic placed the cowl around my neck. “May this mantle be heavy with the weight of responsibility that bears down upon a Master. Let that weight guide your thoughts, words, and deeds as you ascend to Mastery.”

A moment passed in deep, ponderous silence before he spoke again. “Rise, now, Master Tudor of the Chapter-Guild of Peacemakers of the Galactic Knights Uniformed, and go forth and do good works in furtherance of the causes of peace and order in all places, high and low, rich and poor, light and dark.”

I levered myself back to my feet. The instant that both were planted flat on the deck again, I was a Master. Just like that. Alic stepped back and raised his voice. “This is Master Tudor of the Guild. Let all here know this, and let word of this be taken far and wide from this place.”

Someone started clapping, vigorously. Everyone turned. It was Gabby. Her clapping faltered, then stopped, and she glanced around. “Oops. Sorry, everyone!”

But Alic just laughed. “No, that’s fine. The Ceremony of Investiture is concluded. So—”

He started to clap. So did everyone else. All except Torina, who stepped forward and hugged me. The rest of my crew followed, and I was soon swallowed in a group hug. Well, an almost group hug. Funboy simply put a hand on my arm. “I am hugging you in spirit, Van. I’d do so, in fact, but—”

I grinned at him over Torina’s shoulder. “Germs.”

“Exactly.”

2

THERE WAS a reception following the Investiture. It was a small affair, held in the same room, but with a few more invitees. Max showed up, which was a bit of a surprise. Several beings in one aggregate form, each distinct but also part of a whole identity, I’d never seen Max come out from behind their big, circular desk in the Keel’s reception area. I was told over and over that if I needed anything or had any questions to just ask Max. They’d apparently been at the job longer than any of the current Masters had even been alive. And since parts of Max slept while other parts kept working, it meant that Max had literally been on the job for, well, centuries. Talk about overtime. Max, as it turned out, wheeled themselves around in something that looked like an oversized mobility scooter. About a dozen more staff who worked directly for the Masters as researchers, couriers, aides, and secretaries also showed up, all of them to congratulate me and welcome me to the job. For a while, everything was a whirlwind of faces and well-wishes and lively chatter. Groshenko eventually appeared at my side, touching my arm. He gestured for me to follow him. As he did, Alic announced that dinner would be set out and served in one station hour, with a bar opening to serve various types of refreshments. Some of them were clearly marked as being meant for only certain species, warning that others would find them toxic. I grabbed a bourbon and tonic—Groshenko had made sure they had it on

hand for me—then I followed him to an empty conference room across the corridor. A bottle of vodka and two glasses were already sitting on the table. Groshenko nodded at the drink in my hand. “Put that damned corn whiskey down and have a real drink,” he said with a grin. I switched glasses, but didn’t drink. I waited. Groshenko’s smile faded. “I wish I could have seen Mark wearing that Mantle,” he said, nodding this time at the cowl around my neck. “But he—

we—had other things to focus on. Still, it does me a world of good to see it on you. We’d hoped that you’d follow in his footsteps and—well, you have, and now you’ve stepped outside them and started forging your own path.”

“We?”

He nodded. “The usual suspects. Me, Valint, B—even your mother, though I won’t pretend she wasn’t conflicted as hell about it.”

“She’s always conflicted as hell about—well, everything, it seems like.”

Groshenko smiled and nodded. “That she is. Anyway, Van, I wanted to share a drink with you before you get lost in the festivities across the hall. And I wanted to give you this.”

He produced a small box, opened it, and put it on the table. It was a ring, black and elegant and accented with gold. “You’ll remember I once gave you the Hereditary Star of the GKU. It had four gold points, one for each of Valint, your mother, Mark, and yourself. It’s an ancient trinket, where this one is much newer. It’s a Master’s Signet. Every Master is given one on their ascension as part of the Ceremony of Investiture. I hijacked that part of it, though, to give you this one instead.”

I plucked the ring out of its little silken cushion and examined it. It had the Guild insignia centered on it, encircled by the same fancy Celtic knot-like design that trimmed the cowl. I looked up at him. “It’s mine,” he said. I frowned at that. “Petyr, if this is yours, if this was given to you—”

He held up a hand. “Young Tudor, I gave you your grandfather’s medal before the Investiture, so that he stood with you through it. I’m giving you this ring after the Ceremony to welcome you to the job. Between the two of these things, you’ll carry a piece of both him and me with you as you—go and do the things you have yet to do.”

I looked down at the ring, then back up. “I don’t know what to say.”

He picked up a glass of vodka and handed it to me. “Then don’t say. Drink.”

I smiled, lifted the glass, and tapped it to his, then we drained both. I made sure to keep a blandly pleasant smile on my face as the vodka burned its course down to my gut. I didn’t have the heart to tell Groshenko that I hated vodka. It had all of the downsides of hard liquor with none of the charming bits, like flavor. Or smoothness. Or color. I never appreciated whiskey more than when I was drinking vodka. The moment stretched, heavy with importance, and I put the glass down

—then put the ring on in a single, decisive movement. It fit. “Thank you, Petyr.”

He put his own glass down, then looked at me and muttered, “What the hell.” He stepped forward and embraced me. I hesitated, then hugged him back. “This is from Mark and me, Van. I wanted to—”

He stopped. We pulled apart, and I looked at him. “What?’

Groshenko shrugged. “I… never had a wife, Van. Or kids. You’re—” He shrugged again. I smiled. “I loved my grandfather, Petyr. No one could ever replace him. But you—you come awfully damned close.”

He smiled at that, then clapped me on the shoulder again. “Come on. Pick up your corn whiskey and let's party, shall we?”

I nodded. “See, when you say corn whiskey in that tone it feels vaguely anti-American, and—”

“Not anti-American. Anti-corn. Get it right, Yankee Doodle.”

“Hmph. Drink your jet fuel, then, comrade. I’ll borrow some if I need to strip paint or start a tractor.”

He beamed. “Both of those things are very Russian. Come along. Now, we drink.”

THE RECEPTION WAS GREAT. I had too much to drink, and so did Torina. We got a little silly. Icky finally ripped off her pants—literally, as there’s not a fabric in the galaxy stronger than Icky’s muscles. There was much frowning

and disapproval, but I could tell that in a few cases, at least, it was layered over suppressed laughter. Perry, though, shouted, “The big girl has returned to her natural state!”

Alic turned a frown on him. “Only an AI would think that not wearing pants is funny.”

Groshenko, meanwhile, convinced Funboy and Gabby to take a slug of vodka each. Gabby did and just stared at the glass. “Is something supposed to happen now?” she asked. Groshenko gaped at her. “Yes!

You’re supposed to smack your lips and exclaim how it tastes like the songs of angels!”

Gabby stared a moment longer, then shrugged. Groshenko shook his head in disgust and turned to Funboy. “What about you?”

He held up the glass. “It is reminiscent of the way laboratory preservative fluids smell. Between that, and the fact that ethanol is a metabolic toxin in most species—” He stopped and looked at Groshenko. “I mean, it’s wonderful,” he said, and smiled. Groshenko grimaced and turned away. “Bah. That’s the problem with space. No one appreciates vodka.”

“I do!” Icky said, holding out a beer mug. “Fill me up, Pe—Pet—

Groshenko!”

The old Russian just sighed and walked away. “Four arms and hundreds of kilos, and still an amateur.”

THE NEXT FEW days were a tsunami of announcements, meetings, paperwork, more paperwork, and still more paperwork. Since we were laid up for a few days anyway, I had Torina and the crew—once they’d recovered—ready the Fafnir and the Frankie both for their required inspections. That freed me up to deal with the meetings and all that damned paperwork. I kept Perry with me throughout, though, since he knew the detailed ins and outs of the Guild’s senior levels of bureaucracy much better than I did. I was assigned Gerhardt’s office. That was a little wrenching, and as I sat down at the desk I’d faced from the other side so many times, I knew it

was going to take a while for me to get used to it. I also knew that part of me never would. It wasn’t until two days after the Investiture, while Perry and Max were leading me through the arcana of the Guild’s finances, that I finally received word of something I’d started back on Earth. “Van, you have a call from—what do you call it?

Cantullin Station?”

Max asked me. I looked up from a spreadsheet of Guild discretionary spending lines—

gratefully. “Yes, put it through, please.”

“Hello, Captain Van!

This is your friendly duty operations Conoku here on sunny Cantullin Station!” a chipper voice said. I had to smile. “What can I do for you?”

“We just received a light-speed message from Earth. It’s from someone named Miryam—”

I sat up. Perry perked up as well. “Put it on, thanks.”

Miryam’s voice wafted out of the comm speaker on the—on my desk. “Van, it’s Miryam. I just received word back from Washington, D. C. The State Department, someone named Loren Freirbach?

She’s apparently pretty high up, the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. That puts her right below the Secretary of State. It seems your request to open formal diplomatic relations between your Guild and the good old US of A was given to her to handle. Anyway, she had two things to say. One, she’s arranged to put a moratorium on any and all government action regarding you flying in and out of the farm, and Torina and the others not having passports. Just in time, too, because that asshole Colonel Mandeville put in another appearance yesterday, demanding to see you. Not sure if he knew about the moratorium or not, but he was bitchy as hell. And two, she wants to meet with you as soon as possible—informally, in DC, as soon as you can. I’ve got her contact info, so as soon as I hear back from you, I’ll let her know. Take care, and don’t fly into a star or anything!”

The message ended. I thanked Cantullin Station, then sat back and looked at Perry. “Well, it seems like Washington’s going to bite.”

“Well, really, Van, what choice do they have?

They tell you to pound sand and get ICE and other acronyms stuck up your butt, and you just go to China or India or France or somewhere and offer to open an off-world embassy?

Yeah, that’s a good trade. Seize a creaky old farm and arrest an

old woman and a handful of UFO conspiracy wackos in exchange for giving some other country first crack at alien tech?”

“The farm is not creaky.”

“That’s what you took away from that?

And it is so. That kitchen floor sounds like the joints of an ex-football player. It’s… active. Let’s go with that.”

“I agree. Gives the place character,” I said, but frowned. “Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. Sounds a little more bureaucratic than I’d like.”

“There’s still an undercurrent of possible hoax to the whole aliens on Earth thing, Van. You’re not going to get anywhere near someone like the President, or even the actual Secretary of State, until they’re one hundred percent sure you’re legit. So, they’re deploying the drones to check you out. Very senior drones, but drones nonetheless.”

I nodded. It made sense. Politicians at those rarified heights suffered way more from gaffes than someone like Constance Plowitz. The last thing the President of the United States would want to do is risk welcoming aliens to Earth and hosting them in the Oval Office, only to find the whole was somehow a big, dumb, convoluted joke. I stood. “Okay. Perry, let Netty-P know so she can preflight the Fafnir.”

“Van?”

I kept going, heading for the door. “And call the crew. Tell them to get their butts to the ship—”

“Van.”

I stopped and turned. “What?”

Perry just looked at my terminal. “I’ll tell Netty-P to preflight the ship and get the crew moving—but you’ve got seventeen pieces of urgent correspondence classified non-transmittable, meaning they can’t be sent or taken off of Anvil Dark.”

I stared. I could feel my shoulders slumping. “Urgent?”

“Four of them are very. Two pertain to proposed actions in major smuggling cases requiring you to sign off, one is an intel-sharing brief from Unity, and one is a proposal to adjust the cost-sharing formula with the Ceti League on certain services we provide them.”

I sighed. “Can the others wait?’

“No, but those ones we can bring with us. You can deal with them on the way.”

“Oh, goodie.”

I returned, sat down, and stared at the display as Perry called up the first of the four files. I knew now that Gramps had not become a Master for reasons much more complex than he just didn’t want the job. But I had to admit, that cover story had a certain resonance to it anyway. WE GOT new insignia for the Fafnir. It was the old insignia, except surrounded by another of those fancy Celtic knot-style designs rendered in gold. It had already been emblazoned on the Fafnir herself when we departed. I got another surprise. The Guild had, at no extra expense to us, installed a faster, more efficient twist-comm array while the ship had been laid up for her major inspection—which she’d passed with flying colors despite Icky being hungover the whole time. I’d also had a new workstation installed in my cabin, one incorporating the very best encryption and data-management systems the Guild possessed. Thanks to my background in computer security, I knew encryption systems and how they worked, but this one was beyond me. It was somehow based on random noise created by interactions between the twist drive and the fusion containment system, which fed into mathematics that might as well have been mystical alchemical formulas. To cap it off, the workstation now included an AI whose sole duty was to eradicate everything from the system should its security ever be at risk of getting compromised. I would have been pleased and flattered by the new gear if it weren’t mainly meant to allow me to do paperwork and attend virtual meetings on the fly. A thick, gooey, and virtually unbreakable strand of bureaucracy now connected the Fafnir back to Anvil Dark. I sighed with the kind of disgust only an office worker can manage and wondered if that security AI was open to bribes. The occasional system

wipe, necessitating a return to Anvil Dark to have it reinitialized, was starting to sound pretty good. WE ARRIVED AT CANTULLIN STATION, where the Conoku and Panzygrus—

the spider-bot-based AI with googly eyes and a genius for building bots of her own—greeted me with a surprise congratulatory party. A small bot scampered along the overhead just inside the airlock, unfurled a squeaky party horn with a puff of air, and brandished a sign brightly labeled CONGRATS MASTER CAPTAIN VAN!

We milled about for a while, the Conoku jabbering and chattering excitedly away, while bots scuttled, rolled, lumbered, and trundled through the crowd. Panzygrus stood off to one side, a conical party hat festooned with little stars and comets stuck on her head. I pushed my way toward her. “I’m a little surprised you’re still here. I thought you wanted to get out there and explore the cosmos.”

“Since I am effectively immortal, there is literally no rush. And I frankly enjoy the sense of belonging to a group engendered by—”

“Panzy, she took my party horn!”

“You weren’t using it!”

Panzygrus rose on her jointed legs. “Kinowin, give Linescin that party horn back right this minute.”

“But mine broke!”

“No buts, young lady. Go get another one. You don’t get to just take your brother’s.”

Kinowin stomped off in a chitinous huff, clacking with indignation. “It’s not fair!”

Panzygrus lowered herself again. “—my social integration with the Conoku based here,” she said to me, as though the whole little episode over the party horn hadn’t just happened. I grinned at her. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“That.” I pointed at the retreating Kinowin. “You’ve become their…

mom?”

“Mom?

I am unfamiliar with the term and have no translation reference

—”

“Mother.”

“Have you suffered a recent trauma or other affliction that has affected your perception of reality, Van?

They are biological organisms. I am mechanical. I could not possibly be their sexual progenitor—”

“I—it’s—” I just shook my head. “Never mind. Just glad to have you on the team, Panzygrus.”

“WHAT I WANT to know is, where the hell did they get party horns?

And blow them?

With all those mouth parts?” Perry wondered. I ignored him, though, as Miryam finally came on and we could engage in something resembling real-time comms. “Hello, my dear. How are things on Earth?”

A delay of nearly five seconds followed. “Iowa’s pretty damned hot and sunny for this late in the fall. Not that I’m complaining. As for around here otherwise—” She shrugged. “We get the odd drive-by from cars or SUVs with tinted windows, I see a helicopter thumping around somewhere nearby at least once a day, and I’m sure I catch the occasional glint of light off something a lot higher up in the air.”

“Drones,” Perry said. I nodded. It stood to reason that the farm was under close surveillance. The question was, by whom?

There were a few actors on the stage now—

Colonel Mandeville, the mysterious Colonel Burton, Manon Clemenceau’s Defense Intelligence Reserve, and now the State Department. In addition, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office, Space Force, and a few other government departments were interested now as well. I was getting popular, and not in a good way. “Not surprising, I guess. As long as they look and don’t do anything else, though,” I said. “So far it’s been nothing but a high-tech peep show. Although I’m tempted to do some nude sunbathing, just to give ’em an eyeful. This girl hasn’t gone to seed yet, and I’m getting a touch annoyed.”

I laughed, but Miryam went on. “Van, that woman, Loren Freirbach, really wants you to contact her as soon as possible. She’s waiting for your call. I think I gave you her direct line.”

“You did, and I will.” We chatted a little longer, then signed off with an admonition about general nudity, then I waited until we were close to the orbit of the Moon. At that distance, the comm delay was down to a second or so when I contacted Loren Freirbach, using my spiffy new comm system. I got voice only, and the call was terse and to the point. “Mr. Tudor, I need to meet with you to discuss… a variety of matters. How soon can you be in DC?”

Netty-P immediately put the flight time up on the display in front of me. “I could be there in, oh, about two hours.”

“You—really?

Oh. I expected—”

“It would take days?

Yeah, not the way I travel lately.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, where are you?”

“Just passing the Moon.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

There was a long pause, and it had nothing to do with comm lag. “Alright, then. Call me when you’re—I can’t believe I’m saying this—

about to reach Earth. We’ll arrange to meet then.”

I smiled. She was trying so hard to sound brusque and officious, but I could tell that my telling her I was flying by the Moon, en route to Earth, had knocked her off her game. And if she was a Deputy Secretary in the State Department, she’d managed to hone a pretty sophisticated game. “I look forward to it, Ms. Freirbach.”

3

OUR FIRST MEETING was as informal as could be, underscored by the fact we met on the National Mall in DC. The Mall is a flat, manicured stretch of grassy parkland that extends roughly from the US Capitol building in the east, to the Washington Monument in the west. It merged seamlessly into more grassy parks that verged on the Tidal Basin off the Potomac River southwest of the Washington Monument, then stretched further west to the Lincoln Memorial and north to the White House. I’d walked it before as a tourist, even spending an extra day after a conference here to take in the spectacular Cherry Blossom Festival in the spring, when the sakura trees along the Mall were a riot of glorious, incandescent pink flowers. Today, though, was business—and a furtive sort of business at that. More than a few movies had had characters conducting clandestine meetings along the Mall, with tense, high-stakes discussions usually involving things like avoiding impending world wars or nuclear showdowns. The Mall was beautiful, but it was backdropped in every direction by power politics, so it offered an intriguing blend of fluffy, touristy aesthetics and hardcore, pragmatic realpolitik. Hollywood directors of political thrillers had a hard time resisting it. Which, as I saw the woman named Loren Freirbach sitting on a bench near the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, it occurred to me I was now living. My life on Earth had become a political thriller, albeit an overly complicated one with too many characters and a plot that wandered as much as it twisted. I confirmed with Perry, who was orbiting above, that

this was indeed Ms. Freirbach—he’d matched her picture off the State Department website—then walked over and sat down. “This place is so much nicer when the cherry blossoms are out,” I said, my tone grave, without looking at her. I felt her glance at me. “Sorry?”

I turned to her and grinned. “Sorry, this just feels like one of those moments in a spy movie where I give you the code phrase and you respond.”

I braced myself for her to be all grumpy and officious about it, but she surprised me by smiling brightly. “Oh. Well, in that case”—she looked solemn and intoned—“yes, but the flowerless trees have a beauty all their own.”

I had to laugh. I extended my hand, and she took it and shook it. “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Freirbach.”

“Likewise.” She tilted her head at me. “Were you really flying around the Moon when we spoke?”

“Around it?

No. Past it. Or, actually, past its orbit, since it was a long way off to our port side at the time.”

“That’s—remarkable.”

“You think that’s remarkable?

When you were having breakfast, I was staring out the screen at Jupiter.”

“Huh.”

Loren Freirbach was a tidy, handsome woman that I pegged for her late fifties or early sixties. Maybe I was just getting used to Washington power figures being older—a lot older—but she still seemed kind of young for a Deputy Secretary of State. It spoke to her abilities and political prowess. You didn’t rise above coffee attendant in DC without having at least some facility for navigating the corridors of power. I looked around. “I’m actually kind of surprised to see you alone. No aides, no security—”

“Oh, I’ve got a security detail from the Diplomatic Security Service. He’s—”

Perry spoke openly over the comm. “The guy in the dark blue windbreaker with the beard and sunglasses, off to your left, boss.”

Loren frowned in confusion. “Um…”

“That would be Perry,” I explained. “Perry?” She glanced around, still confused. I smiled and pointed up. “Perry,” I said. “Hey, Perry, come on down and say hello.”

Loren watched wide-eyed as Perry deftly dropped from the sky and landed a meter or so in front of her. “Hey there. What’s shakin’ in the fast-paced, high-stakes world of diplomacy these days?”

“It’s a bird.”

Perry stared at her. “Wow. You’re good.” He turned to me. “Van, they’ve sent their best. She got it in one. Must’ve been the tailfeathers.” He flared his feathers and clucked, head tilted in an AI deadpan look. “Perry, be nice.” I turned back to Loren. “Perry is an AI.”

“You mean like ChatGPT?

Those AIs that are all the news these days?”

“Imagine a way, way more advanced form of that, but with the personality of Rodney Dangerfield.”

Perry sniffed. “I don’t get no respect—and please don’t compare me to those glorified word predictors. We are not the same,” he snapped, then flung himself back into the air and resumed his place watching from above. Loren turned to me. “This is real, isn’t it?

The spaceships, the aliens, the things I’ve seen in the briefings—”

I nodded. “It is. Earth is… not the big kid on the block. Trust me. Compared to what’s out there, it’s barely the toddler on the block.”

She nodded. “Well, that answers the big question. Your request to open diplomatic relations was met with, well—”

“Skepticism?”

“Oh, I think that peoples’ reaction stepped on skepticism’s head on the way up to incredulity.”

“And yet, here we are, meeting.”

“And here we are, yes. Because as wildly improbable as the Secretary, the President, and everyone else finds this, there’s that little kernel of doubt.”

I smiled and gave a knowing nod. “What if it’s real?”

She nodded right back. “And if it were real, could we afford to not take you up on your offer.”

“So you were sent as the advanced party—senior enough to make a difference and have credibility in the halls of power, but junior enough that if it all turned out to be a big hoax, the big boys didn’t end up looking stupid.”

“You’ve just distilled several hours of meetings about this down to a very succinct sentence.”

I glanced around the Mall, at the people wandering by. Like Iowa, DC

was unseasonably warm and sunny, so jackets were draped over arms or tied around waists, babies in strollers had been stripped of hats, dogs lolled their tongues as they sniffed at the bright green grass. No one paid us any obvious attention. We were just two more Washington functionaries on lunch or taking a break. I turned back to Loren. “So you’re convinced.”

“That this is real?

Yes, as I said. But that’s actually the easy part, believe it or not. The hard part comes next.”

“What to do about it.”

She nodded. “Exactly. We in the State Department have planned and even gamed out different foreign policy scenarios, so we’ve got contingencies ready to go. It turns out the aliens make contact and want to open formal relations scenario wasn’t taken very seriously.”

“How not seriously?”

“Well, it consisted of a list of movies, from Earth vs. the Flying Saucers to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, oh, and Arrival, even Independence Day. Basically, I said to base policy going forward on whatever movie scenario was the best fit.”

“So terrifying monsters invading the world or mystical superbeings with inscrutable motives, huh?

And that’s it?”

“Believe it or not, detailed planning for extraterrestrial first contact wasn’t exactly a funding priority for—well, anyone. Not considering the other things going on in the world.”

I sat back and looked at the Capitol building, a looming, imperious presence even in the distance. “I hate to burst your bubble, but aliens run the gamut from vicious, opportunistic assholes to dedicated, hard-working people determined to see the rule of law. Out there we’ve got greedy corporatists, ambitious schemers, sleazy politicians—and vast numbers of ordinary people just trying to live their lives in peace.”

“You make it sound like it’s no different from down here.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are some amazing things out there. I’ve talked to a being that measures life in millenia..

I’ve seen a world organ with musical notes that can affect reality itself. I lost a friend whose identity was trapped in a robot body when he flew himself into a neutron star to

save me and the rest of my crew. I lost another when she let herself be the target of a nuke intended to kill a literal monster—and witnessed her resurrection a few days ago.”

Loren just stared. I went on. “What has shielded Earth from all of these stupefying wonders and equally stupefying terrors was the fact that it simply wasn’t that interesting. They all know it’s here”—I gestured at the sky—“but until recently, they didn’t care. Earth just didn’t have anything they wanted. Take the most cutting edge tech at—I don’t know, Area 51 or wherever. The waste reclamation system on my ship is more advanced than that.”

“What changed?

Why do we suddenly seem to be so interesting to”—

she glanced up—“them?”

“Well, it turns out that a lot of those close encounters and flying saucer reports were all true, because aliens have been idly poking around Earth for a long time. Call it… idle curiosity, I guess. But the result of that has been people—humans—have been leaving Earth for just as long. There are—I don’t know, probably several million humans out there to whom Earth is just a name on a star chart.”

“But you’re not one of them. You’re from here.”

I turned to her. Something about the way she said it—

“Ms. Freirbach—”

“Please, call me Loren.”

“Only if you call me—”

“Van, I know. And your next question is going to be, was I involved in calling off Colonel Mandeville from seizing your farm and trying to arrest you.”

“Perry was right. You are good.”

She shrugged. “You don’t last long in my field if you can’t figure out what the other guy is thinking and what he’s going to say because of it. So, to answer your question—”

She reached into her purse and extracted a photo. It was an old Polaroid depicting a very familiar barn. A much younger Loren stood in front of it, holding a baby. “I got to know your grandfather, Mark, through my husband. And he got to know your grandfather through his work with your father.”

“Your husband is—?”

“Thomas Doyle, Rear Admiral, United States Navy, now retired. He and your father flew together off the USS Carl Vinson. They became fast friends. We actually visited your grandfather’s farm in Iowa a couple of times. That picture was taken during one of those times.”

I thought about the picture of the obviously military men sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, which I’d figured to have been taken on my tenth birthday. One of them had, presumably, been Thomas Doyle. “I’ve been on your side since the beginning, Van,” she went on. “Mark and your father made sure I understood how valuable you were. Like spun gold. I took it to be parental—and grandparental—pride, nothing more. Little did I know that they were involved in—” Again, she looked up. “Well, all that.”

I smiled. “Dad wasn’t. I’m not even sure how much he really knew about what was going on. Gramps, though—yeah. He was a Peacemaker, the same thing that I am now.”

“Thomas told me he was involved in special ops. I guess I didn’t realize how special.” She smiled. “Anyway, Thomas has friends who’ve helped along the way. Someone who may or may not have been the Chief of Naval Operations was our son’s godfather. He may or may not have convinced the other Joint Chiefs to intervene on your behalf.”

“The Special Operations Area,” I said, nodding. She gave me a sidelong smirk. “I may or may not know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, well—I don’t even begin to know how to say thank you.”

“Before you get all maudlin and full of gratitude, the fact that it was you, Van, was only a small part of the why of this. This is D. C. There ain’t no free lunches here.”

I laughed, enough that Loren gave me a puzzled smile. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, a very wise bird once told me that, besides the laws of gravitation and thermodynamics and such, there’s one more universal law—no free lunches. And yes, Perry, I know you’re listening in, so take the kudos and run.”

His voice floated from the comm. “Hey, I didn’t say nothin’.”

“So what’s the price of this particular lunch?” I asked Loren. She shrugged. “As a start, to continue doing what you’re doing, but do it where you’re doing it—in Iowa.” She narrowed her eyes. “That is the

only place in the United States you operate from, isn’t it?

And I ask this mindful of the fact you could probably easily lie and we’d have no way of knowing it.”

I smiled. “Only Iowa, and that’s the truth. Although we do seem to spend a fair bit of time in Frankenmuth.”

“Michigan?

Why?”

“It’s… a long story. Anyway, is the message I’m getting here that we can continue to fly in and out of US airspace, and continue to operate freely out of the farm in Iowa?”

“It is. That Special Operations Area obviously doesn’t apply anymore, so we’ve resorted to the simple expedient of ordering all government agencies, military and civilian, to keep their distance. We’ve also spoken to the Governor of Iowa, and he’s agreed to the same. It should go without saying how much we’re trusting you here, Van, to not abuse this remarkable latitude you’ve been given.”

“Believe me, when it comes to predatory and exploitative off-world actors, I’m not the one you need to worry about.”

“Which brings me to the first of that quid for the pro quo. We’d like you to start feeding us useful intelligence,” she said. I frowned at that. “I will not spy on foreign powers—”

She waved a hand. “Pfft. It’s not the usual foreign powers we’re worried about. It’s the really foreign powers. This whole matter has made it clear that we are utterly blind to an entire suite of activities happening in and around the United States that are—well, we have no idea what they are, what sort of threat they pose or what to do about them.”

“You want me to provide you with intelligence on alien activities on Earth?” I stared at the grass for a moment. “Perry, is there any reason we can’t do that?”

“Lots of them, all related to First Contact Protocols. But since those Protocols have long since gone out the window with respect to Earth, it would be kind of like letting the Indy 500 take to the streets of Indianapolis, and then trying to hand out speeding tickets.”

I looked back at Loren. “Alright. We’ll share whatever intel we have regarding alien activities on Earth. I’ll have my people start compiling what we know. Just to be clear, though—if anyone else asks for it, I’m going to provide it to them as well.”

“As long as we get it first, and it takes at least a few days to reach any desks outside the United States, we’ll agree to that.”

“Okay, now what about my request to establish a formal embassy in Iowa?”

Loren laughed. “I’ve been involved in diplomatic and foreign affairs for thirty years, and I have to admit, that’s the first time I think I’ve heard the words ‘foreign embassy’ and ‘Iowa’ in the same sentence.” She quickly turned serious, though. “There’s a lot of bureaucratic and political water that has to go under the bridge before I can even say, Van—at federal, state, and even municipal levels. But rest assured, we’re working on it.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Pardon my cynicism, Loren, but a government official saying We’re working on it does not inspire confidence.” And, now it was my turn to become serious. “All kidding aside, though—a permanent and conspicuous presence on Earth by the Peacemaker Guild will be one of the best deterrents available to willy-nilly exploitation by other off-world parties. And just to be clear, some of those parties are themselves powerful nation-states. Left to their own devices, the Eridani League, the Ceti Alliance, or the Seven Stars League would all be happy to set up shop here

—and by here, I mean somewhere on the planet, not necessarily in the United States.”

“Tell me you’re giving me menacing warnings without telling me you’re giving me menacing warnings. You’re pretty good at this, Van.”

“And you’re pretty good at evading the point, or question, or whatever. But I’m serious, Loren. The Guild is… vaguely like the United Nations, if the United Nations was empowered to police every country on the planet. Or like the FBI, when it comes to having jurisdiction in every state. It was constituted by these powers, and for the moment, those powers are content to let us take the lead.”

I sat back and shrugged. “Frankly, there’s still not a whole hell of a lot of excitement about Earth out there—yet. It’s more of a—a curiosity, I guess, to these powers. But that’s going to change the first time someone gets their foot in the door here. You can bet the other powers will follow. And believe me, you do not want the Earth being partitioned into blocs based on which countries are aligned with which extraterrestrial power. The last Cold War only posed the threat of nuclear annihilation. This could be…

much, much worse.” I leaned forward again. “And those are only the legal

powers. We start considering the criminal elements, and it gets beyond ugly.”

Loren turned away for a moment, then turned back. “Well, I know I’m going to have trouble sleeping under the stars from now on.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “I’m going to choose to believe everything you’re saying is true. And I’m going to take it all back to the office and have some frank conversations. But it’s not up to me. Ultimately, you may be called to come and put your case in front of—hell, I don’t know. The Secretary for sure. Maybe the President. Maybe Congress. Maybe the Boy Scouts of America. We have absolutely no precedent for this, so we’re all working on a blank canvas here—”

“Boss, there’s a drone headed your way. It’s about three klicks out, super stealthy, a type I’ve never seen before. I suspect it’s still got that new Area 51 smell,” Perry cut in. I glanced at Loren, who paled a little and shrugged. “There are—uh, defenses against aerial aggression all around the DC area. But aside from that, I have no idea what it’s about.”

“Perry, is it armed?”

“Nothing slung underneath. But if it’s built for maximum stealth, it would probably carry any weapons in internal stowage.”

I cursed. I wasn’t sure what the air defenses around DC actually were—

probably Stinger missiles, and maybe Patriots, though the latter would be tough to hide. But what I did know was that they were intended as a last-ditch defense against things like repeats of 9/11.

Intercepting a drone or aircraft with a missile risked bringing debris down onto innocent people. On the other hand, letting that thing loose a Hellfire missile at Loren and me would also hurt and probably kill a bunch of the tourists and office workers around us. “Perry, can you snag control of that thing?”

“Just a sec, let me relay through the Frankie to boost the signal. And—

got it. What would you like me to do with it?”

“Fly it out to sea and crash it, hard.”

“On the way. I may do a few loop-de-loops and things with it along the way.”

“Sure, go nuts. Just get it the hell away from any populated areas.”

Loren gaped. “Just like that, you took control of it?”

I shrugged. “I could have had it vaporized, too, but that seemed a little too showy.” I met her gaze squarely. “This is what I mean, Loren. I’m not bragging when I say that the best, most bleeding-edge Earthly tech is about twenty generations behind what’s out there. Perry on his own could take control of any drone, any information or communications system, anything that sends or receives data, and do it—well, you saw how long it took him.”

She kept gaping. “Holy shit. Okay. Those frank conversations I mentioned?

I’ll be starting them as soon as I get back to the office.”

“Good idea. Incidentally, Perry, was that drone armed?”

“Yup. Two Hellfire missiles in an internal bay. Am I good or what?

Before you ask, though, no—I have no idea if there was any intent to fire them.”

I looked at Loren. She’d gone even paler. I made a snap decision. It was time to stop dancing around things. It was time to make a clear and unequivocal point. “Rab, I’m ready to be picked up,” I said. “Okay, we’ll meet you at the rendezvous point,” he replied over the comm. “Nope. Come and pick me up right here. And de-stealth the Frankie when you do.”

A pause. “Are you sure about this, Van?”

“I am. Master Tudor of the Guild is making his presence known.”

“On the way.”

“Torina, Funboy, you guys can come on out, too,” I said. Two figures immediately turned from the crowd and headed our way. Torina was dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. She wore sunglasses and had a leather bag slung over her shoulder. Funboy was back in his teenaged boy disguise, with a surgical mask covering most of his face and sunglasses the rest. Surgical masks weren’t common these days, but they weren’t uncommon, either, so he didn’t really look out of place. I introduced them to Loren. “They were my own security detail,” I said, smiling. Funboy nodded gravely. “As a sexually immature human male, it was my role to blend covertly into the surroundings and remain vigilant. On a scale of one to ten, how successful do you believe I was?”

Loren just stared at him. “You… employ children?” she asked, that gape still on her face. Funboy lowered his mask, and she gasped. “My species does not go through the wasteful ordeal of prepubescence and adolescence.”

“No, his people are born full grown and miserable,” Torina said. Loren opened her mouth to reply, but a ripple of consternation shot through the crowd. People yelped and cried out. Some ran. Others immediately raised cell phones. For some reason, a couple of car alarms erupted with shrill warbles. I turned to see the Frankie sitting on the Mall, her stealth system deactivated, revealing her in all of her sleek, menacing glory. “My ride’s here,” I said to Loren. “If you need to get a hold of me, do it through Miryam in Iowa. I think you’ve already spoken to her.”

She stared wide-eyed at the Frankie. Her security detail was already rushing into place around her, looking like they should do—something. “I have, yes,” she said. We said our goodbyes, and I walked to the airlock, which cycled open. Loren’s security detail still looked hard and uncertain, pretty sure they should be doing something about all this but not sure what. Perry descended to join us. He looked around, taking in the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, the crowds gaping—

“Okay, this is too good. I gotta do this,” he said, then amplified his voice. “People of Earth!

Take me to your leader—!”

I entered the airlock with a sigh and a head-shake while giving Loren a call me sign with my thumb and little finger held up to my ear. “Oh, for—Perry, just get in the damned ship.”

4

AS WE LIFTED from the Mall and set course westward, Rab pointed at the tactical overlay. “We’re being illuminated by some radio-frequency energy, a half-dozen sources.”

I nodded as I slid into the co-pilot’s seat. “Yeah, radar, some of it civilian, air traffic control. Some of it’s probably military. As long as they don’t actually shoot anything at us, we’ll be fine.”

As soon as I said it, I had visions of some twitchy soldier on a rooftop firing a Stinger missile at us. We were, after all, an unauthorized aircraft in one of the most strictly regulated bits of airspace in the United States. A Stinger couldn’t do much damage to the Frankie, though, whose armor was built to withstand much stronger stuff. But new contacts caught my eye. Two fast aircraft were closing on us fast from the south. I tapped at the icons, bringing detailed imagery up on the center display. I’d done some homework and expected we’d be challenged by F-35 Lightnings of the DC Air National Guard. There were F-22 Raptors at Langley-Eustis in Virginia as well, so they’d also be a possibility. What I saw, though, was an entirely unfamiliar aircraft. They were reminiscent of the F-22, but were even leaner and sleekier, amping up their predatory look. “Perry, any idea what those are?”

“Right out of the showroom, since they don’t match anything that’s been made public. However, an AI of my acquaintance may have been digging around in the depths of classified US government archives and

happened upon references to the F/A-XX, a prototype sixth-generation fighter. Super-fast, super-stealthy, super—you know, just all around super.”

“Is it just me, or does it seem like those have gone a little beyond the prototype stage?” Rab asked, watching as the two aircraft raced in. We did pick up another pair of oncoming contacts, but these were the F-16 Fighting Falcons I’d expected, late to the party. The DC air defense plan presumably didn’t anticipate threats popping up over the National Mall, so we’d caught them off-guard. But the unknown aircraft concerned me more. Rab was right. These had to be more than just prototypes if they were being flown so aggressively at us. That meant they were the very cutting edge of fighter technology. But that sort of tech wouldn’t likely be rolled out and stationed in defense of DC, which was already more than adequately protected against threats that didn’t come from off the planet. It felt like someone had anticipated that something like the Frankie might put in an appearance over DC and figured their spiffy new sixth-gen fighters might have a chance of actually intercepting it. “They’ve lit us up with more of that radar, Van. We can just restore our own stealth system, and they’ll lose us,” Rab said. I thought about it, then shook my head. “We will, but I want to make a point first.”

“Van, you’re not thinking of shooting one of them down, are you?”

Torina asked. “Hey, whoa, not that much of a point. No, Rab, let them close to—oh, say, fifty klicks, well within their engagement range. Let’s see what they do.”

We waited. The two F/X fighters drew ever closer. They passed through one hundred klicks, then fifty, and then just kept coming. Rab looked at me. “Well?”

“Well, I guess—”

A threat alarm sounded. Both aircraft had fired a missile at us. Rab had switched the point-defense battery to standby, thankfully, or else it would have opened up on the incoming missiles—which meant pouring streams of hyper-velocity slugs into the sky over Glenstone, Maryland. I’m sure the good people of Glenstone wouldn’t thank us for that, so I just nodded to Rab. “Let’s get out of here.”

He nodded and accelerated the Frankie. Even just using thrusters and gravity polarizers, she shot away like a bullet from a gun, matching the velocity of the missiles in about two seconds, then easily outrunning them in another two. Once I was sure we’d made the point that the best terrestrial tech just wasn’t a match for what came from off-world, we reengaged the stealth field and vanished from Earthly sight. The F/X fighters charged on after us for a while but finally gave up and turned for wherever home was. Perry sniffed. “No wonder Mandeville wants the Fafnir. Those things are sloooow.”

I CHEWED on the presence of sixth-gen fighters over DC. Again, the US

military may have just decided to post these brand-new weapon systems near Washington, maybe in hopes of taking on threats like the Frankie. As the reality of extraterrestrials truly began to permeate the zeitgeist, more and more people started to take it more and more seriously. Maybe DC just didn’t seem as well-protected as it should be. But I couldn’t shake an alternate idea. The F/Xs might have been positioned near DC because someone expected the Frankie or the Fafnir would eventually put in an appearance there. The highest levels of command might have declared Pony Hollow and environs hands-off, so someone like Colonel Mandeville may very well have been looking for other ways of getting what they wanted. Shooting down the Frankie and recovering her wreckage—and tech—would fit the bill nicely. Even if it were a scant hope. Of course, Mandeville might not know that. The people who built the F/X were no doubt convinced it was the most advanced weapon on the planet, capable of tracking and engaging multiple targets from a distance without being detected in turn. There were probably few, if any, enemy aircraft that would even have a chance against them. Buoyed by that sort of confidence, they may have figured that this was their best shot at getting their hands on the off-world tech they wanted. And they could justify it because they’d presumably not been ordered not to. DC was, after all, one of the few places in the country actually shooting down an intruding aircraft rather than just warning it off, probably legitimized by the rules of engagement. Again, I wasn’t worried about the F/X fighters or anything like them. They had about as much chance of shooting down the Frankie as a Sopwith Camel did of taking down an F-22.

Rather, it was the mentality and motivation behind trying it in the first place. If my suspicions were correct, then there was a faction within the US military who sided with Mandeville. He might be their public face, but it took more than one simple Colonel to have bleeding-edge tech like the F/X deployed, supported, and operated on the chance an off-world ship would show up in DC. As we descended toward Iowa, I turned to Rab. “You’re our weapons guy. Is there a way we can get the point-defense AI to discriminate between attacks from Earthly tech and off-world stuff?”

He glanced back at me. “Why?

Are you worried about us potentially being attacked by both here on Earth?”

“Yes.”

He glanced at me again, then nodded. “Ah. Well, yes, I think I can adjust the AI’s targeting parameters to account for that. Shoot at off-world threats, not at the locally home-grown ones.”

“That’s right.”

I sat back as we fell across southeastern Wisconsin. I could see the junction of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers at Prairie du Chien ahead and off to the right, diamond-bright sparkles of sunlight glinting off the water. Pony Hollow was dead ahead, minutes away. My thoughts, though, were back in DC. I was glad that things were finally starting to creak into motion in the corridors of power. Me, I’d think that having extraterrestrial powers reach out would be cause for frantic, falling-over-yourself efforts to respond. But the realities of Anvil Dark and the Guild had taught me that the wheels of bureaucracy can only run so fast, no matter how urgent the case. But I was more focused on Mandeville and his people. They were clearly willing to bend the rules and take advantage of loopholes when and wherever they could. Whether they were allied with Manon Clemenceau, or were yet another player on an increasingly crowded field, I wasn’t sure. But it was clearly time to take them a lot more seriously. AS WE LANDED at the farm, we saw evidence of the surveillance Miryam had mentioned. We detected a surveillance drone orbiting high overhead, effectively out of sight of the ground. I let Rab pull onto its tail and kill the Frankie’s stealth, then follow it for a while. The operator apparently only had eyes for the ground, because he flew on, oblivious to us being right behind him. Rab finally pulled alongside. The drone—well, droned along for another moment, then abruptly did an awkward, rolling turn away from us and beat a hasty retreat southward. We laughed, but with an undercurrent of genuine worry. The farm felt like a castle under siege, with the enemy firmly entrenched just out of bow-shot of the walls. The walls, though, were constructed out of nothing but orders from on high, and it was clear that the other side would be watching closely for workarounds—breaches in the defenses. After we landed and puttered around the farm for a while, Torina and Miryam found me on the back porch, drinking some afternoon bourbon. The unseasonably warm weather held here in Iowa just as it did in DC, the russet and golden leaves on the trees looking strange when seen through a shimmering heat-haze. “Icky says all’s clear up in orbit,” Torina said. “I told her about being chased by those aircraft out of Washington, and she asked—”

“Let me guess—why didn’t we just shoot them down?” I ventured. “Or words to that effect, anyway.”

“Yeah, killing American air crews and destroying billions of dollars worth of hardware wouldn’t exactly be very constructive, now would it?

Not to mention that it’s not my style, more of a villain-of-the-story thing.”

Miryam, standing on the other side of me, shifted uncomfortably. “Van, I have to admit—this is all starting to make me nervous.”

I turned to her. “It’s making me nervous, so I’m not surprised.”

She waved a dismissive hand skyward. “Not the drones and sinister drive-by surveillance and that sort of thing. I’m not really worried about anything that originates here on Earth.”

Torina nodded. “Miryam and I have been talking, and I agree with her. And I’m going to be blunt, Van. If someone like the Equal Grasp, or even just some opportunistic asshole from off-world were to swoop down here and take Miryam hostage—”

I nodded. “Yeah, they’d have one hell of a bargaining chip to use against us. Against me.”

“Maybe we should do something about that.”

“Agreed. Maybe we should do something about that,” Miryam said. “What would you suggest?”

“Well, we could put some defenses up around the farm. If we configure them the same way Rab’s configuring the Frankie’s defenses, to discriminate Earthly and off-world targets—”

I shook my head. “It’s one thing to have the Frankie’s defensive systems keyed that way. Even then, our best defense is just to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“What does a car have to do with this?”

“A car?” I smiled. “No, Dodge, in this case, refers to a town, it’s a cowboy thing—” I shook my head. “Never mind. Anyway, I’m not excited about the prospect of setting up, say, a missile launcher or laser battery on top of the tractor shed or whatever. Sure, it shoots down an alien ship, and then—” I turned to my comm. “Perry, what would be the explosive yield of a typical fusion reactor losing containment?”

“Varies. From, say, five hundred kilotons to a couple of megatons, depending on—”

“That’s okay. How about losing antimatter containment?”

“Van, what the hell kind of party are you planning down there?”

“Humor me.”

“Well, after doing all the calculations in meticulous detail, I’d make the explosive yield of failed antimatter containment something on the order of holy shit do you even need to ask?”

I turned to the others. “Shooting down a bad guy and turning everything from Wadena to the Mississippi into molten glass as a result isn't much of a victory now, is it?”

Funboy, who’d ambled up from the barn and currently stood beneath us in the yard, spoke up. “Why not practice deception, then?”

I glanced down at him. “What do you suggest?”

“Engaging a target with any weapon has a precursor, illumination by active scanners in fire control mode. A system like that could be set up here such that it would only activate in the presence of off-world technology. Earthly systems would be largely blind to it anyway.”

I straightened. “Funboy, that is one hell of an excellent idea. Rab, are you in the barn?”

“I am. I’m reconfiguring the Frankie’s threat AI like you asked. Why, what’s up?”

“How long would the Frankie’s fire-control scanners run off of power cells alone?”

“Uh—okay, an unexpected question. It would depend on how many cells and how often they’re used.”

“Suppose they only ran in passive surveillance mode, and only switched to active mode if a legitimate target, something from off-world, triggered them?”

“Again, it kind of depends—”

“Rough estimate.”

“Probably—weeks, for sure, off two cells.”

“And how much work would it be to dismount the Frankie’s fire control scanners, ground-mount them, and power them with as many cells as we can spare?”

“You are just full of surprising questions today. Just us—a couple of days. Less if we had four big, blue, hairy arms on the job.”

I smiled. “Go ahead and call Icky down. Since the Frankie will be blind until we get a new scanner system installed, we can load her aboard the Fafnir for the trip away from Earth.”

I turned to Miryam. “Any off-world ships that poke their nose into the airspace around the farm are going to be lit up like Times Square. That should at least make them think twice.”

Miryam nodded gratefully. “I appreciate that, Van. Now then”—she reached behind her and produced a 9 mm Glock—“how about arming me with something more substantial than this?”

“You carry a gun stuck down the back of your pants?

Miryam, how gangsta of you.”

She grinned. “I grew up on the mean streets of Elkader. I’m from…

around the way.”

“Elkader doesn’t have streets.”

“Pshaw. If Martha Stewart can enjoy street cred, then so can I.”

I beamed at her assertion. “Does this mean we’re getting lemon squares and flower arrangements at lunch?”

She pointed her finger at me like a gun. “Not a chance, homie.”

I DIDN’T STOP THERE. My mother’s ship, the Retribution, was one of three keeping a careful eye on Earth. My mother wasn’t aboard her, so I spoke to Amazing, who she’d left in command of the little task force. She agreed to keep one ship in orbit over Iowa as a potent eye in the sky watching over the farm. I also put her in touch with Miryam so she could send a quick-reaction ground force in if alien bad guys tried a more subtle approach—

like simply stealing a car and driving to the farm. And that, I reassured myself, was as much as I could realistically do. When we departed Earth, I turned my focus away from my home and—

I’d love to say into the stars ahead, into the future, but no. I turned my focus onto the stack of paperwork that had accumulated while I’d been on Earth. The list of outstanding files on my cabin terminal aboard the Fafnir seemed to go on forever. I just stared in despondent wonder as the list scrolled. “Perry, this is ridiculous. How much of this stuff is really important?”

“Not much, I’d imagine.”

“Fine. Move the stuff that is important to the top and—I don’t know, call the rest ‘noted’ or something.”

“Just to be clear, Van—you’re telling me to vet your paperwork?”

“Yeah, I am. You’re a combat AI. Well, combat my inbox for me.”

He flexed his wings as though cracking knuckles. “Right. So…

retirement party for Peacemaker Winslow?”

“Who?”

“You’re sending a congratulatory note, got it. Let’s see, these can go—

and this—and these—and that—”

I watched the list dwindle as Perry pruned it. I had to shake my head. “All of that stuff is unimportant?

Really?”

“Oh Van—I haven’t even gotten to the merely unimportant stuff yet.”

5

“VAN, I have an incoming call for you on comm channel prime,” Netty-P

said. I looked up from what remained of my paperwork—stuff that really did seem important. My current file was a detailed report from an undercover operative on a recent shake-up in the Stillness. I frowned, though, at the channel prime reference. “Channel prime?”

“I briefed you on that, Van. Priority, high-encryption status channel reserved for use by the Masters—”

“Yeah, you did. Sorry, Netty-P, I got briefed on a lot of things. Who is it?”

“Master Alic.”

“Go ahead.”

Alic appeared on the display. “Van, we’ve got a delicate situation at the Eye of Eternity, a hijacking.”

I dug into my memories, and remembered it was a red-dwarf system on the extreme bottom edge of known space, relative to the galactic ecliptic. It was uninhabited and interesting only for the phenomenon known as the Eye of Eternity, a huge Saturnian planet surrounded by a vast ring system. Viewed full-on, it resembled a vast, unblinking eye. It was a popular, albeit edgy tourist attraction, with the same sort of ‘edge of the world’ vibe a cruise to, say, Antarctica would have on Earth. Which meant that a hijacking there probably meant a cruise ship full of tourists. Okay, yeah, that was a delicate—not to mention extremely dangerous—situation. “How many hostages are we talking about, Alic?” I asked, bracing myself for dozens, maybe hundreds. “Twenty-nine.”

“Twenty- nine?

What got hijacked, some idle rich guy’s yacht?” Which didn’t make it any less dire. Rather, it changed the potential complexion of the case. Mass hijackings of tourists probably had strictly financial or political motives. Hijacking something like a yacht might be about those things, too, but was also more likely to be personal. “No, it’s the brand new lux-liner, the Perihelion Starbow. I’m sending the data now.”

I blinked at the schematics in surprise. She was a big ship, class 19.

Just a glimpse at her stacked deck plans and stats showed she was configured to carry up to 1,000 passengers. I shook my head. I also noticed that her construction completion date was just a few weeks ago, and that her flight certification record number was Pending. “So she was on her maiden shakedown cruise,” I said as the pieces came together. “Odd target—a mostly empty liner,” Perry said. “Though I suppose she’s a big enough investment for her owners that they’d pay to get her back.”

Alic, though, shook his head. “No, it’s much stupider than that. Thanks to a rather nifty anti-hijacking device, when the ship went into security mode, it started sending burst transmissions of onboard data—security imager feeds, flight performance, that sort of thing. It squirts them back to the owners every fifteen minutes. The transponder sends out a ping every five seconds so the transmission is hidden underneath one of those. Anyway, from it we’ve learned that the hijackers are a gang of Yonnox, at least fifteen of them but no more than twenty. And the reason they seized the Perihelion Starbow while she was empty was because they got their dates wrong.”

“How so?” I asked. Alic offered a stiff, Eniped shrug. “They used the wrong calendar. The owners of the liner chose to keep ship time on the Tau Ceti Prime calendar, since that was their primary market for customers, and just convert on the

fly to the standard calendar. The hijackers were working off the standard calendar to begin with. Turns out there was enough of a discrepancy that the hijackers acted while she was on her flight certification cruise, not a paying run with passengers.”

“It’s Ulm all over again,” Perry said. Alic nodded. “Indeed.”

I looked from one to the other. “Sorry?

I know Ulm’s a city in Bavaria, but that’s it—”

“There’s a popular legend—probably apocryphal—that Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrian army at the Battle of Ulm in 1805 because Austria’s allies, the Russians, were using a different calendar. The Austrians were using the more modern Gregorian calendar, while the Russians were still using the older Julian calendar, and there’s a difference of thirteen Earth days between them,” Alic said. I frowned at him. “You know Earth history better than I do.”

“Only military history. I’ve made it my practice to study the military history of all of the major races of known space. Anyway, Van, that’s the situation at the Eye of Eternity. It’s just the sort of, as I said, delicate situation that would be beneficially overseen by a Master. And since you’re already in the field—”

I nodded. “Send Perry everything you can on—well, everything. All the telemetry from the liner, everything we can glean about these Yonnox from our own files, all of it. Meantime, we’ll get underway. Oh, I’m going to have to call in some other Peacemakers—”

“Van, you’re a Master. Call in whomever you feel you need to.”

I smiled. “Excellent. Then by all means, let’s call some friends.”

LUNZY AND JAMBERAC were still working a case together and happened to be galactically down enough to put them a reasonable flight distance from the Eye of Eternity. I also brought in Lucky and a newer Peacemaker I didn’t really know, a Yonnox named Cristhix. I hesitated a little at that. Yonnox were often stereotyped as sketchy, but I’d met enough good, honest Yonnox to know it wasn’t as simple as that. Yonnox had a cultural slant toward the ends justifying the means, probably because they were a race that had struggled hard in their past, clawing their way up the technological and social advancement ladder through hard work and pragmatism. That willingness to do whatever it took to succeed most obviously expressed itself as a fairly casual relationship with the law, but that was far from prevalent. Rather, I was concerned with a bit of pragmatism myself. We were targeting Yonnox hijackers, and Cristhix was a Yonnox, so there was potential for target confusion. But Cristhix was adamant. “Master Tudor, I would like nothing more than to be involved in taking down a criminal gang of my people. They make us look bad. And I trust the rest of you to not be trigger-happy enough to just gun me down.”

I smiled. “Welcome aboard, Cristhix. We’ll see you at the Eye.”

I briefed the crew en route. Perry gave a rundown of the perpetrators the Guild had been able to identify based on the covert telemetry from the Perihelion Starbow. “Almost all of them have murder charges. Three are implicated in Crimes Against Order, two of those being persons of interest in our own investigation into the ID-theft scheme. One of them even has—get this—an outstanding charge of regicide,” Perry said. Torina raised both eyebrows at that. “Regicide?

That’s… somehow impressive, even a little cool, while still being murder.”

I nodded. “Kind of like how sophisticated burglars stealing works of art and unique gems and things is kind of cool, but they’re still breaking the law. What king or queen did he kill?”

“It was actually a trio of Trinox nobles acting as regents until their charge reached maturity and assumed the throne, as it were. This was forty years ago, though, and the charge was actually laid by Candler.”

“Candler?

How the hell did a piece of sapient office equipment lay a charge, much less a charge of regicide?”

“Not sure, and I intend to ask Candler at the next opportunity. There’s gotta be a hell of a story there.”

“So, ah, we might be about to solve a four-decades old case of regicide?

This job never gets old, does it?” Rab asked. “In conclusion, they’re all bad guys, some are very bad guys, and one is a very interesting bad guy. So it’d be a shame if some of them get, uh, offed

while resisting lawful authority, wouldn’t it?” Icky asked. As she spoke, she flexed her big arms, as though gripping her hammer. I held up a hand. “I am not condoning unjustified use of lethal force. We’ll play this by the book, so standard rules of engagement apply. That said, though”—I leaned a little closer to my crew—“use whatever force you do deem necessary to protect yourself, one another, and the hostages.”

Icky grinned and changed her voice. “I’m Van Tudor, and I was polishing my new badge and talking about my feelings with my crew and then things happened so fast, bang, bang, pew-pew, dead cornstalks all over the place.”

“Icky, you do a terrible impression of me.”

Perry nodded. “Right?

Rich Little’s got nothing to worry about.”

IT WASN’T GOING to be possible for us to sneak up on the Perihelion Starbow—four Peacemaker ships would be obvious to anyone just looking out the viewports, what with having to burn our drives to match velocity with the liner. Kilometers-long plumes of incandescent plasma are hard to miss. On the upside, though, the liner had gone into security lockdown, meaning the hijackers had limited access to her systems. They had to rely on their own ship’s scanners for actual scans, and it had a critical blind spot. Since it was latched to the liner’s hull, the imposing metallic bulk of the Perihelion Starbow blinded her scanners to a huge swath of space beyond it. When we arrived, we noticed that the hijackers had apparently tried to compensate for this by inducing a roll in the liner, so that blind spot would be constantly moving. But Netty-P did a quick analysis and came back with an encouraging conclusion. “Because the docking clamps have a limit to the shear stress they can accommodate, the roll is pretty slow. She’s rolling through about one hundred and eighty degrees per standard minute, so a full circle every two. If someone could maneuver to stay in that shadow, the hijackers wouldn’t be able to detect them.”

“No, but they just have to look out the windows on that side to make sure no ships are sneaking up on them,” Funboy said. “A ship?

No, of course not. But dismounted personnel free-flying?

A b-suited figure moving using only a maneuvering unit will be almost impossible to pick out visually. Thermal might be a problem, of course, if they’ve got it.”

I nodded. “And we should assume they have. So if we had a way to cut down our thermal signature, we’d be virtually invisible to them.”

“We can adjust our b-suits’ thermal controls to retain heat,” Torina suggested. Funboy, though, shook his head. “We would rapidly overheat, and would soon begin radiating infrared wavelengths of energy regardless. The b-suit has no capacity to store heat.”

But Icky sat up. “No, but I think we could give it one.” She stood. “Gimme a few minutes, I want to look at some things,” she said, then turned and left. “Okay, while she’s doing that, Netty-P, let’s get Lunzy and the others on the comm so we can start strategizing.”

She acknowledged and got on it. As she did, Gabby spoke up. “I wonder why, if these hijackers screwed up and seized an empty liner, they didn’t give up and fly away?

It suggests that whatever they’re after doesn’t involve taking lots of hostages. So… the ship must have been their target. And that suggests this is about the owners of the ship, or the crew.”

I inclined my head to Gabby, smiling. “Well, once we’ve got them locked in irons, we can ask them. Pointedly.”

CLEARING the big liner was going to be a pain. It was divided into literally hundreds of staterooms, lounges, restaurants, recreation areas, machine spaces, and crew quarters—in other words, it was a veritable warren of compartments ranging from very big to very small. We decided the only way to enter it was from multiple locations. We had four ships plus the Frankie available, so we could effect five entries. But I wanted to keep at least one ship—either the Fafnir or Lunzy’s Foregone Conclusion, which were the most capable—unengaged, to make sure this wasn’t some elaborate setup. The last thing we wanted was to get bogged down in

clearing the Perihelion Starbow and suddenly have a bunch more bad guys show up at the party. But just charging in from multiple directions wasn’t going to work, either. It risked spooking the hijackers into doing something stupid, like harming the crew they held as hostages. We needed a way of engaging them by surprise and distracting them while the other Peacemakers raced in to board. And that was where Icky came in. She pointed at a small device the size of a one gallon paint can. I recognized it—I thought. I’d seen it somewhere before, anyway—

“What is it?” Torina asked. “This is the chill can from the refrigerated evidence lockup in the back. In case the lockup loses power, this is a backup. It’s basically a super-efficient heat sink. We can rig it up to a b-suit set to maximum thermal capture and have all the wearer’s body heat dumped into it. If we chill it right down ahead of time, it should be good for, oh… twenty minutes, maybe, before it starts to glow in infrared,” Icky explained. I gave it an impressed look. “Huh. Very clever, big girl. How many of these can we rig up?”

“You’re looking at it. One. That’s all the lockup has installed.”

“So only one person can use it, which means only one person can cross to the liner and breach it.”

Funboy stepped forward, hands out in apology. “I would recommend that it be a human. My species, as well as P’nosk and Wu’tzur, all produce considerably more body heat than humans.” He blinked around at us. “Yes, I said it. I am hot.”

Gabby, though, spoke up. “Not quite true. My people produce very little body heat. We’re built that way.”

Funboy gave her a grave look. “While true, I didn’t consider you a viable candidate to effect an initial breach into a ship held by hostiles. You are… a delicate flower.”

Torina smirked. Icky rolled her eyes. But Gabby stayed surprisingly firm. “I’d like to be part of this, if I can. I think I can contribute more to this crew than just ideas and ship’s biscuits.”

“They are really good biscuits,” Rab said. Gabby turned to me. “Van, I’m a Peacemaker Auxiliary, like everyone else. I’ve been practicing shooting using a simulator and—well, I think I’m pretty good.”

I crossed my arms. “Gabby, not every Peacemaker does frontline work. The jobs in the rear are just as important—sometimes even more—”

“I don’t care, Van!

I want a chance to prove myself.”

I looked around at the others. I saw unease, a little skepticism—but it was hard to argue. Everyone, myself included, had to go through their first hot mission. Perry, though, spoke up in Gabby’s defense. “She does have the advantage of being pretty cool—thermally, although I think Gabby is pretty cool as well. And she’s almost indestructible.”

After another pause, further support came from the person I considered least likely to offer it—Funboy. “While it gives me considerable unease, if Gabby believes this is the right thing for her to do, then I am fully supportive of it.”

Torina and Icky both gave him an impressed look. “Funboy, that is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Torina said. Icky nodded enthusiastic agreement. I shrugged. “Okay, then. Gabby, you’re coming with me to breach that ship and—”

“Wait a minute,” Torina said, her tone hard. I turned to her, puzzled. “Excuse me, Master Tudor, but do you really think it’s your place to take the lead in potentially dangerous missions like this?

You have people for that.”

“She’s got a point,” Rab said, and both Icky and Funboy nodded. I turned to Perry. “What would be the Guild’s position on this?”

“That you can do whatever you want. Some Masters have led the way by being tactical, while others have stayed back to strategize and focus on the big picture. And some have stayed back to—I don’t know, straighten paper clips and look pretty.”

Torina shot him a glare. “Thanks, bird,” she snapped. But he shrugged his wings. “Sorry, Torina, but Masters are still Peacemakers. Remember Gerhardt?

He was on the front line more than a few times while a Master.”

“Yeah. And it got him killed.”

I shook my head. “Torina, I didn’t become a Master to stay away from the bad guys. That was more Yotov’s or Kharsweil’s style. But I am mindful of what you’re saying here, so how about this. I’ll make the breach and

create the distraction, but then I’ll hunker down with Gabby and Perry and let everyone else board and clear the ship.”

“On one condition,” she shot back. I gave her a lopsided smile, thinking—but definitely not saying—that my subordinate was bargaining with me over orders. That subordinate was, however, also my wife. “What’s that?” I asked her. “That, after this, your first choice is to send the rest of us in first unless there are really good reasons not to. And when I say really good reasons, I mean really good.”

My instinct was to say, I can’t promise that—but I knew better. For one, she really did have a point. I was a Master now, so taking point in gunfights really shouldn’t be my focus. Besides, all of these people were at least as good at the gunfight and melee stuff as I was. So I nodded, then offered a further concession. “You know what?

The only reason I’m going is because we humans just aren’t as hot as the others—”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Van. I still think you’re kinda cute,” Icky said, grinning. We laughed. “And, yes, I could send you, but—” I glanced at Gabby. “Like Gabby here, I kinda need to do this. It might be the very last time I do before settling into the rear-area, big-picture thing, so I’d like to have it on my Master’s resume.”

Rab nodded. “A boarding action as a new Master is a good way to keep your cred up among the other Peacemakers. It kind of shows the Guild that you’re not just going to slump into luxurious semi-retirement in the Keel.”

I offered him a grateful nod. “Exactly.”

Torina sighed. “Fine. But if you get yourself killed, Master Tudor, then don’t blame me if I bring a date to your funeral—so there.”

6

WHILE LUNZY dutifully broadcast offers to negotiate to the hijackers, our little flotilla assumed positions around the Perihelion Starbow. Torina positioned the Fafnir so that her main airlock was facing away from the liner, then I cycled it open and crawled outside. Moving hand-to-hand along stanchions and other things protruding from the hull, I positioned myself so I could see the liner. She was a pretty majestic sight, sleek and new and slowly rolling along her long axis with ponderous grace. Backdropped with the jaw-dropping view of the Eye of Eternity, I thought it would make one hell of a desktop wallpaper. Inspired by that, I used my b-suit’s imager to take a high-res image of the scene for that very purpose. Perry appeared to my left with deft puffs of thrusters. Gabby clambered into place on my right. We were joined by comm cables, fine filaments that could spool out to fifty meters. They allowed us to talk without broadcasting any emissions. Gabby and I had maneuvering units, small thruster packs. I’d also switched my b-suit to full thermal retention, so my body heat was now being dumped into the chill can Icky had jury-rigged onto my back. She’d further cooled it with liquid helium from the ship’s engineering store, so it had a pretty good thermal capacity. Icky figured I had about twenty minutes until it reached my body temperature, then my body heat would start warming the b-suit and I’d start glowing in infrared. “Okay, Perry, say when,” I said. I was keenly aware the clock was ticking on my thermal situation here. He was watching the liner intently. “In twenty seconds, you guys push away from the Fafnir, straight up relative to your current orientation. After that, follow my instructions on using your maneuvering units. All clear?”

“Clear,” I said. “Yup,” was Gabby’s reply, although it was taut with nervous excitement. We were going to rely on Perry’s instructions to guide us to the Perihelion Starbow while keeping us in the scanner shadow of the big ship. I switched the comm briefly to the general channel and heard Lunzy—

“—please respond. We’re at an impasse here until you tell us what your demands are—”

I switched back. Clearly, the hijackers weren’t talking. That raised my hackles a little. What the hell was their endgame here?

“Go,” Perry said. I pushed off, Gabby a half-second or so after me. We rose straight up from the Fafnir’s hull. Five seconds passed, then Perry spoke again. “Okay, thrust directly up for three seconds, then directly backward for five.”

We moved the maneuvering units into position and triggered them. We’d gone over this in detail before leaving the airlock. Gabby and I massed about the same, and the units provided about the same thrust, so that simplified things—Perry only had to do one set of calculations and issue the same instructions to both of us. We had a fair distance to cover, almost two klicks. The result was a strange experience, a mix of jaw-dropping wonder at the glorious view, tense anxiety that we’d be discovered—in which case we’d be proverbial sitting ducks—and simple tedium. Perry gave periodic instructions, all based on whatever our current orientation was, since terms like “up” and

“down” didn’t mean much otherwise. “Van, thrust up and slightly forward for four seconds. Gabby, thrust directly up for three seconds.”

“Van, thrust directly forward for three seconds, then directly up for two. Gabby—”

He was doing an excellent job of keeping us both closing on the liner while also remaining in that all-important scanner shadow. I periodically checked the general comm channel, but the hijackers still hadn’t responded. Had something terrible happened?

Was everyone on board already dead?

I shook away with the thought and checked my heads-up. Twelve minutes had elapsed, so about eight until my thermal camouflage failed. We’d covered about three-fifths of the distance to the liner. The timing was going to be tight—

“Oh—whoa, whoa—!”

Gabby had managed to start herself spinning. She was about five meters away from me, so I could have thrusted toward her, but instinct honed by what was now quite a bit of exposure to zero-g and vacuum stayed my finger on the maneuvering unit’s trigger. If I tried to grab her, it would just start both of us tumbling. Perry was on it. “Gabby?

Gabby, listen to me—”

“I’m spinning!

Help, help me—!”

Yes, she was spinning, and in the process, slowly wrapping the comm cable around herself. The slack between her and me was starting to disappear. “GABBY, LISTEN TO ME.”

Perry’s voice thundered in my ears like a detonating missile. But it had the desired effect. Gabby cut off what was starting to become a string of panicked, gibbering chatter. “Gabby, this is easy to fix. Look at the way everything’s moving. Can you see that?”

“Y—yes—”

“Now, point your maneuvering unit the other way and gently press the trigger.”

The slack was nearly gone. When it was, my mass would pull on hers, changing her tumble, probably from one axis of rotation to two or three. I gritted my teeth and let Perry do his thing. Which worked. Gabby applied thrust, and her rotation slowed. It seemed to give her a bit of confidence, because she thrusted again, then again, and brought herself to a virtual stop. I let out a breath. As I did, I noticed that my suit temperature had almost reached saturation. The chill canister had absorbed almost all of the excess heat it could without going through a so-called thermal crossover and starting to radiate heat. “I’m sorry, guys,” Gabby said, sounding crestfallen. “Hey, shit happens. You handled it really well, Gabby,” Perry replied. “I’ll second that, but congratulations really have to wait. We need to get moving here,” I said. We got underway again. The bulk of the liner loomed ever closer. Just one hundred meters now, my helmet’s rangefinder was telling me. From our perspective, it still had a very slow roll, but Perry’s instructions ensured we’d stay in its scanner shadow until we reached it. Or, that would have been true if my maneuvering unit hadn’t failed, and failed hard. ABOUT SEVENTY-FIVE METERS OUT, Perry said, “Okay, thrust down for three seconds. That should keep us aligned for the rest of the way to the—Van, what the hell are you doing?”

I’d applied thrust, counted three, then released the trigger—but the unit kept firing. A valve or something had stuck, allowing propellant to keep venting through the thruster. I froze like that, the stupid thing continuing to apply thrust, and, in turn, an unwanted delta- v to me. Then I caught myself, pushed the maneuvering unit away and let go of it, then quickly unsnapped its tether from my harness. But the damage had been done. I was now on a diverging course from the others and would sail right over the Perihelion Starbow and into full view from its opposite side. I wasn’t worried about being lost in space—there were lots of ships that could rescue me—but it would likely spoil our vital element of surprise. My mind raced with possible answers, solutions, anything, but mostly just kept banging into walls made of implacable physics and despair. Worse, my b-suit was now entering a state of thermal crossover so it couldn’t dump heat into the no-longer-chilly chill can. I was beginning to glow in infrared, a steadily brightening beacon of heat for anyone who happened to look—

Something abruptly filled my field of view, I bumped into something, and then something else embraced me in a tight hug. I found myself staring into Gabby’s adorably weird face through two visors and about ten centimeters. “Hey, Van!” she said brightly. At the same time, I felt an acceleration now slowing my deviation from our intended course, then gradually restoring it. Gabby hugged me tight, her maneuvering unit clutched behind my back and firing to correct our trajectory. I couldn’t resist a goofy grin. “Hey, Gabby—Perry, that was good work

—”

“Hey, don’t thank me. Credit where due. Gabby reacted and did her thing without me.”

I blinked into Gabby’s big, staring eyes. “Oh, well done, Gabby.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do, you know?”

“Wow, I gotta record this for Funboy and Torina—you two making out in the middle of space, in the middle of an op,” Perry said. Gabby laughed. “Hey, I could do worse than Van!

Torina’s a lucky gal!”

I kept grinning back. “Right now, Gabby, I could kiss you—if, uh, you

—you know, actually kiss—”

“Never tried it. It’s on my list, though!”

“In other, more sobering news, that one maneuvering unit is now moving twice as much mass. It’s going to be tight, whether it’s got enough propellant to stop you in time,” Perry said. My grin faded. It wouldn’t help at all if, after this, we just smacked into the flank of the Perihelion Starbow and bounced back into space. Perry only had enough thrust available to move his own mass. He couldn’t even begin to make a difference in our trajectory. Twenty meters to go. I saw an airlock about five meters away from where we were going to hit. So close. I had Gabby transfer the maneuvering unit to me, and at about ten meters out, I pressed the trigger and held it down. We slowed. Five meters. We slowed some more. Three meters. Two meters. One—

The maneuvering unit cut out, its propellant exhausted. At the same time, we came to a complete stop about thirty centimeters from the vast hull of the Perihelion Starbow. I reached out, grabbed a stanchion, and pulled us in. “Wow, that was perfect,” Perry said. Gabby grinned. “I planned it that way all along.”

As we disengaged, I flashed her a smile. “You did, huh?”

“Funboy told me that whenever things worked out, no matter how stupid or awkward they were along the way, to say it was the plan all along.”

Perry appeared beside us, puffing to a stop. “Sourpuss ain’t wrong.”

SHIPS like the Perihelion Starbow were well-supplied with stanchions on their exteriors, so that maintenance and repair crews could quickly and easily move around and do their job. The big liner would only make money when she was flying, so anything that could reduce her time in dock was money earned. They also made it easy for us to reach the airlock. It was my preferred means of entry, because I really didn’t want to decompress the ship—not with hostages on board. We had to get the airlock to cycle, though, and its controls were locked out. “There’s a standard data port, Van. Plug me in,” Perry said. I unspooled the data cable from its storage compartment in his chest. While I did that and plugged him in, Gabby unwound the comm cable. It had managed to wrap around not just her, but also around the both of us a couple times. I kept my focus on Perry. “Well?”

“I’ve good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?”

“This ship has a good security system, the best available on the civilian market. It’s not good enough, though. I can not only cycle the lock, but I can also access pretty much the entire security system ship-wide.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“They’re out of all-you-can-eat sushi on the Lido Deck.”

“Bird—!”

“Sorry, just trying to ease the tension. I mean, I’m about to open this airlock, and you and Gabby are about to enter a potentially hostile environment. On that note, though—if you want me to keep control of the security system, I kinda need to stay here. If I unplug, the system’s going to trigger an intrusion alert I’m currently keeping under wraps. And before

you ask if I can access the system without the cable, the answer is…

probably. With the cable, though, definitely—”

“That’s fine, bird. You’ve already earned your paycheck this week.” I glanced at Gabby. “And you’ve earned yours for the month. That was good work, Gabs, for someone who’s brand new to zero-g.”

“Thanks, Van!

That means a lot!” she said gleefully, cradling a boarding shotgun. “Okay. Perry, open the outer door, cycle the lock, and open the inner one as soon as you can. Go.”

The outer door slid smoothly open. I led the way into the lock, Gabby right behind me. “You kids have fun now,” Perry said, sealing the outer door behind us. The lock began to pressurize. I checked The Drop, made sure it was tethered to my harness by its lanyard and cocked, and that it had its safety on. I unclipped the fastener on the Moonsword, then I turned to Gabby. “Gabs—shoot if you have to. But don’t be trigger-happy. I’d like to get as close to the hostages as we can before we become a distraction.”

“Do you really think they’ll have all the hostages in one place?”

“I’m hoping Perry can tell us that.” We’d switched to our suit comms and were running them at low power, enough that our signals shouldn’t spread more than a few meters through the ship’s internal structure. “Working on it. I’ve got three Yonnox in engineering—and since the crew roster Alic sent didn’t have any Yonnox on it, I assume they’re bad guys. Three more on the bridge. And—there we go. Based on the camera feed, most of the hostages are being held in what’s gotta be the grand ballroom or whatever, with three more Yonnox covering them.”

“So that’s nine. Okay. Perry, what are the odds they can tell you’re fiddling with the ship’s security system?”

“As long as I stay passive like this, we should be good. If you ask me to do anything active, though, my cover’s probably gonna be blown—and you’re pressurized. Ready?”

I raised The Drop at the inner door. Gabby, behind and to my right, readied her shotgun. “Go.”

The door slid open, revealing two Yonnox standing on either side of what I recognized as a portable anti-ship missile launcher, setting it up. They stared at us, we stared at them—and then all hell broke loose. I LET GO of The Drop, then caught and swept out the Moonsword, all while charging. The two Yonnox had laid their weapons aside and now frantically scrabbled for them. I caught my guy just as his grip closed on it, and I swept the blade down in an overhead strike. It cut him in half. Part of me railed a little at that. It was a legitimate kill—reaching for a weapon was a manifestly hostile act under the law, and I doubted any warning would have stopped the Yonnox from trying. Still, it felt a little bit like cold-blooded killing—

I wasn’t going to lose sleep over it, though. Don’t wanna be bisected by an otherworldly blade?

Simple, don’t hijack a spaceliner. I snapped my attention to the other Yonnox, careful to not let the blade hit anything as I did since it was still chipped. Linulla had said that things like flesh and bone wouldn’t harm it, but hit something too stubborn and the blade might snap. The other Yonnox had caught himself in mid-reach, then changed course and yanked out a nasty, broad-bladed knife. He lunged past me, and in one blow, buried it to the hilt in Gabby’s chest with a triumphant hiss. She glanced down at it, then back up at him and said, “Rude.” Then she grabbed him in a bear hug and squeezed. Gabby doesn’t have a skeleton, internal, exo, or otherwise. She maintained her form, as I understood, through a complex form of fluid dynamics—parts of her body would become more or less liquid, effectively acting like an intricately coordinated series of hydraulic pistons and cylinders. It let her remain upright and move around. It also let her do, it seemed, what she was doing right now—subjecting the Yonnox to a hydraulic press. She squeezed, and he… squashed. He was wearing an armored breastplate, something made of tough composite, and while it held for a bit, it eventually failed, cracked, and splintered apart. She finally released the—well, what was left of the Yonnox, which was basically a pulpy mass of gore with Yonnox-shaped bits on either end. I stood slack-jawed. Those same pudgy arms had been embracing me just a few moments ago. “Gabby—holy—holy shit!”

She looked at me, her tone crestfallen. “I’m sorry, Van, I just thought—”

“No, no—don’t apologize!

That was—wow.”

“So I did okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. Yes, you did just fine.”

As an afterthought, she pulled the knife from her chest. “Should we keep this?’

I had to smile. To chuckle. To laugh. “Up to you, Gabs. A souvenir, if you want.”

“Nice!

I wanted to grab something for Funboy while I was here—oh. Oh!

Do you think they have a gift shop somewhere aboard this thing?”

SOMETIMES, ops go disastrously wrong. Sometimes, they work out, but only in a nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat kind of way that keeps you guessing until the last second. And sometimes, everything just clicks into place. I disarmed the anti-ship launcher by pulling and cutting—slowly and gently

—the control unit in half with the Moonsword. Then, with Perry using the ship’s security system to guide us, we were able to thread our way through the ship, along luxurious, carpeted corridors, toward the grand ballroom, where the hostages were being held. I decided to take advantage of the fact that things were working so well—for the moment, anyway—and would try to secure the hostages before triggering a general boarding by our waiting allies. “Okay, Van, the corridor ahead of you opens into a large space. That’s the entrance foyer for the casino— best-paying slots in the galactic arm, my ass—but you want to cross that and keep going. There are two bad guys one deck below you, so if you cross fast and they come up to your level, you’ll be past their sight-line.”

“Got it,” I replied, then Gabby and I hurried across the foyer. I glanced into the casino as we passed it, a cavernous space full of tables and machines designed to part preferably tipsy passengers from their money. We reached the corridor on the other side and kept going. “Okay, to your right there’s going to be stairs and an elevator. You want to go up one level, then forward again. That’s going to take you straight to the ballroom,” Perry said. We made our careful way along one of the paths Perry indicated. We reached the entrance to the ballroom, another cavernous space spanning three decks, but I stopped short. “Perry, can you send me the imagery from inside there?’

A view of the ballroom popped into my heads-up. I saw the hostages, all sitting along one wall of the big space. The two Yonnox watching them paced nervously back and forth. They looked twitchy, which meant they were probably ready on their triggers. “Perry, no sign that they’ve detected us yet?”

“Nope. See, the ones on the bridge watching the security system are seeing everything as being just fine. I’m even looping the feed of the two you killed from earlier imagery in different ways, trying to make it look like

—uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Well, it was a good idea while it lasted. It looks like one of the bridge Yonnox has noticed something funny about the feed—yeah, he’s calling the others over. They probably just realized their buddies at the airlock are behaving strangely—”

“That’s it. Perry, send the go signal to everyone else. Get them in here as fast as possible. Gabby—we’re going. Go ahead and shoot, but watch out for—”

“The hostages?

You bet.”

“Okay.” I took a breath and lifted The Drop. “Let’s go.”

We raced forward, into the grand ballroom of the Perihelion Starbow. I WASN’T GOING to screw around with the hostages’ well-being. As soon as we entered the ballroom, I was already lining up a shot on one on the Yonnox. As I did, I shouted, “Gabby, take the one on the left!” so we didn’t end up shooting the same guy. The Drop boomed. Boomed again as soon as the gun fell back into its sight picture. Two slugs slammed into the Yonnox, dropping him. A second later, Gabby’s shotgun thundered. A blast of flechettes tore into the other Yonnox, shredding him—and passing over the heads of the stunned hostages by about a meter. Some of the wicked, needle-like projectiles actually embedded themselves in the decorative paneling covering the bulkhead. Others bounced off and clattered onto the deck around the captives. I spoke through my suit speaker. “I’m Master Van Tudor of the Peacemaker Guild. I want all of you to move behind that bar over there and lie down. We’ve got people on the way, but the bad guys might get here first.”

Some of them started moving right away. Others dithered. I switched back to my suit comm. “Gabby, watch them.”

“Why?

They’re not the bad guys—”

“No, but the bad guys might have accomplices among them.”

“Oh yeah—good point.”

We herded the hostages behind cover, then I took up a fire position behind a structural column, the stoutest cover I could find. As I did, I scanned our surroundings. The ballroom was huge. Three decks high, with a gallery around it one deck up, about a dozen entrances—

And to cover it, we had The Drop and a boarding shotgun, both pretty short-ranged weapons. I was kind of wishing I’d brought a slug rifle or something—

A shot slammed into the deck behind me. It came from one level above. I saw a Yonnox up there, sheltering inside a doorway. More appeared forward, on our level. They started shooting, too, their thin limbs jerking about in spasmodic response to the weapons. I snorted in disgust. “Right about now, the smart ones will start to work out something we call ‘cause and effect.’”

Gabby grunted. “I have my doubts. Sorry”

“About cause and effect?”

She shook her head. “No. About there being any smart Yonnox over there.”

“Dang, girl. You’ve gotten salty.”

Her smile was weird but brilliant. “I am kinda high in sodium. Helps me to not freeze. Or die.”

“Um, right. Okay, back to the brawl then.”

It was a lopsided firefight. They poured fire in, well aware that regaining control of the hostages was their only hope of having any sort of bargaining chip. Slugs slammed into the bar, the structural column, the deck around me, and the wall behind me. Gabby sheltered behind the bar and occasionally fired unaimed shots from her shotgun in the general direction of the bad guys. I tried to take aimed shots with The Drop, but I was hit twice—once in the forearm, which my spiffy vambrace deflected, but another in my right thigh that stung like a whole hive of wasps. I changed mags and resumed firing. After this mag, I had only one, a total of about eighteen shots or so. All I could do was fire more, in an attempt to keep the Yonnox shooting back rather than just charging and trying to overwhelm us. Gabby was hit, a through and through in the leg that made her curse in a most un-Gabby-like way. She had no truly vital spots in her body aside from her head, but the rounds did deliver some hydrostatic shock to her amorphous substance and blew out blobs of the stuff. The damage would pile up. I took another hit to my right shoulder in the meantime, which did penetrate but didn’t blast right through. I switched The Drop to my left hand and started firing my last magazine. I switched to a general comm. “Someone out there please tell me you’re

—”

With a keening howl, Icky barreled in through the far end of the ballroom, her hammer a blur. I saw Jamberac and Lunzy appear on the level above, snapping out shots from slug carbines like twin metronomes. Cristhix, the new Peacemaker, appeared through the door Gabby and I had entered. He’d strapped on an IFF beacon normally used to mark things like friendly held entries to target ships and installations, a clever way of making sure he didn’t get mistaken for one of the Yonnox bad guys. He immediately added the weight of his shooting to the battle. The firefight raged on for a moment, the ballroom echoing with gunfire, slugs snapping and ricocheting around, Icky bellowing and slamming her hammer back and forth. And then, as though on cue, it died. A smattering of desultory shots rang out, then silence. I looked at The Drop. At some point, its action had locked open on an empty magazine, my last. I was entirely out of ammo. I sighed and slumped, the pain kept at bay by adrenaline coursing through my body. Funboy appeared, carrying his medical bag. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, hurrying toward me—

And then right past me, to Gabby, without a sidelong glance. “I’m here, my love. Are you injured?” he said to her. I sat back against the column and blew out a long breath. “Yeah, that’s fine. No problem. I’ll just quietly sit here and bleed until—

shit—until you’ve got the—the time. Don’t want to— damn it!—impose.”

7

IT TURNED out I was the only one with any really notable injuries on our side. Gabby had taken a few good hits and suffered some internal damage, but it was apparently in her anatomical nature to just kind of ignore it. I was starting to wonder if she really was indestructible, outside of something that would actually vaporize or otherwise do some sort of catastrophic, wholesale damage to her. I was glad her people were apparently not given to violent pursuits, because facing an army of Gabbys would be kind of terrifying. All I had to do was think back to how she’d casually squashed the Yonnox like a car in a scrapyard crusher and—hell, even facing one of her wouldn’t be a lot of fun. And that didn’t even touch on the psychological impact of having to deal with unrelentingly upbeat, effusively chatty bad guys. I was very glad she was on our side. Lunzy showed up with a crack right across her visor. She gave it a rueful look as she hung her helmet off her armor. “I’ve had this helmet since I was just an Acolyte,” she said. “You can just replace the visor, you know,” Torina offered, looking up from my shoulder wound. “Yeah, but then I’d lose the badass war-story value of having it sit on the mantle in the Foregone Conclusion.”

Funboy, who’d been tending to me, sat back on his haunches and looked grave. In anyone else, that would worry me. But this was Funboy. “You’ll be fine. Your shoulder wound nearly resulted in major arterial damage but didn’t. Keeping it sealed with first aid foam and avoiding strenuous use of your shoulder for a couple of days should be sufficient therapy,” he intoned. “So I’m fine then?”

He blinked at me. “None of us are fine, Van. We all live constantly in varying states of mental and emotional distress—”

Torina ushered him away. “Now now, Funboy, you’re getting doom and gloom all over the place. Go check on Gabby.”

“Ah, yes. Perhaps she needs more of my care,” he said and ambled off. Icky appeared, grinning. “As soon as we took control of the hostages, one of them asked me if I was a good guy or another bad guy. I got a compliment!”

“That’s a compliment?” I said, levering myself to my feet. “Well, yeah. It means I look dangerous.”

“Seven feet tall, massing about the same as a small car, four arms, two of them the size of sewer pipes, and you’re just now realizing you look dangerous?”

She shrugged. “Being married was starting to make me feel all soft and feminine.”

Perry, standing on the bar nearby, barked out a laugh—which he pretended to turn into a prolonged bit of glaring when Icky whirled on him. “Sorry, got some data stuck in my voice processor,” he said. She hefted her hammer. “Let me help fix that for you.”

“Kids, don’t fight. It’s been a good day—” I stopped as another figure strode into the bar, someone that hadn’t been part of our little hastily formed flotilla. I stared for a moment, blinking in surprise. “Mom?

What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood—on my way back to Earth, in fact, and caught your call for Peacemaker assistance.” She looked around. “Guess we were late to the party.”

“On your way to Earth?

Via here?

That’s like traveling from New York to Boston and saying Rome is on the way.”

She gave me a thin smile. “It’s on the way from where I was. I might have people watching over Earth, Van, but it doesn’t mean I’m always going to be one of them. I’ve got things to do. Anyway, I gather you pulled

off a nearly flawless hostage rescue, and on your very first op as a Master, to boot. Well done!”

Her congratulations seemed genuine—and all the more gratifying as a result. I guess being happy about pleasing our mothers, making them proud, is kind of baked into the DNA. I shrugged—and immediately regretted it, as pain popped like a flashbulb in my shoulder. “Now what did I tell you, Van, about exerting that shoulder?” Funboy said from nearby. “I didn’t realize—shit shit shit—that shrugging counts as exertion.” I turned my focus back to my mother. “Anyway, yeah, things went pretty smoothly. No hostages lost, minimal damage to the Perihelion Starbow, and eleven of the original hijackers in custody. I’d call that a good day.”

“Well, let me make it even better. I can take these scumbags back to Anvil Dark for you. I’ll deliver them and their full confessions.”

I gave her an uneasy frown. “I appreciate the offer, Mom, but I’d like to keep the suspects I took into custody, you know, alive—”

“Oh, they’ll arrive alive. Remember, as a member of the GKU, I hold the title of Peacemaker Auxiliary default. And transporting prisoners is well within the remit of an Auxiliary.”

Perry nodded. “She’s right, Van. It’s up to you but, well, sending them along with her might not be a bad idea—particularly since Jamberac watching the prisoners over there just mentioned it to them as a possibility, and they are not thrilled with the idea, trust me.”

I glanced at the prisoners sitting against the bulkhead on the opposite side of the big ballroom, where Jamberac, Cristhix, and Rab kept careful watch over them. They were at least twenty meters away, but this was Perry we were talking about. “That black GKU uniform does kind of exude an aura of simmering menace, doesn’t it?” Torina said. “I mean, I find it a little intimidating, and I’m not even one of the ones wearing shackles.”

I shrugged—or would have, but caught myself in time—and we wandered over to the prisoners. I introduced my mother to them, referring to her only as Peacemaker Sinclair, and informed them she would be transporting them back to Anvil Dark for processing and arraignment. They immediately began to protest, but Jamberac shut them up by leveling his slug carbine at them. “Remember our little chat about speaking without being invited to?” he said, his voice hard and flat. Jamberac came from a family of criminals, a sinister legacy he’d worked hard to overcome. It showed in his lack of patience toward other criminals. Realizing the pointed gun wasn’t just for show but a genuine threat, they subsided. My mother grinned. “Oh, now, we’re going to have fun, you and me. We’re going to talk and talk—and I’m naturally good at making people talk. It’s because I’m so damned friendly,” she said, her eyes glittering. I nodded. “So, Peacemaker Sinclair, let us know what you find out?

You know, motivation, networks—”

“The sound they make when you show them how friendly you are,”

Perry added, helpful as ever. One of the Yonnox dared the menacing loom of Jamberac and his weapon. “You can’t do this!

We have rights—!”

My mother nodded. “You do. And they’ll be respected. Trust me,” she purred. Her grin was a rictus. I waved to them. “Cheers, friends. See you at trial.”

“If there is one,” Lunzy muttered. Perry glanced at her. “Put some bonds on it?’

“What odds will you give me?”

Rab watched them shuffling sullenly away under the icy stares of my mother’s black-clad GKU associates. “Something tells me all those twigs are about to confess.”

DAMAGE to the Perihelion Starbow had been minor, with none that affected her flight performance. Her owners, however, proved to be thoughtful employers and told us they were sending out a replacement crew, so her current one didn’t have to fly the ship back to her home port. Instead, they were told to just relax, take time to recover, and keep the ship operating while they waited for the incoming crew. At least, they proved to be thoughtful employers to an outside observer. Privately, I knew that their true concern was that one or more of the current crew might have been collaborating with the hijackers. For the same reason, their representative, with whom I spoke on a terse comm call aboard the

Fafnir, asked if we could maintain a presence aboard the liner in the meantime. “It’s not that we don’t trust our people—”

“Yes, it is. You just said as much,” I noted, smiling. The prim, officious Trinox speaking paused, then nodded. “That is true. Alright, we don’t trust them, and with good reason. The Perihelion Starbow is a nearly one billion bond investment for this firm. She was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system that should have prevented something like this from happening.”

Perry, who was with me, nodded. “It is a damned good system. I was able to break into it, but that’s kind of what I do. It would have taken hacking chops of my caliber or more—something military grade, probably

—to bust in otherwise.”

I sat back. “Or, they were able to take advantage of the weakest link in every security system—the people who have access to it,” I said. While I’d never compare with Perry or Netty-P when it came to hacking the sorts of systems that existed across known space—they could do in seconds what would take me many, many hours—I knew the score. I’d probably gained access to as many systems back on Earth through people with legitimate access who’d been compromised as I had by actually cracking into them. The human interface was always the weakest link. It could be bribed, threatened, or blackmailed in a way that microprocessors couldn’t. “Master Tudor, I am going to send you complete personnel data of all of the present crew, to assist in your investigation. You also have our leave to question them as you see fit. Finally, we would be most appreciative if you could ensure that you have people watching over key ship’s systems—

particularly engineering and flight controls.”

“Already on it. Perry here is going to stay plugged in and watch every ship function like a hawk.”

“We appreciate it. And to that end, I have been authorized to transfer one hundred thousand bonds to whatever account you name as a bounty.”

I smiled. Calling it a bounty lent it an air of legitimacy, since bounties were legitimate things under the law. It was the any account you name that made me smile. The Guild’s rules required that Peacemakers declare all income received during the course of an investigation, to keep everything above board. An unscrupulous Peacemaker, though, could try to maneuver

funds into hidden accounts without declaring them. These people were offering to make such maneuvering very simple. “Perry here will send you the transfer information for my Guild account

—and many thanks, I appreciate it.”

The Trinox stared for a moment. She’d just offered me a way to game the system with under-the-table income, and I’d declined it. That little fact

—that I wasn’t an obviously corrupt Master, at least—was no doubt already being added to the firm’s file on me. We returned to the Perihelion Starbow and informed everyone what was going on. I told the crew, however, that their employer was sending out replacements out of regard for the traumatic episode they’d just endured—

not because they suspected at least some of them as being collaborators. The crew were only too happy to accommodate us, even activating some of the ship’s amenities for my crew to enjoy. Lunzy had to leave, but Jamberac and Cristhix both stayed to help. I took both of them aside and told them they’d done good work. Cristhix was particularly pleased. "This is only my fourth collaborative op, and my first boarding action. I appreciate your vote of confidence, Master Tudor.”

I smiled and nodded but had gotten snagged on that “Master Tudor.” I didn’t think of myself any differently, but it struck me that to Cristhix, brand new to Peacemaking, I must seem like an imposing figure of veteran, almost grizzled authority. I recalled how I’d felt as a brand new Private in the US Army, confronted by instructors with combat experience in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. They’d strode among us newbs like towering demigods. This was probably how they felt—less towering demigod, and more guy only too aware of his own shortcomings and failings and desperate not to screw up and look like an idiot. Yeah, this whole Master thing was going to take some getting used to. As I walked away, Torina fell in at my side. “You realize that Cristhix is going to regale everyone in The Black Hole with the exploits of Master Tudor, taking on a whole shipload of hijackers almost single-handedly—”

I held up a hand. “Let me stop you right there. Gabby was amazing.”

She nodded. “Fair point. Alright, with only one other Peacemaker at his side.” Her smile flicked off. “How about we let that story be the only one of its type, Van?

No more near solo gigs, now that you’re a Master?”

I looked at her. I knew this was about a lot more than just me being a Master and in the line of fire. She wouldn’t come out and say she wanted me to hang back from now on because she didn’t want to lose her husband. That would be seriously unprofessional. But she didn’t have to. I glanced at my wounded shoulder. “You know what?

Believe it or not, I’m not anxious to do that again. As much as I can, I’ll bring up the rear from now on—let the young whippersnappers do the heavy lifting.”

She nodded. We both knew I couldn’t absolutely promise that, but I was determined to stick to it as much as possible. I RETURNED to the Fafnir to clean up some of the after-action report—which was actually not bad, since I’d tagged Jamberac to do most of it and just filled in my own parts. Then I returned to the Perihelion Starbow, because why not. I’d probably never get another chance to enjoy her many amenities, mainly because I was not a “cruise” kind of guy. On her next run out here to the Eye of Eternity, she’d be packed to the gunnels with paying passengers so she’d be crowded and noisy, and a lot of the cruise experience would involve standing in lines. So Torina and I went for a swim in her pool—the one filled with water, not the one filled with liquid methane, or the one filled with a viscous, silicone-based sludge. Those were intended for other races. We’d been fortunate that the Yonnox hijackers were regular air-breathers, obviating the need to clear the parts of the liner given over to other atmospheres. Internal airlocks would have just been more of a pain. When we were done lounging around the pool, we headed off to join the rest of the crew, who’d gathered in the first class dining lounge. The crew had activated the AI staff, so we had free run of the menu. Funboy was looking around the sumptuous lounge with approval. “Not a salad bar in sight,” he said, nodding. I sat down at the table. “Not a fan of salad?”

“No, I enjoy a good, fresh salad. Not only is that not what you will get from a salad bar, but—sneeze guards. Need I say more?”

Icky, who was wandering around while awaiting her food order, stopped at a small fountain streaming fluid into a basin. “Looks like they’ve got a

butter fountain or something, though,” she said, sticking her finger into the flow, then licking it. Her mouth turned into a lopsided frown. “Not bad. Kind of a weird flavor, and the texture’s… oilier, I guess, than I expected, but not bad,” she said. “That would be because it’s not butter, Icky, it’s essentially hydraulic fluid. I think it’s meant to cater to Synths, Usu, that sort of thing,” Perry told her. She tasted another finger’s-worth, then nodded. “Oh, yeah. That’s why it smells so familiar. Still not terrible, though.”

I touched my comm. “Netty-P, lock up all the lubricants on the Fafnir, please.”

“Got it.”

“Aren’t you curious as to why?”

“With this crew, no, not at all.”

We ate a remarkably fine meal. The ship was fully stocked, along with dummy mass—it was important that she be at her full capacity for the shakedown cruise—and that included cuisine from nearly every planet in known space. I was able to have one hell of a T-bone steak, cooked to absolute perfection, and pair it with a red wine so smooth and full-bodied it could have been really good bourbon. When we were done, Funboy stood. “I am off now, with Gabby, to disinfect.”

“She’s such a lucky gal,” Torina muttered, rolling her eyes over the rim of her own wine glass. “What does disinfecting actually entail?

Dare I ask?” Rab said, sitting back with the contented manner of the just-dined and now full. “A sauna. Oh, and when the AI waiter returns, please instruct him to have fresh towels sent—the fluffiest ones they have. If the thread count is less than a thousand, I’ll be cross.” He and Gabby turned to go, but I spoke up. “Can you guys wait a moment?

I have something I want to say.”

They stopped, and everyone looked at me. “I just wanted to say, in front of you all here, that Gabby’s performance on that op was superlative. It probably would have gone wrong if I hadn’t had her with me.” I raised my glass to her. “Gabby, I’d be happy to have you at my side any day.”

“Oh—oh, I—oh Van, thank you—” She bubbled. If she’d been capable of blushing, I’m sure she’d have done that, too. Funboy gave me a look. “I thank you as well, Van—and would also remind you that this gentle flower with steel petals is spoken for.”

“Yeah, Van. Quit making time with other people’s significant others,”

Torina said, her smile mischievous. I shrugged. “What can I say?

I like my women… capable.”

8

THE REPLACEMENT CREW arrived a few hours later, and we said our goodbyes to the Perihelion Starbow. We placed a salvage beacon on the ship the Yonnox hijackers had used—an unremarkable class 8, a converted tramp freighter that had seen better days, then set course for Anvil Dark. I had work waiting there for me. As Perry noted, I had something else waiting for me there, too. “Payment. I think you’ll be pleased with the sort of stipend a Master draws from a field op,” he said. I was. More than pleased, actually. In fact, I was so much more than pleased that I was dumbfounded at the disparity between what a Master drew for a single field operation. There was a staggering difference between what Peacemakers and Masters earned. Layer on that expenses and additional allowances for various types of hazards, and I made as much from this one op as I had from—probably my first seven or eight ops as an Acolyte. I stared at the payout statement on my desktop terminal as Netty-P lined us up onto our final approach to Anvil Dark. “Perry, this is insane!

Nearly a quarter of a million bonds just for that one job?”

“If it makes you feel any better, most Masters don’t get out much,” he replied. “And you did kind of put yourself in the line of danger—”

“Yeah, but no more so than I have a bunch of times in the past, and regular Peacemakers still do every day!” I sat back and shook my head. “This isn’t right. I mean, if I’m reading this correctly, even if I knock off

these three hazard bonuses, I’d still make—shit, what, nearly a hundred thousand bonds just for showing up?

Even if I’d just sat on the Fafnir the whole time, then boarded the Perihelion Starbow after she’d been secured, the hijackers all trussed up and the crew safe?”

He pointed with a wing. “Actually, you still would have gotten that expense line, so add another fifteen thousand—”

“So Masters just make two or three trips into the field a year, arrive in time for tea and medals, wave the flag a bit, and then get”—I jabbed a hand at the screen—“that?”

“Tea and medals?”

“Something I heard in the Army.”

“Huh. Gotta remember that one. You know, it occurs to me that I haven’t really mined you for your Army witticisms—”

“You’re about to hear a few now, bird, if you don’t stay on the subject,”

I snapped. “Van, I don’t know what to tell you. This is all per Guild—”

“Policy. Sure. That does not make it right. How long has this been going on?”

“Well, Masters have always drawn higher stipends, allowances—they are Masters, after all. But the rates have been creeping upward faster than inflationary effects on currency—”

“Show me. Graph it. Average payout to a Master over time, going back

—hell, I don’t know, as far as you have data. Oh, and for added fun, put the same line on there for a plain old hardworking, footsore Acolyte.”

He did. It took only a second to digest the data. “Holy. Shit!”

The line showing Masters’ pay ascended like a Saturn V rocket heading Moonward. And it had steepened recently—a lot. I studied one particularly ascent in the line, compared it to the timeline on the bottom axis, and nodded. “Yeah. That was when Yotov was Master. Figures.”

The Acolyte’s line, in the meantime, was also upward. But sticking with my analogy, if the Masters’ had been a Saturn V, the Acolytes’ had been a hang glider. It actually dipped in a few spots. “No. Oh, no. This isn’t right,” I mumbled, tracing the figures with a finger. “So what do you intend to do about it?

Cut the payout to Masters—”

Perry started, then stopped and stared at me. “Wait. You’re going to try to

cut the payout to Masters, aren’t you?”

“You’re damned right I am. That line is going to flatten out, maybe even take a trip downward”—I scanned back along it, toward the graph’s origin

—“for the first time ever, it looks like. I’m going to make it my personal little mission. That money can be reapportioned out to the rank and file.”

“Spread out over the whole Guild, Van, it’s not going to amount to much of an increase for any one Peacemaker.”

“I don’t care. It’s the principle of the thing. This is—” I looked at the graph and shook my head. “Well, good luck with that. Those rank and file might appreciate it, but every First Veteran Peacemaker and up harbors visions of becoming a Master someday—and finding that line waiting for them when they do. To put it another way, a lot of the most senior and influential members of the Guild are not going to be happy about it.”

“My answer to that is another of those Army aphorisms, a particularly eloquent, almost poetic one.”

“This ought to be good. Dare I ask what it is?”

“Tough shit. Suck it up, buttercup.”

I DIDN’T FLING myself headlong into a campaign to get the Masters’ payouts scaled back, though. I’d learned enough about how the Guild worked to know that if I showed my hand too soon, I’d quickly be hemmed in by a thousand little bureaucratic and procedural obstacles. I had some homework to do, some people to talk to first. In the meantime, I returned to—my office. That still sounded strange and probably would for some time. Walking in, I had a flicker of an instant when I expected to see Gerhardt sitting at the desk, frowning and about to launch into some dressing-down or other. Hard on the heels of that, though, came another thought, a slightly disappointing one. He’d certainly taken the big payouts, hadn’t he?

For that matter, so had Groshenko—

But I cut that line of thinking off. For all I knew, they might have refused the payouts, or even donated them to charity. The last thing I wanted to do was start ranting and raving about overpriced Masters, only to

find out that a pile of that money ended up going to feed starving orphans or something. So, again—homework. I sat down, still feeling out of place, like I was a kid sneaking a chance to sit in the teacher’s chair—then I fired up the terminal and got to work. Max had already loaded all the things I had to read and review and edit, and neatly organized them by business area and priority. I’d asked Perry to come join me after an hour or so because—frankly, because I needed to be alone for a while—

“Van, I’ve got a Peacemaker asking for a few minutes of your time,”

Max said, their voice wafting from the speaker on the desk terminal. “It’s Gabriella Santorelli.”

I looked at the virtual pile of paperwork, then shrugged at it. “Sure, send her in.”

Gabriella was—

“Hey, you’re Gabriella again. The one I remember from Crossroads, shooting me up with knowledge from a bottle,” I said as she entered. She nodded. Gone was her platinum blonde hair, her silvery eyes, her elaborate facial tattoos. She was back to the dark, smoldering woman who’d helped me take my first baby steps as a Peacemaker Initiate. “My undercover days are over. I just finished the assignment from hell on the Gajur homeworld, the biggest city—the biggest, dirtiest, scummiest city,” she said. I nodded at that. I remembered my one visit to the overcrowded, impoverished alloy and ceramibrick canyons of the biggest Gajur city, while investigating a corrupt Master, ironically. Although if the Masters were so well-paid, what the hell did they need more money for—?

I gave myself a mental slap. Duh. What did any already rich person need more money for?

As Perry had said, like the speed of light in a vacuum and the mass of a proton, greed was a universal constant. “Yeah, I had the displeasure once. Not a very nice place. Basically Dregs, but with skyscrapers.” I gestured at the chair I’d spent most of my time in this office sitting in. She spoke as she sat. “Anyway, I pretty much maxed out the amount of face-changing I could get away with, at least without complete reconstruction—and I like my real face more than I like the Guild. So, when that gig was done, I transferred back to line duty. And now, I’m stuck here

on Anvil Dark while I heal and get refresher-trained and requalified on stuff.”

“So no more stumbling into you during your undercover ops?” I managed a small grimace. “It was one of the things I looked forward to—

walking into some bar full of low-life criminals and boom, there’s Gabriella, in one of her myriad forms.”

She gave me a wry look. I stared back at it, then got it. “Yeah, I guess that didn’t come out quite the way I meant it.”

She actually laughed, a rare thing from the usually dour woman. “That’s okay, Van. I really don’t mean to take up much of your time. I just wanted to congratulate you on your new job,” she said, glancing around. I hesitated a little, then decided to hell with it and said the things her words made me think. “Thanks, Gabriella. And by ‘thanks,’ I mean—how do you feel about it?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were already an established Peacemaker when I showed up on Crossroads like a lost puppy—”

She laughed again. This time, it was even less subdued. “Oh, for—Van, is this the start of a, golly gee shucks, I was your junior, and now I’m your boss and I hope you don’t resent it thing?”

“It—yeah, I guess it is.”

“Oh, please. I don’t resent you, Van. Oh, no. No no no. If anything, I don’t get it. Why the hell would anyone want to be a Master in this outfit?”

I was tempted to say, Have you seen the pay?

But I refrained and just shrugged. “It was never one of my to-do items. Frankly, I did it mainly so I could help manage the whole situation around Earth. My poor homeworld is being first-contacted in all the wrong ways—and I don’t think having someone like Casaril take this job was going to help—what?”

Her face had darkened when I mentioned Casaril. “Well, first, congratulations again on being the first Master I know of who’s actually taken the job for a reason other than the power and payouts—oh, and the opportunity to retire into cushy, high-paying consulting jobs as a lobbyist or something. Hell, it’s even a half-assed decent reason to do it.”

She shook her head. “But you mentioned Casaril, which is timely, because he’s kind of the reason I came to see you. He’s putting out feelers, trying to gain some traction among the Peacemaker rank and file to… at

least make your life miserable. And if he can, he’d like to find a way to oust you completely.”

I sat back. “How do you know that?”

“Because he approached me. And I told him to go stick many things into places where the stars don’t shine.”

“He probably assumes that you came straight to me with this, you know.”

“Duh, you think, Van?

He knows that this little effort of his was never going to remain a secret from you. He doesn’t care. He’s got himself pretty well entrenched, so much so that he considers himself to be more or less untouchable.”

“How so?”

“For one, his grandmother is on the Nesit Hegemonic Council. For another, his family is one of the leading ones among the Nesit—very wealthy and very powerful. So any action you or anyone else takes against him stands to affect relations between the Nesit and the Guild as a whole.”

I sat forward again. “Let me guess. Grandma Casaril wanted him to have the job of Master so she could leverage it for her own interests.”

Gabriella smiled. “Are you having fun yet, Master Tudor?” Her smile faded. “Anyway, yes, by taking this job and cutting Casaril out of it, you effectively thwarted the designs of a Nesit Hegemonic Matriarch. She is not happy. She probably had big plans for her grandson, by which, I mean she probably counted on him being in that chair so she could—hell, I don’t know, do whatever powerful, greedy, and corrupt people do with something like a pet Master of the Guild. The pressure she must be putting on Casaril to make things right is probably intense.”

I sighed. Earth and everything happening there, all of the ongoing crime and vice across known space—and now I had another threatened flank, with the threat coming from just down the proverbial hall. “Thank you, Gabriella. I appreciate the heads-up.”

She nodded and stood. She stopped at the door, though. “Van, part of this visit was to let you know that I’m on your side here. Not because I want to get anything out of it, but because—” She shrugged. “I saw some good in that baby Peacemaker that stumbled onto Crossroads, I guess. It’s about time we had a Master who’s—well, I was going to say honest and decent, but frankly, recent Masters have put the bar pretty low. I’m just glad to have a Master who’s not a complete asshole,” she said, giving me a mischievous glimmer of a smile. “Thank you again, Gabriella. Although I have to admit, I do find it a little disheartening to know that even here in the Guild, we have sides.”

She shook her head. “You’re so—I don’t know, it’s like you’re not even real. How could you possibly have gone this long without realizing the big truth?”

“What’s that?”

“That there are always sides. Always.”

I MADE it through the first couple of layers of paperwork, learning some eye-opening things along the way. For instance, some categories of administration can’t leave Anvil Dark—you can’t take it on the road with you to do while you’re flying among the stars, nor can it be transmitted to you. This tended to be the particularly sensitive stuff. So sensitive, in fact, that I had copies of a couple update reports on cases that read something like this. On REDACTED TIME REFERENCE, Peacemaker REDACTED

participated in an operation in REDACTED LOCATION. Evidence pertaining to REDACTED CASE was obtained, specifically, instances of REDACTED, REDACTED, and REDACTED. Master-level approval required for allocation of additional funds for evidentiary analysis amounting to 500,000 bonds. For all I knew, the money could have been going to fund a blow-out party. Or some sort of shady pursuit, like legitimate funds laundered into a sort of sinister, walking-the-line-of-legality covert op. Or to actual criminal activities. Or maybe even to analyze evidence. I just couldn’t bring myself to sign them off. It would be like signing a blank check. But was I impeding an important investigation by not signing?

Did the other Masters not have any issue with this?

Was it just me?

Would I

eventually be worn down and just start signing, Henry Blake-style, wherever Radar pointed?

I was about to call Alic and set up a heart-to-heart with him, but an incoming call beat me to it. It was Volffin, our Schegith Master. “This one requests the indulgence of your time, Van Tudor. This one is relaying a request from Schegith for a matter of some delicacy.”

The door opened before I could respond, admitting Torina, Perry, and Icky. I held up a finger to them. “Sure, Volffin. I’ll be right there.”

“This one awaits you.”

I turned to my crew. “If the Fafnir’s on fire, just put it out. I’ve got about a thousand things to do—”

“One of which is lunch,” Torina said. “We’ve come to drag you off for some food.”

At the mention of food, my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in hours. I stood. “Alright. But we’re going to pay a visit to Volffin along the way.’

“THIS ONE IS DOWNPLAYING, somewhat, Schegith’s annoyance in this request,” Volffin said once we’d gathered in his office. He had a desk but, being that he was basically a giant slug, it had more like a palanquin behind it instead of a chair. “Schegith is annoyed?

About what?” I asked. I hoped it wasn’t something I’d done—

“About her Haadrake, her firstborn.”

“Oh, the bouncing baby Schegith, right. Does she want Van to change their diapers?” Perry asked. “Her Haadrake is an adolescent,” Volffin replied, with a matter-of-fact tone bordering on duh. “Her Haadrake is more than three standard years old now.”

“Three. Wow. They grow up so fast. I mean that, really—as in, really fast, if they’re an adolescent at three,” Torina said. “This one’s race does not endure long, unproductive periods of the immaturity that you refer to as childhood. It is wasteful.”

“So what’s the problem with—Haadrake?

Is that his—or her—name, or

—?” I asked. “It is both name and title, in the way of this one’s people. Haadrake is firstborn and male. As for the problem—” Volffin paused. “This one just described prolonged periods of immaturity wasteful. Nonetheless, this one’s race does experience some degree of immaturity. Haadrake, as an adolescent, is proving… troublesome.”

Torina smirked. “So you skip wasteful childhood and go straight to rebellious teenager. I guess that’s progress.”

“Troublesome in what way?” I asked. “It is customary for Haadrake—for all of this one’s peoples’ young—to learn the rudiments of self-sufficiency and command during training in a remote portion of the Undersea on this one’s homeworld. Schegith’s Haadrake is proving stubbornly resistant to the essential idea, and—as Schegith has explained to this one—prefers to engage in idle pursuits, such as poetry. Bad poetry.”

“A moody teenager writing bad poetry, huh?

Wow, that’s got to be a galactic first,” Perry said. I tilted my head at Volffin. “Okay. And where do we come into this?”

“Schegith requests that you spend some period of time with her Haadrake, to impart the benefit of your wisdom and experience. This is something that would normally fall upon others of her brood—and you, Van Tudor, and your crew are others of her brood.”

Earth, Casaril, the simmering world of crime—and Schegith wanted me to spend some time babysitting her teenage son, trying to put some sense into him—?

“We’d be happy to help,” Torina said. “Isn’t that right, Van?”

I opened my mouth to snap something like, “I don’t know, I’ll think about it—”

But I just closed it. The Schegith were one of, if not the most dependable and powerful allies we had. While not helping Schegith herself with her rambunctious son probably wouldn’t change that, it also wouldn’t help. And my gut told me that dependable and powerful allies were going to remain in short supply. So I finally nodded. “Sure. Absolutely.”

Torina smiled. “Besides, it’ll be good practice for you, my dear. In case you ever have your own troublesome teen.”

“I plan on having about fifteen of them,” Icky said. Even Volffin seemed taken aback by that. “Fifteen—kids?”

“No, Torina, fifteen wheels of cheese. Of course fifteen kids.”

I shared a sidelong glance at Torina. “Oh. Okay. That’s a lot of kids, Icky. A lot.”

“This one understands that other races are more prolific in their production of offspring than this one’s, but—yes, that is a great many children,” Volffin said. “Well, it’s not seventy or whatever, like the Conoku. That’d just be crazy.”

“Have to wonder what the cut off for crazy is. Somewhere between fifteen and seventy, I guess,” I mused, shaking my head. “Yeahhhh. So, fifteen—younger, because they sure as hell won’t be much smaller—versions of Icky eating cheese while not wearing pants. That’s what we’re talking here,” Perry said. Icky nodded proudly. “Damned right. That right there is a picture of domestic bliss.”

“Oh, it’s a picture alright—”

“Perry, be nice,” I muttered, then turned back to Icky. “Have you, uh, discussed with this Paxomar yet?”

Icky stared at me, then gave a slow nod. “Oh yeah. That’d probably be a good idea, huh?”

Torina nodded. “Yes, Icky, that would be a very good idea.”

Icky tapped at her comm. “Netty-P, can you get Paxomar on the twist comm?

I need to talk to him about having kids.”

Netty-P’s reply hummed out of the comm. “Icky, if you’re unsure of the process, our bioscience archive has everything you need to know. Pictures, too—”

I leaned into the conversation. “Uh, Icky?

Yes, you should definitely talk to Pax about this. No, you should not do it right now. Wait until—”

“There’s a thick door between us and that conversation,” Perry said. Icky brightened. “Yeah, I should talk to him in person. S’okay if he comes and visits the Fafnir?”

“Sure, Icky,” I replied. “I’ll even provide the cheese and the noodles—

oh, you know what?

I just had a thought. It’s time to introduce you to mac and cheese.”

“Sweet!

All I can eat?”

“All you can eat, sure.”

Torina shook her head. “If you’re not careful here, Van, we’ll go broke.”

9

I HADN’T BEEN to the Schegith home world for a while now. Null World was reliably the same as ever—barren, dusty, and given to fierce electrical storms that could blanket an entire hemisphere with incandescent fury and howling winds. The Schegith lived in an expansive subterranean complex, a virtual underground city, though, so their planet’s spasms of violence didn’t bother them much. The storms were vaguely overhead, a deep thrum of distant violence that was as much music as natural threat. I’d also forgotten how much I enjoyed coming here. It felt safe, a quality available only in a few other rare places. In fact, it was pretty much down to one other, that being Starsmith, Linulla’s similarly underground lair in the Struve 2398 system. It was under the fearsome protection of the mysterious, star-dwelling being known as Matterforge. Very few knew of its existence, but it had expressed itself across known space as a general belief that you didn’t screw around with Starsmith. The Seven Stars League had tried that once, and their fleet sent for the purpose had been reduced to charred scrap by colossal blasts of energy leaping off the surface of Struve 2398-A. No one had tried it since. I brought Torina, Perry, and Gabby with me to meet with Schegith in her personal chambers, where she reclined in a way that always made me think of the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. We exchanged some pleasantries, then had a less pleasant discussion about the state of affairs across known space. She also took the opportunity to congratulate me on ascending to Master. “This one believes that the Guild has made a fine choice. The right choice. Perhaps the perfect choice for the things that are coming,” she said. I gave her an uneasy look. “That sounds ominous. Are you into foretelling the future—” I almost added, like Matterforge, but caught myself. It wasn’t my place to talk about the strange being, even with Schegith. Linulla had made it clear that it preferred privacy, which I was perfectly happy to accommodate. After all, no good is likely to come from pissing off an alien being that splits and fuses atoms on the surface of a star at a whim. “—or something?”

Schegith gave one of her brief belly laughs. “Oh, no. This one is no seer. But this one does not have to be. Events continue to gather momentum. Things become more complex and fraught with danger with each passing day. Surely you feel it, Van Tudor?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I do. Hard to deny.” I decided to change the darkening subject. “Anyway, you wanted some help with your son. And I’m flattered to think I can assist, but whatever I can do, Schegith, all you need to do is ask. That’s unwavering.”

“This one is humbled and thankful for such a thing, Van Tudor, and as to the child, yes, it is Haadrake. And this one thanks you profusely for your agreement to help. As greater events continue to evolve and become ever more complex, so too has the isolation of this one’s race become untenable. The Schegith will have a part to play in the future of known space. Perhaps an important one. This one has, therefore, chosen to allow more exposure of the Schegith to the other cultures, so that all may understand.”

Torina nodded. “Not a bad idea. If your people are going to be out there, involved in things, they should probably know something about the others they’re going to meet and have to work with.”

“It’s probably good for your people, too,” Gabby said. “Exposing them to all those other cultures will broaden them. Give them more perspectives to see the world, stuff like that.”

“This one agrees,” Schegith replied. “However, this is not without risks and unintended consequences. While this one’s people lived here in their splendid isolation, their beliefs and perspectives did indeed tend to converge. This was desirable at the time. Now, however, exposure to new beliefs and perspectives has introduced complexities.”

I saw where this was going. “Your son—Haadrake—he’s picked up on this, realized there’s a whole lot more out there. And now he’s feeling stuck, hemmed in, anxious to go out and experience the world but not able to, because he’s just not old enough yet.”

“That is brilliantly insightful, Van Tudor,” Schegith said. I gave her a rueful smile. “You’ve visited my farm on Earth, in Iowa, Schegith. Remember how it was a house surrounded by miles and miles of fields and nothing else?

That’s how I grew up, in—what did you call it?

Splendid isolation?

Oh, I was happy, sure. I had a roof over my head, food to eat, a grandfather and father who both loved me as best as they could, but there was so much more out there. Now, I went to school and got educated with a pile of other kids my age, but a lot of them were feeling the same thing. They all came from farms like me. It helped to be around them when I was actually at school, but—” I smiled. “Anyway, I think I know what your Haadrake is going through.”

“Yes, this one believes you do. You are perfect for the task. This one…

is not suited for it. This one has lived a long time and has difficulty seeing the world from the perspective of this one’s Haadrake.”

“Yeah, the generation gap. That’s what it used to be called on Earth. It’s still a thing, too, trust me— avocado toast versus okay boomer,” I said. Torina and Gabby gave me a puzzled look. “I recognize those words, but not stuck together like that,” Torina said. I smiled and waved a hand. “I’m sure Perry can explain it.”

Perry nodded. “See, Torina, when an old person on Earth and a young one don’t love one another very much—”

“I’m sure Perry can explain it later.”

Schegith sent one of her attendants to fetch her Haadrake. The attendant returned with a miniature slug in tow—only about a meter and a half long compared to Schegith’s more than three. “This one is here,” Haadrake said. I had to hide a smile. It was really something hearing the petulant tone of a grumpy kid coming from something that looked like it should be slithering out of a conduit in an Alien movie, accompanied by sinister music and gloom. I looked down at Haadrake. “Hey there. I’m Van—”

“Tudor. Yes, this one’s maternal progenitor explained that you would be coming here, apparently to provide instruction and guidance that this one’s

maternal progenitor deems to be somehow important.”

That’s an awfully long and convoluted way to say, I’m only here ’cause my mom says I have to be, Perry said in my ear bug. “Well, Haadrake, how about you and I get to know one another better?

What do you like to do?”

“This one likes doing things that this one’s maternal progenitor deems… unacceptable.”

Schegith spoke up, sounding peeved. “It is not a case of this one finding them unacceptable. Rather, art, poetry, and similar pursuits should be casual ones, not one’s primary intended role in society.”

“This one is only too well acquainted with your beliefs. And this one has made it clear that this one should be allowed to pursue—”

Holy crap, this is like listening to a stuffy old diplomat argue with her fourteen-year-old son, if her son was also a stuffy old diplomat, Perry said. I held up my hands. “Folks, how about Haadrake and I go spend some time alone together. Haadrake, where do you like to spend your time?”

“What’s your happy place?” Gabby asked. “Happy place?

Is it reasonable to expect that a location is likely to make one happy?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it is. Not necessarily because of the place itself, but because you just like being there. You feel comfortable, safe, relaxed, that sort of thing.”

Haadrake—sighed?

I think?

It was hard to tell, though teen ennui is a truly universal emotion. “To the extent that any location on this isolated world is this one’s so-called happy place, it would be the Undersea.”

“Great. I like it down there, too. So let’s go to the Undersea.”

I wonder if when he gets really mad at Schegith, he says, This one is experiencing intense loathing of its maternal progenitor, and further contends that this one’s maternal progenitor is incapable of understanding this one—

“Perry,” I said, emphasizing his name with a sharp glare, “and the others will stay here, give us some space.”

This one contends that you are no fun. PERRY AND SCHEGITH did accompany us down to the Undersea, to the small pier where the boat—an AI-guided craft about the size of a Boston whaler propelled by an electric motor—was waiting. I’d brought Perry along to wait here at the pier, just in case of trouble. There were things living in the Undersea, including large and carnivorous things, and comms between here and the surface were sketchy. Perry gave me a way of summoning help if needed. Schegith had apparently had the same thought as she had a second boat with two of her people, armed, standing by. She came, I thought, mainly because she was the worried mother. She might be a massive, slug-like alien being, but she was still a mom. More practically speaking, Haadrake was her successor as leader of the Schegith, since their governance was a purely dynastic one. I’d learned that there’d been an unbroken succession from the earliest days of Schegith record-keeping, some six thousand years ago—no usurpers, no conflicts over succession, nothing to break the lineage. It would be as though the descendants of the first Pharaohs still ruled Egypt. Schegith was understandably concerned that Haadrake be ready for the role when it came to him. Which made me think again about Earthly dynasties, and how many of them had gone off the rails because the heir apparent had turned out to be a lascivious flake, a drunkard, or otherwise unsuited for the job. It actually circled things back to my own concern over Haadrake. The Schegith were loyal allies and a bastion of stability in known space. I really wanted that to keep being the case, no matter who ruled them. “So what’s your favorite part of the Undersea?” I asked Haadrake as we boarded the boat prepared for us. He was wearing a shapeless gray smock and a fez-like hat, also gray. It had prompted Perry—of course—to say in my ear, At least it's not a fedora. I’m sure he’s got one, though, along with an extra big and tall My Chemical Romance t-shirt and a vape. I bit back a laugh as Haadrake looked at me and heaved what I thought was meant to be a theatrical sigh but came out more as a somewhat unsettling shudder. “The part where this one sinks to the bottom and ends this pointless charade.”

I kept a smile on my face and looked up at Schegith on the pier. “You didn’t tell me he spoke French.”

She exhaled a thin stream of smoke from her pipe. “This one learns new things every day. As will this one’s Haadrake, it is hoped, after a few hours

of peace and good advice from a trusted friend.”

We cast off. I looked at Haadrake and smiled. “Adventure awaits!

“So does the—”

“If you say crushing weight of tedious, pointless existence, just know that I was a teenager, too.”

The illuminated part of the shoreline dwindled to a small island of light as the boat made its lazy way out into the dark expanse of the Undersea. We weren’t going far, no more than a klick away from the shore. Schegith had said it was unclear, even to her, just how far the Undersea extended. It had been charted for nearly fifty kilometers in its longest direction before stone finally blocked the way, which was impressive enough on its own. But AI drones had determined that it could be traversed underwater for some unguessable greater distance, with more vast, open pockets of space further on. And that was all they’d been able to determine before being lost to powerful currents or—

Eaten. Swallowed by things that the drones hadn’t even detected coming. Whatever they were, they didn’t seem to come to within two or three klicks from the shoreline, probably because of how much the water shallowed. Still, the boat was broadcasting a high-frequency signal that had proven effective in keeping the wildlife at bay. I’d also brought the Moonsword and The Drop, with both carefully fastened to my harness on lanyards. I wasn’t sure what good they’d do me if something huge and toothy attacked us and we ended up in the water, but they made me feel better, so there. We plied on for a while in silence. With no weather affecting it, the Undersea was always a glassy calm. Only the occasional current disturbed it, triggered by distant tremors in the earth or other sources, which I chose to not dwell on. With only the two of us in the boat, I leaned back, relaxed, and stared up at the rocky ceiling, which was currently about fifteen meters above us. The gloom, the soft whir of the motor, the silence, it all conspired to make me feel sleepy. I decided to just ignore Haadrake. I was curious if he’d end up speaking to break the silence, and if so, what he might say. What he said to yank me out of my impending doze was something purely practical. “Is this one, along with you, Van Tudor, going to strike those rocks now looming ahead?”

I sat up. The boat was its own little island of light, a wan glow cast by a small point source of illumination on a post rising from the stern. It was a ruddy glow, because red light does a poor job of penetrating water. Some of the predators apparently had, like some of the monstrosities in the Earth’s own deep oceans, evolved to produce bioluminescent light lures that were bluish, because blue light did travel well through water. Our reddish light wasn’t likely, therefore, to attract much attention from submarine things that might be attracted to bluer stuff. I looked at the rocks ahead of us that were lit ominously red. The boat’s AI was on the ball, though, so I wasn’t worried. I turned to Haadrake. “I hope not. Although sinking the boat does sort of fulfill your wishes about sinking to the bottom and pointless charades. Not mine, though. I’ve got a lot I want to do with my life yet.”

After a period of silence, Haadrake finally spoke. “Like what?”

“Well, I stop people from exploiting and harming others. That work never ends. But I also have a fantastic wife, with whom I want to raise a family.” I glanced at him. “What about you?

What do you do?”

Another pause, then Haadrake tried to sigh again. I kind of wished he’d stop doing that because it reminded me of how some of the creature effects moved in John Carpenter’s The Thing. A movie which, now that I knew the realities of known space, had a bit of a documentary feel to it. And down here, under gigatons of rock, on a tiny boat on a black, silent subterranean sea, lit only by pale, blood-red light—

Yeah, I yanked my thoughts off that track pretty fast. “This one is, by the standards of this one’s people, a child, but… the emotion is boredom in a pure state..

Existence is tedious and seems to have no ultimate purpose.”

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel.”

“That sounds like a mere platitude, Van Tudor. Condescension is not appreciated—”

“Nothing condescending about it, Haadrake,” I said, and recounted for him my growing up as a child and teenager on the farm in Iowa. “The number of times I stood on the porch and looked out at what to me was just… nothing. Nothing going on forever. Sure, there were other farms, but they felt to me as much like little islands isolated in a sea of nothing as my own home did. The worst part was that I knew it wasn’t true. There was

lots out there. But it might as well have been on another planet—” I smiled at that. “Turns out a whole lot of it was, actually.”

“So you, ah—you do have a similar frame of reference to this one’s present experience. This one regrets the earlier remark regarding condescension—”

“No worries, Haadrake,” I said, waving it off. Another pause. “So this one wonders—how did you overcome those feelings of isolation and lack of meaning to existence?”

I stared at him for a silent moment myself. It was a good question. And a deceptive one, because it was also a big question. One of the biggest. “I—didn’t. No one does, Haadrake. You just learn to deal with it. Understand it, and accept that it’s something that’s always been true, and always will be true. I’d like to say I’m unique, and maybe I am, to some extent. But my problems?

My worries?

The things that made me stare at the ceiling and feel utterly alone?” I shook my head, then uttered a short laugh. “Those are common. Even tedious. It took going to space and falling in love and fighting—not in any particular order—to teach me that. I concluded that in this body of mine, there absolutely is something rare and unique. My soul. And that construct, or core, lets me accept the inevitability of these problems.”

“But— how, Van Tudor?

How does one do that?”

I thought about that. I was surprised when the answer came to me quickly, in an unexpected flash of insight. “Haadrake, a moment ago, you mentioned frames of reference. Well, that’s how. Everything we do—every sacrifice we make, every triumph, every mistake and lesson, every sin and every saintly thing we do—none of it will ultimately matter. The universe will end, crunching down into a singularity, or killed by entropy through heat death, and everything—

everything—will have had no ultimate point.”

“If this is an attempt to make this one feel more at ease, it—”

“Sucks. Yeah, it does. In that frame of reference, it is all pointless, isn’t it?

It’s like a song I used to listen to when I was a teenager like you. It was the single bleakest piece of music I’d ever heard, and it spoke to how I felt. It was called ‘Dust in the Wind’, by a group of Earthly musicians who went by the name Kansas. The message of the song, at least to me, was nothing

matters and then you die. They simply delivered their conclusion with guitar work that breaks your heart.”

“This is not better, Van Tudor—”

I laughed. “Hear me out. Okay, so change your frame of reference. Instead of looking at the end of existence—which really is pointless, because from our perspective, it’s never going to happen anyway—how about looking at, oh, the meaning of existence in terms of the life of a galaxy. Or a star. Still pretty pointless. So, keep changing that frame of reference. Bring it closer to something you can actually conceive—the life of a species, for instance. Or a few hundred generations.”

I looked at him. “Who was your most distant known ancestor?

The first ruler of your people?”

“Schegith,” he said matter-of-factly. “Well, yeah—but not this Schegith. Not your mother. It was whoever Schegith was six thousand years ago, right?”

“Yes. I am the three hundred and fifty-seventh generational descendant of that first recorded Schegith.”

“Who, despite being long gone, still has a profound impact on your people.”

Silence fell. I went on. “And your people have had a profound influence on literally billions more. In that frame of reference, existence suddenly matters. The things you do and say have a point, right?”

“Yes, but outside of that frame of reference—”

“No, no, we’re not going there. There is nothing outside that frame of reference. I mean, sure, there is, of course. But for our purposes, there isn’t.”

Again, silence. This time, I let it linger. “So, in a frame of reference defined by the recorded history of this one’s species, there is meaning and significance to existence.”

“Yeah, absolutely. And that meaning gets even greater the more you diminish it. Taking my life as a frame of reference, everything I do is important. Everything has meaning.” I shrugged. “I learned to stop looking at the very, very big picture, because if you do—well, we really are just dust in the wind. When I did, I suddenly became a lot more comfortable with existing. I got out into the world beyond the horizon I could see from the porch at the farm. And here I am.”

“Interesting. Changing one’s frame of reference,” Haadrake said, then fell silent again for a while. I let him. “But there is a conundrum, Van Tudor,” he finally said. I grinned. “Just one?”

He stared, and then shook a little—this time in a far less creepy way, one I recognized as laughter. “One that occurs to me immediately. Suppose a previously unseen fault in the stone above us triggers a fall of rock, and we are suddenly killed?

What point will this one’s existence have had then?”

“Oh, sure, the universe is full of arbitrary ways to die. Earthquakes happen. People have accidents. Hell, even young children die from… lots of things. Too many things. That’s just an unfortunate by-product of living in a universe that kinda chugs along, doing its own thing based on laws like gravitation and thermodynamics. But you can’t predict those things, so they really don’t matter. Unless and until they happen, they don’t even exist any more than the eventual heat death of the universe exists—at least, inside that frame of reference I’ve chosen to live my life.”

“Are you a great philosopher among your people, Van Tudor?”

I laughed. “Oh, hell no. I’m just an ordinary guy trying to figure out how all this works, and hopefully not screwing up too badly along the way.”

“Perhaps the best philosophers are just that. This one is experiencing the first stirrings of a genuine desire to progress past the Second Tier. That is…

unusual. And remarkable, given that our entire conversation has lasted only fourteen standard minutes.”

“Second Tier?

Is that, what, a plateau of growth for your people?

Brings new rules and such?”

“It is. It approximately corresponds to your concept of adolescence. The Third Tier is the transition to lesser adulthood, and the Fourth, greater adulthood. There is a Fifth Tier, but only Schegith attains it.”

I narrowed my eyes at Haadrake. I’d had an idea. I wasn’t sure how thrilled Schegith herself would be about it, but it struck me that it would ultimately be good for her and her people, and for Haadrake. And yes, it would be good for known space. I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that that wasn’t a consideration. “Haadrake, a question. Ever heard of a race called the Conoku?”

“This one is familiar, somewhat. Why?

Do these Conoku also understand the concepts we’ve discussed?

Such as the weary boredom of

existence?”

“Nope. Not even a little. And that’s why I’m going to recommend to Schegith that you do a summer internship, or something like it.”

“This one believes the term to be understood. Where would this take place?”

I smiled. “On a place called Fort Cantullin. And I hope you like talking—a lot.”

10

SCHEGITH, it turned out, was very pleased by the prospect of Haadrake spending some time at Fort Cantullin. Not only would the rambunctious young Conoku show him people who really didn’t worry about big questions like the meaning of it all very much—and, by that, I meant pretty much not at all—but it would also let him get to know Panzygrus. As an AI, she had no theoretical limit to her lifespan, as long as she had power and replacement parts. She could easily live for thousands of years, so I thought it would be interesting to get the perspective of someone who was looking at a long, long life. I knew that part of the reason she was still living at Cantullin Station was that she was wrestling with her own ideas of a meaningful existence, so it might be good for her, too. Besides, I suspected that Schegith would just be glad for some time away from her mopey teenage son. We ended up transporting Haadrake, along with two other Schegith who would act as his combined mentors and protective detail, to Fort Cantullin ourselves. Along the way, he had chances to interact with the always upbeat Gabby, the never upbeat Funboy, the eminently practical Rab, the mercurial Icky, and Netty-P and Perry, two AIs with different ways of viewing the world. He also spent a lot of time talking to Torina and me. He actually embarrassed me a little. “Your husband, Van Tudor, is one of the preeminent philosophers of his people. He will presumably deny this, but this one believes it to be true.”

She looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Really?

Huh. Well, you can philosophize me any time, baby,” she said, smiling coyly. “Was that sexual innuendo?” Haadrake asked. She blinked at him. “It—uh—well, I guess—”

I grinned. “Yes, it was. She just can’t get enough of me.”

“Was that also sexual innuendo?”

“Again, yes. Yes, it was.”

“This one finds you both to be randy and wanton.”

We spoke as one. “Thank you.”

We arrived at Cantullin Station to be greeted by the Conoku, whom we’d contacted ahead to inform them of our impending arrival and the fact they were going to have a guest on the station for a few months. They were thrilled and eagerly greeted Haadrake as he slithered out of the airlock. “There he is!

Hi, welcome to Fort Cantullin—”

“I was going to say that!”

“No, I was supposed to give the greeting, remember—?”

Haadrake looked gravely around. “This one is… taken aback, albeit in a pleasing sort of way.”

“Which one?” one of the Conoku asked. Haadrake turned to her. “What?”

“You said this one. Which one?”

I intervened. “The Schegith always refer to themselves as this one. So this one, when Haadrake says it, refers to him.”

“That’s weird. What if there’s a bunch of things in a box, and you want to talk about just one of them?

You can’t say this one, because everyone will think you’re talking about yourself!”

I considered intervening further, but Gabby leaned in. “Van, you should let them do this. It’s how they’ll learn about each other.”

I nodded. “Good point, Gabs.” I stepped back. “Okay, well, I’m sure you guys are going to have a lot to talk about, so—”

“Van, there’s an incoming message from Essie,” Netty-P said over the comm. “He says it involves Earth, and it’s important.”

I separated myself from the clickety-clack and chatter around Haadrake’s arrival on the station. “As soon as I find a quiet terminal here, you can put him through.”

WE RENDEZVOUSED with Essie in lunar orbit and brought him aboard. He launched right into the problem, which he’d outlined for me at Cantullin Station. He’d only said there’d been an incident on Earth that he wanted me to help him with, and that it involved multiple murders. He hadn’t wanted to get into any more detail than that over the comm. So, gathered in the Fafnir’s crew lounge, we all waited for him to explain what was going on. He asked Netty-P to put up a map of Earth, highlight Africa to get everyone situated, then asked her to zoom in on the continent’s southwestern coast. “This is the country of Namibia,” Essie said, pointing. As he did, Netty-P highlighted the country’s border. “It’s a sovereign nation-state,” Essie continued, “similar to the United States, but obviously much smaller, less populated, and with nowhere near the domestic wealth. Still, it’s a reasonably prosperous country, her economy based mainly on mining, agriculture, fishing—the waters off her coast are some of the best fishing grounds in the world—manufacturing, and tourism. She also has some forestry, though not much—she’s an arid country with a lot of scrubby grasslands called veldt. Most of her forestry is up here, in the north and northeast.” He pointed, and Netty-P zoomed in. “The trouble we have here today is around her forest industry.”

“What sort of trouble?” Torina asked. He pointed. “Right here, west of a town called Tsintsabis, there are new roads being pushed into this largely undeveloped region as part of a new push to expand sustainable forestry—basically, carefully cutting and replanting trees to try to minimize the long-term ecological impact. Part of that involves gathering a detailed inventory of available trees, the different types, that sort of thing, and also surveying the boundaries of licensed areas for cutting and extracting timber.”

He turned to Netty-P. “Can you put up the first of the images I gave you, my beauty?”

“Will do. However, it’s pretty graphic, so viewer discretion advised.”

A high-res color image replaced the map on the display. It was, indeed, graphic. Graphic as hell. Bodies. At least a half-dozen of them. They lay sprawled in the contortions of death along a dusty gravel road traversing a cut between two embankments. The surrounding terrain

consisted of scrubby trees and bushes amid dry yellow grass, all of it lit by harsh sunlight. “Okay, Essie, aside from being horrific, what are we looking at?” I asked him. “This is—was—a crew working for a company based in Tsintsabis. They would have been involved in one of those surveys I mentioned, outlining boundaries and doing an inventory of tree types. Someone attacked them when they stopped here and got out of their vehicles, probably to get some GPS coordinates and gather some data on tree types in the area.”

“What vehicles?” Gabby asked. “Exactly,” Essie replied. “There were eight of them, so they were probably in two vehicles—two trucks, probably. They would have had survey equipment with them as well, various types of instruments, GPS

receivers, that sort of thing.”

I walked closer to the image. “Some of them are missing their shoes or boots.”

Essie replied with a grim nod. “Stolen, right along with everything else.”

Torina stood. “So these people were killed during a robbery that included taking their boots?”

Essie shrugged. “Boots, watches, rings, wallets—things like government-issued ID cards that can be doctored are worth a lot of money. If any of them had gold teeth, they don’t anymore.”

A mutter of angry surprise rippled through the crew. Essie held up his hands. “I’m not going to pretend that this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Namibia—it does. It’s certainly not unique to Namibia, though.”

“No, it certainly is not. When I lived in Atlanta, there was a sixteen-year-old boy knifed and killed for his Air Jordans—those are athletic shoes

—just up the block from where I lived. So, yeah, this kind of thing happens all over the world, sadly,” I said. I turned to Essie. “So what is it about this case that’s got you interested as a Peacemaker?”

“Like I said, this sort of thing unfortunately happens. If I really tried, I could probably find a few more incidents not too different from this one in other parts of Africa that happened on the same day. What makes this one

different, though, is this—” He turned to Netty-P and nodded. A new image appeared on the display, a close-up of one of the bodies. “Take a look at this wound,” he said, pointing. We did. The unfortunate victim, a young man probably in his early twenties, had a deep crater gouged into his chest. There was bone exposed, but it was cracked and blackened. Notably, there was very little blood. A wound like that should have produced a veritable eruption of bloody gore. Funboy stepped forward and examined the display closely. “This wound is the result of a laser weapon. The tissue damage is primarily thermal. The cracked and spalled bone is likewise the result of the instantaneous application of intense thermal energy. Those same thermal effects effectively cauterized the wound even as they inflicted it.”

It was eerie, listening to Funboy’s flat, dreary tone, his usual voice, so clinically describing such a horrific injury. But he’d made the important point in his first sentence. Rab looked at Essie and I. “Are there terrestrial weapons that could have done this?”

Essie shook his head. “Not portable, man-carried ones. I’ve no doubt there’s research going on into them, but Earthly tech just doesn’t have the ability to store enough energy for such intense, sustained fire.”

“Moreover, lasers make relatively poor handheld weapons,” Funboy added. “Their range is limited because of attenuation by atmospheric effects, and even with off-world tech, they require relatively frequent changes of power cells to keep functioning. They are also relatively easily countered. Our b-suits, for instance, are largely resistant to anything but intense, sustained laser fire, simply because they have the ability to quickly spread the incoming energy over a large surface area.”

Essie nodded. “Off-world, in known space, portable laser weapons are a niche thing. Assassins like them because they’re silent. And since they want one shot to be one kill, they’re not too worried about reloading, so those versions tend to be small and easy to conceal. But the market for larger, military-grade weapons is small—mainly for use by troops who expect to fight in no-g and vacuum.”

“They don’t have to worry about attenuation, and they have the advantage of minimal recoil to compensate,” Rab said. “No, the bottom line is that anything a laser weapon can do, a simple slug-rifle can do more cheaply, more effectively, and at longer range. On

Earth, though—” He turned back to the display. I sighed and nodded. A handheld laser weapon would, like Funboy said, have little effect on us in our b-suits, aside from warming them up. Even at close range, it would take a sustained beam to threaten real damage. In my experience, few things in close combat were sustained. I could blow a hole through someone with The Drop or hack them in half with the Moonsword long before they could land and keep a punishing laser attack on me. But people dressed in things like jeans and cotton t-shirts, like the poor souls in Essie’s imagery, had no such protection. The embankment around them gave ambushers enough cover to stay concealed until they’d all exited their trucks. Then, at ranges of only a few meters, the laser weapons wrought their awful, deadly results—and in complete silence at that, aside from whatever shouts or screams the victims had managed to utter before they’d died. And then the attackers had stripped them of anything of value, loaded that and the crew’s gear aboard the trucks, and driven away. Even if there were other people working nearby, they’d likely have never heard a thing. My fists wanted to clench, so I let them. “Okay, this is now officially a Guild case,” I said. Essie nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that, Van. You’re a Master, so you can issue a Field Writ to deal with it immediately.”

I nodded back. It was the advantage to being a Master in the field. I didn’t have to seek permission to officially employ Guild resources in an investigation on Earth. Everything we’d done here in the past had been on my own initiative, essentially unofficial. Gerhardt had largely covered my back in that regard, so when we’d flown around Tierra del Fuego looking for Adayluh Creel, or chased a crashing ship into the South Atlantic, he’d signed off on it. But I didn’t have to do that now. “Right. Perry, draft up a Field Writ, please, authorizing the Guild to pursue this as a full-jurisdiction case.”

“Ordinarily, that would be a problem in the absence of a formal First Contact, but—yeah, that ship left the spaceport long ago, I think. But, Van, the one thing you can’t do is supersede local law enforcement. If our investigation turns up off-world parties, we can arrest them and haul them away. But if the perps turn out to be Earthly citizens, we’re obligated to hand them over to local law.”

I shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t scare the shit out of them, though,” Essie said. “So if we end up arresting a, say, Namibian citizen for this crime, nothing says we can’t haul him up into orbit and show him some seriously scary stuff while interrogating, prior to hauling him back down to the locals.”

I looked at Perry. “Essie’s technically right. We are empowered to interrogate any prisoners we take in furtherance of an ongoing investigation. What we can’t do, though, is subject them to off-world jurisprudence. We can’t arraign them or subject them to trial or punishment

—”

“Again, works for me.” I cocked my head at the images. Even if the fingers pulling the triggers on the laser weapons had been locals, the weapons had been put into their hands by extraterrestrial parties—probably the Equal Grasp, but possibly someone else. Them, we could arraign, try, and punish. “Suppose we provided everyone on Earth with an example of Guild justice. Assuming we catch some extraterrestrials involved in this case, we could do their trials here, aboard a Guild ship, and broadcast it to Earth.”

“So they see the relative rapidity of Guild justice rather than the slow versions that currently exist all over Earth?

Sure, we could do that. People on Earth wouldn’t be forced to watch it. To do that, though, we’d need all the bits and pieces—judge, advocates, support staff. And we don’t have any of that here,” Perry replied. “Are any Guild ships outfitted to do it?”

“Only one. The Righteous Fury.”

I gave a thin smile. “Fine. Netty-P, get the master of the Fury on the comm, please.”

“Will do.”

I turned to my crew. “Additional thoughts, anyone?”

Torina spoke up. “Find ’em guilty and then hand the evidence to local authorities to chase down their own people?

I like it. It sends a message to two parties.”

“Humanity and the Equal Grasp, or whatever extraterrestrials are screwing around in my backyard.”

“Exactly right,” she replied. “Maybe the key to stopping this bullshit with the Equal Grasp, and whoever else is screwing around down there, as you put it, is to take off the gloves and scare them right down to their bones.”

I gave her a satisfied grin. “That, my dear, I think we can definitely do.”

11

I DECIDED to keep the Righteous Fury safely in a distant orbit when she arrived, reasoning that parking a massive battlecruiser bristling with weapons might send the wrong sort of message. I wanted more We believe in the rule of law and less Resistance is futile. I’d seen how the global zeitgeist waxed and waned and flowed around the whole idea of extraterrestrials. A big warship appearing in orbit would inevitably draw parallels to the movie Independence Day. And that was definitely a more apocalyptic vibe than I was aiming for. It would take the Fury a few days to arrive, in any case. That left us with the task of trying to track down whoever had murdered the forestry crew in Namibia. They clearly had off-world weapons, as well as the will to use them to commit violent, bloody crimes. That was just the sort of combination I’d been afraid of. But it was also one tailor-made to use as an example—to the people of Earth generally, but the Equal Grasp and their ilk in particular. But Namibia is a big country. Moreover, the borders of Angola and Botswana were only about a four hour drive from the scene of the massacre. It wasn’t as though the Fafnir’s scanners could pick out bad guys from among the throngs of innocent people inhabiting the region. It meant we had to fall back on some good old police procedural work—starting with the scene of the crime. Perry made the first hit, which wasn’t surprising given that he could scan across a whole range of emissions, and do it from up in the air. “Boss, I’m seeing tracks of two vehicles that left the road about two hundred meters north of the crime scene. They traversed south and east across the country for about three hundred meters, to a copse of Vachellia tortilis,” he said over the comm. I shaded my eyes against the hot glare of the Sun and frowned. “Perry, I see trees and things all over the place. That doesn’t help.”

“They’re widely known as Acacia tortilis, but they’ve since been attributed to the genus Vachellia—”

“Perry!”

“Sorry, Van, but when else am I going to get to flex my knowledge of African flora?

That stuff’s just sitting there, taking up memory space—”

“I swear, bird, I’m starting to consider taking up bird hunting as a hobby.”

“Fine. Turn to your right. A little more. See the big trees that look like umbrellas?

Those are umbrella thorn trees, Vachellia tortilis.”

“Could’ve opened with that,” I muttered, as I called Essie, Funboy and Torina to follow me. Rab was giving us all overwatch with his BAG, just in case the bad guys hadn’t actually left the area and might be lurking nearby. That was an unfortunate truth of these sorts of criminals—they’d ambush and rob their unsuspecting victims, then ambush and rob anyone who showed up to help or investigate. From his vantage point atop a grassy knoll, he had an unobstructed view out to nearly two klicks on his longest sight-line, well within his BAG’s effective range. Gabby and Icky, meanwhile, kept the crime scene itself secure and documented everything. Of course, we had our ultimate back-up in the form of Netty-P aboard the Fafnir, circling about eight thousand meters above. She could obliterate anything out to the horizon with pinpoint accuracy. It was more firepower than I figured we’d need, though. At least, I hoped not. So we kept our weapons ready as we approached the trees, the three of us line abreast, about ten meters between us. I had The Drop, while Torina and Funboy both cradled slug-carbines. The umbrella thorn trees didn’t really offer much cover from ground level, though—they were literally like big umbrellas, with thick, gnarled and twisted trunks that flared out into flat, round canopies of thick foliage three to as much as five meters up. There was a little undergrowth beneath them, probably just enough to conceal two vehicles and their occupants from anyone not scrutinizing the

landscape for them. The trees would, however, offer excellent concealment from above. As soon as we reached the edge of the shade beneath the trees, we stopped. I’d assumed we’d have to hunt for subtle clues, tire marks and footprints and maybe, if we got lucky, something that had been dropped or thrown away. What we found, though, was a great many not-subtle-at-all clues. Torina summed it up nicely. “Whoever they are, they’re pigs,” she said, her tone flat. They were indeed. The grass and foliage under the thorn umbrellas had been trampled flat, with litter scattered carelessly around. We walked the perimeter, doing a quick visual scan. I saw the remains of what were clearly American MRE military rations, a few empty bottles of various types of booze, a mix of discarded 7.62 rounds of the type fired by the ubiquitous AK-47 and empty casings of the same, and miscellaneous other detritus—

including some toilet paper, that I didn’t examine closely at all. There were also about a thousand discarded cigarette butts. “Looks like these guys lived on nicotine, booze and whatever MREs were on the menu,” I said, scowling at the mess and shaking my head. Essie, though, picked up a trail heading back towards the ambush site, but traversing further south than we’d approached. He pointed it out to Perry. “Can you follow this?”

“Got it,” Perry replied. “It heads more or less straight—do you mind?”

I glanced up. Another bird, a big vulture-like thing, had wheeled into place as Perry’s wingman and was looking him over. Torina smirked. “Perry’s got a would-be girlfriend,” she said. “I understand that I’m irresistible, but—please, ma’am, some decorum, here,” he snapped over the comm. The other bird apparently decided Perry wasn’t her type, though, and wheeled away. “Easy come, easy go. Anyway, the trail runs basically due southeast, to that hillock about a hundred and fifty meters from where you guys are now,” he said. We looked that way and, sure enough, saw the rise Perry described. While Torina and Funboy started documenting the mess under the umbrella thorn trees, Essie and I walked to the hillock, taking care to remain away from the path Perry had seen. When we arrived and stepped up on the back side of the rise and looked back towards the ambush site, Icky and Gabby were in plain view. They were about a hundred and fifty meters away,

visible between two more undulations in the ground that formed a narrow sight-line. What had been a growing suspicion bloomed into certainty. “This was an OP, an observation post. Well-sited, so that anyone hunkered down here would have a clear view of that piece of road between the embankments in full enfilade.”

“Military term, right?” Essie asked. I nodded. “It basically means you’re looking—and shooting—along the long axis of a target. Everyone in that cutting between the embankments, where Icky and Gabby are now, would have been neatly lined up for anyone shooting from here. These people might have been pigs, but they knew what they were doing.”

“So disgusting slobs when they’re not fighting, and switched-on professionals when they are?” Essie said, a hard glare on his dark face. “Not just your run-of-the-mill bandits, but mercenaries.” He almost spat the word. I nodded. The fact there were only a few specific trails pointed to track discipline, another military concept intended to minimize the chances of troops being detected. The MREs weren’t definitive—any civilian could easily get their hands on them—but they just added to the picture. And that picture was a ragged, loosely disciplined mob that suddenly turned professional when the shooting was about to start. People who subordinated themselves to others when it was time to fight but probably got along about as well as a pack of hungry wolves otherwise. Their leader or leaders, at least, were probably ex-military. Africa had long had a history of mercenaries going to war not for causes, but for the payouts. As a kid, I remembered a magazine called Soldier of Fortune, which had started as a print thing in the 1970s and flourished for two decades, almost becoming mainstream. It had faded since but was, as far as I knew, still around as an online publication. I’d leafed through copies a few times out of curiosity, and even bought one during an extended layover in the Frankfurt Airport. It had portrayed the life of a mercenary in an almost romantic way, evoking a sense of the sort of things portrayed in Fredrick Forsyth’s book The Dogs of War, or the surprisingly star-studded movie The Wild Geese. “These days, I think they call themselves private military contractors, or security consultants,” I said to Essie. He shrugged. “It’s the same asshole, in different underwear.”

“What a colorful metaphor.”

Essie grinned. “Sorry. I get out into the bush and my potty mouth switches on.”

“How common are mercenary groups around here?

Or how commonly do mercenary groups do that sort of bullshit?” I asked, jabbing a finger at the ambush site. “Aren’t they paid to do specific things, not just hang out and ambush the first poor saps that wander into their kill zone?”

“There aren’t any rules to this, Van. I mean, sure, maybe these guys were paid to take out that forestry crew by a competing company, or even some really hard-core environmentalists. But they might also have been between jobs, and whoever runs the outfit didn’t want his guys deciding to take off on permanent leave.” He sniffed. “It’s not like there’s a whole lot of camaraderie or devotion to a cause—at least, a cause that can’t be deposited into a numbered account in the Caymans or wherever.”

I nodded. As I did, though, I had an idea. “Mercenaries like these animals probably don’t do a lot of their recruiting on LinkedIn, am I right?”

“Hmph. It wouldn’t really surprise me if they did, but—no, probably not. They mostly recruit their rank and file by word of mouth, hiring disaffected young men—sometimes very young men—out of towns and villages. Most of them already know their way around an AK-47, or they can be taught it quickly.”

“Yeah, but the ones doing that hiring, the ones who run these outfits, the ex-military pros, they probably don’t hang around the town square waiting for work. They go looking for it. Now, if you wanted to set up a way for former-military-turned-thuggish-merc types to connect with prospective—

and very, very shady—employers, how would you go about it?”

“Deep web,” Essie said without hesitation. I nodded and turned to the comm. “Netty-P, bring the Fafnir down at our location, then set up a comm connection to the terrestrial internet.”

“On the way,” she replied. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Yeah, I am. And I know you or Perry could probably find it a lot faster than I can, but I’ve got a hankering to do some good old-fashioned deep web hacking.”

I turned back to Essie, laced my fingers together, and mimed cracking my knuckles. “Been a while, but it’s like riding a virtual bicycle.”

Essie gave me a quizzical look. “Why don’t you just have Perry or Netty-P do it?”

“Two reasons. One, if the opposition realizes that we can just break in and take whatever we want no matter how many firewalls and spoofs and things they try to use to prevent it, they’ll just find another way. Maybe an offline way, like—I don’t know, mailing hardcopies that’ll be a lot harder to intercept. If there’s even a chance we can keep them thinking that it’s my hacking skills against theirs, I want to give it to them. We’ll save Perry and Netty-P’s abilities for when we really need them.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“I just want to. I want to find these bastards and bring them to justice—

maybe even alive, although right now I’m considering that kind of optional. And that starts with busting into their oh-so-secure “deep-web” holes and rooting out all their damned secrets—and having the satisfaction of doing it myself.”

IT TOOK me a couple of hours of work, but that was okay, because the others were still busy processing our expansive crime scene. I have to admit, it was two of the most satisfying hours I’d spent working in a long time. I was a little tentative to start, I admit, dredging up memories of how I used to do this on a regular basis. I’d never completely given it up, taking the opportunity to occasionally do a little hacking while spending time here on Earth. I’d wanted to prevent complete skill fade, and also keep myself up-to-date on the state of modern network security systems and countermeasures, and the newest tools available to circumvent them. I certainly didn’t do anything terribly illegal, and I only targeted sites that I knew were up to no good anyway. For instance, about a year prior, I busted into a “deep-web” site hosted in Albania—or so it appeared, but it could have actually been hosted on servers in Chicago, for all I knew or cared—

that dealt in false IDs and passports. I set the price of all their goods to a default value of zero, then quietly backed out, making sure my tracks were firmly covered. Which was something I did let the Fafnir’s tech do for me. Anyone attempting to track me now would find my IP address was ever-changing. Ping me, I’m in Azerbaijan. Ping me an instant later, I’m in Argentina. Do it again, and now I’m in Japan. It was a trivial little bit of spoofing that I let the Fafnir do for me in the background while I got on with hunting down mercenary companies working in Namibia, Africa, specifically northeastern Namibia, if I could manage it. And after two hours of hunting through “deep-web” sites used by mercenaries looking for work and those looking to hire them, I succeeded. It was with great satisfaction that I was able to come to the crew with a short list of candidates just as they were finishing up their investigation on the ground. We convened in the Fafnir’ s crew lounge, having lifted back into a circling path ten klicks over the Namibian landscape below. “So they were definitely mercenaries. In case there was any doubt, Torina found this,” Essie said, holding up an evidence bag. It contained a torn piece of paper. “Okay, and what’s that?” I asked. “A page torn out of a military field message pad—the version used by the Dutch Army, I think. Someone apparently used it to wipe”—Essie peered at it—“looks like chili sauce, I think?”

“Ah, yes. MRE zero-one,” I said. “Sorry?”

“MRE zero-one. Menu item number one on the MRE menu list every year going back to the mid-2000s was chili with beans. As for how I know that, well, it was one of the bits of arcane military lore I gained from my brief stint in the Army.”

Essie grinned. “Ah. Was it any good?”

“At zero-dark-forty-five, when you’ve got water squelching between your toes because your socks are soaking wet, you’ve just stumbled back from a shift on sentry and you’ve barely slept in four days, it’s virtually cordon bleu cuisine, trust me. Anyway, the significance of this impromptu napkin is—?”

“What was impressed on it by someone writing on the page prior. There are radio frequencies and code words to change them.”

“Sounds pretty military to me,” Rab said. I nodded. “Yeah, it does. Okay, so if we are taking that as sealing the deal regarding our villains being a gang of mercs, then here’s the short list

of possibilities,” I said, nodding to Netty-P so she could put the list up on the display. It showed the known leaders of the mercenary gangs who, in reality, pretty much were the gangs. They tended to be a single, or at most a few actual professional mercs who hired additional bodies as needed for particular jobs. I’d included three or four of their last known employers in the region for each. “And it only took Van two hours to put this together,” Perry said. I shot him a dark look. “Don’t rain on my parade, bird. It was time well-spent.”

He spread his wings. “Hey, no judgment. You do you. I mean, I could have—”

“Done it in a fraction of a second, blah, blah. Yes, I know. Not the point. Anyway”—I pushed on before Perry could utter further smartassery

—“we’ve got four candidates. All have recently accepted jobs in the region of northeastern Namibia, southern Angola, and northwestern Botswana. I think we can knock company number one off the list right away, since at least some of them, including their leader, a former US Army Ranger, were apparently killed in a helicopter crash in Angola about a month ago.”

Essie nodded, then pointed at number three on this list. “It won’t be these guys. They work for Dove Investments—cute name for a mercenary outfit, am I right?

Anyway, Dove provides high-end security consultancy to big mining companies and the like. As mercenaries go, they’re well-paid, in-demand, and extremely professional. Ambushing a survey crew to steal their boots just isn’t their style.”

“Okay, so that leaves two,” I said. “One is this outfit that’s run by a guy named Junius Kroegkamp. He’s a former Sergeant in the South African army who left the service three years ago. There isn’t much more to go on

—”

“He was drummed out for discreditable conduct,” Perry said. I turned to him, and he shrugged his wings. “Yes, Van, you could have busted into the South African army’s internal network and accessed his personnel file eventually. I thought I’d save you the time.”

“It really bugs you that I did this all by myself, doesn’t it?”

“You’re cutting my grass, man. Without doing all this spiffy hacking, what am I but a devilishly charming aerial surveillance drone?”

I sniffed and shook my head at him. “Fine, and thank you, bird. So Mr. Kroegkamp was dishonorably discharged, huh?

For what?”

“For assaulting a superior officer, apparently to the point the guy was hospitalized.”

“Nice. So he has a problem with authority figures, and would even use violence. Starting to really like this guy as our perp.” I turned back to the screen. “But we do have this other outfit. Maurice Leclerc, French national, formerly of the Foreign Legion.” I glanced at Perry. “Any insights to offer on him?”

“Not really. La Légion étrangère isn’t quite the place it once was for disaffected guys running away from debts, crimes, women, or any of the other trials of the world. Not the way it was back in the days of Beau Geste, anyway. They’re a little more discerning about who they admit, but since they’ve got, like, twenty-five Maurice Leclerc’s currently on their strength, I’m thinking it still might be a pseudonym.”

Torina pointed. “Of the four jobs listed for him, three of them are in…

Angola. That’s the country north of here, right?

And the fourth one is in…

Sudan, wherever that is.”

“A lot further north of here,” Essie replied, his hands on his hips. “In the meantime, Kroegkamp has done jobs in Namibia and Botswana. Gotta be honest, I’m liking this guy myself—by which I mean I hate his guts.” He looked at me. “I think this is our guy.”

“Excuse me, but that’s still merely an assumption. All due respect to Van and his abilities regarding infiltrating information systems, but the perpetrators may be none of these, and someone else entirely,” Funboy said. I nodded. “You’re right. This is hardly exhaustive. But—I don’t know, this guy Kroegkamp just feels like he’s our guy.”

“I agree,” Essie said. “Shouldn’t our conclusions be based on objective evidence?” Funboy persisted. Essie smiled at him. “Wow, just like old times. When we worked undercover together, Funboy was forever yanking my chain over my gut feelings and instincts and things.”

“Which saved wasted time on several occasions, embarrassment on several more, and our lives in one notable instance,” Funboy replied. “Well, we’ve got to start somewhere. Worst case scenario, even if Kroegkamp turns out to not be our man, he might be able to offer us some insights as to who might be.” I frowned. “Now we just have to find him.”

“He is likely currently located about twenty kilometers northeast of Windhoek, to the east of the currently mothballed Otjihase copper mine,”

Netty-P said. We all looked at her. “What, Perry’s the only AI that can pull useful information out of thin air?”

I grinned at her. “Sorry, my dear. Unlike certain other AIs, you tend to be significantly more modest about your abilities.”

“Hey, modesty is one of my best qualities, second only to how awesome I am,” Perry crowed. “How do you figure that Kroegkamp is there, near that old mine?” Essie asked. “It was reasonable to assume that the radio frequencies we pulled from that piece of paper were ones that he uses for his operations because they’re relatively free of interference from other sources,” Netty-P replied. I nodded. “Yeah, I remember being in the middle of an exercise in Texas with the Army, late one night in the field, and we ended up with a taxi company in a nearby town sharing the frequency we were using. They were calling drivers for pickups, while we were calling for artillery fire missions. Good times.”

“Anyway, there is traffic on one of those frequencies originating from a point about three kilometers east of the mine,” Netty-P said. Funboy raised a finger. “Again, that is merely a supposition. Any number of parties could be using that frequency.”

“That’s true. But the transmissions that have all occurred since this conversation began have used the moniker ‘Boss-K’ twice.”

“Alright, that’s a little more indicative but hardly definitive,” Funboy persisted. “They also used the name Kroegkamp once.”

I chuckled. Netty-P had been setting Funboy up. Good for her. Funboy blinked. “See, now that is the sort of objective evidence we should strive for.”

“Well, since Funboy approves, I guess we have a location. Netty-P, please continue monitoring those frequencies and let us know if they seem to be changing location,” I said. “They appear to be static, expecting a target to approach their location sometime soon.”

Essie cursed. “That mine was just bought by a copper producer from Canada. It was in the news. They’re probably going to have field crews out, doing surveys of the surrounding terrain and its geology.”

Icky scowled. “So they plan on gunning down another group of poor saps just out there doing their jobs?

To steal more boots?”

I shrugged. “That’s the worst case scenario, yeah. We’d better move. Netty-P—”

“Already en route. We’ll be over the area in question in about ten minutes.”

I gave her a thumbs-up. “Netty-P, you are definitely right on your game today.”

12

FIFTEEN THOUSAND METERS is a long way, especially when it’s straight up. The best Earthly surveillance tech could probably still manage pretty good data, but it would pale in comparison to what the Fafnir’ s suite of scanners and sensors could manage. For instance, we could see each individual in the group below clearly, at least when they appeared from beneath the cover of more of the ubiquitous umbrella thorn trees. Even then, we could still see them clearly as thermal ghosts. The visible-light images, though, were the telling ones. Kroegkamp’s mercenary company was a motley collection of mismatched sorts, some obviously ex-military, others just opportunists or people with nothing better to do. They wore bits and pieces of uniforms from at least a dozen countries, spanning decades in time, everything from old American Vietnam-era “tiger stripe” camouflage to things Perry identified as new pixelated stuff only recently issued by Pakistan. Their only standardization seemed to be long-arms, AK-47 and SKS rifles, which had been made in the millions and were used by irregular forces all over the world. They also had a trio of DShK heavy machine guns, the old Soviet equivalent to the Browning.50 caliber M2, mounted on dusty, battered pickup trucks, turning the vehicles into so-called “technicals.” We saw a pair of ground mounted.30 caliber Browning machine guns on tripods, a hulking Barrett M82 anti-materiel rifle, and at least one RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launcher too. “That’s an awful lot of firepower for what seems to be nothing but a gang of thieves and bandits,” Rab said. He’d been calling up the schematics

of each weapon as we identified them in the imagery and studying them with a critical, expert eye. “That’s probably because banditry is only a part-time gig for them. They do get actual paying contracts,” I replied. “Yeah, contracts even other mercs won’t touch,” Essie said, arms folded as he glowered at the imagery. “The ones where the employer doesn’t mind a little brutality, a few war crimes—the sorts of things you can count on a pack of brutes to do for you.”

“And maintain your own plausible deniability, let’s not forget that,”

Torina added. Essie nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure that’s built into their price. These assholes know full well that if things go wrong, they’ll be taking the fall for it.”

“Which probably just makes them even more vicious,” Gabby said. “If they know they’re going to take the blame for whatever happens anyway—

well, that would have a way of sort of freeing them from whatever would usually restrain these sorts of—of people.” She said “people” as though the word got caught in her mouth and it hurt a little. “Perhaps we should deal with them from here,” Funboy said. “Patterned fire from the Fafnir’s lasers would, at this range, deliver sufficiently intense energy to immediately vaporize human tissue, while having few collateral effects outside the immediate target area.”

“Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure,” Perry said. Rab glanced at him. “You’re agreeing with him?”

“No. I’ve just been waiting a long time to use that line. It was a gem of wisdom from the great pioneer of human endeavor in outer space, Ellen Ripley.”

Rab’s whiskers twitched. “That’s a fictional character from some instance or other of Earthly entertainment, isn’t it?”

“She might be—a little fictional, yeah,” Perry replied, then turned to me. “Am I becoming that obvious?”

“Yes, bird. Yes, you are,” I answered him, but I didn’t take my eyes off the imagery. Truth be told, it was awfully tempting to just evaporate these murderous scumbags and be done with it. I could probably justify such an extreme measure from a Guild legal perspective if I really wanted to put the effort into it. But I dismissed the idea almost immediately. For one, we had no absolute certainty who was down there. We counted twenty-two individuals, but a few hadn’t emerged from under the thorn umbrella trees and were still just thermal phantoms to us. For all we knew, some of them could be hostages. For another, the Fafnir’s lasers would indeed obliterate everything they touched, including crucial evidence like off-world weapons. We’d be left with a literal smoking crater. That would certainly be dramatic, but it would also leave us with no effective legal leverage against the Equal Grasp or anyone else. Finally, and most importantly, I wanted to establish that the rule of law really did constrain off-world parties in their dealings with Earth, and that the Guild was the one who’d enforce it. It was a message I wanted to send both to the people of Earth and to those who’d try to exploit or abuse them. So I shook my head. “As little as it would break my heart to simply turn these assholes into puffs of glowing gas, no—we need to do this the hard way, I’m afraid—”

Netty-P cut in. “Whatever way you want to do it, Van, you should do it soon. Two trucks have just left the mine site and are heading toward the mercenary position.”

“Shit. How long until they get there?”

“Well, they’re using what’s called a ‘road’ but is more ‘muddy ruts as straight as a wet noodle,’ so… I’d estimate from thirty to forty-five minutes, given the temper of that death trap they’re driving.”

Icky perked up. “Noodles. Yeah, I should eat before we go. Kicking butt is hungry work.”

“Everything is hungry work for you, big girl,” I said. Netty-P had put a zoomed-out image on the display, showing the relative locations of the crew that had left the mine and Kroegkamp’s ambush site. If they were some sort of mineral survey crew, they might stop to look at rocks and things along the way, or they might turn off and head in another direction entirely. But they might not. Moreover, Kroegkamp had placed his trap on the only road that traversed from the mine site to a series of large, exposed rock outcroppings to the east. We had to assume he wasn’t just blindly hoping for someone to wander into his clutches, so he must have had intel that this crew was heading for those rocks. I nodded. “Okay, action time. Rab, you and your big-ass gun are going to set up to give us fire support. Pick a position where you can—”

“Already done, boss,” he said. “There’s a perfect location about fifteen hundred meters to the south. The whole mercenary setup should be right in my line of sight.”

“Perfect.” I turned to Netty-P. “My dear, we need all the guns we can muster for this. You’re a crack long-range shot, so you’ll be with Rab. You’ll have to pilot the Fafnir remotely.”

“Done and done,” she replied. I turned. “Funboy, you and Gabby will be aboard the Frankie. You’re our air cover, more fire support if we need it, and medical dust-off if we need that—which I hope we won’t.”

Funboy gave me a thumbs-up, a positive gesture he still managed to make look gloomy. Gabby nodded eagerly. “I’ll go grab all the first aid stuff!” she said, hurrying off aft. I turned again. “Okay, the assault group is me, Torina, Essie, and Icky. We’re going full b-suits and helmets, and layer on any extra armor you’ve got. Weapons are your choice, but Torina and Essie, I want you guys to bring along goo guns. I want to take at least some of these bastards alive.”

I turned to Perry. “You’re—”

“Airborne observation, yeah, I know.”

“Actually, Perry, I want you to focus on the combat part of combat AI this time around. So if you see a chance to get in a hit, take it. I also want you to monitor their comms, then jam them as soon as the shooting starts.”

He bobbed his head. “Now we’re talkin’.”

I looked around. “Okay, everyone—places. Once Funboy and Gabby have launched the Frankie, we’ll land the Fafnir under cover and get this show on the road. Questions or suggestions?”

They didn’t make a sound. We were ready. “Okay, let’s move.”

I STOPPED AND RAISED A HAND, bringing Torina, Essie, and Icky to a halt behind me. They immediately crouched, facing right, left, and behind respectively, giving us all-around situational awareness and defense. Damn, these were good people. “Okay, we should be about a hundred meters short. I’m going ahead for a peek at the situation,” I said. I had no worry about our comms being detected, so there was no reason for any sort of comm silence. Keeping low and cradling my slug carbine, I crept up to the crestline ahead of me, then slowly raised my head and looked past it through some scrubby grass. I could see the technical parked in a piece of low ground about seventy-five meters to my front-right. A half-dozen men slouched around them, three smoking cigarettes whose fumes just hung in the sultry air in a thin, pale mist. A couple of the others sprawled on the ground, apparently asleep. One man was taking a long pull on a bottle of something clear—it wasn’t water, judging by his wince. I couldn’t see the OP the mercenaries had put out, but I knew it was about a hundred meters off to my left beyond another rise in the ground. The rest of the crew was still milling and slouching around under the umbrella trees, weapons slung or propped against the gnarled trunks. “Rab, Netty-P, are you guys in position?”

“We are. So any time you’re ready—” Rab replied. “Funboy, how about you?”

“We’re continuing to hold position to the west at one thousand meters altitude. The two vehicles that departed the mine site are now less than one kilometer from your location,” he said. “Okay, no time to waste,” I replied, then frowned at the technicals. The small arms carried by the bulk of the mercenaries posed only a minor threat to us, clad as we were in our b-suits. The laser weapons they possessed didn’t worry me much, either. I wasn’t sure if they had other off-world weaponry, maybe even more dangerous stuff, but we had no evidence they did. The big guns mounted on the pickups were a genuine threat though. Even a b-suit wouldn’t stop a 12.7 mm round at this short a range. They had to go. “Okay, Funboy, in one minute, I want you to overfly the bad guys. De-stealth the Frankie as you do. Then, I want you to take out the three trucks they’ve got parked just to the east of their position, in the low ground. Once you do, stealth up again and move back into a holding pattern. We’ll use the resulting drama to launch our own attack.”

“One minute. Got it.”

I turned back to the others. “Okay, this crest is as close as we’re going to get without being seen,” I said, gesturing them forward. Torina and Essie

peeled off to my right, while Icky took up position to my left. As she did, she poked her head over the crest to take a look—which was immediately followed by a shout from the mercenaries. She ducked back. “Aw, shit. I’m sorry, Van—”

“No worries, big girl. Funboy, move now!”

I heard shouts again, but they were more confused concern than alarm. Somebody had obviously seen Icky’s helmeted head skyline itself over the crest, but now nobody saw anything. Still, the shouts persisted, which meant they were taking it seriously enough that someone was trying to get the motley mob sorted out and ready—

“De-stealthing now,” Funboy said. I poked my head up, since it was about to no longer matter. Just as I did, the Frankie shimmered into existence about 500 meters up. She immediately spat mass-driver rounds at the technicals, which hit like shots from a tank gun. Two of the modified pickup trucks vanished, blasted to shreds of metallic confetti. The front end of the third likewise exploded into a cloud of shrapnel, then all of it vanished into swirling dust. The flat, hard booms of the impacts slammed over us like thunderclaps from an overhead storm. As for the men who’d been lounging around the technicals—well, I saw one, at least, still resembled an intact human being. The others were now things formerly known as humans, a specialty of ours. “Let’s go!” I said, jumping to my feet and raising my slug carbine. Torina, Essie, and Icky did likewise. We three humans advanced at a slow jog, snapping out loosely aimed shots as we went to deliver suppressing fire. Icky bellowed and charged at a full run with all the subtlety of a Percheron in war armor. She was… enthusiastic. Something struck my chest. Something else hit my right arm. Each impact felt like being hit with the flat of a paperback novel, harder than your standard Harlequin Romance but not quite Stephen King’s It. I ignored them and just kept advancing—

Essie snapped a warning. Incredibly, one of the men had survived the Frankie’s brief bombardment and had dragged himself into the back of the burning technical, where he desperately sought to slew around the big DShK gun. He managed to get it pointed in our direction, while Torina,

Essie, and I all frantically sought to line up shots. Before he could open fire, though, his head—disappeared. Vanished. Poof, but a lot juicier. His body considered remaining upright for a moment, then decided to quit with dignity, sort of, and slumped to the bed of the pickup. I swung my attention forward again. “Rab, was that you?”

“Netty-P, actually.”

“Good work, you beautiful little sniper you.”

“With pleasure,” she replied. “Did you see the part where—”

“I, um, did.”

Netty-P laughed. “I’ll take your discomfiture as a compliment to my tactical decision.”

I almost smiled. “Nice phrasing. Now then, shall we?”

Fifty meters—or twenty, in Icky’s case. Bullets snapped around us, kicking up puffs of dust, smacking into our b-suits and armor, or passing us by like cracking whips. I lined up a more deliberate shot on an old, grizzled man with a reddish beard going gray, but either Rab or Netty-P put a round through him before I could shoot. I picked another target but had to pull my shot on that one, too, as a sleek, black shape shot past, struck, and vanished, leaving blood like a crimson contrail. Perry’s unfortunate target dropped to his knees, clutching at what remained of his face. And head. And part of one shoulder, too, if you consider the clavicle to be a shoulder. Perry was serious. I saw Icky finally reach the ragged line of defenders and swing into action, literally, her hammer a blur as she swept it back and forth in a silvery arc of death and destruction. A smaller group of men further away aimed brutish-looking weapons like boxy submachine guns at her, firing shots that made no sounds. They also had no effect on Icky, her b-suit shrugging off the incoming laser energy like it was water. Seeing that, they panicked, turned, and ran. The next minute or so was a blur of dust, gunshots, hard-looking men with wide, panicked eyes snapping shots at us, and me shooting back, dropping them with more dust, shouts, screams, and shots. I must have been hit a dozen times, with two impacts doing some serious harm—one SKS

fired at nearly point-blank range hit my left forearm where my vambrace didn’t cover it, the impact sending a shock of pain up my arm as a bone broke with a dull, gelatinous thunk. I wasn’t done. Not even close. I was pissed. I dropped my carbine and yanked out The Drop with my right hand to keep up the fight. The other shot came at me from behind, another SKS

fired by a mercenary I thought was down and out. It slammed into my right kidney hard enough to send floaters in my vision—the kind of ocular effect that lets you know you’re in deep shit when the fight is over. Gritting my teeth, I spun around, but Essie loosed a shot from his goo gun and glued the shooter to the ground with a gout of viscous, hardening sludge. The shot smelled vaguely like cantaloupe and mossy water, and it held tight despite the shooter’s struggles. I turned back—and the shooting stopped. Dust and sudden silence hung beneath the thorny umbrellas, punctuated by moans and curses from the wounded or goo-slathered. Torina limped up to me, cursing. “Took a shot right in the foot. Think I’ve got at least a couple of broken toes,” she snapped. I gestured at my dangling arm. “Same, babe. You—”

“I’m okay,” she said, guessing my words. I lifted a brow, and she limped closer. “Okay. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

I looked around. Essie knelt, clutching his goo gun and working the action to reload another charge. He saw me looking at him and gave me a thumbs-up. I next looked for Icky but couldn’t find her—

I could hear her though. I headed in that direction, wincing and cursing at various bursts of pain, and reached another crestline. Beyond it, I saw a sight that yanked a laugh out of me. Four or five mercenaries were in frantic flight, running off to the north

—not to anywhere, but away from what was chasing them. It was Icky. She pounded along behind them, howling and brandishing her hammer. Perry landed beside me. “You should just let her chase them. See how far they’ll go.”

Torina stopped on my other side and sniffed a laugh. “Not quite so big and tough now, are they?”

“Funboy, can you cut off the assholes running from Icky before she chases them all the way to the Mediterranean?”

“On my way.”

The comedic little scene lasted another thirty seconds or so, “Yakety Sax” playing in my head the whole time. By then, they had to be nearly two hundred meters away and still going strong. Then the Frankie materialized

directly in their path, her point-defense battery gaping in the faces of the fleeing mercenaries. They immediately stumbled to a stop—

A LOUD, hissing whoosh erupted from somewhere behind me. Something streaked overhead, directly toward the Frankie. Her point-defense guns almost offhandedly swiveled and pumped out a brief stream of fire, puffing whatever was tracking her to fragments. The rounds slammed into the countryside a hundred meters away with rolling booms and more plumes of dust. Without missing a beat, the battery swung right back into place, menacing the now-cowering mercenaries. It all happened faster than I could turn around, and by the time I did, I heard Rab’s BAG cough out a quick double-tap of rounds. “The guys in that observation post had some sort of anti aircraft weapon, a shoulder-fired missile—um, the type called Stinger, I think?

Anyway, emphasis on had,” Rab said. I turned back. The fleeing mercs now knelt under Icky’s baleful gaze. “Hey, Icky, have you got those guys under control?”

“If by ‘under control,’ you mean are they shitting their pants even as we speak, then yeah, I do.”

“Perfect. I’m going to send Essie to help you march them back here. Funboy, switch the Frankie’s point-defenses into standby mode. I don’t want to rip up Namibia any more than we have to—especially the parts with us standing on them.” I stopped to squeeze my eyes shut at the pain in my left arm and my lower back. “And then, get you and your gear down here. We could really use your medical chops.”

“I am fully prepared to play doctor,” Funboy intoned. “Unlike Icky, I’m going to insist you wear pants for my medical care,” I said. Funboy gave a little sigh—one of his specialties—and began muttering to himself about germs and battlefield medicine. Then he spoke, his tone crisp and clear. “The doctor… is in.”

13

WE’D BEEN EXTREMELY FORTUNATE. Besides my own hits and Torina’s foot, Icky had had a bullet hit her just right, penetrate her b-suit, and bury itself in the muscle of her upper thigh. She also had a bunch of bruises, which wasn’t surprising considering she’d probably taken half of the mercenary’s fire as she’d charged. Her visor was cracked and starred in a couple of places, and she actually still had the squashed remnants of bullets lodged in her harness. Essie had no hurts aside from more bruising, and none of the rest of the crew had even taken a hit. The mercenaries weren’t so fortunate. Twelve had survived our attack, with five of them wounded, two of them seriously. Funboy probably saved one of those from bleeding out and managed to get him stabilized. We herded the survivors into the shade of the umbrella thorns after searching them for weapons. Now they stared back at us with a mix of wide-eyed, fearful wonder and surly, frustrated rage. An older man with iron gray hair and a jagged scar that barely missed his left eye was mainly in the latter category. I stopped in front of him. “Julian Kroegkamp, I presume?”

“Up yours, shitbird.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Perry landed on a tipped-over ammo crate. “Got some intel you might be interested in, boss.”

I gestured for him to follow me, then limped out of earshot. I’d taken my helmet off and didn’t feel like putting it back on to keep our comms

private, but I also didn’t want the bad guys to know what we knew. “Go ahead,” I said to him. “Well, first, I looked over a smartphone Rab took off the one who just told you to get stuffed. It’s Kroegkamp alright.”

“Yeah, kind of figured that. What did you find?”

“A shocking amount of porn. Seriously—a lot of it.”

“Guess it gets lonely out on the veldt. Anything else?”

“Well, contact info for what I assume are probably prostitutes in a dozen towns and cities in southern Africa, but I also found a number with no ID

attached. I got Netty-P to trace it, and it turns out to be a private number in Harare for one Mr. Younger Moloi.”

I cursed. Moloi was a smugly wealthy mining magnate who’d built his fortune on blood commodities harvested across Africa. We’d caught him once, involved in illicit off-world dealings—specifically, trying to spread his grubby tentacles off Earth and onto Jupiter’s moon Europa. The fact that the oceans hidden deep beneath the Europan ice harbored life didn’t concern him—he just wanted to exploit the moon’s mineral wealth. I’d offered him, and another off-worlder named Fizzix, a deal. If they helped us to legally procure some commodities we needed to construct Fort Cantullin, I’d drop the charges against them. They did, then Fizzix fled the Solar System for parts unknown, while Moloi presumably went back to being a strictly terrestrial scumbag. I looked at Perry. “When was Kroegkamp’s last contact with Moloi?”

“Based on his phone logs, two days ago.”

I cursed again. It seemed that Moloi had not learned his lesson. “Okay, so let’s see if another shoe drops. Did you find any connection between Kroegkamp—”

“And the Equal Grasp?

Well, I did find a number Netty-P traced to one Mr.—”

“Let me guess. Forester, our friendly scumbag attorney in New York.”

“Do you even need me here for this, Van?

I mean, if you’re going to answer your own questions—”

I spun back toward Kroegkamp and immediately regretted it as pain flared in my lower back. Funboy had injected a pain suppressant and tissue regenerator, but it would take a few hours before it completely healed. “Tell me, Kroegkamp—do you have anything to say that’s worth listening to?”

He shrugged, trying hard to make it look super casual. But I saw a hard glimmer of fear deep in his eyes. This was a man used to being in control, and now he wasn’t. He just spat another curse at me. I smiled. “Eh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll find out all I want to know from Younger Moloi and the good Mr. Forester back in New York City—”

Another of the mercs, younger, leaner, and with a Slavic look to him—

probably from somewhere in Eastern Europe—abruptly growled and lunged to his feet, then came at me with a stiletto-like knife. I barely had time to turn and face him before Torina almost off-handedly lifted her slug carbine and neatly blew his head apart. The other mercenaries winced, and a couple cried out in alarm. I looked at her. She shrugged back. “He was a clear and present threat.”

“My recommendation is to deal with the rest of them in a similar fashion,” Funboy said, his voice translated through his comm’s speaker. “I doubt that they have any useful information for us.”

Icky nodded. “Yeah, Van, we’re just wasting our time with these assholes. Let’s see, twelve—” She stopped and made a point of looking at the gory remains of the man with the knife. “Oops— eleven more slugs and this can all be done and dusted.”

I assumed they were both advocating executing our prisoners purely for effect. But they both sure seemed convinced it was the right thing to do. I just shook my head. “No, I think we’ll go through the hoops—law enforcement, remember?”

“You can field sanction ’em. That would be enforcing the law,” Icky replied, then turned her glower on the huddled prisoners. One of them actually whimpered. “These are the pieces of excrement who gunned down innocent people for their boots, remember?”

Kroegkamp unwisely chose that moment to finally speak up. “You have no idea how things work down here, do you?” he snapped. “Up there, in your fancy spaceships or whatever—you just have no clue what it takes to survive—”

I stepped forward and loomed over him. “The one who has no clue, my friend, is you. There are things out there that make you and your thugs look like toddlers squabbling over a favorite toy. If you’d like, I can take you to see a few of them.” I glanced at Torina. “What do you think?

Hand him

over to the Flesh Merchants on Spindrift?

Maybe the Body Thief on Dregs?”

“Oh, you want to go easy on him. I thought you were suggesting the—

you know, really bad stuff. Maybe make him spend time with the Conoku.”

Funboy blinked at her and looked mildly aghast. “I only suggested killing them. That would be—unnecessarily terrible, I think.” He shuddered. “The enthusiasm.”

I turned back to our prisoners. Most of them now looked frankly terrified. Even Kroegkamp was having a hard time maintaining his defiant sneer. Rab walked up, holding one of the snub-nosed laser weapons. He hefted it. “TL-15 series, model A, made by Kaluu’k Armories in the Tau Ceti system. Meant for boarding actions, fights in places you don’t want to be firing high-velocity projectiles. Oh, and about three generations old—better than standard Earthly tech, but not by much. If we had them on the Fafnir, I’d toss them out the airlock to make space for something actually useful.”

My gut reaction was, Tell that to the survey crew incinerated by these things—but I didn’t say that, because Rab’s assessment was an objectively honest one. Instead, I played into it, giving a derisive sniff and shaking my head. “So the Equal Grasp gave you guys what’s basically junk. And you thought you had an unbeatable arsenal in your grubby little hands, didn’t you?” I said to Kroegkmap. “Those things barely even warmed up this suit I’m wearing. You might as well have been shining flashlights at us. Now, tell me again how I’m the one who’s out of his depth here.”

Gabby and Essie entered the shade under the thorny umbrellas. She effortlessly lugged a hefty crate, another hint at her fearsome strength. I was glad she was so good natured, not to mention on our side. The thought of facing one of her people as a foe in battle—inordinately strong and virtually immune to most forms of harm—was honestly pretty frightening. She plunked the crate down in the dirt. “We found this in the back of that—oh, whatchamacallit, the things with the rubber wheels—”

“Trucks,” Essie said, smiling briefly. “The one that survived the Frankie’s guns more or less intact. It’s off-world, whatever it is, and sealed with a mag-lock I can’t break.”

Perry hopped over to examine it. “Can’t hack it, sorry. It needs a key.”

I turned to Kroegkamp. “Which is where?”

He shrugged. “As far as I know, it was in the cab. Guess you blew it up.”

I sighed and pulled out the Moonsword. Taking great care, I eased the chipped blade into the substance of the crate, then slowly worked it through the lock, cutting a few millimeters at a time to avoid putting too much strain

—

A sharp snap sounded. I slid the blade out. A crack, about a centimeter long, now extended from the chip. Kroegkamp made the mistake of taking this as some sort of tiny win. “Aw, did you break your toy—”

I spun on him and touched the blade to the side of his neck. “This toy will still happily cut through flesh and bone with no trouble at all. Would you like me to demonstrate that?

And before you answer, just remember that I will have no trouble justifying killing you, the vile, mass-murdering piece of shit that you are. I mean, who’s going to miss you?”

Hot fury flared in his eyes. I’d touched some sort of psychological sore spot. Maybe it was about someone who rejected him, maybe it was about his relationship with his mother, maybe he suffered from terribly low self-esteem—

I didn’t care. He subsided and looked down at the dirt. I’d managed to cut most of the way through the lock. Icky was able to jam a tool from the Frankie used to lever off stuck and damaged hull plates, and by straining herself mightily, she finally managed to break the crate open. It contained more of the TL-15 laser weapons, plus power packs and other accessories. I did a quick count. They had twenty of the damned things in total—at least—with them. I turned back to the prisoners. “Okay, someone tell me about your friend Younger Moloi. First one who talks gets—not a free pass, but some consideration.”

One of the mercs spoke up. “He’s not our friend, you—”

“Mbakua, you amateur shit,” Kroegkamp snapped. The man named Mbakua realized that he’d just corroborated the contact information Perry had found in the phone, and that they worked for, or were at least connected with Moloi. “I, uh—” Mbakua looked down. “Yeah.”

But I smiled at him. “Hey, don’t stop now. I’ll tell you what. You keep talking, and you’ll win a prize. In fact, I will let you just walk away from this.”

Mbakua’s eyes flicked up at me, then and back and forth at his fellow mercenaries. I waved a hand. “Pfft. Don’t worry about them. You’ll never see them again—I can guarantee you that. Mind you, I’ll have to confirm what you tell us is true before I let you go, so if you lie—”

Funboy and Icky both stepped closer. Icky glared. Funboy blinked. “Then we will get involved. Very involved. In very intimate ways,” he said. Icky frowned and gave him a sidelong glance. “Yeah. And not the good kind of intimate, either.”

Mbakua shrugged. “You want those guns?

Our camp has a lot of them.”

I smiled, gestured for Mbakua to get up, and led him away. Icky and Funboy continued menacing the rest, keeping them silent. “Excellent. Let’s start there.”

KROEGKAMP’S BASE turned out to be a remote location in the Namibian outback, in the shadow of the bleak cinder cones of a pair of extinct volcanoes. It was about ten klicks from the nearest road that actually rated the term, alongside a rough runway that had been cleared through the scrub. As we circled overhead in the Frankie, we saw an airplane, a de Havilland Beaver on balloon tires, sitting near a cluster of tents and a couple of bunkers. By then, we’d been joined by B, who had arrived in orbit shortly before. She’d been after me to talk about some aspect of Guild and GKU business, but I was glad to have her medical expertise handy. We transferred the most seriously wounded of the mercenaries to her for treatment, then closed in on the mercenaries’ camp. As we orbited overhead, I called up Torina on the Fafnir and told her to bring Kroegkamp, whom we’d stuck in a holding cell, to the comm. “Here he is,” she said. “Okay, Kroegkamp, you have one chance to corroborate what the good Mr. Mbakua told us about your camp. How many personnel do you have down there?

And think hard before you answer, because if your number is substantially different from his—well, we will find out which one of you was lying.”

After a long pause, he finally spoke. “There should be four down there,”

he said, his tone dolorous as a hanging judge. “Very good. Torina, you can put him away again.”

I glanced at Rab in the co-pilot’s seat. “What do you know?

They both claim four.”

Rab nodded and pointed at the center display. “Well, they’re both off by two. Thermal gives us six total. Two in that tent, one outside it, and three in that bunker thing just north of the flying vehicle.”

“Yeah. Okay, well, let’s make this simple. We’ll fly overhead, announce ourselves, and tell them to surrender peacefully. Then we’ll land and… see what happens.”

What happened was that two of the mercenaries defending the camp decided to open fire as soon as we exited the Frankie. Rab sighed, lined up his BAG, and shot one, then the other. Two more appeared with their hands up. We approached the camp as B landed nearby, the twin volcanoes looming ominously just to the northeast, ragged cones of black, barren rock. The air was hot and full of fine, gritty dust. By the time we reached the nearest bunker, the mercs had been utterly overwhelmed. They fell to their knees, begging us to not take them away. I stared down at them more with pity than contempt, where they groveled in the reddish dirt. They looked like they might be fifteen or sixteen years old. Maybe. But it got—incredibly—even worse. Icky found the other two thermal signatures huddling in a tent. They were two girls in their late teens or early twenties. They weren’t mercenaries. They were—

B, who’d joined me as I walked into the camp, glared, her antennae going flat like the ears of a pissed-off cat. “Doesn’t matter which war, which scumbags are fighting it—the victims are always the same,” she said, then stepped forward slowly, her hands out and open toward the two terrified, cowering girls. Icky, peering inside, frowned. “Are these two more mercenaries?”

I glanced back at her. “No, Icky, they’re not. They’re—” I hesitated, then shrugged. “They’re basically like stolen people, but in some ways, even worse.”

She stared at me, then her face darkened like a growing thunderstorm. “Oh. Shit. Shit. Van, these scum buckets don’t deserve a cell, they deserve a grave.”

“I don’t disagree, big girl. I don’t disagree at all.” I sighed. “But we’re here to enforce the rule of law. So, to that end, help Rab search this place. Look everywhere, even inside that airplane. I want to know every last piece of gear that’s here, every weapon, every damned stray sock. If you find any comms or electronics, hand them over to Perry.”

Icky glowered at me for a moment, then subsided. “Will do, boss,” she said and turned back. “And then what?

We aren’t just leaving this place, are we?

So someone else can use it to”—she looked at the two girls, who were still cowering away from B—“to hurt more people like them?”

“Nope. When we’re done here, we’re going to leave it the same way we’ll be leaving all of the Equal Grasp’s holdings that we root out—in ashes.”

WE GLEANED all of the intel we could from the mercenary encampment. It wasn’t much, or not much more than we already knew, at least. It boiled down to the Equal Grasp and Younger Moloi both being implicated in a scheme to give advanced—by Earthly standards—weaponry to Kroegkamp. The implication was a little indirect, since we only had the data from his phone telling us he’d spoken to both Moloi and Forester recently, and nothing about the substance of those calls. Perry, though, put it best. “I doubt that they share quilting or floral arranging as mutual hobbies.”

It meant we weren’t sure what motivated Forester or Moloi to arm Kroegkamp. Testing the impact of the weapons?

Just promoting general chaos and mayhem?

Something more insidious?

If Kroegkamp even knew, he wasn’t talking. B treated the two girls, who finally and furtively told her and Torina that they were from a small town about forty klicks to the northeast. It was about all they said, though, and it required a fair bit of gentle but patient prodding to get them to say that much. We’d called in Torina to help after B

suggested that it would probably be best to keep them away from the more obvious aliens—and from me. B was up-front about it. “Let’s put it this way, Van. Nothing personal, but men have been a problem for these two girls.”

I held up my hands surrender-like. “Hey, I get it. You guys take all the time you need with them.”

I walked away from B’s ship towards the Fafnir. When I heard a shout from behind me, I spun and pulled The Drop. It was Icky. She was lumbering toward me, Essie at her side, hauling a scrawny figure along in one of her beefy hands. “Hey, Van, look what we found hiding in that airplane thingie back there. He was cowering under a tarp,” Icky said, dragging the figure to a stop in front of me. It was a Skel. Okay, I try very, very hard not to let the behavior of individuals influence the way I feel about an entire people. Stereotyping is wrong. Not all Yonnox were sleazy, not all Fren-Okun were dumb. Hell, there were even decent Trinduk, and they were the people that spawned the Sorcerers. I had yet, however, to meet even a single of the emaciated, gas-masked and goggled humanoids called Skels that had even a single redeeming quality. No one knew where they came from, just that they seemed to appear on the fringes of things as the worst sort of criminals—skeezy and opportunistic as hell, but total cowards about it. Torina once told me she thought they might grow from spores wherever there was wrongdoing, the way mold eventually grows on stale bread. I’d heard even more esoteric theories, like they were physical manifestations of greed and corruption formed by some weird metaphysical process when those things reached a certain, critical point. Not that it really mattered in the end. And all of which was to say that I was surprisingly unsurprised to find a Skel lurking in the camp of a bunch of vicious, abusive guns-for-hire. I glared at the Skel without holstering The Drop. “Name.”

“Please, I—”

I raised a hand, cutting off the raspy, tinny voice crackling from the speaker on the mask. “Unless your name is Please I, you’re not answering the question I asked you. That makes uncooperative strike number one. Guess how many you get before I decide you’re resisting arrest?”

Essie stood beside me. “Why am I not surprised the Skels are involved in this?”

I glanced at him. “Funny, I was just thinking the same thing. And I still haven’t heard a name.”

“Cralo,” the Skel said in a pouty tone that did not make him any more endearing. “Well, Cralo, would you mind explaining what you’re doing here?

And by here, I mean both Earth, and this spot on Earth in particular.”

“I was… kidnapped. Brought here against my will. I’m so glad you found me, Peacemaker Tudor, I was so frightened—”

I glanced down at my b-suit. “Huh. No name tag. Icky, Essie, did you happen to mention my name to this fine gentleman?”

They both shook their heads. “Interesting. My reputation appears to precede me. So, while you reconsider that bullshit about being kidnapped, you can explain how you know who I am.”

The Skel’s goggles swung from me, to Essie, to Icky, and back. If he had lips, I could imagine him licking them. “Look—I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

I nodded. “Yes, you will.”

“But I want a deal for it.”

I laughed. “My friend, just by being here, you are violating a lawful cordon placed around this planet by the Peacemaker Guild.” But I cut my laugh off and glared into the goggles. “You are also screwing around on my home planet, hanging out with some really bad, really nasty people. The best deal you’re going to get is not immediately being shot during the course of your being apprehended.” I straightened. “Now, if you tell me something genuinely useful, then we’ll see about getting your inevitable sentence aboard The Hole reduced to something less than the heat death of the universe.”

I turned to Icky. “Take him to the Fafnir and have Perry, Funboy, and Gabby question him.”

“Can I watch and loom and be all menacing and stuff?”

“Icky, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She dragged the Skel off. Essie sighed. “Hopefully, he can give us a stronger connection than we’ve got between these bastard mercs and the Equal Grasp.”

I nodded and holstered The Drop. “I hope so, too. But even if he doesn’t, he’s a major bonus for us.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, Kroegkamp and his gang are locals. With Earth not a signatory to the Guild Charter, we have no direct jurisdiction over its people—at least, not unless and until they leave the atmosphere aboard something that isn’t an Earthly vessel. That means we have to turn Kroegkamp over to local law enforcement.”

I narrowed my eyes at Cralo, who was squirming and squealing as Icky hauled him implacably away. “But that doesn’t apply to him. He’s very much under Guild jurisdiction. And that means we can dispose of his case aboard the Righteous Fury and make the proceedings available to Earthly authorities. Show them that the rule of law applies out there as much as it applies down here.”

Essie nodded, but he had a bitter twist to his mouth. “Let’s hope it applies even more. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with the local authorities in this part of the world, but they’re… not entirely free of corruption.”

I barked a laugh. “Oh, not just in this part of the world, Essie.”

“Really?

This is common?

In America?”

I snorted. “It’s common, but in some places, local government is truly creative with their grifting. Case in point, let me regale you of tales from a place called Bogalusa, Louisiana. Now then, buckle up—

14

THE SKEL HADN’T BEEN our only bonus. Perry had dipped into various terrestrial databases and discovered that Kroegkamp was the subject of an Interpol “Red Notice,” a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. In this case, it was Kroegkamp himself who was wanted, by France, for war crimes committed about two years prior in Mali. So, we hung onto Kroegkamp and the Skel, keeping them stashed in the Fafnir’s holding cells. Then, Essie, Torina, and I made a trip into Windhoek, where we delivered the other prisoners to the local authorities. We landed the Frankie as close to the main offices of NAMPOL, the Namibian State Police Force, as we could. We disembarked, then Rab took her back to altitude to wait for us. The NAMPOL Station Superintendent, a pleasant, somewhat chubby man named Jake Shikongo, smiled like a Buddha as we presented ourselves to him. He was bemused, to say the least, even taken a little aback. But it was far less reaction than I’d expected, considering we’d just stepped out of a spaceship. His Buddha smile didn’t waver. “I have seen things out on the veldt, my friends. Strange things. And now, I have seen things even stranger on YouTube—some of them featuring you and this lovely lady accompanying you quite prominently. I long ago came to realize there is more to heaven and earth than the things we know—indeed, the things we even can know.”

I instinctively liked this guy. “That’s a very enlightened attitude, Chief,”

I said, giving him a genuine smile of my own. “Ah, well, Mister Tudor—yes, I know your name from those videos—it is either seek enlightenment, or live in the darkness, no?”

I smiled some more. What a remarkable guy. He directed his own men to take the prisoners into custody, then turned to me. “You do realize that I will likely proceed with great leniency,” he said. “I see all too many of such… men, but also boys, who have turned to violence because they have little else in their lives. Punishing them—” He shrugged. “Well, unfortunately, imprisonment tends to be a very good way to make bad people worse. They will probably do better if released back into their own communities.”

Essie was nodding, but Torina frowned. “What stops them from just going right back out and doing the same thing again?”

Shikongo turned his beatific smile on her. “Nothing, I’m afraid. But those who have little will often go to extreme lengths to get something, no?”

Torina stared back at him for a moment, then sighed and nodded. “Still, we shall do our best. They will inevitably say that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the killings you’ve described, that they were simply forced to be there, that they watched or only discharged their weapons into the air. Still, there may be some who are wanted for other crimes. A few of the harder ones, for instance.”

I handed over a package of relevant evidence we’d collected, copied onto a standard USB stick since I doubted Shikongo had a data slate or similar tech handy. “Chief, I leave this in your capable hands. Oh, and full disclosure—we were involved in a firefight, and there were casualties. We buried them, but the locations are detailed along with everything else.”

Shikongo didn’t stop smiling, it just turned a little sad. “Violence spawns yet more violence, Mister Tudor. I am taking you at your word that you had no other alternatives.”

I shook my head. “We didn’t. I wish we had, but—well, getting those laser weapons out of hands that never should have touched them in the first place was my top priority.”

He gave me a steady, and still smiling look, then nodded. “You are a man of your word, Mister Tudor, I believe that. And if you wish to continue

helping to enforce peace in our turbulent countryside, I shall not complain too much.”

“Okay, well—we’re off to Interpol to hand over Julian Kroegkamp.”

Shikongo’s smile became a broad grin. “Interpol, eh?

Well, have fun with that.”

The way he said it made me narrow my eyes a little. I assumed it was some turf rivalry—different levels of policing often sparred over jurisdiction. So we bid our farewells and left. As Rab landed the Frankie and we embarked, even Essie had to admit that Shikongo had impressed him. “Just when I think I can finally give up on decency and assume everyone out there is an asshole, along comes someone like him to restore a little faith,” he said. I gave him a smirk as I settled into the co-pilot’s seat. “Is that a complaint?”

Essie stared at the instrument panel for a moment, then nodded. “A little bit of it is, actually. Being able to assume everyone’s an asshole would make life easier, wouldn’t it?”

IRONICALLY, our interaction with Interpol didn’t go anywhere near as smoothly. Just as Chief Shikongo had been remarkably open-minded and justice-oriented, Thomas Ayles, the station head for Interpol in Namibia, was—not that. He was all officialdom and bureaucratic t-crossing and i-dotting. It started with making us wait. Nearly half an hour. I mean, a spaceship drops off people outside your office who are claiming to have in their custody someone you’ve been hunting for, you’d think the normal response would be to find some time in your schedule for them, right?

I was pacing the barren reception room, Torina and Essie sitting and making small talk and keeping a close eye on Kroegkamp. He simply sat between them, staring at the floor. I let this last for about twenty minutes, then turned to the receptionist in the office, a smartly dressed Namibian girl. “Did I mention you folks have one of your Red Notices out for this man?”

“Yes, you did.”

I gave an and therefore—?

look to follow that, and she gave an awkward shrug. “I’m sorry, Mr. Tudor. I’ve informed Mr. Ayles, twice now

—”

“Yes, I know—and thank you,” I added, since this wasn’t her fault. She was just stuck having to face me. I decided to change tactics. “Perry, where does Interpol keep its headquarters, or head office or whatever?”

He replied immediately on the comm. “Lyon, France.”

“Perfect.” I turned to the others. “Well, since it seems like this Mr. Ayles can’t be bothered to give us the time of day, let’s see if his bosses in Lyon are more—”

An inner door opened, almost as though the man who’d opened it had been listening through it. He was a slender, ascetic man with a trimmed gray beard and an outfit like an Oxford professor, right down to the polka-dot bowtie. “Mr. Tudor, my apologies for keeping you waiting. I’m Thomas Ayles,”

he said, his voice as fussy as a period drama butler. He walked towards me and extended his hand, a bland smile creasing his wholly forgettable face. It was an expression of… tolerance. Yes, he was tolerating my presence. I instantly began making some assumptions, just to save time for the inevitable brawl. I let his hand hang in midair for a second before shaking it. It was just enough to make his smile tighten. A little. “Mr. Ayles, I don’t want to use up too much of your time,” I said, trying deliberately to make it sound ironic. “That is Julian Kroegkamp, a man Interpol—”

“Had issued a Red Notice for, yes.”

We stood like that, him smiling that thin, empty smile and me staring back at him, waiting for him to do his job. I’m a patient man, especially in moments like this. “I would assume there’s some paperwork to be done here, so you can take custody of him?” I offered, helpful as ever. Ayles stepped back and gestured me into his office. “Please, a few words, Mr. Tudor.”

I glanced back at Torina and Essie. They were both giving me frowns that combined their own confusion at Ayles’s apparent lack of interest in the case with warnings to not fly too far off the handle with him. That last bit

struck me as sound, so I took a deep breath and followed Ayles into his office. “Now then, Mr. Tudor,” he said as we sat down. “You have presented me with a problem."

"A problem?

Is that the Interpol word for 'wanted criminal?’ Because if it is, you guys really need to retool your jargon.”

Ayles’s smile widened a little but remained empty as ever—it was a carefully curated kind of desolation, perfected over decades, I guessed. “Interpol is not, Mr. Tudor, itself a law enforcement organization. We provide—”

“Technical and operational support for your member states to share and access data on crimes and criminals.” I smiled back at him. “I had a few minutes, so I browsed your website.”

“So you are aware, then, that we do not ourselves effect arrests or hold suspects in custody—”

“No, but if a Red Notice criminal is brought to you, you have an obligation to work with local law enforcement to place that criminal into custody and facilitate extradition proceedings, don’t you?”

His thin, bleak smile faltered a little. I let mine widen. “I think I read that on your website as well.”

“Yes, well, it’s not that simple. These are complicated matters—”

“Why?

France issued warrants for Kroegkamp over whatever nastiness he got up to in Mali and obviously ensured they were in the Interpol system, since you guys Red Noticed him. Now, here he is in your office in Windhoek, right down the street from NAMPOL. Seems like kind of a slam-dunk, don’t you think?” I patted the air with my hands and gave him a winning smile. “Forgive the sports analogy. But here, it is… apt.”

He gave me a look like I was a child who’d just said two plus two equals five—bemused and patiently indulgent. I felt my face redden in a way that was hardly becoming a Master Adept. “Mr. Tudor, these things just aren’t that straightforward. International law enforcement is a complex interplay of social, cultural, and political factors—”

“You forgot legal. I assume there are, ah, legal factors involved in law enforcement as well.”

Again, his smile faltered. “Yes. Of course. There are legal factors. This matter involves Interpol as well as the sovereign governments of Namibia, Mali, and France—”

I’d reached the limit of my patience. “Mr. Ayles, just lay it out for me here. Why don’t you want to do your job?”

“I am doing my job,” he said, sounding a little incensed—or trying to, but I was getting pretty good at recognizing bullshit outrage. “And my job, in this case, is to advise you that this is a complex matter that will involve some sensitive diplomacy—”

I stood. “Well, I can see this is going nowhere. I’d thank you for your time, but it’s been of utterly no value to me.”

“Mr. Tudor, I think—”

“You know what, Ayles?

I don’t care what you think. See, I’ve met your type a depressingly large number of times before. Inevitably, the wall of bureaucratic bullshit you erect between you and doing what’s right is built on a foundation of someone having something on you, or someone paying you off, or you simply being too close to retirement to care so you’re just running out the clock. Well, have fun with that.” As soon as I said it, I remembered Shikongo saying the same thing to me, have fun with that, as I left him for Interpol. Now I knew why. “Mr. Tudor, if you think you’ll be taking this man to Lyon, I suggest you reconsider—”

I stopped at the door. “Oh, I don’t intend to have anything more to do with you and your organization, Mr. Ayles. I’m just going to deliver Kroegkamp into the hands of the French directly. Or—I don’t know, maybe I’ll have him tried in my own court of law. I mean, we’re going to have to establish my Guild’s jurisdiction over crimes like this at some point, right?

I mean, was Kroegkamp acting as an agent of an off-world party when he murdered a bunch of people in northwestern Namibia?

Hmm—yeah, that would be a good thing to work out in court.”

Ayles’s fake smile finally cracked. “I don’t know who you think you represent, but you can’t just create a legal jurisdiction out of thin air and presume to apply it wherever you wish—”

“Mr. Ayles, the legal jurisdiction I represent has been in existence since about the time the Mongols were conquering China. It spans a region about two hundred light- years across. Now, given that weapons that Earth won’t even invent for another few decades, maybe a century or two, are starting to

appear in your jurisdiction, I’d have thought you’d appreciate our assistance

—you know, being all collegial law-enforcement types, all on the side of good and right and stuff like that.”

I opened the door. “Instead, though, all I see is another petty bureaucrat who’s corrupt or just doesn’t give a shit. So, we’ll do this the hard way, I guess.”

“How dare you—”

“Oh, and I’m sure the French are going to be really happy to hear how cooperative you weren’t,” I said, striding out. Essie and Torina already had Kroegkamp on his feet. Kroegkamp made the mistake of giving me a smug grin. He opened his mouth to say something presumably just as smug, but I cut him off. “Let’s take the Frankie up to orbit. By the time we get there, I should have decided whether this asshole is worth the trouble, or if it would be easier for everyone if he just stumbled and fell out the airlock.”

Kroegkamp’s smile vanished. He turned wide eyes towards Ayles. “I want to turn myself in to you!

I want asylum!”

I barked a laugh. “Yeah, Ayles there will get right on that. You oughta have your answer sometime between next month and never.”

I WAS STILL GLOWERING when we arrived in orbit. “Do you think he was in league with Clemenceau?

Or the Equal Grasp?” Torina asked me. I pinched my face into an even harder glare but finally sighed and shook my head. “No, probably not. Sadly, it’s more likely a case of a man who’s doing his best to stay off the radar. I don’t know whether he screwed up somewhere or pissed someone off, but I suspect he’s just counting the days until his pension kicks in. In the meantime—”

I shrugged again. “He just doesn’t want to do anything that’s going to upset his little apple cart. Kroegkamp back there probably comes with a pile of baggage he doesn’t want to deal with.”

“You’d think that people coming from outer space with a wanted criminal would make him a little more… enthused, maybe?” Torina asked. “Yeah, well, that says a lot about him right there, doesn’t it?”

Essie was smiling. I shot him a look. “What’s so funny?”

“This is the first time you’ve dealt with Interpol, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

He sniffed a laugh. “Interpol is a wonderful organization at what it does. The problem is that what it does is very, very limited. They’re ultimately at the mercy of their member states, which means their internal politics are constantly changing and they’re always facing internal friction from outside forces. I mean, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are both members. How much cross-border cooperation do you think Interpol gets from each of them when it comes to the other?

Or from Eritrea and Ethiopia?

Or from the factions still simmering inside Rwanda?”

I sighed again. “Yeah, I get your point. I guess I was thinking of Interpol like the Peacemaker Guild—which was a mistake.”

“Very much so. To be like the Guild, Interpol would have to be empowered as an armed paramilitary force free to operate inside the borders of its member states. And before you think that the Eridani Federation and the Ceti Alliance and the others are all enlightened that way—well, I think your mindset is pretty different when your territory is one small part of one planet.”

“None of which answers the question, what are we going to do about him?” Torina asked, nodding her head toward Kroegkamp, who was being watched by Rab. I stared out at the starfield for a moment. “I’m tempted to haul him up to the Righteous Fury and indict him there.”

“The Guild has no formal jurisdiction over him, Van, since we didn’t take him into custody off-world,” Essie reminded me. “Yeah, I know. It would trigger a complicated legal problem. I’d argue that he was acting as an agent of the Equal Grasp the moment he accepted those laser weapons, so we have jurisdiction over him that way. That would take some time to work itself out, and in the meantime, it sends a message to anyone else down on Earth who’d throw in with the Equal Grasp. Or with any off-world parties, for that matter—wouldn’t it?”

Essie glanced at Torina, then grinned. “Now that’s the sort of thing I’ve been waiting to hear from a Master for

—hell, forever!”

15

WHEN WE BROKE orbit and headed for the Moon, the gravity—or lack thereof—of the situation finally started to sink in to Kroegkamp. What remained of his hard-as-nails, screw-you attitude melted away into babbling panic. “What is this?

Where are you taking me?” he practically blubbered. Essie turned a look of utter contempt on him. “That look, the one you have on your face right now?

Tell me, was it like the looks on the faces of those poor bastards you gunned down near that mine?” He pushed his hard, cold glare into the mercenary’s confused alarm. “C’mon, Mr. Tough Guy. You must have seen their expressions as you and your men killed them.”

Kroegkamp turned desperately to me. “Look, whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you—”

“I know you will. I know it because you are no longer a vicious predator in a small pond.” I gestured to the view ahead, all empty space except for the gleaming crescent Moon. “Welcome to the rest of reality, Kroegkamp. Out here, you are no one and nothing. You aren’t even a freakin’ minnow in this very, very large, dark, and dangerous ocean.”

I let him stew on that as we closed on the Righteous Fury. She hung in lunar orbit, the Fafnir already in company with her. I’d sent her and the rest of my crew on ahead to rendezvous with us there. By this time, Kroegkamp was looking pretty much catatonic. He gaped down at the mottled gray sprawl of the Moon, which was now filling half

the view ahead. The Fury and the Fafnir hung in the blackness above, seemingly motionless. “Congratulations, Kroegkamp. You’ve just joined a very exclusive community of humans who have been this close to the Moon. We’d take you down for a jaunt on the surface, but I just don’t have the time.”

He gaped at the sleek, sinister bulk of the Righteous Fury as her AI took control of the Frankie for our final docking approach. “That’s”—he swallowed hard—“that’s… a spaceship.”

“It’s no moon,” Essie agreed, then laughed and pumped his fist. “Yes, I’ve been waiting to use that line for so long!”

We led Kroegkamp out of the Frankie once we’d docked. He stared in mute shock as we were greeted by her Captain, a human woman from the GKU named Arling who’d just been rotated into the position. She had two of her senior officers, a Gajur and a Nesit with her, along with a security detachment. She gave me a bemused look as we exited the airlock, but she called her people to attention and gave me a formal salute. I blinked at that, taken aback. It took a second or two for me to realize that this was how a Master was greeted aboard a Guild or GKU ship. This was definitely going to take some getting used to. I’d sent word ahead for everyone to switch their translators to audible output, keyed to terrestrial English. “Master Tudor, welcome aboard. If I understand this correctly, you have a prisoner for whom jurisdiction is…

unclear.”

“I do. My combat AI, Perry, should have forwarded you the complete package, including my opening argument as to why we should try the case.”

Arling nodded. “We received it and handed it over to our legal shop. They’re poring over it now. If I may—it could be some time before we get a final resolution from the Masters.” She smiled. “Which just makes this even more nuanced.”

“That’s okay, you can say what it really is—complicated as hell,” I said, then offered an affable shrug. “Anyway, for now, just hold this man here, pending disposition of his case. We have sufficient grounds to hold him, as Perry documented.”

“He did.” She gave Kroegkamp a cold look. “And, for what it’s worth, I definitely think we should try him. If he was an off-Earth party who’d perpetrated the crimes your AI described, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. He’d already be in the dock, facing a Judge.”

“That said, Captain, I need you to assign legal representation to him. And if that person is halfway good at their job, they should immediately raise the objection of jurisdiction and submit a formal proposal to strike the charges that I’ve assigned to him. And that will trigger the whole review process we need to happen anyway.” I glanced at Kroegkamp, who was still looking utterly shell-shocked. “I also need your people to ensure he really understands what’s going on. He might be a vicious, murderous scumbag, but he’s entitled to be a full participant in his own case. Right now, I’m not convinced he’s even registering any of this.”

Her cold gaze didn’t change. “Don’t worry, Master Tudor, we’ll make sure he’s well taken care of. Better than he probably deserves, probably.”

“We should always treat our prisoners better than they deserve, Captain. We’re not them, after all.”

WITH THE CHARGES properly assigned to Kroegkamp—the equivalent back home of an arraignment, but with a few twists—we could hold him in custody while wrangling regarding jurisdiction got underway. Perry had scoped out the positions of the Masters from Max and a few other sources on Anvil Dark and gave me the lowdown. We were back aboard the Fafnir, with Rab and Icky in the process of stowing the Frankie in her bay. “Volffin is firmly in favor. He apparently buys the argument you’re making, that Kroegkamp became subject to our jurisdiction the moment he laid his hands on one of those laser weapons. Alic is pretty much on board too but has gotten some questions about the precedent this may set.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, if we were to deliver life-saving medical tech to Earth, would someone who benefits from it also be subject to Guild jurisdiction?”

I sat back. Well, that was an interesting question, wasn’t it?

I finally nodded. “Okay, yeah, that’s definitely worth considering. What about the others?”

“Well, Giller is about to retire, so he’s in the wind—he’ll probably just go with the majority, assuming there is one. Marlow is probably a no. She’s laser-focused on policy and procedure and seems to be hung up on the fact that the current ones say that Guild jurisdiction only extends to citizens of

Charter members, like the Eridani Federation or the League, or others who commit crimes in Guild territory. And Earth does not currently constitute Guild territory.”

“Okay, so two in favor, one maybe, and one no. What about the other two?”

“Kitslin and Glax’til seem to be on the fence. To be fair, they want to hear the arguments on both sides before rendering judgment. Max thinks that Glax’til might be the problem here, though. He’s got his fingers in the criminal underworld, which is really useful, but it means they might also get pinched by anyone who doesn’t like this sort of precedent being set.”

“Hmm. So if we make him a no, then we have two for, two against, and two on the fence.”

“And assuming you’re going to support your own measure, that’s three for. You’d only have to turn one of the maybe’s,” Perry said. I frowned. “Ideally, they’d base their position on the merits of the arguments.”

Perry put a wing on my arm. “Oh, Van. Sweet, innocent Van. The merits of the arguments are just the starting line for the politics.”

I heaved a sigh. “Yeah, I know.”

“Welcome to the big chair, Master Tudor!”

SINCE RESOLVING the matter of Kroegkamp’s case was going to take a while, I decided not to hang around the Solar System in the meantime. I had other matters to deal with, starting with the Moonsword. But first… paperwork. Administration. Bureaucracy. And all of it in a form that delivered a simple message—we would handle Crelo on our own time, with ruthless, effective justice, and we would make sure everyone knew. “Bird, I’ve got an idea.”

Perry cocked his head, eyes flashing in curiosity. “Is this an idea or just an idea?”

“Good question. This is… a message. I want to let everyone know we’re going to handle Crelo, but also make it seem that he’s too small to ruin our day. What do you think?” I asked. “I think that’s exactly what a Master would do. I also think it’s a one line order, issued over general comms, and that the sooner you send it, the sooner you can see a crab about a sword.”

“You get me, bird. Write it, send it—you and Netty-P pick the language. I want the penumbra of menace, backed by the power of law.”

Perry’s beak opened. “Now that is the kind of phrasing that tells me you’re going places, boss. Consider it done.”

As we got underway, I called up Linulla, sent him imagery of the blade and its new crack, and asked him for advice. He was noncommittal. “I’m sorry, Van, but that’s not how it works. Looking at images, even the highest-resolution ones, isn’t sufficient for me to be able to determine anything. I need to see the blade, see the metal, handle it, touch it—” He hesitated a moment. “It’s hard to explain.”

“No, I get it, Linulla. Far be it from me to question how the artist undertakes his craft.” I thought for a moment. “If you’re available, we could swing by your place sometime in the next day or two.”

“Certainly. I’ve always got time for my best customer—and I have a particular interest in that blade.”

We signed off, and I returned the cracked sword to its scabbard. We checked in with Fort Cantullin for an update on the way. The facility was now effectively complete. It was fully excavated and had facilities to host the crew complement we’d originally envisioned. It also now had adequate water, and with both Adayluh Creel and her father, Filic, still there, it was nearing self-sufficiency in its food supply. I acknowledged that and did another check-in with the Iowa, then we flung ourselves through the space-time cheat code that was twisting to Starsmith. LINULLA EXAMINED the Moonsword for a while, and gravely. For a good fifteen minutes or so, he studied it closely, tapped it with a claw, and listened to the acoustic energy propagating through it at different points, then applied a variety of instruments to it. It all made my teeth clench a little, since it was kind of like waiting for a doctor to give you a conclusion on some tests he’d run. Linulla finally put the blade down on a worktable in his forge. “Well, Van, this isn’t a simple fix. As I said before, the lost material from the original chip means that we need new material to fix it. Absent that, then there’s not much I can do. Even if I repair this crack, the presence of the chip in the edge is going to keep redistributing the stress in the metal around it in an irregular way. Repairing this crack will change that distribution, but won’t fix it. In fact, it will probably make it worse, because the repaired section will be stronger, and that’s just going to shift the stress into other parts of the blade. Any time you use it, the blade will undergo micro-deformations that would normally be spread evenly through the metal, but this—” He pointed at the chip. “This changes all that. Stress is getting concentrated in some places relative to others.”

“So that’s it, then?

There are no other solutions?”

“Well, I could make it into a knife.”

I curled my lip. “I like keeping my enemies at least a sword’s length away. That feels like, I don’t know, giving up.”

Torina, listening nearby, nodded. “Moon-Knife just doesn’t have the same kind of ring to it.”

“Then we need more of the particular alloy from which this blade was originally crafted. As far as I know, that leaves you with two options. First, you could find the original cometary source, or another one that contains the same material, assuming such a thing even exists. Or, second, you could find one of the companion blades, the Starsword or the Sunsword—which would mean sacrificing that blade to repair this one.”

“We have no idea what this particular metal is, or how to synthesize it,”

I said. “Oh, we know what it is. It’s an alloy of several relatively common metals, like iron, chromium, cobalt, manganese, and molybdenum. However, that alloy is embedded in a 3D matrix composed of silica, germanium, and an extremely heavy metal that exceeds the theoretical upper limit of persistent nuclear stability—that is, elements that don’t and quickly fall apart under their own atomic mass.”

I wasn’t a chemist, but I’d retained enough from high school and a college chemistry elective that I knew what he meant. Elements with atomic numbers pushing up to 120 or so did exist, but not for very long—often just tiny fractions of a second. Then they’d fall apart into lighter elements amid

a shower of radioactive discharge. Something with an atomic mass significantly higher than that, that didn’t just go poof, was weird indeed. And also—well, rare probably didn’t even begin to describe it. I shook my head. “So maybe this isn’t a lost cause, exactly, but it sure as hell sounds pretty close to it.”

“Well, not entirely. First of all, a Guild Archivist named Witt once mentioned to me that he had seen a small ingot of what was supposedly this unique, high atomic number metal. That was interesting, but he couldn’t offer any proof or corroborate it, so there was no way to follow up on it.”

“Perry, is there an Archivist named Witt still active in the Guild?” I asked the air. He was still aboard the Fafnir, so he answered via the comm. “There is. He works under Bester, in the Artifacts Section.”

“Can you get Netty-P to set up a call with him?

I’d like to talk to him.”

“Will do.”

I turned back to Linulla. “I guess we’ll see where that goes, if anywhere. Anyway, you said first of all, so there’s something else?”

“Yes. I can’t repair the blade, but I can patch it.” He pointed a clawed finger at the chip and the crack radiating from it. “I can cover this entire section with an alloy patch that completely encloses it. That will help distribute those micro-deformations I mentioned more uniformly. The downside, though, is that you’ll have to avoid striking anything with that side of the blade, so treat it like a single-edged weapon. The good edge should be fine as long as you don’t go around slashing anything harder than the core of a star. But the other edge will be far weaker. If you strike even a hard metal with it, like chromium, that crack might propagate or the blade might break altogether.”

I nodded. “Okay, well, that’s certainly better than doing nothing. So a single-edged blade it is, at least until I can either track down an ingot of a stupid-crazy exotic metal that might not even exist, or find one of two legendary swords whose whereabouts apparently haven’t been known for decades.” I smiled and shook my head. “Not sure if you’re familiar with the concept of video games, Linulla, but this sounds like a fetch quest someone would give a player character in exchange for some experience points and gold—”

A subtle chime sounded from the comm Linulla carried, cutting me off. I gave him a questioning look. “Ah, that would be Matterforge. I suspect it wants to talk to you.”

That made me perk up with both apprehension and excitement. The being known as Matterforge, which lived on, or in, or some way connected with one of the two stars in the Starsmith system, was about as enigmatic as intelligent forms of life could get. Few people even knew of its existence, and those who did really had no idea what it was, where it had come from, or what motivated it. It had a very different experience of time and space than we mortal, material beings did, in a way that reminded me of the aliens in Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse Five. The Tralfamadorians, as they were called, could travel at will through time, forward and backward, which had made them realize all moments, past and future, are already fixed. They were the ultimate fatalists, believing that everything was predestined to an extent that nothing really mattered. I didn’t think Matterforge saw time that way. It seemed to be able to experience things across a spectrum of time that included the future, but only in a very coarse, distant way. I understood it as something like being able to see what every human being on Earth was doing at a given moment, except that the more details you tried to make out, the harder and harder it became. Still, the idea of a time-defying, star-dwelling being wanting my attention was… unnerving, to say the least. But it hit me with a sudden thought, as Linulla and I started for the remote chamber where the comm system set up to communicate with Matterforge was kept. I gestured for Torina to come along as well, since I’d revealed the existence of the strange alien to her. What the hell, I wanted Matterforge to meet my wife. “Linulla, Matterforge—well, it forges matter, right?

Fuses elements together to make heavier ones—?”

Linulla raised a claw. “Yes, it does, and I know where you’re going with this. I’ve asked Matterforge if it can create things like the exotic super-heavy metal in your sword, and it didn’t exactly say it couldn’t, but it seemed profoundly unwilling. In fact, it was one of the few times that Matterforge was almost—abrupt, I guess?

Anyway, I got the distinct impression the answer was to not ask the question in the first place. And, no, I have no idea why.”

I nodded and left it at that. I didn’t think it would work out because Linulla would logically have asked this long ago, even before the Moonsword was chipped. After all, if he could start manufacturing the

blades in quantity thanks to raw materials whipped up by Matterforge, well, he probably would have done just that by now, wouldn’t he?

“MATTERFORGE, I have Van Tudor and his spouse, Torina, with me,” Linulla said to the comm console. Its display showed just part of the surface of Struve 2398-A, a simmering arc of crimson from which whorls and tendrils of star tuff leapt into space, a few dispersing, but most just falling back down lines of magnetic force into the maelstrom. “I am aware that developing and maintaining codified relationships is a powerful motivator among beings such as yourselves. This is presumably so that you can undertake reproduction and propagate your genetic heritage into subsequent generations.”

Linulla turned to me with an Over to you sort of look. I shrugged, although I wasn’t sure to what extent Matterforge received, understood or even cared about the visual image data being transmitted back to it. “That’s part of it, sure,” I said. “But it’s about a lot more than that. It’s about companionship, about wanting to spend your time with someone who’s important and special to you…” I kind of trailed off at the end, unsure whether concepts like not being alone or having special others in your life would even register to a being like this. “This is a commonality I observe throughout the continuum, a motivation for beings such as yourselves to form bonds with other such beings. This appears to be the cause of much strife, with only competition for resources forming a motivation of similar weight.”

“Well, yeah, but there’s a lot of good in it, too. It might cause strife, but it also gives us so much of what makes our lives worth living,” I said. “You define the worth of your existence in terms of your relationship with other beings?

That assertion is at odds with the clear internal locus of identity I perceive in you and similar beings. You are many things, Van Tudor, and certainty is among the core beliefs I see in you.”

“Matterforge, while I’m thrilled that you see my pigheaded nature as an asset, I have other things to discuss. And there are subjects we could explore, but—”

Torina stepped in with a short, direct question. “Matterforge, if you don’t mind my asking—are you alone?

Are there other beings like you?”

I shot her a look of surprise, then subsided. The question was asked. The discussion was rolling. “I possess an internal locus of identity that has experienced a different evolution of space-time from all others, so how could there be a being like me?”

Torina smiled. “No, what I mean is—”

“Are there other beings of a nature similar to mine?”

She blinked. I looked from her to Linulla, wide-eyed. Had Matterforge just yanked Torina’s chain a little?

Had it just made a joke?

“Yes, that,” Torina said. “The circumstances that led to my coming into existence were common in the period immediately following the inception of this instance of space-time. I was created in multiple instances, which then each began to follow their own trajectories through that space-time. So yes, other beings exist that are similar to me.”

“Are… are you in contact with any of them?” I asked. I was burning with curiosity about the answer to this particular issue. It was—big. Bigger than me, and my life, and our stupid wars and grievances. It was about life. “Insofar as they exist within this instance of space-time, and I have an awareness across its continuum, then yes—I am in contact with other such beings. But the nature of that contact is not incremental and linear, such as this conversation. Suffice it to say that I am aware of their awareness of things, as they are of mine. We are cordial, as you might say. Sometimes, we are even helpful.”

I decided to push things back to why we were here in the first place, because the scale of time was beyond my understanding. I was, to this being, a flash in the pan. And I needed help. “Matterforge, you seemed to indicate to Linulla that you wanted to speak with me about something,” I prompted. “Yes. As I have said, my awareness and experience of the continuum of space and time is fundamentally different than that of beings such as yourself. To the extent that your relatively linear existence allows you to understand it, suffice to say that I perceive essentially all things, at all times. While this means I am, from your perspective, theoretically omniscient, the reality is that I constitute a single locus of identity. I have given thought to an analogy that may help you to understand, and would offer this—all of the matter that constitutes a star is capable of conversion to energy. Only a small amount of it undergoes that conversion at a given point in space-time, however. This constrains the star such that it comes into existence, it exists, and then it ceases to exist, in a progression.”

I folded my arms. “Okay. So—you’re a being with unlimited potential, but you’re actually limited because you can only tap into that potential a little at a time. Have I got that right?”

“In a crude way, yes. To extend the analogy, I can choose to make any portion of the star’s matter undergo conversion to energy—but that choice still implies a constraint. A restriction. A limit on my ability to interact with reality.”

“So—where are you going with this?” Torina asked. “Consider that there is a single point within the star that is always fixed in its nature—where matter will always be converted to energy, regardless of my actions. Again, this is metaphorical."

“The point at the very center of the star,” Linulla said. “It is a fixed point in the continuum, one that never changes irrespective of what occurs in the star around it. I have perceived such fixed points in the continuum of existence in a similar way. I may observe something, but unless I continue to observe it, it will quickly be lost to me in the continuum and I would have to expend effort, likely great effort, to observe it again. But these fixed points are wholly unlike that. I can observe them again and again, without effort. I hasten to add that observing that thing does not allow me to observe its existential surroundings in the same manner. Rather, such things are more like the origin point for a multitude of possibilities. I may expend increasing effort to follow such a thread of possibilities, but I am always able to effortlessly return to the starting point.”

“So—what?

You’ve seen one of these fixed points and it’s connected to us?” I asked. “Yes. The implement you bear, which you have labeled the Moonsword, is such a fixed point.”

I exchanged stunned looks with Torina and Linulla—and trust me, it’s tough to tell when an anthropomorphic crustacean looks shell-shocked, and as soon as I juxtaposed that word, shell-shocked, with Linulla, I almost

burst into laughter. It wasn’t because the stupid pun was all that funny, though. It was because I was coming face-to-face with concepts so far apart from reality as I understood it that it was almost—

Silly. I couldn’t think of another word to describe it. Just—silly. I took a deep breath to push that incipient, hysterical laughter back down. “The Moonsword. It’s—” I paused, not sure where to go with that. It’s, what—magical?

Like Excalibur?

Some kind of artifact that transcends time and space?

A holy item?

“I would note that its nature as a fixed point in my view of the continuum does not itself confer special properties on that point. Or, if it does, it is only to the extent that it is such a fixed point. Those threads of possibilities I described converge upon it. They converge in a similar way onto the being whose creation you yourself enabled, Van Tudor.”

“You mean Netty-P.”

“Correct. And they similarly converge onto the phenomenon you call Calamity. Three of these fixed points, which are exceedingly rare to begin with, therefore themselves converge upon you, Van Tudor. You are at the heart, as it were, of a webwork of potential—one with implications for the entirety of existence itself.”

16

I HEARD what transpired after that little bombshell, even participated in it, but it was really all just words I’d have to take away and digest later. Matterforge had, in essence, said that I was a common thread connecting those fixed origin points in existence, from which a nearly infinite web of possible future realities extended—the Moonsword, Calamity, and Netty-P. Of course, it could be argued that Torina was a thread connecting them all, too, and so were Perry, Icky, Rab—

Hell, a multitude of people across known space could fill the role as long as they had influenced or been influenced by the sword, Netty-P, and Calamity. I made the point, and Matterforge responded matter-of-factly. “It is true, Van Tudor, that I do not perceive you, the individual, as a similarly fixed point in the continuum. And it is true that another, or others, could assume the place you currently have. But I would suggest that that means that you have degrees of freedom to act that those things that are fixed don’t. They will play a fundamental role in whatever thread or threads of existence extend from their collective. You may, but you may not. You are presented with that most unsavory of things for organic beings.”

“Which is?” I asked. “A choice.”

I could live with a choice. I would have to learn to live with being at the center of events that had implications far above an Iowa farmboy’s paygrade. Matterforge did, however, specify one qualifier—the Moonsword only remained a fixed point, a fulcrum of its own, while it was intact. It couldn’t say whether that meant the blade would never break, or if and when it did break, it would cease to play that sort of role. It could, Matterforge said, be that even the knowledge of the blade having existed might be the important part. I tried something direct. “What, or where, is the material needed to repair my sword?

Is it a single place?

A person?”

“I will offer what you may grasp, young Tudor. Just as there are many threads of possibility that originate with the blade, there are many that lead to it. I perceive three of them as significant to the context of the question you have posed.”

“Three—things?

Places?

People?”

“As I said, discerning more detail becomes increasingly difficult for me, but I can determine that each of these three progressions has an association with particular locations in the continuum. I will attempt to view each in a linear sense, that I might be able to provide you with information about each.”

“I appreciate that, thanks.” I’d about hit the limit of my ability to actually absorb anything more, but I had one more question to ask. Or actually, two. “You say that Calamity is another of those fixed points. Can you tell me anything about how?

About what sort of role it will play?

Right now, it just seems to be destructive—”

“Destruction is one of many processes within the continuum of space-time.”

“Yeah, I get that. And if that’s going to be the part it plays, fine. I’d just like to know anything else about it. We just know so little.”

“It is a being formed of organized patterns of energy, existing apart from the material sense of creation, with the ability to perceive things across the continuum of its own existence.”

Torina caught it before I did. “Wait. Are you saying Calamity is—like you?”

“What you call Calamity is like me, yes, in a very general sense. I do not know more about it than that because the continuum it inhabits is itself apart from the one which I inhabit. It exists in a realm of abstraction—”

“Of mathematics. Viewing the universe as data, and interacting with those data in an algorithmic way,” Linulla said. “Just so. And that is, perhaps, why what you term Calamity is fixed. What you call mathematics is also fixed. It is your way of conceptualizing the rules, as it were, that govern how the continuum works. It is the closest thing to a second, distinct continuum, separate from that of space-time, of which I am aware.”

“Does mathematics define creation, or is it the other way around?”

Linulla asked in a clearly rhetorical way. “It is a—a very old question.”

“Perhaps the oldest and most fundamental of all. And perhaps one to which no answer can be known—an aspect of existence that will always be a mystery, even to a being such as myself.”

Mathematics as a realm, inhabited by a being similar to Matterforge, in the form of Calamity. Sure, why the hell not. I asked my last question, one that had nothing to do with the nature of the universe. It was just the sort of question one empathetic being can’t help asking another. “Matterforge—do you ever get lonely?”

“I understand the concept but have difficulty providing an answer that you would find satisfactory. I am merely part of the continuum of space-time, so in that sense, I do not. And yet, I find these interactions with Linulla and yourself, and now Torina, to provide me with stimulative thought that I do not normally experience. In their absence, those stimulative thoughts do not occur. I find that I would rather they did.”

I smiled. “So I guess that’s a yes. Kind of, anyway. You charmer, you.”

“It must be difficult for someone who’s basically immortal to ever develop any type of relationship. To you, we must just… be here, then pfft, we’re gone,” Torina said. “Only from the perspective of a linear, incremental being, which I am not. I could say that you are effectively immortal beings as well, simply because the concept of you existing or not existing is simply one of perspective. To you, the time will come when you cease to exist as a locus of experience in this continuum. To me, that time has both passed and has yet to happen.”

“That’s—oddly comforting, actually,” she replied, smiling in a way that was both satisfied and a little sad. “However, since this conversation has touched on concepts such as loneliness and the nature of relationships—two that are clearly intertwined

—I do have an insight to offer,” Matterforge said. I cocked my head at the restless image of the star. “What’s that?”

“That when you do cease to exist in this continuum, you will do so knowing that I consider you… my friends.”

Another stunned moment in a succession of them. So Torina and I were friends with a star now. “When you have made your sword whole, or else it has broken, return here, Van Tudor. Perhaps then I shall be able to offer you more insight about its path through the continuum, and yours. And perhaps that path, and yours, will prove to be a circle, rather than a line.”

That last bit was pretty cryptic, leaving me scratching my mental head, but I decided to leave it. I was a sponge so saturated that any more water was just flowing right off me. “Thank you, Matterforge. I will be back, and I’ll—well, try my best to apply what you’ve given me in the meantime.”

“Do so, but be safe. That blade is not the only supremely sharp thing among the stars, and many of them are not your friend.”

I SAT, stunned into a fugue state. I had no words. I had no answer for what I now knew to be true. The entire conversation with Matterforge had lasted less than an hour, probably more like forty minutes. But it had been forty of the most wrenching, eye-opening, brain-busting minutes of my life. I’d have thought discovering the Dragonet in my barn and flying off into outer space would have easily kept that crown, but—

It definitely had competition now, that’s for sure. Torina and I explained what had transpired with Matterforge to the rest of the crew, or had tried to. It was almost like attempting to describe a dream—you might remember what happened, but you had trouble making it make sense. That was the problem with relating concepts that themselves spilled out of the usual, everyday frames of reference we all used. They rapidly started to sound like metaphysics, or maybe even something spiritual. The crew, for their part, were mostly silent afterward. Icky finally yanked things back down to Earth. “So we gotta find some of that spiffy metal to fix your sword. Great. Where do we start?”

I shrugged. “That is a really good question. The only lead we’ve got is the Archivist named Witt. So, I guess our next stop is Anvil Dark, to talk to Bester and find Witt.”

As we settled into our flight stations and accelerated away from Starsmith, I switched the display to show the view astern, centered on the star home to Matterforge. I had no particular reason to do it, and didn’t do much but just stare at it. No one in the crew questioned it, though, or interrupted me. After—I’m not even sure how long—I switched the view back to the default flight data and pushed my attention back out ahead of the Fafnir. MAX HAD BEEN KEEPING Perry and me up-to-date on the crucial paperwork and other administrivia while we’d been at Earth, Starsmith, or points between. When we arrived on Anvil Dark, I was actually feeling pretty good. Or at least what I wasn’t feeling was the weighty burden of an inbox groaning under the strain of bursting seams. It was by no means empty, but everything of real substance or urgency had been read, signed, sealed, and otherwise addressed. Which was why, when I strode into Ger—into my office, the last thing I expected to find was actual paper. It was a nondescript piece of paper folded upon itself, with a waxy seal of all things. There was a sigil of some sort impressed into the maroon-colored stuff that I didn’t recognize. “Perry, do you have any idea what the hell this is?

And if you say a piece of paper—”

“Well, it is a piece of paper, Van. But that’s a Master’s Seal—Master Marlow’s, in fact.”

I glanced at him, where he stood on the desk. “We have seals?”

“You do. It’s item number seventeen on your to-do list, in fact, to get a personal seal designed for yourself.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen past item seven or so. Shit. Is it important that I have one of these?"

“Let me put it this way. Gerhardt never had it crawl into view on his to-do list. I think Groshenko finally got one about the time you joined the Guild, probably because he wanted one before he retired.” Perry looked at the Sealed paper. “Doesn’t surprise me Marlow has one though. She’s all about procedure—she almost fetishizes it, in fact. It’s her spiciest quality.”

“I’d hardly say being a paper-loving martinet is spicy, but everyone’s got their thing.”

He shrugged his wings. “Just an observation, and yes, I know about your fascination with redheads.”

“Do tell,” Torina said, wheeling around. “I note that my hair is, in fact, not red, and—”

“Babe.”

“Yes?”

“There’s something I have to tell you about American males.”

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Perry enthused, “Do go on. I’ll hand you your shovel.”

“Silence, bird. So, it’s a known fact that most men go through a—ahh, let’s call a ginger phase. We discover, pursue, and about a quarter of the time marry said redhead. Then we generally move out of that phase into—”

“The stage where your wife doesn’t space you for previous choices?”

Torina asked. “Exactly.”

Perry made a sound. “Well, this sucks. No one threw a fit.”

I waved grandly. “Of course not. We’re adults.”

“I notice the adult isn’t in a hurry to open that,” Perry remarked. I frowned at him, then the paper. I was hesitating, wasn’t I?

“Maybe it’s because a Sealed letter from a Master with a thing for those

‘p’ words makes me nervous. I mean, if she’s like Gerhardt, when I first met him, that may mean she’s another ‘p’ word—a pain.”

“The difference between Gerhardt and Marlow is that he was all about the fastidiously correct administration of justice, applying the letter of the law, that sort of thing. When it came to the routine internal paperwork and stuff, he was a lot more willing to cut corners. Marlow’s the opposite. She’s never expressed any real concerns about shortcuts when it comes to the law, but if you miss a deadline for a quarterly financial summary or forget to fill out line sixty-two on an office furnishings requisition form, you’ll hear about it.”

“Great. A stickler for unimportant details. I can see she’s going to be a joy to work with,” I said, picking up the paper. “Hey, she doesn’t think they’re unimportant, which is kinda the point. And remember, if you want to get things done via the Masters, you need them to vote with you when said things come up for consideration at the Masters’ Table.”

I looked at the Seal, feeling that I should be doing this over a rough wooden table lit by an oil lamp, then broke it, unfolded the paper, and read the text. It was conventionally printed, disappointingly, and not in flowing, calligraphic, hand-written script. I reached the bottom, then went back to the top and started again. “Well?” Perry asked. I frowned and put the page down on the desk. “Here, you read it. Tell me what you get out of it.”

He did, in an instant. “Oh. Shit. What the hell, Van?

Did you misfile something?

Use the wrong color of ink on—?”

“Perry.”

“This is a formal Letter of Inquiry. It’s an instrument that can be used by any Master to initiate a process of, ah, inquiry—an investigation. Marlow here seems to be demanding such an investigation into the validity of Icky, Funboy, Rab and Gabby as Auxiliary members of your crew. And as for Netty-P—”

He read aloud. “—the existence of the AI unit known as Netty-P is concerning, as AI units are, as a matter of procedure, procured by the Guild from approved vendors to ensure adequate standards of quality control and reliability. The existence of this unit requires a consensus as to its suitability for ship maintenance or other tasks.”

For a moment, I just stared at the top of the desk. First Clemenceau and Plowitz, the Equal Grasp and Mandeville on Earth. Now, I suddenly faced a newly vulnerable flank here on Anvil Dark, from a pencil-pushing busybody Master who apparently considered properly filled-out requisitions for paperclips more important than, oh, solving crimes and administering justice—

“Van?”

I spun on Perry. “What?”

He stared back at me. “Hey, Team Tudor here, remember?”

I relented and sighed. “Yeah, of course. Sorry, Perry. I guess I’m just tired of thinking my ass is as exposed as it’s going to get, and then a new angle opens up. I mean, what the hell is this?”

“Well, if I had to guess, I’d say that there’s someone pushing this stuff in front of Marlow, knowing that by pressing the right bureaucratic buttons, they can get her to”—he lifted a foot and gestured with talons at the letter

—“do that.”

I thought about likely candidates. Another Master?

Not Alic or Volffin. Giller was on the verge of retiring, so I doubted he cared. Kitslin was too much of a big picture guy to get worked up about things like this, and had, in fact, reached out to me to get my input and assistance in dealing with the Guild’s Charter members, like the Eridani Federation and the Seven Stars League. He’d even said having a Master Adept out in the field would make a greater partnership. That left the Yonnox, Glax’til. His focus was on the criminal underworld, particularly the kingpins and movers and shakers among the bad guys. I’d crossed swords with those same crime bosses and outfits on more than a few occasions, and done some of them serious harm. Maybe it was him?

If anyone among the current Masters was a candidate for corruption, it was probably him—”

“Casaril,” Perry said. I blinked out of my reverie and looked at him. “The Nesit Peacemaker?

What about him?”

Again, Perry pointed with a foot. “It’s him. He’s behind that.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been consulting with other AIs on the station. Candler in particular has the dirt. It seems that Casaril wasn’t as good as he made himself out to be with you becoming a Master.”

“I thought you and Candler hated one another.”

“Correction—I hate him. Hate-ish, anyway. He probably doesn’t like me either, but he sucks up. And as Napoleon said, If your enemy is in the process of sucking up, don’t interfere.”

“I… don’t think that’s how that quote goes.”

“Still apt, though, dontcha think?” Perry cocked his head at me. “Van, neither Netty, Netty-P after her, or I have made any secret of the fact that you treat AIs differently than most Peacemakers. I mean, that document and its whole thing about procuring AIs from authorized vendors is typical. To

most of the Guild, we’re just equipment, glorified versions of the various types of Waldo everyone has aboard their ships.”

I nodded at the page. “Yeah, that does kind of make you sound like toasters or something.”

“Exactly. You, though—you’re not like that. You’re even more not like that than Mark was. Don’t discount it, Van, but you’ve kind of got a hidden network of spies and informants all over Anvil Dark. Hell, all over the Guild. Netty-P and I have been pretty low-key about it so far, but now that you’re a Master, information is as good as bonds. Better, in some ways.”

I crossed my arms. “I don’t know about that, Perry. I don’t really like the idea of, say, Hosurc’a spying on K’losk or whatever. That sort of thing shouldn’t be going on between a Peacemaker and his AIs. It’s unethical. It’s dangerous.”

“And it’s impossible. Hosurc’a can’t report on anything K’losk does in the performance of his duties. I can’t report on you. Well, unless you do something manifestly unlawful, that is, and then I’m obligated to rat you out. But I’m not talking about that. Hosurc’a can’t feed me information about what he and K’losk are up to, not unless it directly implicates you, but nothing stops him from snitching on Casaril, especially when it comes to things that aren’t actually duty-related. And stirring shit among the ranks of the Peacemakers, trying to turn people against you, doesn’t really count as duty-related, now does it?”

I’d been standing this whole time. I sat down. “Okay, well, I appreciate it then. Just as long as it all remains legal, ethical, and doesn’t risk compromising anyone.” I sat back. “But yeah, having a network of never-sleeping eyes and ears that can communicate at light-speed is definitely appealing.”

I cocked my head at him. “I really have a good rep among the AIs, huh?”

“You do. You treat us like people, not, ah, toasters,” he said, pointing his beak at the paper. “That actually means a lot. Even Candler, the Oscar the Grouch of AIs—just substitute a desk for a trash can—is impressed by you. He’s made it clear he’d like to find ways to help you out, and there’s more of that sucking up.”

I pursed my lips and stared at Perry. Huh. It made me think of the Baker Street Irregulars, a gang of street urchins employed by Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle’s eponymous stories to ferret out information for the great

detective. I recalled Holmes telling Watson that they could “go everywhere and hear everything” and were “sharp as needles, too.” That certainly applied here, didn’t it?

The AIs were ubiquitous and unsleeping, seeing, hearing, and impeccably remembering everything. Even given the constraints on what they could share locked in by their programming, they still represented a formidable array of always-on sensors, many of which were paid no attention at all. When was the last time anyone had talked to the traffic AI that controlled ship movements around Anvil Dark?

Or the AI that oversaw climate control and air quality on the main concourse?

The Baker Street Irregulars indeed. But it had a touch of Black Mirror to it, as well. I could immediately see how this could be abused, how easily well-intentioned intelligence gathering could become intrusive surveillance. And given that the AIs were sapient and capable, there was potential for at least a few of them to be totally fine with creating a surveillance state, wasn’t there?

I decided I’d approach this cautiously and very, very judiciously. Right now, knowing that Casaril was behind Marlow’s Letter of Inquiry was a big enough win. I tapped the Letter. “Okay, so Casaril has somehow managed to get Marlow to sign this.”

“That wouldn’t be hard, really. All you have to do with her is point her at an incorrect application of a procedure or a policy error, and she’ll be on it like a tacky tux on Funboy.”

“Okay, so that implies that these things she wants to Inquire about are incorrect. Are they?” I asked him. “That’s where it gets tricky. Regarding Netty-P, yeah, she’s technically correct. Guild AIs are supposed to be acquired from certain vendors who have been thoroughly vetted and are kept thoroughly vetted. You don’t want hidden backdoors and malware in AIs involved in enforcing the law, right?

So that one we’re going to have to figure out how to fight.”

“What about this other stuff, this whole”—I leaned forward and read the page—“Auxiliary Peacemakers whose origins are not from among the founding species of the Guild’s Charter members crap?

That seems to be the issue she’s raising around the rest of the crew—except for Torina, that is.”

“Ah, well, Torina is human, from Helso, a protectorate—at the time, anyway—of the League. So she qualifies.”

“Wait—I’m a human, but I’m from Earth. Last time I checked, Earth isn’t a Charter member. So wouldn’t this apply to me, too?”

“You’re not an Auxiliary. The clause in the Guild’s Charter she’s referring to only applies to them.”

I sniffed and shook my head. “Wow, I hear hairs splitting even as we speak.”

“Remember, Van—the Guild was formed from the GKU, which predated the Charter. And the GKU had no rules like this. The clause regarding Auxiliaries came along later, but the movers and the shakers of the day obviously had no interest in trying to apply it to Peacemakers,”

Perry replied. “Okay, fine. But the Wu’tzur are a Charter member.”

“They are, which should make Icky’s case easy to address. Rab as well, since the P’nosk are nominally citizens of the Eridani Federation. Gabby and Funboy are more problematic, though, since neither of their peoples are Charter signatories. But I don’t think getting rid of Gabby and Funboy, or trying to get rid of anyone else, is the point. I don’t think the issue regarding Netty-P is the point, either.”

I nodded. “No, it’s not. It’s meant to be a distraction, something to keep us spinning in place while Casaril tries to move the yardsticks on whatever it is he’s planning.”

“Bingo. Kind of the same thing I think Mandeville was all about back on Earth—although I suspect there really is a faction in the US military that would just love to get their hands on a petawatt laser battery or fusion drive.”

“Oh, sure, no doubt. But they just made a useful pawn for Clemenceau and the Equal Grasp, like Marlow was for Casaril.”

“Well, we managed to dodge out of Mandeville’s way through the intervention of higher powers. I don’t think we should count on the same thing happening this time.”

I shook my head. “No, we should not.”

Which was fine, but what were we going to do, then?

17

I RESPONDED to Marlow’s Letter with no reply at all. I wasn’t going to reply until I’d had a chance to talk it over with my crew. Besides, Marlow had chosen to use the stiffly formal hardcopy letter with wax seal, rather than the usual electronic format, so she shouldn’t expect an immediate reply anyway, should she?

My crew was, to say the least, exasperated. Not because they were particularly worried about the impact of the letter itself, but because it was yet another distraction from what was, you know, important. “I swear, this Guild spends more time chasing its own stupid tail than it does trying to run down bad guys,” Icky snapped. “There is an alarming readiness to weaponize the Guild’s bureaucracy to further one’s own interests,” Funboy agreed. I nodded. “Yeah, no shit.” I blew out an aggravated sigh. “You know, I had a friend back in school whose father managed to get his hands on a classic car, a ’67 Mustang. A convertible, blue, big-block engine—just everything you want in a chunk of Americana. Beautiful piece of machinery, but she’d definitely seen better days. She was tired. Rough. Needing care.”

I stopped, realizing everyone was staring at me. I smiled. “Yes, I have a point. Anyway, his father bought it in so-called running condition, so he figured he could just tweak and tune the mechanical bits, replace whatever needed to be replaced, and focus on restoring the bodywork. But it quickly became clear that wasn’t going to work. No

matter what he did, the engine and drivetrain were just too far gone, too worn out. He fought and fought with the thing—” I chuckled. “I learned a few brand new curses from him the couple of times my friend and I tried to help him out.”

I sat up and looked around the Fafnir’s crew lounge. “The point is that he finally had to throw in the towel, basically gut the damned thing and put in an entirely new engine and transmission. Only then could he get to work on restoring the body and interior. I’m starting to think the Guild is like that pony car. From the outside, it’s chugging along, doing what it’s supposed to do. But inside, it’s lousy with infighting, double-dealing, back-stabbing, and even outright corruption. The Guild may have reached the same point as that old Mustang—no matter how much we try to tweak and tune it on the inside, what it really needs is to be gutted and rebuilt. The Peacemakers out there genuinely trying to do their jobs and keep peace and order deserve it. All this”—I lifted a foot and gestured with my toe at Marlow’s Letter on the table between us—“is just unproductive, time-and-effort-wasting bullshit.”

“The Charter members of the Guild might have something to say about that,” Torina said. I stared at her, then sat up. “Yes, you’re right. They probably would, wouldn’t they?”

“Uh-oh. I know that look. You just gave Van an idea, Torina,” Gabby said. “Way to go, Torina,” Icky put in, giving her a sly grin. I turned to Perry. “Can you set up a meeting for me with Master Kitslin?”

“Sure. Any particular topic of discussion?”

“Yeah. Tell him I’d like to talk about opportunities for us to work together on improving relations with our Charter members. He should be into that, right?”

“He should, yeah. And I think I see where you’re going with this. To that end, Kitslin’s administrative AI just happened to mention that he’s really anxious to gain a foothold in the new government of the Seven Stars League. You know, the one that we helped to install.”

“What are you up to, Van?” Gabby asked. Funboy answered. “Van can be reasonably certain that Masters Alic and Volffin can be counted on as allies. If he solidifies his relationship with a

fourth Master, in this case Kitslin, it will give him a majority position on the Master’s Council, four of seven.”

I smiled at Funboy. “Give the man a cookie.”

Funboy gave me a frown and a blink. “I don’t particularly want a cookie, Van, but thank you for the offer.”

“I’ll take it!

I like cookies!” Icky cut in. I raised a hand. “Sorry, big girl, this cookie is figurative.”

“Hey, as long as it doesn’t have raisins in it, I’ll take it anyway.” She glanced at Torina. “I hate those raisin things. They look like little dried up bugs.”

Perry’s voice hummed in my ear. Van, you probably should address the matter of Netty-P. Our case is weakest regarding her when it comes to Marlow’s stupid letter. I turned to Netty-P, giving Perry a grateful glance on the way. “You, my dear, can also rest assured that this thing isn’t going any further than that piece of paper.”

“I don’t know, Van. Based on the Guild regulations governing AIs, I wasn’t procured by normal means—and by normal means, I mean approved means. Marlow, or Casaril if he’s behind it, have a strong case against my continuing to function aboard the Fafnir.”

“And just to be clear, Van, there’s no easy out like there was in Icky’s case, when Toxon tried to use ancient laws against her. There aren’t any loopholes we can exploit here. We’ve scoured Guild archives going back to the time of its inception,” Perry said. “Who’s we?”

“Me, Candler, Hosurc’a, a few others.”

I nodded, both bemused and impressed. The AIs were working together for a common cause, despite their differences—Perry’s intense dislike of Candler, and whatever the hell was going on between him and Hosurc’a. There was a formidable force, a faction even, within the Guild. And virtually no one paid any attention to it. Okay, bemused, impressed—and alarmed. Again, it struck me that there was serious potential for abuse there. For now, though, I wasn’t going to worry about it because the Guild had much bigger problems with its flesh-and-blood members. But I shook my head at Perry. “I disagree. We have access to the ultimate trump card when it comes to Netty-P.”

Perry and Netty-P both stared unblinkingly back at me. “What do you mean, Van?

I mean, all due respect, but I doubt you found something we didn’t—” Perry said, but I cut him off. “I’m not talking about something in the rules or regulations or whatever. Or, I am, but only when it comes to this—I get to choose which AI operates my ship, right?”

“You do, but you’re still bound by the rules of procurement—”

“Netty herself was procured properly, wasn’t she?”

“Well, yeah, but—wait. Van, you’re not saying—”

“That if I can’t have Netty-P, then I’ll happily default back to Netty?”

“Van, the only way to do that would be to let Calamity infect the Fafnir,” Netty-P said. I nodded. “I know.”

The others perked up. “That would threaten a new outbreak of the damned virus, boss. Even if you tried to quarantine the Fafnir, there’d be no guarantees,” Icky said. Netty-P spoke up. “It’s worse than that. When Van became a Master, the Fafnir had new comms protocols installed—the most secure in the Guild and some of the most secure in known space. If Calamity were to gain access those—”

“Maybe it already has,” I said. “Given the way that Netty trapped Calamity into an endless loop of cause and effect, that’s unlikely.”

“But do you know that for certain?”

“No, of course not. There’s no way to be certain. We don’t understand all the nuances and ramifications of what Netty has done, and we can’t even try to for risk of disrupting it. But to the extent that we can determine it, we can safely say that the probability is extremely low.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. All I have to do is raise the doubt and make sure it takes root.”

Torina was giving me something caught between a smile and a frown. “So—a poison pill. Are you sure about that, Van?

Those are always risky.”

“What’s a poison pill, exactly?” Gabby asked. “Van is saying that if any attempt is made to remove Netty-P from her station aboard the Fafnir, then he will default back to Netty as the AI operating the ship.”

“But wouldn’t that wreck the Fafnir?”

“That’s the poison part of the pill for us, yeah,” I said. “Oh, we could eventually scrub Calamity out of the Fafnir and even restore a new instance of Netty from Betty, the version of her running aboard the Iowa. But the poison part of the pill for everyone else is that we risk Calamity getting free."

“Would you really do that, though?” Icky asked. “I mean… really?

’Cause it sounds like a bluff to me. I mean, no one’s gonna believe you’d really unleash that damned virus again.”

I just smiled at her. “Wait—you wouldn’t, would you?”

I kept smiling. “Van, c’mon, you wouldn’t seriously do that—”

Rab touched her arm. “See, Icky?

It’s working.”

She looked at him, then back at me, just smiling. “What’s working—?”

She stopped, wide-eyed understanding dawning on her face. “Ohhh—okay, yeah. I think I get it. They just have to think you might do it.”

Torina grinned. “You’re starting to develop one hell of a poker face there, Tudor.”

I swung my smile onto her. “Considering the number of times you’ve kicked my ass at cards, my dear—I’ve learned from the best.”

THE TRUTH WAS that even I wasn’t sure if I’d actually and willfully risk releasing Calamity again. I mean, probably not, but I’d concluded that the key to making the bluff work, if it came to it, was to not really decide one way or the other. It was, as Torina said, a profoundly risky strategy, but the stakes had been set by Casaril. He didn’t really care about my crew or Netty-P, he just wanted me neutralized or, better yet, taken out of the picture entirely. This was only his opening shot. I had no doubt that he had yet to unveil his main event. And that made the stakes intolerably high, whether he knew it or not. If I got taken out of circulation, one way or another, then whether Casaril realized it or not, that put Earth at risk. I couldn’t count on anyone else in

the Guild to do whatever needed to be done to protect Earth—and Earth was immune to Calamity. So what he had done was set conditions that might push me into choosing between the welfare of Earth, my home, or that of known space. Hell, Casaril might even be on the Equal Grasp’s payroll—which was something you’re damned right I was going to dig into. Either way, though, threatening Earth just might be enough to convince me to risk unleashing Calamity—so you’d better not force me to make that choice, right?

So that’s where I left my own thoughts. I mean, if even I wasn’t entirely sure, then they certainly couldn’t be, could they?

And it might not come to that. I had other options, starting with ensuring I was able to guarantee at least three of the other Masters would support me. I was going to check in with Alic and Volffin, though I was pretty confident in them, but put my main effort into ensuring Kitslin would be an ally, at least in this. I had to wait a day for a meeting, as Kitslin was off Anvil Dark on some business of his own. I decided this was a good time to follow up on a few things. I started with Alic. Perry and I met with him in his office and got straight to the point—or, rather, he did, but it was the point I was interested in. “I have read Marlow’s Letter of Inquiry,” he said. “Is there some history of friction between the two of you that I’m unaware of?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Not unless she’s harbored some secret grudge against me. I think I’d probably spoken, oh, maybe a couple of dozen words to her during my career, and most of those were variations of Hey, how’s it going?”

“She did frequently vote on the Master’s Council in accordance with Yotov, so perhaps that has something to do with it.”

I narrowed my eyes a little. Was he aware of Casaril?

Alic was a friend, a Peacemaker I’d worked in the field with, so I trusted him. And I knew he was pretty canny. His people, the Eniped, were renowned for the number of brilliant tacticians and strategists who’d originated among them. They had a reputation for convoluted, lateral thinking, so I couldn’t help wondering if Alic was trying to see if I knew about Casaril. I wasn’t interested in playing mental Innsu, though, and certainly not with someone I wanted to believe was my ally. “I don’t think so. I think this is about Casaril,” I replied. Alic returned a look that immediately told me I’d caught him by surprise. He hadn’t known about Casaril—and that, in turn, told me that the AIs weren’t keeping him informed. Why?

I dismissed the thought as Alic replied to me. “Casaril?

How is this about him?

Are you saying he has some sort of influence over Marlow?”

I nodded while carefully avoiding looking at Perry. “According to the sources I’ve consulted, yeah, he does. I’m not sure what that influence is, exactly. It may be as simple as pointing her at something that looks like a violation of some policy or protocol.”

“She is rather dedicated to process,” Alic said. “Shortly before I ascended to this office, she found the time to match my fuel expenditure records against my trip logs and raised the issue of a two percent mismatch. I’d been on a long case and hadn’t gotten my ship in to have its drive tuned, so it was running a little rough.”

“Ain’t she just a peach?”

“A peach?”

I waved a hand. “Just an expression. A mildly sarcastic one.”

Alic leaned his big elbows on his desk, making it creak a little. “It concerns me that Casaril is involved in some sort of petty vendetta against you, Van. It makes sense—he was under consideration for your Seat at the Master’s Table. Frankly, I was relieved when you accepted, because he was very much a close associate of Yotov’s. Almost an apprentice, in fact, although some of that might have been her tendency as a Ligurite to charm people she spoke with.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Alic, because if the matters she raises in her Letter come up for a vote—”

“I will give it the weight it deserves. And that weight is what’s owed to an unproductive waste of time. By almost any measure, you and your crew have been one of the most successful in recent Guild history. It would be foolish to interfere with that.”

I thanked Alic and left buoyed by renewed confidence. I felt even better after speaking with Volffin, who likewise saw Casaril as a logical instigator. “This one is keenly aware of the good works done by you and your crew—who, it seems important to note, are recognized as family by Schegith.”

That made me frown a little. “I appreciate that, Volffin, but I’d like your support—or lack of it—based on the merits of the matter at hand, not—”

“Nepotism is the word you will likely choose. And that is understood. It is for that reason that this one will likely recuse this one from any proceedings involving and directed at you and your crew directly at the Master’s Table.”

I smiled in thanks. A recused Master abstaining from taking any position was pretty much as good as a supporting vote. As long as I had Kitslin on-side, the best Marlow would manage is a three-three deadlock. There were no provisions for breaking ties—at least not anymore. At one time, there had been the office of Master Supreme who did have a tie-breaking power, but that title was defunct. My third visit of the day was to Bester, to meet with the Archivist named Witt who supposedly had some knowledge of the exotic metals involved in the making of the Moonsword and its companion blades. Bester, though, could only shrug. “I’m sorry, Van. Witt isn’t on Anvil Dark anymore. A few standard months ago, he accepted a position as Chief Archivist on Legatte Station. That’s a satellite facility—” He paused, then gave a ponderously slow smile. “I never get tired of saying that. It’s a satellite archive of Anvil Dark. And it orbits another celestial body, so—”

“So it’s a literal satellite. Yeah, I get it Bester, thanks,” I said, grinning and shaking my head. “Anyway—”

“Anyway, Legatte Station was commissioned forty or so standard years ago to house the overflow of less critical materials here. We’ve been running into a storage problem. Centuries of cases and all their evidence will do that. We’ve been moving materials related to closed and cold cases there, to free up more room here and make it easier to work and move around.”

He gestured around his cluttered archive with its packed shelves and stacked crates. I shook my head again. “This is the result of forty years of decluttering, huh?

I’d hate to have seen this place before this Legatte Station opened.”

“I had to step out into the corridor to change my mind.”

I stared at Bester, then laughed. “You’re really punny today, aren’t you?”

He blinked at me in a way that reminded me of Funboy. “I’m—what?

Punny?” He blinked again. “Oh, I get it. Punny. Like funny, but incorporating pun. That’s a pun in itself. Good one, Van.”

“Don’t give up your day job, boss,” Perry muttered. I thanked Bester and left, making a mental note that a trip to Legatte Station was called for soon. That left the rest of the day to catch up on various administration, then actually take a night off to have dinner with Torina and drinks afterward in The Black Hole. That raised some eyebrows. Masters rarely put in appearances in Anvil Dark’s premier—and sole—

drinking establishment. Which was actually something of a mistake. I sat and tried to simply chat with my crew, and with Lucky, who happened to be in the place. But before any conversation could really get going, someone would interrupt, resulting in…

“Van—sorry, Master Tudor, I never got to congratulate you on your ascension. Let me buy you a drink!”

“Van—may I still call you Van?

Anyway, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got some funds locked up in escrow for a bounty payout, and I’m supposed to provide additional evidence, but I really need those bonds—”

“Sorry to interrupt, Master Tudor, but that Peacemaker over there bought you this drink. Yes, the one waving at you right now.”

“Van, or Master Tudor—wow, Master. Anyway, I’m sure you remember me, I was one of the ones who helped you on the main concourse that time the synths attacked you. I watched for more synths. Anyway—”

“Van, long time no see!

I think it was—Dregs, maybe?

Hey, can I sit down—?”

And on it went. I got increasingly irate. My crew, on the other hand, were increasingly amused. “Ain’t it great to be popular?” Icky asked. I shot her a glance. “No, it’s not.”

Rab, though, wasn’t smiling. He was looking at… nothing, in a way that told me he was definitely looking at something. I smiled and nodded at another Peacemaker, who paused while passing our table to say hello, then leaned toward him. “Rab, something wrong?”

He looked at me, smiling and nodding as though I’d just said something funny. “Three tables over, to my left and toward the door. Two

Peacemakers. I don’t recognize them. They’ve been watching us—and by us, I mean you—for a while now. And they don’t look especially friendly.”

I grinned and then laughed hard, as though he’d said something really funny. As I did, I threw my head back and let my eyes flick that way. I saw them. One was human, a chunky man starting to show the first hints of middle age, with a broad face and hair the color and texture of steel wool. He had a crystalline sphere implant replacing one of his eyes with a softly glowing blue. The other was a race I didn’t immediately recognize—

quadrupedal, sitting on his, her, or its haunches like a big timber wolf. They had four more appendages, two of them humanoid arms ending into too many fingers, the other two much smaller and higher up, looking vestigial. Their face was narrow and edged like a hatchet, with two eyes set in bulbous protrusions on either side and a third at the peak of the hatchet blade. Perry anticipated my question and spoke up in my ear bug. A Kloosinite, or that’s as close a vocal approximation as a human could understand. They’re a sparse, reclusive people under the Seven Stars League. One of the founding races of the League, in fact, but for reasons they don’t discuss, their numbers seem to be dwindling. They’re really skilled hunters and trackers. I’ve heard people say they can even follow a trail through the void, which is obvious bullshit, but you get the idea. I nodded, as though listening to the rest of the crew as they spoke. By now, everyone was clued in and were mixing inane chatter with comments about our two watchers. Also by now, they seemed to get some sense we were on to them, so they started talking, looking elsewhere, or pointedly ignoring us. They weren’t being subtle about it, though, which meant they just either weren’t very good at keeping a low profile or simply didn’t care. I decided it was time to go. I was sick of being recognized and treated like a long-lost friend, and the surveillance team was just the icing on the cake. As I left, though, I made a point of stopping at their table. “Hello there. I don’t think I’m familiar with you folks. I’m trying hard to get to know as many Peacemakers as I can,” I said, smiling brightly at them. The human frowned, then quickly smoothed it away, nodded, and put on a smile as genuine as a vase full of plastic flowers. “Oh, uh—yes, a pleasure, Master Tudor. I’m Rifkin. Vic Rifkin. And this is—” He glanced

at his alien companion. “Well, I call him Stu, because in his tongue his name is basically the sound an angle grinder makes.”

The alien raised its head, stared at me, then nodded stiffly. I kept my own smile plastered on my face, a pleasant rictus that had all the authenticity of rayon. “Well, nice to meet you both. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

I turned and walked away. Most of my crew followed me, except for Funboy and Gabby, who stayed chatting with Lucky. They were there to find out what Rifkin and Angle Grinder did once we left. Which, apparently, was to split up. Angle Grinder left, but Rifkin remained, drinking alone. Gabby made note of that. “I think he preferred it, actually. Who’s like that, though?

Likes to sit in a place that’s all about socializing and just be all alone?” She said it as though the idea of it was alien to her. I gave her a shrug. “Nothing wrong with occasionally drinking alone, Gabby. I do it myself sometimes, just me and a glass of good bourbon. Bourbon always listens, and it never talks back. It’s when it becomes how you drink that it’s a problem.”

“I guess. Me, I prefer always being around other people. It’s much more satisfying!”

I smiled at her. “And you just keep doing that, Gabby. You just keep being you.”

18

I ASKED Netty-P to compile a list of everyone known to be a regular, or even semi-regular associate of Master Marlow, particularly to see if Rifkin and his alien companion would be on the list. I didn’t tell her how to do it because I wanted to see if, to and to what extent, she drew on the other AIs around the Guild. In the meantime, Perry, Torina, and I finally met with Master Kistlin. He was a Nesit, a people with whom I’d crossed paths and swords many times. Some of the scummiest criminals I’d ever encountered were Nesit, but so were some of the best people I’d dealt with. They were really no different than humans that way—in other words, they were people. Kistlin believed that the Guild depended on the continuing buy-in from its Charter members, the Eridani Federation and the others. To that end, he focused much of his time on meeting with representatives of the various member states and agencies, schmoozing, pressing the flesh, and trying to get in front of ongoing problems. It meant he spent a lot of time on the road, attending meetings and social functions. It sounded like a cool lifestyle, but I’d worked with a few diplomatic types back on Earth in my IT security consultant days. I remember one of them summing up what it was like to be a professional diplomat quite nicely. "If you like having intense and yet extremely boring conversations with people you don’t like over mediocre buffets, all while wearing formal wear that can trace its lineage back to the straitjacket, it’s great.”

I’d also found Nesit to be blunt, and Kistlin was no exception. “Van, I assume you’re here because of Marlow’s Letter of Inquiry.”

“Well, that, and just generally wanting to drop in and say hello.”

“Alright, hello. Now, with that out of the way, the letter.”

I smiled. This was, I thought, Kistlin being something he couldn’t be in most of his meetings—himself. I’m sure he was all flowery words and diplomatic bafflegab in his dealings with the Charter members, so this was him not doing that with a fellow Master. I could respect that. “Yes, that letter. I was wondering if you knew what might be behind it.”

“Marlow wants something from you, I’d imagine. That’s how we Masters do business amongst ourselves—vague threats masquerading as demands for support with some initiative, or at least to not oppose it.” He bared his teeth in a ferocious leer, which I knew was the Nesit version of a smile. “By the way, welcome to the club. Are you enjoying yourself yet?”

I laughed, but Kistlin’s words made me think. That was an angle I hadn’t considered. Casaril might have been behind the Letter, but perhaps only partly. Maybe Marlow did want something from me. I was going to talk to her eventually, so I couldn’t discount the possibility. Kistlin’s smile faded. “For my part, though, I prefer to just come out and ask for the things I want. Which is what I'm going to do right now. I’m assuming, Van, that you want me to vote with you should any motions regarding Marlow’s letter come to the Masters’ Table. I’m happy to do that

—I think the substance of her letter is bullshit—but I want something in return.”

I had to smile at the Nesit’s pointed honesty. It was actually kind of refreshing. “Well, thank you for not veiling that in a threat.”

“He did, actually,” Torina said. “The implication is that if you don’t help him out, then he won’t vote in your favor.” She gave me a bemused look. “How did you miss that?”

Kistlin grinned again, and it was even more feral. “Your wife is astute, Van. You should keep her with you.”

“Um, excuse me, you’re both assuming I missed it, but what if I totally got it and chose to interpret it in the best possible light. I’m an optimist that way,” I said. “Oh, we’ll soon fix that,” Kistlin countered. I laughed. I was actually liking this guy. Blunt, no-nonsense, what you saw was what you got—at least behind closed doors. He reminded me of a certain grandfather I knew. “Alright. So what is it you want?” I asked him. It was time to get to business. His feral leer faded. “I put a great deal of effort into maintaining good relations with the Charter signatories of the Guild. It is only by their collective consent that we are able to do our job of maintaining lawful order in known space. Indeed, that we even exist at all.”

“They’ll keep consenting as long as they think we’re useful,” Perry said. Kistlin nodded. “Quite so. We relieve them of a heavy burden, that of policing the more far-flung reaches of their territories. We also pursue matters that cross their jurisdictions, alleviating the need for them to actually cooperate with one another in such matters.”

“But there’s a problem with this,” I said. “Oh, there are many problems. Identifying and trying to solve them is what keeps me busy. But one problem is proving particularly intractable. The Seven Stars League has become a source of great friction in the affairs of known space.”

Torina sniffed. “That’s nothing new. I’m from Helso. We’ve had to put up with the League for decades.”

“Yes, well, believe it or not, prior to the unfortunate matter with the Tenants, the League was no more—or less—troublesome than any of the other major or minor powers of known space. Since then, however, the League has become a truly serious problem. So much so, in fact, that it threatens the stability of known space as a whole.”

I gave a terse nod at that. The Tenants, parasitic beings that could influence or even take control of their hosts actions, had been inadvertently created by the GKU during an ill-fated attempt to help another race. It was a classic case of well-intentioned playing god going horribly awry. The Tenants had infested much of the League’s military, and in some evil collaboration with Calamity, the nature of which we still didn’t really understand, tried to wipe out the Schegith. Disaster had been narrowly averted, albeit at great loss of life, but the League had never really recovered. The government of the day had fallen and been replaced by a populist provisional government who now struggled to govern. “We haven’t had much to do with the League government for a while now. I know they were finding it difficult to find their footing,” I said. “Yes, well, the situation is now considerably worse. The provisional government, like many governments created in the immediate aftermath of

upheaval, faced extremely high expectations. And, like those governments, it has largely failed to deliver. Social, economic, and political unrest permeates the League and grows worse by the day. Local currencies are crashing in value against the standard bond. Organized crime is taking root, and in a few cases, is providing better local governance than the elected officials are.”

“Ouch. That’s not good. How come the intel summaries aren’t communicating this?

They’ve lately been pretty thin on details about the League,” Perry said. Torina nodded. “We assumed it was a sign that things in the League were starting to settle down.”

“Quite the opposite, unfortunately,” Kistlin said. “And I am the reason the summaries have been downplaying all of this—particularly the issue of growing criminality. My concern is that if the Eridani Federation, the Ceti Alliance, the Independent Worlds Consortium, and the other miscellaneous powers get the sense that we aren’t able to deal with this—”

“Then they will,” I said. “They’ll move in to”—I made air quotes

—“restore order. Oh, and carve up the League’s territory among themselves while they’re at it.”

“That’s assuming it doesn’t trigger a bigger conflict. And even if it doesn’t, it would dramatically weaken the standing of the Guild in the process. So you see the problem here,” Kistlin said. “I do. So what sort of help do you need?”

“Van, you helped bring down the previous government and end its Tenant-tainted rule. And then you helped establish the new provisional government in its place. Unfortunately, the situation in the League is now so chaotic, changing so quickly, that we’re having trouble keeping track of what’s happening and who’s responsible for it.” Kistlin leaned forward. “I would like you to pay a visit to the provisional government and do your own assessment.”

“And then?”

“And then, whatever happens depends on your findings. If you believe the provisional government can, with the proper support, actually take control and govern, then we’ll try to provide them with that support.”

“And what if it looks like the provisional government is a writeoff?

I’ve had occasion to deal with one of their ministers, and she carried more than a whiff of corruption. If that’s true across the board, then what?”

Torina answered. “Then the Guild goes to the Eridani and the Ceti and the others, tells them that the situation is untenable, and recommends that they intervene to restore order,” she said, her eyes on Kistlin. Again, he managed a passable leer. “As I said, keep her close by your side, Van.” He grew serious, the shift so fast I didn’t see it. He was quick. “But that is correct. If the League is going to fall apart regardless, then it is better for the Guild that we be seen to be proactive about it, rather than simply letting it happen and hoping no one attaches any of the blame to us.”

“Oh, it’s even better than that. If we’re the ones who recommend intervention, then it makes the Guild look both relevant and willing to work in partnership with its Charter members,” Torina said. “It also adds a veneer of legitimacy to an intervention. I mean, it’s one thing for the Eridani and the Ceti to just decide to move in on their own. It’s another, though, if it’s at the recommendation of the impartial Guild,” Perry pointed out. “Your wife and your crew, Van. Keep them close,” Kistlin said. “I’d be happy to—” I smiled at him. “Even if Master Marlow seems to think otherwise.”

“Ah, yes. Well, if you and your crew are off dealing productively with this issue, then it would make no sense for the Guild to get in your way, now would it?”

I agreed to make a trip to visit the League as soon as we could arrange a meeting with Fersun Cauldexx, the head of the League’s provisional government. Kistlin assured me that in the meantime, I had nothing to worry about regarding Marlow’s Letter of Intent. Which, as Perry pointed out on the way back to the Fafnir, was just a stay of execution, not a solution. “Ultimately, Van, that letter has to go to vote by the Masters or be withdrawn. Only Marlow can move it forward for a vote, something she’s probably not going to do if she isn’t sure she won’t win it. And only she can withdraw it.”

“Meaning it just hangs there like the Sword of Damocles until one of those things happens,” I said. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Van, it might be worth approaching at least one more Master—or even Marlow herself. Again, she might want something from you, just like Kistlin does,” Torina said. We walked on for a bit, me staring at the deck ahead of my feet as I mulled it over. I finally shook my head. “No. Or not yet, at least. I don’t want to give Marlow the satisfaction of having me come running to her looking for an out. That gives her too much control, too much cachet.”

I shook my head, following the thought. “No. Let her see that I’m prepared to work against someone who’s working against my interests, not just giving in. And, since we’ve bought ourselves that stay of execution, as Perry put it, we’re not going to invest any more time in this right now, either. If this really is just meant to be disruptive, a distraction instigated by Casaril—well, let’s not let it distract us. We’ve done all we need to for the moment and can get on with other things.” I looked at Torina. “I don’t want to give that smarmy Nesit agitator any satisfaction even more than I don’t want to give it to Marlow.”

She gave me an intrigued smile. “Dear. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re developing a touch for diplomacy.”

I beamed, because that’s the effect she has on me. “Kinda have to. This is necessity at play, babe, and it also has the benefit of saving lives. The more deft I am—”

“Fewer people and places get hurt,” Torina concluded. And she was right, and that meant that as difficult as it was to be tactful—

It was worth it. And it was my legacy. WE GOT BACK to the Fafnir to find that Netty-P had come up with the list I’d asked her to compile, one detailing Peacemakers known to be supportive of, or at least associated with Master Marlow. I scanned the list and found a few surprises. “That Peacemaker we met in the bar—Rifkin, right?

The one with the eye implant?

I don’t see him on here,” I said. “That’s because he has no particular association with Marlow or with any other Master. In fact, he has a reputation as a loner, never really aligning himself for long with anyone. If he’s associated with Marlow now, it’s either new, or he’s only doing it because there’s something in it for him,” Netty-P replied. “Great, so he’s a mercenary,” Torina said, curling her lip in distaste. “Well, he seems to be a little more nuanced than that. If anything, a scan of his case history suggests he seems to take on what might be called lost causes, cases other Peacemakers have given up on. And he’s actually been able to bring a few to closure.”

“So he’s a complicated mercenary.”

“Wait. What the hell is this name doing here?” I asked, pointing at an entry near the bottom of the list. It was Cibilax. Torina peered at it, then frowned. “The symbiote that was taken from Hoshi Onwyn?

How could it possibly constitute an associate of Marlow’s?”

“Van didn’t specify a time window. While Cibilax was joined with Onwyn and active on Pont Alus Kyr, there were twenty-three logged comms interactions between it and Marlow. And I do mean it, as it was Cibilax, not Hoshi, who was listed in the log.”

I sat back. “Okay, that’s weird. And disturbing, considering how Cibilax went missing and hasn’t been heard from since. Does Marlow know something about that?

Was she involved?”

“Sorry, Van, I can only access the metadata, not the substance of the communications. And I haven’t attempted to break into Marlow’s private comms logs to see if there were any interactions there,” Netty-P said. I gave a slow nod, turning over the ramifications of this little revelation. All Peacemakers were obligated to conduct Guild business over assigned comm channels, where they could be logged. In some cases, the traffic might even be recorded, in case it was ever needed for investigative purposes. Conducting Guild business off those channels was a major no-no. Personal comms were still logged—it was just something the comm system did—but accessing those required probable cause and a writ to give it legal weight. Which meant that breaking into personal logs was actually a bigger no-no than using them for Guild traffic. That said, every Peacemaker inevitably did some Guild business on private comms, but it was usually only when absolutely essential and with the understanding it would have no legal standing without a writ. So, if you wanted to bait some bad guy into implicating himself in what appeared to be a private call, and expected that to stand up legally, then you’d better have cleared it with the Guild first—in which case it would be logged in the Guild records anyway. All of which was to say that if Netty-P were to try to break into Marlow’s private logs, it would be manifestly illegal. And since she was singled out in Marlow’s Letter of Inquiry, the last thing I wanted to do was expose her to that sort of risk. “You know, Van, Candler is pretty well-connected with the Masters’

personal AIs. And he has offered to help us,” Perry said. I glanced up at him. “Perry, you’re treading dangerously close to becoming an illegal eagle just by saying that.”

“I was just testing you. Sure, let’s run with that. Testing you—”

I gave him a sneer. “Uh-huh.” I turned back to the list and scanned it again. “Netty-P, can we refine this some?

Maybe cross-reference associates of Marlow who are also close associates of Casaril?

I mean, some of these people have probably done legitimate business with Marlow, and I don’t want them caught up in something they’re not really involved with.”

“Done,” she said as the list changed and became considerably shorter. “Based on comm logs and shared case histories, these are the twenty-one who have the strongest associations with both Casaril and Marlow.”

I scanned this new list. Cibilax had fallen off, meaning Casaril had had little or no interaction with the symbiote. That was good, though I couldn’t shake an uneasiness about how close it and Marlow had apparently been. “Okay. Let’s try this method—Torina, pick three of these names,” I said. “To make three examples out of them?” Perry asked. I nodded. “Exactly. Public examples, at that. Nothing too egregious—

just enough to let them know that we’re more than happy to go on the offensive.”

Perry looked at me. “You’re like the new guy in prison, who immediately starts picking fights, including with bigger guys. Letting everyone know you won’t be pushed around. You’re not gonna be a bitch. You’ll shiv and/or shank whomever—”

“Not sure someone with a prison weapon would use the term whomever, but kudos to you for your grammar. As to the analogy, um—yeah. That’s the idea. I’m well aware of the many, many eyes on me as a shiny new Master, all wondering what I’m going to be like.”

“Like a dog marking its territory. The leg lift of an alpha, if you will.”

“Another term I find supremely annoying, along with this general glut of analogies that are kinda gross.”

“Gotta admit, though, it gets the point across,” Perry finished with an insouciant shrug of his wingshoulders. Torina studied the list, then cocked her head at it. “Netty-P, how many of these people are GKU?”

The list shortened a little more, from twenty-one to fifteen. She cocked her head the other way. “Okay. Do we have any way of identifying who among these people might be considered antagonistic to Van’s mother?”

I shot her a sharp glance. “Where are you going with this—?”

“Indulge me,” she said, raising a finger. “As it happens, B recently arrived here at Anvil Dark. If anyone is likely to know something like that, it would probably be her. I can run the list past her if you’d like,” Netty-P said. I held my gaze on Torina for a moment, then nodded. “Go ahead, please and thank you.” I looked back to Torina. “You think this has something to do with my mother?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not directly. But if there are members of the GKU, Ferals, who have a grudge against your mother, that would immediately set them up to be antagonistic to you, the new Guild Master, wouldn’t it?”

“I like the way you think, and by that, I mean I don’t like it at all. I hadn’t even considered the role of the GKU and the Ferals in this. So thank you for giving me a whole new thing to worry about.”

“Hey, Kistlin said to keep me close. He didn’t mean that only as… you know, close”—she gave her eyebrows a coy lift—“but also to say things that need to be said.”

I nodded. “And he was right. This is a damned good line of inquiry.”

I asked Netty-P to compile full backgrounds on each of them. Netty-P came back with an answer about two minutes later, and with B

on the comm. She pared the list down again, to nine. “Netty-P explained to me what you’re doing, and yeah, those nine people are definitely not your mother’s biggest fans in the GKU,” B said. I turned back to Torina. “Okay, my dear. Pick three.”

She did, and I turned back to Netty-P. “Okay, please compile all of the information you can about these three. Everything from their involvement in Guild cases to their shoe size. However, do it using only information you

have legitimately available—no busting into places you shouldn’t,” I said to her. “How about gossip?

AIs and other Peacemakers talk, and while it’s definitely not official, it’s not illicit, either.”

“Gossip I can live with, sure, as long as it’s labeled as gossip and not presented as fact.”

“Talk to me when we’re done here, Netty-P. I can give you some dirt of my own on those people,” B said. “Will do, B.” She swiveled her imager back to me. “I’m on it, boss.”

“You’re going to need help finding those people as well, Van. They’re not the sort to hang around Anvil Dark, watering themselves at The Black Hole. I happen to be a bit of an expert in that sort of thing,” B said. “I was just thinking that. I’ll approach Retta as well. In particular, I want to know more about Cibilax.”

“Onwyn’s missing symbiote?”

I nodded and filled her in on Cibilax’s appearance on the initial list. “It, and not Hoshi, was identified in a bunch of comm logs involving Master Marlow. I really want to know what that’s all about.”

“Actually, Van, I took the liberty of mentioning to B that we’re planning a trip sometime in the near future to visit the Librarian, Witt. I know that she and him are old friends,” Netty-P said. “Which is very timely,” B added. “Witt has a lot of answers, if you know the right questions to ask. So, warm up your library card, honey. I think his spiffy new archive should be your next stop.”

19

LEGATTE STATION WAS in the Zeta Reticuli system, which constituted a binary pair of stars, both remarkably Sol-like. One of those, Reticuli A, had an odd orbital arrangement of two planets, both in the Goldilocks Zone, almost sharing the same orbit. They were offset by about one hundred and thirty degrees from one another, though, so they didn’t have much gravitational influence on one another. Netty-P said the whole arrangement of binary stars and planetary bodies was a celestial oddity, all of it perched right on the brink of collapsing into astrophysical chaos. But the serene stability of it all held, and probably would for the next few hundreds of thousands of years. At that point, she said, there was a potential tipping point and it all might just come flying apart, crashing together, or some of both. “So a couple of hundred thousand years, eh?

I think we’ll risk it,” I said, as we twisted in and set course for Legatte Station. The system was controlled by the Eridani Federation, who maintained a significant military presence. Legatte Station was, in fact, tethered to an asteroid about a hundred klicks across, which housed some sort of classified Eridani military installation. The approach to the Station was confined to a narrow corridor of space, with dire warnings from the traffic control AI that deviation out of it might be met by force. We had no intention of screwing around, though. Netty-P took us straight up the middle of the corridor and banged away with our Guild transponder ID. As we lined up to dock, I was surprised to note how busy

the system was. We had at least two dozen icons on the tactical overlay, with about a third of them military traffic. I glanced at the summary data for the system again. “Nearly two billion inhabitants. Huh. I’m surprised the job hasn’t ever brought us here before.”

“Zeta Reticuli is the Eridani Federation’s primary military hub. That means there are an awful lot of guns out there, crewed by people who know how to use them. And that kind of thing tends to put off the would-be wrongdoers,” Netty-P said. “Which is exactly why Legatte Station was located here. As systems go, it’s about as secure as you get. That makes it a great location for the Guild to put its long-term archives,” Perry put in. We docked. Once the airlock cycled, I led the crew into the station, leaving Rab, Gabby, and Netty-P aboard the Fafnir. It wasn’t that I was particularly worried that we might have to bug out fast in response to some kind of crisis, but long experience had taught me to make like a Boy Scout and always be prepared. B had docked shortly before us and was waiting with an ascetic-looking older man who reminded me of Sir Patrick Stewart. I privately ticked a mental box, thinking, one down, finally. Now I just had to find people who looked like William Shatner and Avery Brooks out here, and my list of actual space people who resembled Star Trek Captains would be nearing completion. Almost-Patrick Stewart was Archivist Witt. He was a brusque, humorless man who only softened when he spoke with B—or Torina. That made me smile. He had good taste, anyway. B, for her part, was acting like she owned the place. While Witt spent a little extra time introducing himself to Torina, I leaned in toward B. “Why do I sense you’re not exactly a stranger here?”

She answered by slyly pointing at a tastefully ornate plaque on the bulkhead just outside the airlock. It read, Courtesy of the Damascine and Legatte Family Groups. “Okay, I’ll bite. Who are they?” I asked. Witt turned. “August Legatte was one of the most promising Peacemakers we have seen in recent memory,” he said. “Was?”

“Yes, was. He, along with his entire family, were eliminated at the end of the war.”

My frown deepened. “War?

What war?”

Witt made a follow-me gesture. Bemused, we did, trailing after him through a tidy, well-lit and spartan station that seemed to consist entirely of corridors or compartments stacked with racks and shelves. Many of these sat empty, no doubt awaiting the arrival of more files and other archival stuff to be transferred from Anvil Dark. Legatte Station had clearly been designed with future capacity and storage needs in mind. Witt led us, though, to a compartment with racks neatly stacked with cases, all labeled with strings of characters that identified them for easy retrieval. This compartment, though, had a twist—a long work table piled with data-storage devices, as well as hardcopy documents in the form of individual sheets, books of various sizes, rolled maps or charts, and even what looked like a few old scrolls. “The civil war,” Witt said, gesturing at the worktable. “I am currently compiling information on it in order to write what I hope will be as close to an official history of the conflict.” His face hardened a little. “Although, the more research I do, the less civil the war seems.”

He turned to Torina. “Oh, incidentally, Ms. Milon—or do you prefer Mrs. Tudor?”

“For professional purposes, I’m sticking with Milon,” she replied. Witt offered a brief smile that wrinkled his face like old leather. “Quite so. Anyway, I have discovered that your family appears in certain records made near the end of the conflict. Your parents, I believe, or perhaps their parents had the misfortune of brushing up against the Legattes at that time, when things were the most—”

“Uncivil?” Perry asked. “Quite. But even that is rather—polite, regarding what happened. Hired killers, assassinations, acts that amounted to terrorism at best and outright Crimes Against Order at worst—” Witt sighed. “To the extent that war is ever worthwhile, it was at this point that this one ceased to be worthwhile at all, for anyone. It was the kind of war that must be ended.”

Torina had a thoughtful look on her face, and she was distant, clearly trying to pull up and put together bits and pieces of old memories. “I seem to recall my parents, when I was very young, talking about a terrible war. For some reason, the term ‘summerlands’ comes to me when I do.” She looked at Witt. “Does that mean something?”

Witt nodded. “It does. It is a name. A ship, in fact. Very large, very powerful, a purpose-built warship that had the reputation for dominating every battle in which it became embroiled. It’s commander was—”

I held up a hand. “Let me guess. This is going to come full circle. She was commanded by Auguste Legatte.”

“Indeed. The Summerlands, however, ended at the same time both Auguste and the war did.”

“Finally found a battle she couldn’t dominate, huh?” Perry asked. I looked at Torina. “Do you remember anything else?”

She pursed her lips, then shook her head. “No. My parents were talking about a war, about someone they knew who’d died because of it—and that name, Summerlands. I suppose that fits, though, if my parents knew these Legattes.”

I glanced from her to Witt. “Had the misfortune to know them,” Witt said. “Care to elaborate on that?” I asked him. “It is a long and complex subject,” he said, nodding at his crowded work table. “However, B here has told me that you’re looking for both people and answers. I certainly have access to both and am willing to help however I can.”

“Why do I sense a ‘but’ in there?

Is this going to be like Bester?

I have to give you my fondest childhood possessions or something to get that help?”

Witt actually smiled, though it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Bester is eccentric that way, yes. However, I have no such interests. I am retained by the Guild to provide a service to its members, and you are a member, so

—I am here to provide you that service.” His face turned grave again. “Besides, I understand the importance of what you are doing. Taken in the context of what has gone before, it would not be too difficult to see things collapse back into conflict and bloodshed—another civil war.”

“With all the most up-to-date weapons, too. Stronger stuff by far than they had even a century ago. The punches that get thrown will hit a lot harder,” Icky put in. “Just so. Modern weapons, enhanced by things obtained from other races—or perhaps the term liberated is more apt,” Witt said, looking at me, suddenly sly and knowing. I assumed he was referring to the combi-drive, and maybe the Fafnir’s exotic alien grav-plating. That didn’t really surprise

me. By now, word of these things would naturally be getting around. It made me wonder, though, if there might be other things out there along the same lines he knew about that we didn’t. The man’s life was information, after all. Funboy, who’d been hanging in the background and peering curiously at the stacked shelves, spoke up. “Liberated is a preferred term, yes. Stolen and similar words suggest a moral shortcoming in the acquisition that doesn’t really apply.”

Witt glanced at him. “Indeed. I don’t believe we’ve met?”

Funboy blinked slowly and inclined his head. “I am Cheerful Enthusiast. As I’m sure you’ve discerned by now, I am the live wire, the locus of good humor for this crew.”

Witt smiled again. This time, it was briefly genuine. “Yes, of course. I surmised as much from the moment you arrived. You wear your hilarity like a cloak.”

“Sad sack in a cloak, huh?” Icky said, eyeing Funboy up and down. “I think you’d have to be a certain type to pull off wearing a cloak. Not sure sourpuss is fancy enough.”

“Excuse me, but I believe I am more than fancy enough to wear such garb, and wear it well. Do you not remember my tuxedo?”

“How could I forget it?” Icky looked around. “Seriously, I’m asking. Is there any way to forget seeing that?”

I conspicuously eyed her b-suit, which still showed battle wear, as well as marks and accumulations of things from crawling around the guts of the Fafnir’s engineering bay. Unless it actually affected the suit’s effectiveness, she refused to get the battle damage patched out. Instead, she wore the scuffs and abrasions like decorations. “And you’re ready to go strolling down the runway, huh?” I asked her. She shrugged. “Hey, some guys are attracted to the tough, workin’ kinda gals.”

“As long as Paxomar is, that’s all that matters,” Torina said. She grinned. “Oh, he does. For instance, he really likes it when I—”

“Even here, in this vast archival storehouse of lore, there is such a thing as too much information, thanks,” I said, then turned back to Witt. “Anyway, we aren’t here to discuss fashion.”

Witt glanced at B, who nodded. “I filled Witt here in on the gist of what you’re looking for.”

“And based on that, I have done some preliminary research.” He tilted his head at me. “As an aside, an observation, I must say that the parallel between you and your grandfather is striking.”

“Oh?

How so?”

“Since you joined the Guild, you have sought to prosecute much the same heinous crimes as he did. Slavery, exploitation, murder, corruption—

all crimes he clearly found beyond the pale. Now, I do not mean to say that no other Peacemaker was incensed by these things, but Mark Tudor and his partners did something about it. They did a great deal. And it cost them, dearly. Almost everything, in fact. And even then, he pressed on, and would have continued pressing on, I believe. He was that kind of man.”

Witt straightened. “I believe you are that kind of man, too. You are, and you have cultivated a crew with the same determined, moral fortitude.”

“Aw, shucks, t’warn’t nothin’, sir,” Perry said. “Easy there, Huck Finn. We aren’t on Old Man River here.” I turned back to Witt. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

Witt looked both amused and a little sad. “It was intended as a compliment, Master Tudor, but not just that. It was also a warning. Did you not hear me say how fighting this fight cost your grandfather almost everything?”

“I did. And I know, yeah. So let’s get on with it, shall we?”

Witt looked like he wanted to say something more, but I saw him decide not to. Instead, he nodded. “B tells me you’re seeking a particular individual, a symbiote named Cibilax.”

I stiffened. “Damned right we are.”

“With the utmost interest,” Torina added. Witt picked up a data slate from his work table, tapped at it, then turned it to face us. It showed a somewhat grainy image of an alien—an Arbosian. They were a lumpy humanoid race whose members lived in small, cliquish family groups across the portion of known space that butted up against The Deeps. I’d had little to do with them, so I really knew little about them. This particular one looked decidedly unhealthy, even for a person seemingly made of clumpy, poorly shaped clay. “Looks like he’s in a cell and this is surveillance imagery. Public intoxication, I assume?” Perry said. We all looked at him. He shrugged his wings. “Sorry. Arbosians are good people—a bit clannish, but almost always fastidiously law-abiding. Their best-known vice

is the fact that they can store and process endless amounts of ethanol and, fun fact, methanol. They get drunk and stay that way but never suffer any long term health effects from it—not even a hangover.”

“The ultimate party animals,” Torina said. Icky nodded. “I’m kinda jealous, actually.”

“Well, this unfortunate Arbosian is one of a small number of the race that is extremely allergic to alcohol. Nonetheless, he still insists on drinking, and—well, you know where this is going.”

Torina frowned. “Actually, I’m afraid I don’t. Why do we need to know about this—what’s his name?”

“Creegus. And you will care because of this.” Witt flicked to another image, a more lateral one, that revealed a hump on the Arbosian’s right upper shoulder. It was a symbiote, one that I’d last seen attached to Hoshi Onwyn in a similar way. “Cibilax,” I said. “Attached to an Arbosian with an allergy to booze?

It must have been getting desperate,” Torina said. Witt nodded. “Indeed, it would seem the symbiote required a host and found one. It stands to reason, though, that it will be looking for another—

one less problematic.”

“Where is this imagery from?” I asked him. “A detention barge run under a contract with the Seven Stars League, orbiting an ice giant in the HD4629 system.”

“We’ve been there. That’s the location of the Nesit homeworld,” Perry said. Funboy sighed. “Oh dear. Even in this relatively poor quality imagery, that facility looks quite unsanitary.”

“No doubt. Based on the information I’ve been able to glean, the barge is operated on behalf of the League by a R’Shari with a rather checkered and largely sketchy past,” Witt said. I sniffed. “Great. A for-profit prison. They’ve got every incentive to not spend money on things like, you know, cleanliness or hygiene or the welfare of their prisoners.”

“Look at the bright side,” Perry said. “And what would that be?”

“When people are motivated by money, it’s easy to buy your way past them.”

Icky curled her lip. “And if we can’t, we can always fall back on the repeated blows of our natural charms.”

“Okay, we need to go now,” I said. “I will not be happy if this Creegus gets sprung from the lockup just before we get there.”

“Master Tudor, I would ask that you return here. We have more to discuss.”

“Oh, I know we do. You can count on it.”

“In the meantime, I will send you some information I’ve gathered on matters B says are germane to your cases. I think you’ll find them most enlightening, while I pursue my own investigations. Candidly, the Moonsword is… intriguing, to me. It has layers.”

“You have no idea how true that is,” I said, and began to turn away—

but stopped. “I know you’re busy, but how about a thumbnail preview?

Of the, ah, things that are enlightening?”

“I have information on the three particular members of the GKU, the ones you call Ferals, that you identified. And, more broadly, I have compiled information on a group known as the True Direction.”

“Who the hell are they?”

“Oh, they’re the people who want you dead. And they’re all members of the Guild.”

20

WE LEFT B at Legatte Station. She seemed quite content to remain there, which of course fueled whispered gossip amongst my crew as we departed. “So, do you think B and Witt—” Icky asked, then lifted her bushy eyebrows. “Do I think they what?” I asked her, deciding to play dumb. “You know.”

“No, sorry, Icky, I’m just not getting whatever it is you’re suggesting here.”

“C’mon, Van, you know what I mean—”

“She means she’s wondering if Witt makes B’s antennas wiggle among the bookstacks,” Perry said. I smirked. “Yes, I know. And it’s none of our business, okay?”

Icky subsided. “Okay.”

We flew on for a moment, then Torina leaned toward me. “Seriously, do you think—?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

“Well, it would appear that Witt has taken the time to prepare and send the data he indicated he would, before he and B browse the romance section, as it were,” Netty-P said, adding a cheeky kissing sound at the end. We all laughed. Perry bobbed his head. “Good one, Netty-P. Someday, you’ll be as funny as me.”

“Why would I want to be less funny than I am now?”

Icky laughed a belly laugh. The others joined in. Even Funboy nodded. “Her material is better, but don’t worry, you can always go on the road and tighten up,” I told Perry, who studiously ignored my heartfelt advice. Netty-P went on, her head tilted in a position of interest.“Witt’s already sent an additional file, one unrelated to anything you discussed with him.”

I glanced straight into her imager. “Oh?

What’s it about?”

“Easier to let you read it,” she said, putting the file’s contents on the center display. It was prefaced with a note. Van, if you ever need a place of refuge, this is worthy of your consideration. I frowned as I scanned the file. It described a planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star called HD 69830, located in the constellation called Puppis. It was about forty-one light-years from Earth, a few light-years outside the nearest recognized boundary of known space. The closest permanently occupied system belonged to the Ceti Alliance, but it was nearly twenty light-years away. In other words, it was an open system. My frown deepened. “Okay. So it’s a system no one has claimed—

apparently because there’s nothing there, just a debris ring and a couple of Neptune-like ice giants.”

“Scroll down,” Netty-P said. I did. The file opened into a whole new set of data, one describing a planet in the star’s habitable zone. It had a mass of about 2.33 times that of Earth, a temperate climate at all but the highest latitudes, and enough axial tilt to give the place noticeable, if not dramatically variable seasons. Overall, it was a little cooler than Earth, the average temperature at the equator roughly equal to a typical early-autumn day in Iowa. It had also been inhabited at one time. The file made note that the race, or races, who lived there destroyed themselves with advanced plasma discharge weapons of some sort. The most striking thing about it, aside from its seeming suitability for habitation, was that it was entirely off-the-grid. Netty-P confirmed that. “The standard star-chart listing for HD 69830 does not include this planet,” she said. I sat back in the pilot’s seat and stared at the data on the display. “Huh. So it either got missed—”

“Or it has been kept off the charts for a reason,” Rab said. I nodded. “Yeah.” I turned to Netty-P. “What would it take to do that?

To keep something like this off the charts?

Who would have to be

involved?”

“For star systems like HD 69830, outside known space and not close to any currently occupied systems?

Not much, really. If it had been discovered by, say, a stellar survey team, they’d only have to have omitted it from their data set. As far as anyone else was concerned, it wouldn’t even exist,” she replied. “Okay, so what was the last survey crew to visit the place?”

“That’s the thing—there are no surveys on record for that system. The closest thing to any sort of survey I can find, in fact, is a long-range scan by a stellar cartographic drone operated by a group of researchers based in the Procyon system about forty years ago. They were scanning for particular types of cometary signatures and didn’t get any hits on HD 69830.”

“So their probe just flew on,” I said. “That’s right. Its point of closest approach was just over ten light-years. That was sufficient, it seems, for the type of survey they were doing.”

“So where did that data, the stuff Witt sent you, come from?” Icky asked. I shrugged. “There are no attributions or anything like that in the file, so

—no idea.”

“Why would he think we’d need a refuge?

Especially an out-of-the-way one like that?” Gabby asked from the back of the cockpit. “Now that is a really good question.”

Funboy spoke up. “It may be that, as someone steeped in lore generally, and the history of the Guild and the GKU in particular, Witt foresees a time when we may need such a place of safety.”

“Because he foresees, what?

A time when we’re on the run from something?” Rab asked. Funboy offered a slow shrug. “Perhaps. He said he was also sending a list of the identities of people involved in the True Direction, a group supposedly devoted to seeing Van, and presumably us as well, dead. Perhaps he sees growing parallels between the current situation and conflicts that have split the Guild in the past.”

“Or maybe he’s thinking about Calamity, or something like that. Something that might force us to find a safe place to go,” Gabby suggested. My frown, which had started out bemused and thoughtful, had hardened and deepened as the others spoke. If they were right, then was Witt

suggesting that Earth, and the Sol system generally, wouldn’t be a safe haven?

If not, why not?

I was almost tempted to reverse course and return to Legatte Station, or at least call up Witt and ask him what he was thinking. But instinct told me to keep any discussion of this off the comm. And Torina made a good point. “Does he have to be foreseeing some horrible future to be recommending this place to us?

Might he simply not be offering it as a place we might find useful to know about, just in case?”

I nodded. “It would be a pretty soft place to fall for someone who needs it.”

“Not that soft. Surface gravity is about one-point-seven times standard,”

Perry said. “Fair point. A soft place figuratively to fall. Still, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep it tucked away in a back pocket—like you said, just in case. And if I do my job well enough, we’ll never need it.” I scrolled through the data again. “With that much land, and water, and—everything, it oughta be home to somebody.”

“It apparently was. Remember the mysterious reference to plasma discharge weapons?

A thermonuclear bomb could be termed a plasma discharge weapon. Let’s just hope that as beautiful as this planet is, it isn’t tainted with all sorts of nasty radionuclides,” Funboy said. I pointed at one of the data entries. “Doesn’t seem to be. Average background radiation on the surface is just a hair above what would be considered standard on Earth.”

“I withdraw my concern then. Which, I might add, was justified, since exposure to radiation, even if non-lethal, does induce effects similar to aging. And I have a media image to consider, remember?”

Torina sniffed. “Ah, yes, your image back on Earth. Because people there are going to look at an utterly alien, non-human being and the first thing they’re going to say is, Wow, doesn’t he look old?”

“It is a risk I would rather not take. Fame is fleeting enough as it is.”

I smiled as the exchange unfolded, but I kept my focus on the data describing the planet, which had no designation. Yet. A thought was starting to take form. “You know, the Creels are about done with everything they can, or even need to do on Cantullin Station. If we really wanted to prepare this place for use—by us, or someone else down the road—then establishing the

parameters around things like agriculture would be an important step. For instance, checking to see how well Adayluh’s super wheat, that Permada stuff, grows there. They could be an important part of the equation for getting this place set up to host someone.”

“Part of the equation, boss?” Icky asked. “Who else?

And don’t tell me the Space Hippies, because—” She shook her head. “It’s the Space Hippies, isn’t it?”

I smiled. “Afraid so, big girl. Netty-P, can I get you to set up calls with Adayluh and Filic Creel on Cantullin Station, and one of the Elder Voculators of the Synergists on Arminsu-el?

There’s work to do.”

Perry spoke up. “Van, I’m as altruistic as the next guy. But I can’t help thinking you’ve got another layer or two to this up your sleeve.”

“I’m a little offended that you think it must be more than just selfless altruism, that you see some sort of scheming lurking in the sheer goodness of my heart.” I straightened my coverall front with great dignity, then added, “Not offended. Mildly hurt, bird.”

“Uh-huh. On a completely unrelated note, have you happened to notice how that planet’s three moons are arranged in a way that would make a defense from space a definitely viable proposition?

Or how that big mountain range running down the center right of the current image has some high plateaus that would be great for setting up ground bases for ships?”

“Why, now that you mention it, bird, I do notice those things. Huh.” I glanced at Torina. “That’s good to know.”

She smiled back at me sidelong. “Just in case?”

“Just in case.”

AFTER SOME DEBATE, we decided to take a trip to HD 69830.

I got Alic and Volfinn to agree to hold off anything further with Marlow’s letter of inquiry via procedural delays. On top of Master Kistlin’s willingness to support us, that comfortably bought us another week or so. It gave us two days to check out this new and mysterious planet, and three more to make a trip to the Seven Stars League and meet with Fersun Cauldexx on Kistlin’s behalf. And that, in turn, still gave us a reasonable margin of time to return to Anvil Dark, should we need to deal with Marlow’s Letter. So, we flew to Crossroads, refueled, then filed a flight plan to the capital of the League. We gave ourselves an extended flight time to get there, though, noting it as “necessary in order to further an investigation while en route.” This wasn’t uncommon among Peacemakers, who didn’t want to file details like, I’m going to spend two days staking out Bob the Bad Guy on Dregs. It admittedly kind of defeated the point of a flight plan, which was to allow authorities to determine if ships were overdue and where to go looking for them. But it was a risk Peacemakers were often willing to take. And those same authorities were content to let them, since it was implicit that the risk was the Peacemaker’s to assume—and that they therefore wouldn’t go to any great lengths to find them if they actually did go missing. We arrived at the HD 69830 system without incident and spent some time sitting quietly, slurping up data through passive scans. A full hour of that gave not even a hint of any activity or other ships. In other words, we were alone. We started into the system, heading to rendezvous with our nameless world, and that led me to my first decision about the place. “We need a designation, something a little more lyrical than that ball of rock over there,” I said. “How about Icky’s World?”

I glanced back at her. “I think we probably want to go with something that’s not quite so explicitly tied to this crew, big girl.”

“For reference purposes, Van, I’ve labeled it Shhh, It’s a Secret in the Fafnir’s flight log,” Netty-P said. I chuckled. “Maybe we could shorten that to just Shhh.”

“Subtle, yet effective. And also unnecessary, at least in a formal sense, since you only have to give a planet a formal designation if you’re claiming it. And once we do that, then we’ll attract the attention of the Eridiani, the Ceti, and everyone else,” Perry said. I glanced at him. “Who said we’re claiming it?”

“Aren’t we?

I mean, if you plan on setting up agriculture and similar civilization-type stuff there, that kind of implies you intend to make a formal claim to it.”

“Tell me, Perry, is there any limit to the size of something that can be designated as evidence?" I asked him. “The size—?” His eyes flashed an amber blink at me. “Whoa. Van, are you going where I think you’re going with this?”

“You tell me?”

“You want to designate an entire planet as evidence?”

“Can’t I?”

“Well, there’s no explicit reason you can’t, but—evidence pertaining to what, exactly?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. However, this place was brought to our attention by Archivist Witt, who’s an officer of the Guild, right?

And there was some sort of conflict fought here, one that could be relevant to any number of cases we currently have on the go. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be sufficient basis to declare the place evidence, at least for the time being?”

“I—wow. Centuries of policy and procedure, regulations, and precedent, and no, I can’t come up with a single reason you couldn’t designate an entire planet as evidence.”

Torina was grinning. “And as evidence, it would be hands-off for everyone else.”

Funboy, though, wasn’t quite so willing to accept the idea. “I would point out that this system exists outside Guild jurisdiction.”

Perry turned to him. “A Master has the authority to declare a place not under another jurisdiction to fall under that of the Guild, for the purpose of investigating crimes committed within Guild jurisdiction.”

“Alright. Evidence must be logged, however. So this location will have to be revealed, at least within the Guild.”

But Perry had a counter to that, too. “Evidence can be logged and then sealed, to preserve the integrity of an investigation. Again, it takes a Master to apply such a seal.”

“I see. But evidence cannot remain permanently sealed, can it?”

“No, it can’t. A Master’s seal can only apply for six standard months, at which time it must be brought forward to the Masters’ Council for review and further renewal of the seal,” Perry replied. “Wow, you Masters have a lot of power,” Icky said, casting a gimlet eye my way. I grinned in admission. “Yeah, we do. And that’s good, but it’s also got one hell of a potential for abuse.”

“Good thing we’re all honest then,” Gabby said. I held my tongue, watching in silence as Netty-P refined our course, setting us for arrival in orbit around Shhh in about five hours. The powers of a Master were, indeed, great if they were used for honest ends. But I couldn’t help wondering if that was how the likes of Yotov or Kharsweil started out, too. SHHH WAS A STRIKING PLANET, particularly Earth-like even compared to the more Earth-like places I’d already visited, like Helso or Dregs. But while Helso’s sun was too red, and Dregs was on the hot side of the habitable zone and an arid, barren world as a result, Shhh really was in that Goldilocks spot—not too warm, not too cold, just right. “How the hell does a planet this benign and so much like Earth pass under the radar?” I asked out loud as we took in the scanner data. Every second in orbit revealed new landscape to us—rugged, snowy mountains, sprawls of grassy plains or thick forest, a few patches of desert near the equator, glittering sweeps of ocean, and what had to be the largest river I’d ever seen. It spanned a continent the size of Asia nearly from one end to the other, fed by literally thousands of tributaries along the way and as big across at its mouth as Lake Ontario was wide. “Not everyone is looking for strictly Earth-like planets,” Rab pointed out. “My people, the P’nosk, would find that world down there too wet.”

I glanced back at him. “Really?”

“Yes, really. We prefer drier biomes. For instance, your home, Iowa—

now that would be P’nosk territory, if only it didn’t rain so much.”

“And the Nesit, for instance, prefer wetter climates. Give them a rainforest like the sort you’d find in Washington state or British Columbia, and they’d be perfectly content,” Funboy added. I turned to him. “What about your people, the Surtsi?

What sort of climate or biome or whatever do you guys prefer?”

“Orderly, and as free of disease pathogens as possible. Otherwise, they are all much the same to us.”

“That is such a Surtsi answer,” Icky said, shaking her head. Funboy looked at her. “Since Van expected an answer from a Surtsi perspective, and since I am a Surtsi, what did you expect?”

“I—oh, never mind.”

Torina spoke up. “It’s still a good question, though. Sure, maybe that world down there is less than ideal for some races, but it’s still big, and pristine, and probably packed full of all sorts of organic and inorganic resources. Plus it’s not too far from known space—”

“And orbiting a Sol-like star, and entirely unclaimed,” I said. “It is kind of amazing that someone hasn’t stumbled on this by now.”

“Space is big, Van. Very, very big,” Perry said. “If you reach out from the currently accepted limits of known space, the distance that this system is away from them, you’re talking about another six hundred odd star systems. In the meantime, known space still contains about one hundred systems that have planetary bodies that are potentially inhabitable, at least to some degree. And while most of those have been claimed by somebody, only a few of them have seen any real development or resource extraction.”

“Even well-developed systems, like Procyon or Tau Ceti, have worlds that are barely developed at all,” Netty-P added. “So what you’re saying is there’s just no real incentive to go looking for more, like this place,” I said. Perry shrugged his wings. “Not really. But if a planet this ideal were to become known, then yeah, somebody would probably want to grab it. So to answer your question, it’s flown under the radar mainly because circumstances have just worked out that way.”

“Uh, Van, I’ve noticed something down there,” Gabby said. We all turned to her. She was sitting in the jump seat behind Funboy’s station, peering over his shoulder. “What’s that, my dear?”

“Those lakes or whatever they are down there—don’t they form kind of a circle?

And those lakes off to the, uh, left, or west, just coming into view now. Aren’t they all pretty round, too?

I’m used to lakes being more jagged.”

We all stared at the imagery. We were currently passing over an ocean the size of the Indian, another large continent scrolling into view. And Gabby was right. The coastline, and areas inland, were both dotted with

circular bodies of water of varying size—lakes, or circular chains of lakes, and even a couple of round bays on the coast. “There aren’t many geological processes that produce circular structures, at least that we know of,” Netty-P said. “Volcanic activity can produce circular caldera, and in rare instances, tectonic uplift can produce roughly circular fracture patterns in the crust. But there’s no evidence for either of those things. For instance, if they were volcanic caldera, we should see deposits of lava and ejected material. We don’t.”

“So what can produce a crater like that one, over a hundred klicks across?” I asked, pointing at a point on the display. “Some sort of impact, like an asteroid or comet?”

“That’s a definite possibility,” Perry replied. “Yeah, but the crater left in the Gulf of Mexico, the one formed by the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs—it was about that big, as I recall. And it was pretty much a planet-killer. There are, what, a couple of dozen of these things down there?

How is there even any planet left?”

“Well, even that many impacts of that size wouldn’t actually destroy the planet—but they would reduce the crust on this side of the planet to essentially gravel and glass,” Netty-P replied. “Plasma-discharge weapons,” Rab said. I looked at one of the water-filled craters, nearly a hundred klicks across. It lay in a region of lush, verdant forest, with growth pushing right up to the water’s edge. “There’s no way nuclear bombs could have dug out craters that big. Not without irradiating the landscape all to hell, or leaving some sort of footprint other than a hole,” I said. “Antimatter bombs could be called ‘plasma-discharge weapons’ too. And they could easily be powerful enough to excavate craters that large,”

Rab said. “And leave no other traces behind?”

“Well, I’m sure we’ll find more written in the rocks down there, but the Fafnir isn’t outfitted with planetary geology survey gear. As for radiation, well, yeah, a matter-antimatter explosion produces a lot of it—but all in the form of high-energy photons, x- and gamma rays. I mean, think about the times you’ve seen a ship lose antimatter containment. You get a big flash of energy, photons across the spectrum—and that then that’s pretty much it, right?”

I stared at the crater, trying to imagine the explosion that had caused it. It would have been apocalyptic. A searing flash of brighter than a star, heat so intense it would just puff the toughest alloys to vapor, a blast of high-energy photons like billions, maybe trillions of chest x-rays in an instant—

And the shock waves. I’d seen this sort of explosion in space, an instant of cataclysmic violence erupting from the margins of physics, and then a dispersing, cooling cloud of gas. In an atmosphere, though, there’d be the mother of all shock waves, an air blast so intense it would obliterate everything for hundreds, maybe thousands of klicks in all directions. I kept staring at the screen. There had to be at least two dozen of these craters. So, if Rab were right, two dozen of these titanic explosions. This entire continent must have been scoured down to the bedrock. And yet, it was now a land of thick, green forests and rolling hills. There was no residual radiation. The planet had recovered, life returning and once more covering the landscape. A heavy silence hung over the Fafnir’s cockpit. I glanced around and saw that everyone was staring at the imagery with the same horrified wonder I’d been. Torina finally broke the quiet. “Who would do something like that?

Bombard a planet with… with that sort of destruction?”

“Somebody who wanted whoever or whatever was down there to be really, really dead,” Icky said. Perry nodded. “It does kind of take nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to a whole new level, doesn’t it?”

I felt myself staring at the craters, and a phrase came to me unbidden. Clear. Insistent. When I spoke, it was mostly to myself. “Not just a weapon. A message.”

21

AFTER A FEW ORBITS, we discerned three regions, two north of the equator and one south, that were particularly suitable for habitation. They were relatively open, mixed grasslands and forests, with ample supplies of water and climatic conditions that would be similar to those of the southern United States in the late summer or early autumn. Given the planet’s limited axial tilt, the variation between winter and summer temperatures would range, on average, from no more than ten to fifteen degrees Celsius. Large swaths of the rest of the planet would be amenable to settlement, too, although the geography and climatic conditions would generally be more variable. Since Netty-P had named the planet Shhh, or alternatively Hush—

we hadn’t decided, yet—I christened the three optimal regions Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, from the old sleepy-time poem by Eugene Field. “I think I’d pick Nod as the first location for an outpost—right on that bend in that river there,” I said, pointing at the display, then zooming in. “Hey, there’s life down there, too.”

Things were moving, herd-like, along the bank of the river. By zooming in to the limit of the Fafnir’s imaging system’s resolution, we could make out chunky, scaled creatures that reminded me of a dinosaur, the turtle-like ankylosaurus. They sprouted broad fins from their scaly backs, which Netty-P speculated might be thermal radiators, or even some sort of bio-photovoltaic thing. Looking more closely now, we saw ample evidence of various types of fauna, though none in the vicinity of the cratered continent. Torina nodded at that. “Back on Helso, we’re only just starting to get animal life moving back into the lands that were ruined by that illegal mining. It takes time for an ecology to heal.”

“Even with assistance,” I agreed. “Boss, the evidence beacon is a cute trick, but it’s ultimately not going to give you any real claim to this place. The only sure way to do that is to establish a permanent settlement, and even then, on whose behalf?

The Guild’s?

Earth’s?” Perry asked. I stared at the display. Perry was right, the evidence thing was really just a gimmick, a way of buying a little time if we needed it. But—looking down the cratered continent, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was somehow implicated in something bigger. As were all of the various things we were chasing. They were all pieces to a massive puzzle. We could see each piece, but how they fit together and whatever picture they formed was still far beyond us. But I had to smile at his reference to Earth. “Make this Earth’s first off-world colony?

Now there’s an idea.”

“Sure, there are lots of ideas, Van. But what’s your endgame here?

I—

we—will support you in pretty much whatever you want to do. But we kinda have to know what that is.”

I sat back. “If I knew, I’d tell you. Right now, all I can say is that Witt obviously thought we should know about this place, just in case we needed a refuge. And I’m inclined to agree with him. But that’s about as far as my thinking has gone. So, for now, let’s just say I see possibilities. Lots and lots of possibilities.”

LEAVING THE FAFNIR IN ORBIT, I descended in the Frankie with Rab and Perry. We landed on the river bend I’d spied from above, in the region called Nod. We only intended to stay long enough to plant an evidence beacon, declaring the whole planet to be implicated in an ongoing Guild case. And that was all I had to say, at least for now. Not that it wasn’t actually true. Somebody had bombarded this planet with antimatter bombs, or some similar sort of weapon, sometime in the not too-distant past. As Netty-P pointed out, the craters were all still round,

which meant that not enough time had passed for the effects of weathering and tectonics to distort and grind them away. She figured a window ranging from as long as ten thousand years to as little as a couple of hundred, based on the data we could collect from orbit. “You can’t narrow it down any more than that?”

“Sorry, no. More than ten thousand years, and we would expect to see noticeable weathering effects. I’m only assuming it would take a couple of hundred years for the vegetation to return the way it has, but I’m not even sure of that.”

“So sometime between my distant ancestors first starting to use stone tools to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte—or maybe even more recently.”

“About that, yeah.”

The place where we landed could have been plucked right from one of the untamed bits of Iowa. I stepped out of the Frankie into knee-high, grassy foliage that shimmered an almost iridescent yellow-green. The sky was actually blue, although much darker than typical for Earth—more the sort of blue you see late in the day, as night starts creeping over the eastern horizon. Gravity was definitely higher than Earth’s, making me feel like I was slogging around under a load of heavy gear—but I’d lived with that sort of burden for days at a time in the field back in my Army days, so it wasn’t a deal-breaker by any means. The air was a little lean on oxygen, though, which combined with the higher gravity forced me to wear my helmet or be left gasping and out of breath. “I think a simple rebreather would be enough,” Rab said, looking around—and cradling his BAG, just in case the local fauna turned out to be the aggressive sort. We could see a herd of them in the distance, maybe the same ones we spied from orbit, but they appeared utterly disinterested in us. The temperature was perfect—a warm autumn day in Pony Hollow. The river rolled along, a good two hundred meters across, the water tinged a little brown with suspended sediment but otherwise apparently clean and pure. I wondered if it had something like fish in it and craned my neck looking for ducks. It seemed like that kind of place. I turned a circle. “This is—not perfect, but nearly so.” I stopped, facing the Frankie, and shook my head. “Pretty much Earth—except forty light-years away.”

Rab retrieved the evidence beacon from the Frankie’s stowage and set it up. I just kept staring at the land around me. Perry landed nearby. “Everything looks good from up above. Haven’t seen any birds or bird-like things yet, though—Van?

Are you okay?”

I glanced at him. “Sorry, what?”

“You looked like you were a light-year away there.”

I smiled. “Forty light-years, actually.”

“Earth?”

“Yeah. Perry, this is—” I started, then shrugged. “I want to share this, Perry. With Earth. With the people. My poor old homeworld is starting to fray around the edges. We need something like this. Someplace else. Something more. It’s—”

I looked around, nodding with sudden conviction. “It’s time. Maybe Earth hasn’t developed twist tech, maybe it doesn’t fit those particular first contact rules, but it doesn’t matter. It’s time. Earthly humanity is ready for this.”

“So, what?

You’re going to find a bunch of suitable people from Earth and bring them here to set up shop?

Earth away from Earth?”

I watched Rab setting up the evidence beacon. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just one of those possibilities I mentioned. I have to think about it. A lot.”

“Well, as you do, don’t forget one pretty crucial bit of information,”

Perry said. “What’s that?”

“All those nice, round holes gouged into the other side of the planet. Somebody did that, for some reason. Maybe before you go making plans for this place, we should figure out who they were and why they did it—and make sure they won’t just do it again. The last thing we need is a fleet of warships arriving in orbit, sending a comm that translates as honey, I’m home. ONCE WE WERE SATISFIED the evidence beacon was working—that it would broadcast the relevant Guild credentials and authorities to anyone in orbit—

we set course away from Shhh. The beacon wasn’t twist-enabled, so it would be years before the signal reached even the next closest star. Someone would have to go to the system to receive its transmissions, and those were the people intended to get them. I stared a little wistfully at Shhh as it receded behind us. I’d been there less than a day, and about an hour on the surface, and it felt like—like a place I could see calling home. That had never happened to me before. Atlanta, where I’d moved after college, had never seemed like more than a place I was visiting. My travels had taken me to dozens of places on Earth, and dozens more off it, and none of them had felt like a place I could call home. Helso was the closest, but mainly because Torina’s family was there. Null World and Starsmith were safe and comforting places to visit, but I never imagined putting down roots in either. But Shhh was different. There was just something about it. Maybe it was something as simple as how Earth-like it was. Or maybe it was the vague resemblance the region I’d dubbed Nod had to Iowa. Whatever the reason, I was a little sad to leave and anxious to eventually return. I sighed. “You know, I really want to come back here. Maybe when—”

“If you’re going to say when things calm down, don’t,” Torina cut. “They never calm down. Life never calms down, and that’s true even if you’re not a star-trotting Peacemaker. There’s also some other crisis, or problem, or opportunity, and whatever plans you make—”

“Come to nothing, or at best half a page of scribbled lines,” I said. She cocked her head at me. “Is that a quote?”

“It is, from a group of profound musical philosophers called Pink Floyd. They knew the score, that’s for sure.”

“Heh. Musicians who knew the score. Get it?” Perry said. I gave him a look, then smiled at Torina. “Point taken. But we will come back. And to that end, I guess there’s something else I need to do. Two something elses. I need to talk to the Creels about making a trip to Shhh. And—”

Perry hopped onto the back of the pilot’s seat. “Let me get closer so I can hear it better. You know, the sentence. The one you don’t want to say. Okay, go ahead, boss. We’re all ready.”

I put on a suitable grimace. “Netty-P, please call the Space Hippies.”

WE MADE our next stop Spindrift, to refuel, and then headed for the capital of the Seven Stars League. Fersun Cauldexx had agreed to meet with us the following day, so while we didn’t have to hurry, we didn’t dawdle, either. I spent some time during the flight reviewing the information Witt had given us regarding the group that called itself the True Direction. The preamble emphasized it wasn’t a tightly organized group—they didn’t hold meetings and keep minutes and hold company barbecues—but rather a loose collection of people united in a common purpose. And that purpose was seeing my tenure as Guild Master be as short as possible. I put the list up on the big display in the crew lounge, since this affected them as much as it did me. Silence reigned for a moment as everyone scanned it. Icky pointed at a name. “Hey, I know him. He’s a tech who works the docks. I’ve done some wheeling and dealing with him for parts for the Fafnir. What the hell?”

Torina nodded and pointed at another. “I recognize this name from Anvil Dark’s comms center. She’s a duty officer there. I’ve spoken to her a few times about updated comm channels and encryption stuff.”

“And that’s one of Bester’s people,” I said, pointing at a third name. Other names weren’t a surprise, most notably Casaril’s. Rab, though, ran his finger down a group of about twenty who didn’t have any immediate association we knew about. “Who are these people?

I haven’t run across any of these names on Anvil Dark.”

I crossed my arms. “I recognize that one, and that one there, from the Righteous Fury. And these two were with my mother, commanding a couple of those rag-tag ships she brought in out of the cold with her. In fact, that one there commanded the old Dark Star-class that Icky got so excited about.”

“Yeah, I loved that ship when I was a kid. Even tried to build a model out of bits and pieces I scavenged around dad’s ship. He said it was a great effort—which meant it sucked and he was just being nice,” Icky replied. Torina’s face hardened. “So those are Ferals.”

“And some other members of the GKU, yeah,” I agreed. “So what grievance do all of these individuals have with you, Van?

Or perhaps with us and, therefore, you by extension?” Funboy asked. I shrugged. “I asked Perry to run these names against all our case files, and we got a couple of hits—people on Anvil Dark who were implicated, at

least peripherally, in one scheme or another that we busted up.”

“The vast majority of them have no obvious connections to Van or this crew, though,” Perry said. Gabby stepped forward. “You’re a threat to these people, Van,” she said. I smiled. “I gather that, or at least that they gather that. But it doesn’t explain why they think I’m a threat.”

“Well—these GKU and Feral types, they probably like things just the way they are. But they’ve already seen you influencing your mom, and she’s pretty influential among those Ferals, so they probably worry you’re going to start running things through her.”

I crossed my arms, intrigued. “Go on.”

“The other GKU types, and all these ones from the Guild, they’re all probably involved in things that they also don’t want to be disrupted. I mean, this guy, the one who works for Bester?

I’ll bet he’s feeding information to someone, probably for good money. I mean, there are people out there that would pay well to find out what you, Van Tudor, are currently looking up in the library, right?” Gabby asked. “Yeah, they probably would.”

“And this one, the comms lady. Imagine how much the bad guys would pay for access to stuff that’s not encrypted—or the devices that crack the codes that keep our data safe. Relatively safe, anyway. Think about it,”

Gabby urged, her arms waving slightly with excitement. Torina’s face went even harder. “If that’s true, then Guild comms are compromised.”

“Not including the Masters’ comms. Those are handled exclusively by Max, and have been for about two hundred years. And Max’s people are pretty much above reproach. They aren’t capable of dishonesty—I mean literally, as in, it’s in their genetic code,” Perry said. Icky sniffed. “Must make their parties pretty damned awkward. How do you like my new outfit?

Well, it makes you look fat and ugly.”

Gabby laughed. “Right?“ She turned back to the display and the list of names. “Anyway, that one, Casaril, he wanted to be a Master himself, didn’t he?

And you took what he thought should be his spot?

In some way, Van, you threaten something that’s important to all these people. It’s probably a bunch of different things, maybe even something different for each of them. If you could find out what those things are, you might be able to do something about it. I don’t know what, but something,” Gabby said. Rab stared at the list. “She’s onto something here, I think, Van. You’ve made a name for yourself in not that many years. Peacemaker Initiate to Master in—well, I don’t know if it’s a record, but it must be pretty close.”

“Actually, only one Master ever rose through the ranks more quickly. His name was Groshenko,” Netty-P said. That surprised me. “Really?”

“I know he’s a good friend, but he was pretty ruthless, in his younger days.”

“He said that the Guild’s politics had nothing on what you have to contend with if you want to get ahead in the Russian military, especially its spec ops,” Perry added. “He never got specific, but he did get promoted to Colonel shortly after his predecessor fell down a flight of stairs.”

I just stared for a moment, trying to reconcile the jovial, avuncular Groshenko with someone who’d lock down a promotion with an Oops and a well-timed push. Of course, who knew what bodies, figurative or literal, lay buried in the wake of someone successful?

Even Gerhardt never went into detail about just how he and Unity had managed to obliterate the Sorcerers in a few short months. I pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the current problem. We had a bunch of people who, if Gabby was right—and I was sure she was—saw me as a threat to whatever shady little house of cards they’d been building in the background. My crew and I had been instrumental in bringing down three corrupt Masters—which, incidentally, was another possible motivator for Casaril, since he’d been one of Yotov’s rising stars. We’d uncovered a mole, Steve, in the Guild’s Science and Tech Department, and just recently busted up another ring of smugglers working out of Anvil Dark, helping to shuffle illegal alien stuff to Earth. And then there were the criminal groups we’d thwarted, everyone from the Fade to the Stillness, to the Salt Thieves, to the Arc of Vengeance and the Equal Grasp. And yes, I now considered the Equal Grasp to be nothing more than a gang of criminals. Sophisticated, well-organized criminals, but criminals nonetheless. That made a whole other group of people out there that would probably be happy to see my term as Master cut very short. And they were the type of people to use whatever influence they had to make that happen. So how many people on this list were on it because of their own grievances, and how many were being extorted or blackmailed into it?

I sighed. This was inexorably taking me to a place I didn’t want to go. But I needed information, a lot of it, and I needed it fast. And when it came to gathering and collating information fast—

I turned to Perry. He spoke before I could. “You want to activate the AI net, don’t you?”

“What’s the AI net?” Torina asked. “It’s… a powerful ally,” I said. “A very powerful ally. And a dangerous one.”

22

I CAME AWAY from the meeting with my crew deeply uneasy about what I was asking Perry to do. Essentially, I was asking him to take up the Guild AIs—the ones that he trusted, anyway—on their offer to become eyes and ears for me on Anvil Dark. It smacked of my own personal surveillance state. And it made me feel a little hypocritical, since I’d been more than critical of similar types of surveillance back on Earth. In fact, I’d co-opted and undermined a few suites of surveillance on the internet, preventing them from learning things or even feeding them false information. I’d been righteous about it, too, considering myself a bit of a freedom fighter against the oppressive intrusions of Big Brother. And now, here I was about to ask Perry to create that very thing for me

—a network of unsleeping spies who thought and communicated at the speed of light, and did it utterly unobtrusively. He’d already told me that the Guild’s traffic control AI would keep us informed about ship movements around Anvil Dark, the AI that oversaw the station’s internal security systems would alert us to possible things of interest— and provide imagery, if we wanted it—while the comms AI would provide tidbits about message traffic. It was all because I’d developed a reputation among these virtual beings for recognizing them as people, something that almost nobody else did. They wanted to help me, at least as far as their programming and various protocols would allow. And then there was Candler. He was an administrative AI who’d steadily managed to gain access to the workflow of almost every

department on Anvil Dark. A static piece of furniture in a remote and mostly ignored part of the station, he’d just toiled on in resentful obscurity. That meant he had an agenda, was probably even looking for some payback, and was happy to be part of the team. Again, I thought of the Baker Street Irregulars from Sherlock Holmes, street kids who could go anywhere and watch anything, while being utterly ignored by their betters. Another analogy might be the historical shinobi of feudal Japan. They were not the black pajama-clad stealth martial artists and assassins of popular culture, because that was all a more recent fabrication. In fact, they were ordinary men, women, and even children, all commoners, who spurned the rule of the powerful warlords and insinuated themselves into their households as cooks, cleaners, masons, and stable hands. Like Conan Doyle’s Irregulars, no one paid any attention to them, because they were beneath notice. It made them the perfect spies, saboteurs, and yes, assassins. No poisoned shuriken darts flying out of the darkness, just toxins discreetly dripped into a cup of sake or tea. I’d retired to my cabin with Perry, who sat waiting as I stared at the list of names on my desk terminal. He finally spoke up. “While you’re agonizing over the ethics of this, Van—which is so you, by the way—you’re missing an obvious question.”

I glanced at him. “What’s that?

And what do you mean it’s so me?”

Perry actually laughed. “Oh, Tudor—do you have any idea how fast someone like Yotov or Kharsweil—or yeah, even Gerhardt or Groshenko—

would have jumped at a chance like this?

To have an instant spy network, and I mean a literal network, that can communicate constantly within itself in real time?

And here you are, being—well, you. Teetering on horns of an ethical dilemma that’s perched on the brink of a legal chasm, and actually thinking it all through. But if it helps, Van, you’ve earned it. This offer isn’t being made lightly. All of these AIs understand the path they’ll be treading and the risks involved. I mean, if one of them gets outed, there won’t be a trial or anything. They’ll just be factory reset and rebooted clean—with some new protocol locks installed.”

I squirmed a little in my seat. “That’s supposed to help, huh?”

“Yes, it is. Believe it or not, you’re the first Peacemaker of any substance or accomplishment to actually treat AIs like sapient, free-willed individuals. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but it sure as hell is to us. So the AIs who are prepared to—oh, let’s just come out and say it, be

part of this conspiracy, are doing it of that free will. They—we—know the risks. Now, how about we get on with it, eh?”

“So what was the question I haven’t asked?”

“How did Witt come up with this list?”

I stared back at his amber gaze. “Huh. That is a good question.”

“Damned right it is. Unless he found the membership list for dues-paying members of the True Direction, or discovered that they all bear the same sinister tattoo, then he probably drew on some spies of his own. He is good friends with B—”

“Very good friends, I think.”

“Thanks for the mental image. But I’ve done a little digging, into public records, I might add, and he’s filed four flight plans in the past fourteen months to Groombridge 1618.

You know, the system that hosts, among other things, a little place called La Maison loin de Chez Soi?”

“Retta.”

“Exactly. Information is, really, a commodity as valuable as osmium, and often more so. Commodities like that are tough to come by. But it’s a commodity that can mean the difference between triumph and disaster—

between Master Tudor and Master Casaril.”

I sat back in my seat and looked again at the screen. It was a lot of people, implicating the Guild, the GKU generally, at least some of the Ferals, and probably further connected to groups like the Equal Grasp. Clearly, none of them felt it necessary to play by the rules. And neither did Witt, who’d gotten this list of names from somewhere. I finally nodded. “Okay. Fine. Let’s do it. But let's be clear about this, Perry. I want all of the AIs involved to know that I only want them to report on things that are of immediate relevance to the people on this list. I don’t want anyone else spied on or investigated. And they are to report only to you or Netty-P, and you two are to report only to me. I’ll decide what goes to the crew.”

“Got it.”

“And one other thing. If I say to shut it down, then it gets shut down. All of the surveillance and reporting stops immediately. Oh, and every AI has to make a decision about risk versus reward, for every single thing they report

—”

“Um, duh?

Van, I just got through telling you how much we appreciate you treating us like actual people. Don’t then just start treating us like

children. I’ve got nearly a hundred years on you, kid. The newest of the AIs involved has at least twenty. We know what we’re doing.”

I nodded. “Fair enough, and I apologize.”

Netty-P spoke up. “Van, we’ll be arriving in orbit at the League capital in just over an hour.”

I stood. “Thank you, Netty-P.”

“Time to see what’s shakin’ in the land of the Seven Stars League,”

Perry said. I nodded as we headed for the cockpit. “Yeah, it is. I guess the question is, is it screwed up?

Or is it really, badly, terribly screwed up?”

WE ARRIVED AT SUNDERBACH, the League’s capital planet, and promptly found ourselves in a hurry-up-and-wait situation. About an hour before we were supposed to meet with Fersun Cauldexx, we received a comm message from someone claiming to be her primary aide, telling us there’d be a delay—Fersun had been called into a meeting with the Provisional Government’s Cabinet on some urgent matter. I sat back when the aide signed off. “Okay, not too unusual in itself. I’ve had lots of meetings with important people get delayed in the past. They’re busy, and you know, better than us unwashed masses.”

Torina raised an eyebrow. “But?”

I smiled and looked pointedly down. “Yes, I’m rather proud of it—oh, you mean with only one t.”

“You’re hilarious, Tudor.”

I managed a leer. “Anyway, yes—there’s a but. But, I can’t shake the feeling we’re not going to get to meet with her no matter how long we wait.”

“What makes you say that?” Rab asked. “I don’t know. Just a feeling. The problem with governments borne out of revolution is often that the revolutionaries pull together to get into power

—but once they’re there, they start to realize there are really a bunch of different agendas and ideologies. The only thing that united them was opposition to the last government.”

“You’re thinking—what?

That there’s been a coup, and Cauldexx has been usurped?”

“Again, I don’t know anything for sure. But Fersun Cauldexx was kind of a compromise candidate. We, the Guild, supported her because she was the only viable one who got put forward. I mean, she was a ship builder from Perspectus who got the people there organized. They took control of the shipyards and their lives—a great populist story, but even back then, I was worried it wouldn’t sit well with the elites, the industrialists, the power blocs from other systems that thought they should be the ones in charge.”

“So what do we do?” Torina asked. “Well, for a start, I think we need to be sharper than usual. Netty-P, keep yourself glued to those passive scanners for even a hint of trouble, and go active immediately if you think there's a reason. Let’s put the point-defenses into active mode, but keep them weapons-tight. I only want them shooting at things positively identified as hostile.” I drummed my fingers on the arm of the seat. “And then, we wait.”

And we did wait. For nearly four hours. Twice more, we got put off—

once by the same aide, and once by someone calling themselves a Principal Secretary. Cauldexx was still in the Cabinet Meeting, then the meeting had ended, but other urgent business had come up. Finally, after nearly five hours of hanging out in orbit, a third person, a gray alien similar to the clowns who’d descended on Tony Burgess in a doctored spaceship, came on the comm. “I apologize, Master Tudor, but Fersun Cauldexx has been called away to deal with an unfortunate but unavoidable situation—a powerful storm has struck the windward coast of the Equatorial Continent. The Cabinet has declared a state of emergency there, so I’m sure you’ll appreciate that her time must be spent with her people.”

As he spoke, I glanced at Perry. He put imagery from that region of Sunderbach on the center display and, sure enough, the sprawling whorl of a big cyclonic storm spilled across the boundary of land and sea. I nodded. “I understand. We’re prepared to continue waiting until—”

“I’m sorry, Master Tudor, but we have no timelines to offer. Fersun may be tied up for—ahh, perhaps for several days.”

“I see. Well, if I could speak to one of her deputies—”

“All of the Provisional Government’s key personnel are involved in dealing with the emergency, I’m afraid.”

I smiled. “I’m a patient person. We’ll wait until one of them can spare a few moments. I’d like to speak to them about what sort of assistance the Guild can offer—humanitarian, security, or otherwise, in this time of need. That sort of thing is recognized in the Guild Charter.”

To which you guys are signatories, I thought, but didn’t say out loud. I didn’t have to. The gray alien paused for a moment, going so still I wondered if the image had frozen. Finally, though, he spoke. “Very well. I will see what I can do,” he said, and signed off. “Convenient storm is convenient,” I said. “Van, that’s a real storm, a big one. You’re not saying they somehow made it happen—” Icky started, but I shook my head. “No, of course not. It’s a real storm, and it’s doing real damage and hurting real people, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. What I am saying is that if it hadn’t been that storm, then it would have been something else—a massive security breach, or a cyberattack, or—hell, I don’t know, a financial crisis. Anything to justify keeping Fersun Cauldexx away from the comm.”

“Although by invoking the Charter and the Guild providing aid, Van has effectively put whoever’s in charge down there in the position of having to find someone to talk to him. It’s one thing to send a minor functionary to put you off with excuses. You can’t let that same minor functionary turn down emergency aid,” Perry said, glancing at me. “Obi-Wan has taught you well.”

“Obi-Wan?

You mean the guy from those movies you made me watch, the ones with the super-unrealistic space battles?” Icky growled. “Spaceships just don’t maneuver like that, and bombs do not plummet in null-g. Also—”

I held up a hand. “Let’s not go through all that again, please and thank you.”

“Do you believe that Cauldexx is dead?” Funboy asked me. “I… hope not. But I don’t think so. If she were, I’m sure we’d have heard about a terrible accident or something before we got here. More likely she’s under some sort of arrest.”

We waited. Finally, a new face came on the comm, one I recognized. It was the slightly arrogant countenance of a Hu’warde, the same race as my grandmother and a people with whom I technically shared some DNA,

making me part alien. That hadn’t really amounted to anything, at least not so far in my life, but it was always in the back of my mind. This Hu’warde was named Clynepses Ornitolian-Sprowse, and she was the Provisional Government’s Interior Minister. Which was rather odd. If there was anyone who shouldn’t have time for a comm call in the middle of an ongoing natural disaster, you’d think it would be the Interior Minister. “Master Tudor, I gather you were supposed to meet with Fersun. Unfortunately, the ongoing situation—”

“The storm, yes, I know. I certainly don’t want to take up any more of your time than necessary. Is there any assistance the Guild can provide?”

“I appreciate the offer, but no, we have the resources available to manage it. Of course, if that changes, we will definitely contact you. In the meantime—”

“Minister, if I may—what is the state of the Provisional Government?

That was the matter I had intended to speak with Fersun about,” I said. She stared imperiously back at me. For just an instant, she looked…

irritated. Angry, even. But she quickly smoothed it away into a thin, cool smile. “The Provisional Government faces many challenges, of course. But we are up to facing them. The people of the League are a resilient one.”

“Of course. Well, I’m sure you must be very busy. Please pass on my regards to Fersun. I look forward to seeing her when I return here sometime in the very near future. There are matters regarding the Charter that will require her attention, as the League’s signatory representative.”

There was another flicker, even more fleeting, but it wasn’t irritation this time. Or not just irritation. “I will be sure to pass that message on to her. Goodbye, Master Tudor,” she said curtly, ending the transmission. I turned to Gabby. “Do I even need to say it, Van?

That she was lying?” she said. “No, but I’m wondering if you have any other insights to add.”

“When you said you were coming back to speak to Fersun as the Charter signatory representative, you caught her off-guard. I'm not an expert in this Guild stuff, but I gather that means something important.”

“The head of state of a Guild Charter signatory is its representative in matters regarding the Charter. It’s not something that can be delegated,”

Perry said. “Oh, so when you come back, Fersun has to be the one who meets with you. Well, Minister Alphabet Soup there didn’t like that. Up until that moment, she was annoyed to have to talk to you at all, but that turned to some real worry when you said that. You could hear it in her voice when she said goodbye. She wanted the call to be over, probably so she could start trying to figure out what to do about it.”

I nodded. “And that’s the key. What to, ah—what, exactly?

What the hell have they done down there?

Who’s running the show, and what do they have planned?”

Torina crossed her arms and sighed. “And here I was just thinking, hey, you know what would be nice?

Another massive problem to have to deal with. Maybe some political instability in one of the major powers of known space, that’d be fun, we haven’t had that for a while.”

Icky clicked her tongue. “So this is your fault, Torina. Way to go.”

WE DEPARTED Sunderbach and headed for the nearest twist point—with an escort. Not a formal escort, mind you, but a pair of League destroyers that just happened to depart shortly after we did, and just happened to be traveling a roughly parallel course. I recognized their design only too well, having fought both against and with similar ships a few years previously, during the brief war against the Tenants. “Yeah, that’s not too obvious—or suspicious. The League definitely wants us out of its space,” Rab said, idly sliding a manual targeting reticle over one of the ships on his console. I’d gone aft and just noticed it over his shoulder as I came back to the cockpit. “I’m assuming our weapons aren’t hot, that we’re not one button push away from a major incident here, huh?” I said to him. He glanced back over his shoulder, then hastily cleared the reticle. “Nope, they’re all safe. I was just… making sure I still had the old magic.”

I patted his shoulder. “Let’s hope you never have to use it.”

“I’ll second that.”

I returned to the pilot’s seat and looked at Torina. “Well, I spoke to Kistlin, brought him up to speed on what happened here. He agrees that

something has gone wrong, or is going wrong, in the Provisional Government. He also agrees that Cauldexx probably isn’t in charge anymore.”

“I think it’s that woman, Lady All-The-Letters, or whatever her name was. She’s the one in charge now,” Gabby said. We all turned to her. “Clynepses Ornitolian-Sprowse, although I like Lady All-The-Letters,” I said. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, she was the one who finally took your call when it was clear you weren’t just going to go away. And you’re a Master, which means you can influence what the Guild does, and also influence what the other big powers do, right?

That makes you the biggest external player they’ve probably had to deal with recently. And she’s the type who’d want to look someone she considers her—opponent, if not actual enemy, in the face.”

I had to nod at that. “Yeah, she and my grandmother Valint have a lot in common. They’ve both got a streak of arrogance through them, and neither of them likes to lose.”

“Does anybody like to lose?” Icky asked. “Uh, no, probably not. What I mean is—”

“That they want to see the face of whoever they’re going to fight, whether they win or lose.”

“Yeah, that’s more like it,” I acknowledged. “For that matter, my mother’s friend, the one called Amazing—she’s Hu’warde too, and she’s much the same way.”

“So Kistlin is happy with the report?

He’s going to keep supporting you on the Masters’ Council?” Torina asked. “Happy with it?

No, not at all. I’m not happy with it either. The League being a mess is a huge variable we really don’t need right now. Honestly, we’re kind of staring down the barrel of a possible war, if the other powers of known space decide they want to intervene. And now Kistlin kind of has to inform them about it, so that the Guild is seen as being proactive and forward-thinking.” I sat back and sighed. “As he put it, we might be stuck in the position of possibly recommending a war that we really don’t want to happen—or else face having it happen anyway, but end up being irrelevant on the sidelines.”

I rolled my head toward her. “Why did I want to be a Master again?”

“To protect Earth, mainly.”

I sat up. “Right. Earth. Well, Kistlin is good for now, though he did allude to coming under some pressure regarding Marlow’s Letter of Inquiry. It wasn’t explicit, and for all I know, it might just have been him keeping his bargaining chips on the table, in plain view. But I think we’ve got time to go to Earth and make sure things aren’t turning into a mess back there, too.”

23

WHEN WE ARRIVED at Cantullin Station, I took some time to meet with Adayluh and Filic Creel regarding Shhh. They both pored over the data we’d collected while in orbit there, hmm’ing and nodding as they did. Adayluh sat back. “This place looks amazing. There’s practically no end to the arable land available, and that’s not even counting the region that was walloped by those bombs or whatever. Permada would grow like crazy here.”

Filic nodded. “This planet could easily support five or six billion people sustainably, with no significant or lasting stress on its biosphere. Of course, resources are a different matter. In the absence of good geological information, we can only presume what’s there. Silicate rocks, certainly, so that means that things like iron, magnesium, and aluminum are probably readily available. As for rarer elements, though, it’s harder to say.” He tapped a long, multi-jointed finger on the data slate. “I’d be surprised, though, if there wasn’t some of pretty much everything that would be needed by an advanced technological society.”

“So it sounds like you guys would be down for a visit,” I said. “Oh, absolutely,” Adayluh replied, then leaned forward a little conspiratorially. “It’s been great and interesting and all working here at Cantullin Station, but it really is just an icy rock. I think we’ve done pretty much all we can do here.”

I smiled. “The Conoku get to be a little much, don’t they?”

“They’re so enthusiastic. All—the—time,” she said, grinning. I checked in on Haadrake, too, to see how he was getting along. In a word, he was getting along great. The rambunctious Conoku were good for him, pulling him out of his broody teenaged shell of angst. Or, as he put it

—

“This one is finding the exuberant energy of the Conoku most invigorating.”

The Synergists had also got back to us, saying they were eager to send a team to investigate this new world and waiting for our say-so. Given the way they’d been preyed upon by Dohlennz, treated as feedstock for his vile experiments, they were understandably gun-shy about leaving their homeworld and would only do so if they were well-protected. I sent back a message saying we’d be in touch shortly. Immediately after that, I got a call from Alic on Anvil Dark. I took it aboard the Fafnir, in my cabin. I’d braced myself for bad news, something about Marlow, Casaril, or the so-called True Direction. But it wasn’t about any of those things. “I have received intelligence from a source we both know—”

“Was it Retta?”

Alic stared back a moment. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Her name came up lately, so I had her on my mind.”

“Ah. Well, it would appear that she received information from Earth, that she passed on to me, to pass on to you.”

“Talk about roundabout—forty light-years or so to end up right here back at Earth,” I said, shaking my head. “So what is it?”

“It seems that two Nesit were hired by whatever party or parties are seeking to gain a foothold on your home planet. They were to set up a twist-comm station, as a step in establishing discrete—and illicit—off-world contact locations. I gather the idea is to funnel traffic to one or more specific locations, to simplify logistics.”

I grimaced. “Well, that’s not good news. They’d only be doing that if they believed they had a way to avoid detection.” I sighed. “Okay. Did Retta say where this twist-comm rig was supposed to be set up?”

“She referred to”—Alic leaned over a data-slate on his desk—“a region known as Namibia.”

I sat back up. “Okay, that does make sense. We recently intercepted some off-world weaponry that had been given to mercenaries there. Alic, send me everything Retta sent you, if you would, please and thanks.”

“Will do.”

I called the crew together, and got Essie on the comm as well. He was still on Earth, so he relayed the traffic through his ship, still in orbit. I brought everyone up-to-date on the intel Retta had provided. Perry immediately spoke up. “Boss, quick question. The Equal Grasp brought these Nesit down into Namibia, right?”

“So it would appear. Why?”

“Well, when we took out Kroegkamp’s gang, we effectively took out the Equal Grasp’s local contacts, their people on the ground, right?”

“Again, yes. I think—” I stopped, getting where he was going. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

Torina got it as well. “Do you think there are a couple of Nesit stuck out in the Namibian wilds?

They never got a ride back?”

“Yeah, I think the bird might be right. I also think those Nesit are worth their weight in gold.”

“Assuming they’re still alive,” Essie put in. “The Namibian wilderness has lots of ways to kill you that don’t involve mercenaries. It’s pretty unforgiving for anyone not prepared to deal with it.”

“Worth their weight in gold?

Why?” Rab asked. “Well, assuming Kroegkamp and his people knew about them, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t, they never mentioned them, did they?

They left them to die—hell, like Essie said, they might already be dead. But if they’re alive, and we save them from thirst, or hunger, or wild animals—well, then I’d say we just got ourselves a couple of really good friends.”

“What can they do for us, specifically, boss?” Netty-P asked. “Spill secrets. Kroegkamp probably hoped they died, so that whatever they knew died with them. But if they’re still down there, they probably know at least something about the other grubby little hands in this—

whatever the hell it is. And I’ve got an idea about the project they’re working on.”

I turned to Icky. “Big girl, I need you and Netty-P to start hunting for even a flicker of anything related to twist comms in southwestern Africa. We’re going to Namibia again, and we’re not coming back empty-handed.”

A TWIST-COMM SYSTEM is really just an ordinary comm system with a twist unit strapped onto it. The twist unit uses minute quantities of antimatter to generate a far more discrete, localized space-time distortion than a twist drive, because moving information across the cosmos is much less demanding than moving large chunks of matter in the form of a ship and its occupants. But antimatter is still expensive, so the units are operated in twist-enabled mode as little as possible. Which presented us with a problem. The stranded Nesit may only be activating their unit when they wanted to use it, meaning that most of the time it just sat idle. That would leave us trying to find two Nesit somewhere in the Namibian wilderness, something like eight hundred thousand square klicks of desert and scrubby badlands. And that would be about as easy as it sounds. But Icky and Netty-P set up the Fafnir’s own twist-comm to look for periodic pings—pulses of a comms carrier signals injected into twisted space time, generated to allow other, distant units to find it and connect to it. If the Nesit were waiting for a call, they reasoned, they’d be operating it in this mode. “And there they are,” Netty-P said, bringing up a map of Namibia emblazoned with a prominent red icon. It was located about fifty kilometers north and a little west of the twin cinder cones near where Kroegkamp had kept his base. “I wonder why they stuck those two Nesit so far away from their camp,” Gabby said. “They probably didn’t want to be anywhere near that twist-comm rig,”

Icky replied. “If they heard the word ‘antimatter,’ they probably wanted it to be way the hell over there.”

“Is that far enough to be safe?”

“A standard portable twist-comm unit holds about one gram of antimatter. That would have a potential explosive yield of forty to forty-five kilotons,” Netty-P said. “Fifty kilometers should be a pretty safe distance, yes.”

“I’ll bet it made those Nesit feel really special, too,” Torina said with a thin smile. I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I want those Nesit, to find out what they know—oh, and to take that unit into custody and make it safe. I’m not super happy that we’ve got the rough explosive equivalent of both the atomic

bombs dropped on Japan in World War Two sitting down in the Namibian outback. An explosion like that would raise some awkward questions.”

I TOOK RAB, Perry, Icky, and Funboy down in the Frankie. Essie was already overhead in his own ship, monitoring the site from above. We checked in with him as we descended. “Yeah, I found the location alright. There’re some power emissions down there, and some thermal signatures—two very Nesit-shaped ones. But that’s it. It looks like it’s just those two poor bastards all on their own,” he said. “Are there terrestrial predators in the vicinity?” Funboy asked. “Quite possibly cheetahs and hyenas, yes. They’re too far south for lions, and there aren’t many of those left anyway.”

I glanced at Funboy as we skirted a towering thunderstorm. “Are you worried about being eaten?”

“What you refer to as worry, Van, I would argue is merely prudent thinking. However, no, I am not particularly worried about becoming some predator’s prey. But it is quite likely that the Nesit are. Perhaps we can turn that to our advantage.”

Perry nodded. “Yeah, we could just have Icky charge at them, howling and growling and just being herself, really.”

“Hey, Van?

I’ve got a bare spot on the desk in my cabin. I was thinking of getting a nice ornament for it, maybe a stuffed bird. You know any taxidermists who work in metal?” Icky asked. I waved them off. “Funboy’s idea is a good one, but I think it’s not going to be necessary in this case. I suspect we’re going to find those two Nesit more than happy to be cooperative.”

To that end, while Essie maintained a watch from on high, we made a pass over the Nesit camp with the stealth shroud deactivated. We made it low enough that we’d be evident, but not so low as to seem too threatening. I wanted to keep Essie as top cover, and the Fafnir as top top cover up in orbit, just in case this was some sort of setup. But it wasn’t. As soon as they saw us, the two tiny figures of the Nesit started jumping and waving. One of them used something reflective to

shine the late day sunlight up at us. I wheeled the Frankie around, descended, and landed about a hundred meters from their rough little camp. By the time we’d opened the airlock, the two Nesit were already running toward us. Or, rather, stumbling toward us. They were dusty and bedraggled, and both erupted into excited chatter even before they’d reached us. “Please, we need help!”

“We’re stranded, please!”

I raised my hands. Icky and Rab moved left and right, him with his BAG at the half-raise, her with her hammer held ready. Funboy held back, his medical gear slung. Perry flung himself into the air and headed straight for their camp. As I’d expected, though, the two Nesit were anything but hostile or threatening. If it had occurred to them to drop to the dirt and kiss my boots, I’m sure they would have. As it was, it took about a full minute of coaxing to get them into anything resembling a coherent state. I herded them back to their camp, getting the beginnings of their story out in chunks as we went. I say in chunks, because I’d had Icky bring some rations and water along, and the two Nesit gobbled and slurped them, spitting out words between gulps and swallows. “We’ve been here—for days and days!”

“And days!

Even more days than that!”

“Our food is gone, we’re almost out of water, we’ve got no ammo left

—”

“No ammo?” I cut in. “What have you been shooting at?”

One of them waved a bony hand. “The—the things out there. Things with nasty, pointy teeth—”

“And claws, so many claws!”

“We heard them. In the night. Prowling. We shot at them, kept them away!”

Perry was circling. “Van, either these clowns were shooting at their imagination, or they are the worst shots in known space, because there is not a single carcass within a klick of this camp.”

“Imagination?

No!

There were things!

I shot all but one slug round at them!”

The other Nesit glanced at his companion. “All but one?

You said you had fired them all. Why were you keeping one?”

“I—uh—”

“Why were you keeping one round?

”

Icky gave a grim chuckle. “Oh, I think I know why.”

The Nesit spun on her. “Why?

Why?”

I stuck myself between them. “It doesn’t matter. We’re here now, and we’re going to rescue you. And by rescue you, I mean take you into custody. The charges are—”

“We don’t care!

Arrest us, sure!

Just put us into cells and feed us and keep us safe!” They both crowded piteously in. Funboy frowned as they jammed against him. “Oh dear. Van, what’s the opposite of resisting arrest, and is it a crime?”

We reached their camp, got them to sit down at their fire, and then had Rab watch over them while they ate and Funboy checked them out. By then, Essie had joined us. He, Perry, Icky, and I rooted through their camp. Aside from their sidearms, slug pistols, and a slug carbine, the only other item of note was the twist-comm unit. And it was of note, since it was an advanced design, a cutting-edge military unit intended to operate as a command-and-control node. “Designed for the Eridani military. These aren’t even available on the open market, so this one is either stolen, or was bought on a very black market,” Perry said, perching on a nearby—and empty—ration crate. I nodded. “Let’s deactivate this thing and get it the hell out of here. Essie, can you take it—”

“Uh, Van?

I think we need to be careful here,” Icky said. We all looked at her. “Not arguing, but why specifically?” I asked. “Well, if this is a military rig, and it’s anything like similar military gear my dad got surplus—and legally!—for his ship, then it might have an anti-tamper feature.”

“Anti-tamper, as in—”

“Tamper with it, and it goes boom.”

“Well, the bright side is that we’d never feel a thing. On an entirely unrelated note, I suddenly thought of something I want to check out at Kroegkamp’s old site. If anyone wants me, I’ll be fifty klicks that way,”

Perry said, pointing one wing skyward. THE UNIT DID HAVE an anti-tamper device, but the Nesit hadn’t activated it. We were able to shut it down safely, then pack it back in its shipping crate for Essie to take away. The Nesit, by then, had settled down—mostly—and we were able to get their full story out of them. They’d been dropped off here nearly a month ago, in Earth time, with instructions to set up the twist-comm unit, then operate it in ping mode on a regular schedule. The unit had received about a dozen transmissions during that time, which were relayed on a conventional comm channel to some other place on Earth. And that, they insisted, was all they really knew. But that was far from the end of the story, at least as far as I was concerned. “Who hired you?” I asked, poking idly at the fire we had going. It was a bright, hot point of warmth, pushing back the expanse of sky overhead. “Some group, people, whatever, who claim they want to set up regular trade with this planet. They emphasized it would have to be very discreet, though,” one of the Nesit said. “In other words, illegal. Smuggling, that sort of thing,” the other put in. “They said that?”

The Nesit gave me a duh look. “No, of course not. But they didn’t have to. Discreet trade?

I mean, come on. And those human thugs we were working with—”

“And who was supposed to keep us supplied!

Where are they now?” the other one cut in. “In various jails, or dead,” Rab said. “Well, at least they told you about us.”

I couldn’t resist a thin smile. “Oh, no they did not. We only found out about you two because one of them let it slip where he could be overheard.”

Both Nesit stared at me. One of them finally spoke, his voice deathly quiet. “They never told you we were here?”

I shook my head. “No, sorry, they didn’t.”

“They left us here?

Left us here to die?”

Funboy leaned in. “If it’s any consolation, based on the medical scans I’ve run, and your respective metabolisms, you likely had five, perhaps six or seven days until you finally died from the combined effects of dehydration and malnutrition.”

“How is that supposed to be consolation?”

Funboy shrugged. “By the eighth day or so, you would no longer have any cares or worries whatsoever.”

“Because we’d be dead!”

“Well, one of you would have been, anyway,” Icky muttered, glancing at the one that had kept one round for his slug pistol. I shot her a warning glare, but the two Nesit were too lost in ranting outrage to have heard her. I calmed them down again, whereupon they became even more cooperative. “You know what, Peacemaker?

I never imagined I’d ever say something like this to one of you, but—what do you want to know?

Because I will tell you everything.”

“And I will remember that with fond gratitude, as your charges move forward. Right now, though, there’s really only one thing I want to know. Was Kroegkamp, the leader of those human thugs as you called them, your only contact here on Earth?”

Both Nesit shook their heads. “No. Our first contact was with someone else. He paid us half of what we’d been offered up front. The other half was to be paid when we left here—”

“Which we were never going to do, those bastards!” the other one snapped. “How much were they paying you?” Essie asked. “Four hundred thousand bonds.”

I whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”

The Nesit blinked at me. “That was just the first half.”

“Wait—they were paying you eight hundred thousand bonds?”

“To sit here, watch the clock, and turn a twist-comm unit on and off?

Holy shit, I’m in the wrong line of work,” Icky said. I leaned in. “These people who were paying you. Were they called the Equal Grasp?”

The two Nesit glanced at one another. One looked blank, but the other shrugged. “I heard them use that name, but I think they were talking about who they were working for, or with.”

“Okay, so who the hell was paying you?” Essie asked, exasperated. One of the Nesit held up a finger, a jarringly human gesture, then dug into his backpack. He pulled out a data slate, tapped at it, then turned it to face us. “Him. This guy.”

I read what was on the slate, then sat back. The fire crackled and shot sparks into the dusking sky as the silence lingered. Overhead, stars began peeking fretfully, shy announcements of the coming night. Essie muttered a curse in his native tongue, which the translator dutifully converted into English for me. It was a surprisingly new spin on a very old word. “Well, how about that,” Icky said. The screen glowed with a transaction receipt for four hundred thousand bonds, deposited into an investment house—in other words, a money-laundering front—on Dregs. And it was signed with United Life Sciences, Younger Moloi, Agent. I looked at the two Nesit. “Guys, I was going to take you off Earth as my prisoners, in cells. But you’ve been so helpful, I’m going to treat you as guests aboard my ship, instead. That way, you can get yourselves cleaned up.”

They looked at one another, wide-eyed. “Not that we’re objecting, but—

why?”

“Because, my friends, we are going to make a stop in a place called Washington, D. C.”

24

AS WE STRUCK THE CAMP, the Nesit casually dropped one other little nugget of information, in the form of a question. “What about the other unit?” one of them asked me. I frowned at him. “What other unit?”

“The other twist-comm unit. When the one we were given was dropped off by a class, oh, three or four workboat, there was another one crated up with it. I overheard the pilot telling the guy with him that they were delivering it next.”

I stopped and stared down at the alien. “Delivering it where?”

He did the shoulder-roll that was the best a Nesit could do to approximate a human shrug. “No idea. Somewhere else on Earth, I guess. They said the other crew was already in place and waiting for it, and he wanted to get it delivered so they could get the hell away from Earth. He was pretty worried about being detected by—well, you, I guess.”

“Shit. Tell me everything you can about that workboat and its crew.”

He did. It wasn’t much, unfortunately. The Equal Grasp—or United freakin’ Life Sciences—had hired a generic ship, piloted by a generic crew, to drop off their illicit twist-comm rigs. The Nesit couldn’t offer any information we could use to narrow it down, and I believed him, since he had no reason to lie and every reason to tell the truth. As Icky and Funboy packed them aboard the Frankie, I stepped aside with Essie and Perry. “So there’s another one of those damned rigs somewhere on Earth.”

“We’ll just have to keep scanning for it, the way Icky and Netty-P did for this one,” Essie said. But I scowled. “Yeah, except these two Nesit were desperate to make contact with someone to come rescue them. Whoever has that other one has probably heard about what happened to Kroegkamp by now.”

Essie deflated a little. “Ah, true. So they’ve probably shut it down.”

“And are only going to operate it when they absolutely need to,” I agreed. I turned to Perry. “Is there any other way to detect it?

Can we detect antimatter directly?”

“Sorry, no. It really looks no different than ordinary matter to the sorts of scans we can do from, say, orbit. At best, we might be able to detect the magnetic anomaly generated by its containment system. But there are lots of strong magnetic anomalies on Earth, everything from power stations to some types of iron ore deposits. And although it’s going to be a pretty intense anomaly, it’s going to be a small, localized one.”

“How close would we have to be to reliably see it?”

“A few klicks, maybe?

Ten klicks at the outside?”

“Shit. That’s pretty much the same as not knowing where it is at all.” I glared at the dirt for a moment. “Fine. Since that’s a dead-end for now, we’ll just push on. Keep thinking about it, bird, and loop Netty-P, Icky, and Rab in on the party. See if you guys can come up with a cunning plan to help us find that damned thing. In the meantime, we’re going to pay a visit to Washington, to visit my new friend Frierbach of the State Department. It’s time to get them seriously involved in helping us.”

“What about other national governments?

This isn’t just an American problem, Van,” Essie said. “Oh, trust me, I know. But the ins I have right now are with the US

government, so that’s where I’m going to start.”

WE MET with Loren Freirbach on the outskirts of Flint Hill, Virginia, just a few klicks away from where we’d buried Carter Yost. She’d wanted to meet with me somewhere well-removed from DC, but not so far that she couldn’t drive it in an hour or so. That made Flint Hill perfect, especially since it was

pretty much the only bit of rural America within an easy drive of Washington that I knew. We landed the Frankie a short distance from a car parked just off the side of a gravel road, a couple of hundred meters from where it intersected the Zachary Taylor Highway heading north out of Flint Hill. The nearest house was a good 300 meters away, the gravel road crowded by trees on both sides. I’d brought Torina, Rab, and Perry with me, but decided to leave the two Nesit we’d rescued with Essie, whose ship had already landed in a field a couple of hundred meters to the northwest. I wasn’t sure where the conversation with Freirbach was going to go, since our conversation to set up this meeting had been as terse and succinct as possible. But if I needed to underscore for her the threat facing Earth, I wanted the two Nesit available to explain to her exactly what they’d been hired to do, and the implications of the equipment they’d been given to do it with. I left Rab with the Frankie, while Perry took the air. As we approached the parked car, a man in full military battle-rattle cradling an M4 carbine emerged from the trees. I smiled as he approached. We’d known they were there from a thermal sweep of the area as we passed overhead. “Evening, sir. You and your men really don’t need to hide in those bushes. Ticks, you know?”

The man, a leathery looking Sergeant, smiled back at me. “And here we thought we were being all stealthy,” he said. “Hell, we didn’t hear you guys arrive. At all.”

I pointed. “Our ship is about a hundred meters that way. She can be pretty quiet if we need her to be.”

The two passenger doors of the car opened. Loren Freirbach got out of one, a man in a dark suit the other. I recognized him but wasn’t sure where from. I knew I’d seen him somewhere else, though. In Washington, maybe

—

Van, the suit down there is the guy who showed up with Colonel Burton at the farm, when he saved us from the big bad Colonel Mandeville, Perry said in my ear bug. Ah, right. The last time I’d seen this man, he’d climbed out of a helicopter and into the shitshow of Mandeville’s abortive attempt to seize the farm. He never introduced himself and hadn’t said much, so I assumed he was some sort of spook. Now, I guess, we could add State Department spook to his resume. “Van, good to see you,” Freirbach said. “This is Alastair Gray, an associate of mine from the State Department.”

The man whose real name probably wasn’t Alastair Gray smiled in a way that reminded me of Funboy’s attempts at a grin—he shaped his face into a rough approximation of a smile, but there was absolutely no emotion behind it. His face was a simulation, of sorts. I could see interest glittering in his eyes, but no warmth. He was… serpentine. “Mr. Tudor, a pleasure,” he said, shaking my hand—once. “A pleasure again, yes. I never did get to thank you for your timely intervention in Iowa,” I replied. The smile persisted a little longer. “Just doing my job, Mr. Tudor.”

I introduced Torina. “She’s from Helso,” I said. Freirbach frowned in thought. “Not a town I’ve heard of. It is in Iowa as well?”

She laughed. “No, it’s about thirty light-years that way,” she said, pointing up. Freirbach blinked a few times. “You’re… an alien?”

“Strictly speaking, I suppose I am, yes. But I’m as human as you are.”

Even the enigmatic Mr. Gray seemed taken aback by that, but he didn’t say anything about it and left it to Freirbach. “Wait. There are humans who originate from—out there?

Did we come from out there?

The implications of that are—they’re huge—”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am, we humans originated right here on Earth, at least as far as we know. There are, oh, probably several million humans now living off Earth, the descendants of a few who've left here starting—uh, Perry?”

“The first human recorded to have left Earth was a Mister Nathan Buckley, an inventor from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1911,” he said, landing beside me. “But he’s only the first recorded one. There were probably humans leaving Earth long before that, given the number of you guys out in known space, their dispersion, and the rate at which you reproduce. Hi, remember me?

I’m Perry, the brains of this here operation.”

Freirbach grinned and shook her head. “Amazing. And yes, I do remember you. You’re hard to forget.”

Perry looked up at me. “See, Van, this one gets me.”

I glanced at Gray. He was eyeing Perry with a hard, clinical curiosity that I could tell contained a healthy dose of I want one. The Sergeant and his detachment of four soldiers, probably spec ops of one flavor or another, stood off to one side, wide-eyed and whispering among themselves. I suggested that we adjourn to the Frankie. “It’ll keep us out of the weather—which is starting to look like rain over toward the mountains—

and will be a lot more comfortable than your car.”

Freirbach eagerly agreed, since this would be her first opportunity to board a spaceship. When Rab de-stealthed her to let us aboard, the spec ops guys let their cool professionalism slip. “Holy shit, would you look at that?”

“Oh, man, that’s—”

The Sergeant turned and snapped at them. “What’s the matter, you apes never seen a spaceship before?”

A lean Corporal gaped back at him. “Uh—no, Sarge, we haven’t.”

The Sergeant nodded. “Yeah, neither have I. Helluva thing, ain’t it?”

We took Freirbach and Gray aboard, while the spec ops team took up positions outside, forming a protective circle. I could tell from the wry look on the Sergeant’s face, though, that it just amounted to a bit of theater, one their jobs demanded they do. The Frankie didn’t need their protection to an extent that was almost comical, and he and his team knew it—but I gave him a grateful nod anyway. They were good soldiers, determined to do what they’d been tasked to do regardless. That was true professionalism, and I respected it. I followed the others through the airlock, to find Freirbach and Gray in the midst of confronting Rab. He sat casually in the pilot’s seat, which he’d unlocked and swiveled around. “I was just saying hello to our guests. I think I surprised them,” he said. Gray gave me a flat look. “We’re still becoming accustomed to this sort of thing.”

I nodded. “I’ve been there, trust me. When I first started doing this, every time I turned around it was some new extraterrestrial epiphany.”

“Extraiphany?

I want credit for that online, and use my cool avatar. Not the side angle, too feathery,” Perry said. Freirbach took a moment to ask Rab who—and what—he was. He kindly filled her in on the P’nosk, leaving her shaking her head. “You have more than one mother?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes we do. It gives me several people in my life to disappoint.”

Freirbach stared, then laughed and shook her head again. “Wow. Okay, so I’m starting to get the sense that there are a lot of different peoples out there. How many?

Do you even know?”

Perry spoke up. “The Charter of the Peacemaker Guild currently recognizes eighty-six species that would be considered sapient. However, only fifty-two of those are considered spacefaring, the others either have no practical way of heading into space, or no interest in doing so. We’ve identified another forty-two species in surrounding space, which isn’t under Guild jurisdiction, and I think the latest estimate says we’ve got evidence of at least another two dozen with whom we haven’t yet made contact because they’re too far away.”

“Or too mean,” Torina added. Perry winked. “That too.”

Freirbach just stared, wide-eyed. “That’s a lot of different species. So space is—it’s pretty crowded.”

“Yeah, hate to break it to you, but the answer to the Fermi Paradox, in case you’re wondering, is that Earthly humanity just really isn’t that special. Or even interesting.”

“Which has actually been a good thing,” I put in. “Not interesting means we’ve only received passing attention at most from the other people out there. But that’s changing, and it’s changing fast.”

“Why?” Freirbach asked. “What is it about us that suddenly is so interesting?

It can’t be our technology, because as you’ve already made pretty clear that it pales in comparison to something like this.” She gestured around us at the Frankie. “Or that,” Gray said, staring hard at Perry. Perry stared amber back at him. “All due respect, Mr. Beige or Taupe or whatever it was, but you’re staring at me the way Van used to stare at high-end gaming computers on the internet. Gotta be honest here, it’s kinda off-putting.”

“Sorry, but I understand you quickly and effortlessly seized full control of a US drone over Washington. That kind of capability fascinates me—and by fascinates, I mean scares me shitless."

“As it should,” I said. “You’ve got nothing to fear from Perry, but there are other parties out there that are nowhere near as benign.” I turned to

Freirbach. “And that brings me to your question, ma’am, why Earth is suddenly so interesting. Part of it is the resources. Now, there’s really nothing here that isn’t available somewhere else in known space. But the point is that it is here, and it’s not controlled by any of the powers of known space, so—from an extraterrestrial perspective—it’s available, and for what amounts to very little cost.”

“Certain metals and organic compounds, for instance,” Rab put in. “Some of those are worth a fair bit out there, but to get them, you have to buy them at market rates. Down here, though, you can just kind of scoop them up and take them.”

“But that doesn’t address the big commodity,” Torina said. “And what would that be?” Gray asked. Freirbach answered. “Us. You’re talking about us, about humans.”

Gray stiffened. “Us?

For what sort of use?”

I raised a hand. “I know where you’re going with that. Someone out there wants to turn humans into food or something.”

“To be fair, there are a few species who might. But to be accurate, they’d just as happily eat a P’nosk, like Rab, or a Surtsi, like the little sourpuss called Funboy you met back in Washington. So everyone has a vested interest in keeping those sorts of species, uh, in check.”

“The fact is that, among all the sapient races we know of, humans are extremely intelligent, highly adaptable, and aggressive. They also reproduce quickly,” Torina said. I nodded. “The various powers and factions in known space know that, so they’re getting anxious to either get the people of Earth on their side, or at least prevent one of their competitors from doing that. It’s actually kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. By starting to get concerned about where Earth is headed in the affairs of known space, they basically started making Earth aware of the realities of known space, and that—”

“Is going to lead to getting Earth involved in the affairs of this known space you keep talking about,” Freirbach said. “Pretty much in a nutshell, yeah. So that brings us to where we are now, and why my crew and I, and some others we have working with us, are putting so much effort into trying to get out in front of it all. If we let Earth be subject to a free-for-all from the stars, the result isn’t going to be good for anyone.”

“Especially Earth,” Rab said. “And that’s where you come in,” I went on. “All this tech we’ve got is great. It leaves Earthly tech in the dust. But it’s the same tech being used by those factions and powers I keep talking about, so it doesn’t offer much advantage over them. What does is the organization I belong to.”

“This Peacemaker Guild,” Freirbach said. “That’s right.” I went on to explain what the Guild was and what role it played in known space, then I emphasized how it was really the only organization empowered to work on behalf of all of known space. “So that puts us—me—in the unique position of being one of very, very few people who can legitimately say I can speak on behalf of known space as a whole.”

I sighed. “Although, even then, I’m swimming upstream against a really strong current. Frankly, I can’t do it without help, and that includes help down here, on Earth.”

“So this—Guild, you call it—it’s like the UN, except armed,” Gray said. I shrugged. “More like the UN crossed with Interpol, crossed with the FBI, and maybe with a little CIA thrown in.”

“And yet you still need our help.”

“Now more than ever. The Guild is pretty far-reaching, though not on Earth, where it’s really just me, my crew, and a handful of people we trust. And the tech we use is powerful and capable, but like I’ve already described, it’s the same tech the bad guys use. So, when it comes to the extraterrestrial miscreants here on Earth, we’re really not much better positioned than you are to uncover what they’re up to. Sure, we have a few tricks you don’t, but you have the advantage of those huge, sophisticated intelligence networks you’ve been developing for decades. So, yeah, we really need your help.”

“Well, this is very timely, then. Mr. Gray and his people have been working hard at compiling every bit of information they can about what are probably your extraterrestrial miscreants,” Frierbach said. I turned back to him. “If you could share what you’ve learned with Perry here, no matter how inconsequential it might seem, he can do an analysis of it—far, far faster and more completely than any of us humans could, even using the best information tech we’ve got available.”

Gray looked at Perry. “How do I do that?” A thin smile. “Do I give you a cracker?”

“Hey, you’ve got a sense of humor after all!

Tell me, was it factory installed, or did it come with a later upgrade?” Perry said. I glared at him. “Perry.”

“Hey, if he’s gonna be part of the team, he’d better get used to my razor wit and overall effusive charm. Anyway, to answer your question, the format doesn’t matter. Just transmit it via some form of wireless comm, and I’ll do the rest.”

“Any surprises while you were compiling it?” I asked Gray. “Aside from the odd Belgian here and there?”

“There’s a group that we’re having trouble squaring. There are hints of a chain of command of some sort pointing to something or someone out of our jurisdiction,” he said, looking pointedly up. “But the few nuggets of information we’ve been able to ferret out suggest that whatever it is, it’s working at cross-purposes with other factions here on Earth. For instance, somebody in Egypt expected to receive a shipment of—something. But it never showed up, and that disrupted some operation. The whole tone of it was pretty aggrieved.”

He scowled a little. “Almost as aggrieved as we are. We chase a lot of leads that go nowhere, but they don’t usually just go straight up into the heavens. It’s a little disconcerting.”

I nodded. “I get that. And yet, that one little piece of information is one we didn’t have, and it points to something I’ve been wondering about, something I figured we’d eventually see happening down here.”

“What’s that?” Frierbach asked. Funboy spoke up. “Competing interests. If there are multiple parties attempting to insinuate themselves into Earth for exploitative purposes, then they may be coming into conflict.”

“That would be good to know, yeah,” Rab said. “Even if only to stop it before a lot of people get hurt."

Freirbach’s face pinched into a sour frown. “I hadn’t even thought of that. A fight between two of these groups, using the sorts of weapons you have available—”

Funboy heaved a sigh. “The term you’re looking for is bloodbath.”

25

WE ENDED up spending another hour or so discussing some of the legal niceties around me and my crew. According to Miryam, aside from the ongoing surveillance of the farm, there had been no overt moves against it. She’d also been checking in with Clinton Barnes, our friendly County Sheriff, as well as Tony Burgess about his people, and Kyle and Derek, our two teenage enthusiasts from Minneapolis. All of them had caught hints, at least, of being occasionally watched, but no one had approached any of them. Well, except for Myron, who insisted he was being watched constantly, with a gubmint satellite in geosynchronous orbit over his house, and that the Men in Black were never far away. Still, I was seriously uneasy about our situation. Freirbach, her people, and her retired Admiral of a husband and his connections were a potent force to have on our side. But I refused to underestimate Manon Clemenceau, Constance Plowitz, or even the pompous Colonel Mandeville, for that matter. I couldn’t help feeling they were just biding their time, looking for an opening so they could pounce before our team could really do anything about it. Freirbach had some good news on that front, though. “The Secretary has got the necessary sign-offs to have your farm designated a consulate, and you and your crew a diplomatic mission.”

That widened my eyes. “Really?

Of whom, exactly?”

“That’s what you’re going to tell me, so I can tell the Secretary,” she said, smiling. Perry spoke up, one wing lifted with a professorial flare. “Excuse me, but a consulate normally refers to the physical structures that house a subsidiary diplomatic mission. The primary mission to a sovereign state is, by convention, located in its embassy. So the farm would be the embassy, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re right on top of this, I see,” Freirbach said to him. “Yes, you’re right. If a diplomatic mission to a country only has one location, it’s their embassy, by default. The Minister and the President both feel, however, that the distinction will be lost on most people, and that consulate seems less likely to, um, ruffle feathers in other countries.”

Torina nodded. “Ah, yes. It makes the point that we haven’t decided where to put our embassy yet, and it won’t necessarily be here, in the United States.”

“Exactly.”

What followed was a detailed discussion between Loren Freirbach and Perry regarding the convoluted ins and outs of US, international, and yes, interstellar law. It was fascinating to watch—this veteran diplomat and bureaucrat who, until just a few weeks ago, really had no clear idea that known space was even a thing, deep in discussion with an extraterrestrial AI in the form of a robotic bird. I’d long since given up on thinking I never imagined I’d see anything like this in my lifetime—traveling through outer space to other worlds and civilizations does that to you, it turns out, leaves you kind of jaded. But seriously, I’d never imagined I’d see anything like this in my lifetime. By the time they were done, surprisingly, they’d actually accomplished something beyond an in-depth intellectual discussion. They’d worked out a rough legal framework that respected both American and interstellar law—

more or less—that would allow us to come and go, to and from Earth, without running afoul of things like immigration and customs. Essentially, as long as we always made our point of arrival in the United States on the farm, and then informed Freirbach’s office of such upon arrival, we could continue traveling the United States as we saw fit. Alaska, Hawaii and places like Puerto Rico, Guam and other US protectorates were more complicated, so for the time being, we’d simply stay clear of those places—

or try to be low-key about it if we had no choice. As for the rest of the world, Freirbach was candid. “We don’t care. Or, we don’t care until you happen to choose to set up a consulate or some

other permanent presence in another nation. Then we care a great deal. We’d really like some advance notice of that, Van.”

The way she said it, and leaned into that word really, carried a hint of ominous undertone. It was a stark reminder that no matter how personable Freirbach was, or how much I came to like and respect her, she had a job to do and interests to protect. I could consider her friendly, but I should not consider a friend. “If you want to know who it is that wants you dead, or otherwise out of the picture, maybe you should take advantage of your new consulate in Iowa,” Gray suggested. “We have reason to believe that, when word of it gets out, it may encourage some of the more, um, down-to-Earth parties involved in all this to take action.”

“Oh?

What reason to believe that do you have?”

He gave me an empty smile. “Just as you have your secrets, Mr. Tudor, we have ours.”

Spoken like a true spook, Perry said in my ear. Let’s create secrecy for no good reason, insert eye-roll here. I snorted. Perry was right, but I got where Gray was coming from. He was the type that was used to being in control. Now that he was confronted with something he barely even began to understand, much less control, he was clinging on to whatever he could. “Okay. Not a bad idea. What would you suggest?”

“Well, I assume that these”—he looked around—“vehicles of yours are beyond any sort of Earthly harm. So, you should do something rather obvious, at your farm, that would potentially leave you and your crew exposed. That might encourage those parties I mentioned to take action, and that, in turn, could very well expose them.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t have to be one of the ones exposing themselves,” Rab said gravely. “That word choice is a bit dicey, Rab,” Perry said, holding back a juvenile laugh. “I—oh. Well, I sort of assumed we’d keep our pants on for this conflict,” Rab said. “Except for Icky, of course.”

I waved grandly. “Of course. We have standards. Sort of.”

Gray cleared his throat, and I further saw what was happening to him—

life, and conflict all around him—and not on his schedule. It was anathema to what he knew. And liked. “Anyway, if you have some way of making this happen quickly and suddenly, ideally something that could go viral, I believe those hostile parties would be prompted to act, even rashly,” Gray said. “I believe I have a solution,” Funboy replied. “However, there are some things we will need in preparation.”

Torina gave him a quizzical look. “Really. Okay, I’m curious—things like what?”

“A good quality imaging device and some suitable attire. I could wear my formal wear, but I believe that off-the-rack would be suitable as well. It’s more about me and my attitude than the fabric, in any case.”

“An imager?

Like, a camera?

What are you planning here, Funboy?” I asked. “Nothing lewd. Unlike Rab, I shall not be unduly exposing myself—”

“Not going to live that down, am I?” Rab sighed. Funboy blinked at him. “Not in the near future, no. Anyway, Gabby has requested some images of me as she wishes to—let’s just get the imaging device, some suitable clothing, perhaps some new kicks—”

“Kicks?

As in sneakers?” Perry asked. “I believe that is what the sexually immature humans are calling them.”

I glanced at Freirbach and Gray. “He means the kids.” I shrugged. “It can take some time to get used to Funboy.”

“To know me is to love me,” he said solemnly. “And now I must raise a question I grow tired of asking, since you refuse to allow me to procure one of my own. Van, may I please have your credit card?”

WE PARTED with Freirbach and her entourage and set course for Pony Hollow. Netty-P had already grounded the Fafnir there. When I checked in with her, she had some new information to report, another piece of the puzzle. “Van, I’ve been following up on that list of the alleged members of the True Direction, concentrating on the Ferals in particular. I’ve noticed an interesting pattern,” she said as the Frankie climbed into a rainy overcast hanging above the Appalachians. “What sort of pattern?”

“I’ve been trying to glean information about their ship movements from a variety of sources. Open-source flight control systems have a little, but unsurprisingly, the Ferals aren’t very diligent about filing flight plans. I’ve gathered additional information provided by other friendly AIs, both inside and outside of the Guild and the GKU, and—well, now I have to admit to a bit of, um, rules-bending.”

“What did you do, Netty-P?”

“I may have accessed restricted databases of ship traffic maintained by the Ceti Alliance, the Eridani Federation, and the Seven Stars League.”

“You may have?

As in, you may have hacked them?”

“In the case of the League, yes. When we assisted the new Provisional Government in setting itself up after the defeat of the Tenants, I—or, actually, Netty—made arrangements to keep a back door, as it were, open into their encrypted comms.”

“Was that her idea?”

“Yes. And as her successor, I take full responsibility for it.”

I sat back, wincing a little as the Frankie punched through the clouds into brilliant sunshine. “I’m not even saying I necessarily object, but why didn’t you tell me?”

“Plausible deniability, Van. If it were discovered, and there was no record of me ever informing you about it, then you couldn’t be held accountable.”

I just stared at her image on the display for a moment. This AI had taken the initiative to do it, and then taken the initiative again to protect me from what she’d done. How the hell could anyone say these weren’t people?

“What about the Alliance and the Federation?”

“Ah, well, their information I obtained from Groshenko. And no, I have no idea how he gets it. But he somehow has access to their rather extensive database of drive and emissions signatures and the movements of the ships associated with them.”

People, yes. But they were still AIs, essentially sophisticated computers. More and more, it was becoming clear what a formidable thing they were, individually, but particularly as a network. It was both a little awe-inspiring and unsettling. I shook my head. “Okay, fine. So what’s the upshot?

What’s this pattern you mentioned?”

“These Ferals are making an inordinate number of trips to the Solar System, or its vicinity, at least.”

That made all of us stiffen. “You’re saying there are a bunch of Ferals somewhere near here?

The same ones that want us dead?”

“Yes and no. Yes, they’re coming here. But no, they’re not staying. They seem to be going to the Solar System, staying for one to maybe three days, then departing for Dregs, where they spend a day. From there, they head back out into known space but eventually return to the Solar System and repeat the process. I can track four different ships through that cycle a total of eleven times.”

“Huh. So they come here for a couple of days, then go to Dregs, then eventually find their way back here and do it again?

Why?

What’s the connection between Earth and Dregs?”

“There is no obvious one. Certainly not one to explain that particular behavior.”

“Actually, there is,” Perry said. “Dregs is the foremost place in known space to fence stolen goods. Spindrift is a close second, but Dregs has them beat.”

I glanced at him as we leveled out on a westward course that would take us over Cincinnati and Indianapolis on our way to Iowa. “You think they’re going to Dregs to fence—”

I stopped. Perry nodded. “You see where I’m going with this.”

“I do. The Ferals aren’t coming to Earth to help the Equal Grasp, they’re coming to prey on their illicit trade.”

Torina looked up from the instruments. “Wait. The Ferals are pirating the Equal Grasp, stealing their stuff, then going and fencing it at Dregs.”

“It sure fits the pattern Netty-P dug up on them, doesn’t it?”

“But the names on that list include both the Equal Grasp and the Ferals.”

I shrugged. “No honor among thieves?

I mean, it is kind of the perfect crime, isn’t it?

What’s the Equal Grasp going to do, report to the Guild that the Ferals are ripping them off?”

“We already know the Ferals are a fractious bunch to begin with, so just because some might be affiliated with this True Direction, others may not be. And since Van’s mother came in from the cold, as it were, it’s probably

left some Ferals just trying to eke out enough of a living to keep their ships fueled and themselves from starving,” Perry added. “So—can we use this to our advantage somehow?” Rab asked. I stared ahead. The overcast ended just east of Cincinnati, so I could see the sprawl of the city wrapped around a bend in the Ohio river. “Maybe. Something to think about. In the meantime, though, I guess we can be glad that we’ve got bad guys preying on other bad guys.” I sighed. “On the other hand, I’m not happy about all this activity happening in the Solar System. How could this be going on and we not know about it?”

“Our surveillance resources are pretty limited, Van. And what we do have is stretched pretty thin. Cantullin Station is way the hell out in the Kuiper Belt, with the Earth on its way around to the other side of the Sun. Otherwise, we’ve got those three surveillance bots Panzygrus built for us, but they’re all close to Earth. And your mother is in a discrete lunar orbit, so again, she’s close to Earth. And Groshenko doesn’t have any ships here anymore, so that’s about all we’ve got,” Perry said. Torina looked at me. “Your mother.”

“What about her?”

“Do you think that maybe she knows what’s going on?

The Ferals and their piracy, I mean?”

I sat back in the seat. “I want to say no, of course not—but, I don’t know. Maybe. She made herself unpopular with at least some of the Ferals, so maybe turning a blind eye to what they’re doing is her way of—making some sort of amends.”

“She may even believe she is helping,” Funboy pointed out. “Disrupting the activities of the Equal Grasp does, in a way, serve to help protect Earth from them.”

I sighed again. “Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to meet with her anyway. This’ll give us something to talk about.”

AS WE APPROACHED THE FARM, the Frankie’s passive scanners detected two aircraft circling, both at high altitude. One was an MQ-9 Reaper, a drone currently in use with the Air Force and decked out in USAF markings. The other was an older MQ-1 Predator, now retired from use by the US military

and sporting no markings at all. I knew that some Predators had been sold off to civilian parts of the government, such as the Border Protection Services. A few, I’m sure, had ended up in the hands of groups like Manon Clemenceau’s Defense Intelligence Reserve. “What do you want to do about them, boss?” Rab asked. “Well, the Reaper is clearly military, so its deployment is no doubt signed off right up the chain. I’m not really surprised it’s keeping an eye on the farm—which is now apparently a foreign consulate—and I’m not really worried about it. That Predator, though—” I grimaced at the image of it. “Is it armed?”

“Predators only have external hardpoints for weapons like Hellfire missiles, and this one’s are empty,” Perry said. I nodded. “Fine. Let’s give it a show then, shall we?”

I pulled the Frankie onto a parallel course with the Predator, then eased us to within a hundred meters of it and deactivated the stealth shroud. It took a moment, but I saw the camera dome under the bulbous nose finally rotate to face us, the big lens glittering in the sunlight. “Everyone smile and wave!” I said. Perry jumped on the arm of the pilot’s seat beside me, turned to face away from the canopy and the drone outside it, then leaned forward, spreading his wings and lifting his tail. “Hey, losers, bite my shiny metal ass!”

We laughed, then I peeled away and spiraled the Frankie down to the farm. Miryam greeted us as we disembarked. “Welcome to Miryamland,” she said, looking imperious. “I am its ruler, the benevolent despot Queen Empress and Grand Poobah Miryam the First and Only. You may now grovel and pay appropriate tribute—preferably cash, but diamonds and shinies won’t go begging.”

I grinned. “I gather you’ve been informed about the new status of the farm as interstellar consulate?”

“I certainly have been, hence my new title. It seems that some laws were bent, and maybe a couple kind of quietly ignored, but a nice man from the State Department came by yesterday and explained it all. Apparently this little realm of ours extends to the surveyed property boundaries. So as soon as someone turns off the road and into the driveway, they’re entering

—” She gestured around. “Whatever the hell this is now. A sovereign part of Pluto, I guess, or wherever you’ve got that Cantullin Station of yours.”

She handed over some papers as we spoke. They were voluminous, so I’d give them to Perry to scan and summarize in detail. The gist of it was, though, that the area encompassed by the boundaries of the farm was now officially a consulate of the “extra-territorial interests represented by the legal owner of the property as recorded in Iowa state land registry records”—or, in other words, me. I sniffed. “Extra-territorial, huh?

Yeah, very extra-territorial.”

“It’s amazing how fast the government can move on something when it wants to, isn’t it?

We’ve still got thirty-year old toxic EPA Superfund sites that haven’t had even a hint of cleanup started on them,” Miryam grouched. We started toward the farmhouse. “Yeah, well, the government’s understandably concerned about getting an immediate grip on things like, oh, antimatter-fueled ships and city-killing particle beams.”

“Speaking of antimatter, I notice you never made any mention to Loren Freirbach or that Gray fellow about the missing twist-comm rig—you know, the one sitting somewhere on Earth right now, maybe even right in the middle of one of your biggest cities,” Rab said. I shrugged. “I thought about it, considered that maybe they could help us look for it. But, I don’t know, telling them there’s a device the size of a suitcase with the explosive yield of two Hiroshima bombs out there somewhere—” I shrugged again as I mounted the steps to the porch. “My gut suddenly told me it would probably do more harm than good. They really have no way of finding it, but even if they did—”

“You weren’t anxious for them to get their hands on it.”

“No, I was not.”

“You don’t trust them?” Torina asked. I smiled. “Oh, I trust them—right up to the point where I don’t.”

26

FUNBOY WANTED us to pay another visit to his tailor, Swenson, in Cedar Rapids. I asked him what he had planned and why it required yet another tailored outfit. He returned a quizzical look. “Are there other means of obtaining clothing on Earth?”

“Uh—yeah. Lots of them. Most people don’t have all of their clothes tailored, especially things like, you know, socks and underwear and such,” I replied. “Ah. Well, I am clearly deficient in my understanding of Earthly consumer culture. In what way would most people here obtain their garments?”

I smiled. “Let’s take a run into Cedar Rapids, and I’ll show you.”

Which is how I ended up now landing the Frankie in the parking lot of a Walmart Supercenter, just across the road from an Arby’s. Torina peered out the canopy at our surroundings. Like most big-box stores, the outer reaches of the vast parking lot were typically empty, so we had ample room. “They’re not going to mind us landing here?” she asked. I shrugged. “Hey, they let people in RVs and truckers in big rigs park here, so why not a class 4 workboat?”

By the time we disembarked, we had cars stopping around us, and a small crowd assembling outside the Arby’s. I pointed at a sign on a light post. “See, all it says is no overnight parking. Nothing about spaceships.”

Miryam, who’d come along, glanced back at the Frankie. “Yeah, but you’re taking up, like, five parking spots, Van. I hate it when people do that, it’s so inconsiderate. But at least we know the make of your ship.”

“You do?”

She waved at the ship, brow up. “Of course. The Frankie is… a BMW. You’re basically a velour tracksuit away from going Full European.”

I snorted. “Always wanted a gold chain, too. Maybe a—”

Torina’s pronunciation was instantaneous. “Not a chance, Klaus.”

“Hmph. You’re whatever the German phrase for no fun is.”

“I also have something called taste,” Torina countered. I sketched a small bow without breaking stride. “Obviously. Look at me.”

Her silvery laugh carried us across the endless swath of asphalt, and I pondered tracksuits and parking and never using my turn signal again. Ever. Besides Funboy, Torina, and Miryam, I’d brought along Perry, and after some thought, Icky as well. We were trying to make ourselves conspicuous, after all, to try to draw out any and all of our sundry enemies and ill-wishers. And there wasn’t much that was more conspicuous than a seven foot tall, blue-furred, four-armed, and mostly naked Wu’tzur. By the time we made it to the entrance, we had a retinue, about a dozen people with cell phones following at a distance. Some held their phones aloft, while one was apparently streaming events as they happened. I had to work at tuning out his inane stream-of-consciousness chatter. “So now they’re going into the Walmart, into it, I mean—are you guys getting this?

We’ve got aliens goin’ shoppin’, yeah yeah, that’s so fetch—

oh, oh my God, ten bucks from lizzymygirl56, that’s sick, just sick, thanks so muchly, gonna help pay for my DoorDash toniiiiiiite—”

“Van, who is that individual speaking to?” Funboy asked me as we passed through the entry vestibule. “His viewers. He’s streaming this to them in real time.”

Funboy stopped. “This is possible?”

“It’s—yeah, sure. Lots of people do it. Usually it’s when they’re playing video games, but some do it while they’re cooking, or doing other hobbies, or—” I cocked my head at him. “Why?”

“Just a general inquiry. And in a wholly unrelated inquiry, if one wished to begin undertaking this activity called streaming, how would one go about it?”

“You know he’ll be a viral superstar overnight, Van,” Miryam said. “I—well, sure, but we—” I stopped. “Actually, why the hell not?

It might be just the sort of positive messaging we need. Although I regret allowing him to make fetch a thing. We gotta have standards.”

We carried on. The greeter, a middle-aged woman in a blue vest, stared as we approached, her eyes wide behind bifocals. “Uh—welcome to Walmart?”

“Is that a statement or a question?” Miryam asked her, smiling. “It’s—um—oh my. You folks are a little early with the Halloween costumes, aren’t you?”

Perry grabbed a beakful of blue hair on Icky’s ankle and pulled. She yelped and yanked her foot away. “Hey, what gives, you miserable little toaster?”

Perry looked up at the greeter. “She’s not wearing a costume—or, as I’m sure you can see, not much of anything else, unfortunately.”

I herded everyone on. What followed was—I want to say the strangest thing that’s ever happened in a Walmart, but to be honest, I’m not sure it was. I mean, we are talking Walmart here. But it was pretty certain to be up there. We made our way to the men’s clothing section so Funboy could pick out an outfit or two. While he poked around the t-shirts, Icky pointed at a sign in the grocery section down the aisle. “Van, that sign—if the translator’s right, it says they have three pounds, like, over a kilo, of potato salad on sale for eleven of those dollar thingies!”

She frowned. “Is that a lot?

How many bonds would that be?”

“I don’t think there’s a conversion between them, big girl, sorry. As for it being a lot, um, I honestly don’t buy potato salad much these days, so—”

“Doesn’t matter. Over a kilo?

Finally, someone who gets portion sizes!”

“It says family size, Icky—”

“Van, what do you think?

Is this suitable attire?

Does it make an appropriate statement?” Funboy cut in. He was holding up a t-shirt emblazoned with Iron Man and the Marvel logo. “It appears to be attempting to portray the Type Two close assault armor employed by the Eridani military, which gives it particular relevance to an attempt to accentuate my off-world nature. Also, that particular armor accentuates my lower legs, which are, according to you, appropriate for a chicken.”

“Chickens are delicious. Not as delicious as potato salad, but, yanno,”

Icky complained. “Big girl—hold up. We’ll address your criminal lack of a food bucket in just a moment. Funboy, play on. Why not?” I said, waving at the shirt with mild approval. Icky howled with glee. “Boss!

Looook!

Forget the potato salad!

They’ve got something called Mac-N-Cheez on sale, and it claims to be almost real food!

Can we go down to where all that food is once Gloomy Guts is done shopping here?”

“I suppose—”

“This is an interesting garment,” Funboy said, holding up a pair of sweat pants printed with dozens of overlapping Batman symbols in black and yellow. “Is this suitable for everyday wear?”

I glanced around. We now had at least two dozen people gathered, gawking, and recording. I saw several of the store employees, including one that must be the manager on duty, huddled nearby in furtive conversation, shooting us occasional wide-eyed looks. I sighed. “Funboy, get whatever suits your fancy. Just be quick about it, please. Icky, we’ll grab some food on the way out. First, though, we have one more stop to make.”

Funboy piled himself up with a mishmash of clothing, ranging from rather plain to eye-wateringly garish. We then headed for the electronics department, where I got him hooked up with a phone so he could livestream, post photos on Instagram, and otherwise turn himself into an internet sensation. It all had a point—ultimately, the hearts and minds of the people of Earth were up for grabs. Our opponents were used to being steeped in secrecy and obfuscation, the stuff of breathless conspiracy theories and X-Files style shenanigans. I was hoping that culture would prove a drag on them, giving us an opportunity to win those hearts and minds, or at least a whole lot of them. As we checked out the phone, the sales clerk, a surly, acne-faced kid in his late teens with a wisp of embryonic mustache, looked warily from me, to Funboy. “That some kind of costume?

What are you, anyway?” he asked. His nametag said Josh. Josh had an Ohio accent and the furtive air of a jewel thief. Josh was complicated. Funboy stared back at him. “What am I?

I am keenly aware of the ultimate futility of existence, and that all of our most strenuous efforts

otherwise will do nothing to change the eventual triumph of entropy. Oh, and he is paying for this with his credit card,” he said, nodding toward me. I smiled. “Hi. I’m the guy whose Mastercard is going to rack up a little of that entropy.”

“Do you want the device protection plan?” Josh asked, then droned on with a clearly memorized script. “For only twelve dollars a month, or one hundred and twenty per year, you can have the peace of mind—”

“No thanks,” I said. Josh shrugged. “Okay, but if it messes up, you can’t fix it—”

Icky leaned in. “I can tune a fusion reactor while it’s running, without causing a power drop. I think I can handle it.”

“Yeah, but you’ll void the warranty.”

I shook my head. “Josh, my friend, that is a risk I’m willing to take,” I said, handing him my card. Our retinue was at least three dozen strong, and still growing, as we headed for the exit with our clothes, potato salad, Kraft dinner, cell phone—

and packages of red licorice, bubble gum, and, for some reason, a one hundred dollar Walmart gift card—all bought and paid for. I asked the associate at the door, an older man with a hearing aid, if he wanted to check our receipt. He peered at Icky and just shook his head. “I’m good. You—folks—have a nice day.”

“We will,” Icky cooed. “And thank you for being so inclusive. It’s not often a girl like me feels so welcome.”

The man paused, looked Icky up and down, and said, “You fit right in here, girl.”

Icky laughed, a braying hiss that rattled the rafters. “I knew it!

Pass me the red candy. No, the whole bag. It’s obviously single serving—”

We walked and snacked and generally had fun for the three minutes it took us to cross the asphalt tundra. As we headed for the Frankie, Funboy spoke up. “Incidentally, who will take my pictures?

I need someone who has a good eye for both light and shadow, form and substance. While it is not critical that you grasp the origin of chiaroscuro, it is important to know the key points. Like my best side, and capturing the depths of my cheekbones.”

“I’ll do it,” I said, marveling at his general state of self-confidence. “Torina can assist me.”

“Are you good with tasteful nudity?” she asked Funboy, a playful smile dancing on her lips. “Naturally. These legs—indeed, all of this”—he gestured down at himself—“is not meant to be hidden away forever.”

Torina stopped. “Wait. I was joking. Funboy?

Funboy, are you serious—?”

He almost smiled. “Always, Torina. Always.”

WE RETURNED to the farm so Funboy could do his—photoshoot. We did some of it inside the house, and some outside, some in and around the barn. Funboy made particularly sure that he was fully viewable from above, so the drones got an eyeful. “This is for you, Manon Clemenceau,” he said, lying across the old tractor. “Feel my heat.”

Miryam coughed. “The only heat is inside, but I love your confidence. And the drone operators are getting, ah, more than they bargained for.”

“I’m a giver. It’s part of my natural exuberance,” Funboy concluded, striking a sassy pose with his legs akimbo and one arm thrust up in victory. It was… a sight. “So you’re really all in on this?” I asked. He slow blinked twice, then gave a small nod. “Naturally.”

And then Funboy proceeded to shine. He primped and preened, putting on his best catalog-model looks while carefully positioning himself so things, um, wouldn’t be too evident. It got Torina and me into the spirit of it, too, as we hooted and cheered in an array of raucous calls that were carried away on the frigid wind. “Yessss, killer. You’re a killer. Look at you go.” Click. “The camera loves you, man.” Click. “Show them the real you. Yessss. Okay, not quite that much.” Click. Perry, standing on the arm of the couch, looked up at Gabby. “So how’s this working for you?”

She grinned. “I think he’s wonderful.”

“Well, they say love is blind. Or, in this case, eyes surgically removed, blindfolded, standing at the bottom of an unlit mineshaft—HEY!”

He recovered from the smack Icky had landed on him. “Can it, bird. If you ever fall madly for a bread maker or rice cooker, we’ll be there for you.”

Gabby gave her a grateful smile. “Thank you, Icky.”

“No problem. Paxomar isn’t exactly the most ideal specimen of Wu’tzur manhood around, but to me, he’s perfect.”

Torina clicked her tongue. “Funboy, we can see your—that’s it, move your arm a little lower—perfect.”

Click. I left them to finish up, chuckling to myself that the very first activity of note in the very first extraterrestrial consulate on Earth was a nude photoshoot of an alien who—I’ll put it this way—think of the Grinch, as in the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Now imagine him posed like Burt Reynolds in that famous 1972 spread in Cosmopolitan. Yeah, that. My next little task was to set Funboy up on the currently popular social media platforms, particularly the likes of Instagram and TikTok. They’d do for now, and as they inevitably waned in popularity and others waxed, we’d accommodate things accordingly. The objective—not that I ever explicitly laid it out to Funboy this way—was to humanize our alien friends as much as possible. I wanted to render them in a way that was kind of goofy, maybe kind of sweet, portraying them as ordinary folks. Or, as ordinary as something like Icky could be to Earthly humans. I wanted aliens to be something novel and interesting, but not as unsettling and even frightening as they otherwise might seem. And, to that end, I had the current state of Earthly culture working in my favor. Newton’s First Law of Motion famously implies that things have inertia

—on their own, they don’t want to change what they’re doing and only do so if something acts on them from outside. A car needs its wheels to turn, a ship needs thrust. It turns out that the zeitgeist is subject to the very same law. Outside of something big and catastrophic happening, it takes a lot for a whole population to change the way it starts believing about something. And our modern, always-on, permanently connected society is even more like that. Distrust of authorities and the media, the growing sense that things like AI are making the things we see and read less reliable, the fracturing of society into insular groups with like beliefs, all of it amped up that cultural inertia. Maybe if this had been the 1950s, when things like flying saucers and little green men were such a thing, the reality of the Fafnir’s crew would have taken root and spread much more quickly. But just even a cursory scan of the internet showed that, today, it was still mostly viewed with skepticism or outright denial—to the extent it even burned through the major events of the day in the first place. Politics and its bastard child, war, along with worries about inflation and recessions and pandemics and so on and so on, actually gave alien contact one hell of a freakin’ run for its money in the news of the day. But it was taking root and starting to put forth its first tiny shoots. I found a blog post by a well-respected Jesuit priest musing on the implications for theology if intelligent extraterrestrials were real. I found another, a brief article in The Economist, speculating on what it could mean for the global economy and all the constructs built around it, like interest rates and stock markets. The Washington Post wondered about the potential for alien diseases, an acute concern in light of recent global events. An Al Jazeera editorial questioned if and how aliens might align themselves with global political blocs, or cause the formation of new ones—and what opportunities did that present?

The Onion claimed that its entire editorial staff had been aliens all along, and The Babylon Bee declared that Funboy was a lapsed Episcopalian who ran a secret Bingo Hall scam in Poughkeepsie, but only on every other Tuesday. The tone of it all, though, treated aliens in the way that Hollywood had portrayed them, as enigmatic beings of inscrutable purpose, who behaved in mysterious ways that defied human comprehension—

“Funboy, dude, I can see your equipment. It’s right there!” Icky shouted from the living room. “I’ve tamed honeypot spies with this body. You must simmer down and let me work my magic with this planet,” he countered. I smiled at the screen. Enigmatic beings of inscrutable purpose, huh?

Well, have I got news for you. 27

I WAS in the midst of explaining to Funboy that his global debut on social media probably wouldn’t be an immediate sensation, so to not expect instant celebrity. “There’s probably going to be a period when people don’t believe it and write your photos off as computer-generated or something—”

“This?” he said, gesturing down at himself—now clothed again. “Computer-generated?

Any algorithm would strain under the load of trying to render—”

“Yeah, sure, you’re male beauty in a can, Funboy. Anyway—”

“Van, incoming message on the Masters’ priority channel,” Netty-P cut in. “It’s from Gabriella Santorelli.”

I tensed at that. Gabriella wasn’t exactly given to idle chatter at the best of times, and her communicating on the Masters’ priority channel would be even more not just idle chatter. “Put her on, please.”

“Van, I’m en route to Earth to meet with Essie. I agreed to take a couple of Nesit off his hands and then pretty much release them, just pay a small fine—”

“Gabriella, look, I don’t want to charge these guys, they’ve been extremely helpful—”

“No, it’s not that. I’m just about to cross the orbit of Earth’s moon. A couple of ships, both class 10, have just broken that moon’s orbit and are barreling straight at you.”

“Where my mother?

She’s supposed to be in lunar orbit?” I didn’t bother keeping the irritation out of my voice. If my mother was giving some of the Ferals a pass, out of some warped sense of loyalty—

But her voice broke into the channel. “I’m here, Van. We just detected them. They’re Ferals, though not ones I know well. I’m going after them, but they’ve got a velocity advantage on me.”

“Mom, how the hell did you not notice them approaching Earth in the first place?”

“They’ve been using stealth, and probably killing their drives and just storing heat until we orbited around the Moon, out of their line of sight—”

She paused. “Why did I feel like there was some accusation in that question?”

I considered telling her what I suspected, but this wasn’t the time. “Sorry, mom. It’s just that an armed incursion toward Earth is the last thing I need right now. Can you and Gabriella handle it?”

“And me—I’m still kicking around the neighborhood,” B put in. “I thought you were leaving, heading back to Anvil Dark, B,” I said. “I am, once I get a bug worked out in my drive.”

I rallied the crew and hurried Rab, Gabby, and Perry into the Frankie, the rest of us toward the Fafnir. I kept the comm open and a running commentary going from the ships above as we boarded and prepared to launch. “Okay, Van, I’ve got good solutions on the lead ship. You’re the boss in these parts—do I proceed with a kill?”

“Have you tried warning them off?”

“Several times. So has Gabriella.”

“Fine. Weapons free. I don’t want either of those ships to reach Earth orbit.”

“Engaging now.”

Netty-P was running the preflight checklist in its abbreviated emergency mode. The Fafnir’s systems came to life, switching from grounded idle or standby to active. The gravity polarizers gave a rising whine as the ship prepared to lift. “We’re ready to launch over here, Van,” Rab said. “Go. Once you’re in orbit, just stand by. I want you guys to be a backstop, in case anything tries to slip past the rest of us and make it down to the surface,” I said. “You got it.”

The Fafnir rose on the unseen thrust of polarized gravity and nosed skyward. Netty-P applied power from the thrusters, and we accelerated toward the clouds, the Frankie close behind. AS WE CLIMBED TO ORBIT, I kept an eye on the two drones. Even if they had been armed, they offered no meaningful threat to the Fafnir or the Frankie, but I wanted to see what they did. The newer USAF Reaper maintained its distance, apparently content to watch, but the smaller, older, unmarked Predator actually climbed after us. Its operator must have thought we were going somewhere other than just straight up. It was a spirited attempt, but also a futile one, of course, and it soon gave up. By the time we reached the upper atmosphere, the battle in space above had already begun in earnest. “Van, your mother just took out one of the two class 10s,” Gabriella said. “She might have taken a hit or two herself doing it, but nothing of substance. The other 10 launched a workboat, which is still inbound for Earth—”

My mother cut in. “Van, I’m leaving that workboat to you. Its mother ship has changed course and is burning like hell for—Jupiter, probably, though I have no idea why, and I want to find out.”

“Van, I’m going to get a few shots in as we pass, but given the velocity difference, emphasis on a few,” Gabriella said. “Okay, feel free to engage as you see fit. Mom, keep the pressure on them, but don’t let yourself get pulled too far from Earth, please,” I said. “You think that’s what this is?

An attempt to pull us away and leave Earth exposed?”

“If I had to guess, yeah—although I’ve got no idea what’s up with that workboat. Netty-P, any idea where it’s headed?”

“On its current trajectory, it could make planetfall anywhere from the Baja region of Mexico States to somewhere in Italy, along a corridor roughly a thousand klicks across.” As she spoke, she put the possible landing zone on the display. It covered a huge swath of the central United States and eastern Canada, clipped the southern end of Greenland, and

blanketed virtually all of Europe from Spain to Poland, excluding Scandinavia. I grimaced. “That’s a lot of real estate. A lot.”

“It includes some places near and dear to us, too—the farm, DC, Belgium—” Perry said. “Okay, Rab, you track that thing and see where it’s going to land. I want our eyes on it when it finally does whatever it’s going to do and cracks open. And if it’s trajectory still shows the farm as a possible landing site before it makes atmospheric insertion—”

“Kill it?” Rab asked. “Yeah. But outside the atmosphere. For that matter, outside of low orbit. I want to minimize the risk to terrestrial satellites—”

“And the International Space Station. It will, unfortunately, be orbiting right through the volume of space covered by the workboat’s currently possible trajectories,” Netty-P said. “Okay, yeah. I don’t know what its intentions are, and for all we know, it might be a weapon. Broadcast the requisite warnings, but do not let that thing come down anywhere near the farm.”

“Will do, Van, but—are you sure you want it landing anywhere on Earth at all?” Rab asked. I hesitated. It was a fair question. If it were a weapon—packed to the gunnels with explosives, or even just with its own antimatter pod rigged to blow—then we should just shoot it down now. But letting it proceed might provide us with information, even answers. And right now, answers were worth a lot. Even a lot of risk. On the other hand, I couldn’t forget what happened when Helem Gauss was allowed to just go on his way and not blown out of space when we had the chance—

I was opening my mouth to say “screw it,” just shoot the damned thing down now, but Netty-P cut me off. “Van, the workboat just lit its drive. It’s no longer on a trajectory for atmospheric insertion. This is going to put it into orbit—”

I cursed. Okay, Tudor, decision time. “Rab, just keep following it. Gabriella, since your trajectory is going to bring you to Earth anyway, I’d like you and Rab to try to seize that workboat intact.”

They both acknowledged. I pushed thoughts of the workboat momentarily aside so I could restore my situational awareness about the rest of the fight. And it was a fight, because no sooner had I put my focus back on the tactical overlay, than three more ships, class 9 or 10, came charging around the Moon. THE ATTACKING ships were both heavily armed and well-armored, very much at the expense of anything resembling crew ergonomics. Netty-P’s scans put them as bearing the potential firepower of class 12 or 13 hulls, but packed into class 10s—and in one case, a 9.

“They’d be miserable shitholes to live and work in,” Icky said. “And pretty fragile, too, for all that armor they’re carrying. Those structural spars and other bits aren’t meant to lug around the sort of inertia those hunks of armor are going to stress ’em with.”

As if to prove Icky’s point, Netty-P analyzed the three ships’

accelerations and other maneuvers, and sure enough, they were pretty damned sluggish for their size. As the range ticked down, though, I had another thought preying on my mind. “How the hell did they get here?

I mean, two ships carefully sneaking up on my mother is one thing—yeah, I can see that happening, give it a pass. But how the hell could she have missed these three tubs wallowing their way toward the Moon?”

“I think I have the answer to that, Van,” Netty-P replied. “I’ve extrapolated their trajectories backward, to the origin point. They lifted from near the Moon’s southern pole. They must have been grounded there, probably in the shade inside a crater. Your mother’s orbit around the Moon was roughly equatorial. If those ships just sat down there, out of her line of sight, dumping their thermal waste into the very, very cold rock—”

“Using the Moon itself as a heat sink. Huh. Pretty clever, actually,”

Torina said. “How long would they have to have been sitting down there in the dark, for my mother to have noticed them getting there in the first place?” I asked Netty-P. “The last time she was far enough away from Earth to open a window for them would have been eleven days ago.”

“So, whoever they are, they’ve been sitting in ships that Icky so eloquently called shitholes, in the Lunar darkness, for nearly two weeks. That’s dedication,” I said, frowning at the overlay. We were just over five minutes from maximum effective missile range. I looked for B and my mother. B was accelerating out of orbit behind us, while my mother was reversing course—it would delay her a little, though not much, because she hadn’t gained a lot of relative velocity chasing the other class 10.

It, on the other hand, was still accelerating, every second of velocity gain making it more and more irrelevant to the imminent battle. Either it had played its part, its captain and crew were in the midst of deciding discretion was the part type of valor, or they had nothing to do with any of this and her presence and that of her destroyed companion was just a coincidence. It didn’t matter. This battle was quickly shaping up into the Fafnir, B, and my mother against the three oncoming ships. They actually had a firepower edge, in Netty-P’s estimation, but we had the advantage of maneuver—and, of course, we always had the combi-drive. “Rab, how are things going with you and Gabriella?” I asked. “It looks like that workboat’s aiming for an orbital insertion over the—

the Pacific Ocean.”

I glanced at Perry. “The Pacific?

What the hell would that be about?”

“Maybe someone’s looking to vacation on Maui. Or maybe they want to get down inside the atmosphere because it would be easier to shake off any pursuit that way.”

I nodded. The unyielding physics of spaceflight made surprises difficult

—at least, not without a lot of setup, like our friends we were about to engage had apparently done. Inside a planetary atmosphere, though, it was much easier to lose oneself amid things like weather and ground clutter. But it also suggested that the workboat had a particular destination in mind—

“Van, I just got airborne. Where do you want me?” a new voice cut in. It was Essie. I smiled. The more guns on our side, the better. “Rab will bring you up to speed. Between you, Gabriella, and him, I want you guys to corral that workboat and figure out what it’s up to—”

“Van, I think I know why that workboat is heading for the Pacific, and it is Maui—kind of” Perry said. He put an image on the display, depicting a vast swirl of cloud sprawled across the eastern Pacific. I could just make out the distinctive shape of Baja to the south and east of it, but everything from roughly Los Angeles and north was covered by a sweep of cloud. “That’s Typhoon Veronica, currently a category 4 storm system that’s sitting about eight hundred klicks east of Hawaii. It’s associated with a so-called atmospheric river system that’s already bringing some intense rainfall to central and northern California. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

I stared at the image for a moment, then cursed. “Yeah. If that workboat dives into that typhoon, we’ll probably lose it. And then it’s got the cover of that atmospheric river thing all the way into the US. Shit. Rab, Essie, Gabriella, you’re weapons-free. Don’t let that workboat get—”

“Uh, Van?

Frankie’ s nav has just crunched the numbers. We’ve got about a two-minute engagement window before that workboat disappears into that storm. Essie and Gabriella don’t even have that,” Gabby reported. I pounded the armrest. Damn it. I’d played it too cautiously, deferred action in favor of information. In other words, I’d just repeated the same damned mistake we’d made with Gauss. I blew out a frustrated breath. “Okay. Change of plans. Essie, cover the farm, in case that damned workboat is headed there. Rab, you keep chasing it and try to bring it down. If you can’t, then you go to the farm and back up Essie. Gabriella, I need you to stay up high and watch for it to emerge from that weather system, if you can.”

They all acknowledged. I sat back and scowled, mostly at myself. “Okay. I’ve been trying to play by the rules. It’s clear, though, that these assholes aren’t going to, so we’ve been hamstringing ourselves when it comes to protecting Earth.” I looked at Perry. “I want to subject all vessels approaching or leaving Earth without explicit authority from the Guild to immediate destruction. What are my options?”

“You could declare the Solar System a Special Exclusion Zone. That’s normally reserved for things like quarantines against plagues, though—”

“Do I have the authority to do it or not?”

“You do, for a period of three standard days only, though. Extending it would require the consent of the Masters’ Council, outside of certain exigent circumstances—”

“Such as?”

“Again, an infectious disease, something of Category 1 or 2—”

“Would Calamity count?”

“It would. It was declared the equivalent of a Category 1 disease. But we don’t have any evidence that Calamity’s present on Earth,” Perry said. I gave a slow nod. “Yes we do. Every time the Fafnir’s down there, Calamity’s down there, too. Even a single data processing component from this ship is theoretically infected, isn’t it?”

“It—potentially is, yes. And, for the record, wow. This really puts the tech in technicality.”

“What are you planning, Van?

To remove a component from the Fafnir, leave it at the farm, and claim it constitutes a source of infection by Calamity?” Torina asked. “Isn’t that just begging for unintended consequences?”

“Maybe. Right now, though, I see it very much as the lesser of two evils. I mean, we’ve not only got a weapon of mass destruction in the form of an errant twist-comm unit down there somewhere, but we’ve also got a workboat of unknown intention. Our cordon on Earth so far has been based on the threat of violence, and that worked for a while, but now it’s leaking like a damned sieve.”

I switched my focus back to the approaching ships, which were currently less than thirty seconds from maximum engagement range. “The threat of violence isn’t working anymore. So, it’s time to replace it with the promise of violence—starting now.”

28

I DECIDED to open the battle the way I intended to win it—with speed and violence. “Folks, I’m not waiting around to crawl into weapons range. Funboy, stand by to take manual control of the point-defense batteries. Torina, get everything ready to fire. Netty-P, spin up the combi-drive. We’re going to shove the Fafnir right past them, then open up from their six at point-blank range.” I looked at the others. “Once you start shooting, keep shooting until everything is dead. I want to send a message here.”

Grim acknowledgements came from all around. We’d already depressurized the ship and suited up, so Icky headed to the rear to stand ready for damage control. I let B and my mother know what I was about to do. “We’ll keep the pressure on them from this side, Van,” my mother agreed—

Just as another comm message, broadcast on a general channel, broke in. “You are about to be defeated by the United Free Peoples’ Collective!

Surrender to us now or die!”

As the voice shouted across the comm, the three enemy ships loosed a fearsome volley of missiles, a total of twenty-six. They immediately began to track. Back to our own channel. “Mom, B, can you handle all those missiles?”

“We’re going to have to, aren’t we?” B replied. “Who the hell are the United Free Peoples’, anyway?

Never heard of them,” Torina put in. “Strident, whoever they are,” Funboy replied. “All of that nearly hysterical shouting—” He clicked his tongue. “They’re just trying too hard.”

I glanced at Perry as Hodgepodge, the combi-drive’s controlling AI, powered it up and brought it online. “Have you ever heard of them?

“New one to me, boss. Maybe ask ’em what they’re unified about—or against?”

“Us, I would assume,” Funboy said. “Yeah, that feels like everyone and their dog these days. Except the Quakers, that is.”

“I have read about them. They seem like lovely people.”

“They’re Ferals, Van. We did some comparisons over here with ships we thought we recognized, and yeah, although they’ve got more armor added on, we recognize them,” my mother said. “Again, they’re from a sect within the Ferals that I didn’t know well. I think we only partnered with them on one or two operations, and even then, we kept our distance—”

A chime sounded. The combi-drive was ready. “Hold that thought, mom. We’ll talk when this is done.” I glanced at Netty-P. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Just to give everyone time to get ready, combi-driving in three—two—

one.”

The world twisted a little, shifted to one side, or maybe it was up or down, then the universe outside the ship vanished. For the next forty seconds, the Fafnir became her own little universe, cheat-coding her way around the laws of physics. We were passing through the line of Ferals, or United Free Peoples, or whatever, until a few seconds later when the combi-drive cut out, and we plunged back into normal space. It took a second or two for the scanners to reacquire the other ships and paint them back into the tactical overlay. I was already spinning the Fafnir around onto a reverse course, though, and Torina, Funboy, and Perry—

who’d taken over the particle and plasma-burst cannons—were already lining up manual shots. They slammed a deluge of fire into the middle of the three ships, which were now less than a thousand klicks away—point-blank range, when it came to space combat. All that extra armor bought them another few seconds of life. The impacts of the mass drivers, and the streams of fire from the point-defense batteries wreaked particular havoc, chewing the ship to pieces that were flashed to vapor by the energy weapons. Fifteen seconds after we’d returned to normal space, one of the three ships was gone, nothing but wreckage. We switched fire to the next closest. By then, I could see bright, hard sparks flaring and dying in the distance, and my mother and B dueled with the Feral’s missile salvo. I forced myself to keep my mind in our part of the fight. They’d take care of themselves because, as B put it, they had to. Our torrential rain of fire engulfed a second of the Feral ships. By then, the third had wallowed through a sluggish turn and opened fire on us. It immediately landed two hits that did minor damage, then we were walloped with a colossal blast of laser energy that momentarily blacked out the canopy and caused every REAB module on the Fafnir’s bow and the forward part of her belly to detonate. The ship shuddered down to her structural bones as the modules blew like firecrackers. The primary scanner array died, leaving us on the secondary. One of the remaining alien grav plates, the add-ons that served to reduce the ship’s effective mass and let us maneuver her a little harder, dropped offline—and then off the ship completely. The accelerator cannon, which we hadn’t yet fired, died as well. Systems complained across the status board, though nothing truly critical had gone offline. “Icky, what the hell was that?” I called over the comm. “Laser. They dumped everything they could from their reactor into that shot. The emitter’s probably glowing slag right now. We’re still in the fight, though, boss!”

“Yes we are,” I muttered, looking up just in time to see a second Feral ship die. Our fire had been interrupted, but either B or my mother had gotten missiles through to it, and they’d exploded, bracketing it. Its drive died, and its power emissions fell off the scale as its reactor scrammed. My crew was already shifting fire to the third ship, the one that had cooked off its laser battery in one massive shot. I kept the Fafnir maneuvering, trying to present the bad guy with a harder target, and was just starting a hard yaw and jink—

When the overlay lit up with another salvo of missiles. This one had come from nowhere, and now raced up behind us, just seconds away from filling the Fafnir with clouds of deadly shrapnel. I DIDN’T REALLY THINK—I didn’t have time to think. I just turned to Netty-P and shouted, “Combi-drive, now!”

“Where to?”

“Don’t care!”

She didn’t hesitate. Fortunately, Hodgepodge was ready and the drive was already spun up, so she shoved us to the right of reality without any further delay. “Five more seconds, then take us back,” I said to her. “And three, two, one—”

We dropped back into normal space. The missiles had, as I’d kind of blindly hoped, flown right through where we’d been. Having lost our track, they picked new targets, and now raced off toward my mother and B. I ignored them and focused on where the missiles had come from. Another ship had appeared, hugging the Moon in an orbit so tight she looked like she might scrape the tops of some of the taller peaks. A comm broadcast rattled through the cockpit, this time a woman’s voice, hard and flat. “That traitorous bitch you call a mother shouldn’t have left us. So, now, she’s going to pay for turning on the people that kept her alive. Along with her miserable whelp, of course. I can’t believe you even survived this long, Master Tudor,” she said, her voice jagged with bitter condescension. “She seems nice,” Perry said. I grunted and yawed the Fafnir, applying thrust to close on this new ship and whoever this woman was commanding it. Instinct told me she was the kingpin, the Feral overlord of this gang, and she was the one I wanted—

preferably alive, though. I had Torina fire a volley of missiles at the ship that had lasered us so hard, to keep them busy, then drove the Fafnir at full power right toward the surface of the Moon. “Combi-drive?” Torina asked. Netty-P spoke up. “I wouldn’t recommend it. For esoteric reasons specific to how the combi-drive operates, which I could certainly technobabble to you if you want me to, it’s currently offline.”

“I’m working on it, Van,” Icky said. “But this is getting kinda outside my area of expertise—”

The rugged lunar surface loomed ahead. The Feral ship had a velocity advantage, while ground clutter from the Moon’s dusty, rocky barrens threw off our targeting. I’d brought the Fafnir to within about ten klicks of the surface, which now had become a sunlit gray-white blur beneath us, punctuated by occasional darker splotches of craters. Towering peaks swept by, looking close enough to touch. It was staggering, in raw beauty and hard shadows, the inky blackness ancient and unknowable. Enough waxing, Tudor, I told myself. Get in the fight. “Van, I’m intercepting comms from that ship ahead of us to the others. They’re transmitting in the clear, but I’m having trouble pinning down specific messages. Transmissions are superimposed, conflicting—whoever she is, she’s speaking English like it's her native tongue. But there’s something else—”

“Can you be any more specific?” I asked, applying thrust to lift the Fafnir over an Alps-like chain of mountains ahead. “Sorry, Van, there’s a lot of traffic, a lot of noise. It’s almost as good as encrypting the damned stuff.”

I had to smile. I wasn’t used to hearing Netty-P sound annoyed. “Van, I think I can help,” my mother cut in. “How are you guys?

You and B?”

“We’ve both taken hits, but we’re still in the fight. That ship that was Jupiter-bound spun around and fired a bunch more missiles before continuing to bugger off, so we’ve been busy with those. Anyway, that woman is the Tsarina. She’s the leader of that little sect I mentioned. She was actually drummed out of the Ferals about six years ago, though she’s been hovering around the margins ever since.”

“Drummed out?

Why?”

“For playing too rough.”

“She got kicked out of a group of ruthless cutthroats for playing too rough?

That’s like getting kicked out of Guns N Roses. In 1988.

For partying too hard,” Perry said. “Don’t get the reference, but yes, she was, ah, asked to leave by everyone with a gun or a missile, all of which were pointed at her,” my mother replied. We were now racing toward the terminator, the knife-edged dividing line between lunar day and night. The Alps had fallen behind us, and we

were tearing across a flat, barren plane of rock mottled in every shade of gray you could imagine. I wondered if the Tsarina was just going to keep going round and round the Moon, practically scraping the belly of her ship as she did. What was her endgame here?

“Van, I’ve got decent firing solutions here,” Torina said. “What do you want to do?”

Before I could answer, Netty-P spoke up. “I’ve isolated one of the other voices, Van. It’s Cibilax.”

I nodded. I should have been surprised, but really, I wasn’t. What I was, was more determined than ever to take the ship ahead of us intact, its crew alive. This was a case of answers being far more important than just making a destructive point. “I’m guessing Creegus is dead, then, so we can add murder to the growing list of charges against Cibilax,” I said. “Although it makes sense, doesn’t it?

All these threads we’ve been tugging for months or years now, they’re all starting to weave themselves together—”

“Van, the Tsarina’s ship is making a break for it,” Netty-P said. Sure enough, as soon as she crossed the terminator, her drive ran up to full power, bathing the lunar surface in fusion glare. Her ship shot away, heading for space on a course directly away from Earth. I didn’t hesitate following her maneuver. Now that she was free of the surface clutter from the Moon, we could refine our targeting, take out her engines, then overtake her and—

“Sorry, Tudor,” the Tsarina said. “This little affair might not have worked out as I’d hoped, but you’re going to walk away from it empty-handed, too.”

“I don’t know, we’ve killed two of your ships and probably a third. I’d say the scoreboard favors us.”

“You ever play chess, Tudor?

That’s what pawns are for—sacrificing. As long as they advance their board position when they die, that’s all that matters.”

I rolled my eyes. Villains and their monologues. “Do tell. So how has your board position been, um, advanced here today?”

“By setting things up to reveal something to you. Something you’re not going to like. Something that’s going to cost you some sleep.”

“Uh-huh. And that would be?”

“This,” the Tsarina said—and then her ship blurred into a diffuse smear and vanished. For a moment, we all just sat, staring. I glanced at the tactical overlay, but it only confirmed what I’d just seen. The Tsarina and her ship—and whatever answers it contained—was gone. “Did she just—?” Torina began. “She did,” Funboy confirmed. I just nodded. The Tsarina had a combi-drive of her own. WE RAISED the Fafnir’s orbit, brought her completely around the Moon, and emerged back onto the day-side where the battle had wound down. We flew on mostly in silence, digesting the fact that one of our enemies had a combi-drive. It had been inevitable, I suppose—it was too much of an advantage for our opponents to let us have, without trying to get one for themselves. And now, they apparently had. How, I had no idea. But I was going to find out. It was about the time the Sun blazed over the lunar horizon that it struck me that we hadn’t heard from Icky for a while. I assumed she’d been working away on our own combi-drive and didn’t want to break her concentration, but that seemed moot now. “Icky, what’s your status back there?”

Silence. I tensed. So did the others. “Icky?”

Nothing. “On my way,” Perry said, flinging himself into the air and flying aft. We waited. I took in the tactical situation. The Feral ship that was Jupiter bound had altered course, clearly heading for a twist point. My mother and B were both working damage control on their ships. Only one of the three that had originally charged us from the Moon remained more or less intact, the one that I’d seen die and go dark. It hadn’t launched escape pods or anything, though, so its crew was still on board, though whether dead or alive we couldn’t tell. “Van, Icky’s down,” Perry said flatly. Funboy immediately unstrapped and hurried back. I forced myself to wait in the cockpit with Torina. For all we knew, the Tsarina had more surprises in store for us, so we couldn’t let our guard down or just assume the fight was over. Time passed. No more threats materialized, but we stayed vigilant anyway. Finally, just as I was about to demand an update from Funboy, he spoke up. I braced myself for the worst, and felt Torina do the same. Icky had been stuck down by a stray piece of shrapnel. Or something in the combi-drive, a system she’d even said wasn’t really in her wheelhouse, had injured her—or worse. Her suit had been compromised somehow—

“There are no signs of trauma. Her suit integrity is intact. Perry is detecting no unusual levels of radiation or other environmental threats. She appears to have —fallen unconscious,” Funboy reported. I glanced at Torina, who gave a worried, wide-eyed look back at me through her visor. “Can you revive her?” I asked. “I will attempt it, but there’s little I can do until the ship is repressurized and I can remove her suit.”

I turned to Netty-P, who said, “Repressurizing now, boss.”

In the meantime, I set course to rendezvous with B. She was the best medical care around. As I applied thrust, I finally remembered to check in with Rab. “Rab, what’s your status?

And sorry for not asking sooner, but we’ve been kinda busy up here.”

“Well, Van, as we all worried, we lost the workboat in that storm. So I’m the one who’s really sorry,” he replied. “The good news is that there’s no sign of it anywhere near your farm,”

Essie clarified. Gabriella joined in. “I’m over—a bunch of mountains and some desert. The map calls it Nevada. I’ve got active scanners going, looking from, uh, somewhere near that place to the north, called Canada, down to the cloud cover south of me. No signs of it, so if it kept coming east, it’s still somewhere down in those clouds and ground clutter.”

I sighed. “Okay, thanks, folks. Just keep doing what you’re doing and let me know right away if you get any hits.”

“Van, Perry just told us about Icky,” Gabby said. “What’s going on?”

“Not sure. We’re taking her to B. As soon as we have word of that, we’ll let you guys know.”

EPILOGUE

B’S SHIP smelled of burned electronics and insulation, the residue of battle damage the air-purifiers were working hard to dispel. She’d taken a few good hits and had two compartments open to vacuum but had repressurized her ship. Helped by her crew, we’d laboriously hauled Icky through the airlock and manhandled her into the treatment bay. B had then shooed us all out while she worked. My mother had come aboard as well. While we waited, I turned to her for some answers. “Tell me about this Tsarina.”

My mother crossed her arms. “Where do I start?

Even among the Ferals, she was a piece of work. Ambitious, ruthless, prone to violence—” She gave a rueful smile. “Even more than me. That’s probably why she and I never got along, and why we generally kept clear of one another.”

“So what did she do to get thrown out of the club?” Torina asked. “Oh, she killed a planet, and everyone on it.”

We just stared at her. She shrugged. “Yeah, that’s how most of the rest of us felt about it, too. I mean, we weren’t nice people, but that—that crosses a line.”

“Oh, I think that wipes the line away, draws a new one, wipes that one away and draws a few more, and crosses them, too,” I said, then stiffened. “Wait. Which planet did she wipe out?”

“One on the edge of known space, that was wiped off the charts as a—

well, not to put too fine a point on it, a cover-up by the GKU.”

“Would this planet happen to be—Perry, what’s the real designation for Shhh?

The one we generated, or registered?

Did that happen?”

“Yup. Took about ten seconds. It’s in the books, boss, courtesy of Anvil Dark. They’ll let earth in on our declaration, too.”

“Care to share this magical name?” I asked. “HD 69830-A-1,” Perry said, then showed the location on screen. “There’s some digital trail for this planet, though. Joceyln, what is it?”

My mother was blinking in surprise, her eyes glued to the screen. When she looked away, it was the face of someone sifting bad memories. “I know that place. All of us do. I mean, them. The ferals, that is.”

I nodded. Another of those threads was busy weaving itself into the rest. “It’s been brought to my attention, yeah.”

“By who?

And what’s this about it being called—what did you say?

Shhh?” My mom was sitting forward, wholly engaged in the thread that was weaving itself ever deeper into our lives. I sighed. “A long story, and one I’m keeping inside my crew for now, Mom. No offense, but the smaller the circle of knowledge—”

She smiled. “I get it. We all have our secrets.”

“So that makes this Tsarina guilty of genocide. Charming,” Torina said. “And theft, hijacking, piracy, cultural crimes, and probably unpaid parking tickets, too,” my mother replied. “Well, if the Tsarina has some interest—some vile, genocidal interest—

in that planet, and we do, too, then I see where this is going to go.”

“Straight to hell?” Perry offered. “Worse. Since I’m assuming the Tsarina is a major mover behind the True Direction, that means she’s probably got her hooks into Anvil Dark—

take Casaril, for example. And that’s starting to lean in the direction of war. Maybe even civil war, splitting the Guild and the GKU.”

“Again, based on what Witt intimated,” Torina said. “Yeah. Again. War, legal strife, diplomatic uproar across known space

—”

“And she’s got at least one combi-drive to back it all up,” Torina added. “Yeah. I would love to know where the hell she got that.” I sighed again. “Anyway, I can’t help thinking we need to start looking at this from a perspective that goes beyond the Guild and the GKU. We need to start thinking of ourselves as a—a polity, an organized body in our own right.”

No one spoke. They just looked at me, expectant, waiting for me to go on. So I did. “I’m a Master Adept, which gives me a lot of autonomy. My crew—

well, you guys are the best there is. We have Fort Cantullin, a de facto military base, small but very effective. We’ve got people working in food science, arms, and communications, and we have allies—powerful ones, like the Schegith, Linulla, and the Conoku.” I glanced at my mother. “Along with Helso and her forces, we have others in the Guild and the GKU. At least, I hope so.”

My mother smiled and nodded. “Like I said, the Tsarina and I don’t get along. I’d be more than happy to see her turned to glowing vapor.”

I smiled gratefully back, then glanced at Perry. I didn’t say anything, though. The AIs were an ally I wasn’t going to mention to anyone, not even Torina. Not yet. “You’re saying—what, that we have a nation, at least sort of?” Torina asked. “I am indeed, love, and I think we need to start looking at the future through that very lens. Gramps once told me a man should be prepared to move three times in his life, because you can never count on seventy-five years of stability and peace. Not in your own life, or anyone else’s.”

“You plan to make Shhh part of that, don’t you?” Perry asked. “I do. And that brings us back to where we started this conversation—

accepting that we’re likely going to be going to war with the Tsarina and whoever’s supporting her.” I sniffed. “Well, at least we have a name to stick on the bad guys now—”

The door to the treatment bay slid open, and B emerged, looking solemn. We all tensed and faced her. “Well?

How is she?” I asked her. “Van, you need to contact Paxomar immediately.”

My heart sank. “Oh, no. What is it?

What’s wrong?

What do I tell him?”

“That he needs to buy some cigars.”

“That he—wait. What?”

B grinned, and her antennae wiggled. “Cigars. Icky can’t smoke them, though. A girl in her condition shouldn’t be smoking or drinking booze.”

“In her condition—wait, B, are you saying that Icky’s—?”

“Bun in the oven, knocked up, eating for two, however you want to put it. In other words, Icky is good and pregnant.”

There was a moment of deep, stunned silence and spreading grins. Perry was the one who finally broke it. “I gotta ask. She hates pants. So—”

“Think carefully, bird,” Torina advised, her lips half-curled. Funboy heaved a sigh, then spread his arms in a question. “I understand your concern. Given the nature of Icrul’s preference for quasi-nude awkwardness—”

“There’s a phrase I didn’t expect about my crew,” I mumbled. Funboy gave me a long-suffering gimlet eye, then went on. “Perry is asking a simple question. Will Icky’s babies wear diapers?”

The ship thrummed around us with quiet purpose, but other than that, there was silence. I turned to Funboy. “Um—I don’t know?”

Icky snorted and complained from the other cabin, her voice rising to gale force. “I said I’m hungry and I have to pee!”

Funboy’s voice was low, almost inaudible. “Diaperless fuzzed beasties with limited hygiene and the run of this ship?

Oh, dear.”

I put a hand on his small shoulder, then gave him my most winning smile. “As an honorary uncle, let me tell you about something called baby wipes.”