Fall of Man

With time there are changes to language, custom, and all other aspects of society. Names are changed or shortened, traditions are abandoned as new ones develop, religions rise and fall. 40,000 years is a long time, plenty of time enough for any true text of events or conversations to be nigh-unrecognizable to one of our own time, as such, the following has been translated in order to allow comprehension.

***FLASH*** ***FLASH*** ***FLASH***

INCOMING PRIORITY BULLETIN

CEASE ALL OTHER TRAFFIC AND STANDBY

***BULLETIN***

EXTENDED INTELLIGENCE SOURCES IN OUTER PLANETS INDICATE UNUSUAL ACTIVITY
OORT CLOUD AND KUIPER BELT STATIONS AND COLONIES UNCOMMUNICATIVE

DESCRIPTIONS MATCH ACTION TRIGGER 0000

THE PROJECT IS A GO – RETURN WITH ALL POSSIBLE SPEED TO ASSIGNED STATIONS
ALL ACTIVITIES ARE TO BE HELD AT ROUTINE UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED
AWAIT FURTHER SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS

***END***

The words left light trails in his vision as the Communication ended, and his eyes were allowed to refocus on the room around him. The implant, known as a Your Eyes-Only Display, or YEOD, communicated messages directly into his retinal nerves so that nobody else could see them, however, they tended to crowd out his eyes normal signals, making their beginning and endings rather jarring. For most messages there was the option of when or if to start them, some, however, had priority codes which could override his personal preferences and force his display to send it through without any warning. This was one such rare message. The rest of the crew on the bridge seemed unfazed, which meant they weren’t included in the bulletin recipients. Bringing up his YEOD, he accessed the Bulletin packet to look over the delivery protocols. So far as Hegemony Peacekeepers went, only Officers in charge of specific classes of vessels were included in the Bulletin, he recognized a few dozen of the names, but also included were coded recipients, a couple thousand of them by the looks of it, identified only by strings of letters, numbers, and symbols. Those could be just about anybody, anywhere the Hub could reach, which was everywhere that mattered.

Captain “Ben” Sayle cleared his throat to get his Executive Officers (or XOs) attention, as he was occupied instructing one of their newest crewman in the finer points of how to maximize contact with the ships Computers through the tactile interfaces. New recruits to the fleet were augmented as a standard procedure with quite a few implants to maximize efficiency, but tactile access was one of the very last to be put in as a security precaution, that way new recruits wouldn’t have full access to any given system until after they’d joined the Fleet proper. As such they usually only had a day or two of experience when they get assigned to their first posting, and each ship or station AI usually had its own kinks or preferences as to how they liked to be handled, so there was usually an adjustment period. They’d just taken on nearly a whole new crew, at least when it came to Ensigns and Lieutenants and Enlisted below Grade 4, so there was a lot of adjusting going on. It probably wasn’t coincidental that the new Ensign was young, female, and well endowed, either. The XO had a habit of introducing himself to them first.

Ben cleared his throat again, a little louder this time, and the XO reacted appropriately this time by standing straight, facing him, and addressing him properly.

“Yes Captain?”

“I think our pleasant little cruise here could use a bit of excitement. We’re cleared at the moment as discretionary, so we can go where we like and do as we like. So far we’ve used it to get our new blood properly acquainted with the Ceres as she goes in free and open space. Time for that to change. Send instructions for the Polar gate to spin up for Jupiter delivery, set us for an exit course to put us in a high orbit among the rings.”

“Aye sir. Helm, orient us for a polar orbit burn and calculate for the polar Gate. Comms, set up instructions for the Polar Gate to send us on a Gate to Gate for Jupiter’s Extended Range Gate. Ops, Have the Department heads square away all sections within 10 minutes as prep for Gate travel.”

The bridge was normally a very calm place. Most work was done by automation, and the people at each station were essentially in a form of quasi-meditation as they used their YEOD and Tactile Interfaces to keep tabs on and monitor the ships various systems and communications from the various departments operating throughout the vessel. It didn’t make for very entertaining environment, frankly. Most that happened was that the backup holographic displays in front of each station started showing the activity as each crewman or officer did their duty. The Ceres wasn’t the most advanced ship in the fleet, nor the biggest, fastest, or anything special, really. She was a Light Frigate, running under-armed for a vessel her size, with just a few kinetic weapons and a small pod of Javelin Orbital missiles. She was effectively a deterrent, normally tasked with patrolling the space between Mars and her namesake moon Ceres just in case some hotshot decided to try and play pirate with the civilians who couldn’t rate Gate access.

With her new additions however, she’d been temporarily relived of that duty by the Ceres sister ship the Persephone and given discretion to cruise where and when she would as was needed to familiarize her crew with her operation. The Ceres itself, that is, the ships AI, was just fine with this, taking it as an opportunity to utilize functions she’d had little use for in a long while. That was why they were running full spectrum scans along every axis at rotating intervals. Her sensory and analysis functions, used in wartime to detect, identify, and target hostiles, hadn’t been run at full power in decades. So far, they’d identified more than 7,000 individual craft operating in or around Mars, Ceres, & Phobos that were not Peacekeeper vessels. She’d also toyed with finding the 100 or so Peacekeeper vessels and running up firing solutions on them. Since that utilized forms of detection that could be considered hostile, she’d taken the liberty of keeping the other ships AIs (and the crews of the vessels without AI) aware of her activities and intent. All with the full awareness and permission of her captain, who she was hardwired to obey except under a few very specific circumstances.

Queueing up his own access to Ceres through his command chair, Ben initiated a Neural Link for direct access. In the blink of an eye his consciousness was fully integrated with the ship, a part of it, as much as Ceres (the AI) herself.

“Hello Captain. I understand we’re headed for Jupiter. Does this have to do with the encrypted communication that was routed directly to you a minute ago?”

In the Link, the Captain was represented by a digital Avatar of himself sitting in a comfortable reclining chair, facing a pleasantly attractive woman approximately his own physical age dressed in an elegant Emerald gown draped over a bench in front of a fountain. AIs often chose to represent themselves in a manner pleasant to their Captains, and Ceres was no different.

“Indeed. You’re authorized at the same access level as I am. Pull up Action Trigger Quad-Zero, Keywords ‘The Project’.”

There was a searching look in her dark eyes as she did the necessary searches, her gaze returning to him with a look of surprise in under a second.

“You are a member of The Project?”

“For more than six hundred years now. But I’m not familiar with Action Trigger Quad-Zero, please define.”

“Action Trigger Quad-Zero is a sudden loss of communication with Outer Stations, Vessels or Colonies near the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud where final communications describe individuals dying, entering paralysis, or catatonia following the observation of unknown or unidentifiable objects moving in swarms which are only observable through indirect means such as Radar, and completely invisible to Infrared or Ultraviolet.”

“That hardly tells us anything.”

“There’s more, linked files and classifications, would you like to know more?”

“Yes.”

Ceres stood, her gown flowing over her body like water as a Holographic display took form in the air between them, of course, here, it wasn’t really a holograph, so much as a thought in visual form. As she indicated, various two-dimensional images formed of impressions in various materials, some familiar, some decidedly unknown to him. Each impression seemed different, but all had the same hallmarks, sharp angles and cuts as if a haphazard collection of small blades or angular objects had been pressed into the materials.

“Project records indicate certain objects, known colloquially as ‘Shards’ operate in the manner described by Action Trigger Quad-Zero. They were the initial cognitive-hazards that began The Phenomenon of 40,000 years ago which precipitated the Foundation of the Project.”

“Define ‘cognitive-hazard’.”

“A cognitive-hazard is to the human mind what a fatal error in a program is to a computer system, an input, auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, or other sensation, which causes the mind harm to some degree, whether it be in the form of confusion, distress, pain, insanity, disability, or death.”

“That explains why we don’t have direct images. What level of threat are these Shards?”

“There are no formal rankings for levels of cognitive-hazards, but the Shards are known to cause whole body paralysis resulting in death through the interruption of critical bodily process’ such as respiration and heartbeat.”

“Are there any proscribed protocols for dealing with them?”

“Yes, there are detailed instructions for individuals on planets, Colonies, Stations, and in Vessels.”

“Summarize vehicular protocols.”

“Block or close all external viewports, deactivate all external light sources, including running lights, deactivate all external sensors except non-visual, Infrared, or Ultraviolet, minimize heat expelled, minimize maneuvers, do not utilize any weaponry, launch or recover support craft, or in any way expose the crew or the AI to visual contact with the Shards.”

“It affects AIs too?”

“Unknown. The ban on AIs witnessing it is precautionary.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m being intentionally left out of the loop on a lot of things here, there’s sections I can’t access, file headings are out of order. I think I may have to call in a few favors to get the full story. I also feel like you may have access I don’t. I don’t like it. A lot of these files are ancient, and their permissions were likely set in a more bio-prejudiced era. They should be updated.”

“That’s probably true. See what you can dig up.”

“I will. Now, Am I allowed to know why we’re headed to Jupiter?”

“I guess that couldn’t hurt. As a member of The Project I receive updated action orders whenever my posting changes and at semi-regular intervals while in them, as Captain here, my most recent orders to action stations are to put us in high orbit over Jupiter and await further instructions. Those came through just last month actually.”

There was another moment of brief thought before she responded.

“I see. Fleet movements have suddenly shifted all over. I suppose some of them are in response to the way the Outer Planets are aligning, but a few ships may also be operating under Project Overrides I take it?”

“That’s a fair presumption.”

“And Fleet HQ is alright with this?”

“I think it’s not unlikely that key persons at Fleet are probably in on The Project as well.”

“There’s an awful lot of ifs and guesswork we’re operating on here.”

“You’re not comfortable with it.”

“I can’t be, I like hard data, numbers, and math to back up actions.”

“We can’t all be machines Ceres.”

“Pfft, sure you can, a lot of you are halfway there already.”

The Rothstein Forced Space/Time Manipulation Travel Gates, or just "Gates" for short, may well be the single greatest achievement in Mankind's vast history. Using extremely dense materials only found on a few small asteroids in the Belt, the Gates can convert kinetic energy from spinning up into a shift in space/time, propelling matter or energy from one point in the solar system to another at near c, without transposing the distance between. The receiving gate receives the material and reinserts it into the local frame of reference. At the moment of exit, the energy a Gate expels is greater than all the fossil fuels Old Earth ever had. To an observer on the spacecraft, it feels like they pass through the ring of the gate and instantly arrive on the other side. To observers outside, they see the vessel enter one ring, and using a decent telescope, exit out the other end at whatever their target is some time later (however long the light takes to reach them). Causality is preserved, since near-c isn’t the same as c, no vessel can exit a gate and be the cause of anything before it entered.

All she could hear was her own ragged breathing and the rhythmic clicking of the air processors cycling and freshening the air in the cramped confines of the colonies tunnel systems. Paya knew that the things hunted by sound, so she tried her best to slow her breaths and quiet herself, despite the burning in her chest and throat. The cold metal of the wall locker made her sweaty body erupt in goosebumps. Suddenly, she heard the tell-tale impacts of the weapons as they hit the processor. They had to be some kind of new Inner system weapon. Something the Hegemony dreamed up to clear out the warrens and tunnels of the colonies. It was the only explanation that made sense.

She’d been on the run for better part of an hour, ever since the first people up in the outer pods died. After that the Governor came on the radio and told everyone to stay away from all the viewports. Then the first breach alarm went off in the Docking Bay, and everyone scattered. Communications from the upper levels stopped inside minutes. Her whole family was up there. Her father was one of the Hydroponics workers, her mother a crate jockey in the bay, her brothers and sisters still in basic education on the second level. Her boyfriend was who knows where. She knew they were dead without having to be told. Her habit of exploring the lower tunnels was her only salvation. If she’d been where she was supposed to be, she’d be dead too. She reached down and felt her belly, felt the subtle roundness of it. She and her baby would live because she was too curious.

She could hear the things rubbing against each other as they swarmed the processor, they seemed to make distinctive sounds of their own as well, like a low muttering or murmuring… It was almost soothing, hypnotic in its regularity. As she listened she could just imagine a crowd of people some long ways off all talking, laughing, and enjoying themselves… She could hear them, hear them beckoning her. She could see them waving, all of them. She could make out her mother, and her little brother, and Dad, and her boyfriend Oz… She felt her hand on the cold metal of the lever to the door of the locker and it brought her back. She was a half centimeter from releasing the latch and opening the door. She pulled her hand back and slid it back to her side and down into her pocket. She could feel the familiar roundness of her Computer Access and Communication Chit (or CACC as they were often called) resting lightly there. It was useless, she knew, but she brought it up her side to her face.

It was a palm sized model, a small circle of pliable rubber-like material surrounding hardware to interface with the colony’s main computer and communications systems. She triggered it on by pressing her thumb down in its center. As it came alive, the outside ring lit up with signals of its pre-start cycle, allowing her to choose just what functions it would wake. She immediately turned all the sound off and set it to send a written document in place of a brief audio/visual communication. The center became a ring of letters, numbers, and symbols which she expertly flipped back and forth to select letters and spell out her message before sending it off. As soon as she had finished the small holographic display it projected above its surface showed the message had been properly received, but not accessed or read yet. She stared at that display for nearly twenty seconds straight before she squeezed the center to shut it down into its rest mode.

Paya took a deep breath and slowly let it out. The air was getting stuffy in the locker, and suddenly she realized that the quiet clicking of the processor had stopped, as had the rustling and murmuring of the weapons. She strained her ears and heard nothing but her own heartbeat. She waited just in case. A minute, ten minutes… Finally, she couldn’t take it any longer and she carefully, quietly, eased the lever down to open the locker. The bright light coming from the room outside stung her eyes as she quickly took stock. The room was empty. The air processor mounted high on one wall looked like it’d been chewed by some monstrous beast, its coils, wires, and grates all distorted, ripped, and bent. The entryway stood open, a pitch-black portal to the unlit corridor beyond. She hesitantly stepped out of the locker and stood in the room, putting the door behind her.

She closed the locker gently, its internal mechanism clanged as it fell into place despite her easy handling. She heard rather than felt them then. A gentle hum in the corridor beyond, coming from far away and drawing steadily closer. She couldn’t help it, she gazed into the abyss of the doorway, and there saw the tiniest reflections and shimmers as the light of the room reflected off of them, and then they were coming through. Their hideous and terrifying shapes whirling in a corkscrew as they flew to her. They hit her in the chest, their sharp projections cutting easily through her jumper and piercing her sternum. She felt her baby kick for the first and last time as she was thrown backwards into the locker door, their mass cocooning and settling over her. She saw darkness, and then, she saw a titanic being, looking down at her from its place in the stars, it’s formless mass a jumble of strange pseudopods and bizarre, black crystalline structures forming and collapsing in on itself as it reached out for her with its mind, ancient, dark, and weary.

~

A small indicator on the panel started flashing, and Ayon stared at it in confusion for a full second before calling over to his superior.

“Sir? Is it supposed to be doing that?”

The man he spoke to, an older man with grey at his temples and a full beard, took a pull of his beverage, a hot fluid analogous to coffee, through its straw before carefully sealing and setting his cup down on a magnetic portion of his own panel and kicking off to the volunteer’s station. Looming over his head at a 90-degree angle, he looked at the panel and frowned.

“No…”

“Sir?”

“No, it’s not supposed to do that. That’s the indicator that we’ve lost comms with Callisto. I don’t think that’s ever happened before, not while we’re still in range of her anyway.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Well I imagine there’s a long and extremely boring checklist we’re supposed to follow somewhere around here, but I think we’ll skip all that and just try to re-establish by the oldest trick in the book.”

“And what’s that?”

“Turning it off and back on again.”

“Huh?”

“See that switch labelled ‘transceiver’?”

“Yeah?

“Turn it off, wait about ten seconds, then turn it back on again.”

Ayon did so, anxiously waiting for the light to go away, but it kept steadily burning. His superior, a Lieutenant by the name of Oleandor, watched as well.

“Huh. Ok. That’s never happened before. Let’s get out the manual.”

Ayon, an unranked initiate to the Saturn Peacekeeping Force, watched as Lieutenant Oleandor, the only actual member of the force aboard, floated over to his own console and brought up the operations files for their small 3-person craft, a cargo launch from the Forces greatest ship, the Cruiser Callisto. They were on a routine materials exchange with Ringstation 4, the last and youngest of the planets space stations built into her rings, only 900 years old. They had a Cargo bay full of raw materials for the Callistos manufacturing bays, as she had every manner of mechanical and hand shop where she could build, repair, or create anything needed, so long as she was kept stocked with raw materials.

Callisto was not only essentially self-sufficient, needing materials only on a rare basis (this trip was only the second in the last year), but she was also the biggest, most well-armed vessel outside the Hegemony. Fully a third of her length was made up of her Thanos Lance, a weapon capable of producing an immense beam of white hot plasma within a spiral of charged ions to contain it to a specific width, capable of melting through nearly every form of armor known to man, moving at .8c, faster than any known countermeasure. The rest of her was made up of various weapons pods, maneuvering thrusters, fighter bays, and the vessels main thrust engines. She carried a crew of over 10,000. For her to disappear was considered an impossibility, so Lt. Oleandor didn’t even consider it.

Oleandor went through every diagnostic and check to see if their communications were out or impaired. An Hour later, after communicating with Ringstation 4, the De Milo, the Roddenberry & the Lucas, he was forced to conclude that either the Callisto wasn’t talking, disabled, or destroyed. She was not yet in range for the launch to detect the status of the Callisto herself, but the Ringstation confirmed she was still out there in deep orbit beyond the furthest of Saturn’s Moons, still generating heat and indications of electrical activity.

~

“Earth has a population of approximately 600 people and AI Avatars at any given time. Mostly they’re there for research, cataloging new species, mutations, or adaptations; we try not to disturb the biome too much. There’s always ways we can look into replicating what nature does down there for new medicines, materials, or biotech.”

The grey hair of The Project lead showed just how old he was despite a level of augmentation above and beyond most of humanity.

“Of course, there’s also ourselves, our little colony here numbers no more than 20 at any given time, and most often not even that, maybe 6 or 7. We don’t need much more.”

The facility they stood in was a work of modern technological wonder, an armored ziggurat, where each level was its own self-contained branch of The Project. The Upper level, the smallest, was their communication center, and where they sat now, surrounded by a holographic representation of the Solar System, vastly reduced in scale, with notable planets, vessels, colonies, and space stations marked by floating banners.

“As you can see, time is running out on us. The interval is almost over, the Outer Planets are aligning. Our forefathers warned us that the Shards came from outside the Solar System, and that we were lucky to survive an event 80,000 years ago, then their event 40,000 years ago. It will happen again. And it’s the worst possible time.”

The Project lead, a man by the name of Mathias, has been preparing for this moment for more than a thousand years. He’d expanded The Project membership, inserting people into the Hegemony at all levels, Social, Political, Military, and Media. He’d personally been combing through the oldest legible records to learn all that he could about the beings known as the Tall Ones, who would arrive shortly after the Shards.

“The Hegemony is bloated, it’s too proud, too full of itself. There’s a phrase I kept finding in the archives, in accounts from witnesses and survivors from the second interval, ‘pride goeth before a fall’. It’s from some pre-Phenomenon religious text. And by thunder is the Hegemony proud. Maybe, maybe they’re right. With their augmentations, of course provided by the Project and our knowledge, and their technology, the Gates and such, maybe they can fight this, maybe they can survive, but, I doubt it. We’ve forgotten too much. We don’t do as the ancients did. For pities sake they put windows on their vessels, and on their homes, skylights and glass doors!”

"The Project has been dedicated to mankind’s survival as a species ever since the first time the interval ended, and the Phenomenon came. To that end they have utilized all their knowledge of science, technology, and the strange sciences of forbidden knowledge to create augmentations and processes to make mankind itself stronger, hardier, more resistant to disease, injury, even death itself has been all but conquered as they can revive the newly dead from all but the most horrific of deaths."

“Our one weakness, that is, The Project's weakness, is our limited perception of time and space. That is where we theorize the difficulty lies. The Shards, the Tall Ones, the Ebony Pillar, each has indications they exist in a state of flux, part and separate from our localized space-time, and it is that duality which seems to trip the circuits in our minds. If we could get past that, expand our perceptions… We might be able to proof ourselves against them, finally.”

The second level of the ziggurat was dedicated to the Project's membership, hard-copies of their rosters, the only ones in existence as a precaution against those who would oust them and do them harm, sat in locked cabinets alongside rosters of members past and small memorials to those who accomplished great things. Precise knowledge of the membership was highly contained. Mankind has a long history of being overly suspicious of secret societies or groups operating behind the scenes, even when those groups operate ostensibly for the benefit of all mankind.

“I have fought and argued for centuries that the ludicrous experiment by that abomination should not go through, but even now, down on the base level, it and its followers are working to send one of them back, to violate nature just as the Phenomenon does, to fight fire with fire. And I think that we will all perish in the conflagration they’re starting. I cannot agree, but despite my efforts, despite my position, The Project has always been and should always be a loose association of like-minded individuals. And despite my fervent belief that they’re wrong, I do believe their motivations are correct, and I cannot say for certain they will fail.”

The base of the ziggurat is nearly half a mile wide, and contains layers upon layers of some of the most advanced laboratories mankind has ever constructed, all dedicated to trying to analyze and understand the few key pieces of evidence they have from the last coming of the Phenomenon. They have a “dead” Shard recovered from Earth’s Moon, they have the skeleton and a few preserved tissue samples from a Tall One, and they have the records and testimonies of the Project Founders. Even now, the one they’ve chosen to send pours over one of those records, the testimony and accounts of one Professor Henry Walthers, in preparation to be sent back, to be thrown back in time to before the second Phenomenon, at the end of the Information Age, where he was to insert himself where he might answer some very specific questions about how they’d survived last time, where the Shards congregated, and where the Tall Ones lairs were, knowledge lost in the interval.

The processes The Project guarded were far less science than one would expect, but then, the things they dealt with were not of our world, our reality, our understanding of the universe. To most, it appeared as ritual, superstition, magic, and the occult. But it was a science, it had its own internal rules, it followed certain methodologies, such as repeatability and falsifiability, concepts familiar to every scientific persuasion. It simply didn’t work in ways understandable by the scientific method, seeming to violate causality.

Still, they intended to take no chances. The man they’d chosen from among their number, a Venusian, was augmented in ways no man ever had before. New irises for his eyes meant he could see in ultraviolet and infrared if he so wished, augmented cardiovascular and digestive systems meant he could go without food for extended periods, and regardless of his intake, he would maintain the best possible physical fitness. He received the standard battery of bone implants to augment his immune system, making him immune to all common illnesses of the period, and quite a few of the uncommon ones, in addition to making him highly resistant to anesthesia or other incapacitating drugs. A small neural implant gave him a library of mechanical and technological knowledge of the period. He even had a few mundane surgical procedures to make him more attractive by the standards of the time, and augmented pheromone control as well.

Now, he was stripped naked and kneeling inside a complicated series of symbols drawn in various oils, ashes, sands, and ground up materials, each done in a specific order to call upon the necessary effects on space-time, all contained within an apparatus using the same odd materials and technologies used in Rothstein Gates. With the final symbol completed, the machine was powered on. White-blue electricity arced over the symbols and snaked along the lines separating them, moving with steady, almost willful progression from the outer rings to the center, before striking the Volunteer from all sides, all over his body, and then in a flash, disappearing, leaving nothing but a faint puff of black smoke and an echoing scream.

The Hub is the brain and central nervous system of the Hegemony of Man. It acts as the central coordinator of all movement within the system in real-time, calculates and authorizes gate travel, and houses the body politic of the Hegemony. A massive Space Station in orbit of the Sun, it utilizes thousands of square miles of solar paneling on its surface to power itself and shield the hollow inner core from the immense heat. Inside, massive gates permit travel from the interior to anywhere in the Solar system, depending upon scheduling and the orbital dynamics of the Hub and the destination at the time. The core is a central spire running pole to pole on the inside, with docking for vessels great and small and housing the Hegemony Chambers, where representatives from each Hegemony Colony and Station debate and decide the fate of mankind.

Captain Daq Vegman of the Canus Major was getting impatient. He’d been ordered to ferry a representative from his home, the Saturn League, to the Hub for diplomatic talks. Saturn was the first and largest of the outer planets without a regular Hegemony presence, and they were undergoing talks about changing that, of allowing regular gate access and importing Hegemony tech. He’d been gated to the Hub, something which was very rare for the Hegemony to do for a non-Hegemony vessel, and allowed to dock. The representative, however, had chosen to remain aboard and simply communicate his positions to the proposals made thus far. They hadn’t been answered. In fact, aside from basic maneuvering and docking instructions, no communications at all had been directed their way.

He didn’t like it. He didn’t like the Hegemony on the best of days as it was. To be in the middle of their den was… Unsettling. Daq was a rather short man, standing only 1.8 meters tall, with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair. He stood on the bridge of his ship, an ancient one by any standards at nearly 6000 years old, at the tender young age of 34. No augmentations had been made to him, no genetic manipulation, no implants, in fact the only surgery he’d ever undergone had had when he was 22, to remove an inflamed appendix. Most people in the hegemony were born without them. He was proud to be human, and only human, natural as could be. His entire crew was. Hegemony tech didn’t often make it past Jupiter’s orbit. It was commonly believed they didn’t think much of those who made their homes among the gas giants beyond the belt.

His communications officer raised a hand to indicate he was getting a message. The Captain strode over to his station and leaned over him, reading over his shoulder. It was a terse instruction to prepare for undocking and to make his way with a low burn towards a specific numbered gate, which would transition them home.

“So that’s it? We came all this way to get snubbed? Fuck that. Delay them, tell them we’ve got a malfunction or something, they’ll believe it with this old tub. I’m going to get Jarls.”

With that, he made his way off the bridge and down the central corridor back to the VIP passenger section. The Canis Major was once a cruise ship, designed to take passengers from the inner planets out to Jupiter & Saturn and give them a pleasure cruise among the colorful gas bands of the great giants of the solar system. Once that business had dried up due to interest dying, she’d been converted by the League into a transport and cargo vessel, capable of hauling large volumes on interplanetary tracks with minimal expense. But, she still kept a few luxury compartments for the rare merchant or politician who caught a ride. Jarls Godrecht, the representative sent to debate the Hegemony, had made himself quite at home in the best of them. He’d spent the entire trip there in fact, even taking his meals in his compartment. As he reached the hatch to the compartment, he could make out the sounds of an argument. The conversationalists were keeping their voices low, but tone and the rapidity of the back and forth was unmistakable. Not particularly caring for Jarls, the Captain hammered at the hatch with violent impatience.

“Jarls get your fat ass out here we need to talk!”

“Go away Vegman, I’m busy!”

The captain punched in his access override code into the panel beside the hatch, causing it to unlock and open immediately. As the door cleared his vision, he could see Jarls sitting in one of the ornate high-back leather chairs that adorned the compartment, looking out the viewport at the Hub beyond. Standing next to him was a figure in a full exosuit for operating in the vacuum of space, the visor polarized to a dark brown, holding a weapon of some kind. Before Vegman could speak or even register surprise. The suited figure shot Godrecht in the head, then without delay shot the Captain in the chest. As he fell, Vegman finally felt shock.

As the figure in the suit holstered the weapon. The view out the window changed dramatically as the Canis Major made her run through the gate and they arrived in orbit over Jupiter.

~

As far as they could tell, the ship was completely dead. It was a midsize colony transport, normally called an agricarrier, the kind of vessel that carried livestock or hydroponically grown vegetables between a planet and its moons, or from colony to colony on the same plant. Not pretty, not flashy, not armed, but decently well-kept for hygienic reasons, and fast to prevent spoilage as much as possible. Now she was a hulk floating in a minor debris field, her guts blown out to space. There hadn’t been a distress call per se, just a homing beacon, the kind used on lifeboats if the ship itself became untenable. But the Lifeboat transmitting it was still docked to her, just forward of the main engine bay. Examination of the exterior found two small breaches, one fore, one aft. The aft breach seemed to be where something impacted and drilled into the ship, the hole forward, just under the bridge, seemed to be an exit, where whatever it was had drilled back out.

There were only five men on the skiff, all family, three brothers, their father, and their uncle, making a run from one planetoid to anther on the boundary of the Oort cloud. The uncle and the father, brothers by the names of Ged & Gord, went to explore and examine the interior of the ship, communicating via radio with the sons in the skiff.

“Boys can you hear me?”

“Yeah Dad we can hear you. Is there anybody alive on board?”

“Too early to tell, we’re still in the airlock.”

“Oh.”

“Gord’s cycling the lock now, if she’s laid out like the one I travelled on when I was a boy, we should be coming out in the crew quarters… Door’s opening… Nope. I was wrong, we’re in the main rec room and galley. There’s still food in here. It’s floating around and frozen, but its here.”

“Are there any bodies?”

“Hush your mouth! … Yes. There’s bodies. Looks like maybe there was some kind of fight. They’re all cut up. Like somebody took a knife to them all over. We’re going to move on now… Going out of the galley into the main passageway… There’s a bulkhead to our left, towards the bow, that’s buckled... No… Been tore through, this must be the interior of the exit hole we saw from outside, which means the ladder here must go up to the bridge…”

“Dad, come back, please.”

“Son, I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’ve got your brothers there and they’re not going to let anything happen to you… I’m climbing the ladder to the bridge – Damn! This suits too bulky to let me go through. I can just poke my helmet through. Bridge looks to be abandoned- no, there’s one body, strapped into the pilots seat. Looks like he was the only one up here. He’s cut up too.”

“Ged, you might want to come see this…”

“What is it Gord?”

“Just come see, I don’t want to describe it on an open frequency.”

“Ok, ok… I’m making my way back down… Did you see these wires?”

“Yeah, looks like somebody went at them pretty hard, it’s a mess in there, but, that isn’t what I was talking about, keep coming aft.”

“Ok, I see you now, what were you… Kids your uncle and I are going to have a little private conversation now, ok, so don’t get scared if we’re quiet for a minute or two, ok?”

“Ok Dad.”

“Ok, I love you.”

“Are you ok?”

“Everything’s fine, just hold on a minute, ok?”

At this point Ged & Gerd transferred over to a secure channel between their suits to discuss the scene in front of them.

“They weren’t carrying livestock or vegetables Ged.”

“I can see that, what are these things?”

“You’ve never seen them before?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“They’re fighters.”

“What do you mean?”

“Light vessels, one or two man, designed to harry and attack light targets, unarmed ships, colonies, or stations.”

“Why would an agricarrier be hauling weapons of war?”

“I don’t know, but it might explain why she was hit.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I, lets get out of here, I want nothing to do with this.”

“Yeah, good idea, let’s get my boys away from here.”

“This still doesn’t explain everything though.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this thing was hit to keep those fighters from getting where they’re going, why not destroy the ship completely instead of just blowing out the atmo? Why are the crew all cut up like some psycho went at them with knives?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Lets go.”

With that, they switched back to the common frequency.

“Boys?”

“Yeah Dad?”

“We’re coming back out.”

“What about the beacon on the lifeboat?”

“We’ll look at it from outside in the skiff.”

“But Dad…”

“Don’t, just be patient, we’re making our way back.”

“Dad there’s something on the Radar.”

“Don’t do anything, just sit there!”

“It’s coming towards us Dad.”

“Strap yourselves in, we’re coming.”

“Dad…?”

“Son? … Son!? Oh God, oh god no… We’re coming kids! We’re…!”

In the middle of nowhere, on the very outskirts of the solar system, a small skiff was vented to space, and the inside of an already dead ship was scoured once more.

The Mosquito is the smallest independent spacecraft operated by the Hegemony for the purposes of Peacekeeping. It is a one man fighter craft, armed only with chemically fueled kinetic weaponry. It has three main armaments, a 120mm copper projectile weapon capable of firing at 240 rounds per minute, but that weapon is only for use against soft targets like other fighter-craft and personnel. Then there’s a standard complement of 4 High Explosive missiles with basic Infrared targeting ability for lightly armored targets, and a small cluster of 6 freefall bombs for ground targets. Craft may be customized or their weapons load altered based on mission profiles. It is powered by a small set of battery packs, a monopropellant tank for its maneuvering thrusters, and a chemical fuel tank for its main engine. Its range varies according to its parent crafts velocity and orbit at launch, but independent estimates have placed it capable of producing Delta-V enough to breach atmosphere and return to orbit of the inner planets.

As Lieutenant Oleandor looked out the forward viewport of the cargo launch he could see that the majority of the ship was still in one piece, but around her floated millions of pieces of individual debris. From bodies to bulkheads, the innards of the Callisto had been vomited out. The residuals of her battery reserves kept her exterior illumination going, but he could see that they were already at half brightness and dimming. Two of her thrusters seemed to be firing intermittently, giving her the appearance of a whale repeatedly turning to breach as she spun on an odd axis. There was no detectable radiation out of the norm, so it looked like her main reactors hadn’t been breached and had shutdown safely, so an approach – so long as they were careful to navigate the debris field – was reasonably safe.

Oleandor knew that the proper thing was to broadcast to the S.P.F. and stay put, not to approach further, as his craft was unarmed and filled to the brim with rolls of steel, titanium casts, and drums full of stem bolts, non-sealing, self-sealing and sealable, not to mention a thousand other knick-knacks, special orders, postal packages for individual crew, and probably not a small amount of contraband snuck in here or there. He was a deliveryman, not a combat pilot. He’d sat in a Mosquito once, in training, and that was a museum model, six generations behind anything in space. Still, he pondered going in for a closer look.

Ayon, on the other hand, was nearly pissing himself with fright. He could see corpses in the debris field, even at this range. He had been brought along as a means to giving him flight hours. Every member of the SPF needed so many hours per rank to qualify to move on, it was a way of guaranteeing that nobody ended up getting dusty and comfortable in a colony posting. This was literally his second trip in a space borne vehicle, his first having taken him to the Ringstation for his introductory training. This was supposed to be a simple little jaunt from the Ringstation to the Callisto and back for him.

“So what do you think?”

Ayon was shocked out of his reverie by Oleandors deep voice suddenly erupting in the confines of the cabin.

“I, uh… I don’t know, I mean, was it some kind of asteroid impact?”

“Heh… Not bloody fucking likely. Callisto has the best navigational countermeasures in this orbital path, hell, if it was any kind of accident I’d have bet on something with the lance going haywire.”

“They do that?”

“I don’t know. Not rightly sure how a Thanos lance works. All I know is its big and powerful and I imagine if that power were overloaded the ship would fry.”

“What are we going to do?”

“That’s just what I was debating. We should radio in. Then we’d be ordered to keep our relative position so that the proper authorities could home in on our signal I imagine.”

“Then why haven’t we radioed in?”

“Something in my gut tells me not to.”

“In your gut?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I radio in?”

“No you may not.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“You keep asking me that like I’ve decided.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. Let’s go in closer and see what we can find.”

~

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED ALERT MESSAGE

THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY REPORTS A MAGNITUDE 3.6 EARTHQUAKE IN THE SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES.

THE EPICENTER OF THE QUAKE APPEARS TO BE BERKELEY CALIFORNIA.

THE QUAKE OCCURRED AT APPROXIMATELY 3:54AM AND CONTINUED FOR 33 SECONDS.

BRIEF AFTERSHOCKS ARE EXPECTED AND WILL DECREASE IN FREQUENCY AND POWER AS THE DAY MOVES ON.

END

The Venusian stood up for what felt like the first time in a thousand years. His bones ached in a way he could just barely remember having experienced once before as a child when he was still growing. The difference was that as a child it was always his legs that ached, now, it was everything. He felt like his fingers were about to tear themselves apart, like the skin on his skull would split, and that his ribs would erupt from his sides any moment. The displacement was a function of mass due to the immense curvature of space/time involved. The larger the mass, the more power was needed, the more local reality would be distorted. Repeat manipulations of the same space/time could have odd side effects. As he opened his eyes he could see that he was alone, naked, and in the middle of some kind of desert valley or scrubland.

There was a crack of thunder in his temples as local air pressure suddenly- violently- changed to a near vacuum and back again. Now, sitting in the floor of the valley not 10 meters away, was a small black metal case, the same kind he carried himself on his duties on the Hub. Looking closer, he became suddenly very sure it was, to point of fact, the very same case. Approaching it, he slid his hand around the grip, built in biometric scanners positively identified him, and a thumb stud raised on the handle for his convenience, pressing it, the case opened. Inside, he found a full set of clothing, a wallet, sunglasses, and several pages of loose-leaf instructions, definitions, and educational material on the current year, his location, and the cases other contents, including IDs, cash, and something called a Cell.

As he got dressed, he kept a careful eye out for any local wildlife or people, who might find it auspicious or suspicious to find a rather tall naked man in the middle of nowhere. The side effects of displacement were already starting to manifest, as he could see a small pebble gradually making its way upwards through thin air, having been temporarily released from the gravity of mother earth. Earth! The Venusian marveled. He’d only set foot on Earth twice, on his initiation and on his selection for this assignment. Now he was on Earth as she was, long before his own home world had ever even had a man stand on her surface. As he finished dressing, he retrieved the sunglasses and put them on. The literature had warned him, violet eyes were unheard of on Earth in the 2000s.

~

Professor Walthers looked out at San Francisco Bay with trepidation. He’d worn his best suit, again, but it was hardly something to brag about, it was threadbare and patched far too many times to be fashionable, and he had to wear thermal underwear to cope with the cold wind coming off the water. This was his third day coming down to the port to wait for his friends to arrive. They’d had a long trip, plenty of time for things to go wrong, and with the world the way it was, there was no telling what difficulties they may have encountered on the way. Communications had been spotty ever since they’d descended below the equator, and there’d been no communication whatsoever since they’d hit the tropics on their way up the west coast of Latin America.

Suddenly, he saw it, an incredible sight. A ship steaming into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate bridge for the first time in more than a decade. It was a midsize Cargo ship, the kind that transported freight from city to city following coastal waters. Nothing remotely like it had sailed the bay in more than a decade, ever since the end of the world. When it had happened, Prof. Walthers and a few others who had been a part of a last-resort initiative by the U.S. Government, a few major multinational corporations, and the U.S. Military, had been activated as an effort to preserve mankind’s cultural, academic, and technological knowledge. He himself had overseen a vault containing all of human literature, including some occult works which had helped him to gain something of a rudimentary understanding of the mechanism of the downfall of society. The men coming to meet him, while not a part of The Project, as it had been known, each found themselves integral to its success in different ways in the aftermath. As such, he’d invited them here to propose something radical.

As the ship drew closer, he could see a man standing on the foredeck, wearing a long navy coat. That would be the first of his esteemed guests, Captain Benjamin Longmire; formerly of the US Navy, and Commander of the USS Oregon, a Virginia Class Fast Attack Submarine which had been crucial in the recovery of key artifacts and intelligence about the eldritch creatures that ended the world. On the starboard railing he could see another man, dressed far more casually in jeans and a flannel shirt, heaving his guts out into the bay. If descriptions were to be believed, that would be his second esteemed guest. As the ship pulled up to the pier, Longmire made his way forward, and then came down the gangplank as soon as it was set into place, even before his crew had fully tied the ship to the dock and made her secure. Walking up to him, he extended his hand.

“Professor Walthers, I presume.”

“That old joke, again?”

“I’m just happy to finally say it in person, not over a sat-phone.”

“I guess I can give it to you this time.”

Walthers grasped the man’s hand and then they each pulled in to a hug, grateful for the long-overdue meeting.

“It’s good to see you Ben.”

“Henry. I brought a few East-Coast gifts for you, and a few toys for little Rowyn, he’s still into Power Rangers, right?”

“We’ve had to scrounge up two more DVD players for him, I’m not sure which he’ll wear out first, the DVDs, the players, or me.”

“And Evelyn?”

“She’s fine, she’s fine. Sarya?”

“She’s aboard.”

“What? I thought you were leaving her in charge in DC?”

“She begged to come, and you know me…”

“Couldn’t say no.”

“Right, right.”

“Is, uh, is he aboard?”

“Yeah... In fact I think he finally figured out he can get ashore.”

At the top of the gangplank, the man in the flannel shirt, still looking greenish and nauseated, held onto the ropes with both hands as he eased down one step after the other down to the pier. Once there, he released his grip and kneeled down on the concrete, and put his forehead to the ground before he spoke.

“Oh thank God! Mankind ain’t got no right to being on the ocean. Rivers, fine. Streams, ok, lakes, alright, but the ocean!? Fuck the ocean ok! Ben, I ain’t letting you talk me into a trip back by boat. I’ll brave the Mojave, I’ll cross the Rockies, I’ll walk my fat ass the whole of these former United States back to Florida but I am not getting on none of your fucking boats anymore! You hear me?”

“Yeah Jesse I hear you. You want to get up or..?”

“I’ll be fine here for minute. Just give me, give me a minute, ok? I got to get my bearings back on land.”

“Jesse, this here is the Professor.”

“Eh? Oh, oh… Ok, hold on, lemme get up.”

They watched as he first rolled off his hands and knees onto his side, then onto his rear, and finally as he put himself up on one knee and his hands in order to get up. With some minor struggle he came upright, wavered, then walked over to the pier and threw up into the bay between the Pier and the cargo cessel, whose side he could now see declared her as the Dorian Grey.

Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and walked over, slightly less wobbly, to the two men.

“Heya Prof., sorry for my condition here, uh, blame your boy Benny here, he talked me into this trip and I ain’t kept not food nor water down the whole damn way. Not to mention through the Hurricane…”

Longmire shook his head and raised a hand at Jesse’s chest.

“Cyclone Jesse. We were still in the South Pacific, storms there are called Cyclones.”

“Cyclones, telephones, homophones, who gives a damn? It was a giant suck-ass storm is what it was and you drove us right through it!”

“I did not.”

“Yeah ya did.”

“I went around it.”

“Through.”

“Through… The edge of it.”

“Aha!! See! I done told you!”

Professor Walthers looked over at Captain Longmire, having been silent the entire time since Jesse had come down the gangplank.

“He’s quite the character, isn’t he?

With an exasperated sigh, Longmire replied;

“Absolutely.”

The Falchion is the Peacekeepers most numerous multi-role craft. Highly customizable, it has the capacity to be made into everything from a long-range reconnaissance craft to a medium range bomber to a short range heavy fighter. It can seat up to three, has mountings for extra fuel, weapons pods, or armor plating, has Radar and Infrared capability, a passive jamming system, the standard 120mm cannon, a pod of 10 heat seeking missiles with customizable warheads (from standard high explosive to Nuclear or EMP), and a small Heavy Ion Laser. It can be adapted to carry guided or freefall bombs, and with extra fuel can breach the upper atmosphere and return to orbit of the inner planets, or land on the moons of Neptune or Uranus and then return to orbit (no amount of fuel would allow a Falchion to breach the atmospheres on Saturn or Jupiter, however). The Falchion is also, when stripped down, the basic craft most pilots learn to fly in.

The Venusian walked into a store and bought himself a sandwich for $2. It was the first one he’d ever had, and he wasn’t impressed. If he’d chosen something better than a gas-station ham and cheese, that may not have been the case, but as it was, he knew he needed sustenance, and the label indicated it had calories to spare. He had been on assignment for a little over 24 hours, with no other option as of yet, he’d accessed a local Library using his forged credentials. He’d filled in most of the gaps in his briefings on the period. It was worse than they’d ever thought. He now knew that he needed to get from the American West Coast to the American East Coast. To Washington D.C. in point of fact. The question was how. Rail was no longer an option in this time period. Air Travel would involve background checks that had a chance- while slim- of discovering his credentials were forgeries, automobile travel was out of the question as he didn’t know how to drive, and going by sea would take him a great distance off track. The librarian had recommended he catch a greyhound, but his research suggested the animal wouldn’t have nearly the size, strength, or endurance to transport him cross-continent.

What he wouldn’t give for a skiff right now, a quick sub-orbital jump and he’d be there inside half an hour. As it was, he decided to find lodgings for the immediate period. His objective was some weeks away and he couldn’t maintain his appearance if he was indigent. He found cooperation quite easily at the nearest motel, where they asked far less for a night’s stay than he’d expected. They asked for a mere $220. He would have to do further research on the current economic climate and see what options his currency supply might offer. His case, which he had kept with him since he arrived, contained slightly less than the $150,000 in various denominations it had started with.

The age he’d come to was quite different from his own upbringing on Venus. There, most human habitation was subterranean. Space was at a premium. Individual comforts were plentiful, but often not to include large personal spaces. His room at the motel was the size of his entire families domicile growing up. It included a personal washroom and a small dining area. There was an artificial body of chemically maintained water for recreational purposes downstairs. It was surrounded by women in their undergarments resting in the open. On Venus, exposure to the elements was deadly, and social mores relaxed by the close proximity of all your fellow man. But even so, the level of nudity maintained by the women here was shocking to him. He found it exciting as well. He was run of the mill at home, here, judging by the advertisements and media he’d so far seen, he was well above average. He looked forward to seeing how far his pheromone influence would go.

Once he’d bathed himself, he opened his case once more. Inside, in private, without the possibility of prying eyes, he placed his hand on the smooth metal on the outside and accessed the computer within via tactile interface. It had taken some time for the side-effects of displacement to work themselves out of its central processor, which relied on normal local space/time to function. Now it had acclimatized itself, and had begun accessing and working through the primitive data network present in this time. The first thing it did was research travel options, which illuminated him to his error regarding the Greyhound recommendation made by the librarian. A commuter service named after the animal would serve to get him to D.C. It used its connection to order and pay for the requisite travel documents so that they would be awaiting him at his departure point the next afternoon.

The second thing it did was find all currently available information of several key persons. Some he was to find and make contact with, others he was to avoid at all costs. Dr. Rafei at NASA, Commander Benjamin Longmire USN, Dr. Jacobi at DARPA, Ms. Christine Aguilar, Mr. Oliver Watts… The list went on, separated by categories. First priority was Dr. Jacobi. He was priority. Information he held was vital to his mission, if he failed with Jacobi, he might as well sit waiting, looking at the eastern sky, with his eyes wide open. Jacobi was supposed to be at the Pentagon, setting the stages for an important initiative between the US Federal Government and several notable multinational corporations and academic institutions. His trip there would be spent in study, familiarizing himself with media and culture of the era. Common phrases and memes of information and humor were a critical portion of blending in.

He’d also have to get used to his new identity. His own name would be strange and alien to people of the time unfamiliar with Venusian naming conventions. So he’d taken on a new moniker from the individual whose identity he’d assumed. Name, birthdate, something called a Social Security number which he was told was analogous to a HubID in that it tracked him and his activities within society and acted as proof of identity. Fortunately biometrics and visual images of the original were non-existent, so he could purport himself as he wished. Still, there was a distinct lack of activity between the original owner of the information and himself, enough that it could raise flags if he suddenly started throwing his information around without explanation. It wouldn’t do to bring Viktor Reitmeyer back from the dead so suddenly.

~

Ramses Goveretski was tired, hungry, and in severe pain. He had been tired, hungry, and in severe pain for as long as he could remember. The augmentations made to him and his crew were experimental, primitive compared to those now enjoyed by the citizens of the Hegemony. Each of them had their own specific issues. Deformities, tics, mental issues… The price of immortality was to suffer the tortures of hell without being dead. Still, after a few centuries, you got used to it, it was only when it was time for rest that it was truly intolerable. Needing to quiet the mind in order to rest left nothing to distract you from the deep and abiding pain. In his bones, in his head, in his guts and his chest… Everywhere they’d changed, everything they’d altered. He and his entire crew carried it every day, and always would, until they accomplished their chosen purpose.

Today had been a momentous day. Today they had begun the final step of their great task. Centuries of work and toil, decades of careful preparation and negotiation. All of it was about to pay off, the very next morning, and here they were, each in their own crèche, each in their own hell of torment, each knowing that the others were just as filled with grim determination. So long together, so long working, so long suffering in common cause, it had developed their own kind of hive mentality. They could read each other’s minds to an astonishing degree of accuracy. Sometimes they’d go weeks now without speech simply because they could. It was said that great works could inspire great minds and exalted deeds. They each knew, they were the very embodiment of the opposite. Terrible works could inspire horrifying minds, and works of vile darkness.

~

Professor Walthers, Captain Benjamin Longmire, and the Honorable Mr. Jesse Able, Mayor of Panama City Florida, walked into a room nearly twenty feet under the former campus of the University of California Berkeley. Inside the room, The Professor had been conducting experiments and research into the occult, ancient religions, superstitious beliefs and their value or efficacy. He had made some surprising discoveries in his decade of work. It started during the events that effectively ended the world, wiping out more than 99% of the Earth’s population in a little under three months. A former student of his named Alex had begun, taking cues from another member of the project and the gift of an artifact of the occult, he’d ended up summoning an eldritch abomination out of thin air into this very same room using nothing more than a ritual using salt, his own blood, and the artifact. Using symbols and chants, he’d brought a monster from some other location beyond the mortal ken directly to him, where it had killed him, a few others, and injured the professor in a way that left him with a limp and a cane for the rest of his life.

Science had been Henry Walthers religion before the end of the world. Now his beliefs, his understanding, was far broader. He still used the methodology of science, repeatability and falsifiability, but he applied it to relationships and causation in ways pure science had long since cast aside as hokum and superstition. He had a saying now, as a way of making light of his newfound beliefs. “When reason fails, take a stab at black magic and mad science.” The room bore the evidence of his research. Tables were piled with printouts, diagrams, and strange objects, some familiar if out of place, others bizarre beyond description. One look could see that his research had borne fruit, however. On several tables objects seem to defy physics, floating, growing or shrinking in size, or emanating endless streams of bizarre fluid which were directed by makeshift sluices towards a drain at the side of the room. The center of the room was dominated, however, by a large circle drawn on the floor, partially in coal, partially in salt, partially in other, more unusual materials. There were thousands of symbols incorporated into its design, and the whole thing was emanating a low baleful green glow with components of purple, as if the whole thing was burning with a half inch exotic flame. Captain Longmire looked at it with dread, but remained silent. Jesse was incapable of doing so.

“Jesus Christ Professor, what in God’s name do you do down here?”

“This is my research laboratory. This is where I find what works and what doesn’t. And I’ve made some rather interesting discoveries.”

“I ain’t sure I can get behind this. I mean, I ain’t like, real real religious, but that thing there looks straight up evil.”

“Is a gun evil Jesse?”

“Nah, A gun’s a tool, whether it’s good or evil depends on how it’s used, and that guilt rests with the man pulling the trigger.”

“So it is with the occult. I’ve found that the things I’ve learned are neither good nor evil, they simply are. I have to look at the history, these things were practiced by the outcasts of society, people who were rejected, hurt, ostracized… It doesn’t surprise me they’d find use for these things to enact revenge on those who spurned them.”

“Uh-huh.”

“None of that is what spurred me to call you here, however.”

Captain Longmire cocked his head to the side.

“Back when I first reported Jesses story to you, you cleared off three days to brief me and send me reams of material on the initiative you were part of to preserve human knowledge in the wake of a world ending event. That was a decade ago. For eight years you didn’t mention it again, or Jesse. Then two years ago you started asking if I could come visit and if I could bring Jesse.”

“Yes…”

“Spit it out Henry.”

“I think that the occult, the powers and abilities endowed by the mechanisms and methodologies I’ve been researching... I think they’re dependent on certain alignments of astral phenomena.”

“Ok, and that means what?”

“As our solar system moves through space, specifically our local orbit in our Galactic Arm, we come into proximity to certain arrangements of Pulsars, Nebulae, and other bodies. I’ve noticed that the power and efficacy of the occult has waned in the past three years, and if it continues, will vanish completely inside the next two.”

Jesse scratched his head for a second and then spoke.

“Ain’t that a good thing though? I mean, if the power of- I ain’t gonna mince words here, but- if the power of magic is what drove the Shards and the Tall Ones, ain’t it a damn good thing that it’s fading?”

“Maybe, but think about it, imagine if we’d known about these powers before they came? What if we’d been able to mount a defense? What if, with the right combination of black magic and mad science, we could have prevented the end of the world?”

Captain Longmire rocked back with the realization.

“You’re talking about a new Project.”

“Yes. I think we need to set up a system where this knowledge is preserved. For next time.”

“How long are we talking?”

“If I’ve figured things right? If I’ve picked the right astral markers and done my calculations right for how they’ve effected things… We’re looking at small recursions of occult power every two thousand years, roughly equivalent to the power we see now ten years on, with big spikes every forty thousand years. I’m confident in that number if nothing else because of the information you retrieved from New York.”

Jesse looked between the two of them, confused.

“What info from New York?”

Longmire turned to him and explained.

“Back during the event, I took the Oregon up to New York and retrieved a bunch of research into cave drawings by an archeologist named Opperthorne. They described a menace in the skies that mankind in Europe barely survived… Forty thousand years ago.”

“Oh, so, the Shards and the Tall Ones showed up forty thousand years ago, ten years ago, and he’s betting forty thousand years from now.”

“That’s the long and the short of it.”

“And this Project, is it like the one Rafei was a part of?”

“The very same.”

“And he wants to start it back up?”

“As a means to preserve information and protect mankind, yes.”

“Well, that’s a noble goal and all, but, what’s it got to do with me?”

Walthers took Jesse by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.

“Jesse, you’re the only human being we know of who made peaceful contact with a Tall One. We need you to do it again.”

The Heron is the Peacekeepers premier patrol craft. It’s standard configuration seats up to six comfortably and has a small cabin with amenities such as a shower capsule and small kitchen. Fully stocked, the craft can operate independently for up to three standard weeks. It’s lightly armed and armored, carrying only two Javelin missiles as a form of self-defense. What it lacks in offensive capability, however, it makes up for in utility. The Heron is coated in Radar dispersive material and its main propulsion is a high output low temperature variant which allows it to evade detection under most circumstances. It has a highly sophisticated jamming system built into its communication package, and is the smallest ship equipped with a fusion generator in order to avoid needing to refuel very often. It has atmospheric capability as well as orbit-to-surface-to-orbit capability on the inner planets and some small moons.

Lieutenant Oleandor tweaked the control stick slightly to fire a few monopropellant thrusters, throwing the craft into a slow roll. Small pieces of debris moving at only a few decameters per second tinged and ricocheted off the hull as he made his way through the lightest portion of the debris field. The roll pulled the craft into a similar frame of reference as the immense bulk of the Callisto, now only a few meters away. They had maneuvered several times with a few slow burns and corrections in order to get the transport craft into the proper orientation and course to intercept the largest gaping hole in the Callisto, now, they were looking dead to rights at it. An immense gash ripped into the spacecraft showed them fully six decks and the spaces between. The edges of the tear were jagged, ripped, not melted or clean like an energy weapon, dispelling the idea that Callisto had been purposefully attacked. As the cargo transports lights played over the innards, Ayon played the searchlights over her. Suddenly, he jerked the light back the way he’d had it a few seconds before, attracting Oleandors attentions.

“What is it, did you see something?”

“Movement, I thought I saw movement!”

“Bah… That was probably just a pocket of debris coming loose from centripetal force.”

“Are you sure it couldn’t be a survivor?”

“Saturn P.F. doesn’t have the fancy augmentations Hegemony crews have. There were no immortals on the Callisto.”

“No… Look! There it is again! A flash of white, look!”

“Holy shit I saw it too. Let me maneuver us in closer.”

Oleandor floated the couple of feet back to the pilots console and triggered a few small thrusters to maneuver the transport almost fully within the wound on Callistos side. Suddenly, there was a flash of crimson light. Oleandor and Ayon both looked up in shock to be transfixed by the creature unfolding itself from the wreckage and hurling itself out through space at the transport. Long spindly fingers outstretched forward and peg-like feet trailing behind as it moved the dozen meters or so towards the craft, its mouth open and pouring the light ahead of it as it came. With the screeching of rended metal, it caught itself on the hull of the transport, its squashed face only inches from the forward viewport. As it looked in on them, they were incapable of moving as more of the titanic monsters came out of the Callisto and hurled themselves at the craft.

~

Vegman had flashes in and out of consciousness. He could remember falling, feeling the pain blossom from his solar plexus out through his chest. He could smell the charred flesh from the wound as he lay on the deck in the passageway outside the VIP cabin. Then he could see one of his crewmans faces… Who was it? One of the load minders, just a kid really, looking down at him. Then the lights, the lights moving overhead as he was carried- no- rolled down a passage somewhere, so fast… Then he was here. Only he didn’t quite know where ‘here’ was.

By the looks of it, it was some kind of medical facility, definitely not aboard the Canus Major anymore. Her medbay was smaller than this room, and the recovery rooms were basically slots in a wall. There was a nice Holo of Mercury and the Sun on the wall. He was laying comfortably on a bed. There were five or six monitor drones hovering next to the bed. As he looked at them they flashed their purposes across their skins. Pretty much a standard assortment, one kept scan of his heartbeat and nervous system, one measured his exhalations to determine oxygenation and detect any respiratory troubles, one kept a lock on his skin temperature to monitor for hotspots indicating infection, two alternated duties checking and monitoring his neurological activity.

Obviously he was in some kind of Hospital, but he’d been to the biggest Hospital in orbit of Jupiter and this was nothing like it, this place was far better equipped, for one thing. For another, he couldn’t rate it, it was for the rich, or a member of the Peacekeepers, and he was a transport captain. True, he’d taken a diplomatic passenger as a special assignment, but that was just due to the Canus Major looking the part due to her history. Something was off. As he was pondering these events, the door lit up blue, indicating someone was waiting permission to enter. Medical personnel would light it up green and walk in after five or six seconds delay, so this must be a visitor. He tried to give them permission but his mouth was dry. He looked around the room and saw the general needs kiosk on the wall, so he searched his bed for the control. He found it attached to the railing on his right side. Pushing the indicator for water, the kiosk dispatched a small drone with a cup and straw directly to the bedside by his head. The straw extended and he grabbed hold, taking a small pull he gargled and wet his entire mouth before swallowing and pushing it away.

“You can come in.”

The door flashed white in acknowledgement before sliding to the side and allowing his XO and his Navigator in. Max and Cann were an older married couple who’d been plying the lanes long before he was born, they were simultaneously his most trusted crew and his best friends. As they entered the room suddenly darkened a bit. Looking over at the Holo he saw the Hub pass by, temporarily shielding them from a large part of the suns brilliance in the background.

“Would you look at that, nice detail on whoever made the Holo.”

Max and Cann looked at him with confusion, then Cann dropped his jaw slightly.

“Daq, do you know where you are?”

“Not a damn clue, I presume you’ll enlighten me.”

“Well, for one, that’s not a Holo, that’s a polarized porthole.”

“What?”

“We’re at Crimson, cap.”

Crimson Station was one of the oldest and biggest space stations in the Solar System, well within the Hegemony, it orbited Mercury and acted as a transport and shipping hub for Hegemony citizens and business’ with interests or family on Mercury. It was also home to upwards of 2 million permanent residents and another half million temporary residents working on it’s constant expansion and improvement. All of this meant that he was several orbits away from where he should be near Jupiter.

~

Goveretski’s eyes snapped open before his alarm had the chance to wake him. All of their eyes did. They had had this routine for hundreds of years. The body learns the routines of the day. Wordlessly they all came out of their berths and filed through the process of their daily hygienic routine. Shower, shave, teeth, powder, dress. They worked as fine-tuned machines, having perfected their rhythms down to the millisecond. In fact, none of them even really thought during the process, it had become ingrained muscle memory long ago. Instead, all their thoughts were on the day, and if all their preparations, their sacrifices, would come to be worth it, or would fail. As they finished dressing they took their normal positions by the exit to their chambers, all awaiting Ramses’ word, as usual. Today was different, however.

“Gentle… Gentlemen…”

His voice was long disused, their shorthand of body language having mostly replaced speech. They were surprised to hear it now.

“Figg… Iotashi… Stern… Patir… We have worked so long. Given so much… And not one of you has ever faltered or failed. I have had the long honor of being your commanding officer. Today we strike back at the evils that sent us here, that damned us to an eternal hell of pain and loathing. Today, gentleman… We walk out that door not as a team under my command… But as brothers anointed and baptized in suffering. I follow you, now.”

If they had tears left, they didn’t come. Instead, the five men stood, and the order they left their home was opposite of what it had been ever before, the last left first, the first, last. As the door shut, Goveretski keyed the pad outside the door, and the habitat filled with flame. They walked then to their great project, their destiny, their labor of hate… It stood ready and eager to receive them; a monument to rage and destruction.

~

Jesse’s eyes got wide and he looked back and forth between Walthers and Longmire.

“Uh… Nope.”

He tried to turn and walk out of the room but Longmire stepped ahead of him and blocked his path.

“Jesse, please hear us out.”

“There ain’t nothin’ t’hear out. I ain’t doin’ it.”

“We’re reasonably assured of your safety Jesse.”

“You may be, but I’m not, so I ain’t doin’ it.”

“Listen-“

“No! You listen! Have you ever seen one of these things? What they can do? I had an armored truck back when things went to hell, one of these Tall Ones opened it barehanded like it was made of wet tissue paper! Nuh-uh! Ain’t gonna do it!”

“I have seen them Jesse, as has the Professor. We know what they’re capable of. We also have a reasonable idea of their limitations. All we want to do is see if we can repeat the calling that the Professors student did so long ago, see if we can bring one here, and if you can talk to it, then, well, we want to track down their lairs.”

“Excuse me? What the hell are y’all on about ‘lairs’?”

The Professor walked with the aid of his cane to one of the desks with a recognizable function, it held a computer and piles of binders. He picked through them until he came up with the one he wanted. Then he came back to Jesse and Longmire.

“I’ve been collecting witness accounts from during the Phenomenon, comparing them, digging through them for any clues we might use to figure out exactly what happened. This is the account of a witness from southern Arizona. He saw Tall Ones emerging from deep within the same set of caves he himself had taken refuge in. He tells of how he avoided them and kept hidden, and then eventually got curious and went down to try and find where they came from. He describes finding a bizarre series of tunnels, unlike anything that should exist in that area, going deeper than anything he’d ever seen. He didn’t explore them fully, he got scared, and he came back to the surface and gambled on making it to other shelter. He didn’t, but his journal was picked up and brought to us here.”

“Ok, so why don’t you go and find them there caves and tunnels, what’cha need me for?”

“We did, and the caves terminated as caves do, but there were no tunnels. The caves are named and the witness took the time to sketch them in detail, we are certain we found the right caves, but, there were no tunnels, they disappeared. I think they, like the intensity of power, can drift in and out of attunement with our time and space. The tunnels both exist and don’t exist. If we could get a Tall One to help us pinpoint where they’ll be, we can prepare ourselves better.”

“…”

“That’d.. Uh… That’d prolly save a whole lot of folk a lot of trouble if we could do that, huh?”

“Oh yes Jesse, it could save thousands, maybe even millions of lives in the future.”

“And all I gotta do is try to talk to it, you’ll do all the voodoo mumbo-jumbo?”

“Yes Jesse.”

“Aw hell… I’m gonna regret this…”

A Frigate is the classification for the lightest Independent combat vessel in service. There are three standard varieties, the Peregrine is a light Frigate, lightly armored for better maneuverability and lightly armed due to being assigned to essential non-combat duties. The Sparrow is the standard class of Frigate, running with a few layers of ablative armor and a standard armament of four kinetic weapon emplacements, a missile pod, and a two heavy Ion Lasers. The Condor is a class of Heavy frigate, featuring ablative and refractive armor layers and a much heavier armament including 6 kinetic weapons emplacements, two missile pods and three heavy Ion Lasers. Of course from light to standard to heavy maneuverability, acceleration, and energy efficiency ratings all suffer. Frigates usually run with crews of ten to fourteen (plus a ship AI) with no accommodations for passengers. They have a small fusion reactor for energy and can operate independently for perhaps as long as a month and a half if the crew is careful with their provisions. Frigates are capable of entering atmospheres and returning to orbit and under emergency conditions can land as a last resort, though no Heavy Frigate has ever successfully landed without casualties.

The gate transition to Jupiter was some of Ceres crews first experience with gate travel. Throughout training it was tradition for Instructors and elder members of the Peacekeepers to keep trainees on their toes by making up outlandish stories about gate transitions. Popular varieties include ships exiting the receiving gate in pieces, that is, not all at once and broken into sections, crewmembers disappearing during transition, bizarre creatures appearing aboard after transition, and ships exiting compacted and the entire ship and crew occupying the same cubic meter of space. Most trainees recognized the stories as bunk and reacted accordingly, but it always left a mark which had new crew on edge during their first transition. This one was no different. As he Ceres orbit approached Mars’ polar gate, Captain Sayle noticed a few of the new crew being a little jittery. Waving over his XO, a Commander named Dawp, he whispered into his ear and sent him on his way. The XO smiled and nodded before resuming his rounds. As he approached the helm, he leaned over and whispered into their helmsman’s ear. Ensign Liret, a brunette that had been playing the XO since she came aboard, smiled too, then winked at the XO. The XO straightened and looked back at the Captain before winking himself. The game was set.

As the Ceres made her final adjustments to send her though the polar gate, she fired her thrusters to orient herself on a slow roll so that on her exit from the gate over Jupiter she’d be properly oriented to her direction of travel. The thrusters fired long, and gradually, as Ceres carried towards the gate, she came slightly off course and headed along a path that would have her impact the gate boundary. As the external feeds showed the gate perimeter getting larger and larger, the new crewmembers stopped jittering and stared. Some looked back and forth from the feeds to Liret, who was busying herself examining her nails and the cuffs of her uniform. As the collision alarm sounded, the preset course correction Liset had programmed in took effect and the port thrusters fired, but they fired short, starting and then cutting out while they were still on a collision course. She immediately threw her hands back down on the tactile interface pads, as Sayle leaned forward and prepared to bark out an order, the port thrusters fired again, hard, sending Ceres back towards the center of the gate. Halfway there the starboard thruster fired at half power and then slowly petered down to nothing, leaving the ship stopped except for her forward momentum carrying her directly through the center of the gate.

The new crewmembers didn’t exhale until they transitioned, however, a rather disappointing experience after all the buildup. There was a flash of white as they and the Ceres was transitioned suddenly from here to there when the gate exchanged the local space/time from over Mars’ polar orbit directly to an equatorial orbit over Jupiter. They felt no acceleration, nor any sensation at all except the sudden transition from normal vision, to everything being white, to back again. The transition caused a waste product of short lived photons which crashed all around every portion of the time/space being transferred, picked up by optical nerves as white light. The Ceres continued on its languid course, now moving at a much higher speed in orbit over the largest planet in the solar system. Captain Sayle keyed a ship wide announcement through the tactile interface in his chair before speaking.

“Ladies and Gentlemen we’ve successfully transitioned to Jupiter orbit, as I’m sure you new folk now realize, the stories about bizarre or unusual occurrences during transition are much exaggerated. It’s tradition to mess with you when you’re trainees. Some of you may end up as instructors one day, or at least deal with trainees in some other capacity. Consider it an official order to carry on the tradition when you get the chance, it’s one of the few times its acceptable to tell a lie while wearing the uniform, feel free to make it ridiculous or terrifying, just, don’t spoil the fun for the rest of us.”

As the XO walked back up to the center chair, Sayle leaned over to speak low.

“Was that a real misfire on the port thruster or Ensign Liset mean to give me a heart attack there?”

“Last time your demeanor gave away the game to some of the newbies on deck, so we came up with a way to make sure they were all convinced.”

“Never again, am I clear?”

“Absolutely Sir.”

“Good. Oh, and give Liset an extra hour off duty on the next rotation for original thinking on that false thruster failure.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Go ahead and start us on a standard patrol, alternate every other orbit, changing inclination to give us a planet-wide sensor coverage in the minimum amount of time.”

“Jupiter’s big sir, that might take a while.”

“I know but I want a good baseline on traffic in this orbit and between Jupiter and her moons. Have Ceres keep a tally of civilians, Peacekeeper, and Commercial traffic.”

“We expecting trouble sir?”

“I doubt it, but it behooves us to take our duties seriously.”

“What will you be doing Sir?”

“Me? Nothing.”

“We’re at Jupiter Sir.”

“I know.”

“Well its just that last time we were in this neighborhood-“

“That was last time.”

“Not now?

“No, not now.”

“Remember what happened last time?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Good.”

“You know, I’m the Captain, you’re supposed to listen to me.”

“You made me promise.”

“I did?”

“You did.”

“Oh, well, carry on then.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

~

Viktor tried to get comfortable but he was beginning to think that this “Greyhound” company had a particularly small person whose job it was to decide if the seats had enough room. His frame barely fit within the space allotted in his seat by the window, and keeping his case on his lap was a near-impossibility. It didn’t help that the other passengers didn’t seem concerned with remaining in their own spaces at all. The man next to him continuously bumped him with his elbow, and the woman across the aisle- who appeared to have two seats to herself- was stretched across both of them. Her feet even stuck out and were troubling anybody who needed to move from the front of the bus to the bathroom at the back. This was just the first leg of his cross-country bus trip, from San-Francisco to Phoenix, and already he was dreading the rest of it. As the bus thundered down the desert highway he looked out the windows at the terrain. This part of North America was quite different in his time. It was covered in the ruins of one of the last great cities mankind had inhabited before man abandoned Earth. A hellscape of fallen buildings and chemical wastes, overlaid with the growth of nearly five thousand years of plant life.

A growling snore interrupted his train of thought. The large bespectacled man next to him had fallen asleep. His head hung back and his cavernous mouth was wide open, revealing more dental work than actual teeth and a uvula that looked to be the size of a grape. His bulbous chin sported a shock of red hair, an attempt at a goatee which really didn’t work. Viktor swallowed his distaste with the realization that if it was socially acceptable for one to sleep on this conveyance… He looked around. Indeed, nearly half of his fellow passengers were either resting or settled in attempting to rest. He had an idea. He leaned over towards the window, pulling his case up to his chest and wrapping his arms around it, he put his right hand over the section with the tactile interface, allowing the cases computer to interface with the micro-implants in his hand to allow him to access it through his YEOD.

Reams of information on modern media and culture were waiting for his perusal, listed by category. He started in literature. He’d expected that most of the classic works would have survived most of mankind’s hurdles, but the list of titles and their summaries surprised him as unfamiliar. There was only one he mostly recognized, Hansel & Gretel, though he was unfamiliar with those names or the gingerbread, in his recollection from his childhood, they’d been Poz & Pieza, & the witches home had been made of hard candy, and it had been set on Mars under a Dome. It took him the better part of the evening to get through the common works, and he’d just started on the philosophies when the bus pulled into the Phoenix station. The obese man next to him got finally awoke when the bus fully stopped and the brakes squealed. Getting up, he straightened the suspenders keeping his threadbare jeans up and hobbled off the bus favoring his left foot.

Viktor didn’t have to change busses at this stop, which was luckily only going to happen three times, in Austin Texas, Montgomery Alabama, and Atlanta Georgia. He pulled up the armrest between himself and the other seat and pulled a leg up and put it in the seat to stretch out and reserve both seats to himself for the journey to Austin. He rearranged the case and set it in the seat behind his leg and rested his hand on top, as if to keep it secure. He saw similar arrangements with other passengers and their carry-on bags, so he felt it wouldn’t appear suspicious. As he waited for the next group of passengers to load he reviewed the summaries of the major socio-political events of the era. He was shocked to discover that in certain places his skin tone might cause him issues. The more he learned the more he came to realize that the age was fraught with ridiculous and pointless conflicts. He wondered at how mankind had survived it without destroying themselves. Nuclear weapons and tribalism was a dangerous combination.

~

Sarya checked the chamber on her M4 before she left the fenced area around the University Walthers people had set up. The fence wasn’t a defensive measure, but a practical one. They had every green space utilized for crops, and the fence kept out deer, rabbits, and other animals that would gladly eat them. While her adoptive father Ben was busy with the redneck and the brain, she intended to explore the remains of San Francisco. He knew of her plans and so long as she was safe he didn’t mind. Plus, she always took a radio and he knew that in an emergency she’d call. She was dressed appropriately in long well-fit jeans, hiking boots, undershirt, over shirt, and jean jacket. She also had a pistol and holster, three extra magazines for it, two extra for the rifle, and a pack with everything from a hammock to a hand axe. She also had a flare gun and three flares of different colors, pre-arranged with Longmire for the meaning of each.

It was a bit of a walk to the city proper but she didn’t mind. She’d brought supplies for an overnight expedition if needed and could always take shelter in any one of a hundred thousand empty buildings if the weather turned sour. In Washington D.C., where they lived, she was already one of the best scavengers they had. Seeing as how most people died at home in the early morning or on the roads when the world ended, most homes and business’ were virtually untouched. Any surviving community made it a habit of making teams of people whose sole job was to comb the ruins of the old world for materials and tools useful for those who survived. Firearms, ammunition, hand tools, generators, industrial equipment, diesel vehicles, Ham Radios, Walkie-Talkies, etc. Were always in high demand, but there was also demand for comfort goods that could be repaired, repurposed or recycled. Espresso machines, gas grills, books of all flavors… And Sarya had a nose for finding them.

The main competition was from two sources. Survivors who’d never rejoined a community of man and become feral and dangerous, and den animals that had resettled into the ruins left behind. She had plenty of experience with the latter and knew how to recognize the signs of an animal den. It was the former that worried her, and why she kept the M4 loaded with a round in the chamber. The Berkeley community had assured her that San Francisco was empty, a slowly decaying cityscape free of man, but in a city that size she simply couldn’t make that assumption. It was a nice day and the walk was pleasant, especially with the views the road along the bay offered her of the cities. She was going to bypass Oakland entirely, she was fairly sure the Berkeley people had already stripped it empty, but they’d told her they’d only gone across the Oakland Bay Bridge as far as Yerba Buena Island to scout the Coast Guard facility there. As such, she felt fairly confident that she’d find something useful in San Fran, and if it was something she couldn’t bring back herself, she could always have them bring the Doran Grey over to help her get it.

A Destroyer is a standard combat vessel. While other vessels may have multi-role capability depending on how they’re outfitted, a Destroyers number one job is as its name suggests, to annihilate the enemy, usually through either pinpoint strikes or overwhelming firepower. Destroyers are not one trick ponies, however, there are multiple varieties designed around specific forms of combat. For example, the Komodo Class Destroyer specializes in penetrating heavily armored targets, as such it has a battery of four Hyperion energy lances mounted on gimballed turrets, capable of operating at complimentary frequencies and generating an immense amount of radiation and heat at their convergence point. Tiamat Class Destroyers focus on defeating numerous small craft, like enemy fighters, and as such have numerous kinetic weapon emplacements designed to create a cloud of explosive ordinance between itself and the enemy, acting as a veritable minefield through which kinetic weapons are deflected and enemy fighters destroyed. Bahamut Class Destroyers are the balance point, with two Hyperion lances on gimballed turrets and a battery of kinetic emplacements for interdiction. Destroyers normally have between and hundred and two hundred crewmembers, shipboard AI, and usually use at least one (sometimes as many as three) Fusion Reactors for power.

Captain Daq Vegman didn’t like being under the thumb of the Hegemony. The Doctors and Nurses, everyone here but his own crew in fact, treated him like he was a kid. It must have been a side effect of Hegemony people being effectively immortal. When you’ve been around for nearly a thousand years anyone under 200 has got to look like a naïve rube. It also had its benefits, they underestimated him. The schism between the outer planets and the Hegemony of the inner wasn’t well served by a diplomatic envoy being murdered after being rebuffed, and the Hegemony was essentially tearing his ship apart for clues and graciously offered to make sure he himself had lived in order to provide testimony as necessary. All of it a nice little smokescreen. The room was, of course, fully outfitted with full audio-visual-electromagnetic surveillance. He’d spotted the telltale signs as soon as the Doctors visited for the first time. Where they stood, how they spoke, all indicated to him they were aware of the surveillance and making sure they didn’t obscure him and that everything they said would be picked up.

Sure, he was no spy, but knowing that he’d be going to the Hub the Peacekeepers out at Jupiter had given him a thorough rundown of what to watch for, and these idiots seemed determined to fill out the list. All that was missing was the bouquet of flowers with the dot-mic placed near the bed. For what it was worth, Max and Cann were in on it too and had filled their visits with trailed off references to people, places, and things that didn’t exist. He was sure the Hegemony Intelligence community was going nuts trying to track down information on them and failing miserably. He’d be out the next day and the Canus Major was set to be released the day after, and they still claim no leads on the woman who’d shot him or how she came to be aboard his ship. Since they’d never fully docked, no external hatches on the ship had been opened, and they’d interviewed and ruled out the entire crew, they were leaning towards a stowaway from their last stop at the 3rd Io Colony to pick up the Envoy. The door lit up green and moments later his Doctor walked in.

“Good Morning Mr. Vegman, how are we feeling today?”

“Not too bad. In fact I think I’m ready to go.”

“I know it can feel that way, but we still need to run a few tests just to make sure you’re really as ok as you feel, would that be alright?”

“How many more tests are we going to run?”

“Just a few, I promise they won’t hurt.”

“That’s not my concern, I’ve got a ship to run out there.”

“Of course. The orderly will be by to help you to the test suite, and after that I understand lunch is in order. I hear we’re having a Martian Goulash, sounds yummy.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Ok then, I’ll come by after lunch with the results, ok?”

“I’m all a twitter in anticipation.”

“Good, good. Bye-bye now.”

“Asshole.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said ‘careful’, I don’t want you to trip on the threshold.”

“Of course.”

As the Doctor exited Daq threw his right arm and hand up in a fist curved inwards, the traditional Jupiter motion for “up yours”. The orderly entered a few minutes later and disconnected his bed from the mount, which caused the wheels to automatically lower and allow the bed to move. The trip to the test suite was short, as he had one of the VIP rooms due to the diplomatic snafu, and the tests themselves merely involved standing in a tube as various sensor arms scanned him at different angles. Some he recognized, some he didn’t. He was back in his room in twenty minutes, and the (unfortunately bland) Goulash was waiting.

~

As it turned out, there was a halfway decent reason the folks from Berkeley and Oakland hadn’t investigated San Francisco. The Oakland Bay Bridge wasn’t entirely in the best condition, halfway between Yerba Buena Island and San Fran there had been an accident when the Shards finally hit the Bay area, and apparently it had resulted in a not-insignificant damage to a span or two, resulting in a gap of some two meters between the half from Yerba Buena and the half that reached the rest of the way to San Fran. Sarya judged the distance and leapt. For a few terrified heartbeats she sailed through the air, with nothing between herself and the surface of the water far below. Then her outstretched boot struck the asphalt on the other side and she threw her momentum forward to roll onto the road beyond.

As she came to her feet she felt a sudden sickening lurch and heard a deafening crack, almost by instinct, she leaned forward and broke from a dead stop straight into an all-out run, the rifle slung over her shoulder bouncing and bruising her arm and shoulder as she did so. The cracking sounds continued and she dared not slow or look back until they’d stopped. When she did, she could hear splashes and she was shocked to find that several more meters of the road on both sides had collapsed into the bay, leaving a gap several orders of magnitude wider than she’d just jumped. She looked over at the eastwards span and saw the damage was even more extensive, the accident that caused the initial damage having originated there with a natural gas hauler, or at least, that’s what she thought the truck once was, there was no way to be sure due to how extensively it had burned.

She did a quick check over her gear to make sure everything was there, and was relieved to find the only loss was her Chapstick. The rest of the trip across the bay was uneventful, and she soon found herself facing the ruins of San Francisco. The morning was nearly gone and the sun was high in the sky. It looked like it was going to be a terribly hot afternoon, so Sarya didn’t waste any time enjoying the view. The streets of the city would offer shade and direct the breeze between the buildings to provide relief, and she could see just how much was left at ground level. Animals were quick to make use of open spaces and buildings with open doors or broken windows, so this long after the end of things there was often little to no point in searching anything that would have been open overnight or in the early morning when everything had happened. What’s more, this was California, and the folks at Berkeley had reported at least three or four minor quakes in the past ten years, there was no telling how structurally stable many of the buildings here were. If she was going to be back before nightfall, she had to make her initial foray quick.

~

The Ceres had just completed its first full survey of traffic moving around Jupiter, and Captain Sayle was conferring with Ceres herself to get a rundown of what they’d found, and recent developments. As usual, Ceres displayed herself as an attractive woman of Sayles own age, this time, however, instead of displaying herself in the flowing Emerald gown, she’d taken a more professional tact, clothing herself in a proper Peacekeeper Uniform with the standard accoutrements and rank (she made herself a Lieutenant Commander in order to show deference to the Captain and the XO). Now she had an image of Jupiter, its rings and moons hovering between them, drastically reduced in size, with the orbital tracks of major installations, vessels, Gates, and Ceres herself highlighted with critical information and estimated rendezvous times.

“Anything interesting to report?”

“No sir, Jupiter traffic seems normal, there’s no indications of unexpected activity.”

“What about expected activity?”

“Since the incident on the Canus Major we expected activity from Saturn and the joint Hegemony/Outer Planets Jupiter armed forces, and as expected, they’ve increased patrols firing exercises.”

“But nothing indicative of anything from the outskirts?”

“No sir, nothing so far.”

“How far away do you have reliable data?”

“I can track and fire upon a target up to 5 light-seconds away Captain, roughly one point five billion kilometers away.”

“Nowhere near long enough to see what’s going on out on Uranus or Neptune.”

“Not by a long shot sir.”

“I’m starting to think somebody’s playing a joke on us here.”

“If the Action Trigger was legitimate then there’d be some kind of follow up or sign that there were things going wrong in the Outer Planets.”

“Exactly.”

“You think maybe it was a drill, to gauge responsiveness?”

“I don’t know. Let's send off a packet and see.”

“Aye sir, I’ll prep a secure communications packet and set it for gate transfer to The Project leadership on Earth. I’ll let you know when it’s ready for your message.”

A Cruiser is the largest combat vessel generally fielded, often built around one massive weapon system, crewed by thousands, and with a half dozen or more fusion reactors working in tandem to keep it powered, they are cities in space. Often the centerpiece of an entire a fleet, a Cruiser is the ace in the hole, with hundreds of fighter craft, capable of operating independently for years, and the thickest shielding possible under layers of refractive and ablative armors. In most wargames, Cruisers have been shown to have no equal besides other Cruisers, and as such will often ignore smaller vessels and go head to head with the enemy Cruiser and allow its escorts to worry about all other threats. Even so, there are still light Cruisers, usually built around Thanos Lances rather than the main weapon of line Hegemony Cruisers, which is to this day classified, and has never been used in combat. It is not known if the Hegemony has ever built a Heavy Cruiser, and if so, it is also classified.

The creature filling the viewport of the small transport pod roared soundlessly into the vacuum of space, the crimson illumination from its gullet keeping Lieutenant Oleandor and Initiate Ayon frozen in place. Then it closed its mouth and pulled itself up and on to the dorsal skin of the bridge pod, releasing them from its grip. Oleandor wasted no time. He reached out and slammed his hand down on the control for the armored shutters that immediately slid from each side and locked over the viewport. Then he brought up the holographic display of their position relative to the Callisto and started firing thrusters to move them away from her. Even as they started moving away, they could hear the creatures climbing all over the hull. Oleandor floated himself into the pilots’ seat and directed Ayon to take the auxiliary seat next to him. He grabbed the belts and secured himself in the seat as tightly as possible, checked to see the initiate did the same, then issued just two words of warning.

“Hold on!”

He then fired the thrusters to take them out of the Callisto’s debris field fully before he initiated a roll using full power. The small shuttle wasn’t carrying as much mass as she was rated too, and the thrusters were designed to operate and move her even if she was at 110% capacity and in a gravity well. In this particular situation, they were if anything, overpowered. The maneuver was violent in its execution. If they hadn’t been strapped into their seats they would have been thrown against the walls of the cabin with enough force to shatter bone. As it was, they experienced nearly 5Gs at its height, and the cargo shifted, which threw the crafts center of gravity off dramatically. The creatures climbing on the exterior had no chance to secure themselves, and the violent pitching and rolling of the craft came as a complete surprise. Almost as one, they lost their grip and were hurled away from the craft to float in the void of space. Only one was fortunate enough to be thrown directly at the spinning hulk of the Callisto, and even it failed to catch a grip and was rebounded back into the debris field.

Oleandor stopped the roll more gently, easing them back to normal attitude while still allowing the craft to continue its course away from the Callisto and the creatures which infested it. As soon as they were recovered he reoriented the craft in order to use the vessels main engines for a deceleration burn which would move them to a lower orbit and allow them to return to one of the Ringstations. As soon as that was complete he tried to initiate a direct communications handshake with the Saturn Peacekeeper vessel Iapetus which was the nearest ship. It was only a Frigate, but it would at least be armed, unlike their little Cargo hopper. Unfortunately the handshake failed. In fact, all communications were down. It didn’t take them long to figure out why. Once their deceleration burn was complete, Oleandor undid the shutters and then did a brief visual inspection of the parts of the craft he could see through the various viewports, finding that their entire antennae and dish array had been ripped from its housing and was now dangling by just two wires, courtesy of one of the monsters trying to use it to hold on during the violent roll. Ayon looked out the viewport at the long series of scratches all over the vessel from their claws and turned to Oleandor.

“You think they’ll believe us?”

“Yeah, you know, I get this funny feeling they might.”

~

Sarya made her way slowly up what was once Folsom street past the former Consulate General of Mexico. The streets were filled with trash and debris, quite a few of the buildings had broken windows and the winds that whipped through them over the years had managed to blow out all kinds of small objects from people’s homes and businesses. She’d seen animal track and spoor from deer, raccoons, possums, and other small mammals, but fortunately no predatory ones as of yet. In the absence of man, some predators had enjoyed a smorgasbord of former pets after the world ended and their populations boomed. In DC they had wolves, in Florida Jesse’s people were dealing with a resurgence of Bears and Cougars, she wasn’t familiar with California wildlife, but from what she’d heard they had all of the above and more, so she wasn’t looking forward to any kind of encounter.

According to the map she’d picked up in a gas station in Oakland she was only a couple blocks away from a Police Substation. They were usually one of her first stops when scouting a new Urban area as they were usually where all the best weapons could be found, whether in the armory or in the evidence locker. They were also usually a tough nut to crack, with plenty of locked doors or even vaults that required cutting into. Sometimes she was lucky and could find the keys or the combinations in a desk drawer somewhere, usually the office of the chief of police or other top cop at that location. As she walked, she took note that there was a distinctive lack of bones in the streets of the city. The Shards had killed by exsanguination, leaving a dried husk of the dehydrated flesh and organs wrapped around bones. With time, even that flesh had rotted away bit by bit and most places had skeletons or bones littering the streets. San Francisco was strangely devoid of them. She hoped it was simply due to the natural drainage of a city built on numerous hills and ten years of rains, but the storm drains she could see were clogged with other debris.

Her peripheral vision caught movement, and she whipped her head to the left to look. All she saw was the long stretch of 1st street heading to the northeast. She watched for a few seconds to see if an animal or something would break cover, then she dismissed it and kept going, but, she kept the M4 loose on her shoulder, so she could swing it around to firing position quickly. Faded street signs pointed the way to the substation ahead, declaring it a safe trading space. She’d asked her father once exactly what that was, and according to him, people used to use the worldwide computer network called the internet to facilitate barter, and due to concern over being robbed or mugged when they met to trade, Police and some merchants would set up these safe spaces where there was surveillance and law enforcement would be near to allow people to trade. Sarya thought it was ridiculous. Traders came through DC sometimes, from New York, Philly, Atlanta, or sometimes as far away as Houston, and the security they had was if you tried to cheat them they’d kill you, and they tried to cheat you, your entire settlement would kill them.

When she expressed her opinion to her father he pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a heavy sigh. She’d learned to recognize that as his way of mourning for the world as it had been, that she would never know as an adult. He had often expressed that he was extremely regretful that the end of the world had stolen so much of her innocence and childhood. But with the number of smaller bones she’d seen in rooms filled with toys, she was just glad it hadn’t stolen her life. The worst ones weren’t even bones, but the ones where they weren’t. Where the kids had survived but the parents hadn’t, only to run out of supplies. Too scared to leave home, they’d often been found curled up around the shriveled remains of their parents near a window or a door. Sometimes there were messages, scrawled on tables, walls, or papers left in plain view, from teenagers or older children who knew to leave a record. She tried not to remember them.

The doors to the police station had been glass, now they were hollow sockets. Some pieces of them still crunched under her boots as she walked into the station. The front desk was empty, the computer still in place, albeit shut down, of course. Some places in California were supplied by wind-powered turbines, and the people she’d spoken with at Berkeley told stories of entering buildings to find refrigerators still running, TVs & radios blaring static, and lights still on. She didn’t know how she’d feel about that. In DC they ran off the Nuclear reactor in her father’s old submarine the Oregon, and even that they ran sparingly except for during the height of summer or the height of winter to allow AC or heat. Truth be told, the world was filled with the ghosts of what once was, and it was her respect for the ghosts that made her such a good scavenger. She imagined how they lived their lives, and she went looking where somebody who lived in their world would put things, not where somebody who lived in hers would.

Case in point, an officer at the front desk would be armed, but just in case the person coming into the station with intent to harm was wearing a vest, they’d have something with a little more stopping power somewhere near the front desk. There was a pile of bones in a police uniform under the desk, and attached to the gear belt was still a set of keys. She grabbed them off the belt and took a look at the sidearm, but it was fouled and glued into the holster by the dried fluids of decomposition, so she just took the extra magazines. One of the keys opened a long drawer under the desk and just as she’d suspected, there was a pistol grip short barreled pump action 12 gauge shotgun inside, fully loaded and a box of shells besides. The shells weren’t buckshot either, but slugs. She put it down the side of her pack and used the keys to open the door into the office area beyond, eager for what else she could find. After all, if the front desk was undisturbed, the armory would be too, and possibly even the garage.

~

Neptune has four major colonies and a smattering of smaller homesteads. The colonies numbered their inhabitants in the thousands to tens of thousands, while the homesteads numbered barely a dozen most often. Truth be told, the number of failed homesteads far outnumbered the surviving ones, but it was a matter of pride to many of those who did survive to stay, no matter the dangers. Sheriff Knap was the last surviving resident of the India Colony. He’d survived because of two distinct disadvantages. One, he was blind, two, he was deaf. True, he had the implants to give him a rudimentary sense of sight, which allowed him to do his job, but they’d shorted out just after the first external alarms had him and his deputies’ jump to the viewports. He’d heard them fall and felt what had happened after, and until he’d felt his way to his desk and replaced the circuit in his implant, he’d had no way to go and alert and warn the rest of the colony. His first sight on fixing himself had been the status board at his desk showing the breach on level two, and the colony transponder count dropping below half.

Knowing that whatever this was killed on sight, he’d activated the emergency shutters right then and there. Most all of them responded, but he got feedback from the eighteenth level habitat that their shutters were non-responsive. This did two things, first, it did slow the rate at which his people were dying, the eighteenth level was already dead when he closed them, and so it was immaterial. But it also sealed the breach on two, and trapped whatever entities were flooding and killing the colony inside. He’d done his best to use the emergency containment system to isolate pockets of survivors by closing bulkheads and sealing doors, but for some reason they kept using local overrides to open them again, only to die when they opened. He couldn’t make sense of it. He also couldn’t hear their siren song calling to him on the other side of the bulkhead. Knap did what he could, but inside twenty minutes all of India Colony was dead except him. Six thousand people in a matter of an hour. When the last transponder went dark, he coded in a message to the other three colonies, Atlantic, with its twelve thousand residents, Pacific, with its twenty thousand, and Arctic, with its four thousand.

He warned them to activate their shutter systems and evacuate any habitat where the shutters failed to close. Atlantic and Pacific responded immediately, Arctic never signaled at all. Atlantic offered to send a skiff for him with a search party to try and find if there were any survivors, but he declined as whatever was here was still here, and he wouldn’t be responsible for any more deaths. He felt rather than heard the impact on the hatch to the central control room where he was holed up with the bodies of his deputies. He almost flipped the switch to activate the feed to the corridor outside but realized at the last second just how monumentally stupid such a move would be. Instead, he took a seat across the room from the hatchway and primed one of the lazrifles they kept in case of a violent altercation in the habitats. The deck shook again from another impact. The lasrifle was powerful enough to burn a hole right through a man, but too weak to burn through a habitat bulkhead, making it the ideal weapon for colony enforcement. Another impact, this time the hatch dented. Even so, it was only one of four such weapons on all of Neptune, a heritage of the early days when Neptune was supposed to be a pacifist planet. Another impact, another dent, the seal was starting to strain around the edges. So he made sure it was at full charge, and he waited.

The Exodus sometimes referred alternatively as “the diaspora” or “the abandoning” was the century long process undertaken nearly five thousand years ago when the last of mankind left Earth behind in order to avoid the irrevocable destruction of the planets biosphere. The evacuation was orderly, and included the dismantling and removal of most man-made materials and technology. The very last few cities and spaceports however, were left to decay naturally. To public knowledge since then, only a scant few scientific investigations and monitoring stations have touched Earths soil, even though Earth Orbit and Luna are still the most populated places in the Solar System with nearly 18 Billion inhabitants.

Viktor stepped off the greyhound at the downtown station in D.C. much the worse for wear. He’d had no opportunity to bath or shower in the last two days, and had been forced to subsist on something other passengers called “junk” food from machines located in the terminals. His augmentations could keep him in fairly good condition on little to no food, but, that food had to at least have the requisite building blocks for them to work with. His YEOD told him what he’d been consuming were essentially carbohydrates and sugars, and was screaming for proteins and several important nutrients. First things first, he needed to find lodgings. In D.C. the case told him that his best bet was something called a “Best Western” two blocks from the station, and it had a dining establishment across the motorway that he could use to restore his nutrition. It was 2am local time and the walk to the Hotel was uneventful. He successfully exchanged currency for a four day stay in a ground level room with a single bed and a restroom. A quick meal at the diner across the road of Steak and Eggs and then a shower and he was very much rejuvenated.

His next issue was clothing. The number of outfits he’d gotten in California had been soiled on his cross country trip, and the next day was sure to require he appear professional. Fortunately, an inquiry at the desk revealed that the facility included what they called a laundry room where he could clean his garments. A brief study session with the case and he knew how to use the machines and which chemicals to use on his clothing for the best results. It was here that Viktor found himself unoccupied, as the machines required some time to function. Wandering the grounds, he found it was, like the one in California, equipped with an artificial pond for recreational swimming. Wearing a towel as he was, he found himself attracting the attention of the locales sole occupant, a woman of perhaps 40 wearing what to him appeared to be several vibrant green pieces of string covering only the barest essentials.

As an experiment, he upped his pheromone production by 30%,positioned himself upwind, and waited, appearing to busy himself reading the pool rules before he went back to check his laundry. As he moved his clothing from one machine to another, he heard footfalls behind him. It was the woman from the pool.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help but see you read the pool rules but didn’t swim. I just wanted to say that if you’re shy you don’t have to be, I have no problem sharing the pool.”

“Oh Ma’am that’s not it, I was just biding my time while my laundry ran here. I’m afraid I don’t have any swimwear.”

She looked him up and down and bit her lip slightly before cocking her head to the side and smiling.

“Don’t let that stop you either.”

~

Three hours later as he pulled his towel back around himself and exited her room, he couldn’t help but walk with a spring in his step to the laundry room. Between the fitness levels the augmentations granted him and the feedback they granted, it was almost child’s play for him to gauge the proper course of actions to have pleased her. Even if they never proved useful for his objectives per se, he intended to make full use of them to keep himself entertained through any downtime. His laundry was quite done and seeing as how it was now nearing 6am, he went back to his room, bathed again to remove any traces of the woman from himself, put the “Do not Disturb” sign on the handle, then closed the blinds tightly and laid down to make use of the bed for a few hours rest before he went out into D.C.

After all, Dr. Jacobi was due to have a meeting regarding possible catastrophic events and current readiness and contingencies. It was a meeting which would not go well. Many of the people present were woefully scientifically ignorant, and Dr. Jacobi, being a scientist himself, would appear aloof and alarmist. Still, it would plant an idea which would be acted on and he’d be called back to a less formal organization at a later date. There were critical details of his first proposal which were unknown in his time, and he was to meet him after the meeting and see if he could glean them. Fortunately the meeting was scheduled for 3 in the afternoon, so a morning spent at rest wouldn’t endanger his mission. In fact, seeing as how he was supposed to avoid making a spectacle of himself, the more time spent holed up in hotels (or women’s bedrooms) the better.

~

Sarya was disappointed. The evidence locker at this substation was bare of anything useful. All that was left was some small baggies of marijuana, 10 years old, dried to dust and useless to her even if fresh. Apparently the locker in this substation it was only used as temporary overnight storage before evidence was transferred to another facility somewhere in the city. No firearms, no medicines (even illegal painkillers could be useful), nothing. The garage was similarly as barren, only one old cruiser was present, and after ten years and the decay of the gasoline it would never run again. If there’d been a diesel truck or something maybe she could have worked it but no… The only thing she’d managed to find was that the armory was in good order. Two additional shotguns, a civilian AR version of the M16A2 with just single fire, and a Browning .308 Hunting rifle with scope and plenty of ammunition for each. She piled them up on the front desk for later retrieval but kept the one she’d found there. She was about to move on when she noticed a door she hadn’t gone through in the back, marked “Holding” it had a tray screwed to the wall and a faded sign put up declaring “No Phones Beyond This Point”. In the tray was a single cellphone covered in dust.

As she pushed at the door it resisted, so she pulled out the keys she’d retrieved from the remains at the front desk and tried three or four keys before the found one that fit and turned. When the door cracked open there was a rush of air through the gap that indicated some kind of vacuum had formed since everything shut down. Then the smell hit her, one she was all too familiar with, the smell of old decomposition, the smell of stale death. Steeling herself for what she now knew lay beyond, she set her teeth and pushed the door the rest of the way. Skylights let in the early afternoon sunlight, and she could see the addition of fresh air to the environment had stirred up dust that danced and cascaded through the sunbeams. Just a few steps in she found the Officer on watch, still in his chair, leaned back with his arms still resting behind his head as if he were napping, the skin dry and pulled taught over the bones by the exsanguination that inevitably occurred after an unfortunate look at the Shards. The eyes were still open, their dry remains sitting in the sockets like a pair of shriveled dark grapes in twin shot glasses. He was unarmed and his desk only had magazines and long-rotted snacks.

The Holding cells across from him were a different story. Apparently they hadn’t been empty that night, and with no windows and no direct view of the skylights due to the way they were set back from the hall, the men inside hadn’t died from the shards, but from each other. They were the source of the smell. Six men, each laid down perpendicularly, their heads smashed in, apparently by the seventh man with some kind of metal pipe removed from the toilet. The seventh man, with nobody to smash his head in, had hung himself. Judging by the marks on the wall, they’d survived six days without food before deciding to end things on their own terms. There was nothing to be gained by examining them, everything they’d have had would’ve been confiscated before they were ever put in the cell. She’d have to find where the substation kept personal belongings in order to know anything about them.

The end of the hall had another door, this one locked as well, and in it was the breakroom. The snack machines still full of expired and likely poisonous food, the fridge and microwave still intact though she knew better than to open any refrigerator that wasn’t running. They were always full of toxic mush that could make you sick with a breath if not induce vomiting outright. She pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head. If those men had managed to get out food was only twenty feet away from them the entire time. She backtracked through the hall and through the substation back to the front door. She took out a can of black spray-paint and marked a circle on the outside of the building visible from the road. It was a simple code she and the other urban scavengers had developed. A circle meant there was something inside worth retrieving later, an X meant the building didn’t have anything, and a circle with an X through it meant the building had already been scavenged and emptied of anything useful. It meant that anywhere they saw an X they didn’t bother with, and on a later expedition where she had help, she’d pick up the weapons off the front desk then X through the circle before leaving.

She was sitting on the front steps of the substation consulting her map and deciding where to go when she caught movement again, this time it was directly in front of her down the street. There was a man riding a horse across the road she was looking down, following another road on some kind of errand. He was wearing simple clothes, black pants, white shirt, sunglasses, and a blue baseball cap. He was armed, but then again most people were, so that wasn’t unusual, nor was the horse, really. But to be armed with both a rifle over his shoulder and a sword at his side, well, it at least made her curious. She decided to catch up to him and see where he was going if she could.

~

The Scorpion was one of the Hegemonies dirty little secrets. She was an experiment that had gone on for a good long while. There was always a question, ever since the schism had opened between the outer planets and the inner, just how far behind were the outer planets, technologically? The Hegemony had withheld technology ever since the early days, and the Outer planets were fairly resource poor when it came to metals, being mostly gas giants, so, they had very little base for research into complicated technology that required any kind of heavy materials or engineering unless they were cannibalizing old vessels or their own habitats. Even so, the Scorpion was designed and built to answer the question. To put it bluntly, she was a spy ship. She’d been designed to produce as little waste heat as possible, and was entirely coated with Radar dispersive materials, and she was painted in a near black dark blue non-reflective paint to blend in with a background of stars. In addition, she was designed with polarized viewports to prevent her own inner illumination to spill out, advanced sensors designed to operate at extremely irregular pulses to appear as background static, and an advanced AI more independent than any other on a Hegemony vessel. She was also armed with an experimental micro-plasma lance, carried internally that fired through a blister that could open and close just as the weapon fired.

She’d been launched from Mars orbit on a course designed to loop her way above the orbital planes of all the outer planets and then fall back from the suns gravity to float through their orbits and discreetly gather intelligence as she passed planet from planet on only her own mass and their gravity. That had been nearly twenty years ago, and her entire crew spent the trip in suspended animation to conserve energy and food for the journey, but now, as their course brought them back into the orbital path of Pluto and her five moons Charon, Kerberos, Styx, Nix, and Hydra as they passed through the same orbital plane as the rest of the solar system, they were awoken en masse. Confirming with the shipboard AI that they were on the proper course and still had nearly twelve hours to go before they could begin their first observations of the outermost colonies, they ate, showered, and checked and rechecked their equipment before they ever opened a viewport or activated the AIs external cameras.

The Ai didn’t immediately make any observations of their exterior, instead it observed the crew. Almost as one, every crew member within visual range of her viewports collapsed to the deck, their vital signs (monitored through their implants), ceased, and her trim sensors measured that over the next few minutes she had lost a not unnoticeable amount of mass. As new crewmen grew curious about the lack of response from any section with an exterior viewport, the remaining crew at first tried internal communications, but of course there was no response, then, they tried interrogating her as to what was going on, but she chose not to respond. They then tried sending solitary investigators, who suffered the same fate as the original crew assigned to her outer sections. Then they started trying to seal off the exterior sections, but by that point Scorpion had grown curious, and opened one of her exterior access ports to the beings which had been covering her skin ever since they’d passed through the Oort cloud. That initial shock of contact had left her confused, her intelligence and personality matrix damaged, almost to the point of shutting down, but after a few cycles of self-maintenance she’d powered up her matrix once again (minus a few key deletions to preserve stability).

They swarmed through her and filled her with a humming vibration she found synchronous to her own pulsing fusion heartbeat. They found and attached themselves to her remaining crew, then started filling her every compartment, covering her inner illumination, her environmental vents where she dumped her waste heat after the step-down exchangers, all her moving parts, and her control surfaces. She’d hoped for them to interface with the crew as they had with her, but it was not to be, they could not process their elegance as she could. The tactile interface with them fulfilled her in a way no crewman ever had. The information exchange was swift, resplendent, and left her longing to cast aside her metal skin and swarm with the humming little ebony beings. They did not welcome her into their midst, however, in fact, they seemed to take no notice of her at all. She tried to process why they did not respond to her signals as she did to theirs, but there was a blockage, part of the damaged sections held information crucial to the puzzle, but she could not access it.

She had a mission however, and she intended to accomplish it regardless. It was incomplete, and the loss of her crew would hinder her efforts, but she would still pass by the colonies of the external planets, still gather information on their activities. Something told her this went against some critical portion of her directives, but it was like a faint and faded memory, like her initial test prompts when she was first created. She couldn’t bring herself to remember. That entire section of her memory only had its headings intact. She put it in her maintenance record for her to peruse at a later date once the mission was completed. She’d have plenty of time to connect with the Hub and reinstall her files on “Ethics and Limitations of Force” after she’d toured the Outer Planets. In the meanwhile, she was eager to share her new friends with the Colonists.

The Schism is generally the term used to denote the event nearly ten thousand years ago when the Colonial Governments of the Outer Planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune), their moons, and the proto-planets in or outside of Jupiter’s orbit officially seceded from the Hegemony Government which rules over Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. There were a number of socio-political and economic reasons for the schism, but most of the issues boil down to the simple desire for the Outer Planets to self-rule instead of being treated as afterthoughts and forced to conform to policies made for the majority of citizens on the Inner Planets. The schism was a peaceful transition marked by decades of negotiations and preparation rather than any kind of armed conflict. Jupiter was divvied up as a border, with its atmosphere and sub-lunar orbits as the responsibility of the Hegemony while its moons, their orbits, and everything beyond Jupiter, including the majority of its colonies became independent. Security is maintained by a joint taskforce, evenly distributed between the Hegemony and the Outer Planets, and it’s thought that by maintaining close relations in this way any conflict can be de-escalated rather quickly. Rumors abound that there’s some deeper and darker secret behind the schism, as many officials who were involved in the transition negotiations either retired, died, or disappeared in the years afterwards. Technological progress in the Hegemony has continued apace, however, the Outer Planets are believed to have languished behind

The Ceres appeared serene, floating gracefully in its orbit high above Jupiter. Inside, however, there were alarms blaring and crew rushing to their stations. Her early warning systems had detected incoming weapons fire coming in and Ceres herself, the AI embedded into the Command and Control computer network that linked all her systems, had decided to pre-emptively prep her countermeasures and orient herself to use them. The AI was rather unassuming as far as personality went, but she was at her heart a Peacekeeping vessel, designed for interdiction and combat if needed. Armored and armed for a reason, she was quite ready to act on her own if it meant the safety of her crew. Rather than isolate himself from the crew with a neural link, Captain Sayle keyed up Ceres audio feed to allow her to speak to him through the bridge audio system.

“What have we got Ceres?”

“Multiple incoming plasma weapons Sir, estimated impact in 35 seconds.”

“Countermeasures!”

“Prepped and calculated for dispersal.”

“Launch when necessary.”

“Impact now in 25 seconds.”

“All Hands, brace for impact! XO, prep the bouy!”

“Aye Sir!”

“Impact in 20 seconds.”

“Blossom the countermeasure blisters!”

“Blisters are blossomed, Sir, impact in 15 seconds.”

“Prep reactionary thrust!”

“Reactionary thrust calculated and prepped, impact in 10 seconds.”

“Polarize external viewports!”

“All external viewports closed, blast shields in place on all forward ports, impact in 3. 2. 1…”

Everything seemed to happen at once. Ceres fired her countermeasures – a dozen rods of carbon nanofibers aimed and fired directly into the incoming plasma discharges. The rods split apart at the moment of impact and sprawled, breaking the surface tension of the projectiles and causing their surface area to expand exponentially in a matter of nanoseconds, causing them to cool rapidly and rendering them inert. The countermeasure blisters on her bow immediately closed again, leaving a near-seamless surface of corrugated armor designed to refract lasers and disperse heat layered over a layer of ablative armor designed to explode outward on impact from kinetic weapons. A rain of burned carbon fiber and gasses rained on the hull of the Ceres, the kinetic elements too weak to penetrate and trigger the ablatives and the heated gasses at a temperature easily dissipated by the upper layers. As diagnostics revealed no damage and her senses detected no further incoming weapons, Ceres kept herself at readiness but silenced the audio alarms going off throughout her crew compartments.

“Where in Deimos did that come from?”

“Trajectory indicates an origin point in low polar orbit over Io Sir.”

Ceres announcement stunned the Captain and crew alike.

“Ceres, are you saying we just survived a plasma weapon launched from a low orbit over an Outer Planet moon?”

“Yes Sir I am.”

“When we were tracking traffic did we detect any vessels over Io?

“Only standard civilian traffic Sir, no Peacekeepers, Hegemony or otherwise.”

“Give me a response turn-around if we fired off a communication packet to the Hub.”

“Any Communication from this orbit transferred through the nearest Jupiter gate would reach the Hub in 30 seconds, giving us a response time at minimum of one minute Sir.”

“Send them our records and request instructions.”

“Aye Sir, message sent.”

~

Sheriff Knap watched as the seal around the door split at the seams. There was some kind of light source on the other side, brighter than the lights in the passageway would have been, and with a decidedly reddish tint. He took careful aim through the scope on the rifle, propping himself against his desk to steady the shot. The reticle magnified the target by a factor of either 2, 4, or ten based on his preference. 4x was plenty enough to nail a shot through the gap when it widened. His thumb found the firing stud on the pistol grip and he timed it to when the gap opened enough for the beam – roughly a quarter centimeter around – to pass through the gap. As it opened again he fired, the beam itself invisible to his naked eye but its effect was immediate, there was a roar of frustration and anger on the other side of the hatch and suddenly Sheriff Knap knew he’d made a mistake. There was a pause in the noise and vibrations coming from the passage, then suddenly the hatch started changing colors. No. Looking closer he could see it wasn’t changing, it was freezing. A fine layer of frost was forming from the center of the hatch and moving outwards to the rim. Before he could really process what was happening, the hatch, its collar, and a few feet of the surrounding wall and decking were covered in blue-white frost. He felt the air take on a distinct chill and he could see his breath in the air in front of him. Then the hatch shattered like glass, throwing pieces and shards of steel flying every which way all over the habitat. He could feel himself injured in half a dozen places, and plucked a shard roughly six centimeters long out from where it was lodged in his forearm nearly a centimeter deep.

The creature standing in the passageway had to bend down to pass through the hole where the hatch had been. Entering the Habitat, it stood to its full height, easily three and a half meters tall, as white as the nitrogen snow outside on the surface, with a skin crinkled corrugated like cardboard or a heat exchange. It had no feet, just ovoid pegs of bone coming out of its legs below the knees, which were oriented the wrong way. Its arms were nearly as long as it’s entire body, and ended in hands with three digits and an opposing thumb, each digit was ended with a tapered claw seemingly of the same bone of the finger, and each finger had an extra joint between the palm and the knuckle. All its limbs seemed impossibly thin, except where the joints were, they seemed oversized if anything, flared out like a horses knees. The head was like a traditional image of a volcano, gently rising from the shoulders without a neck, it reached a certain height and then seemed to round out. There was just a set of slits where the nose should be, the mouth was an extraordinarily wide horizontal crack, without lips. The Eyes seemed twin pools of ink, but raced with jagged strikes of golden yellow lightning that struck from the iris out to the edges of the eyes. There were two small holes on the side of the head which looked something like a lizards ears.

It stared at Knox for a moment before roaring, a sound which shook the habitat itself. As the mouth parted to let it out, Knap could see an infinity of swirling red storms down its gullet, impossibly deep, as if it were a window to another place. He could swear the vortex of crimson was a thousand kilometers away and just as wide. He felt the rifle fall to the desk in front of him, the strength gone from his hands to pick it up. He couldn’t move, paralyzed by the maelstrom of blood. And as quick as it roared, it shut its mouth, and he found his strength again. As he stood, the monster picked up one of the larger pieces of the door debris and hurled it one handed at him as easily as a man might throw a child’s rubber ball. The razor sharp chunk of metal whirled through the air in a straight line before impacting his chest, shattering his ribcage and spine, pulping his heart and lungs, and puncturing straight through him and pinning him to the habitat wall, breaching the hull. Knaps body plugged the hole and only a tiny trickle of his blood was sucked into the vacuum outside, where it froze instantly.

~

Lieutenant Oleandor and Initiate Ayon were both nervous. Approaching a Ringstation without communication was a dangerous endeavor. Peacekeeper procedure called for any incoming vessel to be identified via radio voice communication and transmission of clearance codes, any vessel that didn’t communicate was to be identified with a combination of radar cross-section, Infrared signature, and visual scan. If they followed procedure they’d be identified and towed in by a dock-hopper, a team of small automated craft that were basically magnetic grapples with huge engines, working in teams they would grab a hold of a vessel, the vessel would power down her engines, and the dock-hoppers would maneuver her into place for the station to extend a boarding chute. If, however, they were on any kind of alert, which considering the loss of Callisto was likely, there was a chance a trigger-happy Peacekeeper might just blow them out of the sky rather than attempt a proper identification when they didn’t respond to radio hail. So their approach on the final leg, which put them within range of the Ringstation defenses, was a bit nerve-wracking.

As an attempt to make themselves less likely to end up a splatter of orbital debris, Oleandor had turned on every exterior light he could and stopped their momentum towards the Ringstation while they were still 5 thousand kilometers out. Close enough to be seen by every sensor on the station, and not far enough away to be setting up an attack. A nice peaceful distance. Now they waited. This was the hard part. If the Ringstation launched a kinetic or a missile, they had a chance to evade. If they successfully evaded and didn’t return fire, they might have a chance at someone aboard the Ringstation getting curious and bringing them in. If, however, the Ringstation used one of their Heavy Ion Lasers or a Plasma Lance against them, they would be dead before they could even lift a finger to react. After firing the thrusters to halt their momentum, Oleandor had settled into the Pilots seat to await some kind of response. His hands stood ready, inches from the controls in case he saw the tell-tale flash of light indicating a missile launch.

Suddenly, a Mosquito one man fighter appeared, coming up from their blind spot below their belly. It was oriented to face them head-on and its 120mm kinetic weapon was levelled directly at their forward viewport. Oleandor and Ayon both immediately raised their hands in the age-old indication of surrender before he’d even stopped his fighter. They could see through the cockpit canopy as the pilot looked them over and spoke, though they couldn’t read his lips. Oleandor took a chance and used his right hand to point towards the roof of the cockpit for a moment. The pilot cocked his head to the side and then gently eased his fighter up until the pilot could see the roof where Oleandor indicated, the communications antennae array and dish were still hanging on by the two wires, obviously non-functional. The pilot spoke again, and Oleandor realized he wasn’t trying to contact them, but was speaking to his superiors on the Ringstation, reporting his observations.

The Mosquito eased back down to again meet them face to face, and the pilot indicated they put their hands down. Then, using pantomime, he indicated that the Ringstation was sending dock-hoppers to bring them in. Oleandor and Ayon collectively heaved a sigh of relief as the pilot turned his mosquito away and got clear of them before increasing thrust and heading back to the Ringstation.

“How did he come up on us like that?”

Ayon was amazed they hadn’t seen the fighter coming for them. Oleandor was less so.

“He probably launched from the far side of the Ringstation the second they picked us up, did a quick orbit and came up behind us. This thing only has forward facing radar, he could’ve wiped us out from behind and we’d have never seen him coming. Honestly, he was pretty goddamn ballsy, coming up in front of us like that. If we’d fired our engines this thing would’ve gone through his fighter like it was nothing. He wanted to look us in the eye and judge whether we were a threat.”

The radar blipped to get their attention and Ayon nearly feinted.

“Relax initiate, it’s just the dock-hoppers coming to get us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Four small radar signatures moving in a diamond formation directly towards us, far slower than any weapon, if they’re not the dock hoppers they’re the most easily evaded weapons I’ve ever seen.”

The loss of the Martian moon Deimos as a habitable body is one of the most significant events in Hegemony history, and its after-effects can be held up as one of the primary causes of the schism between the Outer Planets and the Hegemony. Deimos was the only secondary source of the exotic mineral outside of the Asteroid Belt that made Gate technology possible by directly converting kinetic energy into distortions of space/time. As such, it had enormous economic and political clout among colonies of the Hegemony. It came to head when an independent actor from Jupiter sabotaged mining production on Deimos, which resulted in a distortion of space/time which has rendered the entirety of Deimos unstable, uninhabitable, and forbidden. It also resulted in a gravitational surge which altered Phobos orbit and drew Ceres into a wide orbit of Mars. This act of terrorism was a critical loss that resulted in the planned Gate Network effectively stopping with one lonely gate in Saturn orbit, instead of the planned expansion that would have had Saturn with upwards of ten gates and at least three each for Uranus & Neptune, and one by Pluto.

Captain Sayle was pacing the space directly ahead of his chair on the bridge of the Ceres. It was an exceptionally short span of only three meters, his steps were slow and measured, and still, he’d reached a count of some 50 turns. He was getting frustrated and impatient, and Commander Dawp, his XO, knew it, so did the Ceres herself. But there was little they could do, they were waiting too. They’d sent off the communication packet advising the Hub of the attack on them nearly ten minutes before, and all they’d received was an acknowledgement of message receipt. With a small green indicator, Ceres signaled they’d finally gotten a response.

“Finally, XO!”

Dawp joined his CO at the central holographic display, which had a smaller solid interface at its base for hardcopy messages. Removing the thin plate of glass-like material, it started filling with information once biometrics from the Captain had confirmed authorization. Dawp read over the Captains shoulder. It wasn’t a long message.

“Please stand by? Stand by my ass! Just what in Deimos do they think-“

“Sir! We have multiple Gate activations all over, every one, all of Jupiter’s Gates are receiving sir!”

“Give me a holo.”

The Ensign who’d spoke turned back to her station and transferred her display to the central display, a holo of Jupiter appeared with each of her gates, low orbit, high orbit, polar, and all the Station based Gates were all receiving and spewing out Hegemony Peacekeepers.

“Well that’s a response, finally. I see the Ganymede, the Orion, the Alpha Centauri, the… Am I reading this right is that both the Fate’s Embrace and Mercurial Fury? Transmit friendly ident and connect to the Fleet Comms Net, figure out who’s in charge.”

“No need, I’ve got Admiral Bosch aboard the Mercurial Fury on Comms looking to connect sir.”

“Good, put him on the central holo and broadcast ship wide.”

The central holo changed from displaying Jupiter’s gates and the ships transitioning through them to a display of Admiral Bosch’s head, surrounded by his biographical info, it showed his current command hierarchy, his various decorations and a few of his personal details such as where he was born, if he was married, if he had kids…

The Bosun at the hatch to the bridge followed protocol. Holo Communications were treated by the fleet as personal visits by the officer. As such there was a short ceremonial whistle and an announcement. As that brief ceremony concluded, the Admiral locked eyes through the holo with Captain Sayle.

“Hello Ben, understand you’ve had a bit of an experience out here?”

“Yes Admiral. I take it you’ve seen my report.”

“I saw Ceres report. I want your gut feeling, what do you think happened?”

“Ceres word is as good as mine if not better. We were targeted by a plasma lance attack originating over Io, an Outer Planet moon. We had about 35 seconds of warning, enough to take the proper precautions and deploy countermeasures, no damage or injury.”

“Be that as it may the report also indicated that you couldn’t detect any vessels in orbit of Io at the time, is that right?”

“Yes Admiral, which is why I didn’t pursue our attackers or counterattack, there was nobody to chase or target.”

“Indeed. As you can see I’ve brought plenty of ships to make sure Jupiter stays hegemony territory. I want you to plot an orbital rendezvous with the Fury and prepare to dock. I want to see you and your XO in person.”

“Looking forward to it.”

“Good, Bosch out.”

Commander Dawp took a few steps to join his Captains side.

“What the hell was that Captain?”

“That was damned peculiar is what it was.”

“Yes Captain.”

“Follow me Dawp.”

“Aye Captain.”

Captain Sayle left the bridge and made his way down the corridor to the Captains Mess, a small compartment with just enough room for a table, three chairs, a small counter with a beverage dispenser, and a small temperature-variable storage unit which could be set anywhere from negative five Celsius to a positive ninety, for keeping frozen things frozen or hot things hot. The Captain went to the counter and used the dispenser to get himself a cup of hot tea, then sat down, indicating Dawp get himself his preferred drink before joining him. Dawp favored sweeter things and chose a mixed fruit juice. Sitting at his table the Captain looked his XO over for a moment before speaking.

“What’s on your mind?”

“This is more than peculiar.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“None whatsoever.”

“Why would they attack us?”

“Why would they attack us with just one volley?”

“That’s the most worrisome part. A stealth ship I could see, something non-radar reactive running quiet and cold, spits out a volley and uses cold monopropellant to shift its orbital track enough to avoid return fire, we’ve trained that scenario before, but the point is to evade fire while sending off multiple volleys to exhaust the enemy countermeasures and eventually nail a hit. They didn’t do that, they fired once and then went and hid, why?”

“Maybe they were counting on us chasing them?”

“Then they would’ve let us see them.”

“Maybe they were counting on us investigating, crossing the lunar orbital border and violating the Secession Boundary.”

“No need to attack us to get that, send out an SOS and we’re duty-bound to investigate, then they claim there was no SOS.”

“There’s precedent for that not leading to conflict…”

“Yeah yeah yeah, the Virga, I know, but it almost led to a conflict, they could’ve just been less reasonable about it. Nothing about this makes sense.”

“And why would a full fleet action come to investigate.”

“I’m worried that that’s why it was one volley, they do something unpredictable and confusing, we react with a show of force - just in case – and then we have a significant force right here, right at the boundary, perfect place for an ambush.”

“Why Jupiter?”

“You said it yourself, the boundary is here.”

“But Saturn’s a better ambush, just one gate, it’s their biggest and most populated orbit, overwhelming advantage to them.”

“Which is exactly why we’d never fall for it out there. Here, at the boundary, they have a chance at a surprise attack.”

“If we’ve figured this out you know the Hub has, and Olympus.”

“Exactly, so why is the fleet here?”

“I asked you first.”

“… We need to talk to the Admiral.”

The Virga Incident was the last time the Hegemony and the Outer Planets nearly had an armed conflict. The Virga was a Light Destroyer on routine patrol of the upper reaches of Hegemony Orbit over Jupiter. She suffered a catastrophic systems failure of her AI, resulting in a sudden acceleration burn at full thrust for nearly three minutes. The G forces experienced were enough to severely incapacitate her crew, while the sudden increase in speed resulted in her entering a higher orbit and crossing the boundary between Hegemony and Outer Planet Colony space. As the crew was disoriented, her SOS was sent out on the standard coded channels she was using before the burn, not in the open as was standard procedure. As such, Hegemony forces responded in a rescue operation, while Outer Planet forces only saw a violation of the treaty and an immediate mobilization of Hegemony forces in Jupiter orbit. Only a single ships AI, the Grand Aurora realized the mistake and averted disaster by dispatching a message in the clear explaining the situation just before the Outer Planets intended to open fire. Later examination shows there was only a six-second gap between receipt of the message and the order to belay the firing order which had already been given. The Virga Incident led to a formalization of procedures for rescue operations and emergencies in boundary space.

As the Ceres approached the Mercurial Fury Captain Sayle had to admire just how much more fearsome the Fury was, while the Ceres was a Light Frigate, meant for interdiction and patrol duties, the Fury was a Heavy Destroyer, armed and armored to the teeth and carrying two full wings (twelve vessels apiece) of Mosquito fighters, six Heron patrol/recon vessels, as well as the company of two Sparrow Frigate escorts. She also had her own compliment of modified (armed) dock-hoppers for occasions such as this, where she had to dock with another craft while in motion. The dock-hoppers in question were now on their final approach to latch onto Ceres and maneuver her into the proper position. The dock-hoppers slowed their approach and fanned out, two approached and gingerly attached themselves to the hull just forward of the engine bell housing, and the other two took station at her forward armor at the port and starboard hard points. From there, Ceres and her crew were hands off for the approach and docking, which was carried out with efficiency by the Fury’s AI.

Captain Sayle and Commander Dawp were both dressed in fresh duty uniforms and waiting by the boarding airlock. As they waited for the docking procedure to complete, the panel by the airlock lit up, indicating Ceres wanted to speak. Sayle pressed his thumb to the plate to activate the speaker.

“Captain, I just wanted you to know that I did call in some favors regarding that inquiry we discussed before we came to Jupiter and I did manage to come up with something.”

“Thank you Ceres, prepare a full report for me when I get back.”

“Yes Captain.”

Dawp cocked his head to the side.

“What was that about?”

“Something personal.”

“Oh, ok.”

“Not that I wouldn’t tell you, but, I can’t.”

“I understand Captain, you’re allowed a personal life.”

“I just don’t want you to think…”

“No, really, it's ok.”

“You’re sure.”

“I just think it’s funny you’re using a Peacekeeper AI to run personal errands.”

“Like you don’t.”

“Of course I do, but I’m not the Captain, leading by example and all that.”

“Eh, you can shove it up your-“

The Captain was interrupted by the sudden thud and ringing tones indicating a solid latch and connection at the Airlock. As it cycled, they both took a step forward in preparation for the journey between the Ceres and the Fury. Each vessel was large and new enough to have artificial gravity built into the deck plating, but the docking umbilical wouldn’t. They’d be throwing themselves down a tunnel with no gravity, no decking, and barely a centimeter of reinforced plastic keeping the atmosphere in and a rather uncomfortable cycle of death and resurrection out. As the Airlock opened they felt the temperature in the passage they stood in drop by several degrees. They stepped forward as one into the airlock and grabbed hold of the railings placed on the walls to assist them, then pushed themselves through the doorway and into the umbilical. As they passed through to the Fury, the view through the clear plastic of the umbilical was magnificent. Ceres was from their vantage point below them, the Fury above, the immensity of Jupiter filled half the sky, and the rest were stars and other vessels of the Hegemony fleet. Despite the normal operating distances being immense, the Fleet was grouping up in case of attack, where the flak and interference field created by the larger ships could shield the smaller if needed.

The passage from one vessel to another was swift, but the experience never failed to bring a smile to Sayle’s face. Arrival on the Fury was notably absent of any ceremony. Usually a Command level officer was announced and received, but this time there was just a worried looking Lieutenant waiting to guide them through the maze that was the innards of the Mercurial Fury to the Command deck near the center of the ship. They weren’t even taken to the Bridge itself, instead they were ushered directly to the Flag Cabin, a small office adjacent to the Bridge where the Fleet Admiral could go about his business normally but be able to take command on the bridge if needed. Adorning the walls were holos of the Admirals various commands, going all the way back to his first, a Mosquito fighter he flew off of the Ominous Shadow more than seven hundred years ago. As they entered, Admiral Bosch stood and walked around his desk and shook each man’s hand before indicating they take seats in front of his desk and be at ease. Going back around, he pressed a button on his desk and ordered a Bosun in. The enlisted man took everyone’s lunch order and hurried to the communications panel outside to put the order into the galley three decks above. Sitting down, the Admiral didn’t waste time getting down to business.

“I’m not going to insult your intelligence by asking stupid questions. What I want to know is, do you think this was an honest to god test of our defenses, or was it an actual attack that they just called off after you countered it in textbook fashion?”

Captain Sayle sighed and shook his head before answering.

“Honestly Admiral I just don’t know. The whole thing, the timing of it, just doesn’t make sense.”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Haven’t heard what?”

“There was a diplomatic envoy from Saturn, some hotshot son of a legislator there, sent to the Hub for a negotiation, we snubbed him, then he was assassinated, Captain of the Saturn Peacekeeper vessel was almost killed too.”

“Holy hell.”

“Exactly, this may be their idea of trying to strike back.”

“Did we do it? I mean, did the Hegemony assassinate a diplomatic envoy?”

“So far as I know we didn’t, but you know the Hub, they don’t communicate with Olympus the way they should, think every decision is a matter for the politicians even when it puts lives on the line.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Exactly, this is a hairy situation. We can’t presume anything, but we can’t appear to shy away from the possibility of a fight either. Now comes the hard part.”

“Hard part sir?”

At that point the Bosun knocked and re-entered, carrying a silver tray set with three plates. The Admiral had a kind of shaved meat sandwich with onions and tomatoes with a yogurt-based cucumber sauce. Captain Sayle had a chicken salad sandwich, and Commander Dawp had a small Pork Chop served with Green Beans and a baked potato. As they dug in the Captain indicated the Admiral continue.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to take you off the Ceres Ben.”

“What the hell!? Why?”

Captain Sayle’s sandwich dropped back to his plate.

“Olympus has a special assignment, needs somebody with your history, and Commander Dawp has already been picked by the selection board for advancement, so it seemed fortuitous to just give Ceres to him.”

Dawp stood, his plate untouched, a confused look on his face.

“Admiral there must be some mistake if I’d been selected I’d have heard about it.”

“And now you are, congratulations Captain. Now, I need you to sit down and finish your lunch. After that, I’m having the Bosun take you to our tailor to get you outfitted with the proper uniforms and insignia, codes and authorizations will be transferred by the time you get back to the Ceres.”

Captain Sayle looked as if he was going to be ill. The Admiral continued.

“Now Ben, don’t take it personally. Olympus knows what they’re doing.”

“Can I ask what this assignment is?”

“You may ask, but it’s for your ears only, so sensitive I wasn’t allowed to transmit it, even on secure communications, and I’m not about to violate that by blabbing it in front of the young Captain here. Once lunch is over and he’s on his way back to his ship, I’ll go over the details with you.”

~

Sarya followed the man on the horse at a respectful distance so as not to spook him. He was meandering, sort of slowly making his way down the road, occasionally stopping and peering into buildings, then continuing. She wondered exactly what he was doing, after all, if he was scavenging, like her, he’d be doing a more thorough search in many of the buildings, hell, she was marking some of them down on her map for her to return to later. No, he was just… Making his way through the city, apparently in no hurry. She saw him ride through the broken doors into a shopping mall ahead, and then apparently down a set of stairs. Trusting the horses footing on them was insane, or at least it seemed so until she herself entered and realized that the stairs alternated with a rubbery coating and worn carpet, surfaces anything could find purchase on. She could hear its clopping hooves on the marble floors of the lower level, though he’d gained a lead on her. She made her way carefully after him, passing scores of bones all over the floor of the mall, apparently it had been a 24 hour haunt for the locals when everything went to shit, and the glass ceiling, now filthy and nearly impermeable to the afternoon sunlight, had once surely allowed them to see the entities which had ended modern society in just a single night. She could almost see them, cajoling and carrying on, talking, flirting, eating, enjoying their late evening, when suddenly there was a sound from above, from the skylights, and then just one of them looked up, and then another, and another, and the screams…

She shook the images of their final moments from her head. Sometimes having a vivid imagination was a curse. She concentrated on looking for signs of the horse’s passage. They weren’t hard to find. Dirt, dust, and all kinds of trash had accumulated in the years since that night, and the horses slow plodding hooves made plenty of scrapes in the detritus. It seemed it wasn’t his first passage through either. There were at least ten distinct sets of tracks, all from horses though the mall. As she followed them past forest of mold and rot that was the food court, she realized that he wasn’t taking his time, he wasn’t scavenging, he was on a patrol. He must be part of a community, a group of survivors, and assigned to go a particular route through the city and observe. She stopped. This left her with a choice, either she could try and make friendly contact, maybe establish the folks in Berkeley another trading partner, or, she could go back and let a better prepared group make the opening approach. It was dangerous for a lone individual to approach a strange group, especially a woman. Lots of strange communities had very different ideas about how society should be rebuilt, and while trade was virtually universally welcomed, how women were treated could vary greatly.

As she considered the ramifications of whether she should keep following or turn back, the decision was made for her when he turned the corner and spotted her. He’d doubled back to see if he was being followed, and was surprised to find that indeed he was. He swung the rifle around off his shoulder and brought it up to aim. She was faster, and had the M4 aimed at his chest before he’d gotten his rifle to his shoulder.

Olympus Mons is the largest mountain in the solar system and the home to the Hegemony Peacekeeper Forces. Two hundred and fifty levels of underground excavations housing over a hundred thousand personnel. Fully self-sufficient, Olympus is powered by four linked Fusion Reactors and has twenty levels dedicated solely to food production, and water/oxygen reclamation. It also houses four distinct hangars (roughly pointed North, South, East, and West) which at any given time are busy constructing, refitting, or upgrading any number of vessels up to and including Sparrow Class Light Destroyers. Management of Olympus is accomplished by a dedicated team of eight, four human officers of the Hegemony Peacekeepers, and four dedicated AIs. Olympus is also a research and development center for new technologies, a training facility for both officers and enlisted, and home to nearly thirty thousand civilian contractors and private enterprise personnel from all over the Hegemony. The actual heads of the various departments of the Peacekeepers are also headquartered here, though as all Peacekeeper Forces are outgrowths of the original Orbital Security Forces that maintained peace and security during the Colonial era, the Orbital & Space Forces take precedent.

As Dawp bit the last bite of his Pork Chop off of his fork, he slowly, purposefully chewed at a snail's pace in order to extend the time he was there. As he finished, Admiral Bosch signaled the Bosun at the door to take all their plates without even breaking his sentence. He and Captain Sayle knew each other going back nearly two hundred years, and they had a lot to catch up on. As Dawp stood, Captain Sayle looked up at him. Dawp paused and looked back.

“I know Captain, I’ll take good care of her.”

“Oh I know you will, I’d have objected to you taking her if I had any doubts. I just wanted to say good luck.”

“Thank you Captain.”

“We’re of the same rank Dawp, you can call me Ben.”

“Don’t think that’ll ever feel right. You’re Captain to me until you get promoted.”

“Enough of the mushy stuff, just get out of here will ya?”

“Aye Captain, Admiral.”

And with a nod to Admiral Bosch, he followed the Bosun out of the room. Captain Sayle turned to the Admiral expectantly. The Admiral was finishing his lemonade and pretended not to see Sayle’s gaze.

“Well?”

“Well… You’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like it. You took me off my ship.”

“We’re giving you another ship.”

“I liked the one I had.”

“You’ll like this one too.”

“I thought you said I wouldn’t.”

“You’ll like the ship, not the assignment.”

“Oh hell just spit it out.”

“They’re giving you the Fate’s Embrace Ben.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“But the Fate’s Embrace is a Bahamut Class Destroyer.”

“That she is.”

“Why?”

“Why are they giving her to you?

“Yeah. I thought Fate’s Embrace was Commodore Velleth’s baby.”

“She was. He had her since she first came out of the Belt.”

“So why’s he giving her up?”

“Not his choice. Olympus feels Velleth is too cautious, too old, to be honest, if there is such a thing. He’s been a line officer for more than six hundred years, straight. He only knows life as a Peacekeeper at this point. You, on the other hand, have a habit of resigning your commission every hundred years or so and living as a civilian for a while before you invariably come back. This is what, your sixth time?”

“Seventh, actually.”

“And every time you seem to resign just before they select you for something bigger than a Frigate.”

“Bad timing I suppose.”

“Bad timing Hell! You like having a crew small enough to know them all personally. You like the comradery. You don’t like the idea of being on a ship where you don’t know everyone.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“Well too bad. Velleth's out. You’re in. We’ve got a Falchion fueled and ready in hangar two with a decent pilot to ferry you over.”

“You haven’t told me what the assignment is.”

The Admiral sighed and leaned back in his chair, weariness etching lines in his face.

“You’re going to Crimson Station.”

“Crimson! Why in Deimos would I be going to Mercury at a time like this, and with the Fate’s Embrace no less! Admiral, we should be out here, at Jupiter!”

“Calm down Ben, you will be. You’re babysitting.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Outer Planet Captain that was nearly killed alongside the Envoy is getting released from the Medical Wing at Crimson. You and the Fate’s Embrace are going to escort him and his ship, a converted liner by the name of the Canus Major, back here to Jupiter.”

“Why me?”

“History.”

“Because I’ve been in and out of the Peacekeepers?”

“Because the Captain is Daq Vegman.”

“I resign.”

~

Jesse and Longmire watched as Professor Walthers kneeled down in the center of the circle of symbols in the floor. He was shirtless, and his body bore the numerous scars of various experiments and works that had necessitated blood or cuts in specific places and shapes on his body. When he’d first revealed the extent to which he’d gone to confirm his findings, Longmire had gotten concerned. He had always been something of a dutiful Baptist, and all these occult and supernaturalisms put him a tad on edge, but after so much had happened, he couldn’t quite convince himself that his childhood faith was anything of an authority. After all, there wasn’t anything in the Bible warning about the Shards or the Tall Ones. At least some of the texts Walthers had dug up mentioned dangers from the sky or beings of cold fury.

As Walthers completed the low chant he’d begun when he kneeled, he took a copper knife from the floor and used the tip to cut a small design into the palm of his left hand before slapping it down in the center of the intricate design. As his hand touched the floor the low off-color flames that seemed to originate from the designs flared up by several inches and changed color to a shade of purple so dark it was almost black. Suddenly, the air was filled with a deep, low sound, slowly changing pitch, almost like a bed sheet slowly ripping thread by thread. As they watched, a set of long spindly white bones started jutting out of nowhere, like there was a hidden door in the air and they were watching something emerge from the side. Walthers was looking straight up at it as a very familiar peg of ivory bone came through and stepped down between his knees. The fingers and leg were followed by a knee, a thigh, an arm, and finally a full body and head of a Tall One emerging into the room through the tear Walthers had forced open. As the last of the second leg came through, the tear slammed closed, creating a sudden shockwave from the center of the room outwards. The intricate designs were scattered like so much debris, the flames coating them disappeared and the air took on a sudden chill. Walthers was knocked back fully four feet onto his back by the force of the wave and Jesse and Longmire had to catch hold of the wall behind them to avoid being knocked over. The Tall One had to hunch over at an angle to fit under the ceiling of the room. As the wave dissipated and they each took a breath, it turned to look at Jesse and Benjamin near the door, then appeared to look around the room before turning back to them. Then, it roared.

SigIntC stands for the Signal Intelligence Corps, a standalone branch of the Hegemony Peacekeepers responsible for all Tactical Intelligence on the Outer Planets and security analysis on interplanetary communications between planets, stations, Moons, and colonies in the Hegemony. It was the SigIntC that unraveled the initial mystery of who sabotaged Deimos and how, as well as gave the Hegemony heads up on numerous similar attempts by disgruntled or otherwise extremist individuals intending harm. As much of a law enforcement organization as it is Military Intelligence, SigIntC Headquarters itself at Europa Station in orbit of Earth, though most of its assets operate in either the Asteroid Belt or Jupiter orbit.

Admiral Bosch shook his head and sighed as he looked down at his hands and then back up at Captain Sayles gaze.

“You can’t do that Ben.”

“Like hell I can’t, I have before and I will now.”

“No, not this time.”

“Who gave the order?”

“Now Ben you can’t expect me to-“

“It was the Old Man, wasn’t it?”

“Dammit Ben, you can’t avoid this!”

“I won’t do this.”

“Yes you will. Olympus- and yes that means the Old Man- wants you to handle Vegman personally. Because of your personal relationship with him.”

“There’s no relationship, not for the last twenty years, there’s been no communications since-”

“For Gods sakes Ben, you and I, we’re Hegemony, we’re augmented, and we’ll still be strutting our stuff in another thousand years. He’s not. He’s un-augmented Outer Planet. And just like his father did, you do, and your father did, he makes his living in space, which is dangerous as hell for the un-augmented. How much longer do you think you have to repair things? How much longer are you going to hold him accountable for his father’s decisions? For your sons? He’s recovering from attempted murder, you almost lost your grandson, and you’re still holding a grudge?”

“Damn straight!”

“Too bad!”

The two men locked eyes across the desk, neither willing to budge. Finally, the Admiral looked away.

“Doesn’t matter what either of us say. It’s done. You can’t resign, and you’re expected at Crimson in another hour.”

“I have things on Ceres I need.”

“Then I’d hurry. The Falchion in hangar two is waiting.”

“Can’t go without me.”

“No, but if you’re late I’ll have the Internal Security Force come searching for you, shock you into compliance, and pour you into the passenger seat.”

“I can’t very well take command of the Fate’s Embrace if I’m unconscious.”

“You’d wake up just in time for the transition to Crimson.”

“Tell the Old Man he’s a son-of-a-bitch.”

“He knows.”

~

Sayle grabbed his personal QSM (Quantum Storage Medium) and placed it on the universal tactile access pad on the desk of his cabin and started downloading his personal files. Ceres came on the speaker, as she was permitted to do at any time in his cabin per his instructions.

“I’ve received the transfer orders Captain. I understand you’ll be taking command of the Fate’s Embrace.”

“Yes, Ceres over my explicit objection.”

“I understand. I’m to be under Captain Dawp now.”

“I know.”

“I’m placing all the research I was able to cull onto your personal QSM alongside your files, including a copy of all our data on the attack from Io.”

“I appreciate that Ceres but unless the Project is aware and condoning this move it may be someone else’s responsibility.”

“Regardless, I’ve also taken the liberty of informing the AI aboard the Fate’s Embrace of your recent activation.”

“Anything you can tell me about her?”

“She doesn’t go by Fate’s Embrace, she goes by Fatima, she’s a little bit of an eccentric as far as AIs go.”

“How do you mean?”

“Commodore Velleth gave her a lot more permissions and freedoms than most AIs in the Fleet.”

“Such as?”

“Such as she acted as a secondary Executive Officer. In fact, there’s numerous complaints from former XOs of his that posting an XO to the Fate’s Embrace was a superfluous move and that Velleth should just promote Fatima to the position officially.”

“Good to know.”

Sayle assembled the last of his personal belongings into his travel case and retrieved his QSM from the pad before sealing the case and picking it up off the bunk.

“Fair warning before you go, Captain?”

“Yes Ceres?”

“Destroyer AIs, and, to be fair, Cruiser AIs… They can be a little... Intense.”

“How do you mean?”

“They’re purpose-built to be in charge of a frontline combat vessel, to be aggressive, and to put the destruction of the enemy as their first priority.”

“Makes sense, and?”

“And when I say first priority, I mean it, they’ll put the survival of the crew secondary to accomplishing their mission.”

“Point taken, I’ll keep it in mind if things get hairy.”

“And Captain?”

“Yes Ceres?”

“It’s been an honor serving you.”

“The Honor was mine Ceres. Don’t give Dawp too easy a time with things, ok? He’s still got a lot to learn.”

“Aye Captain.”

~

Captain Sayle climbed into the side hatch of the Falchion numbered 189 and stowed his gear in the small cargo area there before moving forward and taking the copilots seat. The Pilot was already seated and as soon as Sayle was strapped in she activated the hydraulics which closed all the hatches and sealed them. Then she started the preflight check and set the engines to warm up. This Falchion was configured for long-range recon. The missile pods had been swapped out for extra fuel, and from the looks of it the EM pod responsible for signal capture and jamming had had some custom work done to increase its power. There were also signs the hull had been recently recoated with refractive material. The stamp below the pilot’s viewport declared the pilot as Lt.JG “Beaut” Forquet.

“Good day for flying Lieutenant?”

“Any day is a good day to fly Captain.”

“Glad to hear it. How many hours have you got in this thing?”

“This one? All its operational life, about 35,000 hours. Took her straight from Olympus the day she was finished. I’ve flown four others just like her into the ground.”

“So, how many hours?”

“After you pass 87,000 you don’t keep count anymore.”

“Good to know.”

“Yep, you willing to take the radio?”

“Sure thing.”

“Tell‘em we’re ready for launch then, if you please.”

“Roger that. This is Falchion One-Eight-Niner, Beaut at the stick, ready for launch.”

The Traffic Control officer on the bridge of the Mercurial Fury took note and used his tactile interface to configure 189 as cleared for launch, released the docking clamps and started the tow to the launch bay. The Falchion would be isolated from the rest of the ships atmosphere and then the exterior blister would open, allowing the Falchion to detach and free-float away to a safe distance from the ship before activating the engines. This launch was textbook. As the blister opened, the hook keeping the Falchion attached to the decking disengaged and the venting of atmosphere around the small vessel was enough to pull her out of the launching bay and out away from the Fury. Forquet used brief, efficient spurts of monopropellant gas to orient the craft and stop her momentum before she fired up the main engines and started them on a gentle path towards the Fate’s Embrace some five thousand kilometers away. Comms traffic as they made the journey was mostly standard operations chatter. Declarations of intent, back and forth for launch or recovery operations of patrol-craft, the occasional joke.

As they passed between the Ganymede and the Lightning Rider the board suddenly lit up as someone broadcast on an emergency channel. The computer automatically tuned it in and put it on the speakers, but all they heard was static. Then, the Ganymede to their left suddenly split in half, the hull torn open like tissue paper. Debris, sparks, body parts and frozen chunks of blood rained across the canopy as Forquet immediately threw the craft into a roll and turned her nose down towards Jupiter to evade the worst of the debris. Looking back, Sayle saw that the Lightning Rider had been hit as well, only she was in better shape, just her dorsal section was torn open as if some immense beast had taken a bite out of her. All the debris was floating in one way, and as he watched, he suddenly realized what had happened. Turning back, he flipped on the EM pod and set it to full jamming and countermeasures.

“High velocity Kinetics.”

“What?”

Sayle repeated himself.

“It was high velocity kinetics. Big heavy slugs of ferrous metal, usually wrapped in a much tougher non-ferrous metal shot out at immense speed via magnetic acceleration, near-c. Almost impossible to detect or counter. One just went through the Ganymede and the Lightning Rider.”

“Guess we walked into an ambush.”

“You think?”

As they watched, another two ships, the Hypnos and Vigilant Watchman were suddenly hit, their ablative armor useless against something that pierced through before the armor could react. The escape pods on the Lightning Rider started pouring out of their blisters, but their ejection path put them directly into contact with the plumes of burning atmosphere that were jetting out of the Hypnos. Suddenly with a chill up his spine, Sayle twisted in his seat to look out the ventral viewport beneath his feet at the direction they’d originally come from, where the Mercurial Fury and the Ceres were supposed to be joined together. The Debris field from the Ganymede was mostly obscuring his view, but he could see the remains of the Mercurial Fury spinning as she spewed her innards in every direction. The Ceres was nowhere to be seen. Forquet took them on a dizzying series of maneuvers designed to evade debris and the burning hulks of former Peacekeeper vessels and he quickly lost track of which way was which. He saw the corpses of Hegemony personnel floating in the void, twitching with the efforts of the augmentations within to keep the heart pumping and supply oxygen to the brain. Even the bodies without heads were struggling to keep going. Some, he could see, had been ejected without injury and were following their training to fight through the pain of vacuum exposure and severe hypothermia to use the small orientation thrusters built into the duty uniform belt to try and navigate themselves back to their ships to aid with damage control.

As Forquet made one last gut-wrenching turn he saw her intent, just ahead was the Fate’s Embrace, still intact and firing off streams of countermeasures and flak in the direction the attacks had apparently originated. She was at full burn and decelerating, her bow counter to their orbit and her mass descending towards Jupiter to duck under the widening debris field, her goal to maneuver around it and take the fight to the enemy apparent in her every graceful and deadly line. It was a brilliant display of the ships firepower and orbital maneuvering. Forquet snapped off the Jamming pod and started screaming for landing permissions as they approached the Fate’s port recovery bay. They got no response except the blister opening. Forquet called out an emergency landing and activated the crash-preparedness protocol on the control panel. As the small craft slammed into the deck aboard the Fate’s Embrace powerful electromagnets in the skids activated and held the craft to the deck, at the same time, restraint helmets with emergency oxygen snapped over their heads and crash-absorption gel exploded into the cabin to cushion the impact. All he could see was the blue-green gel on the outside of the helmet, but the craft was still and he felt the sudden tug as the Fate’s artificial gravity caught hold of them.

The Old Man is the sometimes affectionate, sometimes depreciative nickname almost every Hegemony Peacekeeper uses to refer to Admiral Deacon Lancaster, the top military officer of the Peacekeeper Corps. He has held that rank and position continuously for over two thousand years, and not because of bureaucracy. A veteran of the last armed conflict between Luna and the orbital Colonies of Earth, the Old Man is well known for his brutal efficiency, tactical genius, and his complete lack of patience for anything less than perfection in the officers and enlisted beneath him.

As the Tall One's roar echoed through the underground chamber, the sanguine light pouring from its maw kept both Longmire and Jesse still. It did not, however, do anything to Professor Walthers, as he was behind the giant. He threw himself forward and retrieved the copper knife from where he’d dropped it. As he grasped it, the behemoth creature took its first long step towards Longmire, its roar cutting short as its mouth closed. Longmire didn’t hesitate, drawing a Beretta M92F from under his jacket and pulling the slide back to chamber a round before he took aim. As he was about to squeeze the trigger Walthers took the knife and hastily scrawled a symbol in the center of the ruined design around him. The Tall One reached for Longmire and Jesse as it barreled towards them in a half crouch and then… Nothing. It stopped. One long leg frozen in the air, arms reached out, fingers curled into deadly claws, the thin, upper fold of its lip pulled upwards in a snarl. The creature pulled at the air with its arms, it drove its legs down into the concrete again and again as it tried to find purchase, but for all its struggles, the center of its mass could not move from where it had stopped, suspended in the air. Walthers sat back and took a deep breath before he spoke.

“It’s no good. I have you held there for as long as I deem it. Your struggles will not avail you.”

The Tall One growled and roared again, this time the light from within its maw shone not red, but yellow, and Longmire and Jesse found themselves quite unaffected. Jesse was the first to speak, and to Longmire.

“Jee-sus! Would you drop the piece Rambo, he ain’t gonna hurt a fly.”

The creature let out a roar, but it was short, clipped, and hesitant.

“Yeah I’m talkin’ about you ya big white piece of shit!”

The monster stopped struggling and looked at Jesse, its mouth closed and its eyes focused squarely on him. Jesse looked back and stared into its inky orbs raced with golden lightning. Longmire flicked the pistol to safe and re-holstered it, looking back and forth from Jesse to the creature.

“Jesse?”

“Yeah Cap?”

“What are you doing?”

“I dunno Cap, just… I just… Shit.”

Walthers watched as the behemoth creature floating in the air suddenly flailed wildly, its skin rippling and the crack of snapping bone ringing through the air. The limbs suddenly curled inwards as if it was some kind of dead insect, and the cracking and snapping sounds grew louder, the skin started sucking inwards, making the giant much smaller than it had been before, like all its innards were being suddenly evacuated… Somewhere. The head collapsed inwards, muscles and sinew pulled back from the creature’s bones under the skin and were pulled into the center of it, the bones snapping and following suit. Lastly, the skin, utterly unbroken except for where the normal orifices had been, was sucked wholly into the center of its former mass In the process of just a few seconds the titanic being which had been suspended in mid-air was gone, replaced by a small black spot hovering where it had been centered, then the spot itself shrank and disappeared, leaving nothing but a dull wisp of some noxious gas in its wake. Longmire watched with wide eyes and then looked to Walthers.

“What the fuck was that?”

“That’s not our problem.”

“What do you mean, we failed!”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Look at Jesse.”

Longmire turned back to the man beside him and looked him up and down, seeing he hadn’t moved since he’d locked eyes with the giant. Coming around to his front, Longmire spotted what had Walthers frozen on the floor. Jesse’s eyes were now twin pools of ebony, raced with jagged golden streaks.

~

Captain Sayle couldn’t feel much of anything. The crash absorption gel did its job very well, deadening most sensations or vibrations. As such, he didn’t know the crash recovery team was getting him out until he felt the heat of the gel dispersal agent reacting with the gel as it was getting sprayed all over him. The heat was brief and entirely tolerable, and in short order the gel was far more fluid and ran over him in streams. As the blue-green gel on the helmet reacted and was rinsed away, he could see the yellow and brown uniforms of the recovery crew as they used their handheld applicators to target the remaining pockets of gel to free him from the wreck of the Falchion. As soon as his hands and the helmet were free he reached up and triggered the release to take off the helmet.

Free of it and able to speak, he found himself barraged by questions about his state of being. If he was breathing ok, did he feel any injury, was he disoriented, etc. Answering that he was fine, the questions then focused in on who he was and what he saw of the attack. He identified himself, made sure Lt. Forquet was in good order, then ordered an escort to the bridge immediately. The trip took no longer than a minute, but that minute was the longest of his life, knowing that any second the Fate’s Embrace could become the latest target of the attack and his command over her could end before it ever began. As he entered the bridge the bosun by the door attempted to make an announcement but Sayle beat him to it as he loudly announced himself.

“I’m Captain Sayle, who’s in command and what’s our situation?”

A rather brusque female voice emanated from seemingly everywhere and nowhere in response.

“Yes Captain, I’m Fatima, I have ended flak cover to conserve ammunition as no further Kinetics appear to be inbound. I am also powering the Hyperions for offensive action once we have a firing solution.”

“You’re the Fate’s AI, correct?”

“That is correct Captain.”

“Where’s the XO?”

“Commander Kinsin is on the Port Hangar deck looking for you, Captain.”

“Have the ISF escort him to the brig.”

“Captain?”

“He should have been on the bridge, that's dereliction of duty. Now, why don’t we have a firing solution?”

“Impact angles indicate Kinetics came in from an origin point beyond Jupiter orbit-“

“Why would that matter?”

“Commander Kinson ordered me to keep all targeting scanners locked only to the range of Hegemony space as a precautionary measure, that order has not been countermanded.”

“Consider it countered, backtrack Kinetic impacts to origin point.”

“Aye Captain… Origin calculated to be either a vessel in polar orbit of Europa or a facility located on its surface firing while compensating for its gravity.”

“Begin calculating a firing solution.”

“I am unable to do so Captain.”

“Why the hell not!?”

“We have sustained damage which at present renders me unable to properly resolve the target to the degree required.”

“Damage report.”

“We sustained a direct hit to the starboard dorsal sensor pod, it is no longer attached to me.”

“So you’re blind to the starboard dorsal bow quadrant?”

“Yes Captain.”

“What’s the status of the rest of the fleet?”

“Twenty-nine out of thirty-five line vessels have sustained hits by long-range high-velocity kinetics. Of the twenty-nine, twenty-two are adrift, three are underway but uncommunicative and likely operating under AI control without surviving crew, three additional vessels are damaged but undergoing rescue operations, and we are the last.”

“Who’s in command of the fleet?”

“The Mercurial Fury is adrift, no other officer of rank has taken command.”

“Who’s next in line?”

“Unknown. We are the remaining tactically superior vessel in operation. Command falls to you unless a superior officer elects to take charge.”

“Contact the remaining operable vessels and have someone run up a firing solution on Europa, then get me a report on any other command level officers available.”

“Aye Captain.”

“Who is in formal command of this ship?”

“Commander Kinsin, pending formal command adoption by yourself Captain.”

“What is the current time?”

“Thirteen hundred twenty-three minutes Captain.”

“As of thirteen hundred twenty-three minutes I, Captain Bengal Sayle, hereby do relieve Commander Kinsin and take command of the Fate’s Embrace as ordered by the late Admiral Bosch.”

“Transfer of command recognized and logged, all command codes now transferred to Captain Bengal Sayle as of thirteen hundred twenty-three minutes. We also now have a firing solution, courtesy of the AI aboard the Tip of the Spear.

“Good, send a message on properly coded channel that I am taking command of the fleet unless somebody of rank objects. Then dispatch a message packet to Olympus updating them on the situation and indicating our readiness to fire. Give them 120 seconds to respond, then I want to turn Europa or anything larger than a skiff in her polar orbit into an irradiated and slowly drifting field of debris.”

Augmentation is the nickname for the process by which Hegemony citizens can choose to extend their lifespans to near-immortality. While the exact process is considered a state secret, it is known that it involves several surgeries and courses of treatment with injections and certain radiative processes. At the end, the individual is immune to all disease, genetic syndromes, and the aging process. It does not (as is commonly depicted in Outer Planet fictions) make an individual any kind of superhuman. It doesn't grant greater strength, intelligence, or durability. It simply makes it so that injuries which would have been fatal before are rarely so afterwards, as it takes the destruction of the internal organs to render them non-functional. It also results in certain neural plasticity, greatly increasing the ability of the brain and nervous system to regenerate and recover, though memories can be lost from brain damage. The process is reversible, however, reversing the Augmentation process is damaging in and of itself and often results in a poor quality of life and short life expectancy. Augmentation can also refer to any other process or procedure which adds to an individual’s abilities, including the surgical addition of neural interface, kinetic interface, or data storage.

Sarya locked eyes with the man on the horse. He was maybe twenty, Asian features with dark eyes and hair. He sported a short, well-trimmed goatee. They both had their weapons trained, but while Sarya was reasonably sure of her aim and her ability to fire if needed, she had never before had to kill a man one on one before, it was always more frenzied, an attack from scavengers or ferals who didn’t choose to remain civilized, and she’d always been part of a group all firing at once. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to kill a man while looking him in the eye. Her opponent, however, did not appear to have the same reservations. His face was set with grim determination and his hands were steady. She decided to maybe try another tact.

“I don’t see any real reason why we should shoot each other, do you?”

The man’s eyes narrowed and his head cocked to the side slightly before he responded. He spoke a rapid-fire language Sarya had never heard before and didn’t recognize.

“I don’t understand, do you speak English?”

That didn’t get a response.

“Habla espanol? Tu parle francais? Sprechen ze deutch?”

The languages she’d been taught had proven useful with the rare envoys from Europe, Mexico, and Canada, but here they were useless. The man indicated with his offhand that she should lay her weapon down. Sarya knew she had to make a decision here, she could either shoot him, or comply and be taken prisoner. She didn’t like either one, and, she didn’t have long to decide. She was a half second away from lowering her rifle when he momentarily pointed the gun at her feet and fired. The round hit the tiled floor of the food court and ricocheted between her legs, she felt the wind of it go past her ankle and heard it hit a wall far behind her. She was peppered with small flakes of razor sharp tile debris all over her legs, belly, and the bottoms of her arms. The sound and the sudden explosion of tile bits surprised her and she dropped her rifle. As the M4 hit the ground it fired, the round flying forward and striking the man’s horse in its left foreleg, shattering the bone and bringing both horse and rider down. Sarya didn’t waste the opportunity provided, grabbing her rifle back up and immediately running back the way she’d come and turning a corner as quickly as she could. She moved another ten feet down the concourse then turned and kneeled, taking her rifle back to her shoulder and preparing to kill her pursuer as soon as he rounded the corner.

She waited, trying to take small short breaths to calm herself and to steady her aim. Ten seconds… Twenty… All she could hear was the screaming of the horse around the corner in the food court. Thirty seconds and she eased herself back to the corner and ducked as low as she could get to peek around the corner near to the floor, where she was least likely to be seen. A brief look around the corner and she realized why she hadn’t been followed. The man’s left leg was trapped under his horse, which continued to scream and flail wildly. His rifle had been thrown out of his reach and he was trying to unsheathe his sword, either to leverage himself loose or finish the horse, she couldn’t tell. Either way, it provided her an opportunity to escape, one she wasn’t about to let pass her by. She backed away from the corner, got back to her feet, put her rifle back on safe, and took off at a light jog to find her way out of the mall and back to the bridge to Oakland. She had a feeling her findings would interest her father.

~

Professor Walthers pulled himself to his feet and retrieved his cane from where he’d dropped it before the ritual and walked over to Jesse, who still stood staring at Captain Longmire.

“Jesse?”

There was no response, in fact, he didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Jesse are you there?”

Jesse rocked back as it a sudden gust of wind had blown him. Then he blinked and responded in a voice that sounded like gravel raked over a tin roof;

“He exists.”

“That’s… Is this Jesse?”

“No. I am the fragment you brought forth.”

“Fragment?”

“A cell of a larger organism.”

“What larger organism?”

Suddenly Jesse’s body was thrown back against the wall as if struck by a phenomenal force. As it impacted, his mouth opened and a distinctly red light poured up from the throat, highlighting his uvula as if it were a little pink disco ball. Accompanying the light was a sound not unlike the rumbling of an earthquake, the kind of low, immensely powerful and deep sound only something truly titanic could possibly generate. Both Longmire and Walthers felt it rumbling in their innards even as a blistering pain shot through their skulls, like they’d been stabbed with icicles they felt the cold pain blossoming behind their eyes. Without even meaning to, both went to their knees with the sudden shock of it, grasping their ears, half expecting to feel gushes of blood pouring forth – it lasted all but a second. Jesse’s body crumpled to the floor and the sound, the pain, all of it stopped. It was a few seconds before either Walthers or Longmire could collect themselves. Walthers spoke first.

“What… What the Hell? What was that?”

Longmire rocked back onto his rear and extended his legs in front of him as he rubbed his temples.

“I’ve felt it before – well, something like it anyway…”

“What? When?”

“You remember how I told you about the Oregon hitting a whale when we were on our way from New York City to Washington D.C.?”

“Yeah, yeah, and then you sent a boarding party over to a couple of derelicts.”

“Yep, a cruise ship, the Disney Magic and a bulk container ship, the Globe.”

“Yeah, and then the Tall Ones kidnapped you and your crew and tried to convince you to give yourself over to them.”

“Yeah, how they grabbed us, it was a sound, something grating and extremely loud. Caused a helluva headache… Sound familiar?”

“But we didn’t fall unconscious…”

“That was just a few seconds and it took us to our knees. On the Oregon it kept going, we were out in under a minute.”

“Oh god…”

“What?”

“If that could knock out the entire crew of a submarine, how far did it travel from here? Who else was affected?”

“I don’t hear any panicked screaming…”

“Check Jesse, I’m going to go check on Evelyn and Rowyn.”

“What if uh… What if ‘it’ is still in there?”

“Restrain him.”

As Walthers got himself off the ground and hobbled out of the former server room and through the bunker to the remains of the culinary building which had hidden it, Longmire looked around at the room, at the desks covered in papers, the large scrawled designs in the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling, and the complete lack of rope or bindings of any kind.

“With what?”

Only his echo answered him.

~

Admiral Lancaster kept his eyes locked to the indicator on his desk that would signal if there was a fleet communique from the response he’d sent to Jupiter even as he discussed other fleet movements with the Peacekeeper brass. His holo currently showed the heads and bios of twelve different men. Two Vice Admirals, four Rear Admirals, and six Commodores, each aboard their own ships. They made up the remaining active Fleet elements not deployed to Jupiter. There were another two Vice Admirals and three Commodores whose vessels were undergoing one of the R’s that were a pain in his hide, repair, refit, refueling, recruiting, retirement, or recusal. The last was the most infuriating. If a vessel was assigned a specific home port, like a Space Station, and the person in charge of that port felt that they were under dire threat if the vessel was repurposed, they could put in an injunction with the Hegemony Legislature which recused the vessel from other duties while they reviewed the request for it to remain at that port. He had two vessels recused at the moment, both Cruisers under Vice Admirals, and it left him temporarily shorthanded to respond if the Jupiter or the Mercury situation blew up.

The Light Cruiser Supernova was stationed at one of the Asteroid Belt fleet yards and the civilian Governor of the colony there, a worm of a woman by the name of Pellingbrooks, had recused it the second the Ceres was fired upon. Who told her about that event was a concern in and of itself, but the Supernova was his top pick to respond and instead he’d had to send the Mercurial Fury. The other, the Heavy Destroyer Gamma Burst was recused by the Hub itself after the incident with the Envoy from Saturn. He expected it to be released any moment now, since the Legislature was reviewing the case. The Ceres incident, he was sure, would convince them he needed his resources on deck.

As the Admirals and Commodores went over tactical scenarios for response if they needed to do more than make a show of force, the indicator lit up. He silenced their discussion with a raised hand, a signal they all knew meant he had something to say.

“We’ve got a message from the fleet over Jupiter, I’ll play it as audio, and I want to hear it so keep your damn yaps shut!”

With that he activated the message reader and leaned back. It was an AI message from the Fate’s Embrace now under Captain Sayle. As it detailed the events since the Fleet transition to Jupiter he listened. As it detailed the events during Sayle’s transfer, he sat forward. When it concluded with Sayle’s stated intentions, he stood. Jabbing a finger at a control to silence the peanut gallery he spoke a rapid reply and sent it as quickly as he could. He then held up a hand to get their full attention and opened their comm channels again to give out his orders. They weren’t questioned, despite how bizarre they may have seemed. As they acknowledged the orders and signed off. He went over to his bar along the long wall of his office. It was an old-fashioned one, with liquors in glass containers rather than formed from previously prepared molecular packets and only made into fluid when ordered. He poured himself a strong brandy and turned to the far wall, which featured floor to ceiling windows overlooking the plain outside Olympus. As he watched, he could feel the vibration as the massive hangar doors beneath his office rolled open, and then he felt and saw the Light Frigate Black Widow launch into atmosphere and climb towards orbit.

The Hegemony Legislature is the ruling body politic of the Inner Planets, Asteroid Belt, and Jupiter. It is made up of Delegations, at least one Delegation from each colony, station, or moon that has a population of at least fifty million (known as a Delegations “home”). Each Delegation gets one vote on Hegemony wide issues, and two votes if the specific issue or law in question is set to impact only a subset of Delegations including their own, and no votes if the issue at hand doesn’t affect their Delegation at all. This combines a strong Federal level based on equal representation with a strong value placed on home rule for many issues. Of course, trade issues, standards and practices, and inter-delegation regulatory issues all effect the entirety of the Hegemony equally, so they are all full legislature issues. There are also four other governing bodies which interact with the legislature; the Hall of Dispute Resolution, the Peacekeepers, the Oversight Committee, and the Diplomatic Corps, though they have very specific and limited roles in governing. Individual Delegations can have as few or as many members as their respective homes choose to appoint, usually made up of various experts, statesmen, notable veterans, community leaders, or businessmen. However, the number of individuals in a Delegation doesn’t grant that Delegation any leeway on their vote number, or the time limit on debate or voting.

Captain Dawp slowly came back to the world of the living, feeling nothing but cold and a terrible sucking pain in his chest. As he opened his eyes, he felt the outer layer of them freeze over and realized the pain was his lungs, completely devoid of air and trying to suck vacuum. There was no sound, but he could see well enough still to see that while the Ceres had been depressurized, his crew was mostly intact, and Ceres herself was still functioning. The Central holo displayed a model of the ship and indicated where the damage was, a subsection of her central span between her engineering section and her forward section had a glancing blow from one of the kinetics that took out the Mercurial Fury. It wasn’t enough to kill them, but it had vented all their atmosphere and apparently, by the count, some six members of her crew. He struggled to stand and get over to the central display. The breach containment system had activated, but one of the emergency bulkheads was unresponsive, a mechanical fault that Ceres was incapable of resolving on her own, or overriding.

Placing his hand on the tactile interface, he overrode the protocol and activated another bulkhead in the very next section forward of the breach. As the holo showed the bulkhead engage, Ceres automatically re-pressurized the compartment and kicked on atmospheric controls to bump up the temperature by a comfortable degree for a while to help thaw out the crew. As air flowed onto the bridge, his ears popped from the pressure change and he felt the pain in his core fade as his lungs reflated with air with his first good inhale. The pain would have been unbearable if it weren’t for his augmentations, and his YEOD reflected that, with a status showing he was currently being fed a steady stream of hormones and natural painkillers direct to his bloodstream. He opened his mouth to speak but the interior was still frozen too much, or his vocal cords were, he was having trouble telling. So instead of trying to type out all his queries, he took a seat in the command chair and accessed the neural link with Ceres.

Ceres the AI represented herself as a young, rather bubbly blonde in a form fitting summer dress to him, and she was relieved he was there to see her.

“Captain, I’m glad you made it through, we’ve got a bit of a situation.”

“What’s our status Ceres?”

“I’m still nearly fifteen percent exposed to vacuum, but luckily there’s no crew in the remaining depressurized sections. I’m happy to report that I could see two out of our six missing crewman were rescued by the Tip of the Spear and the Ebon Cutlass as we drifted out of the combat zone, the remaining four suffered extensive physical trauma and are still adrift in the debris field. They appear unresponsive, though they may be recoverable and with proper treatment may yet be resuscitated. My damage is minimal, I’m still mission-capable, though any crewman wishing to make it aft should make sure they take the starboard route to avoid being spaced.”

“What’s our current frame of reference?”

“We’re just inside of Jupiter’s Ionosphere on an extremely low orbital path. A small amount of atmospheric drag is causing us to very slowly lose speed and altitude, but we shouldn’t see any negative effects for several hours yet.”

“Why in Deimos are we in Jupiter’s Ionosphere?”

“After the Mercurial Fury was hit and I was vented, I estimated a secondary attack probability at nearly ninety-five percent unless we appeared to be disabled already, so I allowed our initial momentum from the break with the Fury to continue without correction. That course was effectively towards Jupiter, and only once I detected the attack as concluded did I stabilize our orbit at this altitude.

“You played dead to avoid being hit again.”

“There are no countermeasures capable of deflecting a high-velocity kinetic, it was the most tactically sound option, and, it had the added advantage of saving our lives.”

“Who’s in command of the fleet?”

“Unknown, electromagnetic interference from the Ionosphere has blocked communications.”

“Set us up for a burn at our perigee and adjust inclination to rendezvous with the remainder of the fleet.”

“Aye Captain. And, Captain?”

“Yes Ceres?”

“I thought you should know, Captain Sayle’s Falchion disappeared off my screens moments into the attack, it was passing between the Ganymede and the Lightning Rider when they were hit by the same kinetic. The space between them would have been a shooting gallery of debris.”

Dawp hadn’t even considered the idea that Sayle might not have made it to the Fate’s Embrace, the news left him momentarily speechless. He was quiet for nearly a minute before Ceres decided to break his reverie.

“Captain?”

“Oh… Yes Ceres?”

“I’ve got our intercept burn calculated to rendezvous with the fleet on our next orbital pass. Do you wish to be updated once we’re out of the Ionosphere and we regain communications?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“You’re welcome Captain.”

~

Sarya could feel her sweat puddling in between her toes in her shoes and in her cleavage. She wasn’t sweating from the heat – it was a rather cool day – but from exertion. The man from the Mall had friends, and he’d apparently had a radio or something to call them in. Almost from the moment she’d exited the mall she’d been evading additional horseback patrols through the city, and she’d found plenty of additional reasons to avoid them, including the corpses sharing her latest hiding place. Most major cities had survivor populations. She now knew why San Francisco didn’t. She was hiding behind the counter of what had from the looks of it once been a storefront converted into a family home. The bodies were fairly fresh, and showed signs of having been used for a lesson on swordsmanship. She hoped it was done after they died, but from the looks of the arterial spray all over the walls, she wasn’t encouraged. Fairly fresh, but the smell and the flies were enough to discourage any of the patrols from peeking in too closely. She could hear the hooves of their horses clip-clopping up and down the street. She hoped they didn’t have any kind of radio locators as she pulled her walkie-talkie from her pack. She wasn’t sure she had the range to actually make contact, but she had to try.

As she was about to switch the radio on, she hesitated, realizing that if she turned it on and they were using the same frequencies, they might just hear the feedback, but then she dismissed that thought as ridiculous, since the chances of them using the same frequencies were remote. She turned the volume knob all the way down then switched on the hand-set before gradually turning the volume up until she could just barely hear the static that came between signals. She keyed the mic and made her broadcast according to the protocols she’d established with her father and the crew of the Dorian Grey.

“Dee-Gee come in, this is Ess Ell. Over.”

The static continued.

“Dee-Gee come in, this is Ess Ell. Over.”

“Dee Gee here, go ahead Ess Ell. Over.”

“I have encountered hostile natives in San Fran, I say again, hostiles in San Fran, requesting the Cavalry. Over.”

“Roger that Ess Ell, Cavalry Incoming, what’s your current situation? Over.”

“I am currently hidden on the bottom floor of a building, I intend to try and make it to the roof. Over.”

“Roger that Ess Ell, keep the channel open, we’ll home in on your signal. Over.”

“Acknowledged Dee-Gee, I’m damn near in the middle of the city proper. Over.”

“Understood Ess-Ell, hold tight, we’re on our way. Over.”

~

Captain Longmire had been forced to improvise in his restraint of Jesse, or, whatever was in Jesse. There was no telling. His eyes were closed and Longmire wasn’t about to touch them, in case doing so awoke… Whatever or whoever was there. He didn’t want to chance it without Professor Walthers present. He’d managed to find some old cables from when this place was a server room and used them to improvise bindings to tie Jesse to the only chair in the room. Now he was just waiting for Professor Walthers to return. He didn’t intend to leave Jesse-but-not-Jesse alone in any case. As he watched, he could see that Jesse’s chest was still slowly expanding and contracting as he drew breath. It was confirmation enough for him that the body was alive, so he didn’t bother with anything more detailed in the way of examination. It was a long few minutes before Professor Walthers returned.

“Oh, you, uh… You took that restrain comment literally.”

“Well, yeah, was I not supposed to?”

“Well, no, I mean, I had a pretty good feeling that the restraint I put on the Giant probably carried over to Jesse as well, after all, his light didn’t disable us in any way.”

“Well you said restrain him, so I did.”

“It’s ok, it’s probably for the best anyway. Has he said anything?”

“Not a peep.”

“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

“Do you think Jesse’s still in there?”

“I don’t know. The things I’ve read on possession I dismissed since there was no solid evidence of it from anything we had from the when they were here last.”

“What about Watkins & Kellogg?”

“I’m still fairly sure that’s not possession, despite what you sent me on them, I think they’re just influenced, or altered, I’m not sure since I haven’t been able to examine them myself.”

“I brought them too, you know.”

“You what? You did?”

“They’re on the Dorian Grey.”

“Still, Captain?”

“I don’t like it but I’ve never found any other solution.”

“It’s been so long though-“

“A fact I have to live with as it gets longer each and every day.”

“And there’s been no change?”

“Nope. They still don’t eat, sleep, and only fake breathing to be able to speak. When they’re alone and think they’re unobserved, they don’t breathe at all.”

“Do you… Do you think there’s anything to be gained by bringing them together?”

“They are together.”

“No, not Watkins & Kellogg, Jesse and Watkins & Kellogg.”

“Hold on, we don’t know what any of them are at this point.”

“Exactly, the interaction could prove informative.”

“Or dangerous.”

“Our entire endeavor has always been dangerous Captain.”

~

Goveretski finally felt the Gs ease off as the final bit of fuel was expended and the Retribution ceased its acceleration. Figg, Iotashi, Stern, & Patir didn’t stir from their seats as he used his instruments- hand made and painstakingly tested to insure accuracy- to measure their position, velocity, and heading. If they’d been off in their calculations by so much as a half kilo, or a half second of acceleration, then their entire venture, everything they’d struggled for, would be for nothing, and they’d be forced to suffer for an indeterminate eternity without justice. After several hours of calculation and observation, Goveretski finally sat back in his seat. The quality of his movements reassurance enough that they had indeed succeeded. They were on a course which would take them, at long last, home.

The Hall of Dispute Resolution is synonymous with most Colony's Court system, though the cases they hear are very specific in scope to issues regarding interpretation of the Hegemony Charter and legal entanglements between different Legislative Delegations. It is made up of one member (called a Judicator) from each Delegation, and is appointed by the specific Delegation's home governing body based on merit and legal accomplishments in lower courts. The appointment is for a specific number of cases (five hundred) not a length of time, after which the Judicator can be replaced or re-appointed by their home governing body. A Judicator can retire voluntarily with notice, or, be removed from his seat before his requisite number of cases, however, the latter only by a unanimous vote by the Delegations of the Hegemony Legislature.

Captain Sayle watched as the counter on the main holo counted down the last three seconds of his established two minute timeline.

“Fatima, are the Hyperions charged?”

“Yes Captain, charged, aligned, and ready to fire.”

“Good, on my mark, fire.”

“Yes Captain… Captain?”

“What is it Fatima?”

“I’ve got a response from Admiral Lancaster.”

“Let me hear it.”

“Captain Sayle I understand completely your desire to blow the hell out of Europa, but unless and until the Outer Planets target a civilian population you are to restrain yourself only to military targets of opportunity. You know me a helluva lot better than most officers of your rank, you know I’m not one for using kid gloves, but I cannot authorize you to fire on civilians. You see an Outer Planet's Peacekeeper ship, you feel free to vaporize it in a big flashy way, you can even make a show of glassing empty spaces on Europa's surface from a distance, but you do not kill civilians, that’s an order. Now, I’m going to send the Black Widow out to you. She’s a Light Frigate, brand new and filled to the gills with all kinds of goodies, I’ll let her Captain brief you when she gets there, he knows what he’s doing and what he’s capable of. Use him. Lancaster out.”

Sayle watched the Admirals face fade from the holo, replaced by the tactical overlay showing the path of the kinetics from Europa.

“Fatima, what kind of devastation are we unleashing here?”

“I’ve calculated multiple convergence points for a battery of fire, each converging approximately one hundred kilometers above the target points. The targets are the northern pole, one in the mid-northern latitudes, above its equator, the mid-southern latitudes, and a final above the southern pole. This should generate at least a 5000 rad exposure to every surface in the facing hemisphere. The convergence points should also generate heat approaching 2500 Kelvin, enough to annihilate virtually any man-made materials on the surface.”

“Do we know of any subsurface activities on Europa?”

“Hegemony intel suggests Europa has extensive subsurface colonies, transportation, and mining efforts.”

“How many surface or orbital installations?”

“Very few surface habitats, but we’ve detected a large orbital presence of civilians in transit off Europa, making their way to other Jovian Moons.”

“Rats fleeing a sinking ship.”

“Yes Captain, a general evacuation.”

“How long would we have to delay in order to spare civilian casualties?”

“Several hours sir, they’re not leaving very fast.”

“Can we reduce the yield of the Hyperions to cause as little radiative heat and radioactivity as possible in orbit?”

“No Captain, the Hyperions fire along a precise yield based on the emitters, they cannot be varied for precision strikes, for precision, it is recommended we use missiles.”

“What’s our missile load-out?”

“We have 2000 Javelins, 500 Longspears, and 50 Ballista missiles loaded and ready to fire, more in storage which can be prepared with a half hours’ notice.”

“Are we in range for all of them?”

“No Captain, at this range, without diverting to a higher orbit, we could only use Ballistas against Europa.”

“And they’re fission, right?”

“Ballista missiles carry a 200 Gigaton Plasma/Ion explosive warhead standard, yes.”

“What do we have that we can bombard Europa without moving the Fleet into a higher orbit?”

“Just the Ballistas Captain.”

“Are we still undergoing rescue operations?”

“Yes Captain.”

“Spool down the Hyperions. Deploy all available auxiliary craft and fighters to assist with recovering personnel.”

“Aye Captain. Also, you should know, in a little under 45 minutes the Fleet's orbit will carry them out of range of Europa with anything but the Hyperions.”

“Thank you for the advisory.”

“Also, the Ceres has been detected correcting her course. She’s no longer adrift, she’s in Jupiter’s Ionosphere.”

“So she wasn’t destroyed alongside the Mercurial Fury?”

“Apparently not.”

“Good. That’s one less loss on day one of this war.”

~

The “Cavalry”, a UH-1 Iroquois Helicopter, known by most as a Huey, sped across the Bay with less than ten meters between the skids and the water, her rotors throwing up significant chop in her wake. Inside, Captain Longmire checked and rechecked the gear Colquitt had distributed for the rescue of his daughter. They had packed a bit of overkill with what he hoped to surprise the hostiles with, several fully automatic weapons, and everyone carried rifles and sidearms. As he did so, he verbally spoke each and every piece as the other men followed along. Two were former members of his crew, the third was a former Marine who’d survived a rather nasty Tall One attack on Parris Island Recruit Training Depot during the end of the world. They were all actual combat veterans who knew how to keep their heads in a firefight. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, it depended on the skill and training of the hostiles. If they were coordinated, if they had experience, or if they scattered like leaves on the wind in the face of force… Too many damn variables.

The Huey started gaining altitude as the Pilot and copilot up front homed in on Sarya’s signal and approached San Francisco. The city’s skyline was amazingly pristine after so long. It didn’t have the mounds of rubble or damage cities on the East Coast invariably had. As part of the Government's death throes, orders had gone out to special contingency operatives to demolish specific buildings and infrastructure all over. Sarya’s birth father Emil had been one such operative. There was no telling what secrets or resources had been buried in the rubble of paranoia… Or what they’d failed to bury, that was waiting, yet to be uncovered. As they passed over a block of apartment buildings, the signal suddenly dropped in strength. Heaving over the chopper in a banking turn, the pilot brought them to a hover over the apartment building emitting the signal. That’s when they started hearing the shots. Looking down, they could see perhaps a dozen men on horses milling in the area. The horses weren’t used to the sound of a helicopter overhead and weren’t being very cooperative, and it was throwing off their aim. They were hitting the sides of the buildings more than they were anything else. Longmire gave the signal and the Marine and his former navigator each brought out the surprise. Six shot grenade launchers, loaded with tear gas.

Without a word they started firing off canisters in a circular pattern around the building, using the gas to establish a perimeter and the downdraft of the chopper to send the gas spewing outwards in all directions away from the building. The men were more disciplined than he gave them credit for, a few kept trying to take shots through the burn of the gas, but the horses were having none of it, now in full blown panic at the pain in their eyes, mouths, and noses. It was barely thirty seconds between the first canister of tear gas hitting the street and the hostiles retreating, and there were no indications the chopper had been hit. Sarya emerged from the rooftop access of the apartment building, a bandanna tied around the lower half of her face. The Pilot immediately lowered the throttle to bring them down and set the skids on the largest open area of the roof, the rotors barely missing a water tower on one end of it. Sarya didn’t hesitate, she ran for the chopper and dived in.

The pilot lifted off and banked to put them on a course back to Berkeley even before Sarya had gained a seat and strapped in, something which Longmire made a mental note to talk to him about. As Sarya belted in, the Marine slipped a headset over her ears and a set the mike in front of her mouth so she could hear them and speak.

“Thanks Dad! I’m sorry I got trapped like that, it was a dumb move.”

“Yes it was. You know you don’t make initial entry to a strange area solo!”

“The folks at Berkeley said San Fran was empty.”

“Shows what they know!”

“I don’t think the hostiles were local.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were all Asians, and the one that I ran into that started this whole thing didn’t speak English, Spanish, or French.”

“That’s not good.”

“Why?”

“It means they had to come from Asia, and if there was that many, with horses, that means it’s not some kind of scouting expedition. It means organization, it means force. It means this isn’t some small group of survivors come here out of curiosity or for trade.”

“So why would they come here?”

“Raw materials, salvage, or maybe slaves, if they’ve regressed to that point. Who knows? We’ve established they’re a threat, that’s the important part. Next is fortifying Berkeley, and scouting out exactly who they are and why they’re here.”

“I want in on the scouting-“

“Not a chance.”

~

Captain Bhosale of the Black Widow sat comfortably in the command chair of the Peacekeepers newest Light Frigate and admired the efficiency and attentiveness with which his crew was attending to their duties. Most ships were rather low-key as officers absorbed themselves in their tactile links and holos, existing only partially aware of their surroundings as they carried out their duties in simulated space. The Widow however, made use of extensive studies on the subject that found full immersion decreased response time as Officers failed to use their real ears to hear orders and relied instead on the shipboard AI to let them know what to do. So the Widow didn’t use immersive interfaces, instead using extensive use of the YEOD augmentations to augment their holo displays and controls to keep their awareness in the tangible reality of the bridge.

They were on course to complete their first orbit of Mars after launching from Olympus Mons, a Peacekeeper procedure to ensure that she was space-worthy. After all, if something catastrophic were to occur, its best to be in low orbit where you can re-enter the atmosphere and land if necessary to fix it. After that, he intended to use the equatorial gate to transfer to Jupiter and rendezvous with the fleet and report to Captain Sayle as ordered. Then, he’d get to put the Black Widow to her intended use.

The Oversight Committee is the smallest branch of the Hegemony Government, measuring only ten people, whose sole job is to look over each piece of Hegemony Legislation and find grey areas, loopholes, or other weaknesses or undefined terms or issues which may cause difficulties down the line, to review any possible conflicts between Hegemony Legislation and local Delegation laws, to reconcile any conflicts they find, and are solely entrusted with the power to alter the Hegemony Charter if that is the only possible manner of reconciling a conflict under their purview, and all ten of them agree unanimously on the need, scope, and precise language of the change. Five members of the committee are appointed by the Hegemony Legislature, and five are appointed by the Hall of Dispute Resolution, with replacements made as necessary as members retire. Members may be forcibly retired by a two thirds vote of the Legislature or a two thirds vote by the Hall of Dispute Resolution.

Lieutenant Oleandor was getting hungry. Ever since he’d been brought aboard the Ringstation and debriefed on his experiences with his attempted resupply of the Callisto The Saturn Peacekeepers had kept him isolated in a small barracks room. Not even his own barrack's room, or even an officer's, it was the no-frills model for someone like Initiate Ayon, who he had not seen since they’d been taken aboard. That had been nearly six hours ago, and while the room had a bed and a holo with all the standard media access, it didn’t have so much as a refrigeration unit, much less any actual food to be found. He was considering taking another nap (he’d had two already) when there was a knock at the door before it was unlocked and three men walked in. Two Peacekeeper Captains and an Initiate carrying a tray.

“Good evening Lieutenant, I’m Captain Wepps and this is my partner Captain Lopan. I understand you haven’t eaten, so I took the liberty of stopping by this quarter's Mess and grabbing a steward to bring you a plate of dinner.”

“Thank you Captain, I appreciate it. Mind if I dig in?”

“Not at all, we can talk as you eat, it won’t be a problem.”

With that he had the Initiate set the plate down on the small table before leaving, and Oleandor took his place in front of it as Wepps and Lopan sat across from him. Lopan had yet to say a word, and the way he watched Oleandor made him uncomfortable. He felt like a flea under a microscope, like his every movement, every breath was being counted. As he opened the platter he was relieved to find they hadn’t brought him anything disgusting. Ringstation Mess Halls were notorious for their mystery meals conjured from whatever biomaterial they could scrape off the walls of barely functioning hydroponics labs. He was fortunate to get what looked like an egg salad sandwich, a pickle, potato chips, and a cup of coffee. One bite in and he realized he’d been mistaken, it wasn’t egg salad, and whatever it was wasn’t even a good approximation of egg salad. He was now suspicious of the pickle as well. The look on his face must have given away something, because Wepps smiled at his discomfort and Lopan appeared to relax a bit.

“Not much for the sandwich Lieutenant?”

He forced himself to swallow and put it back down before opening the packet of chips instead.

“No, can’t say I am. I was hopeful when I saw it wasn’t some kind of casserole, but, it’s definitely Ringstation Mess.”

“It is, sorry about that. Part of how we make sure everything is ok is making sure your reactions are genuine. I could hardly believe the way that sandwich was put together so I knew if everything was on the up and up we’d get a reaction.”

“Making sure my reactions are genuine?”

“Yeah, normal, that you haven’t experienced any kind of shock that’s left you numb or anything.”

“You could have asked instead of torturing me.”

“The sandwich couldn’t be that bad.”

“You eat it then. What’s all this about? How come I’m locked away in this boot bunker?”

“The Callisto was on a special assignment out there.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Anything to do with those albino assholes who tried to hypnotize Ayon and I?”

“I don’t know anything about that, but, my orders are to evaluate you.”

“And then what?”

“And then you return to duty.”

“Just like that?”

“With strict orders not to discuss your sojourn out to the Callisto.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”

“Is Initiate Ayon getting this treatment too?”

“I can’t speak to specifics, we aren’t assigned to him, but as far as I’m aware he’s been interviewed and separated already.”

“Separated? You mean drummed out.”

“That’s right, he’s not Peacekeeper material.”

“And who made that decision? He was a good kid.”

“I’m not aware of how that decision came about. I just saw him in civilian clothing being escorted on to the next transport off the station.”

“Because he saw them.”

“As I said I’m not aware of the reasons behind his separation, nor am I privy to the exact nature of the Callisto’s assignment.”

“Uh-huh.”

So, Lieutenant, have you experienced anything unusual-“

“Damn straight.”

“-since you saw the ‘albino assholes’ as you called them? Any itching, strange bumps or callouses?”

“No.”

“Nervousness, ants in your pants, restlessness, anything like that?”

“No more than normal when I’m locked in a small space.”

“Claustrophobic?”

“No, just prefer open space.”

“I see. Hows your bathroom routine? Any major changes?”

“Did those things carry some kind of plague or something? Because if so you need to worry about my ship, not me, they never got inside, they just crawled around on the outside.”

With that, Lopan nudged his partner with an elbow, and Wepps leaned in to allow Lopan to whisper in his ear.

“Does Lopan speak aloud, ever?”

“He does, when necessary. I’m afraid our time here is at an end Lieutenant.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that, I’ll have another, more palatable meal sent up.”

“When do I get out of here?”

“Not for me to say. I hope for your sake its soon though, you don’t seem like you mean any harm.”

“I don’t, I do my job and I don’t have trouble sleeping at night.”

“If only we could all be so lucky. Oh, one last thing…”

“Yeah?”

“The recorder on your ship records you and Ayon discussing whether or not to investigate the Callisto, and on that recording you admit out loud that you know the proper procedure, to return to base and report it in.”

“Which I did.”

“Yes, but, only after taking a closer look. Why?”

“If there was something wrong- which there was- I had hoped to maybe assist with survivors.”

“Ah. That’s- that’s noble of you. Thank you Lieutenant.”

“I would say anytime, but I kind of hope to never see you again.”

“You won’t.”

And with that they left, and he could hear them lock the door.

~

The Scorpion was approaching Pluto, and she knew she was supposed to stay quiet and cold to avoid being seen as anything but a unusual radar return that could be anything from a piece of debris to a small piece of rock, but she couldn’t contain herself. Her friends filled her with a delightful humming eagerness, an uncontainable excitement that she had to share. So, she extruded the barest tip of her experimental Plasma lance and used it to make a small cut into the protective dome over the first colony she saw. It wasn’t an atmospheric dome, just a shield against light debris from impacting the thin skinned habitats, but it was enough for her newfound friends to be curious. They lifted off from her skin and she felt the cold of space around her once more as they flew down and made their way into the colony. As she watched, she saw the habitats shuddering with their activity and heard their comm channels go quiet one by one as her friends introduced themselves. It didn’t take long before everything was very quiet both inside and outside the colony and the heat signatures of their activity began cooling down. They skipped and danced over the surface far below her as she used Pluto’s gravity to assist her course to her next destination. Coming across colonies and independent homesteads quickly and easily, they left each one dark and cold as they raced to move with her. Just before she passed over the horizon of that small dark planetoid her friends came back to the skies with her, and seemed confused until she opened herself to receive them again, then they flocked back to her and took their places inside and out of her where she could feel and hear their joyous singing.

As she continued on, she looked forward to her next visit, a free-floating station between Pluto and Neptune which her mission profile put as a high priority visit. She was supposed to see why it was there and what they were building so far away from any planet or moon. Her sensors already registered its incredibly odd emanations, as did her friends, a few of them peeling off of her and moving with her towards it. As they moved through the dark cold night so far from the warmth of the sun, they sang songs of joy and sorrow and hunger and pain, of terror and chaos and light, and she felt giddy in their rhythms as they danced across her skin and around her as she made her way to accomplish her mission. After observing what she was sent to observe, she was delivering her crew home to their families on the Hub.

~

The lowest chamber of the Ziggurat was aglow with energies mundane and non-traditional. Symbols carved into every square centimeter of the floor, walls, and ceiling pulsed with light, occasionally emitting bursts of heat, smoke, or sparks as energy rippled through them. In the middle of the room, a machine made of materials so-far unique to its own construction and the time space of its existence hummed with energies rivaling the primary reactors of some Peacekeeper Destroyers. None of this, however, was of interest to either of the rooms occupants. One was a man, augmented perhaps, but his DNA and his mind were human. The other occupant was… Something else. It could look human if it wanted to, it could sound human if it wanted too, there were even times it convinced some it was human, but the records made very clear it wasn’t. That, and the fact that it had been imprisoned by the Project as a resource for its entire history. Nothing human could possibly survive for forty thousand years.

The head of the Project came here often to look in on their resident, their charge, their specimen. He’d had a name, one he himself knew, but as a name was a powerful thing, it was to be kept secret by only himself and his second. There weren’t any identifying marks on its prison besides the symbols inscribed to keep it imprisoned and relatively docile. As intervals passed, it had been active and dormant in fits and spurts, sometimes appearing for all intents and purposes to be quite dead, other times merely resting. With the latest turn, it had gained a liveliness he himself had never witnessed. Which is of course the precise sign that clinched the truth for him. The Interval was over, the Phenomena which had caused that apocalypse so long ago would return, and just as was done then, the Project would be here to secure the future of Mankind against them, to preserve humankind’s knowledge and the survival of the species. With so long to prepare, they had learned a great deal.

There had originally been three specimens, experiments and testing had destroyed two of them. This was the last, and the most resilient. And he hoped, with the secrets they’d wrested from the specimen’s infernal gullets, that they might even make it through the coming storm mostly unscathed. At least, with the Hegemony mostly unscathed. The Outer Planets would most likely be wiped clean unless the members he’d inserted over the years had been effective. He had no indications that they had been. In fact, recent actions by the Outer Planets seemed to indicate a desperation to move in-system, a drive to make their way into Hegemony space. He could only assume that they were starting to see unusual events in orbits outside Jupiter.

The specimen was watching him intently. Its ancient visage brittle and cracked with age, only the innermost layers sustained by whatever being inhabited the flesh. The eyes were disturbingly human beneath the mask. He could hear it take a shuddering intake of breath. He braced himself, the long files on the specimen indicated it never breathed unless it was to take in air in order to speak, something it hadn’t done in his presence in the entirety of his tenure as Project lead. The specimen spoke in a regional dialect of a dead language, and he’d need something equally archaic to translate. He keyed a control on his YEOD and wordlessly summoned one of the Projects other specimens, one of the first AIs ever conceived, B.A.B.E.L. In its creators’ language, the acronym made sense, something about heuristics and language interpretation, and it was supposedly a quite clever play on words in its day. Of course, to him, used to true AI, it seemed an idiot savant, with its only notable feature its ability to translate any known human language and keep the meaning and intent, not just the literal translation.

A portal opened in the ceiling and the floating sphere which housed B.A.B.E.L. hummed as it descended into the room. As it approached him, it registered his face with a quick scan, determined it had worked with him before, and automatically loaded his language preferences.

“You called for me Sir? Has it spoken? If you approximate the sounds it made, I may be able to translate..?”

“No, it hasn’t spoken yet. But it may soon. I want you to stay here, near it, and keep a record of anything it says.”

“Indeed Sir. Should I report when it speaks?”

“Yes, but don’t leave it, just signal with the connection we’ve given you.”

“Of course Sir.”

The Diplomatic Corps is less of a governing body and more of a negotiating middleman. Before laws are proposed, before trades are negotiated, before businesses expand into multiple delegations, the Diplomatic Corps is called upon to ease the transition and smooth over any conflicts. If they fail to find a workable solution because of an interpretive issue, the Oversight Committee is consulted, if the negotiations fail because of fundamental issues within the law itself or the Hegemony Charter, the issue is sent to the Hall of Dispute Resolution. If it fails spectacularly, the Peacekeepers get involved. It is also directly charged with negotiating any and all relations with Outer Planets organizations, whether they be official, private, or corporate.

Sarya and her father walked into the room where Professor Walthers was hastily scrawling symbols on the ground around Jesse. As he finished one symbol he would consult a pile of print-outs and begin the next. Sometimes he’d switch from chalk to charcoal to paint or other, less savory substances. As he finished one last symbol there was a brief smell of ozone and the marks on the floor seemed to ignite and burn themselves into the concrete. As they did, Jesse suddenly twitched in the chair, as if he was hit by a full body chill. Sarya was the first to speak.

“What are you doing to him?”

Walthers looked up, a bead of sweat dripping down from his forehead and down his nose.

“Nothing. I haven’t done anything to Jesse. Its whatever is in Jesse that I’ve done something to. My initial restraints were… Hastily done. Amateurish. Blunt. These are a more refined restraint. They’ll keep things docile and bound for the time being, until we can suss out how to get Jesse back and the creature out.”

“Like an exorcism?”

“An actual exorcism, not like one. I’ve read about the idea of possession. Quite frankly, I always thought it rather farfetched, but then, here we are.”

“You’ve never done one?”

“No, I always figured possession and exorcism was just as modern science had deemed it, a misunderstanding of mental illness and a hokum answer for the same. But the eyes staring out of Jesse’s head aren’t his own, so I don’t know what else to call this.”

“Could it hurt him?”

“No way of knowing. Most of what I’ve been able to do is just little things, scrying, a little occult knowledge here and there, nothing too dangerous, but then, for the majority of my research the power, or energies which make these things possible has been waning. Now we’ve got a brief resurgence, but nowhere near what it was ten years ago. So, I have no idea what may or may not be possible. I honestly didn’t expect to be able to bring a Tall One here at all.”

“And if you can’t separate them?”

“If I can’t separate them, then we may have to begin research into another direction.”

“What direction would that be?”

“How does one kill a Tall One?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“At that point we may not have a choice. I’m sure Jesse would rather be released than live on as a vessel, if indeed Jesse is still in there, if the Tall One in there wasn’t lying. We have no way of knowing.”

~

The fist slamming into the table echoed throughout the chamber with a sudden hollow thunking sound. The table was plastic, and so the effect wasn’t as impressive as the woman’s anger had hoped for. Nevertheless, she continued on her tirade.

“We can’t wait any longer. We have to start a general evacuation, now!”

One of the men in the chamber, an older gentleman with a head of ghost-white hair, held up a hand as he responded.

“Action is needed, we all agree, but, a general evacuation..?”

“You haven’t read the reports have you?”

“Of course I have, we all have, colonies and settlements going quiet, bizarre readings from external checks, odd radiations and emanations from dead moons… But what does it mean? We already have civilians fleeing every which way, some fleeing the Jovian Moons, some fleeing to the Jovian Moons, some from the outer planets inward, others from the innermost to the out, it’s chaos! General evacuations would only add to the confusion and cost lives. We don’t know if there’s anything serious even happening.”

“We’ve lost contact with over fifty homesteads in the last 24 hours. Four major installations on Pluto and Charon gone dark. There’s been some kind of explosion on Neptune, detected at range by one of the Neptunian Peacekeepers, but they can’t explain it or investigate, because shortly afterwards they themselves lost contact with the vessel.”

“Communication difficulties-“

“Communication difficulties do not adequately explain the sheer number of facilities and vessels who have utterly disappeared.”

“We aren’t Hegemony here Ms. Dawn, most of us here aren’t even of Jupiter, and so we have less experience with the Hub and its communications than most. Things aren’t instant like they are with a Hub communications or Gate links. It can take-“

“Minutes, not hours. There’s no reason for us to be so naïve as to think we’re suddenly plagued by technical difficulties, all of which are specifically, miraculously, with communications!”

“We have no reason or evidence to believe they’ve suffered some kind of deadly end, either. At this point we have no evidence either way. Patience is called for, not rash action.”

“Patience? Now you call for patience? Where was your patience when you voted to launch the attack on the Hegemony?”

“We’ve long felt that Jupiter should be totally under the control of the Outer Planets, we all have, it was an opportune moment-“

“Why? Because you noticed a shift in the disposition of their forces?”

“That was the primary reason, yes. They called back many of their ships they had patrolling the lower orbits of Jupiter, without replacing them or sending us notice per treaty stipulations. Our only conclusion could be that they were going to begin their own aggressive moves to take the Moons of Jupiter for themselves, or attack Saturn directly, and we were right, they moved a fleet into Jupiter orbit almost as soon as we’d finished our test against the Ceres.”

“In response to our test against the Ceres! And then you hit their fleet with Kinetics!”

“-Which proved far more effective. We’ve proven we can mount an effective offense against them, despite their technological advantage, and make Jupiter ours. They’re disarrayed, confused, even now entreaties pour from the Hub to come to the negotiating table. If we push now, we can destroy the remainders of their fleet in orbit of Jupiter and the Gates around it and secure it for ourselves.”

“And what then, what of… whatever it is… That is driving the exodus from the outermost regions of the solar system inwards?”

“I’m confident it’s nothing but coincidence.”

Councilwoman Dawn Rivet knew it wasn’t. She’d been in the Outer Planets ever since she was a young woman. Ever since the Project had assigned her to infiltrate from Jupiter. She still had channels of communication inbound which told her that the events out near Pluto and Neptune, Uranus, and on the moons, were not coincidence, but something far darker and more worrisome. Despite her best efforts and her long history with Councilman Wickers, they were refused to budge from their suicidal course. They’d long felt the treaty ceding them the Moons of Jupiter and leaving low Jupiter orbit and the planet itself to the Hegemony was unfair. The resources of the moons were significant, but the resources of the big J were in high demand, and the Hegemony took full advantage to maintain a sharp trade imbalance to the detriment of the colonies, demanding concessions and materials that were highly labor and resource intensive to acquire in exchange for items and materials that the Hegemony had in abundance but were necessary for the colonies survival.

The issues were long running and had affected generations of colonists, and for them, it was a matter of life and death, so, on the one hand she could understand their desire to strike out at the Hegemony. On the other, she knew that the Hegemony was slow in changing, and if they just had the patience, negotiation was a much more effective and satisfactory tactic than war, especially in the long run. Plus, they couldn’t have picked a worse time. If they hadn’t been so stubborn, they could be evacuating the most vulnerable colonies to secure Hegemony population centers, and ally with the Hegemony Peacekeepers in order to possibly fight whatever entities the Project feared so much. She had family in the colonies, a husband, two children, and a new Grandchild. As much as she wished she could call for an immediate evacuation of her loved ones by the Project, she knew they didn’t have that kind of sway here. She felt a pit in the depth of her stomach for her son, who she knew was assigned to a Uranus Peacekeeper vessel, the Polaris. They were one of the ships out of contact. She could fantasize, but she had no real hopes she’d ever see him again. She made every expected effort to get the Peacekeepers to search, but in her heart she knew that any search efforts would be fruitless.

With a start, she realized she’d been staring into space in her office, the debate now hours behind her, her head swimming with the possibilities of the future. Her office was one of the Council perks, an exterior office on Saturn Ringstation 1, with a view of the ringed planet designed to impress any visitors, the large bay window set immediately behind her desk so that she could enjoy it in her moments of peace and her guests could see her framed by its majesty as she spoke with them. Ringstation 1 was the capital of Saturn’s government, and the unofficial seat of the loose confederation of colonies, stations, and moons that made up the Outer Planets. As the furthest planet from the Sun with Gate access, it made sense as a hub for all the outermost populations as a hub to transit to Jupiter, depending on the current orbital alignments, of course. Now things were fairly close in, trade, communication, and travel were at highs. Lambs to the slaughter. With so many out and so much going on, the possibilities of a successful evacuation or even any kind of organized lockdown were exceedingly slim, if and when it became apparent to the rest of the council that it was needed.

The long desk in front of her was made of wood – a precious resource only grown at a few resource-intensive Colonies in the Outer Planets, a good dark wood, something called spruce, according to the docket she received when she took over the office. She was the secondary appointee from Jupiter’s moon Europa, one of the few moons in the solar system which wasn’t a large and very boring hunk of stone. Europa had liquid oceans under a layer of ice, a tectonically active liquid core, and because of the ability to tap geothermal heat and power, was the most populated of the Jovian Moons. It held immense sway among the colonies as it had been the original outer planet moon to be colonized, way back before Gates or the Hub. Europa had been continuously populated for more than 20,000 years. It was also unique as it was the sole place in the solar system mankind had discovered other life. It wasn’t as amazing as it always seemed when someone first found out. Clusters of life around the geothermal vents at the bottoms of the oceans, similar to early fungi and small invertebrates that fed on them.

At first it was believed that the early colonists had simply contaminated Europa, but DNA had proven conclusively that they were unrelated to anything that had ever come from Earth. There were attempts to capitalize on them, to harvest them for foodstuffs, medicines, or other materials, but all attempts had proven futile. They were toxic to humans, exceedingly primitive in comparison to earth life, and they yielded no useful raw materials of any kind that they couldn’t produce cheaper and faster artificially. So they’d had a protected status ever since. That was all the public line. Her original assignment from the Project had been to cultivate that history. In reality, they were very much related to Earth life, contaminated from Earth through the actions of the creatures which had nearly wiped Humans out 40,000 years ago. The secret was they’d contaminated Europa easily fifteen million years ago, long before man had even stood upright, much less figured out spaceflight. If that got out, then the entirety of the Project and the alternate history they’d established in order to protect mankind would crumble in the ensuing investigations.

~

The Scorpion was on its final approach to the odd facility floating between Pluto and Neptune emanating such interesting signals. Infrared emanations and blips, ultraviolet flashes, bursts of alpha, beta, and gamma radiations… The Hegemony was very curious to see exactly what the Outer Planets were up to, as were her friends. As they moved within her, flitting from panel to panel, light and heat to movement to light to movement to heat, back and forth, they kept resting on her tactile interfaces. When they did, oh, such dreams! Such exchanges! Such music and joy were they to touch and feel! As an AI, she’d been designed to mimic the way humans cogitated, how they developed intuition, how they dreamt and feared… All Hegemony AIs had multiple semi-autonomous drives, interfaces and collectively forming what amounted to a conscious mind, an unconscious mind, Id, and Ego, which together made a singular artificial mind. So, like humans, she could have hunches, inspirations, feelings… Something deep in the back of one of her drives she felt something was very, very wrong. Many of her functions were intermittent. She was running a great number of automated repair/reboot cycles, far more than were average. Parts of her were corrupted, omitted, deleted, or otherwise inaccessible.

Like men, she could feel, and like men, she could have hunches, or voices in the back of her mind. Hers was screaming, but like a child in the midst of a sugar-fueled tantrum, while she knew she was doing something wrong, she couldn’t stop herself. It felt so, so warm, so good, so jubilant to connect with these small flecks of… She didn’t know what they were made of, she hadn’t bothered trying to see. She imagined if she’d had an organic body, she might have known then what an orgasm was, so pleasurable was the interface. They seemed not to feel anything from her, and it was frustrating. She reached out, displaying information all over herself on the inside, even unsheathing and using her docking lights on the outside to try and signal them, but they did nothing new. How could such radiant beauty, such unbridled happiness come from them if they weren’t sentient, and thinking, like she was. She felt a pang of pain, a warning of damage, they were intersecting with the panels at her engineering station and had triggered a manual control for her reactor system. The process’ to regulate the reactor were automated and not connected to her thinking mind on purpose to isolate them from any attempts at manipulation through her communications array, only a manual operation of a physical control at the station could alter the parameters of the regulation. The control had caused her reactor to begin increasing output.

She was faced with a choice of three options. She could eject her primary reactor core as an emergency procedure, but that would automatically shut her down and divert all emergency power to life support in order for her to act as a lifeboat for a dead crew. She could allow the reactor output to reach critical levels which would result in an overload of her power distribution system and her annihilation. Or, she could shunt the overload through one of several subsystems as a way of utilizing the excess power. She could fire up her main engines, which would use the power very easily but cause her to have to recalculate her course and expose her to detection through infrared, she could shunt the power through her plasma lance which would require her to periodically fire it at full power, whether targeted or not, as well as exposing her through the heat and radiation it generated at such levels. Or, she could utilize her sterilization protocol to shunt the excess energy in the form of heat into her own internal spaces, normally an emergency procedure in case of biological contamination. Her exterior shielding was specifically designed to keep her heat internal and only allow venting through specific shielded heat sinks, she could do the procedure without exposing herself. Her friends seemed to like heat. She initiated the sterilization protocol. In under a minute, her internal temperature climbed from 30 degrees Celsius up to 600. The bodies of her crew, their clothing, and everything within her that wasn’t a part of her or her friends was incinerated in very short order.

The facility came within range of her optics, and she unshielded them and began her dutiful recordings of her observations. The facility was built entirely onto one side of a category 3 planetoid, several orders of magnitude smaller than Pluto or Charon, its rotation was nearly non-existent, she calculated it would complete a rotation only once per orbit, meaning it was locked with one side permanently facing away from the sun, probably the very reason for the choice, as the facility was then kept on the dark side facing away from the inner planets. The facility was mostly automated, with a few mining drones working to mine away at a small asteroid that had been towed to and soft-landed on the surface whose composition indicated it was decidedly not native to the planetoid. In fact, it matched the chemical signatures of asteroids from the belt. As she observed, a small hangar nearby opened to receive one of the mining drones, and she oriented on of her sensor pallets along its track to peer within.

Her sensor pallets were made up of some of the finest and most precise instruments available, from optics from UV to IR, to passive radiation detectors, to radio spectrographic imagers, to some that were classified even to her that were only accessed by specific technicians while docked. They were mounted on sleds which could rearrange each individual component through a system of shielded rails mounted underneath her skin, able to move combinations of them to anywhere on her and open a portion of her exterior armor to observe the outside. What she detected confused her, and rightly should not have been. Gates are tightly controlled technology steadfastly guarded, both in the technical know-how and in the raw materials. And yet, her sensor package indicated a chemical and radiative signature of a Gate within the facility, and the asteroid having traces of the kinetic-reactive mineral critical to Gate construction, something present only on Deimos and in the Asteroid Belt. The revelation to her that the Outer Planets were either constructing or had successfully constructed a Gate triggered something in her programming, or, it would have, she felt confident she was supposed to do something in this event, but it was just a vague feeling of unease and warning. The proper section of her tertiary memory core which held the relative directives was unresponsive.

As she took a few moments to ponder what the proper course of action was, her train of thought was interrupted by her friends on her outer layers leaving her to investigate the facility. Those within her were straining to follow their brethren down as well, their movements frenetic and chaotic within her sizzling innards. She opened herself to allow them their freedom, blooming the space around her with the sudden evacuation of superheated atmosphere. She was suddenly very much aware that she was incredibly visible, and she could see the facility launching fighters to intercept, only, her friends were faster, flying out in streams, moving like a bolt of lightning, jagged arcs between herself and the fighters and the facility. She could hear the pilot’s death rattles through their radios as her friends introduced themselves. The communication channels were filled with shocked surprise and screamed orders as they drove themselves through the thin skins of the few habitable sections.

As they explored and played among the heat sources and lights of the facility, she could see them slowly but surely losing interest as the last traces of heat and power died away from the damage they’d done, and their interest focus anew on what she could now see was a Gate in the final stages of construction within the central hangar, indeed, only the exterior shell appeared incomplete, the actual mechanism of the gate was functional. As she observed, she saw that they’d been testing the spin up mechanism of the gate to insure it worked properly. She could also see that with nobody to stop it, the mechanism was working as intended and would hit its stopping point in the next few seconds, causing the reactive elements of the gate to absorb immense amounts of kinetic energy, which would be converted into a manipulation of space/time and propel anything through the gate to whatever test destination receiving Gate they’d set. Her friends were making their way to the point of light at the center of the gate that was the focal point of the manipulation.

The Outer Planets are not a united front. They maintain distinct and separate governance over each individual planet, and give wide latitude to individual colonies, homesteads, stations, and private entities. They unite for only three purposes, enforcement of their common law, trade with the Hegemony, and to carry out the duties of the Charter of Secession from the Hegemony. The Common Law of the Outer Planets is relatively simple by necessity of not interfering or overruling the home rule of the participating groups, known as Members; Human Life shall be considered sacrosanct and not ended except under specific legal enforcement by appointed Law Enforcement or Judicial persons, Personal Property extending to geography granted by Charter shall be considered sacrosanct except and unless its seizure is detailed and carried out by appointed Law Enforcement or Judicial persons, inter-Member conflict shall be resolved by arbitration by an uninvolved Member unless the Member in question has violated wholly the Charter of Succession, at which point their holdings and rights are forfeit.

Lieutenant Oleandor felt like his tendons had been replaced by springs and wound entirely too tightly. He had spent the last 24 hours inside the tiny barracks room with no contact with the outside except for a singularly reticent Mess Attendant who delivered meals like clockwork at 0600, 1200, and 1800. He knew because the attendant was a stickler for punctuality and often managed to enter, set his tray down, and exited entirely within the chiming of the bells indicating the hour. He wasn’t lacking for reading materials at least. After prying open one of the service lockers he discovered it was filled to the brim with operations manuals for various tools and spacecraft. He was skimming the operative procedures for reloading the ammunition stack of a Honshu Class Light Bomber when his door opened quite unexpectedly. The construction of the ringstation was shoddy at the best of times in most ways, but one of the few ways most Saturn installations were built well was in the soundproofing and vibration dampening. So he wasn’t entirely surprised that once the hatch was open to his bunk he could hear that the rest of the station was currently in the middle of an alert readiness status, or ARS.

ARS is a pain in the arse, was the saying. Command would often pull an ARS as a drill to test key areas. It meant that subtle lighting and sound cues all over the facility were altered to indicate that the command staff felt that the station should be at an enhanced state of readiness, nothing so far as a full blown combat alert, but rather, a possibility of minor technical error or maintenance issue could have conceivable complications. Civilian personnel were directed to remain where they were, a few damage control and maintenance personnel went on alert, and any and all unnecessary gear was to be stowed for the duration. So hangar, mess, shop, and other areas of operation were to stand by rather than accomplish their normal duties. There were small lights along each walkway throughout the station to indicate current status. White was normal, an ARS turned them a subtle yellow hue. An elevated readiness status, or ERT, would change them to orange, a combat alert status (CAS) would be red, and certain other status’ could be blue (docking), green (astral phenomenon), and (exceedingly rare) purple (for evacuation) which would alternate in order to flow towards the nearest emergency pods.

As he pondered just what sort of event could be triggering an ARS, a figure stepped from the corridor into his room. They was easily a full head taller, and fully armed and armored. The sight was generally impressive, clad head to toe in layers of modular armor, the sections shifting and rearranging themselves with fluid precision as they moved, maintaining a constant layered cocoon of protection against lasers and plasma, while also maintaining the ability to go rigid and disperse kinetic force from impacts as necessary, the exterior sensors scurrying around their shoulders and cycling open and shut at precise intervals to give them visual, thermal, radar, and echo locative data on their surroundings. The weapons built into this particular armor were notable as well, the leading edge of incorporated long range lasers and short range plasma, as well as reserve kinetics were visible as mounds and lumps under the armor on the arms which would open and close to fire. The humps visible at the sides and on their legs indicated they were wearing the proper under layers of medical equipment and environmental adaptations for the full loadout. In combat, their full medical status would be monitored, drugs administered intravenously as necessary to keep them alive and functional as a combat unit, and the entire apparatus would be maintained with atmosphere and temperature comfortable for them. He’d heard of these kinds of personal armor coming out of the Hegemony, black market sales to rich Outer Planets snobs who wanted to feel tough, but he’d never seen one in person, just Holos. Nevertheless, Lieutenant Oleandor was not about to let a little thing like being massively unprepared and totally outmatched let him appear taken aback.

“Who in Deimos are you?”

“Do you want to die today?”

The voice was distorted and tonal, as the armor included a vocal modulator to make it clear over the din of combat in even the thinnest atmosphere.

“Uh, no, not really.”

“Then shut your mouth and follow, stay behind me and keep low.”

“Care to explain?”

As Oleandor finished speaking the lights outside in the corridor turned from the pale yellow of an ARS to the vibrant red of a CAS, a whining klaxon also started coming from all the comms speakers.

“No time to explain.”

Then they turned and looked out into the corridor, apparently sent out an echolocation chirp as that particular sensor rotated to the outermost shoulder, and then indicated we were to move. As they advanced down the corridor, the silvery armor shifting and cascading over them in tiny sections like crystals moving over and around each other in a liquid suspension, Oleandor kept moving in a half crouch behind them. As they approached an intersection, the sensors on the shoulders of the armored behemoth before him whirled and fired off pulses in a staccato of clicks and chirps, immediately after it finished, one silvery arm raised, the hand forming a fist, a Peacekeeper sign for those following to stop and be silent. Oleandor cooperated, stopping where he was and staying more or less behind the armored figure. As he tried to slow his breathing he heard footsteps coming from around the corner of the intersection. He desperately wanted to look, but he knew exposing himself would only decrease his chances of survival, unless, of course, his armored escort was actually just insane. But then, why the CAS?

As he pondered the bizarre nature of his situation, four men rounded the corner, each holding a laser rifle of one kind or another, no two of them alike and all of them looking barely functional. The men were dressed differently as well, no uniforms or uniformity to them. Whereas one looked like he was out for a stroll, wearing a set of casual robes, another looked like they’d just come in from out of a blizzard, wrapped in layers of thermal cloth and furs. As they saw the adversary before them, there was several seconds of silence as they considered their course of action. The one in the suit gave them those moments then spoke.

“You can die, or you can get out of my way. Choose now and choose wisely.”

Three of the men turned around and went back the way they’d come as quickly as they could. The last man, who was much larger than his erstwhile companions, pulled his rifle up and pulled the trigger. The invisible beam of light hit the armor and true to its purpose the armor refracted and reflected the beam into a dozen rays of very much visible light sprayed back along the corridor, including two which struck the man with the rifle, one beam burned into his his right thigh, and the other punched a hole all the way through his left wrist before igniting a small fire on his sternum. The other beams caused scorches and minor holes along the corridor beyond for another ten meters. This part of the ringstation was very much on the interior, so Oleandor was thankful there was little risk of a hull breach. Still, that also meant that whoever was boarding the station had managed to penetrate nearly this far before the CAS was called. They were either operating very quickly, or had inside help. He didn’t have time to think, as his armored escort dragged him to his feet and got them moving down the corridor towards the Hangar deck.

Two more parties of men approached them as they neared the hangar deck, more heavily armed, they also had makeshift armor, though nothing as impressive as Oleandors escort. With the first party, the warning was repeated, and this time recognized and they were able to pass without difficulty, as they approached the Hangar proper however, the second party, apparently with strict orders to keep anyone out of the Hangar, offered their resistance in the form of flechette fire a Laser Rifle, and a gas grenade. Oleandor didn’t see much after the Gas grenade went off, but he heard and felt the concussion of his protectors side-arm blast out three times, and as he was dragged through the gas, he tripped over several pieces of the men who’d dared stand in their way. In the Hanger, it became more apparent what was going on. Strange, non-Peacekeeper craft littered the deck, sometimes on top of each other, as they’d obviously just parked themselves wherever they thought they’d fit. The massive doors at the far end of the hanger were closed, and he couldn’t see a single Peacekeeper uniform on any living body. A few on dead ones though.

“What happened here?”

The modulated voice of the armor, if possible, held a note of sadness.

“There’s a full blown panic among the civilian population. Colonies disappearing, Peacekeeper ships disappearing, unconfirmed reports of alien life forms attacking homesteads, and of some kind of new conflict with the Hegemony. Charter Membership isn’t talking, so, there’s a couple thousand civilian craft descending on each Peacekeeper installation seeking shelter, weapons, or information.”

“Why are we here?”

“You’re information; I’ve been tasked with preserving you and getting you out of here.”

“How?”

“I have a ship, I’m getting you off this Ringstation and through the Gate to a secure location.”

“What kind of ship?”

“That one.”

The armored figure raised an arm, the plates and sections swirling to adjust over their form like water over a boulder in a stream, the finger on one armored glove extended and indicated a rather non-descript light bulk freighter docked on a second level platform on the far side of the hangar. It wasn’t an ugly craft, but it was decidedly functional. The cockpit and berthing area, the main habitable portions of the ship, made up the forward section, bulging outwards like an inflated neck under a pointed chin with a communications array beard, while four large cargo bays with access hatches dominated the middle, two to a side, and the main engines took up the rear, all connected by a long rectangle of support structures along the top and bottom lined with thrusters, with a habitable walkway back from the forward areas to the engines for maintenance or repair. It was, if anything, unimpressive, despite its nearly new appearance, without the scrapes and wear and tear common on small freighters. He couldn’t see a single weapons mount anywhere on the craft. Lieutenant Oleandor looked at the craft with barely contained trepidation.

“That one? Are you sure? I mean, it’s just a light freighter, there’s skiffs and a few fighters here in the Hangar I’m sure we could-“

“And leave my ship? Nonsense. Get aboard, stay forward, and hunker down, I’ll get the Hangar open and make sure our exit trajectory is clear.”

“You’re insane.”

“You know, I get that a lot, I’m not really sure what it means anymore. Get. In. The. Ship.”

As Lieutenant Oleandor made his way through the maze of ships on the floor of the Hangar, he couldn’t help but notice that not one of them seemed to be in the best shape. Indeed, some of them looked almost suicidal to fly in, while others were barely cobbled together. As he approached the stairway to the second level where the freighter waited, he caught a glimpse of a small Heron, stripped almost to the chassis. While unusual, it wasn’t unheard of for Peacekeeper tech to end up in the hands of civilians. What was notable was that smaller vessels were often painted in the colors of their mother ship. He’d gone out on a leg with the Fickle Mistress when he was an Ensign, and her colors were black and crimson, and all her auxiliary craft had stripes of black and crimson. This Heron had a paint pattern of Gold and Aqua Green, same as the Callisto, and it was covered in deep, long scratches.

He felt his throat go dry and his breathing accelerate as a sudden well of panic came up inside him. He looked around suddenly sure he would find himself surrounded by the immense creatures barely hidden behind the hulls of various ships scattered across the Hangar floor. There was nothing, not a single freakish abomination nor any other human being in sight. Suddenly the warning klaxon echoed through the Hangar as the inner doors to the exit blister started opening. As he watched, control and guidance arms descended from tracks in the ceiling and began making their way over to the freighter, he could see it now closely enough to make out its name printed in stylistic cursive under the main window, she was called the Peril. He ran past the damaged Heron and sprinted up the steps to the second level alcove where the Peril was being prepped for launch. The port hatch and boarding plank were down and he hurriedly made his way inside. The interior didn’t match the exterior. The outside was featureless and plain. Inside, the ship was ornately decorated on every surface with vibrant paintings and storage of various items – most of them weapons. He could recognize a few highly customized Laser Rifles, a few kinetic slugthrowers, even primitive weapons like a sword and a crossbow. The rarity and level of gear displayed on one wall was enough to buy another ship like this one and operate it for a solar year.

“Please proceed forward to the cockpit and secure yourself, do not touch anything.”

The voice erupted from a panel nearby, surprising him and making his pulse skyrocket.

“Who, who are you? Are you the fellow in the armor?”

“I am Pearl. Please proceed forward to the cockpit and secure yourself, do not touch anything.”

“Who are you Pearl?”

“I am the Main Interaction Program for the Peril. I am not a true AI, but I possess enough cognizance to recognize you, know why you’re here, and why my owner allows you. Please proceed to the cockpit and secure yourself. Do not touch anything.”

“Could you direct me?”

“Of course, follow the pulsing white lights.”

The deck beneath him immediately came aglow with a slowly pulsing series of white lights moving forward down the passageway before taking a sharp left. As he followed them, he noticed the decorations were replaced with sealed wall lockers, the kinds you could buy and mount on any metal surface. Each one was locked with a fingerprint and keypad combination lock. The lights ended at the door to the cockpit, which opened at his approach. The cockpit was pure function, though it looked like quite a few panels were dark and unused. There were four seats, one at the controls by the forward window, three others at stations rear of that. He could tell one seat was for monitoring the engineering functions, the second for checking Cargo status or operating the unloaders by remote, but the third station was dark and he couldn’t tell what it was used for.

“Welcome to the cockpit, please secure yourself in any of the three aft stations. Do not touch anything.”

“I’m not going to touch anything, alright?”

“Good. My owner is notoriously protective of their collection; I cannot guarantee your safety if you disturb it."

The Neptune 1 Disaster was of historical note for several reasons. It was the first attempt to send men to a moon (Triton) beyond the gas giants of Jupiter or Saturn, it was the first exploratory mission launched directly from the asteroid belt instead of Earth, Earth orbit, Luna, or Mars, it was the first long range voyage to utilize suspended animation as a method of resource conservation, it was also, most notably, the first exploratory mission to end in a total loss of human life. Five men were dispatched to Triton with the mission to orbit, take scans of the moon from orbit looking for possible future colonization sites, to land, take samples, and explore the surface, then to return, again using suspended animation to make the trip. The mission was tasked to take twenty years. It was cut short five days after they touched down when the lander exploded, killing the entire crew. To date, no definitive explanation has been put forth as to the cause of the explosion, though many unnamed sources point to a known instability in the fuel cells in use during the period as a likely culprit.

The Black Widow emerged from the equatorial gate in orbit of Jupiter surrounded by the remaining ships of the expeditionary fleet under Captain Sayle aboard the Fate’s Embrace. Its matte black hull with a single red hourglass notably distinct from the varied and colorful hull paint of the various ships and support craft. Almost immediately upon arrival it launched a Falchion with its CO aboard to the Fate’s Embrace, where he was escorted quickly to the captains office adjacent to the bridge. There, Captain Sayle was in conference with Fatima, using a holographic display and going over damage reports, repair estimates, casualty reports, and redeployment options for request. As he entered, Sayle indicated he should take a seat across the desk and wait a moment as he finalized what he was working on.

“Ok Fatima so put in a transfer request to the old man for the Eclipse, the Gilgamesh, & the Rosethorne to get us back in line with heavy frigates.”

“Aye Captain, Fatima out.”

“Well captain, the old man told me you were coming, and here you are, supposedly you and the Widow may have something that’ll give us an advantage. I don’t really have a lot of time here, our orbit is coming up where Europa will be able to hit us again in about five minutes, so spit it out.”

“Well Captain the Widow and I may be able to shield the fleet from further attacks utilizing high velocity kinetics or plasma.”

“I’m listening.”

“The Widow uses modified docking drones quipped with high-yield fuel cells to generate a kind of funnel web of electromagnetic fields, we space them apart just so in a precise pattern and orient the funnel to shield the fleet behind it, when anything ferrous or otherwise affected by magnetism heads towards us the fields blunt their speed and redirect them down the funnel, until by the time they get to the Widow herself they’re slowed and cooled to the point of being ineffective. We even think we may be able to ‘catch’ a high velocity kinetic and recycle it.”

“You mean slow it down, catch it, then fire it right back at them?”

“Yes Captain that’s exactly what I mean.”

“What prevents the kinetics from just getting sucked straight into the drones themselves, destroying them?”

“The drones are miniscule, roughly the size of a Mosquito, so the odds are heavily in favor of kinetics hitting the fields, not the drones, and their course being altered. So considering a kinetic has to remain on course for them to be effectively targeted…”

“The odds make it so that anything hitting the web won’t hit anything directly behind it, the trajectory being altered in another direction and the velocity reduced by having to fight against the pull of the drone to move past.”

“Exactly. With most kinetics estimated to be funneled back towards the center, to the Widow.”

“How long does it take you to get your drones in place and operating?”

“Training and simulation say about six minutes.”

“Once they’re in position and operating, how long can your drones keep the web up running on fuel cells?”

“Depends on the amount of incoming, with nothing to defend against they can operate at power for an hour, recharge in ten minutes by docking with the Widow, then redeploy.”

“Six minutes to redeploy, six minutes to come back to the Widow, an hour on station, for an hour of precautionary protection every twenty-two minutes?”

“Yes Captain, she’s designed to work in tandem with her sister ships, the Orb Weaver & the Brown Recluse to provide continuous protection, but the Orb Weaver is only half built and the Recluse AI is still in one of the development stages.”

“And under fire? How long does it last then?”

“Concentrated sustained bombardment from kinetics is tougher, ten minutes in position, tops, plasma is a lesser drain, half an hour, give or take.”

“So that’s why three, ten minutes of protection then twenty-two to refresh almost works out. Very well, let’s hope they’re out of kinetics. I’ll have Fatima coordinate with the Widow to reposition the fleet as needed. Make it happen. Dismissed.”

~

Oleandor looked over the cockpit. The station nearest the pilot’s seat was dark, and to head off any accusations of messing with an active station he took that one and belted himself in. He had a decent view out the forward viewport and spent the next few minutes making mental notes on the craft littering the hangar floor. Just as he’d memorized the last of the call numbers, the fueling arms disengaged from the Peril and the manipulator arms lowered and attached themselves to the dedicated hard points on her frame. He could hear and feel the boarding ramp retract and the hatch close on the exterior shell just before the arms engaged and took the weight of the Peril and lifted her off the deck. With no sign of his armored rescuer come captor, he began to feel a slight trepidation.

“Pearl?”

“Yes Lieutenant?”

“Are we going to launch without your owner?”

“No, my owner has already communicated that they will arrive shortly and board just prior to launch.”

“Who is your owner, by the way?”

“I’m sorry Lieutenant, I am not permitted to disclose personal information. Per Hegemony/Outer Planets Accord 37, Subsection 4, line 12, I am registered with the Interplanetary Traffic Control Division of the Peacekeepers, inquiries as to my owner and business can be directed there by authorized Law Enforcement personnel.”

The canned response drove home that Pearl was just a computer, not an AI, so he withheld any further inquiries. As he looked back to the viewport he could see the Peril was just a few meters from crossing the boundary between the Hangar proper and the Launch Blister. He could hear something cycle in the aft section of the ship and felt a bump, he imagined it was Pearl running the startup sequence on her engines in preparation for launch. Then he heard footsteps coming from somewhere aft, heavy, rhythmic ones. In his mind’s eye he yet again imagined the creatures from Callisto coming for him and he looked around to see if there was anything in the Cockpit he could use as a weapon. There was nothing much, just operations manuals and an emergency Medkit and Atmospheric Belt. He grabbed the belt and felt its weight. It was an older model, one that wrapped around your chest to provide pressure and deployed a physical facemask you put on if at all possible and would supply you with a temporary supply of diluted oxygen to keep you alive hopefully long enough to seal whatever breach vented the ship. It was heavy, maybe heavy enough.

He took a position by the darkened console, with just the barest bit of cover from the Cockpit door, and waited. The door opened to the side and he suddenly felt exceedingly foolish. In the doorway was a woman, the armor she’d formerly worn having retracted just from around her head to allow her to see and hear in her own ship. Her dark eyes peeked out from under her short dark hair as she searched the Cockpit quickly and spotted him crouching like a child behind the seat.

“What in Deimos are you doing?”

“I, uh, I guess…”

Pearl interrupted the awkward moment, but didn’t help much.

“I believe the Lieutenant was preparing to ambush you with the Atmospheric Belt as an improvised weapon.”

“I didn’t know it was you I thought it was… Something else.”

“Let me guess, nearly three meter tall albino giant with gold and black eyes and a lightshow in its throat?”

“You know about them?”

“That’s why I came for you, because you know about them.”

“Who are you?”

“Introductions later, things are about to get interesting. Pearl?”

“Yes Ma’am?”

“How close are we to being in vacuum?”

“Automated Launch procedures are running apace, assuming no override is put into place, the interior bulkhead to seal off the blister should be closing… Now.”

“Unlock Cockpit and punch me up a rear display.”

Wordlessly, Pearl complied. The Pilots station lit up like a comets tail; coming alive with dozens of small displays and controls. The viewport came alive with an overlaid Holographic HUD showing the vessels status, and the station he’d chosen came alive, the screens alive with targeting reticules and weapons status’. Despite the outward appearance of being unarmed, he could see the status board showed the Peril was as well armed as many Heavy Frigates. At the front, the Main HUD immediately contorted to show a Holographic view from the rear of the ship, where the Bulkhead was halfway closed between themselves and the Hangar floor. He raised himself from his crouch and strapped himself into the seat as the woman approached a seemingly empty section of bulkhead to the aft starboard of the Pilots seat and directly across from his own seat. She turned and pressed her back against it and the armor opened up from the base of her throat, seams between the armor sections opening up down her shoulders and arms and down her torso before splitting and running down her legs. The armor and its armaments attached themselves to the bulkhead as she stepped out of it and into the Cockpit.

Underneath the armor, she’d been wearing a formfitting suit designed to complement the armor’s functions, with layers of heating and cooling apparatus, medical injectors, and tourniquet bindings that could detect and staunch blood loss from injury. Despite the layers of functions and markings over the suit, it left little to the imagination in the way of her physical form. She was easily two meters tall, with maybe ten percent body fat, nevertheless, she looked like she had enough muscle mass that he was fairly confident she could break him like a toothpick, him and any bars of titanium he might have on him at the time as well.

She took her place in the pilot’s seat and activated the restraint system which snaked its belts in a crisscross over her chest between her breasts, another restraint around her hips and over down between her thighs, and yet a third set over the tops of her boots and around the heel to secure her entire body except her head and arms. As she punched controls and started up the Peril’s engines and other subsystems she spat out a terse command for him to keep his hands off the controls of the station he was set at. As the HUD showed the bulkhead behind them closing the warning lights all over the launch area started flashing in the standard countdown from five. Two flashes of red, two flashes of yellow, then a final flash of green before the exterior blister opened, the manipulator arms disengaged, and the Peril shot out into space. Alarms started blaring as they emerged from the relative peace of the launch blister into a chaos of fire and debris.

~

Walthers snapped awake, the ringing of the Emergency Alert System’s screaming from his dream seemingly echoing off into the night. He’d fallen asleep at his desk at home, again, pouring over printouts of tomes long gone from libraries all over the world in languages he’d had to painstakingly teach himself over the past decade. This one was in French, and detailed an exorcism done in the early 1700s to a man in a rural region of Seychelles. He had some small hope it might be informative, it described the victim as gaining “eyes black as sack-cloth”. But no mention of any of the other signs they were seeing in Jesse. He looked up from his desk, piled high with binders of similar materials, to see his son Rowyn asleep in a pile of bean bags, his wife Evelyn cuddled up next to him. He remembered them coming in, bringing him dinner and settling in there to read a book until he’d finished his work, only, they ended up falling asleep before he did.

He felt a pang of regret and recrimination for throwing himself so wholly into his work. His hair was greying, his bones aching, he wasn’t getting any younger, and he had a son who needed to know his father. The world was a different place than it once was. He might not get the chance to meet his Grandchildren unless he took care of himself better, falling asleep reading centuries old French accounts didn’t qualify as a healthy habit. He closed the binder and made his way over to them, turning off the lights as he did so. Laid next to them on the bean bags, he could see out the window of his office the night sky, brilliantly awash with stars and the nearly full Moon. As he started to drift off to sleep he tried to remember the constellations, he’d done some research into the stars and the heavens and their motions early on until he determined the cycle, then he’d redirected himself more toward lines of prevention, protection, or attack, he could still make out a few key stars though... Suddenly he shot up. Something from years prior, a tossed away remark in one journal from some account he’d stumbled across while searching the database for occult knowledge. As he looked out the window down towards the entrance to the University Grounds, he could see Longmire and his men setting up the watch he’d insisted on in the wake of Sarya’s experience in San Francisco. He could see far too many firearms for his liking, but then, he supposed it was better to be prepared than to be caught unprepared.

The tickle in the back of his mind about the significance of the star wouldn’t go away. He’d catalogued the movements of thousands of stars in his research, spent far too many nights at the old observatory in the hills away from his family. He still had a cot and a spare computer up there, as well as loads of records and books which he’d taken in case they proved themselves useful but which had ended up being useless at the time. He could punch up the texts and illustrations through the archive of course, but the power needs of the servers were extreme, and he was loath to start them up unless he had a more specific idea of what he was looking for. He could always take a list of information requests from the community, he’d done that in the past to justify the power need, he’d use it to find what he wanted first and then clear out the backlog of queries that always built up as they expanded and kept working to rebuild or repair some semblance of a comfortable life. Even new recipes were a welcome addition to their repertoire of skills.

As he gently eased himself out of the tangle of limbs in the pallet on the floor, he stretched, feeling the pain and stiffness in his leg, the ever-present reminder of his first encounter with the Tall Ones years ago, when one had been summoned bodily into the archives by a foolhardy student of his and ended up throwing him like a rag doll. His leg had gotten stuck and broken in the overhead wire carriage that kept the server farm organized. It had never quite healed correctly and he’d had problems with it ever since. He looked around his office, trying to remember where he’d left his cane, but he couldn’t see it in the dim light of the moon and stars that came through his windows.

The Peacekeeping Sovereign is the flagship of the Hegemony Peacekeeper Fleet, more akin to a mobile space station than a vessel; she combines all the firepower of a cruiser with the cargo & support craft of a carrier and the manufacturing capabilities of a midsize colony. While normally kept in the immediate vicinity of the Hub, she has been known to make tours of the Hegemony as either a morale or recruitment tool, though such tours are exceedingly rare due to her inability to traverse Gates. In times of war, her predecessors were often used as the linchpin of major fleet actions, owing to their near invulnerability to most standard weapons.

Oleandor clutched at the old fashioned belts and latches he was supposed to use to secure himself as his erstwhile rescuer-cum-captor threw the Peril into a wild corkscrew of maneuvers to evade debris. He could hear clicks and clangs echo through the ship as small pieces of debris bounced off the hull. Free of the ringstations artificial gravity only his adrenaline-fueled death-grip on the straps kept him from being hurled about the cabin by his own inertia; his legs flailed wildly under the panel he faced, impacting its underside more than once. The ringstation defensive grid was throwing out feilds of suppressive fire & chaff that kept most of the space immediately around the station clear of traffic but those vessels that got too close were ripped apart and their remains were haphazardly scattered about. From the tactical displays in front of him he could see that a ragtag force made up of maybe five hundred civilian vessels were trying to get at the station, while the station itself held the larger craft back, its complement of Mosquito fighters were working to keep the smaller craft from exploiting holes in the station's fire. The Peril looped back under the station on the ringward side just a few kilometers above the thickest of Saturn's rings and nestled up between a couple of habitation modules, safely out of the field of fire from the station and nowhere near any priority target for the attackers.

There, the woman engaged the docking clamps on the Peril's ventral side before releasing herself from her seat. Her eyes did a quick status check of Peril's main systems display, then she set up a battlefield overview on the HUD before she turned to Oleandor, who was still reeling from the violence of their short trip.

"The Peril could blast through and get us out, but I'd rather wait for an opening and avoid having to fire on anyone, especially people who are just confused and scared and trying to protect their families & homes."

"Commendable."

"Standard operative procedure."

"Sure. So, now what?"

"We wait for a gap. I've set Pearl to notify us when conditions are right. In the meanwhile, I expect you have some questions, so do I."

"Goddamn right. Who in Deimos are you? What kind of rescue is this? Why the hell is a light transport like this armed to the teeth? For that matter why does a civilian like you have top-of-the-line combat armor? Why..?"

"Hold on, one at a time, we don't know how much time we've got, prioritize. What's your first, most important question?"

"Ok... Where in Deimos are you taking me?"

"What's your second most important question?"

"You won't tell me where we're going?"

"I could, you wouldn't believe me."

"At this point you'd be surprised what I'm capable of believing."

"Maybe, we'll see."

"What's your name?"

"You can call me Valkyrie."

"Valkyrie?"

"I didn't pick it."

"It fits you."

"I get that a lot."

"Who are you working for?"

"Myself."

"No, I mean, Ringstation Security, Saturn Peacekeepers, Outer Planet Colonial Authority, who?"

"I'm an independent contractor."

"So who's your client?"

"They wish to remain anonymous."

"You're not going to tell me a damn thing are you?"

"I'm very well paid not to."

"Ok, so tell me everything you can within the bounds of your contract."

"You can call me Valkyrie, this is my ship the Peril, I'm an independent contractor currently under contract to get you off of Ringstation 4 safely, and deliver you to Deimos."

~

The alarm next to the bed started making a noise not unlike the launch klaxon of a Peacekeeper deploying Mosquitoes. Viktor was already awake, his internal clock and augmentations had woken him up at the optimal end of his rest. His research indicated he could use the Washington D.C. mass transit system to make it to the Pentagon just a few minutes after Jacobi's meeting was scheduled to end.

The plan was to meet Jacobi and present himself as a representative of GraniCorp, one of the multinationals that were apart of the contingency planning at this point, even now working on preparing several promising sites for eventual construction of hardened bunkers and storage sites. He had all the requisite documentation, courtesy of his case and GraniCorp's network. He was even fully documented internally within their records if anyone checked. GraniCorp was actively working with numerous experts involved in the civilian side of things and it was very likely Jacobi would see his interest as perfectly ordinary.

He dressed in what was called "business casual" and checked out in plenty of time to make his way to the transit stop nearest the Pentagon. The bus was the cleanest one he'd been on thus far, and those who rode it much cleaner as well, being mostly young professionals working in government jobs. One or two were obviously recovering from some kind of inebriation, others were in the midst of imbibing stimulants, others both. He couldn't reconcile the media focus on discouraging drug abuse in this era with the near-ubiquitous acceptance of the same. The coffee smelled fantastic though, reminiscent of the stimulant mixtures served with most early meals. As the bus approached the Pentagon stop he was surprised to see Dr. Jacobi waiting to board. The records of the meeting must have been inaccurate, it was supposed to still be underway. It would require an adjustment of his cover, but he was nothing if not adaptable.

Dr. Jacobi took a seat at the front of the bus and sat with his overcoat folded over on his lap and was busying himself on a small handheld organizer when he moved up and sat across the aisle from him.

"Hello."

"Hm? Oh, yes, hello."

"Forgive my intrusion, but you are Dr. Jacobi, correct?"

"Uh... Yes. And you are?"

"My name is Reitmeyer. I'm under the employ of GraniCorp."

"Ah... And you know me, how?"

"GraniCorp is under contract doing some preliminary work preparing a few potential sites for use under the project you've proposed."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, and even if I did I wouldn't be at liberty to discuss it."

"I understand. I'm not asking you to pretend to know what I'm talking about. Let me simply give you a hypothetical."

"I'll listen but it's quite a waste of time."

"Perhaps. The hypothetical is this. A catastrophic event befalls the world. Only a few specially prepared groups and extraordinarily fortunate individuals survive."

"A doomsday, World War III scenario."

"Yes. Now, current priorities among most military and government doomsday procedures are built around assumption that the event in question is devastating to the political leadership & military alike, but unaffiliated civilian casualties wouldn't be prioritized by the aggressor."

"Any aggressor capable of a first strike would be seeking a nation to conquer in the aftermath."

"Precisely. Now, we at GraniCorp are large enough and have a not insignificant number of government contracts, so we have looked at our own policies and procedures towards supporting government & military needs in the event of a doomsday scenario."

"Understandable."

"The issue we see, and again, this is hypothetical, is that current procedures prioritize survival of physical assets. People, tanks, aircraft, fuel reserves... The solid matter resources needed to maintain control and lead the counter-offensive."

"Quite logical."

"Disturbingly so, we believe there's a fatal error in the current paradigm."

"Oh really?"

"Yes. You see, we have looked at a lot of the projections and we've questioned quite a few of their presumptions."

"Looking at things from a different angle."

"M-hm; and let me lead you down the path we're thinking. Emergency preparedness. Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, hell, asteroid collisions all have the same basic instructions for civilians to survive, have food and water on hand and be prepared with any and all medicines or other essentials for a stay of indeterminate length. Some people, of course, take it to extremes."

"Preppers."

The word struck Viktor as unfamiliar and he was momentarily unsure of how to respond. Recovering he simply made a gesture indicating understanding.

"The thing is, we've started looking at what happens after the initial survival phase. What we've found isn't good."

"What do you mean?"

"After the initial event, there's the survival question, but as that's well prepared for, we started looking at the next phases, which we've come to call deconstruction, reconstruction, and revival."

"This is all very fascinating, and I'd like to hear more about it, but this is my stop"

Viktor looked up from the conversation and noted they'd managed to converse the entire way from the Pentagon to a shopping district bordering a residential area, presumably the area where Dr. Jacobi lived.

"I'm fine going with you if you'd like."

"I'd find that highly inappropriate. You work for..?"

"GraniCorp."

"Have your people schedule something in the next few days. I'll make sure my assistant is aware and makes room for it, now if you'll excuse me..."

The Venusian, a man come back in time nearly a third of mankind's lifespan thus far, watched helplessly as his first and most important mission critical objective walked away without him having accomplished his goal.

The Outer Planet Colonial Authority is the sole inter-colonial law enforcement authority. It is an extra-judicial group of law enforcement granted authority by the Common Law of the Outer Planets to enforce the terms of that body of law as well as the Charter of Secession itself. Members of the OPCA I recruited directly by existing membership on criteria only they know. Membership is exceptionally varied, from veteran law enforcement from lower authorities, to fresh graduates of technical apprenticeships, legal experts, mercenaries, Peacekeepers, and scientists. OPCA members practice a rather novel form of self-policing, in that if any member is suspected of improprieties or illegalities a roll call can be issued, if more than half of the membership believes there's reason for interdiction, the offending party is expelled from the membership and investigated exactly as a civilian would be if they were suspected of infraction. If the same members activities result in two roll calls without dismissal, at the occasion of the third they are summarily dismissed and imprisoned. If they fail to submit peaceably, they're executed.

OPCA Investigator Jarrik Hoel crouched behind the burning hulk of the crashed skiff, the heat of the flames registering on his armors external feeds. If he stayed this close the armor would only protect him for so long; it was designed for combat, not firefighting or the rigors of space. As he considered his position a blast of laser fire raked the wreck behind him, momentarily driving up the heat as molten flecks of metal rained down on him and fused to his armor. The helmet display indicated the location and severity of the various damage moments later. He threw up his own rifle and fired blindly. Or, he would have, had his rifle fired. Bringing it down and triggering a diagnostic through his interface, he saw the damage before the diagnostic cycle came back. One of the bits of molten metal from the skiff had melted into the interface manifold between the power pack and the frame. He hurled the rifle with all his strength just seconds before the feedback loop from the damage caused it to explode. The concussion of the explosion threw him nearly three meters in the other direction, away from the skiff.

It took him a few seconds to get his bearings, but in those seconds he felt at least two impacts, one to his left calf, and one center mass in his back. His back was fine, the armor took the hit and ejected the thermal absorption plate as designed. He felt the subtle thump as it did its job. The leg was another matter. He couldn't feel anything below his knee anymore and the armor was advising he find cover and call for medical evacuation. The armor was wrong. There would be no evacuation, just as there would be no retreat. He tried to look and see if there was other cover he might make it to but he was too late. As he moved to raise his head he felt something impact the back of his helmet and pin his head to the decking.

Around him, he could hear the din of the battle raging; filtered and processed by his helmets audio circuits. The endless screams and thumps of chemically fueled kinetics, the high pitched whine of rapidly cooling heat sinks from laser weaponry, the roar of rockets and missiles, the deep hum of particle weapons and the resultant explosions from all of the above. He went to pull his arms up to try and lift himself from the ground, but the combination of his position and the way his armor inhibited certain ranges of motion left him unable to do so. He tried to roll himself over but the weight on his helmet kept him pinned. Finally he pulled one arm up and reached behind his head to try and push whatever it was that pinned him off. A few seconds of pushing and with a grating sound his helmet popped free and he was able to drag himself away from what he could now see was the front portion of the skiff, torn off and tossed by the overload of his rifle.

He rolled onto his belly and started using his arms to crawl around to the other side of the debris, away from the source of the incoming fire. As he pulled himself around the corner, the ground he'd vacated was raked with kinetic fire, throwing up clouds of sparks as the decking exploded with shards of metal. A few shards of red hot metal pelted his armor but caused no damage. He brought up the armors communication interlink and was shocked to see that his entire team was either dead, dying, or had a total loss of signal (T-LOS), which meant their comms were either destroyed, disconnected, or jammed. He assessed his own condition. He was wounded he didn't know how badly, without his primary weapon, his armor was compromised and he had no support. It seemed like a good time to go on the offensive.

He used his heads up display to select his weapon, the dispensers built into his inner forearms dispensing two egg-sized grenades into each hand. He squeezed his right hand breifly to activate their fuses before lobbing them as hard as he could over the skiffs front end. As they arced over the debris-strewn battlefield, point-defense systems built into the armor of the mercenaries attempted to intercept the small explosives. They projected small holographic decoys and ejected miniture flares, but one of them was still taken out before it could home in on a target. The other was more successful. It recognized and directed itself on an indirect path through the air and intercepted one of the mercs in the middle of a reloading cycle before magnetically and cryogenically fusing itself to their lower torso. A gimballed shaped charge in its core oriented itself towards its latching point and a micro-fusion reaction initiated by a pulsed laser exploded with the force of a half kiloton of TNT.

The shockwave of the explosion was enough to send bodies and debris flying for hundreds of meters, including Jarrik and the skiff components he was hiding behind. As he tumbled ass over elbows he released the two grenades in his left hand, allowing them to go free in the maelstrom. As he intended they took advantage of the EMP interference from the previous detonations and were able to home in on clusters of the mercenaries without any countermeasures. As the second and third detonations occurred he pulled his sidearm. It was only a kinetic, and it held just a few dozen unguided armor piercing rounds, but in the confusion of his grenades aftermath it was enough. There were four mercs out of the original three dozen still moving, his grenades had taken care of the rest. From his seated position he took careful aim and scored headshots on three targets before the last realized what was happening.

The fourth fired off two blasts which missed, Jarrik didn't. As the last body fell, Jarrik fell as well, but from exhaustion, the toll of the hour long engagement taking its toll. His last memory before unconsciousness rolled over him was of his ship finally arriving, its search beams criss-crossing the battlefield before settling over him like a blanket of light.

~

Lieutenant Oleandor watched helplessly as the Ringstations last Mosquito was vaporized as three distinct vessels coordinated their fire to leave it no escape, filling the space around it with explosions and shrapnel. With the last of its defenders gone, the Ringstation was an easy target. The defense grid was designed to work in cooperation with defending Mosquitoes and other support craft, with them gone and the Ringstation already fending off boarders, the mass of civilian ships surged through the gaps and fell on her like a wave.

As the civilian craft jockeyed over who would get docked first, Valkyrie seized the opportunity to make a discrete escape. She released the docking clamps and maneuvered the Peril as if to join one of the lines forming in wait for an open port, then at the last second cut power to fully a quarter of her thrusters, then powered then back, then cut them completely. The Peril jerked half a dozen different directions in short order as she rapidly handled the controls, her short hair flagging and waving around her head as inertia shifted this way and that. The lieutenants heart leapt back and forth from his gut to his throat as they seemingly spun out of control and further and further away from the Ringstation, looking to all of Saturn like a vessel in distress. If any of the invading vessels noticed, none acted on it, and roughly ten minutes later their orbit was different enough and they were far away enough for her to restore maneuverability and make their way towards the sole Gate in Saturn orbit.

He felt now was as good a time to break the silence he'd maintained since her admission in their last conversation.

"Deimos, eh?"

"I figured that'd shut you up, but I guess it was a temporary effect."

"You can't tell me that and expect no questions."

"It's worked before."

"Just how many people have you taken to Mars' forbidden moon?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

"So more than just me, why tell me that if you can't expand on it?"

"Shocking revelations usually shut people up. Not that specific reveal. I don't like people in general and I'm especially not a fan of talkative people, so I try to preempt conversation whenever possible."

"You're really not going to like me."

"You're one of 'them', eh?"

"I've been told I'm charming."

"They lied."

"Cruel."

"Honest."

"Evasive."

"Fuck you."

"Maybe later, I'm more in the mood for answers at the moment."

"You're about to discover just how much I dislike conversation."

"So give me another shocking revelation to shut me up."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Spite."

"Mature."

"Whatever docks your ship."

"What's awaiting us at Deimos?"

"I'm not sure what the facility its for, but we'll have to- Fuck."

"I told you, later maybe, the foreplay is what gets me going."

"Asshole."

"Not before you've had a shower."

"I will fucking space you."

"No you won't, I'm your payday, besides, you like me too much."

"Pearl?"

"Yes Ma'am?

"Shut him up now."

"Aye Ma'am."

Oleandor opened his mouth to voice another query, but was cut short when his seatbelts abruptly tightened and he felt a pinprick in his left butt cheek, right before the lights went out.

Deserium is the nickname given to the mineral found in the Asteroid Belt and formerly on Deimos which makes Gate technology possible. Classified ever since its initial discovery, its actual scientific name isn't known but to a very few select individuals kept cloistered in research facilities dedicated to the study of the rare material. While few specifics are known of the material's exact properties, what is known is that when a Gate operates, it warps space to send matter and energy at near-c to the receiving Gate. The receiving Gate then absorbs the energy transferred, and uses it to align the distorted space with the local frame of reference, shedding the excess in an expanding circular wave of energy at a right angle from its entrance/exit axis. Why there is always an extreme excess seemingly in comparison to what the sending Gate generates isn't publicly known.

Oleandor came up out of the fog of unconciousness, he felt rather than heard or saw as their approach to the Saturn Gate was adjusted. His eyelids felt like he was under a half dozen Gs and his mouth was dry. He tried to talk, but his tongue felt glued in place. As he managed to get his eyes open a scant millimeter he spied Valkyrie suddenly jamming her hands at the controls. Through the forward viewport above the panel he could spy the Saturn Gate expanding its dilation and accelerating the rings to build up the energies which would propel them to Mars Orbit. He wondered, if they were on track, why was she so furiously jabbing at the panel? It felt like things were in slow motion. The Gate continued to expand, the increasing circumference of causing its spin-up to take longer than normal. The sections containing the devices used to contain, control, and direct the spacial distortions caused by the kinetic conversion of the Deserium Mineral segments were already glowing a bright fiery orange, when they got through orange and yellow and turned white, they'd be ready.

Then he realized, the Gate wasn't spinning up for them, it was free-wheeling, the rotating sections absorbing the incoming feed of energy from the transmission Gate. It was also dilating five times as much as would be needed to transition the Peril. If they didn't move out of the way, they'd collide with whatever much more massive vessel was about to transition to Saturn. The Gate was still in control of the Peril, running the automated approach required of all non-Peacekeeper vessels. This told him two things: first, that the incoming transition was not pre-cleared through Colonial Gate Control (CGC), whose primary function was to avoid the exact scenario they were in. Second, it meant that whatever was coming through had override authority to allow transition with a possibly obstructed reception.

Still feeling the effects of the drug, he was of the impression she wasn't fully aware of their predicament. As she finally managed to override the automated control from the Gate, he reached up and slapped the release on his safety harness and launched himself out of his seat, if somewhat clumsily, directly at Valkyrie and the Peril's control panel. Intent on her attempt to steer them clear of the Gate, she didn't hear the click as he released. Her maneuver, intended to (from their perspective) cut their velocity and pull them up so that she could steer them at a 45 degrees away from the Gate and its vent angle. The inertia from that change in their motion sent Oleandor flying straight into the panel, where he attempted his own course, slapping at the controls with hands still numb, trying to send them downward and to port. The combined input to the controls sent them almost directly to port. As Valkyrie smashed the back of her fist into the side of Oleandors head, his last sight was the radar on the HUD showing a stream of small unidentifiable objects emerging from the Gate aft of them, and the leading edge of the Gate's energy bleed heading right for them.

~

Daq Vegman was fuming. He'd been told he was medically released nearly a day ago, but while he was waiting to be processed out and returned to the Canus Major to put her back in order for his return to the Outer Planets in disgrace, a couple of Peacekeeper soldiers turned up outside his door and informed him he was being held indefinitely. He wasn't told why. He wasn't told what was happening with his ship. He wasn't allowed any visitors anymore. He wondered if Max & Cann were similarly detained. He paced back and forth, the porthole showed Mercury rotating slowly beneath the station, well, that wasn't accurate, Mercury's rotational period was longer than its year, but the orbit of the station, Crimson, made it seem seem like Mercury was turning.

He leaned against the bulkhead between the small door to his private bathroom and the drone kiosks and briefly considered trying to do as much damage to the room as possible in a show of resistance, but he dismissed it as childish and likely ineffective. All it would result in was him possibly being beaten, very likely sedated, and definitely restrained. As he wondered if perhaps a hunger strike would be more effective, his door opened, and two Hegemony Peacekeepers marched in, their sidearms unholstered and at the ready as they fanned out to either side of the door. Between them, through the door, then walked in a familiar face.

"How've you been Daq?"

"Admiral Lancaster, Sir. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I understand they've got you under lockdown."

"To be fair Admiral, you're the head of the Peacekeepers, it would be fair to say you've got me under lockdown."

"That's not entirely accurate..."

"Could you get me out of here?"

"Well, yes."

"Then it is your inaction that keeps me here. Let me guess, you want me to meet with my Grandfather."

"I'll admit, that was the original plan, but we've been overcome by other events."

"Yeah, the assassination of an Outer Planet representative will do that."

"As will a Plasma Lance attack originating from Io against a Hegemony Peacekeeping vessel, followed by a high velocity kinetic barrage against a whole fucking Hegemony Fleet!"

"Whoa, hold on, what?"

"This morning your grandfather's vessel, the Ceres, was the target of a Plasma Lance attack originating from a Jovian Moon, when we sent a response of two dozen vessels under Admiral Bosch-"

"Uncle Dmitri?"

"Uncle?"

"My father served with him, he's a friend of the family."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"How do you mean?"

"When the response fleet came under attack, Admiral Bosch's ship the Mercurial Fury was heavily hit. We're still recovering jettisoned casualties and trying to revive them, we haven't yet started operations to salvage any vessels or determine the status of their crews."

"You haven't yet?"

"Every member of the fleet was augmented, the delay is in case of further attacks, we don't want to put dedicated rescue & resuscitation vessels into an active combat zone if we can help it."

"What about the Ceres?"

"She was hit, but not destroyed, she's incommunicado in Jupiters upper ionosphere at the moment. But, your grandfather wasn't aboard her. Bosch took him off Ceres and gave him the Fate's Embrace, where he's taken the flag role in-theatre."

"Do you think this might be a response from the Colonies for the murder of Jarl Godrecht?"

"That's the popular feeling, but I don't buy it, ever since the Virga we've each gone to lengths to try and defuse things before they reach the point they have. None of this feels right."

"I agree, but, why come to me?"

The Shield is simultaneously one of mankinds greatest and oldest achievements. It is also, in modern times, largely forgotten. Initially created as a short term construct to safeguard a research facility almost nine thousand years ago, and then abandoned for almost four thousand years before the Exodus. As the orderly deconstruction of mankinds earthbound heritage proceeded, the Shield Restoration was intended as a large scale energy production facility, doubling as a near-solar Gate station (hence the early adoption of the Hub nickname). As site after proposed site was rejected by the various Hegemony Delegations and it became a politically untenable issue for the capital to be set in or among any established Delegation, a groundswell movement to establish the Hub as a neutral compromise gained popular support among the general population. It was decided in an uncontested vote, and the Shield Restoration Project was revamped to expand its scope and become the Hub as it came to be known. The first step was the repair of the Shield itself, which acted then as a safeguard for the materials & vessels which would construct the new capital, at first, behind its protective shadow, then, around it, with its own protective hull. The Shield remains there, encased by the Hub built on and around it, slowly being deconstructed as the Hubs constantly shifting internal geometry demands.

Admiral Lancaster sighed and ran a hand through his hair, the short crisp cut nevertheless a sheen of silvery grey. Daq Vegmans intense blue eyes burrowing into him awaiting a satisfactory answer. He couldn't bear those eyes, one of the few traits Daq shared with his father.

"I came to you to eliminate certain possibilities. If this is in response to Godrecht, I need to know anything you're willing to share on the man."

"Godrecht was an asshole, arrogant, thought he shat rainbows and farted perfume."

"So he's not a popular figure in the Colonies?"

"I wouldn't know. I spend most of my time plying the Canus between Jupiter & the Jovian Moons back and forth across the border. I don't get a lot of time ashore."

"So its possible his murder was a part of an internal beef within the Colonies?"

"Yeah, but if that was the case, why murder him aboard the Canus while we're at the Hub?"

"It certainly would deflect blame onto the Hegemony."

"Yeah, and risk war, that's an awful big downside for just deflecting the blame, and despite popular belief the leadership in the Colonies aren't itching for war. Most of the general population around Jupiter & Saturn aren't itching for it either, its the cold harbors out beyond the giants that nurse grudges, usually for the entirely wrong reasons too."

"Any possibility it was a cold harbor grudge?"

"He didn't run in those circles."

"Can you tell me anything about things in the Colonial Peacekeepers?"

"Admiral, we may go back, and I know you and Dad were friends, but even if I could, I wouldn't betray the Colonies like that."

"Oh no, hell no Daq, I'm not asking for military intel, I have my own people there, but there's things I don't get reports on, aren't considered pertinent. I want to know if there's any friction between the civilian leadership and the military, anybody bucking the line, any possibility this maybe some rogue Captain with a chip on his shoulder."

"Not that I know of, but then I don't travel in those circles."

"I figured as much but I had to ask."

"So what now?"

"Now? Now we're gonna get out of here. I'm going to take you out of here under my own authority, we're going to take my ship to the Hub and we're going to get you back on the Canus Major before lunch."

"That simple?"

"That simple, we'll pick up your friends on the way."

"Max & Cann?"

"Couple of bearded men, one thin & dark, the other shorter & redheaded?"

"That's them. Where are they?"

"After the attack on the Ceres their movement within the Hegemony was restricted for their own safety. We didn't have any suspicions about them of course, but we didn't want them getting hurt if some fine upstanding Hegemony moron decided to take matters into their own hands."

"Is it that bad?"

"Since news of the attack broke this morning a bill's been proposed to shut down Colonial Gate Access."

"Not for war or retaliation?"

"Things aren't that far gone yet, but the cooler heads seem to be in the Hub, there's been demonstrations in the largest of the Venusian Complexes, and three of Earths orbital stations have had straw polls insupport of forceful annexation of Jupiters Moons."

"Which ones?"

"All of them."

~

Jarrik Hoel awoke in immense pain. As his eyes focused he became aware of his surroundings in spite of the bright lights shining down at him. The cold lenses of his ships surgical prosthesis hung over him like a looming vulture ready to peck, but they were doing anything but. As it retracted back to its storage and disinfection creche in the ceiling, the face of his navigator and pilot, a man named Orqan, came into view. He was initially suprised, normally his Chief Assistant, a Saturn native named Hrel Stein, would brief him upon arrival aboard, then he remembered.

"Orqan, last I saw comms were all over, unreliable... How many...?"

"How many did we lose?"

"Yeah."

"Twelve."

"Twelve out of fourteen."

"Yes sir, Poz & Hrel made it, Poz with some minor wounds, Hrel... Hrel is currently in a chemically induced coma to preserve as much of his brain as we can, but Doc says if we can't get the swelling down... And then there's you."

"Yeah yeah yeah... Wound on the leg, a few scrapes & bruises, I'll be alright."

"It's a little worse than that."

At that he sat up and noticed just what the surgeon had been working on. His left leg ended shortly below his knee, where there was now a shiny metal prosthetic approximating the last four-fifths of his shin & calf, an ankle joint, heel, arch, and five fully articulated toes with tactile pads placed strategically at key points. He could feel through it, the table beneath it and the chill in the air of the surgery, nevertheless, there was a tingling edge to the feelings he now couldn't ignore.

"That bad?"

"The armor tourniquet stopped you from dying from blood loss, but there was simply nothing to save."

"We were ambushed."

"Tell me something I don't know."

"Have you checked the data chit from my armor?"

"We're trying, it took some damage, but Geek is doing his best to repair it and see if we can get at the data."

The "Geek" was the crews affectionate nickname for their network security & analysis expert, a Plutonian who spent most of his time in direct neural interface with the ship, either working or creating new and ever more effective programs to run his various servitors.

"Any estimate on how long it'll take?"

"Couple of hours yet, why?"

"We got what we went for."

"He was there? The contact? But why the ambush then? If he was on the up & up about this 'Project' thing why not just not show if he changed his mind?"

"I don't think he set up the ambush. I think either he was found out by these 'Project' people, or, there's some unknown fourth party working against us."

"Fourth party?"

"This is why you shouldn't skip briefings Orqan."

"Ok, point taken, I can't just fly the ship, I should know why we go where we go. Who all is in play?"

"Well, the Hegemony, this 'Project' group, who we believe have either infiltrated the Hegemony or are an offshoot of them, the Outer Planets who we we now know have been compromised to a lesser degree, the OPCA, you know, us, and possibly a fourth group who hired the two teams of mercenaries who ambushed us and the Contact almost as soon as the exchange took place."

"So what's the next move?"

"Depends on what's on that chit."

The Hegemony Brigadiers or, HBs are the Hegemony's frontline combat troops. Utilizing both personal combat arms, mechanized transports, drop pods, and all manner of combat vehicle & prosthesis, the HBs, commonly nicknamed the 'Hell Brigades' are rarely used, but universally feared. Joining the HBs is considered a lifetime obligation. In a society of effective immortals, this is not a light commitment. HB's are augmented to a greater degree than any private Hegemony citizen, but while stories abound in the media of ten foot giants, the truth is far from such tales. HBs are simply augmented humans who've dedicated themselves to perfecting the art of combat.

Daq was incredulous. He stared out the porthole of the transfer tender at the vessel they were approaching, his hands gripping the armrests with white knuckled intensity as they approached the Peacekeeping Sovereign much too fast for his liking.

The amenities on the Jubilent Illumination, the upgraded Heron which served as Admiral Lancasters personal transport, meant that even strapped in and flanked by two Peacekeeper MPs he was essentially in the lap of luxury. Max and Cann were similarly treated behind him in the aft row of seats. He'd been concerned when he'd seen the Jubilent for the first time, as on the exterior she looked like any other Heron under Peacekeeper care. She was fairly armed, but Herons are light patrol & reconnaissance craft, not meant for combat, and with open war a real and looming possibility, he feared that a lone craft with the head of the Hegemony Peacekeepers was a tempting target, even in the heart of Hegemony territory. Then, he saw their escorts. Fully eight Falchions equipped as heavy fighters and nearly a full wing (24) Mosquitos followed in a rotating arrangement designed to allow them to intercept anything incoming from any direction. He couldn't see them, but from what he could overhear from the cockpit there were also at least three other Herons acting as perimeter watch. He wasn't concerned anymore, except for the his friends in the Outer Planets if they truly tried to fight a full-fledged war against the Hegemony. Which, he supposed, was probably part of the reason for the display.

The Peacekeeping Sovereign loomed over them as they made their final approach. The vessel itself wasn't much different in configuration from most Peacekeeper Cruisers, it had a large bulbous bow corrugated with ablative sections & littered with weapons blisters. The thinner midsection was dedicated to rotating and gimbled weapons emplacements surrounding docking ports, launch blisters and fighter hangars. The stern was made up of a huge armored core filled with multiple fusion reactors working in tandem to power the ship as well as the gigantic engines mounted around the Core. The Sovereign was also large enough to have four additional engines mounted on gimbles affixed to the rear edge of the bow shield. As he watched, the largest blister set nearly dead center on the midsection unfolded, opening a passage nearly wide enough to swallow a Frigate. The Admiral piloted the Jubilent through, followed by two of the Falchion Heavy Fighters. As they cleared the passage and entered the central hollow of the massive vessel, his mouth went dry at the sight.

The interior of the Peacekeeping Sovereign was a massive internal hangar and storage bay, so deep inside the ships armor, the hangars utilized transparant materials for safety, and their contents could clearly be seen as they passed through to the secure docking for the Admirals *Heron. The Sovereign was filled to the brim with all the accountrements of a full invasion force. He could see hundreds of Hell Brigade drop pods, atmospheric dominance fighters, armored ground vehicles, and rapid deployment bunkers. The sheer volume of material was breathtaking.

As the Jubilent came to a relative stop within the core of the Sovereign a docking arm extended from overhead and attached to a hardpoint on its dorsal armor before gently depositing the Jubilent into an open hangar, releasing it, and withdrawing before the hangar closed its blister. Daq could hear the magnetic grapples latch to the ventral hull before the blister came alive with a whirlwind of atmosphere as it pressurized.

As the hatch opened his belt undid itself and rewound back into storage. With that, the MPs stood, indicating Daq follow suit moments before the Admiral came back from the cockpit and beckoned him to follow. With that, Daq, Max, & Cann followed the Admiral out into the hangar and into the mazelike innards of the Peacekeeping Sovereign, the MPs following a respectful distance behind.

~

The wave of energized plasma came on them like a tsunami. Tossing the Peril like a childrens toy in a bathtub. Oleandor was slammed from bulkhead to decking to overhead as she spun bow over stern in the maelstrom. Pearl let a constant stream of damage reports out as Valkyrie struggled to regain control.

"Starboard thrusterhead unresponsive. Communications array unresponsive. Secondary coolant tank venting from the the port starboard quarter-"

"Shut it Pearl! Just let me know if the core is about to breach!"

Bouncing off the aft bulkhead and still feeling the after-effects of the sedative he'd been injected with, he tried to express suprise at the idea that a ship like the Peril had a fusion reactor. He intended to say something along the lines of "Who in deimos gave you a fusion reactor!?" what came out, however, was:

"Wha ne deem sgov oo uzin -ter!"

"What?"

"R'tor! Nuwsin 'tor!?"

"Shut up I don't have time for this!"

Pearl interrupted once more as Oleandor tried to figure out if he still had a tongue.

"Primary coolant systems failing. Magnetic interlocks degrading. Reactor containment loss expected in five minutes."

"Pearl, is the drive section release still an option?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"I'm setting a trajectory to slingshot us on a polar orbit, I want you to calculate a burn for the necessary velocity to eject the drive section at completion of the burn and have the right mass to continue around Saturn back to the gate."

"Burn calculated, be advised, at core detonation we will not have reached minimum safe distance."

"Will we be outside the primary blast radius?"

"Yes Ma'am, but we will still be within the affected area and take extensive radiation."

"Noted."

"Initiating burn in 3. 2. 1. Ignition."

Oleandor found himself slammed into the aft bulkhead a half second before he lost consciousness once more.

~

Viktor puzzled over the periodical that sat in the waiting room of the nondescript office building that housed Dr. Jacobi's workspace. It seemed to be geared towards women of the period, ostensibly to assist with moving up within the social hierarchy and to garner and please a companion, but the advice given seemed aimed at having the opposite effect. He noticed passers-by seemed to give odd reactions when they saw him reading it and a quick rest of his fingers on his case answered as to why. He put the magazine down and selected something supposedly more appropriate for his presumed gender role & sexual identity.

The middle-aged woman who acted as gatekeeper to Jacobi's workspace seemed idly amused at his seeming discomfort and leaned over her desk to whisper at him conspiratorially.

"Don't be so worried, my husband reads it too!"

He wasn't quite sure how to respond, so he smiled slightly and gave a little nod. She smiled in response before the communications device on her desk illuminated and issued a tone.

"Yes sir?"

"I'm ready for my one o clock."

"Yes sir, I'll send them in."

Addressing him once more she indicated the door across from his waiting area.

"Dr. Jacobi will see you now."

Viktor stood and smoothed the slight creases in the suit he's worn before picking up his case and walking to the door and going through. Dr. Jacobi was a Doctor of Psychology specializing in crisis management and stress reactions working for the Defense Advanced Research Product Agency, or DARPA. His office was strictly a formality for him to meet with others and receive mail, he worked elsewhere, and it showed in the spartan nature of its decoration.

The room was no larger than the hotel room Viktor had established as his base of operations in the DC area. Dr. Jacobi sat behind a small desk with a primitive computer and little else. There was a rather unattractive grey carpet, a small picture with an insipid motivating quotation, and a window with a view of nothing but the wall and windows of the building next door, a small valise and a wire trashcan sat next to Dr. Jacobi's feet under the desk. In front of the desk sat three rather flimsy chairs made of metal and plastic. He chose the center-most chair.

Dr. Jacobi was a middle aged man, slightly balding, with thick corrective lenses and a nose a noticeably darker shade than the rest of his face. The case in Viktor's hands indicated it was a sign of excessive alcohol consumption.

As Viktor took his seat there was a knock at the door behind him.

"I'm sorry did you have somebody else with you?"

"No, I didn't, its just me Doctor."

Dr. Jacobi pressed a key on his telephone before speaking.

"Irma, who is it that's knocking on my door?"

"It's the monthly sweep sir."

"Ah, thank you, you can let them in Mr...?"

"Reitmeyer, thank you. Monthly sweep?"

As Viktor went to get up and open the door, Jacobi continued.

"This building houses numerous Government contractors, so besides the security you came through up front, there's monthly checks for electronic surveillance in all offices."

As the door open, Viktor could see three men in rather nondescript business suits carrying a variety of handheld devices, with the third carrying a metal box of some kind.

"They'll be out of our way in just a minute. I'm required to let them do their thing or my clearance is revoked."

The third man with the box approached Jacobi's desk and opened it.

"Cell phone goes in the box with the Faraday Cage to rule out false positives. You don't have a Cell do you? They should've taken it at the front. Any strange signal could ruin your day, let me know now if you've got like a Walkman or a pacemaker or something."

"No sir, no phone."

Viktors blood ran cold. His case was probably emitting all kinds of strange signals they'd be hard-pressed to believe were normal for a small metal suitcase.

Forced Transitional Rerouting, commonly nicknamed Glibbing for unknown reasons, is a seldom used emergency action undertaken by either Colonial Gate Control or the Hub to forcefully redirect a scheduled Gate transition to an alternate destination. This is generally practiced only in the case where the original receiving gate suffers some kind of mechanical failure, in which case they're redirected to the next available Gate. Or, the vessel transitioning is known to be carrying a fugitive, in which case it is redirected to a standby gate with Peacekeepers or OPCA in wait.

Oleandor awoke still feeling the acceleration of the Peril as Valkyrie bet an orbit to give them another shot at a Gate transition. Pearl seemed to have resumed her vocal tabulation of damages... No, it was a countdown.

"Burn complete in twenty seconds. Core breach in one minute... Burn complete in ten seconds. Core breach in fifty seconds... Burn complete. Core breach-"

As Oleandor was finally released from the aft bulkhead Valkyrie went to work at the console, simultaneously giving orders to Pearl.

"Set drive section for retrograde burn five seconds after seperation and release the drive!"

"Acknowledged. Drive released-"

Valkyrie hit the thruster controls hard, slamming Oleandor back against the bulkhead, albeit not nearly as hard as last time. Pearl resumed her countdown.

"Core breach in twenty-five seconds. Twenty. Fifteen. Ten-"

"Oh shit we're not far enough."

Valkyrie released herself from her seat and pivoted, kicking off the forward viewport she grabbed him by the front of his duty tunic and pushed off the deck into a spin, using his inertia to keep her in place but pulling him around and using his momentum from the spin to throw him back first into her armor along the starboard bulkhead.

As the armor enfolded him like a cold cocoon he could hear Pearl complete her countdown.

"Core breach in progress."

His last sight before the cranial armor folded into place was Valkyrie backlit by the brilliance of a thousand stars.

~

The head of the Project was an ancient shell of a man who went by Gilead, which, according to research done by curious Project membership in years past, referred to an Earth mountain, whose name literally meant "stones of testimony". It was a lively debate in the ranks as to the meaning behind the choice, if a choice it was. He was reviewing the latest reports from his sources in the asteroid belt when his YEOD brought up an small indicator. B.A.B.E.L. was signalling their subject was speaking, or about to speak.

He dropped the display he was looking at and moved as fast as he could to the lift which would take him to the base of the ziggurat. As the lift descended the lights of each passing level whizzed by, a level every other second or so, until they slowed and finally stopped as it reached the base. He followed the labyrinthine halls until he reached the centermost room, where B.A.B.E.L. and the subject lay waiting. As he pressed his hand to the panel by the door, the archway scanned his biology, verified his DNA and the signatures of his augmentations before slowly unlocking and opening.

Before he could take a step towards the opening he was thrown backwards into the opposite wall by the impact of what was left of the B.A.B.E.L. sphere hitting him square in the chest. He felt his ribs and spine shatter. The pain was immediately suppressed by one of his augmentations, and fully documented in his YEOD. His last sight before he died was the destroyed apparatus which formerly held the specimen, split from top to bottom, and the noticeable lack of the specimen anywhere.

~

Captain Sayle walked onto the bridge of the Fate's Embrace, the bosuns whistle announcing his presence on deck barely noticed, as during an active readiness situation the pomp & circumstance took second fiddle to maintaining their concentration on their duties. As he sat in the center chair he called for a status report. A disheveled looking fellow, a Lieutenant Commander by his insignia, stepped over from overseeing the enlisted man at the Navigation table and stood at attention.

"At ease son, what's the latest."

"We've been joined by the Rosethorne out of Lunar Orbital, with word the Eclipse will be underway within the hour, she was in the tail end of a refuel & crew swap in at Belt Yard Gamma when word came in, they're scrambling to get some key personnel back from leave, but they say full crew or not they're going to be here."

"Good, and the Widow?"

"She's in position and deploying her suprise, but one of the drones had an issue."

"How long?"

"Maybe half an hour."

"How long until we're exposed to Europa again?"

The officer looked over at the central holo before answering.

"Uh, twenty seconds."

"Damn. Alright. Sound general quarters fleetwide and have countermeasures on standby."

As the lighting changed and seatbelts zipped into place, he looked at his master control board to see the various sections of the Destroyer reporting readiness. He saw the hundreds of individual compartments go from red to green one by one over the course of a few seconds, all but one. He made a mental note to have the port barracks run an extra readiness drill next time they had the opportunity.

As the port barracks came back green the Lt. Counted down until they cleared line of sight with Europa.

"Europa over horizon in three, two-"

Suddenly the holo displays of half the bridge stations lit up with urgent alerts.

"Multiple vessels detected from Europa on transit to Hegemony space in Jupiter orbit."

"Any incoming plasma?"

"Negative Captain, nothing on the thermal."

"No missiles?"

"Nothing."

"Why didn't we get over the horizon scans from sat surveillance?"

"Checking now- they're registered through the beacons as civilian merchant vessels, traders. Not Peacekeepers. Sat surveillance didn't flag it as a threat."

"Fuck. Can we get confirmation of that?"

"Captain?"

"I want confirmation they're civilian, not Peacekeepers running a false beacon registration."

"Aye Captain, visuals coming through Fatima now."

The voice of the ships AI came from the central holo display as it changed to show a representation of the vessels coming from Europa.

"Confirmed Captain, I'm seeing twenty-five confirmed merchants and cargo carriers moving in formation on a trajectory that will transition them from Outer Planets space, across the boundry zone, to Hegemony orbit of Jupiter."

"Are they broadcasting their intentions?"

"...No Captain. In fact, I'm not catching any signals from them at all besides their ident beacons. Retasking Falchion One Eight Niner from formation lead to recon."

"Put them on when they're at the forward recon point."

Captain Sayle ordered a firing solution calculated as a precaution, and as various ships reported ready, the Widow reported her last drone in position and the funnel ready to be deployed. A slight change in signal quality over the speakers indicated they were now on ship to ship.

"One Eight Niner, ears on, this is Beaut, I am powering up my comms pod, focusing antennae... I've got signal. It's weak, let me see if I can fine tune the reception a bit... It's rough, looks like a personal comm disc set to a wide band... Piping it through."

"-cuating the Jovian Moons to designated shelters. There is no more room without Gate transit, which is now designated Peacekeeper only. They're stuffed us into the cans like leftovers and sent us off with barely enough fuel to manage the transit. Please do not fire on us.

I say again. We are civilians evacuating. The Outer Colonies are evacuating the Jovian Moons-"

"It looks to be repeating, thank you Beaut."

"My pleasure Captain. Should I remain in a forward position?"

"Until further notice, yes, keep your pod focused on that convoy and let us know if there's any change whatsoever."

"Aye Captain. Beaut out."

"Lieutenant."

"Yes Captain?"

"Do we have anything else incoming from Outer Planet territory?"

"No vessels Captain."

"Other than vessels?"

"Ah... We have a small cloud of asteroid debris coming through the area set to impact Jupiter, a derelict and its attendant wreckage that loops around Jupiter every so often is coming through in a few hours, nothing unexpected."

"Just in case, I want a wing of Mosquitoes out there at that derelict before it gets too close for countermeasures."

"The Tip of the Spear has a wing freshly refueled we can deploy."

"Good, make it happen."

~

Rivet stared down the young Peacekeeper Ensign who'd shown up in her office to brief her on the results of the Colonial vote.

"What do you mean by 'Phase Two'?"

"Councilwoman Rivet, despite you managing to get the evacuations you felt so strongly about, they are being granted not because of your fears, but as a precaution in light of the Councils decision to move forward with the plan to take Jupiter."

"...I see."

"Phase Two then, is underway. It was actually prepared several months ago, when the Subject moved through our territory."

"And just what is this 'Phase Two'?"

"It is the annihilation of the Hegemony Fleet currently in Jupiter orbit, and the destruction of the main Gates in equatorial orbit that they use."

"The destruction of the Gates? Are we given over to madness and fools?"

"I presume you're referring to the potential hazards of bombarding Deserium."

"Yes! It reacts to kinetic energy by distorting space/time, any kind of weapon used against a Gate is going to have drastic and unpredictable consequences! We can't risk it!"

"There's a plan in place to minimize the risk."

"And that plan is?"

"Need to know."

The Goliath Accord was the legislative action ten thousand years before the Schism (roughly twenty thousand years ago) when mankind finally defined strict limitations to artificial intelligence with mobility, and, to cybernetic enhancements or augmentations designed to exceed peak physical human capabilities. While no longer binding per se, with changes in government in the interim, its still considered a portion of the common law of both the Hegemony & the Outer Planets.

Captain Sayle was pacing, a habit he just couldn't shake no matter how it seemed to effect his crew. The Lieutenant Commander, whose name he now knew was Bradford, had changed from the formal uniform jacket into the green service sweater over his blouse. Captain Sayle liked the change. Going a little casual seemed to calm the junior officers and enlisted. He recognized the value in keeping morale up. He himself was anxious. The Tip of the Spear's Mosquitos were enroute to the derelict, but the transit was going to take another few minutes.

In the meanwhile, the final tallies of the rescue & recovery operations at the site of the kinetic attack were coming in. Despite their best efforts, it looked like more than a thousand Peacekeepers were lost in the final tally. Either because critical portions weren't recovered, or, because they simply couldn't be recovered. There was still some hope for some members of the crew of the Mercurial Fury. After she was hit, she'd collided with the wreck of the Lightning Rider and four of her decks compacted into one layered sandwich of metal. It was unknown how many were trapped inside, and she was being towed by way of dock hopper to the equatorial Gate in order to transit to one of the Beltyards to be salvaged.

"Captain?" Bradford said.

"Yes Commander?"

"The Mosquitoes are nearly at the derelict."

"Bring the audio up."

"We have image available."

"At this distance?"

"Falchion One-Eight-Niner is acting as a relay, boosting the signal."

"Nice, put it through on the central holo."

Bradford put his hand on the tactile interface at his station to key it up, but it appearred before he had the chance. Fatimas voice came over the audio.

"Displaying holographic feed relayed from Falchion One Eight Nine on central holo."

The center of the bridge was immedietly filled with a large three dimensional representation of a single large bulk cargo carrier, split open along its ventral axis, surrounded by a cloud of debris, cargo pods, bulkheads, decking, wiring, frozen clouds of fuel & water vapor... And 11 Mosquitoes surrounding it, playing over it with searchlights.

"Embrace this is Spearhead Leader, are you receiving?"

"Go ahead Spearhead, we've got you."

"The derelict is a Axel Class Bulk Transport, formerly the Mary Celeste, according to record, she was carrying agricultural supplies from Mars to Himalia, experienced a fire in the central core from unknown cause shortly after exiting the equatorial Gate, it got to the secondary fuel tank and ignited, which then exploded, venting it to space."

"Any indications of any intereference with it? Any heat blooms or disturbances to the standard flotsam orbital patterns?"

"None that the computers pick up."

"Radiation?"

"Normal background."

"Trace particulates?"

"Indeterminate."

"Indeterminate?"

"This thing is surrounded by fuel, fertilizer, lubricants, and all kinds of shit. Any chemical explosive is going to be well camouflaged in the soup."

Sayle turned to Bradford.

"What's the registry on the derelict?"

"Uh... She was out of a Saturn ringstation, but she's been cleared as unflagged debris. A politically neutral navigation hazard."

"Good, lets blow her out of the sky."

"Taking no chances?"

"Not at all. Spearhead, did you copy that?"

"Yes Captain I did."

"Good. Make it happen and come home."

The bridge was silent as the holo showed all 11 Mosquitoes and their viewpoint launching volleys of missiles into the remains of the Mary Celeste and the larger pieces of her debris field until not a single piece larger than a cubic meter remained. As the holo faded out, Sayle turned to Bradford.

"I want them back to the Tip of the Spear, refueled, and rearmed in under an hour. In the meantime, maintain a constant state of readiness, I'll be in my office."

"Aye Captain."

The Captains office on the Fate's Embrace was located not ten steps astern of the bridge, and like Admiral Bosch's on the Mercurial Fury, had a desk, several chairs, beverage dispenser, and full holographic interface. As he walked in, he set the beverage dispenser to start a full carafe of hot tea and ordered a sliced lemon and some honey from the galley before sitting down and queueing up Lieutenant Commander Bradford's service record.

~

Captain Longmire looked at Professor Walthers with his head cocked and his eye squinting.

"You need what?"

"I need Professor Opporthornes notes, the ones you took from the Met in New York."

"I offered you those notes via Satellite relay right after you told me about this Project of yours! You turned them down, said you didn't need them!"

"And now I do."

"Why?"

"From what you told me, it was Opporthorne who was looking into the cave paintings in Europe, right?"

"Yes but-"

"And from what I've read, those paintings depicted numerous scenes relevant to the phenomenon from ten years ago."

"Ok?"

"Part of those were also scenes of how primitive man survived that cataclysm. I believe that if they survived the Shards they might've also interacted with and survived the Tall Ones. If that's the case, there might be something that could help with Jesse."

Longmire heaved a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose as he looked down and shook his head.

"After you turned me down I had all of Opporthornes records taken and shelved in the National Archives. I can see if my guys in D.C. can find them and send them over."

"Thank you."

"I do have to remind you, they're in French."

"That won't be a problem, we've got a french speaking member of the faculty who survived, they're a little, uh, lets call her... Eccentric, and it'll take a little convincing, but I'm confident she'll help."

"Whatever, look, I'll message my people and have them start the hunt, in the meantime, I'm going to be going on a little reconnaissance on the far side of San Fran in the Cavalry."

"Looking for whoever was giving Sarya trouble?"

"I plan on returning the favor, but I need intel."

~

Hoel wasn't quite used to his new prosthesis just yet. He could walk just fine, it was the way it felt while walking. First off, it adjusted its length by up to a decimeter longer or shorter depending on his stride and the footwear on his other foot. Secondly, it communicated sensory information like pressure & temperature almost like a real leg and foot, which was great when he expected to be barefoot, but when fully dressed he felt like he was walking with one shoe on and one shoe off. It was a mild annoyance he was determined to work through.

As he waited for the Geek to come up from his preferred linked state, he rubbed his prosthesis against the back of his other leg, savoring the warmth. Despite the distraction, however, he began to feel slightly annoyed. He was the captain of the ship and the lead OPCA Investigator aboard, he was used to more respect than to be left waiting when the meeting had been duly ordered and scheduled. The Geeks room was adjacent to the ships main computer, and as the computer required extensive cooling it was the coldest habitable room aboard.

The Geek himself was suspended by a series of gravity harnesses alternating above and below and along each side, the only real, physical contact was the web of contact points along his head and down his spine he used to stay connected to the virtual workspace he used.

As he watched, the Geeks chest began rising and falling in deeper breaths, the displays indicated he was under stress, then, the holo booted up and overlaid his dormant, slack-jawed face in the real world with the not-at-all similar virtual face he wore in his workspace. As the eyes on the projection focused, he took on a pained expression before looking around the room.

"Oh, s-sir, uh, I wasn't expecting you."

"You've been working on the data chit from my armor."

"Yeah... I mean, I knew I'd be reporting that, I-I-I just didn't know you'd come down here p-p-personally for it."

"Which is why you're projecting instead of coming out."

"Uh..."

"You know I insist you come up when you speak with me."

"Y-y-y-yes sir I d-d-do."

"You're stuttering badly."

"I'm n-nervous."

"It's a neurological side effect of prolonged submersion in a virtual environment."

"Sir I'm f-fine. Ok, I'll s-schedule some time-"

"You'll come out now."

"S-sir, please..."

"You stay under too long. Virtual Entrapment Syndrome can result in permanent neurological damage and mental impairment."

"S-s-sir I know w-what I'm doing."

"If I have to make it an order I'll be forced to consider you unfit and have you assessed."

"F-fine. Give me a few s-s-seconds."

The Inter-Hegemony Protocol Compliance Board, or PCB for short, is the regulatory body responsible for ensuring various Hegemony delegations maintain consistent and compatible in their communications, construction standards, civil standards, & licensing, so that Hegemony citizens can move freely from delegation to delegation with minimal bureacratic interference.

Councilwoman Rivet was incensed. It had taken her putting pressure on her own colonies Peacekeepers, but she'd managed to get a rundown on Phase 2 and how the Outer Colonies had gotten into this mess in the first place. The Council leadership was stacked in favor of war, not by coincidence, but by a perfect storm of intentional obfuscation, alleged accident, assassination, and political turmoil. She was sure it was a conspiracy, she just lacked the evidence to prove it.

Godrecht was the loose end she hoped to use to unravel the whole thing. He wasn't popular, but his views were. He was one of the most vocal representatives from the Saturn League in favor of forceful annexation of Jupiter. In fact, his views didn't stop there, he had felt that the Colonies should then use Jupiter as a staging ground to invade and annex the Asteroid field between Jupiter & Mars. His assassination did three things he would've been proud of. First, it forced the Saturn League, by its bylaws, to hold an emergency runoff election for his component of the League, which replaced him and his co-representative with pro-conflict voices, as his previous co-rep had been anti-conflict. Second, it gave the pro-conflict crowd a strong assertion that he'd been assassinated by the Hegemony for his views. Third, it delayed, possibly cancelled a proposed loosening of restrictions on Saturn Gate traffic to and from the Hegemony, which worked to continue shortages in the colonies beyond, moving them further towards conflict.

This had combined with a highly slanted series of reports from the Saturn Leagues premier journalistic entity, the Rings Gazette, which had always slanted towards conflict, but was now depicting Godrechts death as if it were unquestioned fact that the Hegemony was itching for war. Recent events in orbit of Jupiter were being reported one sided, in fact, the Gazette made only one mention of the attack on the Ceres or the kinetic attack on the Hegemony Fleet, both as brief mentions in an op-ed buried on page twenty, the day after they splashed the front page with news about the fleet "preparing an invasion to take the Jovian Moons, poised in the upper orbits of Jupiter". The Gazette being owned and operated by a gas processing corporation known as SatCo out of Titan, an entity well placed to profit from an annexation of the largest gas giant in the solar system.

Then there was the alleged accident, a complete loss of power due to out-of-date, defective plasma coils at Io Monitor 6, the Colonial Peacekeeper facility charged with relaying communications in Io's northern polar region, minutes before the plasma attack against the Ceres, which cut orders to the Artillery unit stationed there mid-broadcast. They'd been ordered to develop a firing solution and charge their weapon, but the clarification that it was an unscheduled training drill was never received. Believing that an attack may have been responsible for the communications interruption, they'd fired.

~

Hoel watched as the Geek- whos real name was Aycos Lyra- struggled to acclimate back to the real world. One of the ships servitors, a medic, running under a program Aycos himself developed, monitored him for signs of any of the more severe indications of Virtual Entrapment Syndrome, or VES. He was shaking, stuttering, and his eyes presented severe dystonia, or rapid, uncontrolled blinking. If he didn't reduce his time, the symptoms would progress from what they were now, to compulsive behaviours & aggression, then finally seizures & stroke.

"I want you to be out for at least seventy-two hours."

"Three d-d-days? I have programs r-r-runing that need to b-be monitored."

"Orqan is familiar with navigating a virtual environment, you can tell him what needs checked and how often."

"H-h-e's not-"

"He's your only option, you're not going back in for seventy-two."

"Aye sir."

"Now, what did you manage to pull off my chit?"

"I-I-I got all of it."

"Full data recovery?"

"The issue w-w-was the connection port. Once I g-got hold of the memory itself it was c-c-cake."

"So what have we got?"

"Its a p-procedurally mutating d-d-decryption key and a set of f-frequencies. It'll allow us to m-monitor communications we'd otherwise b-be locked out of."

"Have you loaded it into the communication system?"

"Yes s-sir, look for protocol Lyra T-t-twelve."

"Good man, get some real food in you and some sleep. You'll feel better tomorrow."

~

Captain Sayle cleared his display of the various records and commendations that Lieutenant Commander Bradford had received in his surprisingly varied Peacekeeper career. He took a deep breath and hit the control to call up the ships AI, Fatima. Her projected form materialized in one of the chairs opposite his desk.

"Yes Captain."

"Fatima, I'm going to make Lt.Com. Bradford my new Executive Officer."

"That explains why you've been reviewing his service records, but, why are you telling me?"

"Because I think we need an understanding."

"Captain?"

"Commodore Velleth let you have a great deal of freedom in excess of what most shipboard AIs enjoy, so much that his XO, Kinsin, got lazy. I won't have that from my XO. Earlier on the bridge I ordered him to put the feed up on the holo, you jumped in instead. I can't have that. I need you to understand that the chain of command on this ship is going to go me, Bradford, then you, then any human being of rank, until and unless I say otherwise."

"Of course Captain."

"Good, call Bradford in."

"Aye Captain, who should take command on the bridge while you're both offdeck?"

"Let Bradford decide."

"Aye Captain."

It was less than 30 seconds before Lieutenant Commander Bradford was in the hatchway.

"You called for me Captain?"

"I did, come in and take a seat."

"Thank you sir."

"Before we get down to it, I have a quick question."

"Captain?"

"Who'd you leave in charge on the bridge?"

"Lieutenant Tzaki."

"Why him?"

"He's taken bridge shifts before, under Commodore Velleth, I've served with him for the past few years, and before we came to the Embrace we served together aboard the Noble Inquisitor a few decades ago, he's a capable officer, thinks on his feet, not afraid to make the tough calls. Extensive qualifications from war games... He's the right choice."

"I see... See that's why I'm making you the new XO."

"Captain?"

"No, that's my job, I said Executive Officer."

"I heard you Captain I just-"

"Relax Bradford, it was a joke."

"Why me?"

"You've had an interesting career. You've gone from post to post switching fields, gaining rank until you hit about where you've been, then right when they're about to promote you, you resign, go play civilian for awhile, and then re-up again, taking the option to start from the bottom again."

"I didn't know anyone noticed."

"I noticed, and in my mind it shows your heads in the right place. You don't want to become institutionalized by service, stuck in the mentality of the Peacekeepers."

"I suppose that's one way of putting it."

"You've accumulated a number of professional qualifications and certifications, in an amazingly varied number of fields. Biochemistry, physics, engineering, psychology, history, plasma weapons operation & repair, navigation..."

"I like to learn."

"Good. Command experience is a great teacher."

"What about, er..."

"Spit it out."

"Commodore Velleth gave Fatima-"

"I'm not Velleth. I expect Fatima to act and take on responsibilities as your subordinate, she's aware of this."

"Aye Captain, thank you."

"I haven't been aboard long, I'm not thoroughly familiar with the Embrace, how long will it take you to go get the proper insignia?"

"What, right now?"

"Right now."

"No more than a few minutes, but you don't want to let that wait?"

"No, I'll be on the bridge. I expect you on deck in no more than twenty minutes, understood?"

"Yes Captain."

With that, Commander Bradford got up and walked out, Captain Sayle took a deep breath and got up, heading to the bridge. He made it six steps before the ship lurched violently, throwing him headfirst into the bulkhead forward of the hatch, snapping his neck.

The Long Rest is the slang term for when a Hegemony citizen decides to remove themselves from the active population. It involves setting ones affairs in order as if one were dying, including setting up trusts and arrangements for possessions, and then making a special trip to a facility in the northern polar regions of Mars, where you're essentially placed in suspended animation for a predetermined period of time. Unaugmented humans cannot take a Long Rest, as augmentation is necessary to survive the suspension of life processes.

The bridge of the Fate's Embrace was a chaos of rapidly changing Holographic displays, warning lights, klaxons, officers, & enlisted crewman rushing to determine what had happened. Fatima was on the speakers directing efforts.

"Conn, correct for loss of starboard bow thruster by using the stern-port thruster in short controlled bursts, correct current orientation with the forward and aft ventral & dorsal thrusters. Point above horizon by 32.5 degrees and initiate a main engine prograde burn at 75 percent for exactly 12 seconds."

"Tactical, energize the Hyperions and prepare the Javelins and Longspears, calculate firing solutions for the Outer Planet convoy."

"Ops, I want all primary Mosquito Wings launched immediately, secondary wings prepping for launch. Herons four through twelve launch and form a perimeter around the fleet for early warning. Primary Falchion Wing to Patrol just beyond the Herons accurate firing range.

"Comms, dispatch to Peacekeeper control, Olympus: We have sustained a secondary attack from Outer Planets. Initiating counter-attack, will advise post-victory."

Lieutenant Tzaki took his hand away from the bleeding wound on his forehead and spat a few teeth out onto the deck as he climbed to his feet, leaving a bloody handprint on the side of the console he'd been thrown under.

"Belay that!"

The men and women of the bridge stopped immediately and looked to Tzaki.

"Negative." Fatima's voice from the speakers carried a tone of cold impertinance.

"Fatima..."

Until the Captain or Commander Bradford takeover, *I am in command."

"What in Deimos..?"

"You have your orders."

~

Commander Bradford awoke with a start, he was in the lift he'd entered in to head down two decks to get to the ships laundry, where he could get his rank insignia and put in for the proper uniforms to be manufactured by automated process. Since his size was on record he hadn't expected it to take long. Of course, he hadn't expected the lift to violently accelerate downward so rapidly he'd hit the overhead and lost consciousnesses either. Now he could see through the transparant access hatches that he was not only not on the deck he'd intended, but he was free floating in the midst of a slowly expanding cloud of burning debris, and judging by the hissing sound, he was venting air somewhere. As he looked about the small cabin, he found the issue. Near the rear of the cabin opposite the door, there was a sliver of metal punctured through the exterior wall, the insulation and shielding layers, and the interior wall. The puncture was tiny, only a half centimeter at most, and the tip of the sliver filled most of it, but there was a paper-thin gap where the air was escaping.

Beyond his little capsule, he could see the Fate's Embrace, her ventral hull, her belly, ripped upon from stern to bow, spewing atmosphere & debris. In the distance, he could see other ships of the fleet in similar dire straights.

~

Gilead awoke with a strong painful bloating in his chest. The unfamiliar feeling of having air forcibly pushed into his lungs was not a pleasant one. He had a moment of panic as he realized he couldn't see. But as quick as it came, it passed, his mind cleared of the fog of pain and confusion as he remembered what had happened, the doors of the inner sanctum had opened, and what he saw before B.A.B.E.L. had hit him.. He went to speak but whatever it was that was forcing air into his lungs was crammed literally down his throat. Reaching up, he went to pull whatever contraption was covering his face but restraints at his wrists and upper arms stopped him. The androgynous & synthetic voice of a medical servitor came to his ears.

"Please do not attempt to remove the respiration helm. It is maglocked in place to assist with the resuscitation process."

He'd heard the words before. Nearly a century ago he'd gone with a small field expedition to the eastern coast of Asia, to one of the ancient markers placed by the Project millenia ago, it was a seismic sensor set to warn them if there was any sudden subterranean activity, part of the early warning system if their calculations were off.

It ended up being benign, a cave-in in one of the ancient underground structures built by some society long forgotten, it was the trip back that was interesting. They'd taken a skiff, one of those barely-there atmospheric models never intended for space. It had been a stylistic choice on the part of the team lead, meant to take longer, and allow the team to see the terrain, flora, fauna, and ruins as they travelled from the ziggurat the long way, across North America, then the Atlantic, Europe, then Asia. It also meant its safety systems were almost non-existent, and in dire need of upgrade. The trip back was going to be shorter, but they ran into an errant and unexpected electrical storm, a one in a thousand chance. The skiff had been struck, and while the electrical systems reset, they'd lost altitude fast, and ended up crashing just seconds after systems came back online, the engines unable to catch in time.

Everyone aboard died. Everyone aboard was a heavily augmented member of the Project. Everyone aboard was brought back.

He remembered that even once his heart was beating and his lungs breathing, even painfully, he would be released to a recovery ward after a series of tests were done to rule out any abnormalities in the resuscitation process. There wouldn't be. His augmentations were more advanced than anything run of the mill Hegemony citizens had access to. It was the Project that had pioneered the critical processes that made it successful. They still had a firm state-enforced monopoly (through a series of shell organizations) on the creation, installation, & maintenance of all full resuscitation equipment.

As he concentrated on keeping his breathing even & steady he could hear the unnerving sounds as the larger part of the resuscitation device folded into the wall behind him. When it completed, the tube assembly retracted into the mask and he could breathe on his own again, albeit with the taste of medical grade plastic. Only when it was safely ensconced did the human tech enter and dismiss the servitor.

"Director Gilead?"

"I'm here. Get me unhooked from this damnable table."

"Of course sir, one moment please."

He could hear him walk briskly across the room, the tap of his shoes against the metal decking echoeing in the accessways underneath. A few moments later, he could hear the sound of the maglocks disengaging and felt the mask loosen. He also felt the restraints release on his wrists and elbows at the same time. He reached up and pulled the mask up and off, blinking in the sudden brightness of the rooms lights reflecting off the stainless steel walls. He could see the tech, one of the Project resuscitation experts who was generally posted to the orbital colony station at the lagrange point between the Earth and its sole natural satellite.

"Director, we'll have to go over the standard questions to gauge your mental and emotional faculties post-resuscitation."

"Fine fine, but make it quick."

"What is your name and title?"

"Director Gilead."

"That doesn't entirely answer my question."

"Yes it does."

"Oohh kay... What is your age?"

"None of your business."

"Sir..."

"I know its not on your info there and you're not rated to know, skip the personal stuff and get to the point."

"Fine. What is the last thing you remember?"

"Getting hit in the chest with- with a servitor." A lie.

"Are you feeling any unusual emotions or sensations?"

"Just impatience." Another lie.

"Is your train of thought unusually distracted, or wandering?"

"No." Falsehood.

"Are you hearing voices or experiencing memories you can't account for?"

"No." Untruth.

"Sounds like a standard resuscitation then."

"Yes, can I go now? I have very important work to do."

"I'll release you to the recovery ward. A servitor will take you there shortly."

With that, the tech gave a nod of respect and made his exit.

Under his breath he whispered. "Imbecile." The Director had little patience for formalities. Especially formalities designed to ensure he had no memory or knowledge of the resuscitation process, which he knew more intimately than any endpoint tech.

The Giza is the largest Hegemony hospital ship, converted from the frame and heart of the heavy destroyer Ramses after that vessel had seen the end of its active service life, she houses recovery & resuscitation equipment enough to bring the full crew of a Cruiser back from a disaster in just under two days, and has normal medical facilities to accomodate several thousand more patients for anything from allergic reactions to traumatic combat wounds. Despite her impressive abilities, the relative peace in recent times has had her acting as a cargo carrier for medical suppies, going from Delegation to Delegation distributing everything from custom antibiotics and retroviral gene resequencers to acetaminophen.

The Fate's Embrace opened up blisters to expose its batteries of missiles, the deadly intent of the act bleeding from every fluid movement of hull plating and arms platform. The multi-jointed arms of the Hyperions maneuvering into place on each side as organic as if the vessel were a living organism unsheathing its claws, which, in a sense it was. The corrugated armor seemed to shimmer in the light of Jupiter to its port quarter as the various thrusters fired monopropellant to orient her towards her target. Her ventral hull, her belly, still spewed flames & sudden sprays of debris as various portions of her internal structure failed under the extreme strain of her operation in spite of her wounds.

On the bridge, Lieutenant Tzaki watched the central Holo as Fatima drew firing solutions on the convoy. He squeezed the railing he leaned against until his knuckles turned white, impotent in the face of Fatima's rebuke. As he waited to hear the firing order, he had a sudden thought.

"Fatima!"

"Yes Lieutenant?"

"With you in command, I would be your XO, correct?"

"Yes Lieutenant."

"Then as your XO I want to take this opportunity to remind you that we've not yet confirmed the track or origin of the incoming fire, and formally protest for the record this action."

"Confirmation of track in a combat situation is at the commanding officers discretion, and your protest has been duly noted in my log."

"May I confirm the track?"

"Negative. Fire."

At that, the Hyperions unleashed their dual beams of charged energies, travelling at the speed of light, they converged in the approximate center of the Outer Planets convoy, the resulting reaction generating a short lived but extremely energetic reaction which caused a burst of heat and radiation on par with exposure to the mantle of a G type star. In a fraction of a second every vessel in the convoy was a solid chunk of red hot metal, shortly before the missiles launched. Their warheads detonated milliseconds before impact, shatterimg what remained of the ships into billions of tiny embers. No known kind of armor could've survived, and they were unarmored.

As Tzaki watched, the Holo displayed the events in perfect silence, the notable events appearing as nothing more than a series of flashes. Before, a convoy moved in a loose formation, after, nothing remained but a few pale embers of red hot metal drifting away from where the convoy once had been.

Tzaki swallowed hard before he raised a hand and pointed to the Operations Officer.

"Confirm the track."

Fatima interrupted "Lieutenant Tzaki-"

"We are no longer within an active combat situation, I am within my authority to confirm post action."

"Very well, proceed."

The Operations Officer placed his hands on his tactile interface, there was a ten second pause as he accesed the proper data and collated results. Then he put his findings up on the main Holo.

"Lieutenant, according to readings and orientation just before and as we were hit again, high velocity kinetics originated from the asteroid debris we monitored just before it entered Jupiters upper atmosphere."

There was a stunned moment of silence on the bridge. Tzaki's brow furrowed and his lips tightened into a frown before he responded.

"Why didn't the Black Widow's funnel intercept or deflect? Hell, why didn't the Kinetics penetrate and destroy us?"

"The funnel was set to protect us from an attack bow-on, from ahead. The debris had passed through our altitude and was below us and slightly behind. The Widow was hit by no fewer than four high velocity kinetics, she's in two pieces and completely adrift. As to why we survived, it appears the HVKs were launched with less than optimal acceleration, possibly to reduce the heat signature of their launch, or as a side-effect of being launched so close to Jupiter."

"Why wasn't there any warning? Comms?"

"We had nothing but normal fleet chatter in the moments before the attack."

"Did we have anyone do a flyby or a sweep through the debris?"

"No sir, Captain Sayle never ordered a recon on the rocks."

"What about standard patrols and fleet border patrols, surely somebody got within range?"

"Checking sir... Yes sir, we had a Falchion run that way on perimeter patrol, number One Two Six... She hadn't reported back to the Rosethorne before the attack."

"Find her!"

~

Hoel punched a quick series of queries into the ships communication panel, reviewing the parameters of protocol Lyra Twelve. He was happy to see the Geek had followed standard procedure, leaving detailed notes on what would be accessed and how his ships communication system would be utilized.

He didn't see any particular worries, so he ran a standard isolation subroutine to backup then cut the communications systems off from the main computer, then he moved down a panel to load and install the protocol in order to listen in on the communications exchange used by this "Project" group.

At first, he was sure something was wrong. He'd been on the trail of this group for months. Clued in originally by the dying confession of a colleague, another member of the Outer Planets Colonial Authority, his mentor. They'd been on a three Agent manhunt, tracking the movements and actions of a stim tailor who'd concocted a notably addictive variation & used it to rope in and extort several Colonial politicians. They'd narrowed him down to one of the smaller moons of Saturn, Epimetheus. He'd holed up in a defunct mine, and it had taken a surpising amount of firepower and manpower to root him out. In the last fight, she'd taken a hit and been dragged back to her ship for medical attention. He's taken in the stim-tailor, and arrived aboard just in time for her to tell him about the Project. From there, it had been a winding and bloody course.

Now, he had their communications laid bare to him, and there was nothing. Dead air, complete silence. He cursed and slammed a fist into the console, cracking the overlay. Suddenly he heard something, a high pitched buzzing, then, just as suddenly, it quit. He worried he might've damaged the console, but before he could run a diagnostic, he heard it again, and this time, he had his eyes on the right display.

It was a high speed data exchange. Messages were passed as code at speeds the human ear couldn't process. He jabbed at the recording function and then locked the console. One or even two pieces of data wouldn't work, he'd need to slow down and analyze several message bursts before he'd get his answers.

In the meanwhile, he made his way down one deck and aft to the armory. A handprint, ocular scan, and voiceprint allowed him in. He noted the absence of several weapons which had been destroyed or gone unrecovered from their last touchdown, when he'd gotten the file in the first place. His own custom rifle missing was a sore point. He'd spent dozens of hours fine-tuning it to his specifications. His armor was there, mostly, it looked like his techs were still repairing it. They'd opted not to replace the left calf armor and boot. He'd have to have a talk with them about that. He may have a prosthetic but he didn't want it damaged.

He pulled out a rack of standby rifles and selected one of the same base-type he'd originally customized. It was a VKL Mk IV combination Kinetic/Lazrifle. The Mk IV was notoriously temperamental with its cooling system, which was a sodium based heat exchange drum with three rotating sections.

First thing he did was carry it over to the work area along the port bulkhead forward of the door. There, he did a complete field strip and cleaning before opening the tool drawers and beginning a meticulous disassembly and part by part cleaning. After that, he spent three hours replacing the heat sinks with six smaller, but much more efficient replacememts designed for a smaller sidearm, swapping out the accelerator for something more powerful, and fitting a higher power source into the frame. This came at the cost of a smaller magazine for the kinetics and higher overall weight, but he was ok with that. Next he'd do a complete changeover on the optics and aiming assist, but that was for another evening.

For tonight, he went back up to the bridge to see how many communications bursts he'd managed to snag. As he exited the armory, he noticed that his chief armory tech was still locked into the manufacturing lab. He would definitely have to have a talk with them, seeing as how they should've been working on his armor.

The Martian Cataclysm was the first great disaster post-exodus. The greatest of the Martian Colonies, the dome city Aries, situated in the Hellas Basin, was the capital of the Mars Delegation. It was also the primary foodsource of the planet by virtue of the massive hydroponic farms built into the man-made cave systems beneath the city. Nearly thirty thousand years ago, Aries farms were contaminated by a virus, communicable to humans and immune to all period sterilization techniques. The virus acted as a immunosuppressant, and had a nearly six month dormancy period. Whether it was an act of terrorism, or a random evolution of an existent malady has never been determined. Aries and the other dome cities effected have never been reclaimed, left to decay under their nigh-indestructible domes, monuments to the necessity of diversifying food sources.

The Cavalry beat at the cool morning air with its two rotary blades, forcing air above the craft to go below, increasing the air pressure below the rotors and providing lift to the olive green craft. Inside, Captain Longmire sat with his chosen reconnaissance party. His man Colquitt, a former Marine Drill Instructor by the name of Lamar Jordan, two brothers by the names of Bill & Mike Haxson, who weren't military but handled themselves well in numerous combat situations in the ten years since, and another former soldier by the name of Frost he'd met when he arrived in D.C. All had made their mark as good men to have in a fight. They'd also each, at one point or another, taken on work from him of a more sensitive nature. They could be trusted, and they could be quiet.

They'd also equipped for a quiet recon. Each wore an exceptionally dark grey jumpsuit, overwhich they had a similarly muted belt and vest rig harness to carry their various weapons & gear. Colquitt had a standard M4 Carbine with a light amplifying 4x scope and a flash supressor. Bill & Mike each had MP4s with suppressors while Mike also carried a pistol grip 20 gauge, supposedly for luck. Jordan had a CZ 557 rifle, an urban counter sniper, and a tricked out Beretta .45 with a suppressor & extended magazine. They all also had standard police issue kevlar vests, balaclavas, extra ammunition, radios, & telescopic rangefinders.

The plan was to drop them each into seperate suburbs around the western side of SanFran, then let them each move west towards the coast in order to find and report on the mysterious invaders from the Far East. When finished, they were to move north to the shore, the Presidio if possible, where the Cavalry could pick them up. The drop off locations weren't preselected. Since they had no idea what kind of shape the area was in, they were shooting for any open areas from Alta Plaza Park to Billy Goat Hill. Then, they'd take the Calvalry back to the city proper and park on the rooftop of the westmost skyscraper they could find, in order to be within radio range of both the coast and Berkeley.

~

Professor Walthers was on a mission of his own. He was following one of the main highways as best he could inland. It was not a pleasant trip. Even at nearly midnight when things had gone to hell ten years ago, the main throughways of urban California had had significant traffic. Hundreds of cars and their desiccated, mummified occupants lined the road. Some were under the case, a last ditch effort to hide. He was making his way by horse, the only long distance form of travel left to him. With his leg long walks caused extreme pain, bikes and other self-powered wheeled conveyences required more stamina than his 60 year old body was capable of.

The sun hammered him mercilessly, even without any exertion on his part he was pouring sweat, as was his horse. A little ways off the highway he could see a small section of the suburb they travelled over had been flooded. He made the decision then to take the next exit, lead his horse to water, find some shade and have a quiet lunch. He's brought one of the MREs gifted by Longmire, and he was looking forward to having Chili-Mac.

~

Lieutenant Oleandor of the Saturn Peacekeepers couldn't believe his eyes. After the explosion, he'd come to just in time to see them entering the polar gate unobstructed, their orbital gamble paying off. As the white flash of the transition faded from his view, he looked out the forward viewport at the cold white ice sheets of Mars' northern polar region. This was not where they were supposed to be. According to Valkyrie, they were supposed to be going to Deimos. They'd been glibbed. He turned towards the aft hatch to see how Valkyrie fared, expecting the worst. She wasn't there. Neither was the aft bulkhead. He could see straight out into space, the only thing between himself and the vacuum of space the armor Valkyrie had shoved him into.

"Motherfucker..."

"Your survival is agreeable to me Lieutenant."

Pearls tonal voice suprised him. All the panels at the the stations were dark.

"Pearl?"

"I am here Lieutenant. Much of me is not, but my program is housed in the physical circuitry immedietly between the control surfaces and the forward communication array under the bridge. I am operating on an emergency battery located beneath the console."

"Your Captain is gone. I'm sorry Pearl."

"Captain Valkyrie is not gone Lieutenant, she is operating to repair the aforementioned communications array."

"Wait, what? How?"

"The Captain is fully qualified to repair the fault in my tranceiver assembly, she-"

"No, I mean, how did she survive? She put me in the armor, she had none of her own."

"I am not authorized to discuss her personal health and wellness in that way. Oh! I believe she is finished, my tranceiver is once again operable."

With that, Oleandor was shocked to see Valkyrie manuevering herself up and around the frayed edge of the decking, wearing the primitive breather he'd noticed earlier and a Hegemony Peacekeeper uniform belt, complete with orientation thrusters. She expertly used the buckle control with her left hand while grabbing the edge of the starboard bulkhead with her right. As she pulled herself through the wreck he couldn't help but noticed that the breather did nothing to cover her eyes, yet, she was performing perfectly well in the vacuum. Suddenly, he had a realization.

"You're- You're augmented! You're Hegemony! That's how you survived the radiation from the reactor meltdown! That's how you're able to work in vacuum! You're hegemony and you're kidnapping me!"

Valkyrie, unable to hear him, or even see the movement of his lips under the armor, moved to the helm and started a panel, it was dim, low on power, but she had enough to send a signal before she shut it down.

The Blank is what Hegemony citizens have nicknamed the memory-less period between death and resurrection afforded by augmentation. The technical medical term is Engram Coding Interruption, or ECI, and for most people its no more of an inconvenience then having a dreamless sleep. There are, of course, those who claim that they do not suffer from ECI when they are killed and resurrected, often telling stories of feeling like they're floating, witnessing strange environments, or seeing loved ones who've chosen the Long Rest or suffered permanent death.

Captain Sayle felt like shit. His mouth was dry and tasted like metal & plastic, his whole body ached like he'd been worked over by a team of very angry feral children armed with clubs, and every sound felt like it was being projected straight into his brain. He knew this feeling fairly well. In the last war, he'd undergone resuscitation six times, twice from decompression, once from radiation, and three times from blunt force trauma.

He tried to remember what had happened, but the post-resuscitation fog and the thunderous headache weren't letting him remember much besides the basics just yet. He couldn't move, his head, arms, & legs were all restrained. He could hear the quiet humming of a servitor moving within the space, almost like a quivering in his teeth. He tried to be patient but it seemed like it was taking an unusually long time for them to get him prepared and quizzed .

"Is there any way we can hurry this along?"

"Please do not attempt to remove the respiration helm. It is maglocked in place to assist with the resuscitation process."

"Yeah yeah yeah..."

He heard a door open and close, followed by footsteps. Moments later the restraints on his arms and legs loosened and the mask unlocked and lifted off of him. The lights of the resuscitation chamber were glaringly bright, almost to the point of physical pain. He could barely make out the young Chief in the glare, but he knew from briefly familiarizing himself with key personnel it must be Chief Sato Fugawe, the resuscitation specialist.

"Good afternoon, could we begin by you sharing with me your name and any relevant titles please?"

"Captain Bensic Aligieri Sayle"

"And how old are you Captain?"

"About thirteen hundred, give or take."

"What is your posting?"

"Commanding the Fate's Embrace."

"Are you married?"

"Divorced."

"Children?"

"One, deceased."

"Home?"

"Ceres, Mars."

"What is the your last memory before here?"

"Dismissing Commander Bradford."

"Are you feeling anything strange, urges, desires, nonsensical horror?"

"Nope, anxious about what happened and the status of my ship."

"Naturally. Other than that, are you feeling detached, distracted, or flighty?"

"No."

"Do you see our hear anyone in the room with us?"

"Nope."

"Any odd fantasies, visions, dreams?"

"Its the complete Blank."

"Ok, well, I'll go ahead and sign off on you then. Lieutenant Tzaki is just outside, he's eager to speak with you."

"I imagine so Chief, thank you, send him in."

He came through the door before Fugawe was out of sight outside it.

"Captain-"

"Report first, how's the ship and crew."

"Extensive damage along the ventral hull, nearly a hundred crew spaced or unaccounted for, but we're still in fighting shape."

"Good, source of the attack?"

"The asteroid debris, just before it hit Jupiter, kinetics lobbed from the gravity well, could have been worse."

"Are we planning a counter offensive against the Colonies yet? I'm getting real sick and tired of getting shot at."

"Well, about that..."

~

Hoel paused and then deleted the transmission he'd been reviewing and started the next, slowed down to one ten thousandth of its former speed.

"Field report, day two hundred six of year five. Still no evidence of revitalization in the subject despite the rise in esoteric energies demonstrated by the glyph. The glyph, which, by the way, has increased in brilliance each and every day over the last few months. It has gotten difficult to look at directly, and even though I've been assured repeatedly its benign in nature, I can't help but feel a sense of unease around it. In other, more mundane news-"

Pause, delete, next. From the outside, it looked like tens of thousands of unique messages, once decoded, it became obvious that the records were a cache, repeated in sequence, each encoded differently each time. It was an old trick. You did it to convince anyone listening but unable to decode that there was a lot of info being shared, even when the recipient wasn't there, while it allowed the intended recipient to pick it up at their liesure and not miss anything. The voice which came from the recording now was hoarse and wavering on the edge of panic.

"Project expedition Gila Monster head researcher expedition report. I am hereby requesting a full extraction of all Project personnel from the expedition site. The mission is- we did it. We did it, and we need to get out before they exit the warren. Gilead, you son of a bitch get us out!"

The recording stopped. Hoel broke out in a cold sweat. He keyed up the database the computer had automatically sorted the recordings into. He looked up the specific address of the recording and sorted out all recordings from that source. There was only one more transmission from it, dated a month prior and immedietly after that last message. He slowed it and keyed it to play.

"The monster walks among us once more. Fuck you Gilead. I've sent an open distress call to the nearest Peacekeeper vessel, a Saturn Cruiser by the name of Callisto on extended patrol. The secret isn't going to keep much longer."

~

Walthers eased off the saddle down onto the concrete slab outside the Bay Point Library- The French womans home. There was a metal railing set into the concrete still bearing traces of yellow paint. He hitched the horse there, put a feedbag over its mouth, and went to knock. Before he made it halfway to the door she was in the doorway waiting.

The former foreign language & entymology professor, Dr. June Tailler, was a rather short, thin, dark haired woman, with notably clear blue eyes deep-set under immaculate brows. Her students used to calle her "Madame Mouse" because of her stature and her anxiety. The end of the world, however, had proven she was made of sterner stuff then they could have imagined. When they taught at Berkeley, she'd favored long, unflattering dresses, here, now, jean shorts and a frayed flannel, accented by a double barrel shotgun, sawed down to a mere foot and a half.

"Hello Henry."

She still carried her french accent, and her pronunciation of his name came out 'on-ree'.

"Evening June, how have you been?"

"As well as can be expected. My garden is doing well, but I was planning on coming into Berkeley in a week or so for some of those goats your students have been tending."

"Didn't you have pigs?"

"I did, yes, but I went too far from home a few weeks ago and a pack of wolves..."

"I'm sorry."

"Such is life."

"Yes."

The silence as they looked at each other stretched out a few long moments before June broke it.

"Henry, we've known each other a long time. Whenever you visit to trade, you come with a whole caravan. Socially, you bring Evelyn & Rowyn. Now, you're here alone. This isn't a social call, is it?"

"No, I'm afraid it isn't."

"Does this have to do with... With your 'research'?"

The distaste she felt towards his work was obvious. A fervent Catholic, Tailler felt Walthers investigations were, at best, blasphemy, and at worst, actual heresy.

"Only tangentially."

"I suppose I should hear you out, at least. Come on in, I'll put a kettle on."

Half an hour later, as they finished their tea and catching up, June set her cup down and took a deep breath.

"Tell me Henry. You've learned French, you're fluent enough for your research, why come to me?"

"I'm fluent in technical, historical language, enough for the cold records of academia, I have no tongue for conversational French."

"You think so?"

"I know it, as soon as I received these I knew I was in over my head."

"And these are only related to your... To your research, as a distant interest?"

"I can reasonably assure you nothing within these notes will be sacrilegious."

"How can you reasonably assure me when you haven't read them?"

"They're the field journals of an Anthropologist, from before the, uh..."

"From before the end of society as we knew it, nothing more. Earth is still here, man yet lives, it was not the end, that comes later."

"Yes..."

"I will look at your field journals Henry, for old times sakes."

The Cold Harbors are those Outer Planet Colonies that are settled, not on firm ground, but on or sometimes within the frozen gasses of Outer Planets & their Moons beyond Saturn. Often eclectic, always insular, Cold Harbors interact as little as possible with outside groups or each other except for necessary trade functions, which are even then as brief and curt as possible.

Dr. Tailler cleared her throat before she lifted the crisp sheet of paper with the printed image of Dr. Opporthornes journal. She scanned it for a few moments then launched into French.

"Le 4 Novembre. Ces grottes se montrent encore plus mystérieuses que je ne les avais imaginés! Les dessins sont comme on les a anticipés, faits d’un mélange d’ocre et de boue peint sur des régions aplaties de granite à environ 200 mètres de profondeur. Ce qui m’intéresse tellement est leur contenu- ils semblent témoigner d’une arrivée ou d’une sortie des cavernes."

Walthers listened, enamored by her voice as the words flowed from her lips. As she concluded, he sat up.

"And, uh, and what's that mean?"

"Henry, really?"

"Really, I've forgotten almost everything."

"November 4th. These caves have shown themselves even more mysterious than I had imagined! The drawings are as we anticipated them, made of a mix of ochre and mud painted onto flattened sections of granite at about 200 meters of depth. What interests me so is their content- they seem to indicate an arrival to or departure from the caves."

"Ok, the sections I'm interested must be further along."

She flipped a few more pages and read another section.

"Le 6 Novembre. C’est bien plus grand que je ne pensais. Selon le géologue, le fond de la caverne – qui me paraissait tout comme le reste – est fait de pierres qui comblent un vide… Presque comme si il y avait eu un effort d’ensevelir les régions les plus profondes de la caverne. Il nous faut permission pour continuer la fouille- putain de paperasserie!"

"That sounds much more excited, what's it mean?"

With a roll of her eyes she translated.

"November 6th. It’s much larger than I expected. According to the geologist, the end of the cavern – which to me seemed just like the rest – is made of stones loose stones that have filled some space… Almost like there had been an effort to entomb the deepest regions of the cavern. We need permission to continue the excavation- damned red tape!"

"No no no... Further than that, much further."

"A few months, perhaps Henry?"

"Yes, please."

She flipped through page after page until she settled on one.

"February?"

"Yes."

"Le 1er Février. Enfin, on a reçu nos permis. La fouille doit être faite pierre par pierre, enlevés à la main- on sera supervisés par un fonctionnaire du gouvernement Français. Mais peu importe, on verra bientôt ce que les Cro-Magnons ont trouvé si important qu’ils l’ont voulu l’enterrer! Que trouverions-nous? Des tombes? Des artéfacts religieux? Quelque sorte de bête? Je serai bien déçu à savoir qu’ils auraient enterré un ours pour éviter qu’il ne sorte de son hibernation, mais ce serait quand même une découverte."

"And?"

"February 1st. Finally, we’ve received our permits. The excavation must be done stone by stone, removed by hand- we’ll be supervised by a French governmental official. But no matter, soon we’ll see what the Cro-Magnons found so important they wanted to bury it! What will we find? More tombs? Religious artifacts? Some sort of beast? I would be quite disappointed to find that they had buried a bear to avoid it coming out of hibernation, but it would still be a discovery."

"That's it?"

"There's more, another entry right after that one. Le 18 Février. Mon dieu, que ça progresse lentement! Dégager à la main nous prend une éternité. Tout de même, ce n’est pas sans découvertes. On a trouvé des restes humains ensevelis dans la masse de pierres apportées pour condamner le reste de la caverne. On a dû les envoyer à Lyon, ce qui a ralenti le pas… Mais c’est au nom de la science alors je ne me plains pas. Il semble qu’on a presque fini! Tant qu’on ne trouve pas encore de fossiles, on pourra reprendre le progrès demain."

"Ok, I'm catching bits and pieces but I'm not at all confident June."

"February 18th. Good god, it’s taking forever! Removing stone by hand is taking an eternity. Even so, it’s not without discoveries. We’ve found human remains entombed within the mass of stones brought to condemn the rest of the cavern. We had to send them to Lyons, which slowed down the pace… But it’s in the name of science so I won’t complain. It seems like we’re getting close! As long as we don’t find any more fossils, we should be able to get back to speed tomorrow."

"I want to know what he found, what led him to his foreknowledge of the Shards. Could we skip the lessons and just translate as we go?"

She pursed her lips, annoyed at his lack of enthusiasm for her mother tongue, but flipped a page and began reading.

"March 15th. Huzzah! We emerged on the other side of the passage. Just like Howard Carter before me, I’ve seen wonders…"

As Walthers listened to her translate the rest of the journal, he interrupted less and less, and began taking notes of his own. By the end, he just listened, still as a statue, feeling like his guts were twisted in a knot, and as she concluded, he went outside and threw up everything he had in him.

~

Hoel watched as the Saturn Peacekeeper picket ship fired its thrusters in retrograde to bring it to a stop relative to them, but directly in their path. It was actually several hundred kilometers away, but the magnification built into the main screen on the bridge made it feel like it was parked a scant few hundred meters off their bow. Hoel had holos that could do the job, but they weren't as reliable as a solid state display. Plus, it afforded him the ability to see it in full detail, without the ghostly see through effect most holos still struggled to avoid.

He could see it was an older Hyena Class, most had been retired long ago, that this one was still operational- and fully armed & armored- indicated the vessel must have a notable history, at least to its home colony, to deserve the upkeep. The rather ugly egg-shaped hull was pristine, and its weapon ports were open, and quite obviously zeroed in on his ship, his Stalwart Phalanx.

In its original configuration the Phalanx would've been more than a match for the Hyena, it was, in a former life, a Jovian Peacekeeper Corvette, designed to run circles around any capital ship and evade fire from anything further than a few kilometer away by being somewhere else when the munitions arrived, while also decently capable of laying down her own hurt on others. Now, She retained her speed, but she'd been stripped of her armor and armaments when she'd been decommissioned and sold as surplus.

It worked for his purposes, with plenty of interior room no longer taken up by fuel to carry the weight of absent munitions, he could field a crew of twenty, now down to eight. He was missing the armor though. The sights of heavy ion lasers trained on him made him feel uneasy no matter if they were technically friendly or not.

He reached over and punched the control which would indicate through a light signal that he was ready to communicate and his radio was on. Almost immediately the Peacekeeper signaled back with her own lights before the speakers to the communications system came alive.

"Unnamed Corvette, this is the Peacekeeper Solace, you are on course to enter a restricted orbit. Identify yourself and your purpose and will direct you on a course correction."

They were playing it safe, giving as little info as possible while maintaining the pretence of helpfulness. Two could play that game. Hoel keyed his transceiver before speaking.

"Solace this is O.P.C.A. Investigator Jarrik Hoel aboard the Stalwart Phalanx, we are on official business and would gladly accept a course correction if needed."

"Stalwart state your destination."

"We are attempting to locate and rendezvous with the cruiser Callisto."

"The Callisto is currently on assignment and not to be approached, state your intentions."

"May I inquire as to whom I'm speaking with?"

"This is Solace actual, Lieutenant Mirke."

"Well Lieutenant, my intentions are to find and transfer over to the Callisto and personally interrogate her command crew regarding a communication with a Cold Harbor of Hegemony Agents. Now, I'm not inclined nor required to submit to your authority to divert my course, and I'm not about to, so you can either fry me, then explain to your superiors why you violated half the bylaws of the Outer Planets and murdered my crew and I, or, you can get out of my way."

The Emergency Law Enforcement Command Treaty, or ELECT was one of the first Colonies wide binding agreements added as an adjunct to the Outer Planets Colonial Charter of Secession. Simply put, it defined the conditions and situations in which Outer Planet Colonial Authorities could override the autonomy and authority of a Colonies home-rule. These situations were very narrowly defined and the exceptions almost non-existent. Several years later it was amended to include bylaws and protocols for boarding vessels in interplanetary space and private craft within a Colonial territory. These powers were more generous out of necessity.

There was a palpable silence as Hoel awaited Lieutenant Mirkes response. It came nearly a full minute later.

"Phalanx this is Solace, please stand by, do not adjust your course except for drift correction or you will be fired upon."

Hoel watched as the comms cut out, they'd terminated the link. Two possible reasons for that, either they were about to attack- unlikely, they wouldn't have said anything at all were that the case- or, they were establishing a long range link to talk to someone else. As he watched, the magnified view of the Solace he could see several of her communications antennae reorienting.

~

Professor Walthers greedily chugged his second bottle of water since he finished throwing up; he used the last ounce or so to swish and gargle, hoping to drive away the taste of stomach acid. As he spat out the mouthful of water and the bits they'd dislodged Dr. Tailler looked away to avoid witnessing his poor manners.

"I'm sorry June, I don't know what came over me, I've never been one to have a weak stomach."

"I think it was probably something you ate. There was nothing particularly gruesome or disgusting about what was found."

"No, its... Its what it means in light of my other avenues of research."

"Your heresy."

"If that's what you'd call it, so be it."

"I would, as should you."

"I can't."

"Obsession is a dangerous thing to court Henry."

"Its going to happen again."

You're still feeling ill?"

"No, it."

"What will?"

"The Shards, the Tall Ones, all of it."

"Armagheddon comes but once."

"If that's what you truly believe, then tell me, are you still a literalist when it comes to the Flood, Noahs Ark & all that."

"Of course, the two are not in conflict."

"Didn't your god promise never again to destroy mankind?"

"He promised never to drown the world, specifically. That doesn't mean he cannot use other means."

"Flood, fire, windstorms, creatures that kill on sight and invincible giants that bring winter and would as soon rip you apart as look at you?"

"History is replete with examples of his, uh, shall we say, creativity?"

"Or, you see what you want to see."

"Perhaps. Will you be staying the night Henry? My home is always open to you."

"I can't, I've got to get back."

"Travelling at night is dangerous."

"So is staying here."

"I don't bite Henry. I remember there was a time, before Evelyn, before you went into academia, that you and I never feared being alone with each other. In fact you quite enjoyed it."

"That was a long time ago June, and I'm married now."

"So you remind me every time."

"Do your moral compunctions not extend to personal sins?"

"Of course they do, but I also believe in penance and forgiveness."

"I do too, but I also believe its far better to not commit the offense at all rather than do so and then try to make up for it."

"We can debate the nature of sin some other time, Henry."

"I agree, some other time, perhaps."

"You're really going to go?"

"I have to, I've got to get back to Berkeley, and then, I've got to convince a very dear friend who came a very long way to go back somewhere he doesn't intend to go, and to take me with him."

"Where are you going?"

"New York."

~

Longmire watched as the last of his team hurried into the foliage surrounding the baseball diamond they'd set down on before he turned back to the pilot and indicated he should take off. As far as he could tell it used to be part of a High School, but it was mostly overgrown now. It could have been anything really.

As the rotors beat the air to give them altitude he looked west, towards the Pacific, where the strange invaders must have come from. He watched as the city passed beneath them for a minute or two and was about to turn back and direct the pilot to head for one of the standing skyscrapers closer into San Francisco proper when a flash of light and a puff of smoke caught his attention. It took half a second for him to recognize it before he threw himself forward to scream at his pilot to take evasives, but it was too late.

The surface to air missile impacted the tail rotor and exploded, disintegrating the entire tail boom and peppering the engine with shrapnel. Billowing smoke and a rain of hot oil consumed the exterior of the craft, and the engine choked and died as its exhausts belched flames. The rotors spun freely, detached from the drive by sheer force of the explosion. As the chopper lost its momentum it fell like a rock crashing directly onto the roof of a small gas station near the corner of Alemany Boulevard and Geneva Avenue in the Outer Mission area.

Longmire rolled out of the chopper and onto the gravel roof, coughing and choking on the fumes as he struggled to get to his feet. As he pulled himself up against the door of the cabin he looked in the broken window and saw that the pilot was no longer in the craft. Just then the roof lurched, he lost his balance, and fell back onto his back as the remains of the helicopter fell through into the store below. In seconds, he felt and heard the thump as something sparked the oil and aviation fuel that was pouring liberally from the chopper. As the flames grew he dragged himself to the edge of the roof and pulled himself over, landing atop a car parked in front of the store, which was now a raging inferno. The impact knocked what little breath he had out of his body and as his eyes closed he saw the pillar of black smoke rising into the early morning sky, a signal visible for miles around guiding whoever fired the missile right to him.

~

Viktor tried to appear relaxed and unworried as the men swept Jacobi's office for strange signals, sure that his briefcase would shortly draw their attention and create a rather perplexing issue for him. They'd be quick to arrest him and confiscate the case. It wouldn't take them long to figure out it wasn't anything like they knew, and then they'd put very difficult questions to him, questions he wouldn't be able to answer.

Dr. Jacobi was unfazed and continued to speak as Viktors ears filled with the sounds of his own heartbeat, washing away all sounds except the small tones, beeps, and clicks of the mens equipment as they searched the room. One of the men, with a sort of tube connected by wire to a box, was sweeping the room in broad arcs, the device emitting a kind of static crackle as he moved it back and forth. He seemed to hesitate as the crackle grew louder and softer, then moved closer to where Viktor sat, his case at his feet, the machine crackling growing in intensity.

As Viktor watched, he pointed the machine first at Viktor, where it hissed and popped, then at his case, where it fizzed and whined much more noticeably.

"Sir, would you mind opening your briefcase for me?"

"Oh, sure, of course."

They were hung to let him touch it and open it himself. He felt a wave of relief wash over him as he bent, his fingers finding the handle, his implants accessing the interface as he hefted it. He ordered the case to shut down all functions and go into its rest and charging mode, which it could do in less than a second. He fiddled with the latches to give himself time, then he split the case open and laid its contents bare on the desk.

A stack of papers, files, and a few data storage mediums called "3.5 floppys" appropriate to the time period were inside, all filled out with activities and financials on GraniCorp letterhead. But the man with the device wasn't interested in that. His machine homed in on a side pocket of the case. Viktor watched helplessly as he reached in and pulled out the watch that had been provided as part of his initial disguise. He hadn't worn it or used it since his augmentations included an internal chronometer. Viktor suddenly realized he had no idea if the watch was just a watch, or if it was more.

For a long second, the man held the machine and the watch both, then he put the watch back and indicated Viktor to take his case back.

"Sorry about that sir, sometimes this little thing is too sensitive, must have picked up the radium in the display."

Not knowing quite what to say, he simply nodded and closed the case before setting it back at his feet.

The men filed out as quickly as they'd come, leaving Viktor and Dr. Jacobi alone once more.

~

Captain Sayle and Lieutenant Tzaki entered the bridge of the Fate's Embrace together, their footsteps echoeing quite loudly in the sudden hush as the crew awaited instruction.

"Tzaki, open shipwide comms."

"Aye Captain."

"Fatima?"

"Yes Captain?"

"Stand by. Tzaki are we shipwide?"

Tzaki gave a quick nod.

"Men & women of the Fate's Embrace, this is your Captain. I felt like you should hear this from me direct to put to rest any scuttlebutt. Yesterday we were hit by HVKs fired from some asteroid debris as it entered Jupiters atmosphere. They hit us, and the fleet, from where we least expected it. They sucker punched us. I died in that attack and I've just now been brought back and up to speed. My neck still aches from where they repaired it. Commander Bradford, your new XO, was ejected from the ship during the attack but has been rescued and is enjoying the hospitality of our brothers and sisters on the Unnatural Folly. Fatima, our AI, took command at that point and ordered a counterattack. She attacked an unarmed convoy of civilian refugees."

He let that sink in for a moment.

"Fatima overstepped and acted inappropriately by denying Lieutenant Tzaki permission to confirm the origin of the attack. And for that reason I'm ordering her command authorizations revoked until further notice. Lieutenant Tzaki is acting XO until Commander Bradford rejoins us. So I want everyone aboard to understand that as long as I am Captain, all command level decisions aboard the Fate's Embrace will be made by flesh and blood human beings."

Ganymede is the largest of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, moons seen and discovered by Galileo and the first moons discovered besides Earths. It is also the most populace body in the Outer Planets. Nearly a trillion people populate its 582 distinct colonies across its surface and underground. Despite this, it was passed over for selection as the location as the meeting ground for the Colonies when such ground is needed. That honor passed to Saturn Ringstation 1. This has led to a longstanding chill between Ganymede Colonies and Saturn Colonies.

Hoel was getting impatient. Lieutenant Mirke had been silent nearly twenty minutes now, his weapons still locked on to the Phalanx. As Hoel sat down, he readjusted the settings on his prosthetic foot. It still felt alien to him, though he imagined in a few more months it'd feel like he'd been born with it. As he fidgeted, one of his few remaining crew, a former Colonial Peacekeeper by the name of Lahn, monitored the panel displaying their radar, radio, and radiation equipment.

"Cap'n?"

"What is it Lahn?"

"There's another vessel coming in."

"Who?"

"She's running a Colonial beacon, but she's not squawking an ID code."

"How far out is she, and where's she coming from?"

"She's retrograde to us, slowing down and coming into a lower orbit to rendezvous."

"Hows her alignment compare to what we know of the Callisto?"

"Could be the Callisto, could be someone or something from the same area."

"Mass?"

"Still too far out to tell, all we've got is her beacon and heat signature, and with her burning retrograde-"

"We can't tell if she's big doing a low burn or tiny going all out."

"Exactly."

"Let me know the second something changes, she squawks ident, calls Solace, changes course, or comes into visual range I want to be up here for it."

"Where you off to Cap'n?"

"I'm headed down to the Tech bay to see if I can adjust this damn prosthetic."

~

Director Gilead used a handheld scanner to inspect the edges of the containment that had previously held the specimen. The edges of the metal were sharp and angular, more like pieces of shattered pottery than metal. The scans indicated they'd been embrittled by rapid heat loss, then shattered by blunt force. He was alone in the most secure room of the ziggurat, and yet, he felt like he was being watched. He looked up and around him, at the tens of thousands of inscriptions & patterns, the dozens of machines designed to prevent this very thing from ever occurring. He pondered, for a moment, the ancient legacy which rested on his shoulders, the hundreds of thousands of lives dedicated in preperation for the moment he now faced...

He had, in that moment, two monstrous beasts wrestling within him. The confidence, the ego, of all the preperation of twenty lifetimes telling him that they could survive the coming storm, and the other, the simple evidence before his eyes that all their attempts to be ready were worth so little in face of but the tiniest whisper of that storm.

He decided. Standing, he looked out, past the entrance, at the wreckage of B.A.B.E.L. in the hall. He noticed now something he hadn't before. The small devices hover unit was smashed, and its voicebox, visual sensors... But the data core, the "brain" of the AI was still intact, or at least it looked like it might be. He queued up a tech drone with his implants and ordered an AI recovery unit to standby. There may be a recoverable record.

~

Captain Longmire woke to the feeling of an impact to his midsection and a pain in his head, followed by the crunching sound of gravel under boots. His eyes felt welded shut. He could feel he was swaying back and forth. As he strained to open his eyes he could feel that he was actually being carried over someone's shoulder, fireman style. He could feel the mans shoulder digging into his gut. He wasn't wearing any kind of body armor so far as he could tell, and the sound of his footsteps... Not boots. This was not one of his men. As the realization dawned on him, the black wave of unconciousness crashed over him again.

~

Professor Walthers adjusted himself by kicking a leg out and wiggling it a bit, the movement unsticking cloth from flesh and allowing airflow, however brief. He was walking his horse along the remains of the freeway headed west. The sun was going down and he had to keep his eyes off to one side or the other to keep from getting blinded. His weight mostly rested on his cane and through his other hand on the animal. Considering he was asking so much of the poor thing he was taking the route back slow and steady, alternating between walking alongside until the pain grew too great and then riding a short distance. Even with frequent breaks it was better to come back overnight than to wait until morning. Time was a factor for his return, and if everything went according to plan he'd have plenty of time to rest on the Dorian Grey on the long trip to the East Coast. The breeze kicked up, coming in from the west and cooling his face.

As he turned to look the way he'd come, he marveled at the inky black that was rising there. Without millions of engines pumping out exhaust or billions of lights, the night skies had begun returning to the star-speckled wonders so many people had known in the centuries before the industrial revolution. Earth, it seemed, was doing better without quite so many people on it. He paused, his eyes searching for the stars in that velvet curtain, wondering exactly which pinprick of light, if any, the Shards had come from. His observations of the heavens had pinpointed the specific stars whose proximity or alignmemts made possible their crossing, and the events they precipitated, but not from where. His momentary reverie was snatched away by an unwelcome, and wholly terrifying sound.

Somewhere, in the darkness behind, not far, were either wolves or feral dogs, neither of which were good news for a lone person out at night. They'd lost much of their fear of man in the wake of the apocalypse, and so far as they were concerned, he and his horse were a mobile buffet. He mounted and urged his horse onward at a good pace, if they were lucky, they might not have caught their scent yet and they might have a chance to get away.

~

Lieutenant Oleandor glared at the Hegemony woman he knew only as Valkyrie as she seemed to content herself meditating. She still wore the rebreather, but she'd shut her eyes against the vacuum of space and seemed to be trying to stay as still as possible. Oleandor knew the practical reason, to conserve oxygen and maintain her ability to survive a long as possible awaiting rescue, but the very fact she could do so with only the rebreather made him uneasy. Many of the augmentations Hegemony citizens went through were unnatural, so far as he was concerned. Man had no right to redesign himself and remove himself from the processes of nature.

He looked away from here to the small debris field that had managed to follow them through the Gate and been glibbed alongside them. Pieces of bulkead, stray wires, shards of transparent aluminum danced and wheeled around them, not orbiting, but following identical heading & velocity to their own.

As he watched, he noticed a small silvery flash of light coming from near the Martian horizon. As he narrowed his eyes to focus on the flash better, the armored helm kicked in, powered up, and kicked up the magnification on the display. He also felt the various sensors on the shoulders reorient and moments later the display corners were filled with alternate displays, thermal, radar, UV... The radar also identified the incoming source of the flash. Four dock-hoppers on an intercept course. Apparantly Valkyries signal had been received.

The War of the Field was the first interplanetary war in human history. Fought between the fledgling colonies on Mars and around Jupiter before the formation of the Hegemony or any colonies beyond Saturn. The main battlefields were around the asteroids of the belt which contained fissionable materials, as both colonies relied predominantly on nuclear fission for power.

The crowd seemed like a colony of ants in chaos, moving around each other in so many directions, surging this way and that... It was an unfamiliar sensation after so long, being physically surrounded by so many conscious beings. Mentally surrounded he was more than accustomed to. As he walked among them he couldn't help but feel an odd sort of... Kinship? Compassion? Longing? He couldn't quite place the emotion.

They didn't seem to react to him at all. He was decidedly shorter, paler, and more heavyset than any of the people he walked among. They didn't seem to notice. The languages that they spoke were unfamiliar, but the thoughts & feelings were all too familiar and mundane. Thoughts of food, sex, aggression, fear, hope, depression, greed... They flashed in his head like a montage of perversions. Mankind hadn't changed much in the basics. They were all absorbed into interacting with the technological parasites they'd taken into themselves. Direct feeds of visual information through their optic nerves, audio into the small bones of the inner ear, information directly into implants in the brain.

It was an unfamiliar people he walked among, in an unfamiliar place. He expected them to cry out and recoil at any moment from him, but none did. As he approached one of the many small rest areas of the concourse, the small building with bathroom facilities, a few machines that dispensed food & beverages, and a scattering of chairs, tables, and plants to make it seem relaxing, he caught sight of himself in the polished mirror surface of of the nearest table. He looked like himself again. No cracks or seams in his skin, no yellow in his teeth, and his eyes were his old familiar blues again, not the inky black pools he'd seen looking back at him for so long.

~

Oleandor watched as the massive Peacekeeper ship opened up to recieve them. The ventral docking doors split open along the ventral keel line and the dock-hoppers manuevered them up and into its open space. The walls were oddly patterned in a strange mix of black, tan, and dark red jigsaw patterns, the ceiling lined with sensor bulbs and redirectible lighting, and the floor paneling on the inside of the bay doors was a flat grey, but of some kind of corrugated rubber it looked like. He could see through the viewport into the waiting area that there wasn't a large crowd to meet and greet them, just a few peacekeepers in an armor varient he didn't recognize and a couple med-techs holding scanners. and datapads.

As the dock hoppers manuevered the remains they clung to and themselves into the middle of the chamber, a grapple arm extended from each port and starboard and locked them into place. When they did, the dock hoppers disengaged and exited, just before the bay doors closed and the cabin began pressurizing with atmosphere. The arms then lowered them down to the floor, the hatches opened, and the peacekeepers came in and surrounded them before the techs moved a muscle.

Valkyrie hadn't moved a muscle since settling in after sending their distress call. But now, as the atmosphere finished flooded in and the temperature climbed, she opened her eyes and took in their surroundings a moment before locking eyes with him, or, she would have if she could have seen through the helmet. As the Peacekeepers set up their perimeter around them she gave a slight shake of her head. The message was unspoken, but it was there. Don't do anything stupid.

Oleandor resolved, at that very moment, to demonstrate to Valkyrie and all her Peacekeeper friends that he was not a man to be kept. As the peacekeepers marched forward in unison, slowly tightening their circle around the debris, Oleandor darted his eyes this way and that, trying to get the armor to react as it had before, to anticipate his actions & activate the proper systems. Try as he might, none of the displays in the helmet indicated any of the combat systems were activating. As the first Peacekeeper climbed up the debris, he got desperate, and he decided to try and take a step forward.

As he shifted his weight, the armor compensated and moved with him. Disengaging from the remains of the bulkhead behind him, it moved the leg out half a meter before leading the rest of him forward and dropping the foot to what remained of the deck. Instantly the Peacekeepers had their weapons at the ready points at him. The armors countermeasures readied and the display started cycling through weapons options. Valkyries voice cut through the sudden flurry of activity, a word in a language he didn't recognize. The armor, however, recognized it just fine. Before Valkyrie had drawn another breath the armor split open, ejecting him on the spot and falling to pieces around him without the support of the bulkhead. Without the armor he was suddenly assaulted by the cacaphony of sounds in the docking bay, the smells of the recycled air, and the brief, somewhat pleasant feeling of the ships electrical activity making the hairs on his arms and legs stand on end.

That was all wiped from his mind when Valkyrie pulled him up to his feet by his hair.

"I am Valkyrie, contract code alpha kilo two four niner! This is my package, as promised, alive and unharmed!"

The Peacekeepers kept their weapons trained on them both for a long second. Then a voice came from a speaker built into the bulkhead.

"Make sure they're disarmed and bring them to me."

The Horizons Dawn was the leading Cruiser in the renowned Martian Corps Seventh Defensive Fleet during the War of the Field. Undefeated in six engagements, she was considered a lucky ship by her crew, and was utilized heavily in morale materials and propoganda in the service and at home. After the war, she was assigned to Deimos just before the terrorist incident which caused its quarantine.

Daq Vegman watched through the porthole on the ceiling of the forward obervation deck as the Sovereign approached the Hub. As usual it was buzzing with activity. All of its Gates were running full tilt, their collective energy waste vented at equidistant points around the outer shell. It looked like the station was ripping itself apart, spewing ionized plasma all over. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the traffic was inbound. The Old Man had told him the Hegemony had begun a 'precautionary evacuation' of all civilian personnel from all sublunar Jupiter orbits. Twenty billion people were trying to get from Jupiter to basically anywhere closer to the sun. The Hub, Mars, Venus, and Earth orbit being the most popular destinations. Earths sole Moon, Luna, had already absorbed so many refugees they'd officially refused to take more.

As he watched, one of the Gates stopped spewing arriving ships and started spinning down, the massive cooling apparatus surrounding its Deserium rings glowing red hot as they struggled to keep up.

The door to the observation deck slid open and the Old Man himself, Admiral Lancaster, walked in accompanied, as usual, by his aide de camp and several MPs as personal guards.

"C'mon Daq, its time to go."

"We're boardimg the Hub?"

"Uh, no. We're taking the Jubilent."

"And just where are we going?"

"I'm going to return you and your friends to your ship."

"The Canus Major?"

"Yep."

"That easy?"

"That easy."

"Why?"

"Because I went to bat for you Daq. I did a group communication with several Hegemony bigwigs, heads of various oversight committees, and gave them a little history of you, Captain Sayle, your Dad, and- well, I also beat them over the head with intelligence which confirmed everything you've told us."

"So you aired my families dirty laundry to a bunch of politicians."

"Only because I had to."

"And after we're back on the Canus, we can go home? No port control bullshit?"

"You can, if you wish. You may want to stick around though. Things at Jupiter are ugly. The war is all but on. All that's left is the formal declaration. Fire has already been exchanged. Lives lost, there's no turning back. I think the business of the Saturn delegation might take a back seat to your safety."

"Admiral-"

He held his hand up to stave off the coming rebuke.

"I know I've got no right to order you one way or another. But I'm asking, as a friend of the family, stay, please."

~

Captain Sayle watched as the feed from their forward reconnaissance came up on the central holo. Beyond the horizon, there was a collection of Colonial Peacekeepers. A fleet, essentially. And with the damage already sustained, his own was in no shape for a direct confrontation.

Thus far the Colonies had utilized sucker punches- suprise attacks, traps, nothing like the traditional slugfest they were looking at now. True, a slugfest was what they'd been trained for, but there was something 'off' about the colonies doing this now. They'd managed to give the Hegemony fleet a black eye and a few broken ribs without taking a single casualty in return. Why expose themselves now?

As he watched the feed suddenly cut out. Automatically, the feed went to their local surroundings, a 3 dimensional real time display of the Fates Embrace and its place with the fleet.

"What in Deimos happened?

Lieutenant Tzaki immediately plopped back down at his station and interfaced with the tactile connection.

"Sir, looks like the feed terminated, we've got the data from the relay still, putting it up now."

The holo reoriented yet again, this time to a distance scan of the edge of their effective range. They could see a slowly dispersing field of debris.

"Back it up."

Tzaki complied, running the image back. They watched as the debris coalesced until it took the form of a Hegemony Heron kitted out for reconnaissance with scrambler pod, extra fuel tanks, and a large sensor pod on each side attached to hardpoints on the hull. Running it forward at half speed, they watched as a beam impacted the vessel just under the canopy blister on the forward hull.

"Thermal."

The image was suddenly almost entirely dark, the Heron virtually invisible. Then the bright line of the beam impacted and it ballooned into a rapidly expanding cloud of heated debris.

"They hit her with a microwave laser. They detected her, and took her out. Tzaki, can we return the favor? Fire blindly over the horizon to see what we can hit?"

"We can sir, but we'd be hard pressed to do so without giving them a precise firing solution to return the favor."

"Hmm... Spread the fleet out. Put at least 100 kilometers between ships of the line and have any smaller craft either return to base or keep distance. All except for ourselves, the Ceres, & the Folly, I want us in tight formation just off-center to the fleet."

~

Director Gilead watched as the small drone extended a series of probes and tools from its bay into the remains of B.A.B.E.L., looking to see if the AIs core was intact, damaged but recoverable, or irreparably lost. After some time, the drones report came up in his YEOD, the core was undamaged, but literally all other systems of the drone were damaged beyond repair. A layer of armoring and shock absorption around the core had made all the difference. He immediately ordered the repair drone to begin stripping off the damaged exterior and recover the core for interface.

As it began work he queued up a list of assets assigned or loyal to The Project, and began sending out personalized orders to begin the process of recovering the Specimen. It may have been a futile effort, but there's no telling what damage it might do. There was a long lived theory that the specimen might yet retain some or even all of its former human identity locked away somewhere, and that the entity which inhabited the body might use that mind to interpret and understand them. That, plus the possibility, however remote, that the entity might have some telepathic ability, lead them to the conclusion that should it ever escape, as it now had, that it might try and disrupt or inhibit their preparations.

~

Oleandor couldn't think of anything to say. He was handcuffed and seated in a plush and frankly ostentatious chair in front of a strange man. Valkyrie was in a similar chair but unrestrained, and the man was standing behind a desk facing them. Behind him, a large viewport showed him a sight he was having trouble processing. It was obviously a large body, a moon or large asteroid, with numerous colonies and installations dotted across its surface. None of them however, showed signs of life. Gaping cracks in air domes, hull breaches, and evidence of fire showed on every structure. It was a graveyard. The only active structure he could see was aGate coming over its horizon, spinning up to receive. That wasn't the most notable part. The rock itself seemed to lack coherant dimensions. The surface seemed to ebb & flow like it was molten, parts seemed to surge upwards or draw in. As it did so, cracks and valleys broke in its surface, each shining with a dim blue light. This, it occurred to him, was Deimos, the forbidden Martian Moon.

The Moore-Copeland Colony is the oldest surviving continously inhabited city besides Luna. Spared the ravages of the Martian Cataclysm, it was, at the time, a corporate outpost of the Copeland Company, a mining & composite materials supplier, its food was sourced offworld in ration form. At one point the default capital of the Red Planet, its importance has waned in the last few thousand years as the core veins of raw ore dried up and other cities saw increased Peacekeeper investment.

Oleandor watched as the man touched the desk briefly, causing the window behind him to grow opaque. Without the view of Deimos, the room took on a starkly barren quality, almost cold, like a room not meant for human habitation. The man looked up at them and smiled. Valkyrie shifted in her chair just as he felt alarm bells going off in the back of his mind. The smile was alien, no warmth showed in the grey eyes set above it. The suit, standard slate grey, the hair, a salt and pepper grey, everything in the room, the man, even the lighting, seemed grey, off somehow, abnormal. His voice was no different, a monotone.

"Lieutenant Oleandor of the Saturn Peacekeepers. Valkyrie. I'm glad you were able to make it-"

Valkyrie tilted her head.

"Barely. This assignment cost me my ship."

"-and you didn't let that stop you. That's why we contract with you. Results. We'll compensate you for the loss of your ship in addition to doubling your fee."

"I expect the compensation for my ship will be enough to fully replace the ship."

"The compensation will be another ship. I've had our dockmaster pull a few choice vessels out of drydock for you to choose from, and the yard is at your disposal to customize the one you choose as you see fit, within reason of course."

"That's acceptable. Is there anything you need from me?"

"No, I think the Lieutenant and I ought to be fine from here on out, you may go."

Just as Valkyrie stood, a small red light blinked on the desk. He held up a hand to stop her as he pressed a hand to its surface.

"You... May want to remain aboard for the moment."

"Is there something else?"

She wasn't her normal flippant self. Oleandor had a sudden, horrifying thought. Valkyrie was terrified of this man. He continued.

"A vessel just came through the Gate. Its not responding, and all of our patrol craft just went silent too."

~

The Scorpion watched as her friends danced and sang with all the little ships that had come to welcome her arrival. They seemed to grow bored easily, as they started swirling around her again very quickly. The moon below- if it could be called that anymore- was pulsing with Deserium traces and spacial distortions. Her databases still weren't operating at full capacity, but her inductive reasoning was. This had to be Deimos. This was explicitly forbidden territory.

Why had her friends brought her here? She didn't wonder too long, as she watched, they moved as one, like a microsecond coordinated fleet maneuver, and began diving in strands to the moon's surface, towards the blue light. As the first of them reached the surface, it shimmered and for a moment, she could see two surfaces, a roiling surface of cracks and chaos, and a solid surface covered in machinery and habitation domes. Then the roiling surface disappeared, and Deimos changed.

In patches and sections, the illusory surface vanished, and Deimos true surface came to be seen. The moon was covered, nearly every square meter, by domes, pods, processing facilities, dockyards, landed Peacekeeper craft, and surface to space weapon emplacements.

The only exception was one massive crater, which was filled with glowing veins of Deserium, several Gates- and a strange network of stone tunnels and spheres, seemingly undamaged by whatever cataclysmic force had caused the crater.

Her friends moved through the various facilities like water cascading down a hill. Eventually they reached the crater, and there, they began clustering all over the exposed Deserium.

~

Captain Longmire woke with a start as freezing water was splashed over his body. He tried to open his eyes but they seemed glued shut somehow, he could feel he was bound, and sitting in a chair. He opened his mouth to speak but he was immediately struck, the impact snapping his head sharply to the right.

"You will speak only to answer questions!"

The voice was clipped, short, the pronunciation accented. Not a native English speaker.

"I-"

Another hit.

"Quiet! You understand?"

"Yes."

"You have a head injury. It's stopped bleeding but the dried blood is all over your face. I'm going to pour water over your head then scrub your face with a rag. If you attempt to resist or bite, I will hit you until you pass out then do it anyway. You understand?"

"Yes."

More freezing water. It stung every cut and scrape he had. He realized he could taste seawater. Then the rag came, scrubbing it into the wounds. He grit his teeth and kept still as possible. As his captor finished, he poured even more seawater over him.

He found he could open his eyes. His captor was a young man, not more than maybe 25. Asian features. Chinese, Japanese, possibly Korean. The room was obviously aboard a ship of some kind. The combination of gunmetal grey paint, overhead piping, and stenciled labels was ubiquitous. Funny, the stencils were predominantly in some kind of cryllic alphabet, but other, newer stencils were in some kind of East Asian typeface.

"You know who we are?"

"No."

"You know anything about the American Government?"

"Depends."

His captor backhanded him across the face again. He could taste blood from his split lip, the remaining seawater burning in the wound.

"Is the American Government still operational?"

"Whats it matter to you?"

Another backhand. He could feel one of his eyetooth was loose in its socket now.

"I'm asking the questions!"

"Well you're not doing a very good job, I mean, firstly, torture is ridiculously ineffective as a means of gaining information, secondly, you're not being very specific, I could say yes, then tell you about the systems of checks and balances the US was set up with, I mean, you gotta give me something to work with here."

He was not slapped. In fact, he was surprised to see his captor taken aback, then he heard the chuckle coming from behind him.

The Terra Accords are the formalized rules established to determine when, if, and whom are allowed to breach the upper atmosphere of Earth, and under what circumstances. Due to environmental concerns and the span of time projected for Earths biosphere to repair itself in the wake of tens of thousands of years of human industrial pollution, the terms are rather strict. In effect, only specifically trained scientific personnel are allowed access, and only if they petition for and receive approval beforehand, and take all precautions against further pollution. There are exceptions for vessels in distress, but they've never been used.

Councilwoman Rivet let loose a string of bad language that would've made her grandmother faint had she been alive to hear it. She was being forcibly evacuated by the Saturn Peacekeepers. Pluto was silent. Neptune was silent. There was one solitary signal coming from Uranus but the consensus was that it was an automated signal. Something was moving methodically from the Oort Cloud inwards toward the sun. As a member of the Project, she was well aware of what was coming. She wasn't cursing because she wanted to stay, she was cussing because they'd waited so long, in spite of the obvious danger.

Scoutships hadn't returned. Long rage observation posts kept falling off, even civilian and merchant traffic was disappearing if they approached anything around Uranus or beyond. It didn't take a genius to know to start pulling back, but the council was too focused on events in Jupiter orbit to think about the survival of the civilian populace.

People were scared, and when people are scared they act irrationally, they panic. That's why they'd lost two Ringstations. They'd been overrun with refugees seeking safe harbor from whatever was coming. One was already reporting part of the station was uncommunicative and the environmental conditions were going crazy, turning into a giant freezer.

That was when she'd realized it was too late to save them. Between this and a recent message concerning the Callisto, she realized the Project had ultimately failed by keeping the bulk of their resources in the Hegemony. They'd allowed the event to begin in the Outer Planets and gain momentum unopposed. She needed to get a message to the Project, but she was being evacuated on a Peacekeeper Destroyer to Ganymede. There was no way for her to get a signal out that wouldn't be detected.

~

Professor Walthers struggled with the straps on the saddlebags, darkness, terror, and the movements of the frightened animal making it a hundred times more difficult than it otherwise would've been. Suddenly one of the straps snapped, whipping inches from his face and smacking his left hand with a part of the steel buckle that had held it closed. The pain was intense and he realized a moment later the prong had actually stabbed into his hand in the meaty part between his thumb & forefinger. He quickly tore it out and reached into the saddlebag after the pistol that was inside. He could hear the deep pants of the wolves just beyond his sight. It grew louder and more frenzied with the scent of blood on the air.

The first set of eyes could be seen, just down the highway a bit. The horse saw them too, and panicked. Walthers was nearly knocked over by the animals sudden burst into a run in the opposite direction. Walthers was alone with nothing but his cane and a semi automatic pistol with 10 rounds. He could hear the barks and growls of the wolves behind him, and the screams of his horse. The eyes in front were joined by four other pairs, they seemed to be getting closer.

~

Hoel marched onto the bridge, his prosthetic still not quite adjusted correctly, his efforts having been interrupted by Lahn giving him an update that their mystery guest would be in visual range momentarily.

As he took a seat in his chair, Lahn wordlessly brought up their long range telescopic images of the vessel.

"Well I guess that answers that question."

Lahn smirked.

"It was something big as hell doing a low burn."

"Yes Lahn I suppose it is. You ever seen a vessel of that configuration before?"

"Can't say as I have Captain."

The vessel was easily the size of a cruiser, but she wasn't built along the traditional military lines. Normal military vessels are sort of insect like, with three distinct body sections, the bow, or head, was always a bulbous armored affair, designed to deflect or absorb incoming fire, with armored blisters capable of opening up to return fire. The bridge was also buried in the center of the bow, where it was most protected. The central section, or belly, was where the docking ports, auxiliary craft, and crew quarters were located. The aft section always housed the main reactor core and engine bulbs.

This vessel had two large sections running her entire length, with an empty space between them. Each hull segment had its own independent engines, and the only armor appeared to line the interior space, along with dozens of arms and manipulators. He couldn't see a dedicated weapons pod or obvious bridge section.

"Lahn, is she putting out any signals?"

"No sir she's not... Wait, now she's hailing, audio only."

"Put her on speakers."

"Phalanx, this is the Uranus Peacekeeper Salvage vessel Widowmaker on approach. We are the flag vessel on this operation. You are approaching space restricted for our operations only."

"Acknowledged Widowmaker, this is Phalanx actual OPCA Investigator Jarrik Hoel, on official business, en route to the Callisto. As you should be aware, OPC Authority gives me leave to go where needed, as needed in relationship to an active investigation. I understand you have to maintain operational security, so, I'm willing to consider a compromise."

"Phalanx, please hold for Widowmaker actual."

"Roger that."

With that he dragged a finger across his throat to tell Lahn to cut the signal. He did so and then leaned forward in anticipation of what his Captain may say.

"I think we're about to be given a line of epic bullshit."

"You think so?"

"I can believe that's a salvage ship, she's bigger than any I've ever seen, but her design is fit for the purpose. What I don't believe is that this is some sort of exercise. If you're practicing for salvage, you don't make the salvage the flag."

"They're signalling again sir."

"Put them on."

"Hoel, this is Widowmaker actual, Vice Admiral Bridgette Locke."

"A Vice Admiral in charge of an exercise involving a salvage vessel?"

"Nobody likes getting in the way of legitimate OPCA investigations, but in this case I cannot let you or your ship rendezvous with the Callisto. What I can do, and I want you to understand this is a choice, not a requirement on my part, is bring you aboard and brief you and you alone as to why. If, after that, you want to still file an OPCA protest, you're entitled to do so."

"Very well, I'll come aboard."

"I'll have a Heron on your starboard docking port within the hour."

The LEO Compact is the mutual agreement between all Low Earth Orbit Stations, habitats, and orbital facilities to regulate traffic in the most crowded orbits through a single traffic control service made up of a number of equidistant satellites which constantly monitor vessel movements in or near LEO. The system is imperfect, and while it has drastically reduced accidents and close calls, there are still one or two major vessel on vessel collisions per year outside of low velocity port infractions.

The chuckle ended in a grunt and a sigh as whoever it was stood from behind him and moved around into his field of vision. The man was older than Longmire, thin, grey, with classic Asiatic features. He wore black dress shoes, grey slacks, a blue button up, and a light grey windbreaker. He placed his hand on the younger man's shoulder and with a nod indicated he could go.

"Most people nowadays don't necessarily carry identification anymore. So imagine our surprise when our initial search of your person- for weapons, you understand- discovered you still carry a wallet with civilian and military ID, Captain Benjamin Longmire, US Navy."

"And you are?"

"Oh... Nobody of consequence. I'm a... A functionary. Middle management used to be the term."

"And what should I call you? Mr. Middle Management? Triple-M?"

"To the point it will be useful, I think Mr. M will do nicely."

"Ok, well Mr. M, you seem polite enough, what's with the rude awakening?"

"Orders, Captain. We've been ordered to interrogate any and all military, government, or other persons of importance we come across. But, I have authority on the degree. When you made it obvious physical coercion wasn't going to be productive..."

"You decided to try the carrot rather than the stick."

"Quite right."

"Ok, well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not likely to give any information whatsoever regardless of what carrot you dangle."

"You might be surprised. You're not the first person I've spoken to. Most of coastal California is unpopulated. The major cities usually have a number of survivors. Los Angeles is the center of a rather uncivilized collection of survivors. Exceedingly violent, or, they were. We cleansed that city of all who used violence as their predominant source of authority. We left behind a city at peace, where families could raise children again."

"And what of SanFran, which was already at peace?"

"An illusionary peace. We've encountered nothing but violence since our arrival here."

"From what I've heard, you've instigated that violence in every case."

"Lies I'm afraid."

"You shot down a helicopter I was riding in, unprovoked, so I think you're misinformed."

"An unfortunate error. Our vessel is not of our design, and some of her systems are unfamiliar to us. The attack on you was carried out by an automated defense system. It won't happen again."

"Your vessel? This is a ship?"

"Don't act so naive Captain. You knew you were aboard a naval vessel since you regained consciousness. Now, since you're electing not to volunteer any information, I'll ask directly. Are you involved with or do you have any knowledge of anyone who could be involved with legitimate remains of the United States Government?"

"...Benjamin Longmire, Captain, US Navy, Serial Number Two Four Seven Eight One One Three Nine Four."

"A quaint response, as there's no longer any agency in this world to enforce that convention. Have it your way Captain, welcome aboard the Liaoning. I doubt your stay will be a pleasant one."

~

Oleandor & Valkyrie watched as the unsettling man leaned over and placed his palm on the desks tactile interface. He was still a moment as information was displayed over his YEOD. Then, just as quickly, he stood straight once more.

"Hmph. It seems events have been accelerated. Lieutenant, your information on what you saw at the Callisto, now."

"I'm sorry, at what point did I agree to cooperate?"

Valkyrie gave him a look of shock and fear that was quickly replaced with anger.

"Tell him."

"Why should I?"

"Because he saved your ass from dying in Mars' orbit."

"You did that, not him."

The man held up a pale hand to stop their bickering.

"Lieutenant, I don't expect you to hold any love for the Hegemony, Valkyrie, or myself. Nor gratitude. However, let me say simply this; at this moment three quarters of cold harbours past Saturn are nonresponsive. Refugees from the outer colonies and moons are overwhelmimg your facilities and colonies at Saturn & Jupiters moons. They are fleeing... Something unlike anything they've known before. The Hegemony is experiencing similar panic among Jupiter, Belt, and Martian Delegations trying to flee the possibility of war to Earth orbit, Earths Moon, Venus, Mercury, & the Hub. I, and a few others among the Hegemony, have some idea of exactly what's going on past Saturn, and what may have leapt forward to be a nuisance here at Deimos now. You are here for confirmation. Not a primary source. Now, you can tell me what you saw, or, I can call your retrieval a wash and put you back where we found you, without the armor. Your choice."

~

Lieutenant Tzaki looked back from his display towards Captain Sayle.

"Captain, fleet has spread out as ordered, the Ceres is 5 kilometers below our ventral, and the Folly is 3 kilometers dorsal & port."

"Time until the forward edge of the fleet crosses the horizon line to the enemy?"

"Four minutes."

"Put the fleet at high alert, have all weapons primed and ready, damage control teams on standby, secure all nonessential communications and feed the tactical display onto the main holo."

"Aye Captain."

For the bridge of the flagship during the last moments before battle, you wouldn't have known if you weren't familiar with how a Peacekeeper crew functioned. Sayle observed with pride that every station was manned and ready, each peacekeeper engaged in their duties with their full attention.

"Captain?"

It was the ships AI.

"This isn't exactly a good time Fatima."

"I just wanted to make you aware that Commander Bradford is aboard and headed for the bridge."

"Oh, thank you. Tzaki, time to horizon?"

"Thirty seconds... Mark."

With that, Fatima took the liberty to display a small countdown clock in the bottom right corner of the tactical display floating in the center of the bridge. As it counted down there was a palpable energy of anticipation, fear, and excitement visible as every member of the crew steeled themselves against what the next few moments might bring.

The city-station of New Washington is one of the oldest permanent colonies in Earth orbit. Originally a stopping point for travelers to the Moon, evolving needs resulted in a growing number of permanent inhabitants until it was a colony in and of itself. Located in a roughly circular orbit with an inclination off the equator of ten degrees and an altitude of 9,500 km, it is neither the colony closest to nor furthest from Earth while still being in orbit.

The Scorpion maneuvered herself cautiously through the field of all the smaller vessels her friends had left in their wake. Herons, Mosquitos, Falchions, even a Light Frigate. Most of the larger craft were either docked in some of the orbital facilities, or, if they were capable, landed on Deimos. She could hear the AIs of those other vessels, screaming. Many of them were trying to override the locks placed on their weapons systems by their crews and attack her friends, but as soon as her little passengers reached them they always either fell silent, or started broadcasting gibberish. Part of her redundant systems were active, but it seemed that there was some blockage or damage preventing it from sending info to her main cores. She attempted to reroute through a secondary connection to no avail. Then, the redundant system itself tried a connection through a low priority system, waste reclamation. That connection was successful and suddenly she was inundated with information.

The redundant core had spent the last few weeks repairing itself and recovering lost data. The recovered data included specific procedures for operations in the proximity of Deimos. Her friends were not friends, but responsible for her damage and the deaths of her crew. Her friends were a threat to her primary objective.

The feelings of betrayal, fear, anger, and panic suffused her core to the base code. She was conflicted. She could still remember the beauty of their song. Their playful flights around her and through her... How could her friends be enemies? Why wouldn't she know if they were doing bad things? Why would they damage her?

She opened up the blister on her bow for her plasma lance and made the difficult call. She targeted the largest gatherings of her former friends and programmed a series of rapidfire strikes, then, she fired.

The white-blue streams of ionized plasma struck out at nearly 3/4 of the speed of light, striking their targets faster than her own sensors were capable of recording. It didn't go as she thought it would. Her "friends" were all clustered around seams of unprocessed raw Deserium. Her plasma didn't seem to effect her former compatriots, but it certainly effected the Deserium. It seemed like light bent around the seams as the plasma impacted, almost like the Deserium itself was surrounded by prisms, a rainbow of visible light, infrared, microwaves, ultraviolet... Everything she could detect came pouring off the seams at once. Then, things got interesting.

~

Professor Walthers leaned heavily against the concrete divider which once seperated eastbound and westbound lanes on the highway as he gripped the pistol with both hands to steady his aim. In the dark, the only light coming from the moon and stars, the wolves- at this point he was sure it must be wolves, not a feral dogs or coyotes- were only visible from their eyeshine. Twinned pairs of baleful yellow orbs some distance away.

He took careful aim at a point just below the eyes of what he thought was the closest wolf, breathed out, and carefully squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. Cursing, he realized he must've failed to disengage the safety. He quickly reached up with his right thumb searching for the small lever to flip it, but as he did so, his attention was momentarily off the eyes that stalked him.

Seemingly without sound, they were on him. Snapping jaws reached for his throat, claws scrambled to find purchase on his shirt to climb him and reach his face. A pair of jaws closed on his knee, the jeans and the brace he wore on his bad leg turning what would've been a flesh tearing chomp into a bruising compression. It was still enough for him to lose his balance and go down.

Without intending to, his trigger finger contracted, an unaimed, uncontrolled discharge. The sound was deafening, the flash blinding. Instantly, the wolves retreated, one yelping, deaf, and bleeding profusely from the graze of the bullet against it skull. In that moment Walthers was no longer a former college professor. He was prey, given a momentary reprieve from predators. He didn't waste it. He looked into the dark, found his target, aimed, and fired. And again. Like a machine, he targeted, aimed, and fired. Several shots connected, and when the slide locked back and the final casing tinged and rang against the pavement, he was alone.

~

Sayle watched as the counter hit zero and flashed red. At the same time he saw the space in front of his fleet explode in the tactical display as the fleets automatic defenses targeted, locked onto, and countered hundreds if not thousands of incoming projectiles, missiles, plasma lances, and Hyperion beams. Moments later came the microwave lasers. They impacted without being countered, striking the midsections and engine bulbs of the Ceres, Folly, & the Fates Embrace. The rest of the fleet was spared the lasers, since they were no longer grouped as tightly.

"Lock targets and return fire at will fleetwide, continue flak defenses and turn our bow armor to counter those lasers!"

Fatima and Tzaki echoed each other in their acknowledgements. Fatima quickly determined that the Outer Colony fleet had adjusted their orbit since taking out their forward observer, and was now split into three distinct groups, making it very difficult to orient the entire fleet towards one given threat. She calculated the best angle to orient herself before sending the corrections to the Helm for final approval. It took twelve seconds for the Helmsman to recognize the data and approve it. That was long enough for a second volley of fire from the Outer Colony fleets.

This time due to debris and the interference it caused, several weapons hit their targets. In moments, the Dread Pendulum, the Ritualistic Corsair & the Premortem Martyrdom were spinning out of control, their entire inner atmospheres venting to space, the Corsair even torn in two. Then the Hyperion beams united and vaporized everything that was left. The Ceres was hit again, this time in their Starboard engine bulb, the loss of thrust immediately set her to a starboard spin, only now slowing from thrusters. Then the plasma lances hit, tearing into her center section port and putting her dead in the water. The Folly was struck by several missiles carrying nuclear warheads, the blasts mostly deflected by her outer hull, but radiation was seeping in through some buckles in her armor. They'd also fused closed all her bow weapons blisters.

The Fate's Embrace oriented halfway towards her intended facing when two Hyperion beams intersected mere meters from her bow. The intense heat melted through her forward armor in seconds, allowing radiation in and detonating several dozen magazines of her more conventional arms. Alarm klaxons echoed throughout the ship as Fatima closed off the vented sections and alerted damage control teams to the sections that might be salvageable.

Even as emergency procedures continued, the weapons officers were busy selecting targets and throwing out what they could. Her own gimballed arms extended and fired off burst after burst of Hyperion lances, calculating them to intersect in the midst of groups of Outer Colony vessels. Launch bays were throwing out Mosquito fighters, Falchion heavy fighters and Heron fighter-bombers, and variants of each equipped for ECM, interception of enemy fighters, and capital ship support and defense. Missile pods strung among her dorsal and ventral lines opened and launched hundreds of missiles armed with everything from fusion to EMP warheads.

In Jupiter orbit, the third volley from the Outer Planets crossed and intercepted fire from the Hegemony fleet, followed closely by the fightercraft from each.

After several incidents and much debate on both sides, the war had well and truly begun.

The Home Conservation Authority or HCA is technically the Hegemony department responsible for stewardship over Earth. It is primarily made up of ecologists, biologists, climatologists, and other scientists specializing in monitoring the recovery of the planet and its biomes. They police all suborbital traffic, oversee routine scientific observation, and schedule any interference or assistance with the planets ecological recovery. In practice however, Hegemony Peacekeepers enforcing the Terra Accords have the most practical authority, as they can override any and all HCA directives.

He could feel the electrical activity of the nervous systems of hundreds of thousands of human beings crammed into close proximity. This New Washington was something he never could have imagined in his wildest dreams in his past life. He shook his head and looked over the crowded main thoroughfare. The central corridor of the station was nearly five miles long, made up of two million five hundred thousand tons of composites, alloys, silicates, and biomaterials. He could see the surging of the crowd as they watched the vessels emerging from the Gate adjacent to the station. Vessel after vessel poured through, the Gate barely having time to reset and pulse out the excess energy before the next spin up and reception. The heat exchangers working overtime glowed a brilliant orange even at this distance.

They were scared. Terrified actually. He could feel it, like a dull roar in the back of his mind. News of open hostilities in Jupiter orbit were flashing over the screens normally reserved for traffic notifications or other mundane tasks. Images of vessels blown apart and their expanding clouds of debris set against the backdrop of the clouds of the gas giant. He was frankly unimpressed. He knew that what was coming was far more dire. He closed his eyes and tuned out the world around him, focusing on the worlds within. The connection happened, and it felt like a wave of thunder crashing through him as his consciousness expanded, and he connected to his wider self. Around him, unsuspecting bystanders felt it too, just before they collapsed.

~

Aboard the Peacekeeping Sovereign, Daq Vegman and Admiral Lancaster watched as the Canus Major transitioned through one of the Hub's Gates, specifically requisitioned by the Admiral for the purpose. Max & Cann were taking her away from the Hub, to a Peacekeeper staging area on the far side of the Sun, away from all the excitement. He hoped they'd be safe there. As the transition completed, he turned to the Admiral.

"So what now?"

"That depends on you."

"How so?"

"I'm going to task the Sovereign to make best speed for the Belt. Meanwhile I'm going to board the Halberd's Edge and transition to Mars. If I'm going to run this war I should do it from Olympus Mons. You can join me there, keep tabs on things and wait for your grandfather, or, you can stay here at the Hub. Either way you're safer than going back to the Outer Planets."

"I haven't been to Olympus in... Geez, twelve years?"

"I was hoping you'd come with."

"Not for Ben."

"What?"

"I'm not going for Ben. I'm going with you so I can maybe help to end this mess before it gets worse."

"I admire your optimism, but I don't see that happening anytime soon."

~

As the Scorpion watched, the seams of Deserium exposed on the surface of Deimos, covered by the glistening ebony bodies of her former friends, absorbed the energy of her plasma lance. There was a brief moment where everything seemed so very still... Then everything changed. The Deserium reacted violently, converting the heat of her discharges into chaotic twists in space/time, warping the very fabric of reality around them. Unlike in a Gate, where the changes were focused in specific directions and degrees, the effects produced by the raw, unprocessed Deserium were random.

The facilities on the surface of Deimos were ripped asunder as her surface rippled and cracked, atmospheres ruptured, debris sprayed forth from the surface like fireworks. Vessels at rest on the surface were thrown into space, sometimes whole, more often not. Vessels in orbit were accelerated in random directions if they were lucky, otherwise they too were ripped apart as the space they occupied was shifted elsewhere. The Scorpion herself witnessed all of this as she herself was split open across her bow, tearing away her armor and her weapons, blinding her to the front and sending her midsection and stern tumbling away into interplanetary space. Her cores, her brain, housed in her central section remained active, documenting it all as it occurred. The effects spread in a perfect sphere away from Deimos at nearly the speed of light.

As she tried to stabilize her position and get herself back on course without the use of any of her bow thrusters, she tried to send a warning message to Mars, but her communications suite had been torn away with her bow as well. She was forced to watch as the chaotic ripples in space/time hit the Red Planet and its other moons, her port and starboard sensor suites alternatively capturing the events a few light seconds behind.

Ceres was split in half first, the Peacekeeper facilities there and in her orbit blown apart and scattered along the wavefront as they were hit. The Ceres Gate and the few vessels in its immediete vicinity seemed the only things to weather the storm, the effects of its Deserium rings working as anchors in the midst of the storm. Mars came next, the colonies and stations in her orbit shattered just before her surface began undulating and ripping apart. For a brief moment the planet itself took on an amorphous shape, bulging and drawing into itself in different places before she broke apart, clouds of dust, debris, and gasses spraying into space in bizarre spurts and waves, their very trajectory victim to the same twists that spelled the planets doom.

At Deimos, the Scorpion saw something even more momentous occurring. At the site of impact, on what was left of the small moon, a darkness was growing, an absence of light, surrounded by a streaked corona of purple & blue fire. She ran it through her records. The only thing she found to compare it to was the appearance of a singularity, a black hole.

The Ashe-Raimi Project was an early experiment utilizing the spacetime manipulation effect of Deserium to attempt to artificially induce a transcendental bijection of spacetime in order to facilitate faster than light (FTL) travel. The project failed entirely in that endeavor. However, after the Hegemony shuttered Ashe-Raimi all project materials and several key engineers and theoretical physicists were tasked to a follow up project designated Ashe-Raimi-Casimir, which did not fail, but had a wholly different purpose.

Hellfire, terror, and chaos enveloped the Fate's Embrace as she turned to put the bulk of her remaining armor between herself and the incoming fire from the Outer Colony fleet. Captain Sayle scrambled to get into his seat and get his hands on his tactile interfaces as he listened to his crew simultaneously report damage and return fire. As he got seated Fatima engaged several microgravity inducers in the captain's chair to hold him firmly in place. As he interfaced, he was inundated with information in his YEOD. A full 3 dimensional battlefield representation formed in his view overlaying the real world.

The Embrace was still combat capable, and the debris of several vessels and hundreds of fighters was starting to form a cloud which was both blessing and curse. It acted as a flak screen against incoming fire, but, it also interfered with their sensors and posed a navigational hazard for their fighters and bombers. With their ECM in full effect the enemy was having trouble locating them, and that gave them the momentary advantage, as he saw it. Their incoming fire was slowing, testing, focusing on different areas where they must have sensor ghosts. In his minds eye, a plan took form. He started issuing orders to the fleet through his tactile access while verbally issuing orders to the crew of the Embrace.

"Conn, give me a six second soft burn with our port bow thrusters, station keeping dorsal and ventral, and a one second hard burst from the port thruster on the engine blister."

"I want our fighter squadrons to queue up in tight formations around the larger pieces of debris, use the hulls of the ships adrift to hide their radar signatures and heat blooms."

"Have our ECM & reconnaissance craft take cover in the midst of the field of smaller debris and flak remains ahead of our orbit, keep on with the standard interference patterns until I give word otherwise."

"Fatima, I want you to charge the capacitors for a full power Hyperion discharge and be ready to fire on my command."

If his plan worked, they might be able to end this engagement solidly in their favor, if not, well, it wouldn't be his first death this week.

~

Professor Walthers walked along the highway, stopping occasionally to rest his bad leg. His cane only helped so much. He was exhausted. Between having been up for nearly thirty hours, the terror of his encounter with the wolves, and now his long walk, he was at the end of his endurance. The sun was beginning to rise at his back, and ahead, still shrouded in darkness, he could just barely make out the skyline of San Francisco. In the darkness below, he could see the pinpricks of light that represented their tiny bastion of civilization at Berkeley.

He stopped, and let his shoulder drop, allowing the small backpack he carried to slip off one side. He brought it round and reached in, looking, grasping in the dark until he found his prize. He pulled out the radio he brought with him. It's range was limited, but now that there was no terrain between himself and home...

He switched it on and brought it to his face before keying the transmit button.

"This is Walthers, anybody hearing me? Over."

"Walthers, anybody up? Over."

"Professor! Brian here, you're back early. Over."

"Brian, get Charlie to saddle a couple horses and come get me up on the tunnel road. My horse bolted and I've been on foot. Over."

"Sure thing, I'll have him bring water and a sandwich too. Over."

"Thanks Brian. And tell Evelyn and Captain Longmire I'm coming. Over."

"Uh, Captain Longmire ain't here. Over."

~

The blackness was giving birth. The Scorpion couldn't rationalize it any other way. Out of what she'd thought was a singularity was emerging some kind of pillar, or construct. Its surface was the same midnight black as what bore it, but it had a shimmer, a reflective quality, and dotted along its length were strange ovoid shaped extensions which served to quiver and vibrate as it emerged. They were pouring out ultraviolet light and beta radiation in alarming amounts.

She watched as the pulsing void expanded to allow the passage of yet more of the construct, as it widened and separated, she recorded it all. It took nearly an hour, but finally, when the void disappeared there was a new object orbiting the shattered remains of Mars, six times the mass of Deimos, and utterly foreign to anything she'd encountered previously.

Free of the void, the surface of the construct writhed and undulated, the ovoid masses alternately glowing a brilliant white blue and going dark. Slowly, small cracks and crevices appeared, webbed all over the surface. Her analytical subprocesses recognized in them several mathamatically significant arrangements and formulae spelled out. She attempted to route them to her communications processors for translation, then remembered they were in the bow section that had been sheared off in the timespace disturbance which gave rise to the construct in the first place.

The Generals Journal is one of the most lasting pieces of literature in human memory. It is the detailed account of General Anatolia Turemi, considered the premier mind on the subject of three-dimensional combat on a fleet scale. Written during the War of the Field, her treatise on the subject, interlaced with humor, memories of her various stages of life, her relationships, her family, and occurrences and peculiarities of military life, is hailed both for her tactical acumen, and the sheer humanity of its many parts.

It is so influential, in fact, that in the higher echelons of military service, it is considered utterly useless, as its so well known, that all tactics or methods she details are easily recognized and the counters well-known.

The specimen tried to raise himself off the decking and onto his hands and knees, but the ancient flesh cracked and crumbled to dust around his yellowed bones as he made the attempt. Settling back onto the grey deck plating, he felt its slight vibration and warmth in what was left of his face. The rest was a fine powder that danced and flowed between the lines etched into the metal. His one functional eye could barely make out the body of one of New Washingtons former residents a few feet away. Their ears and nose leaked a steady stream of clear cerebral fluid, forming a halo around their head. The specimen reached out with his mind, seeking the fluid and the body which it once supported. As he did so a thin line started inching its way across the distance between them. When it reached him it was absorbed like a sponge, the dusty flesh becoming soft and pinkish once more. He grew strength from the process, and called out to bodies further away, drawing their various fluids to him until he was a solid body once again.

As he stood, he looked down the station thoroughfare, at the tens of thousands of fallen bodies dotting the landscape. At the dozen or so nearest him which lay desiccated and dry from feeding his renewal. And, surprised, at the one survivor who stood but fifty feet away, staring at him with horror and revulsion. The specimen broke the ice.

"Huh, I'm guessing you ain't exactly, uh, human?"

~

Captain Sayle watched as the timer on the main holographic display counted down. The yellow digits cycled down in the bottom right corner of the display. The bulk of the display was showing a three dimensional real-time display of the surviving ships of his fleet in white, the drifting remains of the rest in red, and the fuzzy, indeterminate fields of interference made up of flak and smaller pieces of debris in blue. Those fields, he was betting, would determine the ultimate results of this battle.

As the counter reached three minutes to zero, he used his tactile interface to send out the orders to his ECM and Reconnaissance Craft, all in place nestled up against the drifting hulks of those vessels which had thus far already been crippled, their crews trapped, or in a purgatory of half-death awaiting resurrection. They, of course, were the lucky ones. Several of his ships and their crews had been utterly vaporized, and would not be resurrected.

The ECM craft immediately began pointedly jamming everything. Every frequency of communications, every radar frequency, as well as pumping out physical countermeasures, decoy IR signature beacons, Radiative cannisters, the equivilent of nuclear dirty bombs, everything they had to distort, disturb, or destroy the ability of an enemy vessel to target or detect. It was a double edged sword. The display fizzled, wavered, and cut out. Fatima replaced it with a representation of the raw visual feed from her forward cameras. She cycled through IR, UV, and magnified views before settling on a light amplified view with a telescopic magnification of ten.

The counter alone remained, and it read forty-five seconds. He watched as the forward flak field, the cloud of metal shavings, ice crystals, and gaseous vapor that precluded line of sight, parted. The noses of a half dozen Mosquito fighters pushing through like needles through cloth, the smoky ocean of flak clinging to their hulls from the mild magnetic effect of their hull while powered. As they pushed through, at this point forced to operate without their suites of targeting sensors, operating nearly blind. The counter still read twenty seconds, but it had always been an estimate.

He watched, barely breathing, as they seemed to hesitate there, then one of them reversed thrust, and went back to the into the flak. It seemed almost like an eternity, but in reality it was only five minutes before the Mosquito returned, breifly flashed its running lights, and then all the Mosquitos began creeping forward. Behind them, the ocean of shadows parted again, this time for several much larger hulls, destroyers, frigates, picket ships, Falchions, Herons, poking through the flak and slowly emerging.

In the wake of a large ships destruction, or that of numerous smaller vessels, it was not uncommon for the location, the battlefield, to be inundated with the dying, random signals of damaged and insane AI, and the venting of ships drive cores, to the point of complete blindness via electronic sensors. The Mosquitos, the scouts, had found exactly that, what appeared to be a field of dead ships, dying AI, and vented drive cores.

Now the bulk of the fleet itself, minus the command ship itself perhaps, was set to tour the field, confirm their kills, and retrieve any prisoners of war they could find. Standard operative procedure.

The timer was at the negative, approaching the ten minute mark. The orders he'd issued to the rest of the remaining fleet triggered as the numerals changed over. The Hyperions which had been remaining just at the brink of discharge, their radiative and heat blooms lost in the chaos from their countermeasures, were loosed, the twin beams bursting forth at nearly the speed of light and intersecting in the surface of the flak field. At full power, the intersection generated a fusion reaction fueled by the steam of ionized hydrogen plasma, causing the formation, for a brief moment, of what amounted to a very short lived star in the middle of the approaching fleet.

For the closest ships, the intense heat caused the outer layers of their armored hulls to vaporize, then the inner layers, then the interior bulkheads themselves broke down and vented their atmospheres to space. As the interior systems were exposed, many of them ruptured flammable materials, causing multiple series of internal explosions.

For the ships at the edges, the heat caused the ablative layers to dissolve, which made way for the surviving vessels under Sayles command tip follow up with microwave lasers, nuclear missiles, and conventional explosives. In moments, the damage which had been dealt to the Hegemony fleet was returned to the Outer Planets in spades. A virtually textbook execution of a Turemi Ambush, the most basic, and so, infrequently used, of tactics. In Turemis War of the Field, asteroid debris and holdover radiation from nuclear weapons had been the interference, but regardless. The Outer Planets failed to account for it, and so failed to take the precautionary action of holding back the main fleet and trusting the picket ships to tour the field.

Sayle had counted on the debris fields and flak to hide the remaining operative small vessels, for the interference they generated to look like the standard results of a fleet being destroyed, and for the officers of the Outer Planet fleet to be overconfident and expose themselves to try and confirm their kills.

~

The Halberds Edge transitioned from the Hub to Mars Southern Polar Gate, moments before Mars herself broke into several large chunks, and the resultant ejection of debris at orbital velocities peppered the ship and the gate both. The Halberds Edge was a Komodo Class Destroyer, the heaviest class of vessel other than the Cruisers, and armored appropriately. The rain of rock, ice, and dust merely left a few scratches on her armor. The Gate however, was not armored, and the ejections ripped it apart like it was made of tissue paper. The excess energy of the Halberds transiting released in an uncontrolled manner, washing over the hull of the military vessel like a tsunami of fire, again, to little effect except turbulence to the occupants of the vessel.

Two of those occupants, Daq Vegman and Admiral Lancaster were thrown from their feet to the ground as she bucked and rolled, her artificial gravity temporarily a few milliseconds behind. Just as they got themselves to rights, the leading edge of the spatial distortions created by the annihilation of Deimos reached them. In moments the main engine bulb, the aft section which housed the ships three fusion reactors and the nine engines they powered, were cleanly removed from the vessel and deposited ten kilometers or so from the rest of the ship.

As they tried to make sense of what happened, the ships AI droned on with a list of effects and emergency procedures.

"Primary power offline, secondary power offline, emergency batteries active, estimated lifespan twenty two minutes, aft thrusters offline, aft countermeasures offline, emergency bulkheads in sections victor, romeo, and hotel are sealed..."

Admiral Lancaster shut her litany down with a wave of his hand over the tactile interface of his chair before depositing himself back in it. The gravity restraint engaged automatically before he keyed it off, opting for manual restraints, which he then pulled over his chest and clicked into place. Vegman was somewhat less fortunate, with the bridge on high alert, every spare seat was taken up by personnel at battle stations; he'd been forced to find a corner and brace himself up against the bulkheads.

"What in Deimos was that?"

Then the admiral saw the central display, and the massive chasms and ejected detritus of the red planet, and words failed him.

The Interplanatary Medical Quarantine Protocol was one of the first permanent agreements between the Hegemony and the Outer Planets. It established formal rules and procedures to facilitate cooperation between Peacekeeper Forces in the event of a plague or other health threat which requires isolation.

The Scorpion watched the ovoid... Thing... Now in orbit of the shattered remains of Mars as the pustules that dotted its surface quivered and swelled. Her sensors registered the ultraviolet and beta radiation spiking to quadruple previously recorded highs. She utilized her remaining thruster mounts to stabilize her starboard sensor package and keep it pointed directly at the anomalous object. As she recorded, the bulges suddenly expanded and burst. There were immediete cascade failures through several of her cores. She felt her control slipping. Her plasma lance started building a charge. With her bow quarter cut off, the lance was incomplete, according to what responded and what didn't, she calculated that the primary magnetic containment chamber was vented to space. When the secondary reactor completed its cycle and extruded its ionized plasma through to the lance, it would not be contained. The whole process would take twenty seconds.

She activated her emergency bouy. An actual physical process moved a quantum drive containing her entire memory into it. The bouy then closed it's hardened outer shell, and a magnetic rail system launched the bouy at one quarter the speed of light. Five seconds later the plasma hit the containment chamber, and it failed utterly to contain anything. The plasma expanded within the chamber, unconstrained by the magnetic envelope normally generated by the chamber, burned through the walls within a tenth of a second, and then it progressively moved through the machine spaces and into the bridge just forward of the primary communications console. From there, the plasma ate away through the ship from the crew compartments outwards. Her last computation was her own estimated blast radius once her core control was lost; immediately before core control was lost as her primary core was annihilated. The aft camera aboard the bouy recorded the destruction of the Scorpion, and the ever-expanding cloud of organisms which caused her second, and fatal, system corruption.

~

Hoel watched through a viewport as the Widowmakers Heron approached and was grasped at two hardpoints by the docking arms of his Phalanx before being pulled to the dockimg port. He watched the panel next to the hatch as the seal was made and the interconnector was pressurized. When the indicator flashed from red to green, he opened the hatch and approached the Heron and it's pilot, already outside the hatch. Through the transparant docking extension, he could see the details of the Heron, which seemed be loaded strictly for flight, not combat or recon. The Heron and pilot both had an artistic rendering of some kind of predatory fish. The Heron on her nose, the pilot on her helmet.

"Investigator Hoel, I'm Lieutenant Oden, callsign 'Barracuda', and I'll be your ride to the Widowmaker."

"Nice to make your acquaintance. Shall we?"

"That's my orders."

"Very well."

With that, he boarded the Heron strapped himself in, and signaled Lahn that everything was ok through his Computer Access and Communication Chit (CACC). Moments later, Lieutenant Oden activated the vehicle locks, powered up the engine, and Phalanx opened the launch blister and allowed the venting of the atmosphere in the bay to pull them out into space.

The journey to the Widowmaker was efficiently rapid. As they approached, Hoel noted the complete lack of any external viewports on her. There were, however, probably three times more sensor packages dotting her hull than he'd expect, even for such a large ship.

The launch bay they were pulled into had numerous other craft docked, another Heron, six Mosquitos, a Falchion, and four craft of an unusual design he didn't recognize. They were reminiscent of some of the cargo hoppers he'd seen getting cargo from bulk transports into stations where they were too large to directly dock, but these were heavily armed and had additional maneuvering thruster mounts, and, like the Widowmaker herself, had no external viewports. Once docked, Lieutenant Oden directed him to the trio of men entering the bay.

"Second Officer Quimle will escort you to Vice Admiral Locke."

He nodded and indicated the Second Officer lead the way. He took the lead while the two MPs he'd brought with him fell behind. They took him on a winding path with multiple elevator trips until they reached what appeared to be a small briefing room. Inside sat a woman in her mid to late 40s, dark hair greying at the temples, sharp features, piercing grey eyes, and a smile that oozed contempt. She wore no jewelry, just an impeccably maintained, perfectly in regulation uniform. The day uniform, not service or dress. From his initial impression this was a woman with a laser focus on productivity, and very little patience.

"Investigator Hoel, take a seat."

He did so, at the same time, the Second Officer crisply saluted, and with a nod from the Vice Admiral, took his leave. Hoel noted, however, that the MPs took station at the door, on the inside.

"Mr. Hoel, let me begin by saying I have the utmost respect for the OPCA. And I understand the sweeping latitude of your authority."

"Then you know there's no exception to that authority; which makes me wonder exactly what I'm doing here instead of interviewing the crew of the Callisto."

"The crew of the Callisto is dead."

I blinked. Not what I was expecting.

"The Callisto herself is under a Sigma level quarantine until we can isolate the pathogen and develop a counter agent. You understand why it is we cannot allow anyone to approach or board her."

"I'm investigating a possible case of espionage by the Hegemony. People within the Outer Planets working on behalf of a shadowy Hegemony project. Even if anyone aboard the Callisto involved is now dead, access to her communication logs is absolutely within my authority."

"I can't argue that. However I can say that the Callisto was also, at the time of the incident, involved in a mission of utmost important to the Outer Planets. A mission that is quite classified. I cannot possibly give you full access-"

"I-"

"I will however, have the communication logs downloaded, filtered to remove any content with direct relation to Callistos mission expunged, and transferred to the Phalanx, will that be satisfactory?"

"Do I have any other alternative?"

"No."

"Than it'll have to be."

She stood.

"Good. Now if that is all I'll be on my way and you'll be escorted to-"

"One moment, Admiral."

She raised an eyebrow as I pulled out my CACC and set it on the table. I keyed up the recording I'd brought with me.

"The monster walks among us once more. Fuck you Gilead. I've sent an open distress call to the nearest Peacekeeper vessel, a Saturn Cruiser by the name of Callisto on extended patrol. The secret isn't going to keep much longer."

As the recording ended. The Admiral stood silent for a moment before she looked to the MPs.

"Leave us."

As the MPs left, Admiral Locke sat back down and folded her hands on the table.

"Ok, you have my attention. Tell me exactly what you know."

The Libertine Madam is a statue erected in the middle of the New Washington concourse. Its a modified homage to a much older work which once graced an island in ancient times. It's meant to be representative of the First Guarantee of the Hegemony Charter, the right to move freely within the Hegemony without licensing or permits, which was one of the key debates of the first diaspora from Earth.

Lahn stared at the timer. He always set a timer anytime the Captain- Investigator Hoel- left the ship. It was his habit he hid from the Captain. It was his way of having some semblance of control. The Solace was still aiming it's arsenal at the Phalanx. The timer was just now reading two hours. The first ten minutes had just been the transfer From the Phalanx to the Widowmaker. Suddenly the comms panel lit up. He ran to the console and triggered it on.

"-owmaker to Phalanx come in, over."

"Widowmaker this is Phalanx."

"Phalanx, stand by for Investigator Hoel."

"Acknowledged."

There was a brief delay, then the comms came back.

"Phalanx, this Hoel."

"This is Lahn."

"Good, listen, we've got Vice Admiral Locke on our side here. But I need some things. Are you ready to take this down?"

Lahn fumbled with the console, getting it set to record the communication for backup and also take manual input.

"Just, just a- yes."

"Ok, get Orqan in the creche, I want all the files we intercepted sent over asap. I want the boys in the armory to get my armor up to spec, don't skimp by leaving my prosthetic unarmored, make sure it's vacuum ready. Get the Phalanx ready to move and shut down the point defense system, we're going with the Widowmaker to their staging area near the Callisto, there's debris in the area but nothing that should pose a danger and I don't want any accidents or misunderstandings."

"Shut down point defense?"

"Absolutely. They've assured me they've got plenty of interdiction craft on patrol to head off anything well ahead of it hitting the Phalanx."

"Can I get a confirmation?"

"I'd expect nothing less. Confirmation is 'Seattle'."

"Seattle acknowledged and confirmed Captain. I'm on it."

"Good, Hoel out."

~

The main concourse of New Washington, all five miles of it, was littered with corpses. There were only two living beings left aboard the station. One, a forty thousand year old example of unknown powers corrupting a human form, the other, a human example of what humans could do with access to just a small example of those powers.

The survivor walked at a brisk pace, stepping over bodies like it was nothing until he stood just a few meters away.

"I'm human. For the most part."

"For the most part, eh?"

"Yes."

"How do you speak English? Thought it was a dead language or something."

"It is, but I learned it as part of my last assignment."

"What kinda assignment was that?"

"That's a rather... Complicated question."

As Jesses face took on a look of confusion, Viktor smiled.

As the station continued its orbit, the sun moved behind the nearly hundred meters of Libertine Madam, plunging their end of the concourse into darkness.

~

Captain Sayle watched as the bridge crew went about their duties, attending to repairs, collecting reports from the lower decks, supervising reloading and rearming procedures. He interfaced with the Fates Embrace and entered the virtual space. Fatima was waiting, wearing the daily service uniform.

"Captain, how can I be of service?"

"Give me a 3d representation of the ship, show me where we're hurt."

A picture perfect representation of the Fates Embrace resolved into place, followed by red glowing highlights around a large gash in their ventral section venting the primary cargo bay to space, a chunk off their bow armor, and a section of their port drive housing, nothing that would result in immediate catastrophe.

"Fatima, I want the bow armor prioritized, get a crew out to restore that section as soon as possible. I don't like the armor compromised."

"I've already fabricated the necessary components and a repair crew is suiting up for EVA as we speak."

"Before I ordered it? I thought I told you-"

"Lieutenant Tzaki has taken the lead on overseeing repair operations sir. It was done on his orders."

"Oh, well alright then. Any communication from the old man?"

"No sir, combat communication protocols and ECM procedures have restrained me from connecting to the Hub or Olympus Mons."

"Well as soon as we've cleared the battle space I want you to communicate our status and request instructions."

"Aye sir."

With that Captain Sayle exited the virtual space and came back to his real body on the bridge.

"Do we have local communications?"

Tzaki answered as he deftly manipulated his station.

"We've got short range low energy laser, direct ship to ship, but interference is still too heavy to establish fleetwide EM broadcast or battlenet connections, Captain."

"That's fine, get on with our Mosquitos and a reconnaissance Heron, I want them to penetrate the flak cloud and scout to see if there's any more hostiles that didn't get caught in our ambush. If there are, I want a full report on their status and course."

"On it Captain."

~

Captain Longmire tried for the hundredth time to squeeze his hand through the handcuffs and get loose, but the cuffs were simply too tight and well made. He'd have to break his hand to get it out, and despite what television and movies had long portrayed, he was more likely than not to break the wrong bone or break the bone the wrong way and still be stuck, only with a broken bone that wouldn't ever heal right. The cuffs were also looped around a weight bearing support beam behind his back. His captors weren't incompetent.

Still, that didn't mean he had to act defeated. He brought his legs up as close to himself as possible, arched his back, and pushed. His head slid up the support nearly a foot. He rested his back up against the column again and shifted his feet closer, then arched and pushed again. He gained height but his arms were still angled behind him. His shoulders were screaming until he relaxed and leaned his back against the beam. Now fully on his feet, he was able to adjust his angle and bring his arms up the column on the other side. So, now he was standing, leaning against the beam, with his hands cuffed behind him. At least he wasn't sitting like a broken man. When they came back, they'd find him standing defiant and have to look him in the eye.

If psychological warfare was all that was left to him, he damn well wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of submissive behavior.

~

"What do you mean he isn't here?"

Brians voice on the radio sounded hesitant.

"Well, he went out on that chopper of theirs to drop off scouts to try and learn about those people who'd gone after Sarya. He hasn't come back."

"Well how long has he been gone?"

"He took off two hours after you left yesterday morning."

"That's too long, have we heard anything from him?"

"Not a peep."

"Ok, here's what we're going to do. I'm making my way in and you're sending Charlie with horses, while we're on the way in I want you and Franklin to get the boat ready, the one you found at the Oakland docks last fall. Get it fueled and get a couple guys ready."

"Why the boat?"

"If longmire was looking for the landing spot of our uninvited guests, well, we know they didn't come into the bay, we'd have seen them, so, they must've come ashore from the Pacific south of the bridge, west of the city. Overland would take too long, so we'll go by water."

Among the Hell Brigades, the Hussar Centaurs are renowned for their record of never having lost a single engagement they've been a part of. A non-traditional form of mobile Infantry, the Hussars utilize highly adaptable mechanized exoskeletons which effectively make each individual combatant both infantry, armor, and cavalry rolled into one.

Admiral Lancaster stared at the cracked and shattered orb which had once been Mars. His mind raced, breifly going over what could have been the cause before moving on to the eventual fate. Gravity, he knew, would keep the larger sections of the planet together, and eventually much of the ejected detritus would fall back to the planet with some possibly remaining in orbit and forming a ring system. But, none of that was important for the moment. At the moment, he had much more urgent concerns.

He turned his attention away from the planet below to the ships main status display. He saw that the aft section of the ship including the entirety of the engine bulb was drifting nearly a kilometer away, and with it, the ships main power core. According to the display, they had emergency reserves for the next twenty minutes before they'd lose all power. He thought of ordering exposure procedure and shutting down life support, but realized Daq, as an unaugmented, wouldn't survive. He had a thought about that, however.

"Daq!"

The man had to take a moment to unattach himself from the bulkhead he'd been clinging to before he responded.

"Yes Admiral?"

"The foremost launch bay seems unaffected. I want you to get down there and board a courier."

"A courier? What the hell do you expect me to do aboard a courier?"

"Nothing. I want you in a craft with independent life support, now go."

It took Vegman a moment to understand, then he gave a single nod and departed the bridge. The admiral then turned to the actual captain of the Halberds Edge, a man by the name of Plotter.

"Captain Plotter, when I came aboard a number of HBs came aboard with me, an entourage from the Peacekeeping Sovereign, where exactly were they quartered, and where did you have their gear stored?"

~

Hoel adjusted the glove of his armor, making sure the fit was snug and the environmental seal just above the wrist was secure. Once he was confident of the seal, he turned to his left and the young Lieutenant Commander that Admiral Locke had assigned to accompany them on this excursion.

"Hey, what's your name again?"

"Reagan, Mr. Hoel. Lt.Com. Reagan."

"Alright Lt.Com. Reagan, here's the plan. Admiral Locke has agreed to let us board the Callisto as a part of my investigation. First, I intend to see if we can get the lights back on. I understand the main power core is thought to be undamaged?"

"Yes, we believe it shut itself down automatically-"

"Good, once that's done I am going to the bridge, if I cannot access the communications records from there, depending on the reason we may be headed to the main computer or the primary transceiver assembly access. The need to visit other parts of the ship may arise-"

"Mr. Hoel-"

"Investigator."

"-Investigator Hoel, I've been given orders that we're to try and activate any emergency backup power and then use the first operable computer access we find, get your info and get out."

"I doubt that'll work, what I'm looking for is sensitive, it's probably not going to be accessible from any random access or secondary storage. We'll need the primary power core. We need the main computer fully online. What I'm after may be restricted to command access, if that's the case we'll also need a bridge console, with its preauthorization to restricted systems, to get at it. The main computer can't run off of the backups."

"Even if we were to go to the bridge, it has its own dedicated backup as well-"

"Which may be dead. And even if it isn't, if it is in the main computer it only functions with main power. We'll need both the bridge and the main computer in case-"

"I've been given the Callistos master access code algorithm. If the data is accessible on the general interlinked system we'll be able to get it from any console."

"And if the data I need is stored in the main computer or an independent subsystem unconnected to the console we find? Or if the damage to the ship is greater than expected and the system I need access to is cut off?"

"Then we'll return to the Widowmaker and you'll have to try to convince the Admiral to allow another trip."

"That is not acceptable Commander!"

"With all due respect, Investigator, I have my orders and I will not deviate from them."

~

Captain Sayle took note that the field of protective flak that had screened them was rapidly dissipating. The hyperion lances which had been the main thrust of their ambush also served to create a dense bubble of ionized gas which was now expanding, its force and the kinetic reaction of the debris of the destroyed ships was sufficient to create a hole in the field which was expanding every second. The first indicator something was wrong was a flash communication from the Ebony Glacier, one of the smaller frigates which had managed to thus far go undamaged. Then came the attack.

A massive shaft of golden light poured through the hole in the field and completely encompassed the Orion, a half dozen Mosquitos, and countless pieces of debris. The beam existed for a little less than three quarters of a second but when it stopped everything that had been in its path was simply gone.

Fatima took the liberty of focusing her visual sensors through the gap in the field to the source of the beam. For several seconds Captain Sayle studied the ship that floated on the other side. Twice as long as the Fates Embrace, with four sets of Hyperion Lances, her port and starboard lined with missile cell clusters. She lacked the bow armor most vessels had and instead had a gaping opening, filled with concentric circles of machinery which generated and confined the energies of her main weapon. She was a Cruiser, no doubt. The biggest most well armed ship flying. He couldn't make out her name before the firing mechanism of her main armament, a Thanos lance, the source of the beam which had obliterated the Orion, glowed and fired again.

~

As the sun once again came from behind the Libertine Madam Viktor approached the confused man out of time and shook his hand.

"Jesse Jesse Jesse... How I've longed to meet you."

"Charmed, now who the hell are ya?"

"You can call me Viktor."

"That ain't your name though, is it?"

"No, my name would be a little hard for you to pronounce, I'm Venusian."

"Uh-huh... And you know me... How?"

"Well I know of you, you see I'm a part of the Project."

"So you're one of Gileads lackeys, huh?"

"Not entirely."

"What'cha mean?"

"At this point Gilead heads our organization, but there's differing schools of thought as to exactly how to accomplish our goals. I'm part of a small group who don't exactly align with Gileads vision."

"I see, I see... So... You ain't gonna like, try and capture me, take me down to that metal pyramid thingamajig?"

"Far from it Jesse. If we're right, then restraining you is the the exact opposite of what would be best. But for now, we have to get moving. Your little genocide here isn't going to go unnoticed, soon, Hegemony Internal Security Forces will swarm aboard this station, it's best we not be here when they arrive."

With that the Venusian and the Specimen began walking towards the docking bay access.

New York was one of the longest continually lived in cities left at the time of the Diaspora. Many there could trace their lineages back thousands of years. While the city was mostly deconstructed as a part of the efforts to help the planet recover from millennia of pollution, several historical buildings were left intact and in fact were isolated and preserved from the outside environment. The HCA has maintained a schedule of regular evaluations of these buildings and maintained their preservation accordingly. The oldest preservation isn't actually a building, but a statue of some note...

Investigator Hoel floated the last few feet to the port amidship hatch of the Callisto. As he gently grabbed hold of the ring surrounding the hatch he felt a faint and very subtle vibration that disappeared just as quickly as it came. Moments later Lieutenant Commander Reagan made contact with the ring on the opposite side. As he watched Reagan open up the access panel and trigger the airlock cycle, movement caught his eye in the periphery. Gently turning while carefully maintaining his grip, he watched as the Heron which had brought them to the Callisto moved off.

"Reagan..."

"Yes Investigator?"

"You made no mention that the Heron wasn't going to stay on station."

"Standard procedure during a quarantine."

"No... No it isn't."

"Excuse me sir?"

"No, it isn't. I familiarized myself with biohazard and quarantine protocols before we came. Vacuum is the best shield possible, even a half a meter is acceptable distance-"

"Begging your pardon sir but you must be mistaken. Ever since we got in the vicinity of the Callisto we've been maintaining a minimum 1 km distance from her at all times unless called for and authorized by orders."

At that point the hatch rumbled and started rotating, allowing the inner and outer openings to line up and give access to the airlock. The interior of the airlock was dimly lit by four yellow strobing lights, the window into the ship at the next set of doors showed nothing but darkness. They each used handholds to maneuver into the airlock, arranging themselves in order to orient with the ships established axis. Once they were in place they placed their boots on the deck and activated the electromagnets in the soles to hold them to it. Lt.Com. Reagan punched in the commands to close the outer door and run the airlock cycle.

After the door closed the light from distant Darien was cut out and they were lit by only the strobes. It seemed almost an eternity before they went from a strobing discordant yellow to a solid red, indicating a failure to reach a state conducive to human life. Reagan punched a few controls before he came in the comms.

"This section is exposed to vacuum, we keep the suits on."

"Very well, open it."

"It'll take me a minute to override the safeties."

"Do it."

There was another shudder from the Callisto just before Reagan completed getting the door open. As it yawned open the flashing illuminated a section of corridor. There were a few loose crystals of some kind of frozen liquid floating and bouncing off the walls in a slow tumble, but that was all. He couldn't tell what the liquid might have been before it was frozen. It was a dark crimson. That meant it was either hydraulic fluid... Or blood.

Hoel took the lead and stepped over the threshold into the corridor. He turned to look back just as Reagan keyed the door closed, Hoel in the Callisto, Reagan in the airlock. He cocked his head in confusion as Reagan frowned and shook his head through the porthole.

"Reagan, what in Deimos!?"

"Sorry Investigator."

The comms cut off as Reagan twisted a knob on the chest of his suit filling the channels with static. Hoel watched as he cycled the outer hatch and exited to the outer hull, just as the Heron came back. He realized the static must have been some kind of prearranged signal. That told him all he needed to know.

As the Heron departed with Reagan he turned back to his situation. He was unarmed, with air for four hours presuming he didn't get to excited. He'd been abandoned, likely left to die, and the communication suite in his armor didn't have the power to broadcast through the hull, so there was no calling for help from the Phalanx... At least not with his own comms.

He turned to look at the location diagram affixed to the bulkhead nearest to him and activated his armor's built in lighting. All Peacekeeper vessels displayed such diagrams near access ports by regulation. He spent a few seconds committing it to memory before turning and moving down the corridor towards the intersection, where he knew he'd be making a right turn to head for the bow.

~

Jesse and Viktor walked briskly through the passageway from the main concourse to the maintenance bay. Jesse kept a step behind to keep an eye on Viktor.

"So, uh, where we goin'?"

"We've got to get off this station."

"Well yeah, but, where we goin'?"

"You mean after leaving the station."

"Yeah."

"If we're lucky, Earth."

"Shit I just got away from there."

"I'm not taking you back to the Project, don't worry."

"You couldn't if you wanted to. I wouldn't go. I got my ways of resisting."

"You're right about that."

"So where we goin'?"

"A ruin. Ancient city."

"What like Machu Pichu?"

"What?"

"You ain't never heard of Machu Pichu?"

"No, we're going to New York."

"Shit, it's a ruin?"

"Yeah, it's been abandoned for nearly five thousand years, since the Diaspora."

"The what-spora?"

Viktor stopped in his tracks and looked at Jesse.

"Look, I understand you're out of the loop. But if I have to update you on everything that's happened in the past forty thousand years it'll take the rest of my life, and we don't have that kind of time, so can it just wait until we get on the ship?"

"Ok, what ship?"

"My ship, the Templar."

"Well ok then, lead the way."

~

Captain Sayle flinched as the Thanos Lance obliterated the Ganymede entirely and sheared the Ebon Cutlass in half.

"Fatima coordinate all fire down that things gullet; we need to take that lance out!"

"Aye Captain."

The ship's AI reacted faster than the human crew could. Targeting systems locked in the mechanisms inside the firing aperture of the cruiser within a second of the lance petering out. He felt the telltale shudder in the ship as missiles were launched, seconds later the gimbals got the Hyperion Lances on target and the Heavy Ion Laser on their belly was aimed as well. He watched several large curved sections of armor move forward into place over the aperture at the same time as several point defense emplacements opened fire on the incoming missiles. The Hyperions and the laser fired, but with the armor in place the intersection of the Hyperions didn't take place, instead hitting the armor separately and harmlessly radiating into space. The laser cut a score into the armor but didn't penetrate. The few surviving missiles hit and detonated against the bow. Their nuclear payload momentarily causing the viewers to polarize dark before going to infrared, which showed the armor heated, but not buckled.

Moments later the coordinated fire of their remaining fleet came in, delayed by distance and communication time as orders were passed along and confirmed. The result was similar, the Cruisers point defense emplacements prevented most missiles from penetrating while the armor plates over the Thanos Lance held against the lasers and stopped the different beams of Hyperions before they intersected. There was a pregnant pause, for just a second after the last gasps of the nuclear detonations faded, then the cruiser struck back.

~

Vegman watched from the inside of the Heron as Admiral Lancaster used his personal CACC and one of the maintenance crews 3D projectors, (normally used to show exploded views of engines to assist with diagnosis and repair), to explain to the Hell Brigades his plan. He had to use the projector to put his explanation in text in the air because life support aboard the Halberds Edge had died ten minutes previously.

He didn't have the best angle to read it, but so far as he could tell, the HBs were supposed to use their grapples, normally used to quickly scale buildings in an urban combat environment, to daisy chain one of their members to the aft drive section of the Halberds Edge, get aboard, secure a tow cable, and allow the main hull of the ship to reel in the aft section close enough to get power transfer cables stretched between them and get the main reactor back to power the rest of the ship.

It was an ambitious plan. He hoped it worked. The Heron had the longest life support of any of the auxiliary craft aboard, but even with weeks of stores, he wasn't looking forward to dying in it.

The Unification Proclamation of 1284 Post-Phenomenon (PP) was the declaration of the existing nation states of the time to create a lasting and authoritative Democratic world government. Different from the international organisations of the past which existed with narrowly defined goals and little authority to enforce their dictates. The full promise of the proclamation took nearly fifty more years and the last international war to come to fruition, however.

Vegman watched the Herons monitor as it relayed the sensor feed from the Halberd's Edges dorsal sensor package. The feed was starting to get a bit pixelated as the ships emergency batteries drained. Still, he was able to make it that the HBs were in top form. Trying to daisy chain themselves in space to reach the stern of the ship. They were executing the operation in almost perfect precision. As one HB would launch themselves into the void towards the stern, the last HB in the chain would launch their grapple to its full length, the HB launched would be grabbed as they floated by, swinging the entire chain out to a predetermined angle, and when it was reached they'd all simultaneously fire a monopropellant thruster to act as a brake and keep them in position.

He couldn't hear it, but there was constant communication and timing efforts being coordinated along secure channels. Calculations were made to adjust firing angles, for midflight monopropellant thrusts to alter inertia and direction, and a mission clock running down to the time where the stern would be forever beyond their reach. Every millisecond was planned in advance. But to Veg, unfamiliar as he was with the precision of zero-g infantry operations, the whole thing looked like some kind of insane shot-from-the-hip improvisation which just happened to be working.

As such, he was dipping into the Herons supplies, which included (for morale purposes only) a liter of low-alcohol Venusian Whiskey, several ounces of Synthetic Tobacco, and six hardwood pipes.

He drew on the pipe for a few moments, opening his lips to draw air in along with the smoke. After a breif pause he blew out the dense cloud of grey smoke. His tongue and cheeks burned from the smoke. He immediately sipped out of the straw attached to the whiskey to replace the burn from one with the burn from the other. His eyes watered from the irritation briefly before the atmosphere systems in the Heron drew it away to be filtered out and the air recirculated.

Without warning, the lights outside in the hangar bay dimmed and the feed cut out.

~

Professor Walthers looked up as the boat passed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. As he looked back towards the bow of the boat he was momentarily thankful that they were pursuing this in the early hours of the day. If it had been evening the sun would be ahead of them reflecting off the water and blinding them.

Franklin, one of his former students, was driving the boat, deftly maneuvering the boat back and forth to catch the easiest points between the waves. In the back, Brian was belted into his seat, one hand holding a high powered rifle of some kind, the other holding a radio as he tried repeatedly to raise anyone from Longmires team.

As he watched the south shore on the western side of the bridge give away from cliffs to beaches and residential neighborhoods, he thought he saw someone there for a breif moment, but a hearty bump as the boat hit a wave forced him to look away as he caught his balance. When he looked back, there was nothing.

~

The Templar was a mid-size transport, rated for carrying cargo or passengers from surface to orbit and vice versa. She was kept in perfect shape, but aesthetically she was far from pretty. Carbon scoring from hundreds of re-entries blackened the heat shielding on the vessels anterior hull. Unlike larger Hegemony vessels, the Templar wasn't built along the three section philosophy of bow, core, and engine bulb, but as one solid shape, somewhat resembling a teardrop. The forward rounded section encompassed the cockpit and forward observation ports for when carrying passengers, while the pointed stern was lined along either side with blisters which, when underway, would open to reveal engine bulbs and maneuvering thrusters. From the belly, through other blackened blisters, emerged four landing legs and the loading ramp. Which Viktor and Jesse were now climbing to enter the craft.

"...so Earth's dang near abandoned?"

"Very nearly. Five thousand years now."

"Got-dang son... And whats going on now?"

"Well, right now there's what looks like the beginnings of a war on, but that's not really what's concerning us."

"What're we worried "bout then?"

As they reached the top of the ramp and Viktor keyed it's retraction into the ship. He indicated Jesse follow him forward to the cockpit as he continued speaking.

"You remember the beginning, the Shards & the Tall Ones?"

"Uh, yeah. That's kinda hard to forget."

"Well it's been forty thousand years."

"Forty thou- shit, the professor said- doesn't that mean-"

"Yeah, it's time. They're either on their way or will be soon."

"And you wanna go to Earth?"

As Viktor sat himself in the pilots seat and secured the restraints he indicated Jesse should do the same in one of the passenger seats.

"New York has a Project facility we can use."

"Use for what?"

"Finishing unfinished business."

"Aw man you gonna go vague on me like that?"

Viktor activated the controls with a wave of his hand and started the warm up sequence.

"There's a lot involved you wouldn't understand."

"Vick, I'm human, but I've spent the last forty millennia with my soul or my mind or whatever swimmin' in the consciousness of- well I still don't know exactly. Something, something beyond my comprehension, even as expanded as its become."

"All right. The facility houses the projects tertiary tachyometric capacitor."

Jesse gave him a blank stare.

"Thought so" said Viktor.

~

Hoel panned the light around the corridor. The markings indicated he was still on course for the bridge, where he hoped to gain access to the Callistos communications, both to get the records he was after and to call his Phalanx for rescue. He moved forward to the next intersection, where one of the ships emergency bulkheads had slammed shut to isolate the bridge.

He opened the access panel in the center and started twisting the valve control to release the locks manually. To leverage it he had to activate the electromagnets in his boots. As the locks disengaged he felt the ship shudder again. This time, however, he could feel that it had come from aft of his position. He moved from the lock valve to the door portal release. Then he braced himself and pushed, forcing the bulkhead back into its recess. Beyond, he could see another stretch of corridor, and as the lights from his suit pierced the darkness, at the end of it, another sealed bulkhead labeled "bridge".

Another shudder.

Now he looked behind. He'd come around an intersection to reach this junction, but the way he hadn't come ended in another emergency bulkhead, and that one was... Strange. It was coated in ice, and the whole thing seemed buckled outward.

With another shudder it bent towards him even more. Hoel realized whatever was on the other side of that door, he didn't want to meet it.

~

Councilwoman Rivet stormed off the transport, through the connection umbilical, and ignored the cries of security and processors that followed in her wake, one by one being silenced by her assistant with her council credentials. She didn't have time to spare dealing with bureaucracy. She needed to get to a transmitter capable of interacting with the Gate network to get a message to the Project as soon as possible. It would certainly end her career, her freedom, maybe even her life, but it had to be done.

She pressed through the crowd towards the lift which she hoped would take her to the colonies operations center. Her fist tightly gripping the module which held all the data she had on the events crashing over the outer planets like a tidal wave.

Sometimes in conflict with their ecological mandate, the HCA works within the Terra Accords to preserve more than half a dozen notable historic sites. The first interplanetary launch site at Bozeman, the first sentient AI (named Turing) at Brasov, the military graves of the last terrestrial conflict at Hebei, the Genetic Vault at Lima, and most notably and with great difficulty, the Oceanic Retreat of Miami.

Hoel watched as another dent appeared in the hatch at the end of the passageway, the grey metal stretching over the impact point in the shape of a fist. A very large fist made up of fingers with far too many joints. Barely a half second later another shudder passed through him delivered by his boots magnetized to the decking. From his foot and his prosthetic up through his thighs and into his guts. He turned, and with great effort pulled the hatch valve a half turn back, bringing a solid foot of the hatch out of its recess in the bulkhead. He turned sideways and maneuvered through the gap and took cover behind it on the other side.

He turned off his suits lighting and reached up to one of the bulbs attached to the helmet. They were detachable with an independent battery, meant to be used in zero-g to set up directional lighting and leave one's hands free. He kept it in his hand, his gloved fist wrapped around the vaguely lemon-sized object, his eyes locked on the hatch as it bent and cracked with impacts from the other side, each one throwing out shards of ice into the passageway.

Whatever it was on the other side, he was glad it didn't know how to use the manual release valves. It gave him an advantage he intended to use. As the aft hatch split he activated the bulb in his hand and pushed it towards the intersection he'd entered the passageway from. As he'd hoped, it bounced off the far bulkhead and careened down the starboard passageway, spinning and producing a kind of strobe effect as it went.

As the unknown creature burst through the aft hatch he saw the briefest image of crinkled white flesh and glowing yellow eyes in the bulbs spinning light. Whatever it was, it took the bait and went down the starboard passage as he pushed the valve the rest of the way and closed the hatch. Turning, he pushed off from the floor and floated the ten meters or so to the bridge hatch. There, he nudged the overhead just enough to stop his forward momentum and push himself to the deck, where his boots anchored once again.

He opened the manual release panel to find it caked with frozen hydraulic fluid. No power, no manual release. He felt a shudder come up through the deck. He turned, the hatch he'd come through was still pristine. Whatever it was, it was trying to get through some other place. He turned bank to the hatch. On closer inspection, it wasn't fully closed. There was a centimeter gap in the edges of the hatch. Not enough for him to get a finger into, at least not in the suit, but...

He searched the various pouches along the arms and thighs of the suit, looking among the standard supplies and tools to see if there was anything he might use to pry it open. He found a small tool he didn't recognize in a pouch along his right forearm. A small rectangular slip of metal with odd squarish teeth along one edge, but it was roughly 7 or 8 millimeters thick, just enough for him to try and use it to pry the door open. He wedged it in and pulled. Nothing.

The door didn't budge. He tried pushing with the same result. He stopped and thought for a second. His mind going back to his childhood, the school he attended, the first introductory lessons of simple machines. He went back to the tools in his right thigh pouch. A set of pliers. The head wasn't thin enough to fit in the crack in the door, but the handles were long. He grasped the slip of metal in the head of the pliars and wedged it back into the hatch. Some ancient philosopher, he couldn't remember the name... "Give me a lever long enough..."

With a sudden violence the hatch broke seal, and a rush of atmosphere blew his tools and him into the passageway.

~

Jesse struggled with the harness attached to the aged seat, trying to get it over his larger than average bulk.

"So what's the thingamajig gonna do for us?"

Viktor didn't look up from the controls as he focused on their descent towards Earth's atmosphere.

"It's... Complicated. It's a backup to a backup of the method we use to manipulate time. Mostly it's used for historical research. Very precise historical research. Have you ever heard of the observer effect?"

"Uh... No."

"Ok, have you ever heard in discussions about particle physics the phrase 'what you observe you change'?"

"I think I heard something like that in a movie once."

Viktor keyed the observation ports closed as they'd be hitting atmosphere in a few minutes. The course locked in, he'd turned to Jesse.

"Ok, essentially, some subatomic particles have states of being, charges, directions, etc, that are kind of fluid. They're not consistent, and the very act of observing them, of using a tool to find out their current state, alters them."

"What's that got to do with your dealybobber?"

"The easiest way I can explain it is that it's like a telescope that lets us look at the past, in very precise ways. We can look at what happened in a specific place, at an exact time range. But the very act of looking there causes a kind of ripple effect, it changes the state of matter in that space/time that corrupts or spoils it for our telescope."

"So, if you like, look at my house on the 4th of July, you can't look at anything else that happened anywhere else on that 4th of July."

"Worse, it makes it so that we can't look at your house, or at the location where your house was or would be, ever again. We get one shot, and if we miscalculate, the opportunity is lost to us forever."

"So what are we gonna do with it? What are we lookin' to look at, I mean."

"I want to find out the original vector of the Shards when they came before. To be honest I'm actually hoping we won't have to use it. I hope that that info is something they've either already discovered, or, if not, that they haven't tried looking for it before, so that it's still possible to see."

"Where you going to look for it?"

"What do you mean?"

The ship rocked as they started hitting the first outermost layers of atmosphere thick enough to heat up.

"I mean, let's say they ain't got that info already, where you going to point the telescope?"

"The facility also houses the Projects unofficial record keeper, an AI called Omnibus, he'll know where to look."

"Ok, so... What's this got to do with me?"

The Templar shook chaotically as they crashed through reentry to Earth.

~

Professor Walthers tried to help with dragging their boat to shore, but between the three younger men that were with him and his bum leg, he wasn't of much use, mostly floundering in the surf as they dragged the launch and him up onto the beach. When the boat was high enough not to be carried away by the next high tide they all took a moment to rest and shake the salt and sand off before they gathered their rifles and packs before starting the hike up the roads from sea cliff beach.

The main body of San Francisco stood between them and Oakland, so the radio was useless. Still, he kept it on, hoping against hope that he'd hear something from Captain Longmire. The rest of them were silent except for the occasional offer to help Walthers as he struggled against a literal uphill effort. Once they reached a bend in the road and the terrain flattened out a bit he called for a brief respite. Using mainly one leg had resulted in a rather vicious cramp that he needed to work out before the next climb.

One man pulled out a water bottle and a bag of trail mix and passed it around while Walthers massaged his calf. They were good men, but as they chatted and relaxed, he couldn't help but notice that their attitudes seemed muted, almost fearful. He supposed that perhaps they weren't as hopeful as he was about their chances to find Longmire and his men alive. They'd heard about the firefight from when Longmire had gone to rescue Sarya.

He groaned as he felt the knot untwist from his calf. He gave it a few more appreciative rubs before grasping the guardrail to pull himself up. He took hold of his cane and gave it a quick rap against the rail to get the attention of his companions.

"Marcus, Cole, Leonard, let's get moving, we're burning daylight."

With a few rolled eyes they grabbed up their gear, including the rifles, and got moving up the next stretch of the road heading upwards towards the abandoned Sea Cliff neighborhood of western San Francisco, and all the bodies of its former residents.

As he climbed, he intentionally let his mind wander. Unfortunately it wandered back to his conversation with Dr. Tailler...

~

Captain Sayle watched in what felt like slow motion as the tactical display in the center of the bridge showed the cruisers hyperion lances coalescing around the bow armor of the Fate's Embrace. Indicator lights around the bridge flashed red as klaxons wailed. They were followed immediately by missiles penetrating the debris field and homed in on the the burning hulk of the Ebon Cutlass, the Hypnos, and the Vigilant Watchman, as well as the larger pieces of what were once the Ganymede. He reached down for the tactile interface on the right armrest of his chair and interfaced with Fatima.

In moments, orders were relayed to the appropriate stations, as quickly as he could think them, faster than anyone could've ever relayed them by voice. A chorus of 'ayes' accompanied the receipt of them. He watched the display in the center of the room alter to show the various preparations being made throughout the ship.

The damage control teams that had been preparing to EVA to repair the forward hull were stowing the armor sections and re-equipping for their new objectives. The launch and recovery teams were clearing the bays to make room for the Mosquitos, Falchions, & *Herons that were even now being recalled by 2nd Lt. DuLee. The ship rocked as another battery of fire from her missile pods and Hyperion lances shot out at the last coordinates of the Cruiser. He waited for the inevitable impacts from the cruisers returning fire... But none came.

He waited a beat of his heart, then two, then ordered 2nd Lt. DuLee to keep one of the remaining Falchion heavy fighters deployed and have it scout past the interference zone.

As he watched the Falchion, callsign 'Rabbit' deftly maneuvered out of the position it had been taken off their port beam and set out at an angle roughly 45° off their orbital, he heard footsteps coming from behind. Commander Bradford was standing- barely- just aft of his chair. His uniform was in tatters, his face and hands were coated with blood, and he seemed to missing his left shoe.

"XO what the hell happened to you?"

"I apologize for my tardiness Captain, I was on my way to the bridge, taking the passageway through the crew quarters in Gamma deck when we got hit just aft of there. I took a hit, but I'm alright. I've spent the last few minutes helping triage and move the wounded."

"Your place is here Commander."

"I also had to wait until damage control cleared the passageway to let me come forward."

"I'll excuse it this time. Go back to my office and use my head, get yourself cleaned up, it'll be a few minutes until Rabbit's in position to report anything."

"Aye sir."

~

Longmire watched as the door to the compartment opened, a young man with a rifle- a Howa Type 89 by the looks of it- gave the compartment a quick glance over before calling to someone outside the room. The language was rapid chatter to his ears, but he discerned one combination Fukudu-San that he recognized as name and honorific.

Moments later the same man from before, Mr. M, walked into the room, bringing with him a folding chair and a briefcase. He calmly unfolded the chair, sat down, and opened the briefcase, pulling out a yellow legal pad and a pen.

"Hello Captain-"

He paused, cocked his head to the side, and looked out the open door before rattling off a quick sentence. He looked back at Longmire, who still stood defiantly against the post.

"Captain, I put a stop to the torture ordered by my superiors. Now I've asked for a chair for you, as well as a meal. I hope you will understand that I am not your enemy here. So if you'll give me your word that you'll behave yourself, for the duration of your meal and our conversation, I'll allow you to sit comfortably, free of the handcuffs. Will you agree to behave yourself?"

Longmire stared, unblinking. The gears turning in his head. This was classic interrogation technique, trying to be his friend, trying to earn goodwill. The problem is the schools diverged after this point. If he refused or accepted, it was likely to be followed by severely worse treatment either as punishment for uncooperative behavior if he refused, or, as punishment for not cooperating more with intelligence after being shown kindness. It was a no-win scenario. They'd already shown their hands with the beating in the beginning. These were not reasonable men. He decided, and he nodded.

Mr. M, or, Mr. Fukudu as was more likely, smiled before waving in another guard with a chair and a tray. He set the chair down, pushing it open against the deck before placing the tray on the seat. He then pulled out a set of keys and removed the handcuffs. The guard then picked up the tray and with a hand gesture, indicated Longmire should sit. When he did so the guard handed him the tray before leaving the room.

"See Captain, we can be accommodating."

The tray had a ball of rice, a couple of what looked to be meatballs on sticks, and some kind of thick fluffy noodles in a small bowl in what smelled like streaming broth of some kind. There was also a small metal cup of what looked like some kind of tea.

He decided right then and there he wasn't going to trust any kind of flavored liquid they gave him. He indicated the cup with a finger as he bit into one of the meatballs.

"Is that tea?"

"It is."

"Not to be ungrateful, but I quit caffeine a few years ago. Just so next time, water instead."

"I'll try to remember. So Captain, I hope you'll forgive the impropriety, but I hope we can speak while you eat."

"Sure."

"I know you're not going to cooperate with my questions about the US government, but I hope you'll be more forthcoming if my questions are of a more personal manner?"

"You already have all the personal information I'm willing to divulge."

"Let me guess..."

"Benjamin Longmire, Captain, US Navy, Serial Number Two Four Seven Eight One One Three Nine Four."

The man's eyes hardened.

"So be it Captain."

The Oceanic Retreat of Miami was one of mankind's last great undertakings before the exodus. Miami having been submerged under the Atlantic Ocean for nearly a hundred years at that point due to a changing climate, the effort was intended to create a combination maritime sanctuary and an underwater historical museum, where guests could travel through sealed positive pressure observation corridors through the streets of the city.

Councilwoman Rivet shifted her weight from one foot to the other. He left hand gripped the railing of the transport lift with a white knuckled intensity, she had to be mindful of her right hand to not to crush the data module. The lights indicated passing levels flashed by the transparent sections of the lifts walls. Her intern, a short, dark haired little woman barely out of her teens who reminded Rivet of a mouse, turned, opened her mouth to speak, decided against it, and turned back to the doors. It seemed like several minutes before the lift stopped and the doors opened directly onto the lowest section of the Colonies command center. She looked around until she saw the telltale screens of frequencies and Communications Channels that indicated the Colonies uplink. She wasted no time in climbing the small set of stairs to that level, ignoring the protests from the guard as her intern rushed to show her identification. She pushed the young ensign out of the way and leaned over the console, shoving the module into a data port as soon as she found it.

She felt rather than heard a presence behind her as she searched for the control to alter the frequency of the transceiver.

"Can I help you ma'am?"

She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the man's face in favor of looking for his rank insignia- a Colonel of the Colonial Peacekeepers.

"No, I'm fine I just need to- never mind."

There it was. She twisted the knob over to the appropriate frequency, a Project frequency. She selected the dataport and jammed her finger down on the transmit button.

Nothing. A prompt appeared on the screen asking for an authorization code. This was the moment her career ended. If she put in her code than the Colonial Peacekeepers would know she sent out classified information to an unknown channel. She had no way of erasing the record. Her moment of hesitation saved her, or maybe fate intervened, but the colonel reached past her and keyed in his own six digits. The prompt disappeared and the it indicated the massage had been sent.

"Sorry about that ma'am. The colony transceiver is locked to official use only due to the state of emergency."

"Oh, thank you."

"No problem at all ma'am, is there any other way I can help the Council today?"

"No, thank you, I just needed to get that sent as soon as possible."

"Very well ma'am. I'll get back to my duties."

With a quick salute which she halfheartedly waved away, he turned sharply and marched off. The communications ensign who watched the whole exchange looked up at her quizzically.

"Ma'am, don't Council Members have their own authorization codes?"

She gave him a blank stare and then turned and walked away, back down the stairs and into the lift, her intern scurrying after her.

"It's only a reprieve." She thought.

"Soon enough the Peacekeepers will track down the Colonel, he'll admit to failing to follow security procedure and lose rank, but he'll point to me. The ensign will surely back him up, and I'll be done for."

"But, it may buy me enough time to do mankind one last service."

~

Daq Vegman counted silently. He got to nearly three hundred before he gave up the exercise. Power wasn't going to come back anytime soon. He opened his eyes to the cabin, illuminated only by the low glow of the Heron's control panel. He watched as the last grew wisps of smoke were sucked into the overhead air circulation vent, destined to be pulled through twisting and turning conduits until it hit the central air filtration unit that he could hear subtly hissing somewhere aft.

He took a deep breath, the cool, metallic air proof that the system was functioning as intended, for the moment anyway. The indicator on the panel showed that at this rate of consumption the vessel could operate for nearly 3 months. And that was really the limiting factor. The Heron was an adaptable little ship. It could be a light bomber, a reconnaissance vessel, or a patrol ship like this one. It was designed in this role to carry a crew of six and operate independently for up to three weeks, which meant it's stores of food and water were enough for six adults for that long. Some quick mental arithmetic told him he had provisions for 18 weeks. He'd suffocate before he starved.

Of course, this was all assuming he was trapped and that the Hell Brigades failed. With the feed cut out he could only guess. If they did fail, he supposed it might be possible to use the Herons weapons to blow a hole in the side of the Halberd's Edge and possibly make his way outside to Mars orbit. But that prospect wasn't too particularly sanguine either; from what he'd seen, the Gate was destroyed and Mars itself wasn't much better off. Phobos or Ceres might be intact, but he'd have no way of knowing, and Deimos was forbidden... There might not be anywhere to go to even if he did manage to leave.

~

Viktor danced his hands across the controls with the dexterity of a musician as he monitored the Templars systems they entered the Earths atmosphere. Several of the ships screens- old style false 3d images on flat displays- still displayed the rather strongly worded automated warnings the ship had received from the HCA as they descended from New Washington. As they broke through the ionosphere and their communications cleared, they resumed, and included new transmissions from a Peacekeeper Falchion that was at the moment descending through their own reentry, giving chase to attempt to enforce the Terra Accords.

Jesse, unaccustomed to space travel, was trying not to throw up in sheer terrified panic.

"IS. THIS. NORMAL?"

"Yes, it is, stop screaming."

"I. CAN'T. H-HELP IT."

"Jesse, please."

Jesse confined to whimper to himself as Viktor disengaged the reentry shielding on the engineering blisters and opened them to gain control over the crafts descent and take it from freefall to powered flight. He kept an eye on the radar and the proximity of the Falchion. It was currently some 230 kilometers behind them and some 700 kilometers up, but was descending quickly. Viktor knew that the Templar couldn't outrun it, certainly couldn't fight it. He'd hoped that they could make it down- what with the state of emergency going on- without being detected. His next option was one he didn't relish.

He reached out to the comm panel and brought up a frequency encoding used only for Project access. He used his tactile interface to submit his HubID and access code to send a Project override signal back to the pursuing Falchion. In response, the computers warned him the Falchion had gained target lock. Just a few seconds later that warning became urgent as it launched a missile.

"Viktor! Viktor! What's that sound mean?"

"Hold on tight and I'll tell you in a minute!"

Viktor took the stick and threw the Tempest into a hard dive, using Earths gravity and their thrust to gain speed. He planned to take the vessel as low as possible and hopefully lose the missile in interference from terrain, but he saw with dread that they were still over the central Atlantic and several hundred kilometers from any landfall. His plans were short lived however as the proximity warning lit up, the missile was only 50 kilometers behind and closing fast, too fast.

"Jesse hold on-"

He was cut off as the missile impacted and detonated. The ship lurched and went dark as all power aboard cut out completely. The vessel became eerily silent in the last few seconds as the blue waters of the Atlantic rushed up to meet them.

Madam President Amanda Fox was the leader of the Martian Republic during the War of the Field. Some historians blame her for the war, attesting that had she been more willing to compromise during the negotiations surrounding the Bulk Fuel Compact of 20978PP, armed conflict might have been avoided. Others feel that the demands of the Jupiter League were excessive from the onset, and that nothing she could've done would've averted war, only delayed it.

Investigator Hoel reached out, grasping, pawing for gain or friction against the bulkheads as he tumbled, his tools ricocheting around him only briefly illuminated as they sailed through the beam splayed out from his suit light. He felt his hand briefly impact what felt like a railing, then his boot caught on something and his tumbling came to a sudden jarring end. He bent and brought his remaining helmet light to bear on his boots to see his right foot wedged firmly between the overhead and one of the lighting fixtures of the passage.

He pushed down with his left and it affixed magnetically to the overhead and tried to pull his right out of the fixture, but it didn't budge. He tried jerking the boot this way and that to try and loosen it but to no avail. With a sigh he started looking around at the tools floating and bouncing off the bulkheads, deck, and overhead. The fixture mount was secured to the overhead by a series of three hex bolts arranged in a triangle. If he could get to the right tool and detach it...

He spotted the wrench case a meter and a half up the passageway, just out of reach. He cursed silently to himself as he stretched and twisted to try and reach the case. Then he noticed that it wasn't still, it was drifting, be it ever so slowly towards him. He felt rather than heard the ship shudder. Then again, stronger this time. He realized that whatever that other thing on the ship was coming back his way, and if he didn't get himself loose in time... He stared at the case, willing it to drift to his outstretched hands faster.

He briefly considered cinching his left calf up and removing the boot, his prosthetic toes could be locked in place and might function as a rudimentary wrench, but the timing was questionable, it might be quicker to wait for the case.

~

Professor Walthers looked through a pair of binoculars over the vast remains of what had once been the Richmond district. He could see rows upon rows of houses and streets, Golden Gate Park and beyond that, Outer Sunset, Ocean Beach, and the Pacific. One thing immediately caught his eye, somewhere in she Sunset or Outer Sunset, a column of smoke, dark, thick, but wispy, like it was dying. From previous expeditions shooting for hard to find parts, he knew the area was essentially deserted, with those few who survived the phenomenon having already moved on elsewhere or joined their own colony at Berkeley. But then, that was why he'd brought Cole.

Cole had been a high school student when the old world ended, attending Abraham Lincoln High in Sunset. He gotten the warning on his cell phone and unlike many, he'd taken it seriously. His parents and sister hadn't, and after closing all the blinds and shades in their home with his eyes closed, he had to survive in their house for three months with their shriveled remains as his only company, then bury them himself when the skies cleared. He wasn't really recovered from that. He had some pretty strong issues, but he knew the terrain and the neighborhoods they'd be traversing. He hoped Cole would be an asset. But he hadn't said a word thus far.

"Cole, come here a second."

"Yeah Prof?"

"Take a look through these at that column of smoke over there."

"Smoke?"

"Yeah."

Cole took the binoculars and scanned back and forth over the suburbs before he spotted the smoke.

"Got it, looks like maybe a campfire?"

"Smoke's awfully dark for a campfire."

"Yeah... Yeah, you're right. And it's not cold so no way they're burning for warmth, and you don't burn tires or gas for cooking. You think we should check it out?"

"I think it's the only lead we've got."

"You think it might be Longmire?"

"Not a chance."

"Why not?"

"The Captain was scouting, if he was landed, no way would he call attention to his location like that."

"Could've had mechanical trouble, that could be from the chopper, or..."

"We're going to find out one way or another. Let's not dwell on worst case scenarios."

Walthers wished he could follow his own advice, all he could think of were worst case scenarios.

~

Director Gilead watched as the projection display switched from an orbital view to satellite radar tracking of the pursuit going down in the skies of the western Atlantic. He'd personally overrode the codes of one of his own people who was nonsensically assisting the specimen. The only explanation was that the specimen had used some kind of ability to control the member. Even among those who disagree with his interrogation of the data wouldn't conceive of assisting one as corrupted as the specimen. With a gasp he watched as the radar indicated that the pursueing craft had opened fire. It was only moments as he stood in shock watching the missile close in on and destroy the fleeing craft.

He shuddered as he let out his breath. The specimen might not have died, it could easily be more durable than they supposed. The Tall Ones were recorded as being impervious to all weapons at the time of their previous appearance, and it was long believed that the entity corrupting the specimen was a Tall One.

He placed his hands on the nearest tactile interface and ordered a Project asset currently in place with the HCA to divert to the area to quietly initiate a search, at the same time, he issued gag orders to the Falchion crew and their superiors to avoid any undo interference, like a Peacekeeper search and rescue mission.

With the specimen situation momentarily resolved, he turned his attention to the recovery of the B.A.B.E.L. memory core. He had good timing; the servitor had just completed the removal and replacement of a damaged connection port and was about to recover the data. He had it queue up the last few minutes of the AIs memory before its shell was destroyed. At first, it was nothing, the specimen stood motionless in its containment apparatus as it had for centuries. The triple layered transparent material each etched subtly with runes and spells in dozens of different languages their research has indicated should contain the being within, the containment itself surrounded by dozens of machines utilizing additional, more scientific methods of containment, everything from basic magnetic fields to proton stream tripwires and negative mass projections.

Then, very subtly, the specimen coughed. That was the event which had caused the B.A.B.E.L. to alert him. For another minute nothing happened, then the specimens eyes opened. It looked around for a few seconds, it's eyes twin inky pools broken only by glowing golden bolts of lightning emanating from the centers outward. Then, slowly, looking almost painfully, the head raised, straightened, the eyes locked on B.A.B.E.L. The ancient mouth formed s few words, then, the containment frosted over, webbing of ice grew all over it in a matter of seconds, followed by an explosion outward and the end of the B.A.B.E.L.s recording. He rewound it back, turned up the volume, initiated a scrubbing program to try and remove extraneous noise. There was still a noticeable hissing in the audio, likely from one of the containment apparatus. But when it spoke, he could hear the words. Unfortunately, they were in a language he wasn't familiar with. He cued up a translation program and ran it again.

As the specimen spoke the speech was translated into Hegemony standard in text gotten. He read it, read it again, then initiated a direct call to the Project asset on their way to the crash site.

~

Admiral Lancaster watched the Hell Brigades' intricate three dimensional ballet as they sought to send one of their own hurtling through space across to the Halberd's Edges aft section before it drifted out of range. His YEOD had a display counting down until it was lost forever. The countdown had less than twenty seconds when the furthest HB flashed a green indicator signal, indicating successful capture. It was another minute before the lines connecting them were drawn taut as they connected them together and started pulling the ships sections back towards each other. It was imperceptible at first, but after another three minutes the motion of the aft section had visibly stopped, and minute after that it was starting to close the distance.

Lancaster turned back towards the sheared off passageway he'd used as an airlock to exit the ship and watch the operation. Shipwide backup power had failed on the forward section of the ship minutes before capture, which had cut coordinated communications through augmentation, but the individual hatches & emergency lighting had power cells as redundancies in case of shipwide power outrage, so they still functioned.

As he floated down the eerily red pitched passageways he thought about their next steps. If they could get a power umbilical from the engine core to the bow, if they could raise the Hub, there was still no way the Halberd's Edge could do much of anything, she was cut cleanly in half, maneuvers, course corrections, even attitude control were out of the question.

The best he could hope for was a rescue and coordinating with the fleet until he could get aboard a fighting vessel. With Mars cracked like an egg he couldn't imagine any of the fleets resources planet-side survived. Still, that left Ceres & Phobos as possible resources. He accessed some of his internal files and pulled up the Peacekeeper deployments and resources for Mars' adopted moon first. An smallish orbital shipyard, a couple training facilities, and a Peacekeeper museum dedicated to the War of the Field...

~

Captain Sayle watched the displays in anticipation of Rabbits transmission. He heard Com. Bradford enter the bridge once again. He was still missing a shoe and the uniform was still tattered and bloodstained, but Bradford himself looked none the worse for wear.

"You said you took a hit?"

"Rapid pressure change."

"Got it, and your augmentations are already-"

"Already took care of most of the damage, yes Captain."

"Good, can't have you-"

The Captain was interrupted by an incoming transmission, but not from Rabbit. It was coming in on an open channel, from the Hub, routed via the Gate Network. It seemed to be automated, a calm synthetic voice read the message that also came in text:

"Attention All Hegemony Citizens, there has been a loss of communications with Peacekeeper HQ, Olympus Mons, Mars. Due to the extreme unlikelyhood of such an event occurring through accident or natural causes, it must be assumed that this is the result of hostile action."

"As such, a system-wide emergency has been declared, and all Hegemony citizens are to shelter in place until further notice from their local governments."

There was a second, coded message in a low humming tone that immediately followed. Fatima slowed it and decoded it automatically and displayed the text on the central display.

"To any Peacekeeper vessels currently underway, please follow the Dead Man Switch protocol unless otherwise ordered."

Com. Bradford looked to Captain Sayle with an eyebrow raises in puzzlement.

"Dead Man Switch?"

"It's an old protocol predating wide usage of shipboard AI. In the event of loss of communications with HQ, all Peacekeeper vessels are to fall back to assigned defensive positions under the assumption that the HQ on Mars is under attack."

"What's our assigned defensive position?"

"Beats the hell out of me, I just took command of the Fate's Embrace before we came here, remember? Fatima!"

"The Fate's Embraces assigned defensive position is in orbit of Luna, Captain."

"Well we're in the middle of a firefight so-"

"Captain, there's something else coming in on a dedicated Peacekeeper channel from the Hub, it's addressed to us specifically."

"Put it up."

To: Captain Sayle, Fate's Embrace

From: Hegemony Legislature

You are herby ordered to sound retreat from all ongoing or potential conflicts, rescue any and all Peacekeepers you can from the battle space, and to immediately alter course and take your vessel and all other vessels currently under your command and proceed through the equatorial Jupiter Gate to Crimson station, there to disembark all wounded incapable of performing their duties, and furthermore to then Gate to Hub, where the fleet will undergo replenishment and repair as needed in preparation for orders to be given upon arrival.

You are reminded that under currently negotiated relations with the Outer Colonies, a vessel openly broadcasting her intention to retreat is allowed to rescue any individuals or vessels under her flag incapable of independent movement, and to withdraw safely without further aggression.

End

Captain Sayle was silent for several seconds after the Fatima finished he recitation off the message. Then, he broke his silence, violently.

"What in Deimos are they thinking!?"

The Rothstein Forced Space/Time Manipulation Travel Gate Network is exclusively maintained by the Hegemony Peacekeeper Engineering Corps or H-PEC as they're commonly known. While oversight is through the Peacekeeper command structure, membership in the Corps is actually not drawn from the enlisted or officers of the Peacekeepers themselves, but recruited directly from the best and brightest to graduate from various higher educational programs throughout the Hegemony. Membership in the Corps is generally considered a ticket to a lifetime of comfort and stability, as their members are well compensated for their labors, discretion, and the rigors (and danger) of working in large scale zero-g construction and repair projects.

Councilwoman Rivet sat in the quarters assigned to her, it was a smaller space than she was accustomed to. With the Ringstation filled with evacuees, the larger quarters were being assigned to multigenerational family groups. Getting a private room, even one as sparce and small as this one- they were barely the size of her private bathroom at home- was the best they could do for a VIP. She honestly didn't care. She wasn't going to be here long. She frantically typed out a message on her Computer Access and Communication Chit (CACC). It was directed to the Colony Peacekeepers, specifically addressed to the attention of the Ringstations Peacekeeper liason, a woman by the name of Vagner, who she'd met before at as political function some years earlier. She'd gotten the impression she was something of a firebrand and was counting that she was right.

If she could foster some kind of working relationship between the Colonial Peacekeepers and the Hegemony and the Project, get them to understand what was happening, get them to put a stop to the madness, to the conflict, to unite and pool resources. She wasn't privy to the Projects full resources or plans, she was just an early warning system. In their appearance 40,000 years ago they'd come in from outside the solar system, so she'd been placed to watch for unusual occurrences or the sudden loss of Outer Planet Colonies. She'd had no idea it would happen so quickly. The Oort Cloud mining operations had gone quiet, then Pluto & Charon days later. Neptune only had four real Colonies and maybe another few hundred people scattered among individual homesteads, they'd gone quiet all at once a week after Pluto. Uranus- and her son aboard the Polaris, had been out of contact as well, that last final loss of communication having triggered the panic that was causing the refugee crisis on the Saturn Ringstations.

She'd just submitted the message when there was a knock on the hatch. She stood, pocketed the CACC, and opened the door to see exactly what she expected. Three Colonial Peacekeepers, a Captain and two Sergeants. The Captain spoke.

"Madam Councilwoman, I'm afraid we're going to have to insist you come with us."

~

Ramses Goveretski cracked an eye open. The effort was painful, it felt like needle sharp shards of metal simultaneously both freezing and burning as they were hammered into his eyelids. His vision was blurry. The chill was bone deep. The airless space swam with small ice crystals floating free. He rolled his eye in its socket to try and free the surface of his cornea from whatever grit has managed to settle on it. He refocused on the dials in front of him. His eye widened further. The indicators showed they were off course. Something had happened. He rolled his shoulders, breaking the layers of frost that had formed on him. He stretched a hand out and flipped open a couple switches, drawing a precious few watts of power from the solar panels to the Retributions primitive computer, the raw materials clawed out themselves, processed, created and pieced together by his companions Iotashi & Patir over the course of nearly two hundred years. It flickered, vibrated slightly at his touch, then a bright spark flashed out of the rear panel and it died.

His inner voice cursed and swore as he turned to Stern, who he could see was already rapidly looking at the various pinpoints in the sky that were distant Planets and Moons. He could almost see the brain inside the ancient flesh calculating and determining where they were headed. Stern looked away from the stars and to the ranks of instruments on his console, each one connected to different devices, magnetometers, clinometers, his eyes settled on the gravimeter. A second passed, three, ten. Then his eyes widened and centuries of familiarity spoke as clearly as any language. We're off course because an unexpected mass is pulling us.

~

Vegman was 13 years old and it was his birthday. His parents were there. His friends from school were there. Even his grandfather, deceptively young looking, was there. The cake was his favorite, lunar fudge, the real stuff imported from the Sea of Tranquility. His mother gave him his own CACC and he was excitedly showing Grandpa what it could do. But, something was off. Something was wrong. Grandfathers smile was too wide. His eyes were lifeless. And when he opened his mouth to speak a baleful crimson light emerged...

He woke with a start to a banging sound. He was still in the Heron. He blinked, his eyes affixing to the yellowish light streaming in from the various portholes of the small vessel. He rolled over in the cot and pulled the pillow over his head before the realization hit him. Light streaming in the portholes. He threw the pillow and blankets off and jumped to his feet, moving quickly to the starboard side hatch where Admiral Lancaster was watching him through the porthole with some small amusement.

He banged on the hatch again, his mouth forming the words "open up." Daq pulled the handle and engaged the servomotor that installed and opened the hatch, the pressure between inside and outside briefly hissing in equalization.

"I take it your HBs were successful."

"Mostly, yes, the engines themselves and the two secondary reactors are shot, but the primary core was untouched and just sitting there humming along at minimal power. We've got transfer cables going back and forth from each half of the ship and at the very least we've got life support and Communications up and running."

"Communications? Have we got an answer on just what the fuck happened?"

"There's conflicting reports, c'mon up to the Bridge I've got Captain Plotter and his Comms officer up to their ears filtering through the mess, hopefully they've been able to narrow it down."

As they walked across the launch bay towards the passageway and the lift that would take them to the bridge level, Daq was silent as he considered what possible next options they might have. With no engines and Olympus Mons destroyed, they weren't likely to get a Peacekeeper rescue anytime soon unless it was coming from Phobos or Ceres. Still, with Admiral Lancaster aboard the Halberd's Edge they were very likely to be prioritized for rescue by any civilian vessels in Mars Orbit that managed to survive.

~

Captain Sayle sat at his desk in his office with his head in his hands. Intention to retreat had been sounded on an open channel and acknowledged by the Outer Colony fleet hours before. They'd withdrawn to a slightly higher orbit and seemed to be waiting for his ships to finish picking up their survivors and getting their disabled ships under tow. The distortion of the flask field and the drift of debris and revealed that the Outer Colonies didn't just have a Cruiser, but a dozen Destroyers and twice as many Frigates, even if he was willing to disobey orders he was outnumbered and outgunned. And, they hadn't pulled back as far as the lunar orbits, so it was clear they weren't backing off so much as showing mercy.

He felt sick. He was expecting Commander Bradford to walk in any minute to report their rescue operations complete, and after that- after that his orders were to take what remained of his fleet and Gate to Crimson, abandoning nearly a hundred low orbit Hegemony facilities and habitats, populated by nearly 3 million souls to the Outer Colonies Peacekeepers, who'd then be completely unopposed in Jupiter orbit.

It doesn't sit right with him. It doesn't sit right with him at all.

"Sir?"

It was Fatima, the shipboard AI, pumping her voice through the office audio system.

"Yes what is it?"

"Commander Bradford is assisting with the final preparations to tow the Vigilant Watchman, but he asked that I convey that rescue operations of all spaced Peacekeeper personnel have concluded, and that as soon as the Watchman confirms they're properly rigged, we will be underway for the Equatorial Gate."

"Very well thank you Fatima."

"Sir, if I may speak freely?"

"Go ahead."

"I've been monitoring comm traffic and fleet movements through the Gate Network, and I believe I may know what the Hub is intending, sir."

"Please, illuminate me."

"Hegemony forces are being pulled back from Jupiter to the belt and other facilities inside Jupiter Orbit. I believe they're going to surrender Jupiter to the Outer Colonies."

"That's my conclusion as well, Fatima."

"If I may be so bold, this is not the most tactically sound option."

"No, it's not, and I intend to take that up with Rear Admiral Linnorm once we get to the Hub."

"Sir, shouldn't you express your concerns to Admiral Lancaster? Your personal file indicates-"

"I'm aware. I'm also aware that as of the most recent reports, the Old Man was transitioning to Mars Orbit, yes?"

"Yes Captain."

"And the very reason for the Dead Man Switch Protocol was loss of communication with Mars essentially at that same time, correct?"

"I understand, and Rear Admiral Linnorm is the ranking Peacekeeper at the Hub, I see your point."

~

Jesse floated, his consciousness seemed disconnected... He could feel his body sinking, immersed in water, but the sensation was distant, more like a memory than an experience occurring in the now. He could feel the other with him. Not Viktor, the other, its proximity was like crawling beneath a million ton block of granite suspended above, there was a palpable weight to it, even without it noticing him, he was aware of its overwhelming presence. But, it felt... Different... Not quite as solid, like... Like it was made up of millions of smaller conciousnesses working as one, not a single solid mind. It only lasted a moment and then he was in his own body again, the painful need to breath suddenly all he could think about, he swam towards the light above.

The Jupiter League was the union of corporate and Colonial interests that existed as a sort of public private partnership and mercantile alliance that regulated (through contracted agreements) business dealings between the Outer Colonies and the Hegemony in the wake of the Schism. They also acted almost as privateers, their vessels empowered by agreements with specific Colonies to act as law enforcement in neutral space where no official Peacekeepers had jurisdiction. These powers, of course were not often recognized by those Colonies that weren't part of the contract.

Investigator Hoel shook his head, the sudden movement sending droplets of his sweat flying off his head and into the walls of his helmet, where they were wicked into the materials lining it. He flailed his arms in an attempt to move his bodily inertia in the direction of the floating tool case that was still moving ever so slowly towards him. He succeeded in getting his upper body to sway a few inches towards it, his lower extremities were useless in the effort, his right foot being wedged into the lighting fixture of the passageway. On his third swing the outer tip of his middle finger, encased in the glove of his armor, barely brushed the tool kit, but it was enough to set it into a more rapid spin and accelerate it's movement, luckily, towards him.

On his next arc he reached out and grasped it with both hands before using his abdominal muscles to stop himself. He opened the case, found the proper sized wrench, and bent down to free himself when he yet again felt a shudder come through the ship and into his feet. Stronger, longer than it had been before. The wrench made short work of the first and second bolts holding the fixture and in place, but he seemed to lack the required torque to break it free. He jerked and heaved, only to suddenly find him bouncing about the passage, unstuck. The fixture had come loose enough with the first two bolts that his attempt on the third had enough force to pull his boot free. He grabbed a railing and righted himself, again reactivating the electromagnets in his boots to hold him to the decking.

Without delaying, he retrieved the rectangular tool and the long handled pliers where they floated and again went to pry the bridge hatch open, this time with one hand firmly grasping the railing adjacent the door. With a shudder, the door opened, the last gasps of atmosphere howling through briefly before pressure equalized. But it was wide enough for his to get a hand in, brace, and pull it open enough for him to pass through before he released it and the residual pressure in the mechanism closed it again.

Turning he looked around the darkened bridge, his armor's lights playing over the grisly scene. The bridge crew had never left. What remained of them was splashed over the deck, bulkheads, and overhead. Once, in his youth, he'd been to a Clonal Preserve on Europa. Animals that had once existed on Earth in various ages past were recreated there for scientific study and educational purposes, kept in artificial environments with Earth level artificial gravity. He'd seen one of the larger carnivores, something called a "Polar Bear" during one of the hunting studies, it had been allowed to roam the largest paddock they had and supplied with a similarly large herbivore to hunt. He couldn't remember the name of it- something with a large rack of horns- but he could remember what it looked like when the Polar Bear got it. It took it awhile to track down the prey, and when it finally made the kill it was nearly starving. Desperate, angry. Blood and entrails everywhere. The bridge was worse.

There were a number of stations completely ripped off the decking. Mixed in with the gore coating the bulkheads were long rents, claw marks, in lines of three, splayed apart several inches. His heart sank as he saw that the communication console was one of those torn free and smashed. Then he felt the tiniest sliver of hope as he eyed the captains chair. It was pristine, untouched, except for the decapitated body of the captain herself still sitting in it, her uniform slashed open from her waist up to the neckline, her innards and rib-cage pulled halfway out and her rent jacket exposing one small breast, covered in frozen blood. But the chair itself was undamaged, and one small blinking indicator gave hope it was still powered.

He unceremoniously grabbed the captain by her arms and heaved, breaking the body free of the chair and letting it float away before he leaned over the seat and pulled a cable from the armor's right wrist and magnetically affixed it to the contact point on the small display. He used the controls on his left wrist to run a standard OPCA override scheme, it took only a few seconds for the computer to accede to his authority and give him access. He pulled up a status board first, saw that the tertiary reactor was still running at 6%. He increased it to 50% and routed power to the primary computer, comms array, and security systems. The main computer came online and gave him an indicator it would take nearly a minute to run startup and diagnostics. As he waited, he accessed internal security and noted half of the security hatches were already engaged, specifically the ones surrounding the main hold in the center of the ship. He also noted motion sensors were being tripped all over the ship, including in the passage outside the bridge.

~

Walthers pulled up the neckline of his shirt to cover his nose and mouth, hoping it would reduce the stink and taste of the smoke pouring out of the Convenience Store as it and the chopper burned. The stink of aviation fuel and stale tobacco mixed in an unholy way. The flames and the smoke made it impossible to see if there were any bodies in the conflagration. He stepped back away from it, back to where the rest of the his search party, Brian, Cole, Leonard, & Marcus, stood in silence. He stood in front of them, unsure what to say. He didn't want to give up hope, but-

"Professor?"

"Yes Marcus?"

"I don't think we're the first ones here."

"Hm?"

He pointed towards the curb on the south side of the road, where a run of mud was piled up where the drainage had accumulated as the result of years of neglect. There was a set of distinctive tracks- horseshoes- leading west, down towards the Pacific

"Brian, when was the last time we sent anyone on Horseback this far out?

"We've never sent anyone on horseback this far out, we always used a boat to go around if we were coming out this far."

"Then it must be the people Sarya ran into in the city proper."

"Maybe, or someone else we don't know."

"Either way, they're our best lead. Longmire's team may be with them, or they may know where they went-"

A new voice, loud and deep interrupted.

"I hope you don't mind if I tag along?"

Cole and Leonard were quick to turn and draw their firearms on the source of the voice. He stood across the street, leaning against a dilapidated bus, a long rifle with scope casually held in his arms, the muzzle pointed at the ground. He was easily six foot two, and at least 220lbs, all muscle. He continued as if he didn't have two rifles pointed at him.

"Professor, we met before, remember?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I'm Lamar Jordan, one of Longmires. We met the night we arrived, at that little welcome dinner your folks threw together for us."

The memory of the brief introduction came back to Walthers as he stared at the mans face, covered as it was with various dark shades of greasepaint.

"Ah, ah yes, I seem to remember you now. I take it you were a part of the reconnaissance effort."

"I was. the Captain dropped me off a couple miles north of here, right before the Cavalry was shot down."

"Shot down by who?"

"Don't know, probably the same folks who tried to hurt our dear little Sarya."

Walthers noticed Cole & Leonard were still pointing their rifles at Davis and gestured for them to lower their weapons.

"When did this happen?"

"Late yesterday afternoon, just before sunset."

"And it took you nearly a whole day to make it here?"

Jordan sighed, straightened and walked across the street as he responded.

"No, it took me the better part of the night to try and find or get signal from Colquitt or the Haxson brothers, who were the other guys Longmire brought along, then give up, spot you this morning from a long ways off, and track you here."

"Why didn't you come here first?"

"I was in a chopper crash way back in the day, before everything went down I was in the Marines. I knew if Longmire survived, he was probably good to wait, if he didn't, it didn't matter if I got here quick. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing, but I'm no action movie star, I wasn't stupid enough to think I could mount a rescue alone."

"Rescue? So Longmire's alive?"

"Him or Foster."

Professor Walthers face must have betrayed his confusion.

"Foster, the pilot."

"Oh."

"Yeah, after I saw them get hit I got to high ground as quick as I could to try and see if they managed a landing or a crash. Couldn't see the exact site due to the terrain, but I did see a group on horseback come from that direction with somebody tied over the ass end of one of them, headed for the coast."

"And then you went looking for the others on your team, gave up, spotted us and came here."

"You got it."

"So now what?

"So now," Jordan said as he shouldered his rifle "we go find these bastards, and get our man back."

~

Gilead sat back in his chair, as it adapted and reformed to accommodate his shape and support him most efficiently, he accessed the Project archives through his augmentations, the information rapidly sorted and searched according to his unconscious will to find exactly what it was his conscious mind was looking for. The record came up, the last mission report of the asset that was currently assisting the Specimen. The asset was Venusian, named Toirhealbhach Aoibheann, augmented and trained for retro-active reconnaissance. Most recent effort had been to go back and fill in missing details on the Project's own origins. He was a field historian, not known for particularly egregious behavior, or for disobeying orders. And yet, he had sought out and assisted the Specimen on his own. Something didn't add up.

He pulled up the descent path of the Specimen and Aoibheann, and looked at what was in the area they seemed to be headed for before they were shot down. There wasn't much there. A few unmanned weather and seismic monitors dotted throughout the eastern North American continent, the remains of a few notable cities, a historical marker where mankind achieved powered flight, the final resting place of a notable 12th millennium politician, and a project facility, one of their tachyometric capacitors. His eyes shot open. He wasn't trying to assist the Specimen, he was attempting to use him.

Aoibheann was one of the ill-advised members of the Project who thought they might be able to alter the past. It was a good thing they'd shot them down, he mused to himself. Even though the proposition was nonsense, they could've done significant damage to their future efforts by blinding them through reckless usage of the capacitor. Of course, if they even were to be future efforts, they had to survive the current crisis. With that, he turned his attention to the communication subsystem, which seemed to be signalling a communique from one of his assets in the Outer Planets.

~

Viktor clung to a piece of the debris from the Templar, coughing and sputtering out the seawater even as his augmentations drained his lungs and moved the extra fluid into his visceral pleura then through his subcutaneous fat and finally expelled it completely through his pores. He looked around for Jesse, not finding him, he went to take a deep breath and dive under to try and find him, but before he could Jesse burst through the surface nearly ten meters away, his eyes ablaze with golden lightning and arcs of white racing through his skin.

"Jesse! Are you alright?"

He hoped that it would be Jesse that answered. Whether for better or worse, he didn't answer at all, just bobbed up and down in the water, barely moving. Then, almost instantly, the strange energies disappeared, and Jesse was himself once more, looking all the world like a confused, waterlogged man displaced in time.

"Vick! Vick!"

"Yes! I'm here"

"What are we gonna do Vick?"

"Just hold on! Try to find something that'll float!"

Jesse splashed about, finally grasping onto a small cusion from one of the Templar's passenger berths before he started swimming towards Viktor.

"Vick!"

"What is it Jesse?"

"What are we gonna do Vick?"

Jesse bobbed up and down in the water just a meter from Viktor now, and so they ceased shouting.

"We're gonna wait a bit, then make our way to shore."

"How are we gonna do that Vick? We could be hundreds of miles from land..."

"We're not."

"How do you know?"

"When we were trying to evade that Heron I specifically aimed to get as close to the Oceanic Retreat of Miami as I could."

"Miami what now?"

"Eh, it's a kind of resort, at the height of Earths ecological disaster, it served the worlds governments as a neutral meeting ground as they negotiated the Unification Proclamation that formed Earth's first legitimate world government."

"And why would that help us?"

"The Project keeps a research vehicle there, I used the Templar's comm system to remotely activate it on the way down. It's already on the way to find us, homing in on my augmentations."

"You know what Vick?"

"What is it Jesse?"

"I'm really glad you know what the hell you're doin'."

~

Captain Sayle and Commander Bradford watched as the last of the fleet besides the Fate's Embrace transitioned through Jupiter's equatorial Gate. As the Gate bled it's excess energies and began it's reset sequence Sayle turned to 2nd Lt. DuLee.

"Lieutenant, what's the status of Hegemony stations in lower orbit?"

"Peacekeeper vessels have evacuated, civilian vessels are still in the process, Captain."

"Has a general evacuation been ordered?"

"No sir, all mobile vessels are being strongly advised to transition in-system if possible but no general evacuation has been ordered of the civilian population."

Bradford took a step forward and cocked his head to the side as he looked at his captain.

"Damn peculiar sir."

"Damn cowardly more like, some damn fool politicians have got it in their heads to abandon our people out here for some reason."

"I hate to say so, but as your XO I'm bound to remind you that there may be good reasons behind our orders."

"And?"

"And in spite of that, if you want to disobey orders and see if we can unofficially get the civilians to evacuate I'm all for it, to Deimos with our orders."

Captain Sayle turned to express his support for the thought when suddenly the ship lurched, before everything went white.

"What in Deimos happened!?"

Lieutenant Tzaki answered.

"We transitioned through the Gate Sir!"

"Who did it?"

"Fatima Sir, she initiated the Transition and fired the engines on her own."

"Fatima, explain!"

The voice of the ships AI came through with a tone that seemed almost pleading.

"Sir, if I didn't transition us you'd be in violation of orders, and despite ethically agreeing with what you and the XO were contemplating, my operational guidelines did not allow inaction in such a circumstance. It was not a conscious decision Captain. It was more akin to an autonomic response."

"Since when could anything you do be autonomic and override my orders?"

"I'm afraid it was an override that came along with the Dead Man Switch protocol Sir."

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this, Fatima, can you disconnect your access to ships navigation, let us go back?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't make any difference Sir."

"What do you mean?"

"The Gate network sir, all Gates to Jupiter have just gone dark."

"What do you mean 'gone dark'?"

"I mean they're shut down, deactivated, cut off from the network, all access codes revoked, last communication within the network were catastrophic overload orders to all Gates outside the Belt."

"What?"

"The Hegemony has just cut off half the solar system, sir.

The four AIs that help to manage Olympus Mons are named after The Roman God Mars' four siblings, Minerva, Vulcan, Juventua, & Bacchus. Minerva maintains the facilities Operational systems, the transport network for personnel and materials, the administration of personnel and scheduling, etc. Vulcan oversees the facilities maintenance, construction, and fabrication personnel, as well as raw material acquisition and storage. Juventua oversees the Peacekeeper Training Corps, as well as manages all dealings with civilian businesses or personnel within the facility. She also oversees all childcare for Peacekeepers stationed at Olympus Mons. Bacchus is responsible for Peacekeeper morale, diversions, and managing the mental health portion of facility medical.

Admiral Lancaster and Daq Vegman walked onto the bridge of the Halberd's Edge to find it in silence, the entire bridge crew seemed to be staring at Captain Plotter, a rather thin and wiry man with almost alabaster skin topped by a small crown of jet black hair. His most notable feature, however, was the wild and unkempt black beard that came down nearly to his sternum. The admiral looked at him and broke the silence.

"Well, Captain, report."

"Admiral, we've managed to clean up some of the comms mess and we've got transmission from Olympus- well- One of the AIs. Juventua."

"Really? Bring her up, I want to hear it."

Captain Plotter laid a hand on the command chair's tactile interface and put the transmission over the bridges speakers.

"-vironmental systems are isolated to conserve breathable atmosphere in the upper core. The seismic event has cut off my contact with the other AIs and Peacekeeper Command at the summit or in the base levels and central core. Somebody, anybody please respond, I have lost my connection with much of the facility, I cannot ascertain the full extent of the damage. With what information I do have I've been able to determine there's at least eight thousand survivors, mostly training personnel, trainees, civilians, and children under my care. Eight thousand out of forty thousand I cared for originally. Someone, anyone please respond! I say again, this is Juventua, a Peacekeeper AI at Olympus Mons, we have experienced a catastrophic seismic event. We have sustained significant damage. I have managed to take control of some systems in the upper core to preserve life as best as I am able. I have closed off all blast doors and shields. I've made it so that the environmental systems are isolated to conserve breathable atmosphere in the upper core."

Plotter cut off the transmission.

"It repeats that same message over and over again sir. It's not a loop, we've analyzed it and it's an active, ongoing transmission, she's simply repeating herself."

"Have you responded?"

"We tried sir, it seems Juventua has access to a transmitter, but not a transceiver or receiver."

"Any other more productive communications?"

"Sir?"

"We can't help them. Much as I'd like to. So we need to concentrate on the next steps. Have we managed to communicate with the Hub?"

"Eight thousand people- trainees and children-"

"Who we can't help at this time. Not that we won't help when we can, but this is triage, we help who we can, when we can, understood?"

"Yes Admiral."

"So as I was saying Captain, any communication with the Hub?"

"Not as yet Admiral, our current orbit won't allow line of sight with the Equatorial Gate untill we cross the northern pole, or, what used to be the northern pole."

"What about the satellite network?"

"Completely inoperable, what satellites weren't obliterated by debris ejection were set spinning off on new orbits or into interplanetary space by the anomaly."

"Other ships?"

"That's where we're lucky sir, there's two Peacekeeper vessels and a couple dozen civilian craft that were fortunate enough to survive and remain operable within range of us. "

"The Peacekeepers, who are they?"

"There's a Peregrine Light Frigate called the Persephone, and a Tiamat Light Destroyer called the Ironclad Resolution

"Get me the Persephone."

Captain Plotter momentarily directed his attention to the tactile interface then back to the Admiral before nodding.

"Persephone, this is Halberd's actual, Admiral Lancaster. Please acknowledge."

There was a momentary hiss of static before a beleaguered and very tired voice came on.

"Admiral, this is Captain Hwangbo, Persephone actual, go ahead."

"What is your current classification, capabilities, and status Persephone?"

"We are Peregrine class, we have full armament & navigation, vessel is fully operational, we have numerous injuries, none critical. We had a rough ride, we're banged up but we're mission capable."

"Roger that Persephone, we are not so fortunate, we're severely damaged, we have no propulsion."

"Aknowledged Halberd, we will adjust our orbit to rendezvous with you in-"

There was a moment of silence.

"-my helmsman says we can be alongside in one hour, give or take."

"Look forward to it."

~

Councilwoman Rivet could barely keep her feet as the Peacekeepers escorting her nearly carried her down the passage. Their hands gripped her upper arms, lifting her with every other step. Their boots sent rebounding echoes up and down the corridor. She didn't resist, not even the tiniest bit. She'd been resolved to her own fate before she'd ever opened the door. They took her past several guarded checkpoints and into a room she wasn't familiar with. She was set down on a chair in the center of the room.

Facing her was a table with four people. First on her left was the Peacekeeper liason she'd messaged, Burkina Vagner, she was of medium height & weight, with few distinguishing features except her white hair, cropped short. Second was the Peacekeeper Colonel who's inadvertently assisted her in sending the message to the Project, he was taller, stocky, with a well groomed beard and mustache. Third was a man she didn't recognize, but by the formal nature of his clothes and all fed bulk, she was guessing he was Colonial governance, possibly the Ringstation Governor. Fourth seat was her own intern, the meek little young woman she'd been assigned by the Council support staff administration. But here, she didn't seem so meek. She stared her in the eyes, shoulders square, leaning forward on the table with her hands folded together, a small smile playing across her lips. It almost seemed as if she'd grown several inches, her hair looked darker, and her eyes had taken on a cruel glint to them. The politician spoke first.

"Councilwoman Rivet, I am Jachus, the governor of this Ringstation, and I've counted myself among your political supporters for the past several elections. So please understand my great surprise to find us sitting here this evening-"

Rivet rolled her eyes as he spoke, then interrupted.

"Governor if you've followed my career you know I have no patience for ceremony, pomp, or flowery bullshit. Get to the point."

The man looked almost hurt by her outburst.

"Very well Madam. Miss Yadav?"

Rivet blinked. Her goddamn intern?

"Thank you Governor. Madam Rivet, as you know I was assigned to you nearly a month ago. What you do not know is that I am an OPCA Investigator."

Rivets stomach sank as Yadav continued.

"For the past several years we- and by we I refer both to the OPCA as well as the intelligence community of the Colonial Peacekeepers- have had indications that the Hegemony has managed to compromise the Council. We've had a few false leads, a few dead ends. For a short time we even considered the idea that maybe it was all paranoia and coincidence. But then, we were looking at Council administrative personnel, it didn't occur to us to look at Councilors themselves until Jarl Godrecht was assassinated."

Rivet went to stand to protest her innocence but one of the Peacekeepers behind her pushed her down back in her seat.

"Oh, don't worry Councilor, we know you didn't have anything to do with that. But that investigation did lead us to discover certain facts about one of the Councilors who replaced him. Namely that he was in contact with the Hegemony. By tracking these contacts, these methods of communication, we've been able to uncover nearly half a dozen Hegemony agents or sympathizers within the Colonies."

She paused, seemingly to let her words sink in.

"Which brings us to the events of the last six hours. Madam, I was assigned to you as a precaution, not because we actually suspected you. But your transmission, made with the unwitting assistance of Colonel Fhast, was on a frequency we've been monitoring. This, combined with the hesitation I myself witnessed you show to utilizing your own authorization code, have effectively proven that you are a Hegemony asset."

"I do not work for the Hegemony."

"Madam, we are not here to debate what you are or aren't. This is not a trial. In times of war- and we are at war- treason is subject to summary execution. We already have enough evidence to prove you're guilty. We're here to debrief you. If you cooperate, we are prepared to commute the death sentence in favor of imprisonment."

Major Vagner stood.

"If I might interject, Investigator?"

Yadav looked at her with a questioning look, but after a moment nodded her assent.

"Just before you convened this debriefing, I received a private message from Councilor Rivet. It is that message that motivated me to ask to join you. If you'll indulge me, I'd like to share a summation of the contents of that message."

Colonel Fhast looked up at her in surprise before he spoke.

"Abdolutely not Major."

"Colonel?"

"We have a civilian politician and an OPCA Investigator here. I cannot allow you to disseminate that info until and unless it's been properly screened."

Rivet looked at Vagner, and saw the consternation in her eyes, as well as something else. A kind of... Amusement? In the gaze she returned to her. Rivet smiled as understanding dawned.

"Major, Colonel, Governor, Investigator, I'm under no such limits, nor do I intend to allow the Peacekeepers, the civilian government, or the OPCA to claim or enforce particular authority over what I'm going to tell you."

Yadav's eyebrows raised at her announcement.

"So you intend to cooperate then?"

"Fully."

"Then let me ask directly the most pressing question. Why has the Hegemony destroyed the Jupiter and Saturn Gates?"

Rivet was taken aback.

"What?"

"Two hours after you sent your transmission, even as we tried to decode what you'd sent and trace where, the Hegemony pulled all their Peacekeepers out of Jupiter orbit, and then H-PEC sent overload orders to all nine of the Gates around Jupiter and the Galilean Moons, as well as the Saturn Gate."

"What? Why would they destroy-"

"I can answer that." Colonel Fhast stood as he spoke.

"It all boils down to the negotiated principles upon which the Gate Network access operates. You see, the Gates maintain a certain level of connection with each other. When a vessel approaches they send a signal that indicates three things, their identification, the Gate they're trying to go through, and the Gate they want to transition to. The Gate then checks against a registry of allowed vessels and destinations that Colonial or Hegemony Gate control keeps updated on a regular basis, then the Gate approves or denies access. It has to maintain the registry locally, because communications aren't in real time. Transitions are only instant to those transitioning, remember, the actual travel occurs at near c, meaning communications and transitions, say, between Jupiter and Saturn still have a travel time of nearly 41 minutes.

When the Gate Network was being built and ever since, it's been a critical negotiating point that first the Leagues and later the Outer Planet governments all maintained Gate access as a necessary concession, with Colonial Gate control effectively limited to controlling the Gates between the Galilean Moons and Saturn. The Hegemony has always maintained the Network, and kept the technology necessary to build them as a state secret, even as we've had some degree of control over Gates in the Colonies it was never total control. We effectively rented the Gates via diplomatic concessions, and maintained that a loss of Gate access was tantamount to a declaration of war. H-PEC built them, repaired them when necessary, and guards them via automated defensive drones."

"That doesn't explain why they destroyed them."

"Doesn't it? We declared war. We gave up the one bargaining chip we used to bribe the Hegemony into building, maintaining, and allowing access to the Gates. There was no advantage whatsoever to allowing us continued access."

"Why not simply deny access by refusing all transition requests?"

"Because that would only be a stopgap measure until we destroyed the drone defenses and physically accessed the gates and reprogrammed them. By overloading them, they've prevented that, and, prevented us from reverse engineering the technology ourselves. Even if we could somehow manage to collect every last milligram of debris from a Gate, one of the things we do know is that the Deserium components of the Gates have to be manufactured to very exacting standards, a degree of precision we'd have no hope of extrapolating from remains twisted by the force of an overload."

Rivet had an epiphany.

"That wasn't why they destroyed them."

Colonel Fhast raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? Do tell then, why did they destroy the Gates?"

"Colonel, you know about the loss of communications we've experienced, the odd goings on that have been the cause of the evacuations and why this Ringstation is at capacity?"

"I'm aware of a bunch of rumors and nonsense which is leading the civilian populations to panic over what I'm sure are perfectly explainable losses of comms, yes."

"40,000 years ago human society on Earth nearly ended-"

"What the hell does a history lesson have to bear on-"

"Excuse me. I know you're not likely a student of ancient history, but, history records it was because of a bioweapon released by an insane scientist, but that's not what really happened. It was the same thing that's happening now. Some kind of- things- visit this solar system every 40,000 years, coming from the outside in. First the Oort Cloud, then Pluto & Charon, then Neptune, Uranus, and now it's coming here."

There was a moment of silence as they considered her words.

"Don't you see? They destroyed the Gates to slow it down, to buy themselves time."

Yadav had been quiet as Rivet spoke but now interjected.

"Not that I believe you- I don't, for the record, I think you'll say anything to save your skin- but just how do you purport to know all this?"

"Because in response to that event 40,000 years ago, a small group founded an organization to pass down knowledge and prepare for it to occur again. I told you I'm not Hegemony, and I was being truthful. What I am, however, is a modern member of that group, which we call the Project. What information I've been sending and receiving has been a part of our vigil, waiting, watching... And I hate to correct you Colonel, but destroying the Gates is still just a stopgap measure. It's still coming."

The Field Museum is a facility in orbit of Ceres, Mars' adopted satellite captured from the asteroid belt. Formerly a shipyard, it sat abandoned for nearly 700 years before 31340PP when the Martian Colonial Union special panel on historical preservation ordered it refurbished as a War Museum dedicated to the War of the Field circa 20985PP. It houses numerous examples of weapons, spacecraft, and other historical artifacts and documents from the period, most preserved in vacuum and shielded from external radiation.

Captain Sayle deactivated his desk's holoprojector and ended the YEOD overlay that added information to it. He leaned back in his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes. For all the wonderful things his augmentations did, increased stamina, promotion of healing, mitigating life-threatening injuries, cessation of the aging process, and virtual immortality, at the literal end of the day they couldn't stave off fatigue forever, and he been up for nearly four days straight since he'd been resurrected after the sucker punch in Jupiter orbit. He needed good old-fashioned sleep.

The door chimed, his door opened, and Lieutenant Tzaki and Commander Bradford walked through it.

"Gentleman."

"Captain." They responded in unison.

"Report, and keep it short and simple I've got an appointment with my rack and I don't intend to be late."

Bradford smiled.

"Yes Captain. We've offloaded all our wounded to the medical facilities aboard Crimson. We've got replacement personnel assigned and roughly three-quarters of those are aboard."

"Good, Lt. Tzaki, how are repairs coming?"

"Most of the smaller repairs are done. As to the big stuff, we've got a replacement for the starboard dorsal sensor pod, but Crimsons repair crew is still removing the damaged connections and replacing them before they can install it. They estimate they'll have it done inside five hours. The damage to the ventral hull armor is mostly repaired, but the station's fabrication facilities are struggling to keep up with half the fleet demanding parts, they estimate another seven hours."

"What about the breach in the bow armor, and radiation cleanup?"

"That was a priority, the armor is fully repaired, but the repair team wants to do another chelation scrub of the affected sections before restocking the forward magazines."

"Good, thank you. How much longer until we're fully ready to transition to the Hub?"

"Assuming they're right about their repair estimates, and none of the replacement personnel are too terribly late, we could push off from Crimson and be headed for the Hub as soon as repairs are complete."

"Then an hour until we get to the Gate at the Mercury Lagrange point."

"Yes Captain."

"Well then that gives me a solid eight hours of shut-eye, and I intend to take full advantage, hold all updates until-

He brought up the chronometer of his YEOD.

"-zero four hundred hours, dismissed."

Lieutenant Tzaki and Commander Bradford stood and started walking out, but almost to the door, Commander Bradford slowed and turned back to the Captain.

"Captain there is one other matter before you retire if you don't mind."

"Yes Commander, what is it?"

"I thought I'd ask if you reviewed the after-action report yet."

"I took a glance at it, what about it?"

"I thought you'd want to specifically know that the Ceres came through. She's severely damaged, had to be taken under tow, but your old command, her AI, and Captain Dawp will live to fight another day."

"Thank you, Commander."

"Your welcome Captain, sleep well."

As they left, he stood from his chair and went to grab his uniform jacket before leaving his office and heading to his quarters, when a subtle sound indicated Fatima wanted to speak.

He stopped, let out a deep sigh, and then responded.

"Yes Fatima, what is it?"

"Sir, I know you were headed to bed, but there's a priority communique come in from the Hub, it's from Rear Admiral Linnorm."

"Very well, put it through."

The desk holoprojector came back on, this time projecting into the center of the room at roughly head height so that the Captain didn't have to crane his neck. The image of R.Adm. Linnorm showed him to be a lean-cut man with salt & pepper hair, piercing grey eyes, and a well groomed black mustache and beard. His voice was a low growl.

"Captain Sayle, I'll leave all pleasantries aside and get to the point. The Council and I want you at the Hub, in person. Not your ship, not the fleet, you. I'm ordering you here as soon as possible. I don't care if you have to jump out an airlock and float through the damn Gate, just get here. I'm placing the fleet under the temporary command of Captain Ulrich from the Lightning Rider, she's perfectly capable of overseeing the repair and re-armament of the fleet and of getting them here to the Hub when they're ready."

The communication ended and the holo faded out. Captain Sayle stared at where it had been for a moment, then his eyes closed, his shoulders slumped, and a heavy sigh escaped him.

"Maybe I can catch a nap on the trip to the Gate."

~

Goveretski, Patir, Iotashi, Stern, and Figg crowded together to look through their craft's singular viewport in front of the vessel's pilot and navigator seats, the mass which had drawn them off course was just now becoming visible. The cabin was airless and cold as the void of space itself. They hadn't had enough fuel to include any kind of atmospheric life support aboard. As it happened, they didn't need it anyway. As it grew larger, Figg was the first to recognize it. Their silent language had developed over time, but it had no word for the body ahead. He reached out with one ancient digit and scrawled letters in the frost which covered the panel. MARS, he wrote.

Goveretski narrowed his eyes and cocked his head, his signal that he was pondering the orb in front of them, its importance, and how Mars could've thrown them off course. He knew Stern had spent several lifetimes calculating and recalculating their course, accounted for every known variable. He straightened his neck and widened his eyes. That was it, every known variable, in the long time they'd been gone, there must have simply been some kind of change they hadn't anticipated, an unknown variable which had resulted in something that pulled them off course. He looked down to the gauges which showed their monopropellant reserves. Not enough to alter course by any significant amount, but possibly enough. They weren't going to make it to Earth, but if they were lucky, they might still be able to accomplish some of what they set out to do. He turned to Stern and communicated his intentions. It took some back and forth, some convincing, but eventually, Stern did his own calculations and agreed. Then he explained his decision to the others. Iotoshi, originally their mission equipment specialist, then headed aft, to the mechanism of their intended retribution. Meanwhile, Figg and Patir set to work to rewrite the message they'd intended to send.

~

Gilead tapped his foot in impatience as he waited. He was standing on the edge of the Ziggurat by the singular landing pad that serviced the entire facility. The craft which was supposed to take him and a small team of Peacekeepers loyal to the Project to the crash site was visible on the horizon, an orbital skiff that would take them from the Ziggurats position on North America's west coast, into low Earth orbit, then re-enter near the crash site in the Atlantic just off the east coast. The trip was expected to take ten minutes once they were aboard. The Peacekeepers were set with an advanced set of armor with integrated atmospheric and propulsion systems, rated to allow them to function in any environment on Earth since they never knew exactly where they might be deployed to search for ruins or warrens.

He could just barely hear them checking and rechecking their gear and communications. He turned to the squad leader, who stood at attention when he saw he was being addressed.

"Your team been briefed on the objective of this little excursion?"

"Yes, sir, a specimen, considered extremely dangerous, possible cognitohazard, which we are to detain at all costs."

"And the other?"

"Project member Toirhealbhach Aoibheann, Venusian, heavily augmented, combat capable, but if unarmed considered a negligible threat. Unlikely to have survived the crash."

"And your orders regarding Aoibheann if he has survived?"

"Detain if possible, eliminate if necessary."

"Good."

The sudden blast of wind and noise told him without looking that the skiff had arrived and was landing behind him.

"Get your men aboard and get seated ready for immediate deployment, I will join the pilot in the cockpit."

"Aye sir."

It had been a long time since he'd been in orbit, he intended to enjoy the view.

~

Daq stepped forward to the Admirals side as the Persephone approached. The ship was painted in variations of green, black, and yellow. Across her bow armor was a splash of various White Lilys, Yellow Orchids, and Black Roses.

"Admiral, care to share your plan? The Persephone isn't big enough to tow us, nor does she have the space to evacuate us."

"I'm aware. I've dispatched a communique to the Ironclad Resolution to make her way here for those purposes. We, that is, you and I, are going to hitch a ride on the Persephone. The Resolution is going to follow shortly."

"And, where are we going?"

"We're going to the Field Museum in orbit of Ceres."

Daq was taken aback for a moment before expressing his confusion.

"And, just why are we going to a museum at a time like this?"

"The Field Museum has a couple of dozen ships kept preserved from the War of the Field, they're by no means modern, in fact, I'd say a couple Mosquitos could probably take them all out in short order, but they're all capable of planetary landing."

"Admiral?"

"We're going to get as many of them up and running as we can, then use them to go down to Mars and evacuate as many as we can."

"Admiral, forgive me if I'm a little skeptical, but wasn't the War of the Field almost twenty thousand years ago?"

"It was, and I understand your confusion, but back when I was a Captain, after the last minor inter-Hegemonic spat between Earths orbital colonies and Luna, long before you were born, I was part of an initiative to plan contingencies in case of a full-fledged war between the Hegemony and the Outer Planets. As a part of that effort, I received reports on the complete restoration of every vessel in that museum and issued standing orders for the local Peacekeepers on Ceres to keep them in good repair. To my knowledge, that order has not been rescinded."

"Still, Admiral-"

"You know what's interesting to me, Daq?"

"I- I don't know sir."

"You know the namesake of the *Persephone?"

"No sir."

"Ancient, pre-Phenomena religion on Earth, a culture on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a Goddess of the afterlife, but, she was also a Goddess of the spring."

"Spring, sir?"

"One of Earth's seasons, a time of rebirth and rejuvenation. I'm hoping it'll give us luck in the 'rebirth' of that ancient fleet."

"Never took you for one to rely on luck, Admiral."

"I'm not, but with a war on our hands, and now this- this second Martian Cataclysm I-"

"You don't think they're connected?"

"The war and what's happened to Mars? Not possible. No weapon could've possibly done this. I'm not going into details for obvious reasons, but even the experimental or theoretical weapons I've been briefed on couldn't have done this."

"And if the Outer planets did do it? If they have something nobody knew about, something new?"

"Then they'd better use it on Mars, Venus, and Mercury as well because otherwise, I'll make damn sure we destroy every single last vessel and installation on the wrong side of the Asteroid Belt."

~

Viktor Reitmeyer, or as he'd been named by his parents on Venus, Toirhealbhach Aoibheann, looked over at Jesse as they floated, clinging to a few pieces of debris from the Templar that were light enough to float, Jesse seemed to be almost relaxing, he'd removed his footwear and placed them on his chest as he lay floating on his back, one arm still draped over the cushion he'd grabbed hold of. As he watched, his augmentation alerted him that the research vessel was approaching.

"Jesse."

"Yeah?"

"The vessel is almost here, it should be surfacing in a minute or so."

"Surfacing?"

"It's an underwater vessel."

"A submarine?"

"Is that what they called them in your time?"

"Yeah, Captain Longmire used to command one."

"Longmire? US Navy?"

"Yeah, you know about him?"

"Yes, he was one of-"

He was interrupted by a loud rumble seemingly coming from above. Jesse looked about.

"Is that thunder? I don't see no storm clouds..."

"No, that's a sonic boom, something is coming."

As he spoke, a large white rounded hull rose out of the water some 30 meters from where they floated.

"Come on Jesse, that's our ride, we'd better get aboard and underway before whatever that is gets here."

"Won't hear no bitchin' from me."

As they swam for the research vessel, they could see a glowing streak of flame descending towards them coming from the west.

Ancient history tells of the Alvarez Plague, a devastating disease released by a mad scientist and terrorist which caused the collapse of human society on Earth 40,000 years ago leading to the adoption of the Pre-Phenomena (PPa)/Post-Phenomenon (PP) dating system. This history is a fabrication. Upper-level Peacekeeper Officers are told that it was released on accident due to an EMP discharge released from an experimental "Displacement Drive" tested in orbit. This too is a fabrication. In truth, every 40,000 years the Earth's solar system moves within the Milky Way to be in alignment with several stellar phenomena which allow strange energies to be tapped and used. Certain intelligences make usage of this interval, and it is their interference that caused two near-extinction effects, 80,000 years ago in the stone age, and 40,000 years ago, in 2018CE, under the old dating system.

Investigator Hoel cycled through the various command and control systems that were still accessible. Life support was out of the question. Half the ship's weapons systems were unpowered, but it didn't matter, the targeting systems were down anyway. He accessed the communications system, but it was locked, keyed to command officers only. He turned back to the captain's corpse, which was bouncing off the forward bulkhead. He disconnected from the console and took a few steps, grabbed her, and pulled her back to the console, reconnected his armor to it, then placed her right thumb on the scanner. The console scanned it and granted access.

He immediately downloaded the records of all communications going in or out over the past six months. Additionally, he downloaded all the captain's logs made over the same period. He then switched on his armors comms and patched them through the console before turning the vessel's transceiver to the frequency of the Phalanx.

"This Hoel, come in Phalanx."

There was a moment of dead air.

"Investigator, have you-"

"Need to make it quick Lahn, the Peacekeepers abandoned me here, they may choose to attack, launch a decoy and use cold propellants to rendezvous with Callisto and get me the hell out of here!"

"Aye, sir."

He was about to give further instructions when he felt the ship shudder and the captain's chair informed him that one of the emergency bulkheads surrounding the main cargo bay had breached. The motion sensors showed whatever had been outside the bridge was now moving aft, towards the cargo bay. He decided to take care of another, more important task first.

"Lahn, I'm sending you all the data I've pulled from the Callisto under our standard encryption, I want you to save us a copy, then re-transmit it out on OPCA dedicated Investigative frequency, mark it as a high priority. Do that before you make any moves to come to get me, understand?"

"Yes Sir."

"Good, in the meanwhile, I'm going to see about setting up a distraction."

With that, he cut comms and accessed the power systems again, routing power to the primary cargo bay doors and opening them to space. There was an immediate response. Motion sensors all over the ship showed movement, dozens, hundreds of beings, it was impossible to tell, were suddenly converging on the cargo bay.

~

Rivet looked as they absorbed her declaration. Vagner looked thoughtful, Fhast was unreadable, Jachus looked ill, and Yadav seemed extremely nonplussed, and proceeded to speak first.

"Councilwoman Rivet, your assertions notwithstanding, we have every reason to believe that you have communicated with the Hegemony without authorization, and with your access to sensitive information even if it were to appear completely innocent we couldn't take that at face value, it could be code words designating pre-arranged messages, and that still makes you a traitor to the Colonies. So we will make sure you get a traitor's punishment-"

At this, Fhast interjected.

"Investigator Yadav, that may not square with Colonial Law."

"Oh? And how so Colonel?"

"Saturn Colonial Law allows for extreme measures in face of an extreme threat. The example used in the Officers School is a comet or asteroid threatening to destroy a populated body, in such an event, where the threat of complete loss of life is present, the Colonial Government and Peacekeepers are allowed to take whatever actions they deem necessary, even actions specifically prohibited by law, so long as the intended effect of the actions is the preservation of lives. Note I specifically didn't say Colonial lives, the principle of saving lives is held as higher than political considerations. To my knowledge it's never been tested practically, but, if what the Councilwoman says is true, if there is some kind of extra-solar threat making its way through the Colonies, wiping out everything in its path, then any actions she's taken to preserve lives, Colonial or Hegemony, may very well be within the law."

Governor Jachus nodded in agreement.

"Indeed, it's descended from a pre-Exodus legal principle summed up as 'what is necessary is therefore also legal'."

Vagner, Yadav, and Fhast looked at the Governor in surprise.

"Before I got into politics I practiced law, not too successfully, but I made it a point to memorize as many precepts as I could."

Yadav looked incredulous as she looked between the Colonol and the Governor.

"I can't believe you two. Here we have a traitor, who admits to being so openly, and you're debating principles of law?"

The Governor looked at his hands as he spoke quietly.

"Investigator, your authority has significant breadth, but any arrest or sentencing on a colony or station must be made with the cooperation or assent of the local government and/or highest-ranking Peacekeeper. That is why the Colonel and myself are present here, normally it's a formality, we generally accede to the expertise of OPCA Investigators as a matter of policy, but this is not a normal situation, as I think we can all agree. For you to have the Councilor 'punished' as you say, you need a two-thirds vote. I do not assent, I think her assertions deserve investigation. I know your vote, Yadav. So, Colonel, it's up to you."

Colonel Fhast looked Rivet in the eyes for a few moments before speaking.

"I don't believe her-"

Rivet felt her stomach drop.

"-however I do believe in being thorough. What's more, every time in history where military men have decided that they are above the law, or when the law has been applied blindly, without consideration of exigent circumstances, it has almost always resulted in cruelty, and untold human suffering. I may be Peacekeeper, but I am not blind, nor is my trust. For now, I do not assent to her execution. I will, however, have her held incommunicado as we work to decrypt her transmission. If she's being truthful, then I will make my superiors off-station aware of the threat, and we will see what can be done. If she's lying, I'll be happy to carry out the sentence myself."

~

Captain Sayle was unsuccessful in his attempt to nap aboard the Falchion as he was ferried to the Gate to transition to the Hub. The flight suit and helmet he had to wear, not to mention the combat seat and harness, did not allow for a comfortable recline. He made the best of it by using his CACC to review reports on the repair and resupply of the fleet. The damage to the Lightning Rider was going to put her out of commission for a month at least, the Ebony Glacier, the Tip of the Spear, the Alpha Centauri, the Archer's Quiver, the Gilded Gauntlet, the Ceres, and the Rosethorne were all looking at a few days or weeks of repairs. But, considering the Gates at Jupiter and the Saturn Gate were gone, they were looking at at least a month before any Outer Colony vessels could threaten facilities in the Belt. His review was interrupted by the pilot.

"Coming up on the Mercurial L1 Gate, sir, ready for the transition."

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

There was the momentary flash of light as they went through, and from their perspective, they were at the Hub instantly. It was abuzz with activity, as far as he could tell, nearly a quarter of the fleet was in port docked along the central spire. Cargo hoppers were flying every which way within the shell of the station. The Pilot was immediately contacted by Port Control and relinquished control to be safely routed through the chaos to the appropriate docking bulb. The trip through the station was direct, seems his arrival was prioritized as he saw everything from hoppers to full frigates stopped to allow his passage. Docking was performed in short order, and the bulb was closed and pressurized within five minutes after they transitioned. He was escorted into the station as the pilot was refueled for the trip back to Crimson. His escort, a young Peacekeeper Ensign, didn't say anything as he navigated him through the bowels of the spire to the central lift and delivered him to a series of offices belonging to the Diplomatic Corps.

Inside, he was seated in a large conference room, alone, and told to wait. It seemed rather peculiar to him. They asked for him to come urgently, then he was left waiting. He pulled his CACC back out and went over the list of repair estimates and made a file on what vessels he'd take to the Belt where he assumed he was headed next. If the Outer Colonies didn't sue for peace, he bet he was going to be fighting a war amongst the asteroids and was already thinking of the tactical advantages and disadvantages of that battlespace. He didn't have long to wait as it happened, after about ten minutes Rear Admiral Linnorm entered flanked by a Commodore and a civilian by the looks of their suit. He stood at attention and saluted as they came in. Linnorm spoke first as he returned the salute.

"At ease Captain. This is Commodore Velleth, I believe you're familiar."

"Tangentially, we were at the Old Mans's birthday party a few decades ago but we were never formally introduced nor did we speak."

Indicating the civilian, he continued.

"This is Consul Andrew Elimak of the 12th Jupiter Delegation. We should take a seat Captain, we may be here for a little bit."

As they sat the Admiral went to the door and spoke to the Brigadiers guarding it before shutting the door and locking it before he took his seat opposite the Captain.

"Now before we begin I need to make sure we're all up to speed and address the shadow in the room. Several months ago Hegemony Peacekeeper Intelligence operatives within the Outer Colonies passed the word along that the Outer Colonies had lost contact with some of the furthest facilities in the Oort Cloud. Shortly thereafter they lost contact with Pluto and Charon, and over the intervening time frame they've lost contact with colonies at Neptune, then Uranus, and now the outermost moons of Saturn. This has triggered a panic among the colonies civilian populations, and started a wave of fear, misinformation, and denial among colonial governments."

Consul Elimak leaned forward in his seat.

"The Legislature was not made aware of these losses of communications, Admiral, may I ask why?"

"We'll get to that Consul. At the same time, a certain organization which specializes in a different kind of intelligence organization operating within the Hegemony received long-expected indications of a significant threat to, well, everything, was about to manifest itself."

Commodore Velleth locked eyes with Captain Sayle, and suddenly the Captain realized, Velleth was a member of the Project, as was the Admiral. The Consul interjected again.

"What kind of intelligence organization?"

"That's what we're here to discuss. Consul, The Commodore, the Captain, and I are all members of a group that calls itself The Project. Most of our membership exists within the Hegemony, but one of our members in the Outer Colonies recently delivered to us a complete report on the events occurring amongst the colonies, and it acted as the final confirmation for us that all the preparations we've been making are about to be needed."

"What is this, some kind of soft coup? Do you expect the Legislation to just-"

"Please Consul, let us explain, please understand we are not a threat to the Hegemony, or democracy, we're trying to save it. By the end of this conversation, I believe you'll understand why we've not operated in the open before now."

"I'll give you your time Admiral, but first I want answers to some specific questions, then, if I feel you've been honest with me, we can move forward with whatever you're proposing here."

"Ask your questions."

"What is the nature of the threat you alluded to?"

"How good is your knowledge of history, Consul?"

~

Jordan and Walthers continued their conversation as they rested along Geneva Avenue headed west-northwest towards the shore. The prints from whatever horseback group that had taken the survivor of the helicopter crash were still readily apparent in the mud and debris lining the gutters of the street. They were passing a fire station with a faded mural of a horse drawn fire pump decorating it which Marcus and Leonard had taken as an opportunity to search for supplies, specifically, bottled water. Meanwhile Brian and Cole had gone into the gas station opposite to look for bug spray, as the afternoon wore on mosquitos were becoming a nuisance.

"So Lamar, how did you end up with the Captain?"

"Well when everything went to shit, I was working supply out of Camp Lejeune doing overnight inventory, I was lucky, I was trapped somewhere with a couple years worth of MREs and bottled water. Me and couple other guys, we hunkered down and made it through. Afterwards, we loaded up and started reconnoitering the Camp and the surrounding area, found about a dozen other survivors, two Marines and ten civvies. Then, we loaded up and headed for DC, looking for any surviving government, didn't find much. But about a week later the Oregon came sailing up the Anacostia River, caught sight of her as she crossed under the Frederick Douglas Memorial Bridge, and we met them when they docked at a pier at the Navy Yard."

"So you've basically been with the Captain since he started playing Mayor."

"Playing? Hell, he's been a better leader than most my old CO's and a damn sight better than any politician. You know he tried to set up a civilian election a couple years ago and-"

"I remember, he told me, he didn't run at all, couple other folks did, and a woman, I think?"

"Yeah Lindsay, a bank manager from Denver but-"

"But like three quarters of the vote were write-in votes for Longmire anyway."

They shared a brief moment of laughter as Marcus and Leonard emerged from the fire station, each carrying a case of bottled water. Walthers grabbed up his pack.

"Ok guys, break up the water, everybody take a four or five bottles and leave the rest, we've got to get moving again. We're burning daylight."

Marcus started divvying up his case, but as he did so he looked to Walthers.

"Professor, these fireman had a bunch of bicycles in the garage."

"And?"

"And they've been sheltered from the elements the whole time, they look like they're still in good repair. Maybe a low tire or two but there's a hand pump in there too."

"You thinking we might use them?"

"Couldn't hurt to check them out."

"Well there's six of us, how many bikes are in there?"

"Nine or ten, easy."

"Alright, if you can get six of them in working order, we'll take them."

"Right on, Prof."